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

Published

5 years ago

October 29, 2019

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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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History has Shortchanged Freddie Dawson, One of the Best Boxers of his Era

Published

2 days ago

April 2, 2025

Arne K. Lang

History has Shortchanged Freddie Dawson, One of the Best Boxers of his Era

This reporter was rummaging around the internet last week when he stumbled on a story in the May 1950 issue of Ebony under the byline of Mike Jacobs. Boxing was then in the doldrums (isn’t it always?) and Jacobs, the most powerful promoter in boxing during the era of Joe Louis, was lassoed by the editors of the magazine to address the question of whether the over-representation of black boxers was killing the sport at the box office.

This hoary premise had been kicking around even before the heyday of Jack Johnson, bubbling forth whenever an important black-on-black fight played to a sea of empty seats as had happened the previous year when Chicago’s Comiskey Park hosted the world heavyweight title fight between Ezzard Charles and Jersey Joe Walcott.

Jacobs ridiculed the hypothesis – as one could have expected considering the publication in which the story ran – and singled out three “colored” boxers as the best of the current crop of active pugilists: Sugar Ray Robinson, Ike Williams, and Freddie Dawson.

Sugar Ray Robinson? A no-brainer. Skill-wise the greatest of the great. Even those that didn’t follow boxing, would have recognized his name. Ike Williams? Nowhere near as well-known as Robinson, but he was then the reigning lightweight champion, a man destined to go into the International Boxing Hall of Fame with the inaugural class of 1990.

And Freddie Dawson? If the name doesn’t ring a bell, dear reader, you are not alone. I confess that I too drew a blank. And that triggered a search to learn more about him.

Freddie Dawson had four fights with Ike Williams. All four were staged on Ike’s turf in Philadelphia. Were this not the case, the history books would likely show the series knotted 2-2. Late in his career, Dawson became greatly admired in Australia. But we are jumping ahead of ourselves.

Dawson was born in 1924 in Thomasville, Arkansas, an unincorporated town in the Arkansas Delta. Likely a descendent of slaves who worked in the cotton plantations, he grew up in the so-called Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago, the heart of Chicago’s Black Belt.

The first mention of him in the newspapers came in 1941 when he won Chicago’s Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) featherweight title. In those days, amateur boxing was big in the Windy City, the birthplace of the Golden Gloves. The Catholic Archdiocese, which ran gyms in every parish, and the Chicago Parks Department, were the major incubators.

In his amateur days, he was known as simply Fred Dawson. As a pro, his name often appeared as Freddy Dawson, although Freddie gradually became the more common spelling.

Dawson, who stood five-foot-six and was often described as stocky, made his pro debut on Feb. 1, 1943, at Marigold Gardens. Before the year was out, he had 16 fights under his belt, all in Chicago and all but two at Marigold. (Currently the site of an interdenominational Christian church, Marigold Gardens, on the city’s north side, was Chicago’s most active boxing and wrestling arena from the mid-1930s through the early-1950s. Joe Louis had three of his early fights there and Tony Zale was a fixture there as he climbed the ladder to the world middleweight title.)

The last of these 16 fights was fatal for Dawson’s opponent who collapsed heading back to his corner after the fight was stopped in the 10^th round and died that night at a local hospital from the effects of a brain injury.

Dawson left town after this incident and spent most of the next year in New Orleans where energetic promoter Louis Messina ran twice-weekly shows (Mondays for whites and Fridays for blacks) at the Coliseum, a major stop on boxing’s so-called Chitlin’ Circuit.

That same year, on Sept. 19, 1944, Dawson had his first encounter with Ike Williams. He was winning the fight when Ike knocked him out with a body punch in the fourth round.

The first and last meetings between Dawson and Ike Williams were spaced five years apart. In the interim, Freddie scored his two best wins, stopping Vic Patrick in the twelfth round at Sydney, NSW, and Bernard Docusen in the sixth round in Chicago.

The long-reigning lightweight champion of Australia, Patrick (49-3, 43 KOs) gave the crowd a thrill when he knocked Dawson down for a count of “six” in the penultimate 11^th round, but Dawson returned the favor twice in the final stanza, ending the contest with a punch so harsh that the poor Aussie needed five minutes before he was fit to leave the ring and would spend the night in the hospital as a precaution.

Dawson fought Bernard Docusen before 10,000-plus at Chicago Stadium on Feb. 4, 1949. An 8/5 favorite, Docusen lacked a hard punch, but the New Orleans cutie had suffered only three losses in 66 fights, had never been stopped, and had extended Sugar Ray Robinson the 15-round distance the previous year.

Dawson dismantled him. Docusen managed to get back on his feet after Dawson knocked him down in the sixth, but he was in no condition to continue and the referee waived the fight off. Dawson was then vacillating between the lightweight and welterweight divisions and reporters wondered whether it would be Robinson or Ike Williams when Dawson finally got his well-earned title shot.

Sugar Ray wasn’t in his future. Here are the results of his other matches with Ike Williams:

Dawson-Williams II (Jan. 28, 1946) – The consensus on press row was 7-2-1 or 7-3 for Dawson, but the match was ruled a draw. “[The judges and referee] evidently saw [Williams] land punches that nobody else did,” said the ringside reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Dawson-Williams III (Jan. 26, 1948) – Dawson lost a majority decision. The scores were 6-4, 5-4-1, and 4-4-2. The decision was booed. Ike Williams then held the lightweight title, but this was a non-title fight. (It was tough for an outsider to get a fair shake in Philadelphia, home to Ike Williams’ co-manager Frank “Blinky” Palermo who would go to prison for his duplicitous dealings as a fight facilitator.)

Dawson-Williams IV (Dec. 5, 1949) – This would be Freddie Dawson’s only crack at a world title and he came up short. Ike Williams retained the belt, winning a unanimous decision. The fight was close – 8-7, 8-7, 9-6 – but there was no controversy.

Dawson made three more trips to Australia before his career was finished. On the first of these trips, he knocked out Jack Hassen, successor to Vic Patrick as the lightweight champion of Australia. A 1953 article in the Sydney Sunday Herald bore witness to the esteem in which Dawson was held by boxing fans in Australia: “None of our boxers could withstand his devastating attacks which not only knocked them out but also knocked years off their careers,” said the author. “It is doubtful whether any Australian boxer in any division could have beaten Dawson.”

Dawson had his final fights in the Land Down Under, finishing his career with a record of 103-14-4 while answering the bell for 962 rounds. Following what became his final fight, he had an eye operation in Sydney that was reportedly so intricate that it required a two-week hospital stay. He injured the eye again in Manila while sparring in preparation for a match with the welterweight champion of the Philippines, a match that had to be aborted because of the injury. Dawson then disappeared, by which we mean that he disappeared from the pages of the newspaper archives that allow us to construct these kinds of stories.

What about Freddie Dawson the man? A 1944 story about him said he was an outstanding all-around athlete, “a champion in all athletic undertakings – basketball, baseball, track and even jitterbugging.” A story in a Sydney paper as he was preparing to meet Vic Patrick informs us that he had two young children, ages 2 and 1, owned his own home in Chicago, and drove a two-year-old Cadillac. But beyond these flimsy snippets, Dawson the man remains elusive.

What we learned, however, is that he was one of the most underrated boxers to come down the pike in any era, a borderline Hall of Famer who ought not have fallen through the cracks. Inside the ring, this guy was one tough hombre.

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Ringside at the Fontainebleau where Mikaela Mayer Won her Rematch with Sandy Ryan

Published

5 days ago

March 30, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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LAS VEGAS, NV — The first meeting between Mikaela Mayer and Sandy Ryan last September at Madison Square Garden was punctuated with drama before the first punch was thrown. When the smoke cleared, Mayer had become a world-title-holder in a second weight class, taking away Ryan’s WBO welterweight belt via a majority decision in a fan-friendly fight.

The rematch tonight at the Fontainebleau in Las Vegas was another fan-friendly fight. There were furious exchanges in several rounds and the crowd awarded both gladiators a standing ovation at the finish.

Mayer dominated the first half of the fight and held on to win by a unanimous decision. But Sandy Ryan came on strong beginning in round seven, and although Mayer was the deserving winner, the scores favoring her (98-92 and 97-93 twice) fail to reflect the competitiveness of the match-up. This is the best rivalry in women’s boxing aside from Taylor-Serrano.

Mayer, 34, improved to 21-2 (5). Up next, she hopes, in a unification fight with Lauren Price who outclassed Natasha Jonas earlier this month and currently holds the other meaningful pieces of the 147-pound puzzle. Sandy Ryan, 31, the pride of Derby, England, falls to 7-3-1.

Co-Feature

In his first defense of his WBO world welterweight title (acquired with a brutal knockout of Giovani Santillan after the title was vacated by Terence Crawford), Atlanta’s Brian Norman Jr knocked out Puerto Rico’s Derrieck Cuevas in the third round. A three-punch combination climaxed by a short left hook sent Cuevas staggering into a corner post. He got to his feet before referee Thomas Taylor started the count, but Taylor looked in Cuevas’s eyes and didn’t like what he saw and brought the bout to a halt.

The stoppage, which struck some as premature, came with one second remaining in the third stanza.

A second-generation prizefighter (his father was a fringe contender at super middleweight), the 24-year-old Norman (27-0, 21 KOs) is currently boxing’s youngest male title-holder. It was only the second pro loss for Cuevas (27-2-1) whose lone previous defeat had come early in his career in a 6-rounder he lost by split decision.

Other Bouts

In a career-best performance, 27-year-old Brooklyn featherweight Bruce “Shu Shu” Carrington (15-0, 9 KOs) blasted out Jose Enrique Vivas (23-4) in the third round.

Carrington, who was named the Most Outstanding Boxer at the 2019 U.S. Olympic Trials despite being the lowest-seeded boxer in his weight class, decked Vivas with a right-left combination near the end of the second round. Vivas barely survived the round and was on a short leash when the third stanza began. After 53 seconds of round three, referee Raul Caiz Jr had seen enough and waived it off. Vivas hadn’t previously been stopped.

Cleveland welterweight Tiger Johnson, a Tokyo Olympian, scored a fifth-round stoppage over San Antonio’s Kendo Castaneda. Johnson assumed control in the fourth round and sent Castaneda to his knees twice with body punches in the next frame. The second knockdown terminated the match. The official time was 2:00 of round five.

Johnson advanced to 15-0 (7 KOs). Castenada declined to 21-9.

Las Vegas junior welterweight Emiliano Vargas (13-0, 11 KOs) blasted out Stockton, California’s Giovanni Gonzalez in the second round. Vargas brought the bout to a sudden conclusion with a sweeping left hook that knocked Gonzalez out cold. The end came at the 2:00 minute mark of round two.

Gonzalez brought a 20-7-2 record which was misleading as 18 of his fights were in Tijuana where fights are frequently prearranged. However, he wasn’t afraid to trade with Vargas and paid the price.

Emiliano Vargas, with his matinee idol good looks and his boxing pedigree – he is the son of former U.S. Olympian and two-weight world title-holder “Ferocious” Fernando Vargas – is highly marketable and has the potential to be a cross-over star.

Eighteen-year-old Newark bantamweight Emmanuel “Manny” Chance, one of Top Rank’s newest signees, won his pro debut with a four-round decision over So Cal’s Miguel Guzman. Chance won all four rounds on all three cards, but this was no runaway. He left a lot of room for improvement.

There was a long intermission before the co-main and again before the main event, but the tedium was assuaged by a moving video tribute to George Foreman.

Photos credit: Al Applerose

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William Zepeda Edges Past Tevin Farmer in Cancun; Improves to 34-0

Published

5 days ago

March 29, 2025

David A. Avila

William Zepeda Edges Past Tevin Farmer in Cancun; Improves to 34-0

No surprise, once again William Zepeda eked out a win over the clever and resilient Tevin Farmer to remain undefeated and retain a regional lightweight title on Saturday.

There were no knockdowns in this rematch.

The Mexican punching machine Zepeda (33-0, 17 KOs) once more sought to overwhelm Farmer (33-8-1, 9 KOs) with a deluge of blows. This rematch by Golden Boy Promotions took place in the famous beach resort area of Cancun, Mexico.

It was a mere four months ago that both first clashed in Saudi Arabia with their vastly difference styles. This time the tropical setting served as the background which suited Zepeda and his lawnmower assaults. The Mexican fans were pleased.

Nothing changed in their second meeting.

Zepeda revved up the body assault and Farmer moved around casually to his right while fending off the Mexican fighter’s attacks. By the fourth round Zepeda was able to cut off Farmer’s escape routes and targeted the body with punishing shots.

The blows came in bunches.

In the fifth round Zepeda blasted away at Farmer who looked frantic for an escape. The body assault continued with the Mexican fighter pouring it on and Farmer seeming to look ready to quit. When the round ended, he waved off his corner’s appeals to stop.

Zepeda continued to dominate the next few rounds and then Farmer began rallying. At first, he cleverly smothered Zepeda’s body attacks and then began moving and hitting sporadically. It forced the Mexican fighter to pause and figure out the strategy.

Farmer, a Philadelphia fighter, showed resiliency especially when it was revealed he had suffered a hand injury.

During the last three rounds Farmer dug down deep and found ways to score and not get hit. It was Boxing 101 and the Philly fighter made it work.

But too many rounds had been put in the bank by Zepeda. Despite the late rally by Farmer one judge saw it 114-114, but two others scored it 116-112 and 115-113 for Zepeda who retains his interim lightweight title and place at the top of the WBC rankings.

“I knew he was a difficult fighter. This time he was even more difficult,” said Zepeda.

Farmer was downtrodden about another loss but realistic about the outcome and starting slow.

“But I dominated the last rounds,” said Farmer.

Zepeda shrugged at the similar outcome as their first encounter.

“I’m glad we both put on a great show,” said Zepeda.

Female Flyweight Battle

Costa Rica’s Yokasta Valle edged past Texas fighter Marlen Esparza to win their showdown at flyweight by split decision after 10 rounds.

Valle moved up two weight divisions to meet Esparza who was slightly above the weight limit. Both showed off their contrasting styles and world class talent.

Esparza, a former unified flyweight world titlist, stayed in the pocket and was largely successful with well-placed jabs and left hooks. She repeatedly caught Valle in-between her flurries.

The current minimumweight world titlist changed tactics and found more success in the second half of the fight. She forced Esparza to make the first moves and that forced changes that benefited her style.

Neither fighter could take over the fight.

After 10 rounds one judge saw Esparza the winner 96-94, but two others saw Valle the winner 97-93 twice.

Will Valle move up and challenge the current undisputed flyweight world champion Gabriela Fundora? That’s the question.

Valle currently holds the WBC minimumweight world title.

Puerto Rico vs Mexico

Oscar Collazo (12-0, 9 KOs), the WBO, WBA minimumweight titlist, knocked out Mexico’s Edwin Cano (13-3-1, 4 KOs) with a flurry of body shots at 1:12 of the fifth round.

Collazo dominated with a relentless body attack the Mexican fighter could not defend. It was the Puerto Rican fighter’s fifth consecutive title defense.

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