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Blair Cobbs Took a Strange Route to his ‘Grand Arrival’ at the MGM Grand

The in-house pre-fight festivities for Saturday’s big boxing card at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas begin today (Tuesday, Oct. 29) with the Grand Arrivals. The main event fighters and the contestants in the major supporting bouts enter the hotel’s main lobby on a red carpet, a ceremony that harks to the the Academy Awards although the tradition dates back much farther.
The arrivals are staggered. Canelo Alvarez, being the A-side fighter in the main event, goes last. In the scheme of things, his grand arrival is the grandest. Blair Cobbs is in the vanguard.
For Cobbs, a flamboyant 29-year-old welterweight, the moment marks another milepost in his personal history, a history that could not be any more strange. Boxing has the best storylines of any sport and the Blair Cobbs’ saga ranks with the most bizarre.
Let’s begin by flashing back to the night of Dec. 19, 2004. A small airplane crash lands at a rural airport in Wheeling, West Virginia, where the plane is stopping to refuel on its way from Compton, California to Philadelphia. The pilot, the sole occupant, isn’t badly hurt and runs away, leaving behind his cargo.
When investigators comb through the plane, they find 525 pounds of cocaine with a reported street value of $24 million.
Eugene Cobbs, the courier, was indicted but ran off to Mexico before he was taken into custody. But he didn’t leave by himself. A widower, he wasn’t about to leave his two kids behind. So it was that Blair Cobbs found himself in Guadalajara where he resided for three years beginning at the age of 15.
Before he was uprooted, Cobbs was living in Hollywood in a home he describes as a beautiful mansion. Taking advantage of a multicultural waiver, he enrolled in nearby Beverly Hills High School, his dream school since seeing Stacy Dash in the movie “Clueless.”
As a freshman at BHHS, he hobnobbed with children of Hollywood celebrities, but aside from a few close friends, he felt like an outsider. It was awkward when someone asked “What does your dad do for a living?” — he really didn’t know – and staying aloof nipped the question in the bud.
In Mexico, where Cobbs discarded the name Blair in favor of his middle name, Romero, he was that much more of an outsider and had even fewer close friends. The boxing gym became his refuge.
As an amateur in Mexico, Cobbs once appeared on the same card with Canelo Alvarez. “He was on my undercard,” says Cobbs with a sly grin, noting that he, as the older boy, was accorded a more prestigious slot in the bout order.
The feds eventually tracked down Eugene Cobbs and brought him back to the United States to face the music. In 2010, he was sentenced to 151 months in prison for conspiracy to distribute cocaine and for operating an aircraft without a pilot’s license and was packed off to a penitentiary in New Jersey.
Blair Cobbs eventually returned to his birthplace, Philadelphia. From living in a fancy home in Hollywood, he went to living wherever he could, sometimes in his car, sometimes crashing on the sofa in the home of a good Samaritan. He took odd jobs, working as a delivery boy, as a helper in a boxing gym, “this and that.”
“I was totally unprepared for Philadelphia,” he says. He found a pillar in one of Philadelphia’s few bi-lingual churches, the Casa de Gloria, which he finds ironic as he isn’t fully fluent in Spanish despite having lived in Mexico.
Philadelphia is a great fight town, but Cobbs had trouble getting his pro career on track. “I had too much faith in my own ability to sign with just any promoter,” he says. His first and third pro fights were at a honky tonk in the unincorporated town of Ruffin, North Carolina.
In 2015, his career completely stalled and he was out of action for 30 months. During this period, he scooted off to Las Vegas for the express purpose of landing a contract with boxer-turned-promoter Floyd Mayweather Jr. – “my ‘Hail Mary’,” he says – but that didn’t work out and he returned to Philadelphia.
He wasn’t done trying, however. Somewhat later, he came west again, arriving in Las Vegas in a beat-up old Cadillac with his “motel,” a tent, in the trunk of the car, and this time his perspicacity bore fruit. He caught the eye of Greg Hannely, the driving force behind Prince Ranch Boxing, and finally had the support he needed to give boxing his full attention.
Cobbs’ career as a Prince Ranch fighter began inauspiciously with a 4-round bout at a dance club in Tijuana. It appeared that he was running in circles, back where he started on the honky tonk circuit, but Blair doesn’t look at it that way. “It broke the curse,” he says, referencing the drought, and indeed it has been almost all uphill from there, the lone flat note a technical draw resulting from an accidental clash of heads on a Golden Boy Promotions show in Los Angeles.
Golden Boy liked what they saw in Blair Cobbs. It wasn’t just his potential as a boxer, but his persona; he was a natural showman. He picked up the nickname “Flair” as an amateur in Philadelphia and it fits like a glove. “I have always been an oddball,” he says. “I’m thinking I may have been the youngest person that could do a double back flip. I was five or six years old.”
As a kid, Cobbs was a big fan of the “Power Rangers,” the animated superheroes in the children’s TV series and quite naturally became a fan of WWE. Ric Flair, he notes, was a little before his time, but Cobbs has mastered Flair’s signature “Woo!” which he uses in his ring walk and to punctuate his post-fight interviews. In the YouTube age, he has the “it” factor.
This gimmick obviously doesn’t sit well some boxing purists, but in person Blair Cobbs is affable and refreshingly down to earth. He is in his mischievousness mindful of the young fighter who would take the name Muhammad Ali. And he surprised this grizzled reporter when in recounting all the good breaks that came his way, he used the word “serendipitous.” (After interviewing dozens of boxers, this was a first.)
Blair Cobbs’ father was back in the news in 2014. Because of his good behavior, Eugene Cobbs was allowed to complete his sentence at a minimum security facility in West Virginia, a complex surrounded by a three-foot fence. One day he simply walked away and found his way back to Mexico where he had fathered a child with his girlfriend. But the feds caught up with him again and back to prison he went.
The good news for Blair is that his dad is now a free man, having just been released from a half-way house in Las Vegas. His father has never seen him fight as a pro and now has that opportunity.
Under the tutelage of co-trainers Bones Adams and Brandon Woods, Cobbs has made steady gains inside the ring. In March of this year and again in August, he was pitted against an unbeaten fighter who was fighting in his own backyard, specifically Ferdinand Kerobyan and Steve Villalobos. Blair passed both tests with flying colors. His record now stands at 12-0-1 (8 KOs).
On Saturday, Cobbs has been matched soft. His opponent, Carlos Ortiz, described in a press release as a battle-tested warrior, brings an 11-4 record but has lost three straight and those 11 wins were forged against opponents who were collectively 11-26. The guess is that Golden Boy, operating on the unlikely chance that Blair might be overwhelmed by the occasion – he will be performing before a worldwide television audience on DAZN, quite a departure from his early days in the boondocks – didn’t want to risk the chance that he would fail to wow (make that “Woo!”) the audience. Cobbs vs. Ortiz is compatible with a show that has a must-see main event hitched to a weak undercard.
Reporters in town for the show, in need of a story to complement their Canelo-Kovalev coverage, will be drawn to Blair Cobbs and he won’t disappoint. He’s a likeable young man whose life has been filled with high drama and improbable escapades (a few of which, I suspect, have been refracted through a vivid imagination).
Looking down the road, Cobbs can envision the day when his ring entrance will set a new benchmark. “I would like to come out on fire like a magic act,” he says. One doesn’t know if his career inside the ring will ever measure up to that hullabaloo, but he’s already a celebrity, and now a certified celebrity by virtue of getting the red carpet treatment at one of the world’s most glamorous resort hotels.
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Avila Perspective, Chap. 323: British Family Feud and More

ext generation rivals Conor Benn and Chris Eubank Jr. carry on the family legacy of feudal warring in the prize ring on Saturday.
This is huge in British boxing.
Eubank (34-3, 25 KOs) holds the fringe IBO middleweight title but won’t be defending it against the smaller welterweight Benn (23-0, 14 KOs) on Saturday, April 26, at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London. DAZN will stream the Matchroom Boxing card.
This is about family pride.
The parents of Eubank and Benn actually began the feud in the 1990s.
Papa Nigel Benn fought Papa Chris Eubank twice. Losing as a middleweight in November 1990 at Birmingham, England, then fighting to a draw as a super middleweight in October 1993 in Manchester. Both were world title fights.
Eubank was undefeated and won the WBO middleweight world title in 1990 against Nigel Benn by knockout. He defended it three times before moving up and winning the vacant WBO super middleweight title in September 1991. He defended the super middleweight title 14 times until suffering his first pro defeat in March 1995 against Steve Collins.
Benn won the WBO middleweight title in April 1990 against Doug DeWitt and defended it once before losing to Eubank in November 1990. He moved up in weight and took the WBC super middleweight title from Mauro Galvano in Italy by technical knockout in October 1992. He defended the title nine times until losing in March 1996. His last fight was in November 1996, a loss to Steve Collins.
Animosity between the two families continues this weekend in the boxing ring.
Conor Benn, the son of Nigel, has fought mostly as a welterweight but lately has participated in the super welterweight division. He is several inches shorter in height than Eubank but has power and speed. Kind of a British version of Gervonta “Tank” Davis.
“It’s always personal, every opponent I fight is personal. People want to say it’s strictly business, but it’s never business. If someone is trying to put their hands on me, trying to render me unconscious, it’s never business,” said Benn.
This fight was scheduled twice before and cut short twice due to failed PED tests by Benn. The weight limit agreed upon is 160 pounds.
Eubank, a natural middleweight, has exchanged taunts with Benn for years. He recently avenged a loss to Liam Smith with a knockout victory in September 2023.
“This fight isn’t about size or weight. It’s about skill. It’s about dedication. It’s about expertise and all those areas in which I excel in,” said Eubank. “I have many, many more years of experience over Conor Benn, and that will be the deciding factor of the night.”
Because this fight was postponed twice, the animosity between the two feuding fighters has increased the attention of their fans. Both fighters are anxious to flatten each other.
“He’s another opponent in my way trying to crush my dreams. trying to take food off my plate and trying to render me unconscious. That’s how I look at him,” said Benn.
Eubank smiles.
“Whether it’s boxing, whether it’s a gun fight. Defense, offense, foot movement, speed, power. I am the superior boxer in each of those departments and so many more – which is why I’m so confident,” he said.
Supporting Bout
Former world champion Liam Smith (33-4-1, 20 KOs) tangles with Ireland’s Aaron McKenna (19-0, 10 KOs) in a middleweight fight set for 12 rounds on the Benn-Eubank undercard in London.
“Beefy” Smith has long been known as one of the fighting Smith brothers and recently lost to Eubank a year and a half ago. It was only the second time in 38 bouts he had been stopped. Saul “Canelo” Alvarez did it several years ago.
McKenna is a familiar name in Southern California. The Irish fighter fought numerous times on Golden Boy Promotion cards between 2017 and 2019 before returning to the United Kingdom and his assault on continuing the middleweight division. This is a big step for the tall Irish fighter.
It’s youth versus experience.
“I’ve been calling for big fights like this for the last two or three years, and it’s a fight I’m really excited for. I plan to make the most of it and make a statement win on Saturday night,” said McKenna, one of two fighting brothers.
Monster in L.A.
Japan’s super star Naoya “Monster” Inoue arrived in Los Angeles for last day workouts before his Las Vegas showdown against Ramon Cardenas on Sunday May 4, at T-Mobile Arena. ESPN will televise and stream the Top Rank card.
It’s been four years since the super bantamweight world champion performed in the US and during that time Naoya (29-0, 26 KOs) gathered world titles in different weight divisions. The Japanese slugger has also gained fame as perhaps the best fighter on the planet. Cardenas is 26-1 with 14 KOs.
Pomona Fights
Super featherweights Mathias Radcliffe (9-0-1) and Ezequiel Flores (6-4) lead a boxing card called “DMG Night of Champions” on Saturday April 26, at the historic Fox Theater in downtown Pomona, Calif.
Michaela Bracamontes (11-2-1) and Jesus Torres Beltran (8-4-1) will be fighting for a regional WBC super featherweight title. More than eight bouts are scheduled.
Doors open at 6 p.m. For ticket information go to: www.tix.com/dmgnightofchampions
Fights to Watch
Sat. DAZN 9 a.m. Conor Benn (23-0) vs Chris Eubank Jr. (34-3); Liam Smith (33-4-1) vs Aaron McKenna (19-0).
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Floyd Mayweather has Another Phenom and his name is Curmel Moton

Floyd Mayweather has Another Phenom and his name is Curmel Moton
In any endeavor, the defining feature of a phenom is his youth. Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Bryce Harper was a phenom. He was on the radar screen of baseball’s most powerful player agents when he was 14 years old.
Curmel Moton, who turns 19 in June, is a phenom. Of all the young boxing stars out there, wrote James Slater in July of last year, “Curmel Moton is the one to get most excited about.”
Moton was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. His father Curtis Moton, a barber by trade, was a big boxing fan and specifically a big fan of Floyd Mayweather Jr. When Curmel was six, Curtis packed up his wife (Curmel’s stepmom) and his son and moved to Las Vegas. Curtis wanted his son to get involved in boxing and there was no better place to develop one’s latent talents than in Las Vegas where many of the sport’s top practitioners came to train.
Many father-son relationships have been ruined, or at least frayed, by a father’s unrealistic expectations for his son, but when it came to boxing, the boy was a natural and he felt right at home in the gym.
The gym the Motons patronized was the Mayweather Boxing Club. Curtis took his son there in hopes of catching the eye of the proprietor. “Floyd would occasionally drop by the gym and I was there so often that he came to recognize me,” says Curmel. What he fails to add is that the trainers there had Floyd’s ear. “This kid is special,” they told him.
It costs a great deal of money for a kid to travel around the country competing in a slew of amateur boxing tournaments. Only a few have the luxury of a sponsor. For the vast majority, fund raisers such as car washes keep the wheels greased.
Floyd Mayweather stepped in with the financial backing needed for the Motons to canvas the country in tournaments. As an amateur, Curmel was — take your pick — 156-7 or 144-6 or 61-3 (the latter figure from boxrec). Regardless, at virtually every tournament at which he appeared, Curmel Moton was the cock of the walk.
Before the pandemic, Floyd Mayweather Jr had a stable of boxers he promoted under the banner of “The Money Team.” In talking about his boxers, Floyd was understated with one glaring exception – Gervonta “Tank” Davis, now one of boxing’s top earners.
When Floyd took to praising Curmel Moton with the same effusive language, folks stood up and took notice.
Curmel made his pro debut on Sept. 30, 2023, at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on the undercard of the super middleweight title fight between Canelo Alvarez and Jermell Charlo. After stopping his opponent in the opening round, he addressed a flock of reporters in the media room with Floyd standing at his side. “I felt ready,” he said, “I knew I had Floyd behind me. He believes in me. I had the utmost confidence going into the fight. And I went in there and did what I do.”
Floyd ventured the opinion that Curmel was already a better fighter than Leigh Wood, the reigning WBA world featherweight champion who would successfully defend his belt the following week.
Moton’s boxing style has been described as a blend of Floyd Mayweather and Tank Davis. “I grew up watching Floyd, so it’s natural I have some similarities to him,” says Curmel who sparred with Tank in late November of 2021 as Davis was preparing for his match with Isaac “Pitbull” Cruz. Curmell says he did okay. He was then 15 years old and still in school; he dropped out as soon as he reached the age of 16.
Curmel is now 7-0 with six KOs, four coming in the opening round. He pitched an 8-round shutout the only time he was taken the distance. It’s not yet official, but he returns to the ring on May 31 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas where Caleb Plant and Jermall Charlo are co-featured in matches conceived as tune-ups for a fall showdown. The fight card will reportedly be free for Amazon Prime Video subscribers.
Curmel’s presumptive opponent is Renny Viamonte, a 28-year-old Las Vegas-based Cuban with a 4-1-1 (2) record. It will be Curmel’s first professional fight with Kofi Jantuah the chief voice in his corner. A two-time world title challenger who began his career in his native Ghana, the 50-year-old Jantuah has worked almost exclusively with amateurs, a recent exception being Mikaela Mayer.
It would seem that the phenom needs a tougher opponent than Viamonte at this stage of his career. However, the match is intriguing in one regard. Viamonte is lanky. Listed at 5-foot-11, he will have a seven-inch height advantage.
Keeping his weight down has already been problematic for Moton. He tipped the scales at 128 ½ for his most recent fight. His May 31 bout, he says, will be contested at 135 and down the road it’s reasonable to think he will blossom into a welterweight. And with each bump up in weight, his short stature will theoretically be more of a handicap.
For fun, we asked Moton to name the top fighter on his pound-for-pound list. “[Oleksandr] Usyk is number one right now,” he said without hesitation,” great footwork, but guys like Canelo, Crawford, Inoue, and Bivol are right there.”
It’s notable that there isn’t a young gun on that list. Usyk is 38, a year older than Crawford; Inoue is the pup at age 32.
Moton anticipates that his name will appear on pound-for-pound lists within the next two or three years. True, history is replete with examples of phenoms who flamed out early, but we wouldn’t bet against it.
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Arne’s Almanac: The First Boxing Writers Assoc. of America Dinner Was Quite the Shindig

The first annual dinner of the Boxing Writers Association of America was staged on April 25, 1926 in the grand ballroom of New York’s Hotel Astor, an edifice that rivaled the original Waldorf Astoria as the swankiest hotel in the city. Back then, the organization was known as the Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York.
The ballroom was configured to hold 1200 for the banquet which was reportedly oversubscribed. Among those listed as agreeing to attend were the governors of six states (New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Maryland) and the mayors of 10 of America’s largest cities.
In 1926, radio was in its infancy and the digital age was decades away (and inconceivable). So, every journalist who regularly covered boxing was a newspaper and/or magazine writer, editor, or cartoonist. And at this juncture in American history, there were plenty of outlets for someone who wanted to pursue a career as a sportswriter and had the requisite skills to get hired.
The following papers were represented at the inaugural boxing writers’ dinner:
New York Times
New York News
New York World
New York Sun
New York Journal
New York Post
New York Mirror
New York Telegram
New York Graphic
New York Herald Tribune
Brooklyn Eagle
Brooklyn Times
Brooklyn Standard Union
Brooklyn Citizen
Bronx Home News
This isn’t a complete list because a few of these papers, notably the New York World and the New York Journal, had strong afternoon editions that functioned as independent papers. Plus, scribes from both big national wire services (Associated Press and UPI) attended the banquet and there were undoubtedly a smattering of scribes from papers in New Jersey and Connecticut.
Back then, the event’s organizer Nat Fleischer, sports editor of the New York Telegram and the driving force behind The Ring magazine, had little choice but to limit the journalistic component of the gathering to writers in the New York metropolitan area. There wasn’t a ballroom big enough to accommodate a good-sized response if he had extended the welcome to every boxing writer in North America.
The keynote speaker at the inaugural dinner was New York’s charismatic Jazz Age mayor James J. “Jimmy” Walker, architect of the transformative Walker Law of 1920 which ushered in a new era of boxing in the Empire State with a template that would guide reformers in many other jurisdictions.
Prizefighting was then associated with hooligans. In his speech, Mayor Walker promised to rid the sport of their ilk. “Boxing, as you know, is closest to my heart,” said hizzoner. “So I tell you the police force is behind you against those who would besmirch or injure boxing. Rowdyism doesn’t belong in this town or in your game.” (In 1945, Walker would be the recipient of the Edward J. Neil Memorial Award given for meritorious service to the sport. The oldest of the BWAA awards, the previous recipients were all active or former boxers. The award, no longer issued under that title, was named for an Associated Press sportswriter and war correspondent who died from shrapnel wounds covering the Spanish Civil War.)
Another speaker was well-traveled sportswriter Wilbur Wood, then affiliated with the Brooklyn Citizen. He told the assembly that the aim of the organization was two-fold: to help defend the game against its detractors and to promote harmony among the various factions.
Of course, the 1926 dinner wouldn’t have been as well-attended without the entertainment. According to press dispatches, Broadway stars and performers from some of the city’s top nightclubs would be there to regale the attendees. Among the names bandied about were vaudeville superstars Sophie Tucker and Jimmy Durante, the latter of whom would appear with his trio, Durante, (Lou) Clayton, and (Eddie) Jackson.
There was a contraction of New York newspapers during the Great Depression. Although empirical evidence is lacking, the inaugural boxing writers dinner was likely the largest of its kind. Fifteen years later, in 1941, the event drew “more than 200” according to a news report. There was no mention of entertainment.
In 1950, for the first time, the annual dinner was opened to the public. For $25, a civilian could get a meal and mingle with some of his favorite fighters. Sugar Ray Robinson was the Edward J. Neil Award winner that year, honored for his ring exploits and for donating his purse from the Charlie Fusari fight to the Damon Runyon Cancer Fund.
There was no formal announcement when the Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York was re-christened the Boxing Writers Association of America, but by the late 1940s reporters were referencing the annual event as simply the boxing writers dinner. By then, it had become traditional to hold the annual affair in January, a practice discontinued after 1971.
The winnowing of New York’s newspaper herd plus competing banquets in other parts of the country forced Nat Fleischer’s baby to adapt. And more adaptations will be necessary in the immediate future as the future of the BWAA, as it currently exists, is threatened by new technologies. If the forthcoming BWAA dinner (April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in mid-Manhattan) were restricted to wordsmiths from the traditional print media, the gathering would be too small to cover the nut and the congregants would be drawn disproportionately from the geriatric class.
Some of those adaptations have already started. Last year, Las Vegas resident Sean Zittel, a recent UNLV graduate, had the distinction of becoming the first videographer welcomed into the BWAA. With more and more people getting their news from sound bites, rather than the written word, the videographer serves an important function.
The reporters who conducted interviews with pen and paper have gone the way of the dodo bird and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A taped interview for a “talkie” has more integrity than a story culled from a paper and pen interview because it is unfiltered. Many years ago, some reporters, after interviewing the great Joe Louis, put words in his mouth that made him seem like a dullard, words consistent with the Sambo stereotype. In other instances, the language of some athletes was reconstructed to the point where the reader would think the athlete had a second job as an English professor.
The content created by videographers is free from that bias. More of them will inevitably join the BWAA and similar organizations in the future.
Photo: Nat Fleischer is flanked by Sugar Ray Robinson and Tony Zale at the 1947 boxing writers dinner.
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