`Cold War’ in Boxing Fully Thawed? Maybe So, Maybe Not

Published

5 years ago

October 3, 2019

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The times they are a’changing. Some would say that, in terms of professional boxing at the international level, they already have changed, and for the better.

Others would say that the “Cold War,” which existed from the end of World War II until Dec. 26, 1991, when the Soviet Union officially was voted out of existence by the Supreme Soviet, and which once placed the United States against the USSR in a constant state of mutual distrust, still has a distinct chill. It’s just that the shape of what was and what still might be has undergone alterations over the past 27 years, with the presumed good guys now barely distinguishable from the presumed bad guys.

As fighters from Russia and many of the 14 now-former Soviet republics (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Lithuania, Georgia, Turkmenistan, Belarus, Moldova, Latvia, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Estonia and Tajikistan) now routinely appear on high-visibility cards in America, one veteran U.S. boxing insider insists that some of the familiar tensions still are or should be in play. The conflict now is not necessarily the fault of the fighters from the former USSR who arrived on U.S. shores to advance their careers and quality of their lives, but far higher up, among those in positions of power who allegedly are freer to manipulate the business of the sport since the collapse of the Iron Curtain.

“We still have a Cold War, it’s just different,” said the source, who asked not to be identified. “More and more fighters from those countries are flooding into our country. F— that.

“The Russian mob basically runs boxing. I’ve never seen things more corrupt than they are now. The fact that people (in America) aren’t more up in arms is because they’re stupid.”

That is perhaps an overly harsh assessment, but there can be no denying that fighters from Russia and other Eastern Bloc nations either are or are becoming staples in U.S. arenas and on American television. This Saturday night, DAZN will stream the matchup of established superstar Gennadiy Golovkin (39-1-1, 35 KOs), a native of Kazakhstan who now resides in Los Angeles, and top contender Sergiy Derevyanchenko (13-1, 10 KOs), 31, a Ukrainian who has made himself right at home in Brooklyn, N.Y. The bout, for the vacant IBF middleweight championship, will be staged at Madison Square Garden and marks the 37-year-old Golovkin’s 15th pro ring appearance in the U.S., and ninth at MSG. For Derevyanchenko, the fight is his 15^th in the U.S. (he has never fought anywhere else) and fifth in New York City.

Two weeks later, on Oct. 18 at the Liacouras Center on the Temple University campus in Philadelphia, the main event, for the unified light heavyweight championship, pits WBC titlist Oleksandr “The Nail” Gvozdyk (17-0, 14 KOs), of Oxnard, Calif., by way of his native Ukraine, against IBF kingpin Artur Beterbiev (14-0, 14 KOs), of Montreal by way of his native Russia. ESPN and ESPN Deportes will televise that fight, as well as a matchup of former WBA welterweight champ Luis Collazzo (39-7, 20 KOs) and No. 1 IBF contender Kudratillo Abdukakhorov (16-0, 9 KOs), now a resident of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, but originally from Uzbekistan.

Elsewhere, signs of the westward migration of world-rated Eastern Europeans are no less evident. On Oct. 12, undisputed cruiserweight champion Oleksandr Usyk (16-0, 12 KOs), who is from Ukraine and actually still lives there, makes his heavyweight debut in Chicago against Tyrone Spong (14-0, 13 KOs), of Miami by way of his native Suriname, a fight to be streamed by DAZN. In the co-featured bout, Dmitry Bivol (16-0, 11 KOs), born in Kyrgyzstan but now living in Russia, defends his WBA light heavyweight belt against the Dominican Republic’s Lenin Castillo (20-2-1, 15 KOs).

A bit further down the road, on Nov. 2 at the Las Vegas’ MGM Grand, WBO light heavyweight ruler Sergey Kovalev (34-3-1, 29 KOs), a Russian who resides in Los Angeles, puts his title on the line against Mexican national hero Canelo Alvarez (52-1-2, 35 KOs), the WBA/WBC middleweight champion who will be moving up two weight classes. That fight also will be streamed via DAZN.

What does this massive influx of fighters from Russia and former Soviet republics, the most celebrated representative of whom might be pound-for-pound lightweight Vasiliy Lomachenko, whose primary residence is in Ukraine but who lives in Oxnard when he is in America to train, mean to U.S. boxing fans? Maybe nothing when placed in an updated context, but there can be no denying the startling difference between now and the world in which American citizens lived during the last couple of generations.

In a 1983 speech by then-President Ronald Reagan, the Gipper referred to the USSR as an “evil empire” and “the focus of evil in the modern world.” Most Americans had no difficulty buying into that concept, just as most Russians were instructed to regard the U.S. as the primary threat to their peace and well-being.

As the global superpowers peered at one another across a chasm of understandable apprehension, boxing, like so many other elements of everyday life, was easily cleaved into us-vs.-them camps. Evidence of that was provided during an Oct. 2, 1990, fight card at Philadelphia’s Blue Horizon, where three Soviets – the first pros from the USSR to be brought here to ply their pugilistic trade – were greeted by a near-record venue turnout of Americans who frequently erupted into chants of “U-S-A! U-S-A!” and treated the visitors as they might any invaders from an enemy regime whose mere presence tapped into their darkest fears.

“He wants so much to be liked that when he hears that `U-S-A, U-S-A’ stuff, he feels like a villain,” Tommy Gallagher, the New York-based trainer of the three Soviets, said of heavyweight Yuri Vaulin, who came away with an eight-round split decision over Philly journeyman William Morris. “He has to learn to deal with that b.s. and to block it out of his mind.”

The Soviets could have been warned beforehand that they were about to be treated by Philly’s notoriously inhospitable sports fans as might members of any visiting pro team from New York City or, even worse, the despised Dallas Cowboys. But old, ingrained habits are hard to break, and especially so for Americans caught up in nationalistic fervor fueled by such movies as Red Dawn (1984) and Rocky IV (1985).

A little more than 14 months after the Soviet trio came to regard the Blue Horizon as their personal house of horrors, the USSR dissolved and U.S. citizens were advised to begin learning the meaning of such Russian words as glasnost (“openness” in the loosening of government restrictions) and perestroika (a reference to the program of economic and political reform initiated by former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbavhev).

And now?

Golovkin should be box-office gold this weekend given his legendary punching power and the fact he appears at the Garden almost as often as the Knicks, Rangers and Billy Joel. But while that might explain why his faceoff with Derevyanchenko is costing a reported $20 million to stage, the unidentified source said it doesn’t explain why “they’ve only sold 3,000 tickets,” a figure I have not been able to verify or disprove.

Nor is the highly attractive unification pairing – on paper, at least — of Gvozdyk and Beterbiev selling like TastyKakes on North Broad Street in Philly, just a few blocks from where the Blue Horizon, now shuttered, catered to some of America’s loudest, most passionate fight fans, not to mention the most hostile to visitors who once bore the mark of the Red Peril. Oh, sure, Gvozdyk and Beterbiev will square off before screaming, flag-waving partisans of their or their forebears’ birth countries, but the locals mostly seem to be unaware of how potentially entertaining and competitive the main event should be.

“There are almost no tickets being sold in Philadelphia for those two guys,” the source said. “I can’t spell the name of either one. If one of them bumped into me in the street, I wouldn’t know who he is. They don’t connect at all with the American public. I don’t know their stories. I don’t know where they’re from. And I don’t give a f— about them.”

Just a thought, but it could just be that the homogenized nature of boxing in the 21^st century has gradually tamped down interest in the U.S., pro or con, for fighters from foreign nations, including those countries whose representatives Americans once loved to hate. Does anyone think the “Miracle on Ice,” in which a hockey team of American college kids shocked a veteran Soviet squad in the semifinals of the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics, would have meant so much had not the red-clad favorites also been cloaked in foreboding mystique? How much different can “they” be from “us” when a Russian billionaire – talk about a strange form of communism – currently owns the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets and Barclays Center?

“Alex’s fans are still mostly Ukrainians, which I think also is the case with Lomachenko and Usyk,” said Teddy Atlas, who will be in Gvozdyk’s corner for the third time on Oct. 18. “But more people are beginning to recognize him here. Fighting on ESPN can only increase (his visibility in America).

“Look, we don’t have the Cold War anymore. We don’t have communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union anymore. There is no Soviet Union anymore. People from those countries have freedom. It’s different when you have freedom. We’re all the same now. There’s no separation.”

Freedom to choose is always good, be it in boxing or anything else. Lack of separation, though, can pose problems for those who find it necessary to pick a side or a fighter to root for, or against.

Pictured: Ukrainian stablemates Usyk, Lomachenko, and Gvozdyk

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 289: East LA, Claressa Shields and More

Published

1 day ago

July 25, 2024

David A. Avila

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 289: East LA, Claressa Shields and More

East Los Angeles has long been a haven for some of the best fighters around if you can keep them out of trouble. For every Oscar De La Hoya or Seniesa Estrada there are thousands derailed by crime, drugs or drinking.

Boxing has always been a favorite sport of East L.A. Every family has an uncle or two who boxes.

On Friday, 360 Promotions’ Omar Trinidad (15-0-1) fights Viktor Slavinskyi (15-2-1) in the main event at Commerce Casino, in Commerce, CA. UFC Fight Pass will stream the fight card.

The City of Commerce used to be part of East L.A. until 1960 when it incorporated. It’s still considered to be part of East Los Angeles, but informally.

Plenty of fighters come out of East L.A. but few make it all the way like De La Hoya and Estrada. Will Trinidad be the one?

The first world champion from East L.A. or “East Los” as some call it, was Solly Garcia Smith back in the late 1800s. Others were Richie Lemos, Art Frias and Joey Olivo. There is also 1984 Olympic gold medalist Paul Gonzalez.

Once again 360 Promotions brings its popular brand of fights to the area. On this fight card includes two female bouts. One features Roxy Verduzco (1-0) the former amateur star fighting Colleen Davis (3-1-1) in a featherweight fight.

All that action takes place on Friday.

Elite Boxing

The next day, also in East L.A., Elite Boxing stages another boxing card at Salesian High School located at 960 S. Soto Street in the Boyle Heights area of East Los Angeles.

Elite Boxing has promoted several successful boxing cards at the Catholic high school grounds. The area is saturated by many of the best eateries in Los Angeles. Don’t take my word for it. Check it out yourself and grab some of that delicious food.

Boxing has long been a favorite sport of anyone who lives in East L.A. It’s a fight town equal to Philadelphia, Brooklyn or Detroit. There’s something different about the area. For more than 100 years some of the best fighters continue to come out of its boxing gyms. Some will be performing on these club shows.

For tickets or information go to www.eliteboxingusa.com

Claressa Shields in Detroit

Speaking of fight towns, pound-for-pound best Claressa Shields who won two Olympic Gold Medals in boxing, moves up another weight division to tackle the WBC heavyweight world champion Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse on Saturday, July 27, at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit, Michigan.

DAZN will stream the heavy-duty fight card.

Shields (14-0) cleaned out the super welterweight, middleweight and super middleweight divisions and now wants to add the big girls to her conquests. She will be facing Canada’s Lepage-Joanisse (7-1) who holds the WBC belt.

The last time Shields gloved up was more than a year ago when she fought Maricela Cornejo. Don’t blame Shields. She loves to fight. She loves to win. The last time Shields lost a fight was in the amateurs and that was three presidential administrations ago.

Shields doesn’t lose.

I wonder if Las Vegas even takes bets on her fights?

The only fight she may have been an underdog was against Savannah Marshall who was the last opponent to defeat her. And that was in 2012 in China. When they met as pros two years ago, Shields avenged her loss with a blistering attack.

Don’t get Shields mad.

Perhaps her toughest foe as a pro was in her pro debut when she clashed with Franchon Crews-Dezurn in Las Vegas. It was four rounds of fists and fury as the two pounded each other on the undercard of Andre Ward and Sergey Kovalev in November 2016.

That was a ferocious debut for both female pugilists.

Assisting Shields on this fight card will be several intriguing male bouts. One guy you should pay special attention is Tito Mercado (15-0, 14 KOs) a super lightweight prospect from Pomona, California.

Many excellent fighters have come out of Pomona including Sugar Shane Mosley, Shane Mosley Jr., Alberto Davila and Richie Sandoval who just passed away this week.

Sandoval was best known for his 15-round war with Philadelphia’s Jeff Chandler for the bantamweight world title in 1984. Read the story by Arne K. Lang on this link: https://tss.ib.tv/boxing/featured-boxing-articles-boxing-news-videos-rankings-and-results/81467-former-world-bantamweight-champion-richie-sandoval-passes-away-at-age-63 .

Fights to Watch

Fri. UFC Fight Pass 7 p.m. Omar Trinidad (15-0-1) vs Viktor Slavinskyi (15-2-1).

Sat. ESPN+ 12:30 p.m. Joe Joyce (16-2) vs Derek Chisora (34-13).

Sat. DAZN 3 p.m. Claressa Shields (14-0) vs Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse (7-1), Michel Rivera (25-1) vs Hugo Roldan (22-2-1); Tito Mercado (15-0) vs Hector Sarmiento (21-2).

Omar Trinidad photo by Lina Baker

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Arne’s Almanac: Jake Paul and Women’s Boxing, a Curmudgeon’s Take

Published

2 days ago

July 24, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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Jake Paul can fight more than a little. The view from here is that he would make it interesting against any fringe contender in the cruiserweight division. However, Jake’s boxing acumen pales when paired against his skill as a flim-flam artist.

Jake brought a 9-1 record into last weekend’s bout with Mike Perry. As noted by boxing writer Paul Magno, Jake’s previous opponents consisted of “a You Tuber, a retired NBA star, five retired MMA stars, a part-time boxer/reality TV star, and two undersized and inactive fall-guy boxers.”

Mike Perry, a 32-year-old Floridian, was undefeated (6-0, 3 KOs) as a bare-knuckle boxer after forging a 14-8 record in UFC bouts. In pre-fight blurbs, Perry was billed as the baddest bare knuckle boxer of all time, but against Jake Paul he proved to have very unrefined skills as a conventional boxer which Team Paul undoubtedly knew all along. Perry lasted into the eighth round in a one-sided fight that could have been stopped a lot sooner.

Jake Paul is both a boxer and a promoter. As a promoter, he handles Amanda Serrano, one of the greatest female boxers in history. That makes him the person most responsible (because the buck stops with him) for the wretched mismatch in last Saturday’s co-feature, the bout between Serrano and Stevie Morgan.

Morgan, who took up boxing two years ago at age 33, brought a 14-1 record. Nicknamed the Sledgehammer, she had won 13 of her 14 wins by knockout, eight in the opening round. However, although she resides in Florida, all but one of those 13 knockouts happened in Colombia.

“We found that in Colombia there were just more opportunities for women’s boxing than in the United States,” she told a prominent boxing writer whose name we won’t mention.

The truth is that, for some folks, Colombia is the boxing equivalent of a feeder lot for livestock, a place where a boxer can go to fatten their record. The opportunities there were no greater than in Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1995. It was there that Peter McNeeley prepped for his match with Mike Tyson with a 6-second knockout of professional punching bag Frankie Hines. (Six seconds? So it would be written although no one seems to have been there to witness it.)

Serrano vs Morgan was understood to be a stay-busy fight for Amanda whose rematch with Katie Taylor was postponed until November. Stevie Morgan, to her credit, answered the bell for the second round whereas others in her situation would have remained on the stool and invented an injury to rationalize it. Thirty-eight seconds later it was all over and Ms. Morgan was free to go home and use her sledgehammer to do some light dusting.

The Paul-Perry and Serrano-Morgan fights played out in a sold-out arena in Tampa before an estimated 17,000. Those without a DAZN subscription paid $64.95 for the livestream. Paul’s next promotion, where he will touch gloves with 58-year-old Mike Tyson (unless Iron Mike pulls a Joe Biden and pulls out; a capital idea) with Serrano-Taylor II the semi-main, will almost certainly rake in more money than any other boxing promotion this year.

Asked his opinion of so-called crossover boxing by a reporter for a college newspaper, the venerable boxing promoter Bob Arum said, “It’s not my bag but folks who don’t like it shouldn’t get too worked up over it because no one is stealing from anybody.” True enough, but for some of us, the phenomenon is distressing.

—

The next big women’s fight happens Saturday in Detroit where Claressa Shields seeks a world title in a third weight class against WBC heavyweight belt-holder Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse.

A two-time Olympic gold medalist, undefeated in 14 fights as a pro, Shields is very good, arguably the best female boxer of her generation which makes her, arguably, the best female boxer of all time. But turning away Lepage-Joanisse (7-1, 2 KOs) won’t elevate her stature in our eyes.

Purportedly 17-4 as an amateur, the Canadian won her title in her second crack at it. Back in August of 2017, she challenged Cancun’s Alejandra Jimenez in Cancun and was stopped in the third round. Entering the bout, Lepage-Joanisse was 3-0 as a pro and had never fought a match slated for more than four rounds.

Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse

True, on the women’s side, the heavyweight bracket is a very small pod. A sanctioning body has to make concessions to harness a sanctioning fee. Nonetheless, how absurd that a woman who had answered the bell for only 11 rounds would be deemed qualified to compete for a world title. (FYI: Alejandra Jimenez was purportedly born a man. She left the sport with a 12-0-1 record after her win over Franchon Crews Dazurn was changed to a no-contest when she tested positive for the banned steroid stanozolol.)

Following her defeat to Jimenez, Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse, now 29 years old, was out of action for six-and-a-half years. When she returned, she was still a heavyweight, but a much slender heavyweight. She carried 231 pounds for Jimenez. In her most recent bout where she captured the vacant WBC title with a split decision over Argentina’s Abril Argentina Vidal, she clocked in at 173 ¼. (On the distaff side, there’s no uniformity among the various sanctioning bodies as to what constitutes a heavyweight.)

Claressa Shields doesn’t need Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse to reinforce her credentials as a future Hall of Famer. She made the cut a long time ago.

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Former World Bantamweight Champion Richie Sandoval Passes Away at Age 63

Published

4 days ago

July 22, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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Richie Sandoval, who won the WBA and lineal bantamweight title in one of the biggest upsets of the 1980s and then, not quite two years later, suffered near-fatal injuries in a title defense, has passed away at the age of 63.

News circulated fast in the Las Vegas boxing community on Monday, July 22, the grapevine actuated by a tweet from Hall of Fame matchmaker Bruce Trampler: “Boxing and the Top Rank family lost one of our own last night in the passing of former WBA bantamweight champion Richie Sandoval. It hurts personally and professionally to know that Richie is gone at age 63. RIP campeon.”

Details are vague but the cause of death was apparently a sudden heart attack that Sandoval experienced while visiting the Southern California home of his son of the same name.

Richie Sandoval put the LA County community of Pomona, California, on the boxing map before Shane Mosley came along and gave the town a more frequently-cited mention in the sports section of the papers. He came from a fighting family. An older brother, Albert “Superfly” Sandoval, became a big draw at LA’s fabled Olympic Auditorium while building a 35-2-1 record that included a failed bid to capture Lupe Pintor’s world bantamweight title.

Richie was a member of the 1980 U.S. Olympic boxing team that was stranded when U.S. President Jimmy Carter (and many other world leaders) boycotted the event as a protest against Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan.

As a pro, Sandoval’s signature win was a 15^th-round stoppage of Jeff Chandler. They fought on April 7, 1984 in Atlantic City. Chandler was making the tenth defense of his world bantamweight title.

Despite being a heavy underdog, Sandoval dominated the fight, winning almost every round until the referee stepped in and waived it off. Chandler, who was 33-1-2 heading in and had avenged his lone defeat, never fought again.

Sandoval made two successful defenses before risking his title against Gaby Canizales on the undercard of Hagler-Mugabi in the outdoor stadium at Caesars Palace. In round seven, Sandoval, who had a hellish time making the weight, was knocked down three times and suffered a seizure as he collapsed from the third knockdown. Stretchered out of the ring, he was rushed to the hospital where doctors reduced the swelling in his brain and beat the odds to save his life. This would be Richie’s lone defeat. He finished his pro career with a record of 29-1 (17 KOs).

Bob Arum cushioned some of the pain by giving Richie a $25,000 bonus and offering him a lifetime job at Top Rank which Richie accepted. And let the record show that Arum was good to his word.

A more elaborate portrait of Richie Sandoval was published in these pages in 2017. You can check it out HERE. May he rest in peace.

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