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The KIMBALL CHRONICLES: Bidding Adieu to John Ruiz, The Quiet Man
A TSS CLASSIC: I wasn’t even in Atlantic City on the night of March 15, 1996. Mike Tyson was fighting Frank Bruno in Las Vegas the following evening, and Don King had dressed up the undercard with four other world title fights (plus Christy Martin-Dierdre Gogarty), so even though I worked for a Boston newspaper and Johnny Ruiz, who lived across the river in Chelsea, was one of ours, there was never any question in my mind where I should be that weekend.
But a bunch of us did get together to watch Friday night’s HBO show, a unique event the network’s then-vice president Lou DiBella had cooked up called “Night of the Young Heavyweights. Not many of the 16 guys who fought that night were especially well known then, though several of them would be later. There were heavyweights from six different countries, and while six of these unknowns would eventually fight for world titles, only two would actually win one – and they both lost that night. Shannon Briggs got stretched in three rounds by Darroll Wilson, and Ruiz was counted out by Tony Perez exactly nineteen seconds into his fight against David Tua.
It was about as devastating a one-punch knockout as you’ll ever see. Nobody, or at least nobody in Boston, was exactly gloating about it, but the long-range implications were obvious. Even though Ruiz and his manager Norman Stone were saying “he just got caught; it could have happened to anybody, anyone who’d spent much time around boxing could have told you that a knockout like this one usually turns out to be the first of many.”
As an amateur Ruiz had been the best light-heavyweight in New England, but never quite made it to the top in national competition. In the 1992 USA Boxing Championships he lost to Montell Griffin. In the Olympic Trials in Worcester that year he lost to Jeremy Williams. You wouldn’t term either loss a disgrace – those two met in the final of the Trials, which Williams won, but then Griffin came back to beat him twice in the Box-off and earned the trip to Barcelona – but it did sort of define Ruiz’ place in the amateur pecking order.
As a pro Ruiz had already lost twice. Both were split decisions (to the late Sergei Kobozev in ’92 and to Dannell Nicholson a year later) and controversial enough that Stone could scream “We wuz robbed!” on both occasions, but now they, coupled with the Tua result, appeared to have defined his place in the heavyweight picture as well.
* * *
Three months later at the Roxy in Boston, Ruiz TKO’d Doug Davis in six. Davis was 7-17-1 going into that one and lost 16 of the 17 fights he had afterward. Davis was a career Opponent from Allentown, Pa., a little guy built like a fireplug who lost to nearly every mid-level heavyweight of his era, so the only real significance to this one was that back then he usually tried very hard to finish on his feet so that he’d be available the next time the phone rang.
To watch Stoney’s reaction, you’d have thought Ruiz had just knocked out Lennox Lewis at the Roxy.
As soon as the main event was over, I’d glanced at my watch and realized there was an edition I could still make if I filed my story in the next 20 minutes. I was already pounding away at my laptop before the fighters cleared the ring.
Next thing I knew, a red-faced Norman Stone was directly above me, bent over and shouting through the ropes, which was about as close as he could come to getting in my face without falling out of the ring.
The invective consisted for the most part of a stream of disconnected expletives, but from the few decipherable words in between I gathered that he hadn’t much enjoyed my interpretation of what the Tua loss might portend for Ruiz’ future.
Since I was on deadline, I just ignored him and kept writing. Trainer Gabe LaMarca and Tony Cardinale, Ruiz’ lawyer, finally dragged him away.
Seated next to me was a young boxing writer named Michael Woods, now the editor of The Sweet Science.
“What, asked Woodsy, “was that all about?
“Nothing, I shrugged without looking up. “He’s just a f—— psychopath, is all.
I finished my story and filed it, and then raced to Ruiz’ dressing room. Stone was still there.
“I don’t come up in the corner and interrupt you between rounds,” I told him. “If you want to act like a jerk (though I don’t think ‘jerk’ was actually the word I used), fine, but don’t try and drag me into it when I’m working.”
Having gotten that off my chest, I added “Now. Is there something you want to talk about?”
Actually, there wasn’t. He’d just been blowing off steam. The point of the exercise had been to remind Ruiz that he was standing up for him.
But I’ll have to admit two things. One was that John Ruiz had 27 fights after the Tua debacle, and he didn’t get knocked out in any of them. (Even when he was stopped in what turned out to be the final bout of his career, it was Miguel Diaz’ white towel and not David Haye’s fists that ended it.)
The other is that if somebody had tried to tell me that night that John Ruiz would eventually fight for the heavyweight championship of the world, let alone do it dozen times, I’d have laughed in his face, so on that count maybe Stoney got the last laugh after all.
* * *
No boxer ever had a more loyal manager. Stone was a hard-drinking Vietnam veteran who eventually kicked the booze and replaced it with another obsession. He had enough faith in Ruiz’ future that he twice mortgaged his house to keep the boxer’s career afloat, and was so protective that he eventually convinced himself, if not Ruiz, that it was the two of them against the world.
At that point in his career Ruiz was still vaguely aligned with London-based Panix Promotions, the same people who were guiding the fortunes of Lewis. It is unclear exactly how beneficial this might have been to Ruiz, who between 1993 and 1996 flew across the ocean to knock out obscure opponents in some fairly obscure UK cards, other than giving him the opportunity to boast that he knocked out Julius Francis a good four years before Mike Tyson got paid a fortune to do the same thing.
Working with Panix’ other heavyweight client was also supposed to be part of the arrangement, but Ruiz’ actual time in the ring with Lewis was brief. Ask Stoney and he’ll say that Lennox wanted no part of him after “Johnny kicked his ass.” Ask Lewis and he’ll laugh and point out that sparring with Ruiz was pretty much a waste of time anyway unless you were getting ready to fight a circus bear.
In any case, a few fights later Cardinal and Stone made what turned out to be a pivotal career move by enlisting Ruiz under Don King’s banner. (Panos Eliades seemed utterly shocked that a fellow promoter would poach a fighter from under his nose. “Ruiz isn’t Don’s boxer, he’s my boxer,” exclaimed Eliades.)
If Cardinale and Stone get full marks for aligning Ruiz with King, matchmaker Bobby Goodman deserves credit for the next critical phase of Ruiz’ career.
In January of 1998 Ruiz fought former IBF champion Tony Tucker in Tampa, and stopped him in 11 rounds. For his next three outings, Goodman was able to deliver opponents who each had but a single loss on their records, and, moreover, to strategically place the bouts on high-profile cards which provided national exposure to The Quiet Man.
In September 1998, on the Holyfield-Vaughn Bean card at the Georgia Dome, Ruiz fought 19-1-1 Jerry Ballard and stopped him in four.
In March of ’99 on the Lewis-Holyfield I card at Madison Square Garden, he scored a fourth-round TKO over 21-1 Mario Crawley.
In June of ’99, on a Showtime telecast topped by two title bouts in an out-of-the-way Massachusetts venue, Ruiz was matched against 16-1 Fernely Feliz, and scored a 7th-round TKO.
Ruiz at this point had been working his way up the ladder of contenders, and by the time Lewis beat Holyfield in their rematch that November, Ruiz was now rated No 1 and the champion’s mandatory by both the WBC and WBA. Ruiz, who at that point hadn’t fought in five months while he waited for the title picture to sort itself out, needed to beat an opponent with a winning record to maintain his position.
Enter Thomas “Top Dawg Williams of South Carolina (20-6). Ruiz knocked him out a minute into the second round.
Was it on the level? Hey, I was ten feet away that night in Mississippi, and I couldn’t swear to it, but I can tell you this much: three months later Williams went to Denmark, where he was knocked out by Brian Nielsen, and then when Ruiz fought Holyfield at the Paris in Las Vegas in June of 2000, Williams and Richie Melito engaged in an in camera fight before the doors to the arena had even opened, with Melito scoring a first-round knockout that was the subject of whispers before it even happened.
Having cut a deal and been flipped into a cooperating witness, Williams’ agent Robert Mittleman later testified under oath that he had arranged for Top Dawg to throw both the Nielsen and Melito fights.
The government had extensively prepped its witness before putting him on the stand. If the Ruiz fight had been in the bag, isn’t it reasonable to suppose that Mittleman would have been asked about that, too?
In any case, when Lewis ducked the mandatory, the WBA vacated its championship and matched Ruiz and Holyfield for the title. Holyfield won a unanimous decision, but under circumstances so questionable that Cardinale successfully petitioned for a rematch.
The return bout, at the Mandalay Bay in March of ’01, produced Ruiz’ first championship, along with another career highlight moment. Like so many of the Quiet Man’s other highlights, this one also involved Stone.
Stone had been foaming at the mouth since the fourth, when a Holyfield head-butt had ripped open a cut to Ruiz’ forehead. Then, in the sixth, Holyfield felled Ruiz with what seemed to be a borderline low blow that left Ruiz rolling around on the canvas. Referee Joe Cortez called time, deducted a point from Holyfield, and gave Ruiz his allotted five minutes to recover.
No sooner had action resumed than Norman Stone, loudly enough to be heard in the cheap seats, shouted from the corner, “Hit him in the balls, Johnny!
So Johnny did. And at that moment, not only the fight and the championship, but the course John Ruiz’ life would take for the next ten years were immutably altered.
The punch caught Holyfield squarely in the protective cup. Holyfield howled in agony, but didn’t go down. He looked at Cortez (who had to have heard Stone’s directive from the corner), but the referee simply motioned for him to keep fighting.
But Ruiz had taken the fight out of Evander Holyfield, at least on this night. The next round he crushed him with a right hand that left him teetering in place for a moment before he crashed to the floor, and once he got up, Holyfield spent the rest of the night in such desperate retreat that he may not have thrown another punch.
Inevitably, the WBA ordered a rubber match. The only people happier than Holyfield himself were Chinese promoters who had been waiting in the wings after the second fight. They seemed to be only vaguely aware, if they were at all, that Holyfield was no longer the champion, but when King announced the August fight in Beijing, they seemed to have gotten their wish after all.
This particular Ruiz highlight doesn’t include Stoney, nor, for that matter, does it include the Quiet Man himself.
Despite sluggish ticket sales, the boxers were both already in China, as was King, that July. I had already secured a visa from the Chinese embassy in Dublin a few weeks earlier, and then after July’s British Open at Royal Lytham driven up to Scotland for a few days of golf.
St. Andrews caddies can often astonish you with the depth of their knowledge, but I guess if a man spends a lifetime toting clubs for the movers and shakers of the world he’s going to pick up a lot through sheer osmosis. And on this occasion I’d come across one who was a boxing buff as well. We’d repaired to the Dunvegan Pub for a post-round pint to continue our chat, and when the subject of Ruiz-Holyfield III came up, I told him I’d be on my way to China myself in a few days.
“Oh, I wouldn’t count on that,” he said ominously. I asked him why.
“Ticket sales are crap,” he said. “Ruiz is going to hurt his hand tomorrow. The fight’s not going to happen.”
The next day I got an emergency e-mail from Don King’s office announcing that John Ruiz had incurred a debilitating back injury and would be sidelined for several weeks. The Beijing fight was indefinitely “postponed.”
At least the paper didn’t make me fly home via Beijing.
* * *
The third bout between Ruiz and Holyfield took place at Foxwoods that December. When the judges split three ways, Ruiz kept the championship on a draw. He then beat Kirk Johnson, who got himself DQd in a fight he was well on the way to losing anyway, and then decided to cash in, agreeing to defend his title against Roy Jones for a lot more money than he could have made fighting any heavyweight on earth.
It was as clear beforehand as it is now that if Jones just kept his wits about him and fought a disciplined fight, there was no way in the world John Ruiz could have outpointed him. The only chance Ruiz had at all was a pretty slim one – that of doing something that would so enrage Jones that he took complete leave of his senses and succumbed to a war, where Ruiz would at least have a puncher’s chance.
The trouble was, Ruiz’ basic decency would never have allowed him to stoop to something like that. But Stone gave it his best shot.
The Jones-Ruiz fight took on such a monotony that it’s difficult to even remember one round from the next, but Stone’s weigh-in battle with Alton Merkerson was pretty unforgettable. Merkerson is big enough, and agile enough, to crush almost any trainer you can think of, and even in his old age I’d pick him over some heavyweights I could name. He’s quiet and reflective and so imperturbable that I’ve never, before or since, seen him lose his temper, and it’s fair to say that’s not what happened that day, either. When he saw Stoney flying at him, he thought he was being attacked (albeit by a madman), and reacted in self-defense.
Stone was in fact so overmatched that even he must have expected this one to be broken up quickly. Instead, boxers, seconds, undercard fighters, and Nevada officials fled in terror for the twenty seconds or so it took for Merkerson to hit Stone at least that many times. It was a scene so ugly that even Ruiz seemed disgusted. It wasn’t the end of their relationship, but it was surely the beginning of the end.
The public reaction to Jones’ win was an almost unanimous outpouring of gratitude. At least, they were saying, “we’ll never have to watch another John Ruiz fight.” But they were wrong.
He beat Hasim Rahman in an interim title fight that was promoted to the Full Monty when Jones affirmed that he had no intention of defending it. (Referee Randy Neumann, exasperated after having had to pry Ruiz and Rahman apart all night, likened them to “two crabs in a pot.) He stopped Fres Oquendo at the Garden six years ago, and then in November of 2004 came back from two knockdowns to outpoint Andrew Golota.
The Golota fight produced yet another Ruiz moment when Neumann, wearied of the stream of abuse coming from the corner, halted the action late in the eighth round and ordered Stone ejected from the building.
Most everyone found the episode amusing, Ruiz and Cardinale did not. LaMarca had retired, and while Stone was now the chief second, he was also the only experienced cut man in the corner. Having forced the referee’s hand, Stone had placed Ruiz in an the extremely vulnerable position of fighting four rounds – against Andrew Golota – without a cut man. Strike two.
Ruiz was reprieved when his 2005 loss to James Toney was changed to No Contest after Toney’s positive steroid test, but he bid adieu to the title – and to Stoney, it turned out – for the last time that December, when he lost a majority decision to the 7-foot Russian Nikolai Valuev in Berlin.
Already on a short leash, Stone had openly bickered with Cardinale the week of the fight, but his performance in its immediate aftermath sealed his fate. When Valuev was presented with the championship belt after the controversial decision, he draped it over his shoulder in triumph. Stone tore out of the corner and snatched it away, initiating a fight with an enemy cornermen. With Russians and Germans pouring into the ring bent on mayhem, Stone had to be rescued by Jameel McCline, who may have saved his life, but couldn’t save his job.
Four days later it was announced that Stone was retiring. Ruiz seemed bittersweet about the decision, but the two have not spoken since.
All of Ruiz’ significant fights over the past four and a half years took place overseas, and while he was well compensated for all of them, they might as well have taken place in a vacuum. Few American newspapers covered them.
I didn’t cover them either, but Ruiz and I did get together for a few days last fall out in Kansas, where we appeared with Victor Ortiz and Robert Rodriguez at a University boxing symposium. He’d brought along his new wife Maribel and his young son Joaquin, and the morning we were to part company we got together again for coffee and reminisced a bit more.
Neither one of us had seen Stoney, though I would hear from him, indirectly, soon enough. Newspapermen don’t write their own headlines, and a few months ago the lead item in my Sunday notebook for the Herald reflected on Ruiz’ upcoming title fight against David Haye in England representing this country’s last best chance at regaining the championship for what could be years to come.
When somebody at the desk put a headline on it that described Ruiz as an “American Soldier, word came back that Stoney – who had, remember, been an American soldier – was ready to dig his M-16 out of mothballs to use on me, Ruiz, or both.
Few Americans watched the telecast of Ruiz’ fight against Haye earlier this month, which is a pity in a way, because his performance in his final losing cause was actually an admirable one. In his retirement announcement he thanked trainers Miguel Diaz and Richie Sandoval “for teaching an old dog new tricks, and while the strategic clinch hadn’t entirely disappeared from his repertoire, it was not the jab-and-grab approach that may be recalled as his legacy.
And while Haye was credited with four knockdowns in the fight, three of them came on punches to the back of the head that would have given Bernard Hopkins occasion to roll around on the floor for a while. If somebody had decked Ruiz with three rabbit punches back in the old days with Stoney in the corner, the city of Manchester might be a smoldering ruin today.
* * *
When Ruiz officially hung up his gloves on Monday he did so with a reflective grace rarely seen in a sport where almost nobody retires voluntarily.
“I’ve had a great career but it’s time for me to turn the page and start a new chapter of my life, he said. “It’s sad that my final fight didn’t work out the way I wanted, but, hey, that’s boxing. I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished with two world titles, 12 championship fights, and being the first Latino Heavyweight Champion of the World. I fought anybody who got in the ring with me and never ducked anyone. Now, I’m looking forward to spending more time with my family.
In his announcement he thanked his fans, Diaz and Sandoval, Cardinale, his brother Eddie Ruiz, and his conditioning coach. He thanked everybody, in other words, except you-know-who.
Oh, yeah, one more thing. Ruiz, who has lived in Las Vegas for the past decade, now plans to move back to Chelsea. He hopes to open a gym for inner-city kids. “With my experiences in boxing, I want to go home and open a gym where kids will have a place to go, keeping them off of the streets, so they can learn how to box and build character.
I guess the question is: is Metropolitan Boston big enough for Ruiz and Stoney?
EDITOR’S NOTE: George Kimball, who spent most of his work life with the Boston Herald, passed away on July 6, 2011 at age sixty-seven. In his later years he authored the widely acclaimed “Four Kings: Leonard, Hagler, Hearns, Duran, and the Last Great Era of Boxing” and co-edited two boxing anthologies with award-winning sports journalist turned screenwriter John Schulian. This story appeared on these pages on April 27, 2010.
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Avila Perspective, Chap. 304: Mike Tyson Returns; Latino Night in Riyadh
Iron Mike Tyson is back.
“I’m just ready to fight,” Tyson said.
Tyson (50-6, 44 KOs) faces social media star-turned-fighter Jake Paul (10-1, 7 KOs) on Friday, Nov. 15, at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. Netflix will stream the Most Valuable Promotions card that includes female super stars Katie Taylor versus Amanda Serrano.
It’s a solid fight card.
The last time Tyson stepped in the prize ring was 19 years ago. Though he’s now 58 years old there’s a boxing adage that fits perfectly for this match: “it only takes one punch.”
Few heavyweights mastered the one-punch knockout like Tyson did during his reign of terror. If you look on social media you can find highlights of Tyson’s greatest knockouts. It’s the primary reason many people in the world today think he still fights regularly.
Real boxing pundits know otherwise.
But Tyson is not Evander Holyfield or Lennox Lewis, he’s facing 20-something-year-old Paul who has been boxing professionally for only five years.
“I’m not going to lose,” said Tyson.
Paul, 27, began performing in the prize ring as a lark. He demolished former basketball player Nate Robinson and gained traction by defeating MMA stars in boxing matches. His victories began to gain attention especially when he beat UFC stars Anderson Silva and Nate Diaz.
He’s become a phenom.
Every time Paul fights, he seems to improve. But can he beat Tyson?
“He says he’s going to kill me. I’m ready. I want that killer. I want the hardest match possible Friday night, and I want there to be no excuses from everyone at home when I knock him out,” said Paul who lured Tyson from retirement.
Was it a mistake?
The Tyson versus Paul match is part of a co-main event pitting the two best known female fighters Katie Taylor (23-1) and Amanda Serrano (47-2-1) back in the ring again. Their first encounter two years ago was Fight of the Year. Can they match or surpass that incredible fight?
“I’m going to do what I do best and come to fight,” said Serrano.
Taylor expects total war.
“I think what me and Amanda have done over these last few years, inspiring that generation of young fighters, is the best thing we could leave behind in this sport,” said Taylor.
Also, WBC welterweight titlist Mario Barrios (29-2, 18 KOs) defends against Arizona’s Abel Ramos (28-6-2, 22 KOs) and featherweight hotshot Bruce “Shu Shu” Carrington (13-0, 8 KOs) meets Dana Coolwell (13-2, 8 KOs). Several other bouts are planned.
Riyadh Season
WBA cruiserweight titlist Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez headlines a Golden Boy Promotions card called Riyadh Season’s Latino Night. It’s the first time the Los Angeles-based company has ventured to Saudi Arabia for a boxing card.
“Passion. That’s what this fight card is all about,” said Oscar De La Hoya, CEO of Golden Boy.
Mexico’s Ramirez (46-1, 30 KOs) meets England’s Chris Billam-Smith (20-1, 13 KOs) who holds the WBO title on Saturday Nov. 16, at The Venue in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. DAZN will stream the Golden Boy card.
Ramirez surprised many when he defeated Arsen Goulamirian for the WBA title this past March in Inglewood, California. The tall southpaw from Mazatlan had also held the WBO super middleweight title for years and grew out of the division.
“I’m very excited for this Saturday. I’m ready for whatever he brings to the table,” said Ramirez. “I need to throw a lot of punches and win every round.”
Billam-Smith is slightly taller than Ramirez and has been fighting in the cruiserweight division his entire pro career. He’s not a world champion through luck and could provide a very spectacular show. The two titlists seem perfect for each other.
“It’s amazing to be headlining this night,” said Billam-Smith. “He will be eating humble pie on Saturday night.”
Other Interesting Bouts
A unification match between minimumweight champions WBO Oscar Collazo (10-0) and WBA titlist Thammanoon Niyomtrong could be a show stealer. Both are eager to prove that their 105-pound weight class should not be ignored.
“I wanted big fights and huge fights, what’s better than a unification match,” said Collazo at the press conference.
Niyomtrong, the WBA titlist from Thailand, has held the title since June 2016 and feels confident he will conquer.
“I want to prove who’s the best world champion at 105. Collazo is the WBO champion but we are more experienced,” said Niyomtrong.
A lightweight bout between a top contender from Mexico and former world champion from the USA is also earmarked for many boxing fans
Undefeated William “El Camaron” Zepeda meets Tevin Farmer whose style can provide problems for any fighter.
“There is so much talent on this card. It’s a complicated fight for me against an experienced foe,” said Zepeda.
Tevin Farmer, who formerly held the IBF super featherweight title now performs as a lightweight. He feels confident in his abilities.
“You can’t be a top dog unless you beat a top dog. Once I beat Zepeda what are they going to do?” said Farmer about Golden Boy.
In a non-world title fight, former world champion Jose Ramirez accepted the challenge from Arnold Barboza who had been chasing him for years.
“I’m ready for Saturday to prove I’m the best at this weight,” said Ramirez.
Arnold Barboza is rubbing his hands in anticipation.
“This fight has been important to me for a long time. Shout out to Jose Ramirez for taking this fight,” said Barboza.
Special note
The fight card begins at 8:57 a.m. Saturday on DAZN which can be seen for free by non-subscribers.
Fights to Watch (all times Pacific Time)
Fri. Netflix 5 p.m. Mike Tyson (50-6) vs Jake Paul (10-1); Katie Taylor (23-1) vs Amanda Serrano (47-2-1); Mario Barrios (29-2) vs Abel Ramos (28-6-2).
Sat. DAZN, 8:57 a.m. Gilberto Ramirez (46-1) vs Chris Billiam-Smith (20-1); Oscar Collazo (10-0) vs Thammanoon Niyomtrong (25-0); William Zepeda (31-0) vs Tevin Farmer (33-6-1); Jose Ramirez (29-1) vs Arnold Barboza (30-0).
Mike Tyson photo credit: Esther Lin
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Say It Ain’t So: Oliver McCall Returns to the Ring Next Week
Mike Tyson isn’t the only geezer in action this month. As if one grotesquerie wasn’t enough, Oliver McCall is slated to return to the ring on Tuesday, Nov. 19. McCall is matched against Stacy “Bigfoot” Frazier in a 4-rounder. The venue is a dance hall in Nashville where the usual bill of fare is an Elvis impersonator. The fight, airing on TrillerTVplus, will be historic, says a promotional blurb, as McCall will break Mike Tyson’s record as the oldest former heavyweight champion to compete in a licensed professional fight.
McCall was one of Tyson’s most frequent sparring partners during Iron Mike’s days with Don King. Nicknamed “Atomic Bull,” McCall is 59 years old, sports a 59-14 record, and as a pro has answered the bell for 436 rounds. By comparison, Tyson, 58, has 215 rounds under his belt heading in to his date with Jake Paul.
Stacy Frazier, according to some reports, is 54 years old. Per boxrec, he has a 16-22 record and has been stopped 17 times. In common with McCall, this is his first ring exposure in five-and-a-half years.
The Nov. 19 fight card is being promoted by Jimmy Adams, a former Don King surrogate who has had a long relationship with Oliver McCall. Adams promoted five fights for McCall in Nashville in a four-month span in 1997/98. These were comeback fights for the troubled McCall, coming on the heels of his famous meltdown in his rematch with Lennox Lewis.
Back then, Adams promoted most of his Nashville shows at a bar called the Mix Factory. The promoter and the venue factored large in a New York Times story that began on page 1 of the June 1, 1998 issue and spilled over into the sports section. It bore the title “Boxing in the Shadows.”
The gist of the story was that boxing commissions in different regions of the country “had different levels of tolerance for risk” and that Nashville, which had suddenly become a very busy locale for low-budget fights, was an accident waiting to happen. The Tennessee boxing commission, a division of the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance, was a one-man operation with a budget that penciled out to less than $1,000 per show.
In an article that appeared in the (Nashville) Tennessean shortly after the New York Times expose, promoter Adams scoffed at the insinuation that many of the fighters he used were not true professionals – “I’ve worked to make Nashville the boxing capital of the world,” he said – but Tommy Patrick, the head of the Tennessee Boxing Board, allowed that there was a chance that Adams may have recruited some of his fighters from a homeless shelter.
McCall won the WBC version of the world heavyweight title on Sept. 24, 1994, at Wembley Stadium in London. In one of the biggest upsets of the decade, he knocked out previously undefeated Lennox Lewis in the second round. He made one successful defense, out-pointing long-in-the-tooth Larry Holmes, before returning to Wembley and losing the title to Frank Bruno.
The rematch with Lennox Lewis, on Feb. 7, 1997 in Las Vegas, was one of the most bizarre fights in boxing history. McCall was acting odd before the fifth round when he started sobbing and simply quit trying. Referee Mills Lane disqualified him, but it went into the books as a win by TKO for Lewis. That remains the only time that Oliver McCall, renowned for his granite chin, failed to make it to the final bell.
In the months leading up to that fight, McCall had drug, alcohol, and legal problems.
In some of his most recent outings, McCall shared the bill with his son Elijah McCall. They last appeared together in May of 2013 when they appeared on a card in Legionowo, Poland. A heavyweight, now 36 years old, Elijah McCall returned to the ring in June of this year after a 10-year absence and was stopped in the second round by Brandon Moore in Orlando.
Jimmy Adams, the promoter, was also involved in the careers of heavyweight title-holders Tony Tucker and Greg Page. Both fought at the Mix Factory as their careers were winding down. But he wasn’t able to lock in dates for Riddick Bowe.
In 2005, in a rare burst of rectitude, the Tennessee authorities refused to license Bowe who had returned to the ring the previous year after an 8-year absence at an Indian reservation in Oklahoma.
They based their denial on the transcript of a 2000 court hearing related to a 1998 incident where Bowe kidnapped his wife and five children and forced them to go with him as he drove from Virginia to North Carolina. Riddick’s legal team, led by Johnnie Cochran, argued that Riddick’s erratic behavior was the result of brain damage suffered over the course of his 43-fight professional boxing career.
The “brain damage defense” was just a ploy to keep Bowe out of prison, argued Jimmy Adams, who had arranged two fights for Bowe in Memphis, but the authorities were unyielding and Bowe never fought in Tennessee.
Adams has also been involved in the career of Christy Martin who is listed as the matchmaker for the Nov. 19 show. But the cynics would tell you that Ms. Martin is the matchmaker in name only in the same fashion that Jimmy Adams was a strawman for Don King.
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Boxing was a Fertile Arena for Award-Winning Sportswriter Gary Smith
Gary Smith is this generation’s most decorated and distinctive magazine writer after winning an unprecedented four National Magazine Awards for non-fiction and being a finalist for the award a record ten times during his more than three decades at Sports Illustrated.
A longtime resident of Charleston, South Carolina, Smith began his career at the Wilmington [Delaware] News Journal followed by stops at the Philadelphia Daily News, the New York Daily News and the stylish monthly Inside Sports before landing at Sports Illustrated in 1982. His job at “S.I.” was to write four longform features a year. Mike Tyson and James “Buster” Douglas were among the athletes that he profiled and he also penned features on Muhammad Ali and George Foreman.
Smith said it’s one thing to see an athlete perform but it’s another to know what’s inside.
“I just felt like to really render the human soul in its most honest way, that getting to understand what human beings had been through and what had landed them with whatever coping mechanism they used would be vital so people could understand a person,” said the La Salle University graduate who stepped away from the magazine in 2014. “Some of these people were doing some extreme things and if you didn’t really lay out the soil they sprung from and what brought them to that place, they would seem like aliens or freaks, but you could very much humanize them which was the only fair thing to do. We all want someone to understand why we are who we are, rather than leaving us dangling on the vine.”
Smith’s wife, Sally, is a psychiatrist, and summed up what her husband tried to lay bare in his features.
“He is not satisfied with putting facts together. He wants to understand what is the core conflict that has driven that person,” she offered many years ago. “He hopes to tell a secret that a person might not be aware of.”
It was rumored Smith would interview no less than fifty people for one feature. Smith said that wasn’t always the case, but he wanted to be thorough, which was merely one key in trying to know and understand his subject.
“You needed patience, asking and re-asking questions because you often wouldn’t get the truest or deepest answer the first go-around. Hopefully being comfortable enough in your own skin would engender trust over time,” he explained. “There would be a lot of follow-up questions, even if I had spent a week with somebody poring over the notes and going back and calling them again and again and really taking it further and further, what their interior monologue with themselves or dialogues in some cases. What was going on and felt in each of these pivotal moments in their lives, so you’d really get a feel of what was going on in the interior.”
“That’s why I did a lot of boxing stories,” said Smith. “There was so much kindling, so much psychological tension which makes for great storytelling. No one carried around tension and opposites like boxers did. It’s fertile terrain for any writer.”
A boxer, said Smith, was figuratively naked in the ring. “These are human beings who are participating in one of the most extreme things that any human being can do,” he acknowledged of the manly sport. “There’s a reason why you end up in such an extreme circumstance. You’re involved in a public mauling. You’re risking being killed or killing. To land there is virtually always a real story. You don’t land there by accident.”
Rick Telander, who worked at Sports Illustrated for 23 years, explained what made Smith’s work stand out. “Gary Smith was a unique writer,” he said. “He immersed himself in his topic, in his subject, like no one else I’ve ever read. He used his words to paint a picture that was one thousand times better than an actual photograph. You could feel the mind and the pain and the joy and the resolve and the defeat and the victory of the person he was writing about.”
Telander, who is the lead sports columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times, said Smith was a one-of-a-kind talent.
“He used his skill with words to make you feel exactly what he felt, what you should feel, to understand the story of some other person on a journey to some place we all would recognize, foreign though it may be,” he stated. “No matter how long a Gary Smith magazine piece was, you had to finish it. You had to know. You had to read and feel the resolution. It was a kind of magic. And Gary was the magician. He was the best there was.”
Alexander Wolff, who spent 36 years at Sports Illustrated, shared a similar sentiment. “Gary had the ability to inhabit the head of his subject,” he noted. “He did that by relentlessly asking questions, often leading subjects to address matters and themes they’d never before thought about.”
Smith visited Tyson early in his career and said the one-time heavyweight king had multiple personalities.
“He was a bundle of opposites. At one moment, he’s kind of seething about the world and people and the next moment he’s just a puppy dog with his arm around your neck,” he said. “One moment walking away from my introductory handshake and leaving it hanging in the air when we first met and by the end of it, arm literally around my neck….The friction of opposites was always at play.”
Smith wrote his feature on James “Buster” Douglas after Douglas claimed the heavyweight crown from Tyson in February 1990.
“He was a gentle soul for the most part. Less extreme actually than most boxers. Therefore, it took a more extreme situation being in a ring with Mike Tyson to bring out the natural talents. He was God-gifted and a father-gifted fighter,” he remembered. “He wasn’t the kind who had easy access to all that desperation that’s needed to excel in boxing but after his mother’s death and the proximity to Tyson’s right hand, they brought out that desperation to use these natural gifts as a fighter.”
Like so many who were around Muhammad Ali, Smith was often amused by the three-time heavyweight champ.
“Ali was always a lot of fun to be with. He was mischievous and said things that could be striking,” he said. “Most of them were very interesting in a variety of ways. Ali was the prankster, and you might be the butt of his pranks.”
Among the many honors accorded Smith was the Dan Jenkins Medal For Lifetime Achievement in Sportswriting, awarded in 2019. Some of his finest work can be found in his two anthologies: “Beyond The Game: The Collected Sportswriting Of Gary Smith’’ (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000) and “Going Deep: 20 Classic Sports Stories by Gary Smith” (Sports Illustrated Books, 2008).
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