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Tales from L.A.

Tales from L.A.
One of the best welterweight title clashes in recent years took place as Errol Spence Jr. connected with a single sidewinder left cross to Shawn Porter’s chin and put him down. It proved to be the difference in their back and forth tussle at Staples Center.
It also climaxed a long week of media luncheons, workouts and photographic opportunities that spearheaded the PBC on Fox fight card last week in the city of Los Angeles.
That was only part of the story.
Because of the magnitude of the championship card that also featured super welterweights David Benavidez, Anthony Dirrell, Mario Barrios, Josesito Lopez and John Molina, a horde of boxing writers, photographers and videographers ascended to the second largest city in the U.S. from all parts of the world.
Wednesday’s Recon
Big fight cards similar to last week’s action bring the best of the best in reporting in the boxing world. Reporters descended from far away countries like Great Britain, Japan, Mexico and other nations to watch the heavy-duty boxing lineup that featured mostly 50-50 fights.
The media center was located in the Inter-Continental Hotel on Figueroa Street in downtown L.A. It’s about five city blocks from the Staples Center and accessible by subway if you have a hotel in Hollywood, Long Beach, East L.A. or Pasadena. The media hotel had a rooftop bar 70 stories up that allows you one of the most impressive views of the surrounding areas including a spectacular view of the Pacific Ocean.
First to greet me at the media hotel was Tim Smith a former ace reporter for the New York Daily News who now heads the Premier Boxing Champions communications team. Few know the boxing game as well as the former New Yorker.
“O.G.!” shouted Smith when I entered the room filled with other reporters.
It takes an OG to recognize an OG.
Smith knows everybody in the boxing world and if you don’t know who Smith is, well, you better ask somebody.
Inside one of the banquet rooms several of the featured fighters gathered inside to meet the press. In a very informal setting people with video cameras, microphones and cell phones surrounded each of the boxers in the room depending on their importance.
Anthony Dirrell was surrounded by 30 or more reporters as I entered the room that measured about the size of a Major League Baseball infield. He talked about defending the WBC super middleweight title and other boxing aspects.
Dirrell has been boxing for many more years than most of the other participants with the exception of Josesito Lopez and Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero who began several years earlier.
It brought back fond memories to see these three members of the old guard.
Club Show Days
One major flaw with many of the top boxing reporters has always been their refusal to watch club shows from the smaller boxing promotion outfits. Southern California has a number of promotion companies that put on club shows every month.
These small club shows are where you can first discover the future gems of tomorrow.
Most of the top boxing writers come from newspapers or major magazines that only focus on major boxing stars that appear on televised cards. By the time they see the fighters many of them have been written about for years by those covering the club fight scene.
Discovering fighters at the beginning of their journeys in four-round fights provides invaluable background and insight. If a writer covers boxers at the beginning of their journeys, there are no surprises when they reach the championship level.
The gems stand out. But sometimes the hidden gems need a little dusting off to reach the top.
Anthony Dirrell was one of those who seemed to get lost in the shadow of his brother Andre Dirrell. But the Flint, Michigan native always had that extra toughness you needed to withstand the pain that made others quit.
The first time I got a glimpse of both Dirrells was on a boxing card at Pechanga Resort and Casino in Temecula, Calif. back in 2006. It was a Goossen-Tutor Card and that night Anthony Dirrell waxed somebody in one round.
Four months later I saw Dirrell again at the Staples Center when fellow Michigan fighter James “Lights Out” Toney fought Samuel Peter in a heavyweight fight. Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero fought that same night and won the IBF featherweight world title. After that fight card we ran into Guerrero at The Pantry which was the only downtown restaurant that was open after 11 p.m. in L.A. back in 2006.
Guerrero was another one of those boxers that I saw in his pro debut back in April 2001. I remember it vividly because in the co-main event Hector Camacho Jr. arrived sitting atop a large snorting camel at Fantasy Springs Casino. Some things you never forget. Though Camacho never achieved the greatness most predicted for him, Guerrero achieved status as one of the best pound for pound fighters when he met Floyd Mayweather in the boxing ring in 2013.
Josesito Lopez is another who I personally saw in the boxing ring as a youngster even before he became a professional. The Riverside-based fighter always showed grit and super human determination. It’s amazing to watch athletes like Lopez rise from amateur to star status where they are part of a pay-per-view card that also attracted more than 16,000 fans to the Staples Center.
Watching Dirrell, Lopez and Guerrero rise through the ranks of the professional fight world from beginning to end gives a reporter an overall perspective that can’t be taught.
The main event fighters Spence and Porter were another two whose rise to the top were different. Spence was part of Team USA in 2012 and was picked up by Al Haymon as a professional. I saw his first three pro fights including his debut at Fantasy Springs Casino in November 2012 that featured Gary Russell Jr. in the main event. Most of the fighters on the Golden Boy Promotions fight card that night were signed by Haymon, but not all would remain.
Porter differed from Spence. He fought his way out of the Midwest boxing cards and the first time I saw him fight was against former two-time lightweight world champion Julio Diaz at the LA Memorial Sports Arena in 2012. Diaz proved too crafty for Porter and though the fight ended in a draw it easily could have been a loss for the Ohioan. Their rematch proved different and showed that Porter could adapt and evolve as he dominated Diaz at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas the next year.
Caplan
After the sizzling PBC fight card at Staples Center I ventured over to the Palm Restaurant located on Flower Avenue, a block east of the Staples Center. I was invited personally by super publicist Bill Caplan for a dinner party by the WBC.
I met Mr. Caplan around 1993 when he was the top publicist for Top Rank and they were promoting a slew of prospects including Oscar De La Hoya. Well, Oscar wasn’t just a prospect but a former Olympic gold medalist who a year earlier emerged victorious in Barcelona, Spain.
Few know the boxing world as well as Mr. Caplan (pictured hamming it up with WBC President Mauricio Sulaiman). He’s been involved in the boxing world as a publicist since the 1960s and worked with Aileen Eaton, Don Chargin, Don King, Bob Arum and now De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions.
“I was with Don King when he first started his promotion company,” said Caplan about the rise of King, one of the most recognizable figures in the boxing world.
Caplan also works for the World Boxing Council that coordinates the rankings and rules for world championship fights around the world. Right now the Mexico City-based organization has established VADA drug testing for all championship fights including women.
Sitting and talking with Caplan about boxing in the past and present has always been one of the treasured moments for me. Who else can talk about meeting with the original “Golden Boy” Art Aragon or his buddy Bennie Georgino a former boxing manager and promoter?
One man we shared tales about was the late Luis Magana who would have been right in the thick of the conversation with his own tales. The dapper gentleman from Mexico was a predecessor of Caplan and served as the Spanish publicist for the Olympic Auditorium during his days from the 1930s until the 1980s. He passed away 11 years ago in his mid-90s.
Caplan has been part of some incredible moments too. During his time, he’s watched the boxing masses get their results from magazines, newspapers, radio to television and now through internet streaming spanning more than 60 years. He’s a treasure and one of the kindest gentlemen in the hardscrabble world of pro boxing.
Moments like these with Caplan and others are part of the boxing that make you realize that it’s a very unique world. No other sport has a history as rich as prizefighting with the exception of Major League Baseball. Other sports are relatively new when compared to professional boxing that can be traced back hundreds of years.
Prizefighting has a lengthy history with unique personalities like Bill Caplan who keep the lineage of the sport enriched and thriving.
Last Saturday night, we spoke about several other moments in boxing but those are tales for another day.
Check out more boxing news on video at The Boxing Channel
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Avila Perspective, Chap. 262: Ryan Garcia Reloads and More Fight News

Nobody is perfect.
That’s a mantra that everyone including boxers, promoters and managers should realize. No person is perfect. Everyone makes mistakes.
Ryan “King Ry” Garcia (23-1, 19 KOs) returns to the prize ring to face thunderous punching Oscar Duarte (26-1-1, 21 KOs) on Saturday, Dec. 2, at the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas. DAZN will stream the stacked Golden Boy Promotions card.
A press conference started slowly like a long-lit fuse slowly burning to the stick of dynamite. And when the fire reached the stick, it exploded with everyone in the vicinity burned.
Garcia unleashed pent-up frustration with verbal attacks on his promoters and burned the perimeter with fire. Poor Duarte sat there knowing something happened, but probably needed translation from his people to discover Garcia burned the room.
No survivors.
If that’s just a sample of what’s coming on Saturday night, well buckle-up and don’t miss a second of Garcia and Duarte’s confrontation.
Duarte has 11 consecutive knockouts and an 80 percent knockout rate. Garcia recently lost to Gervonta “Tank” Davis by stoppage and is looking to raze the earth. He has an 82 percent knockout rate.
Somebody is going to sleep in front of millions of fans.
“Oscar is a tough opponent. I know he’s going to come to fight. But I’m right here to make an example for the 140-division,” said Garcia with a death knell stare during the face-off. “This is how I’m coming. This is the Ryan Garcia you are going to get.”
Duarte knows he’s in the limelight. There’s no better place to be. Or is there?
“This is a dream for me. I come very prepared. This Saturday you will see my best version,” said Duarte. “I’m going to win.”
Maybe he picked the wrong time.
Garcia looked as if he were General Sherman on his way to scorch the earth on his way to Atlanta. No survivors.
It doesn’t look good for anyone.
“I’m laser focused” said Garcia with a stare that looked like Superman shooting lasers from his eyes.
The loss to Davis last spring was only on his ledger. In his pocketbook the lean, snap-quick fighter from Victorville, California gained $30+ million. That’s what happens when you fight the best and the world wants to see it. Both he and Tank Davis broke the bank and the counting machine for pay-per-views.
But winning still remains important and few know better than promoter Oscar De La Hoya.
“You never know where the mindset is in a fighter after he loses. You have to give it up to Ryan. When you pick a guy who is dangerous and speedy and who has a shot, kudos to Ryan,” said De La Hoya on social media in a statement that probably lit the Garcia’s fuse that roasted the room.
“When fighters lose they have their emotional rollercoasters. But once you win and you get 30 million bucks everything is friggin good,” De La Hoya added.
Others on the card are Shane Mosley Jr., Floyd Schofield, Darius Fulghum and Ryan’s younger brother Sean Garcia.
It’s loaded. Beware of fire.
SoCal
Amado Vargas, son of the great Fernando Vargas, makes his return.
Vargas (9-0, 4 KOs), a lightweight, meets Ezequiel Flores (4-1) in the main event on Saturday Dec. 2, at C. Robert Lee Center in Hawaiian Gardens, Calif. on the MarvNation Boxing Promotions card
All three of the Vargas brothers have been burning up to boxing ring and all are signed by promoters. Amado and Fernando Vargas Jr. signed with MarvNation and have attracted many fans.
This is the last boxing card of the year for MarvNation. Doors open at 5 p.m. For more information call (562) 713-9026 or (562) 639-3980.
Florida
Don King Productions has its last card of the year and ends it with five title fights including undefeated Antonio Perez (8-0, 5 KOs) versus Haskell Rhodes (29-5-1, 14 KOs) in a welterweight clash at Casino Miami Jai Ali in Miami, Florida.
Perez, 21, is only 5-6 in height and Rhodes is even shorter, but has experience against top competition such as Floyd Schofield and Sergey Lipinets.
Also on the card are Ian Green, Vaughn Alexander, Tre’Sean Wiggins, Chris Howard, Alex Castro, Harry Cruz and more.
The Don King Production card will be streamed at this link: https://itube247.com/
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Australia’s Liam Paro Aims to Steal the Show on the Haney-Prograis Card

These are heady days for the sport of professional boxing in Australia. Cruiserweight Jai Opetaia is the best fighter in his weight class. Tim Tszyu is a major star in the Land Down Under and his younger brother Nikita is lapping at his heels. Then there’s undefeated super lightweight Liam Paro, 27, whose profile will grow immensely if he can get past Cleveland’s Montana Love when they meet on Dec. 9 in San Francisco at the home of the Golden State Warriors. It’s a 12-rounder that will serve as the chief supporting bout to the showdown between Devin Haney and Regis Prograis.
Forget the fact that Matchroom honcho Eddie Hearn has seen fit to dress up this fight with some frivolous title; this is a good match-up. An undefeated southpaw, Liam Paro (23-0, 14 KOs) is coming off the best win of his career. Montana Love (18-1-1, 9 KOs) would likely be undefeated too if not for a bizarre disqualification in his most recent bout. He too is a southpaw.
Paro turned heads in is his last outing when he scored a brutal, one-punch, opening-round knockout of countryman Brock Jarvis. Paro was favored, bur Jarvis, a disciple of Jeff Fenech, Australia’ most famous living boxer, was accorded the better chance of ending the bout with one punch.
Paro vs. Jarvis, staged in October of last year in South Brisbane, marked Matchroom’s first foray into Australia. Paro has had two fights fall out in the interim. The British Boxing Board of Control pulled Paro out of a March 11, 2003 match in Liverpool, England with Robbie Davies Jr. when a routine but mandatory scan showed evidence of a facial fracture. Three months later, Paro was forced to withdraw from a title fight with WBA 140-pound belt-holder Regis Prograis because both of his Achilles tendons were inflamed, compromising his mobility.
The facial fracture, insists Paro, was a false positive; the test was defective. As for the Achilles issue, that’s cleared up. “It’s in my rear-view mirror,” he says.
Paro was raised in the city of Mackay which is near the Coral Sea coast of Queensland. His ancestors migrated here from Italy to work in the sugarcane fields. Unlike so many other dads, his father Errol, a welder in the steel industry, has no boxing background and isn’t directly involved in preparing his son for a fight. Errol is with his son in Las Vegas at the moment (Errol’s first visit to Sin City) and will be there with several other family members to cheer on Liam when he resumes his career in San Francisco on Dec. 9.
When healthy, Liam Paro can usually be found training at the Top Rank Gym in Las Vegas. The boxing infrastructure of the Southern Nevada city draws prizefighters from around the world. He has sparred extensively with Jamel Herring and has boxed with the likes of Shakur Stevenson and Devin Haney. Practicing his craft with fighters of that caliber may give him an edge when he touches gloves with Montana Love.
Montana Love
Montana Love came to the fore in August of 2021 when he stepped up in class and upset Russian tough guy Ivan Baranchyk on a Jake Paul promotion in Cleveland. Baranchyk’s handlers stopped the one-sided affair after seven rounds. Five weeks later, Love signed with Matchroom.

Montana Love
What followed was a third-round blast-out of 29-1 Carlos Diaz followed by a hard-earned 12-round decision over Gabriel Gollaz Valenzuela and then a match with Australia’s Steve Spark which marked Love’s debut as a top-of-the-marquee attraction in his hometown.
The fight between Love and Spark was even on two scorecards after five rounds. In the sixth, shortly after a clash of heads left Love with a bad cut over his left eye, Love pushed Spark out of the ring and was immediately disqualified by referee David Fields. It was a controversial call; a “terrible call” in the words of Eddie Hearn. For the record, after flipping over the top strand of rope, Spark landed on his feet and was fit to continue.
A 28-year-old father of three, Love has always had the vibe of a hungry fighter, a residue of the adversity he has had to overcome. His father died when he was three years old and his mother was only 38 when she passed away from colon cancer. In 2015, as his career was just getting started, he was remanded to prison on theft- and drug-related charges and served 16 months.
It’s rather ironic that Love will be facing an Australian opponent on American soil in back-to-back fights. Needless to say, he hopes that the second installment will go better than the first.
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The Murder of Samuel Teah Calls to Mind Other Boxers Who Were Homicide Victims

There will be a boxing show this Friday at Philadelphia’s 2300 Arena, a low-budget card featuring the return of former IBF 130-pound world title-holder Tevin Farmer. During the event, there will assuredly be a somber moment when those in attendance stand and silently pay homage to Samuel Teah as the timekeeper tolls the traditional 10-bell farewell. Teah passed away last week on Black Friday, Nov. 24, another victim of America’s epidemic of gun violence. He was 36 years old.
Teah was shot in the mid-afternoon during an altercation that spilled onto the sidewalk of a street in Wilmington, Delaware, and died at a Wilmington hospital. As of this writing, there’s been no arrest, but the shooting was apparently not random. A bus driver for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority, Teah was purportedly in Wilmington (roughly 35 miles from his home in Philadelphia) to visit the mother of his child.
Samuel Teah fought as recently as this past May when he suffered a shocking defeat at the hands of journeyman Andrew Rodgers at a show in Pennsylvania’s Newton Township, reducing his record to 19-5-1. Two months earlier he had spoiled the undefeated record of Enriko Gogokhia, an Egis Klimas fighter (think Oleksandr Usyk and Vasily Lomachenko) on a card in Ontario, California. This embellished his reputation as a spoiler. Earlier in his career, he had spoiled the undefeated record of O’Shaquie Foster, winning an 8-round unanimous decision over the man that currently reigns as the WBC world super featherweight champion.
What made Teah’s death more tragic, if that were possible, were all the tragedies that he had overcome. He was born in Liberia when that country was embroiled in a civil war. The family escaped to a refugee camp in Ghana and eventually reached the United States, settling first in New York and then Philadelphia. On the day after Christmas in 2008, when Teah was 21 and working at a Home Depot, he lost six members of his family in a fire that swept his mother’s West Philadelphia duplex after a kerosene heater exploded.
For some, Teah’s violent death may call to mind the murder of another Philadelphia boxer, Tyrone Everett.
That’s an awkward comparison.
Tyrone Everett was a world-class fighter. Six months before he was shot dead by his girlfriend in May of 1977, Everett, then 34-0, lost a 15-round split decision to Puerto Rico’s Alfredo Escalera in a failed bid to win Escalera’s WBC junior lightweight title, a decision so rancid that it stands among the worst decisions of all time. Moreover, the circumstances of Everett’s murder were sordid. His girlfriend, no stranger to the police, fatally shot him after finding him with a transvestite and there was heroin in the apartment they shared. (Editor’s note: For more on this incident, check out the new book by TSS contributor Sean Nam: “Murder on Federal Street: Tyrone Everett, the Black Mafia, Fixed Fights, and the Last Golden Age of Philadelphia Boxing” available on Amazon).
Samuel Teah was no Tyrone Everett. A man of deep faith, Sam’s positive attitude, despite all his tribulations, was infectious. “Everyone liked Teah,” said prominent Philadelphia sports journalist Joe Santoliquito who, upon hearing of Teah’s death, tweeted, “he will always have a special place in my heart.”
While the circumstances are different in every case, Teah joins a long list of boxers who met a violent death. If we limit the list to fighters who were still active at the time of their passing, here are four that jump immediately to mind.
Stanley Ketchel
The fabled Michigan Assassin, Ketchel met his maker on Oct. 15, 1910, at a ranch in Conway, Missouri. In the immortal words of John Lardner, “Stanley Ketchel was twenty-four years old when he was fatally shot in the back by the common-law husband of the lady who was cooking his breakfast.”
Battling Siki
Famed for knocking out Georges Carpentier when the “Orchid Man” held the world light heavyweight title, Siki was only 28 years old when he was gunned down in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan on Dec. 15, 1925, but by then the Senegal-born Frenchman had already degenerated into a trial horse. Siki’s body was found in the middle of the street with two bullets in his back fired at close range by an assailant, never identified, who was thought to be avenging a beating he suffered at one of the speakeasies that Siki was known to frequent.
Oscar Bonavena
At age 33, Oscar Bonavena was still an active boxer when he was gunned down on May 22, 1976, on the outskirts of Reno, Nevada, at the front gate of the infamous Mustang Ranch, a legal brothel. Bonavena had come up short in his biggest fights, losing a 15-round decision to Joe Frazier and losing by TKO in the 15th round to Muhammad Ali, but the rugged Argentine was still a major player in the heavyweight division.
The shooter was a bodyguard for the brothel’s owner Joe Conforte, and rumor has that Conforte was the de facto triggerman, having Bonavena assassinated because the boxer was having an affair with Conforte’s 59-year-old wife Sally who was also Bonavena’s manager of record at this point in the boxer’s career. The story about it spawned “Love Shack,” a 2010 movie that despite a seemingly can’t-miss storyline and a formidable cast (Joe Pesci played Joe and Helen Mirren played Sally) proved to be a box-office dud.
Vernon Forrest
While all homicides are tragic, some are more distressing than others and the death of Vernon Forrest on July 25, 2009, was particularly gut-wrenching. Forrest was shot twice in the back by would-be robbers with whom he exchanged gunfire on July 25, 2009 at a gas station in Atlanta.
Forget the fact that Forrest was a two-division title-holder who had regained the WBC world super welterweight title in his most recent fight with a lopsided decision over Sergio Mora. Few in the sport were as widely admired. His philanthropic work included establishing group homes in Atlanta for the mentally disabled. His death came just two weeks after the death of Arturo Gatti who left the sport following a loss by TKO to Alfonso Gomez in July of 2007 and died under suspicious circumstances at age 37 at a hotel in Brazil.
We here at The Sweet Science send our condolences to Samuel Teah’s family and loved ones. May he rest in peace.
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