The Hauser Report: Filmmaker Eric Drath and More

Published

4 years ago

December 7, 2020

The-Hauser-Report-Filmmaker-Eric-Drath-and-More

Eric Drath is a very good filmmaker. The release of Macho: The Hector Camacho Story on Showtime this month demonstrates that yet again.

Drath (pictured) was born and raised in New York and interned at ABC News while attending college at Columbia. He moved to Atlanta after graduation to work for CNN. Next came a stint at a start-up network called Fox News Channel. The irony of that pairing is not lost on him. Then the sweet science entered his life.

“I wasn’t a big boxing fan,” Drath says. “But in the late-nineties, a friend invited me to go with him to some fights at Yonkers Raceway in the Bronx. We got there. There was a boxing ring and, around it, a world I’d never known. I said to myself, ‘This is so cool. I want to know more about this.'”

The promoter that night was Joe DeGuardia. In due course, Drath left Fox News to do publicity work for DeGuardia’s promotional company.

“That,” Eric recalls, “was when I learned that doing PR for a boxing promoter was, ‘Go get the van, pick up some fighters at the airport, take them to the athletic commission to get licensed, make sure they have their physicals, and send out a press release.”

Eventually, Drath started a company called RingLink which got video clips from promoters and charged the promoters a fee to transmit the clips by satellite to TV stations. Then he got a manager’s license and represented a few fringe fighters. After that, he founded a company called Live Star Entertainment that created satellite media tours for the music industry and produced TV fights for various promoters. Most notably, Live Star produced close to fifty Broadway Boxing shows for DiBella Entertainment between 2008 and 2016.

Meanwhile, Drath had begun the process of carving out a niche for himself as a documentary filmmaker. Over the years, he has worked on subjects as diverse as Theodore Bikel and Pete Rose. But it began with boxing.

In 2006, Drath met Luis Resto at the Morris Park Boxing Gym in the Bronx. Resto (a former journeyman fighter) had been a key player in one of boxing’s ugliest scandals. On June 16, 1983, he fought Billy Collins (an undefeated 21-year-old prospect) at Madison Square Garden. Before the bout, Panama Lewis (Resto’s trainer) removed some of the padding from his fighter’s gloves. Collins suffered permanent eye damage during the bout, was unable to fight again, and died in a car crash nine months later. Resto and Lewis were imprisoned for their wrongdoing. Lewis was widely seen as the more culpable of the two.

“I liked Resto’s story,” Drath recounts. “Nobody else thought it was a good idea. But I scraped together some money, put together a rough cut, and gave it to a friend who gave it to a friend while they were standing together on the sideline during their daughters’ high school lacrosse game.”

The second parent standing on the sideline was Rick Bernstein (then the executive producer for HBO Sports).

“After that, I got a phone call,” Drath remembers. “HBO made its own sports documentaries back then. But they liked it; they bought it; and they made some changes.”

Assault in the Ring aired on HBO in 2008 and won an Emmy for Outstanding Sports Documentary. Drath was credited as its co-writer, director, and narrator. Then he pitched a documentary about Renee Richards to the network. But HBO passed on the project so he sold it to ESPN which televised the documentary after it premiered at the Tribecca Film Festival in 2011. Once again, Drath was the co-writer, director, and narrator.

Two more boxing projects for ESPN followed: No Mas (2013), which focused on the second fight between Sugar Ray Leonard and Roberto Duran, and Robbed (2014), which told the tale of Ali-Norton III against the backdrop of violence occasioned by a New York City police job action.

That brings us to Macho: The Hector Camacho Story.

Macho

Initially, Drath conceived of Macho as an investigative report about Camacho’s murder in Bayamon, Puerto Rico. Hector, who was involved with cocaine for most of his life, was shot four times on November 20, 2012, and removed from life support four days later. He was fifty years old when he died.

Then Macho evolved into a more complete biographical documentary with an emphasis on Camacho’s ring career. The film would have been stronger with more exposition of what it meant – and still means – to be part of the underclass in Spanish Harlem where Camacho was raised and remains an icon. But it’s put together well and has the advantage of a charismatic main character who lights up the screen when he’s on camera.

Eric directed and narrated Macho. The film’s most compelling moments deal with its subject’s post-boxing life and include poignant footage of an unrecognizably fat Camacho as he neared age fifty.

Drath is one of the few directors who has made documentaries for HBO, Showtime, and ESPN. That leads to the question of how the experiences compared with one another.

“HBO was a tight organization that didn’t want outside interference,” Drath recalls. “They bought the film and in essense said, ‘Okay, kid; you can stand outside the edit room while we finish it, and we’ll show you what we’re doing from time to time.’ Showtime is the antithesis of that. They gave me notes but they also gave me the latitude to make the film I wanted to make. I loved the process. ESPN was somewhere in between. But it was an honor to work with all three of them.”

And which of his documentaries does Drath like the most?

“I don’t have a favorite,” he answers, “I love the human element in documentaries. Each one I’ve been fortunate to make so far marks a different period of my life. And each one has that human element.”

* * *

Adam Pollack is an Iowa attorney who has written biographies of the early gloved heavyweight champions from John L. Sullivan through Jack Johnson. Now he has chosen to skip Jess Willard and go straight to Jack Dempsey with Part One of a projected two-volume work published by Win by KO Publications.

Jack Dempsey: The Making of a Champion follows the familiar Pollack formula of relying heavily on contemporaneous newspaper accounts and other primary sources. It’s 559 pages long and chronicles Dempsey’s life through his 1919 conquest of Jess Willard to claim the heavyweight throne. In terms of content, it’s the most detailed of the Dempsey biographies to date.

Today’s interconnected digital world enables research to be conducted more thoroughly and more quickly than ever before. That’s particularly important for Pollack who relies heavily on documents that are a century old in reconstructing the lives of his subjects. He also benefits from a community of boxing historians and fans who forward information to him.

“Writing these books is a passion for me,” Adam says. “I spend some time on them every day. Right now, I’m having a lot of fun working on Part Two of Dempsey. Once he became champion, things really took off – for Dempsey and for boxing. There’s Dempsey-Firpo, Dempsey-Carpentier, the Dempsey-Tunney fights. But my real job is as a criminal defense attorney. That’s how I pay the bills.”

That leaves open the question of whether Pollack will ever go back and forge the missing link in his chain of books by writing a biography of Willard.

“I can’t say never,” Pollack answers. “But at this point, I don’t see myself doing Willard. These books take an enormous amount of time and effort, and I have to balance that against my personal interest in the fighter. Willard had two fights of historic importance – when he beat Jack Johnson and when he lost to Dempsey. I’ve written about these fights in depth in my Johnson and Dempsey books. And Arly Allen did a pretty good job in his biography of Willard. Maybe someday I’ll change my mind. But right now, I’m at peace with not writing a Willard book.”

* * *

A lot of players are losing a lot of money in boxing these days. FITE is one company that’s turning a profit.

FITE is a video-streaming and ordering platform with 2.6 million registered users. It has streamed more than 3,500 events during the past five years and was a key player in the financial success of the November 28 exhibition featuring Mike Tyson and Roy Jones. When FOX Pay-Per-View began having technological issues with the December 5 fight between Errol Spence and Danny Garcia, the promotion decided that sharing a larger pie would be preferable to keeping a small pie all for itself and turned to FITE.

FITE will work with any content provider as long as the content meets its standards. It knows who the fight fans are and how to reach them. It’s user friendly and has avoided many of the technological problems that plague similar services.

Many fans (including this one) look askance at an economic model that puts boxing’s biggest fights on pay-per-view. But where it’s available, FITE is a reliable way to order events – large and small – for those who want to.

* * *

WBC-IBF 147-pound champion Errol Spence raised his record to 27-0 (21 KOs) with a dominant 12-round performance against Danny Garcia on Saturday night. There were questions before the fight as to whether Spence had fully recovered from injuries sustained in an October 10, 2019, automobile accident. But one had to assume that a less formidable comeback opponent would have been chosen had there been doubts in Errol’s camp about his health or what a punch from Garcia might do to the bone and tissue structure beneath his face.

Garcia (now 36-3, 21 KOs) is a tough out. But at the highest levels of competition, he’s an out. Spence gave Danny next to nothing to work with and had enough hurt on his punches to keep Garcia from challenging his narrative for the flow of the fight. Errol’s jab was effective as an offensive weapon and defensive shield. Danny’s left hook – normally the most potent punch in his arsenal – seemed to have been packed in mothballs for the night.

The judges favored Spence by a 117-111, 116-112, 116-112 margin (which was kind to Garcia, who is now 0-and-3 in fights against Spence, Keith Thurman, and Shawn Porter).

If there’s a criticism of Spence’s performance on Saturday night, it’s that (as was the case when he fought Mikey Garcia twenty months ago) he never put the pedal to the metal in an effort to finish with a knockout.

There are two prospective fights for Spence that matter now. The first would be a 147-pound title unification bout against WBO welterweight champion Terence Crawford. The second would be a move up to 154 pounds to challenge Jermell Charlo for supremacy in the junior-middleweight ranks. Ray Leonard sought out challenges like that.

Photo credit: Zoom / Doug Doyle

Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His most recent book – Staredown: Another Year in Boxing– was published by the University of Arkansas Press. In 2004, the Boxing Writers Association of America honored Hauser with the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism. In 2019, Hauser was selected for induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

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Thomas Hauser

Thomas Hauser is the author of 52 books. In 2005, he was honored by the Boxing Writers Association of America, which bestowed the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism upon him. He was the first Internet writer ever to receive that award. In 2019, Hauser was chosen for boxing's highest honor: induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Lennox Lewis has observed, “A hundred years from now, if people want to learn about boxing in this era, they’ll read Thomas Hauser.”

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Skylar Lacy Blocked for Lamar Jackson before Making his Mark in Boxing

Published

2 days ago

January 19, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Skylar-Lacy-Blocked-for-Lamar-Jackson-Before-Making-his-Mark-in-Boxing

Skylar Lacy, a six-foot-seven heavyweight, returns to the ring on Sunday, Feb. 2, opposing Brandon Moore on a card in Flint, Michigan, airing worldwide on DAZN.

As this is being written, the bookmakers hadn’t yet posted a line on the bout, but one couldn’t be accused of false coloring by calling the 10-round contest a 50/50 fight. And if his frustrating history is any guide, Lacy will have another draw appended to his record or come out on the wrong side of a split decision.

This should not be construed as a tip to wager on Moore. “Close fights just don’t seem to go my way,” says the boxer who played alongside future multi-year NFL MVP Lamar Jackson at the University of Louisville.

A 2021 National Golden Gloves champion, Skylar Lacy came up short in his final amateur bout, losing a split decision to future U.S. Olympian Joshua Edwards. His last Team Combat League assignment resulted in another loss by split decision and he was held to a draw in both instances when stepping up in class as a pro. “In my mind, I’m still undefeated,” says Lacy (8-0-2, 6 KOs). “No one has ever kicked my ass.”

Lacy was the B-side in both of those draws, the first coming in a 6-rounder against Top Rank fighter Antonio Mireles on a Top Rank show in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, and the second in an 8-rounder against George Arias, a Lou DiBella fighter on a DiBella-promoted card in Philadelphia.

Lacy had the Mireles fight in hand when he faded in the homestretch. The altitude was a factor. Lake Tahoe, Nevada (officially Stateline) sits 6,225 feet above sea level. The fight with Arias took an opposite tack. Lacy came on strong after a slow start to stave off defeat.

Skylar will be the B-side once again in Michigan. The card’s promoter, former world title challenger Dmitriy Salita, inked Brandon Moore (16-1, 10 KOs) in January. “A capable American heavyweight with charisma, athleticism and skills is rare in today’s day and age. Brandon has got all these ingredients…”, said Salita in the press release announcing the signing. (Salita has an option on Skylar Lacy’s next pro fight in the event that Skylar should win, but the promoter has a larger investment in Moore who was previously signed to Top Rank, a multi-fight deal that evaporated after only one fight.)

Both Lacy and Moore excelled in other sports. The six-foot-six Moore was an outstanding basketball player in high school in Fort Lauderdale and at the NAIA level in college. Lacy was an all-state football lineman in Indiana before going on to the University of Louisville where he started as an offensive guard as a redshirt sophomore, blocking for freshman phenom Lamar Jackson. “Lamar was hard-working and humble,” says Lacy about the player who is now one of the world’s highest-paid professional athletes.

When Lacy committed to Louisville, the head coach was Charlie Strong who went on to become the head coach at the University of Texas. Lacy was never comfortable with Strong’s successor Bobby Petrino and transferred to San Jose State. Having earned his degree in only three years (a BA in communications) he was eligible immediately but never played a down because of injuries.

Returning to Indianapolis where he was raised by his truck dispatcher father, a single parent, Lacy gravitated to Pat McPherson’s IBG (Indy Boxing and Grappling) Gym on the city’s east side where he was the rare college graduate pounding the bags alongside at-risk kids from the city’s poorer neighborhoods.

Lacy built a 12-6 record across his two seasons in Team Combat League while representing the Las Vegas Hustle (2023) and the Boston Butchers (2024).

For the uninitiated, a Team Combat League (TCL) event typically consists of 24 fights, each consisting of one three-minute round. The concept finds no favor with traditionalists, but Lacy is a fan. It’s an incentive for professional boxers to keep in shape between bouts without disturbing their professional record and, notes Lacy, it’s useful in exposing a competitor to different styles.

“It paid the bills and kept me from just sitting around the house,” says Lacy whose 12-6 record was forged against 13 different opponents.

As a sparring partner, Lacy has shared the ring with some of the top heavyweights of his generation, e.g., Tyson Fury, Anthony Joshua and Dillian Whyte. He was one of Fury’s regular sparring partners during the Gypsy King’s trilogy with Deontay Wilder. He worked with Joshua at Derrick James’ gym in Dallas and at Ben Davison’s gym in England, helping Joshua prepare for his date in Saudi Arabia with Francis Ngannou and had previously sparred with Ngannou at the UFC Performance Center in Las Vegas. Skylar names traveling to new places as one of his hobbies and he got to scratch that itch when he joined Whyte’s camp in Portugal.

As to the hardest puncher he ever faced, he has no hesitation: “Ngannou,” he says. “I negotiated a nice price to spend a week in his camp and the first time he hit me I knew I should have asked for more.”

Lacy is confident that having shared the ring with some of the sport’s elite heavyweights will get him over the hump in what will be his first 10-rounder (Brandon Moore has never had to fight beyond eight rounds, having won his three 10-rounders inside the distance). Lacy vs. Moore is the co-feature to Claressa Shields’ homecoming fight with Danielle Perkins. Shields, basking in the favorable reviews accorded the big-screen biopic based on her first Olympic journey (“The Fire Inside”) will attempt to capture a title in yet another weight class at the expense of the 42-year-old Perkins, a former professional basketball player.

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Mizuki Hiruta Dominates in her U.S. Debut and Omar Trinidad Wins Too at Commerce

Published

4 days ago

January 18, 2025

David A. Avila

Mizuki-Hiruta-Dominates-in-her-U.S.-Debut-and-Trinidad-Wins-Too-at-Commerce

Japan’s Mizuki Hiruta smashed through Mexico’s Maribel Ramirez with ease in winning by technical decision and local hero Omar Trinidad continued his assault on the featherweight division on Friday.

Hiruta (7-0, 2 KOs), who prefers to be called “Mimi,” made her American debut with an impressive performance against Mexican veteran Maribel Ramirez (15-11-4) and retained the WBO super flyweight world title by unanimous decision at Commerce Casino in Commerce, Calif.

The pink-haired Japanese southpaw champion quickly proved to be quicker, stronger and even better than advertised. In the opening round Ramirez landed on the floor twice after throwing errant blows. On one instance, it could have been ruled a knockdown but it was not a convincing blow.

In the second round, Ramirez again attacked and again was met with a Hiruta check right hook and down went the Mexican. This time referee Ray Corona gave the eight-count and the fight resumed.

It was Hiruta’s third title defense but this time it was on American soil. She seemed nervous by the prospect of getting a favorable review from the more than 700 fans inside the casino tent.

For more than a year Hiruta has been training off and on with Manny Robles in the L.A. area. Now that she has a visa, she has spent considerable time this year learning the tricks of the trade. They proved explosively effective.

Though Mexico City’s Ramirez has considerable experience against world champions, she discovered that Hiruta was not easy to hit. Often, the Japanese champion would slip and counter with precision.

It was an impressive American debut, though the fight was stopped in the eighth round after a collision of heads. The scores were tallied and all three saw Hiruta the winner by scores of 80-71 twice and 79-72.

“I’m so happy. I could have done much more,” said Hiruta through interpreter Yuriko Miyata. “I wanted to do more things that Manny Robles taught me.”

Trinidad Wins Too

Omar Trinidad (18-0-1, 13 KOs) discovered that challenger Mike Plania (31-5, 18 KOs) has a very good chin and staying power. But over 10 rounds Trinidad proved to be too fast and too busy for the Filipino challenger.

Immediately it was evident that the East L.A. featherweight was too quick and too busy for Plania who preferred a counter-puncher attack that never worked.

“He was strong,” said Trinidad. “He took everything.”

After 10 redundant rounds all three judges scored for Trinidad 100-90 twice and 99-91. He retains the WBC Continental Americas title.

Other Bouts

Ali Akhmedov (23-1, 17 KOs) blasted out Malcolm Jones (17-5-1) in less than two rounds. A dozen punches by Akhmedov forced referee Thomas Taylor to stop the super middleweight fight.

Iyana “Roxy” Verduzco (3-0) bloodied Lindsey Ellis in the first round and continued the speedy assault in the next two rounds. Referee Ray Corona saw enough and stopped the fight in favor of Verduzco at 1:34 of the third round.

Gloria Munguilla (7-1) and Brook Sibrian (5-2) lit up the boxing ring with a nonstop clash for eight rounds in their light flyweight fight. Munguilla proved effective with a slip-and-counter attack. Sibrian adjusted and made the fight closer in the last four rounds but all three judges favored Munguilla.

More Winners

Joshua Anton, Tayden Beltran, Adan Palma, and Alexander Gueche all won their bouts.

Photos credit: Al Applerose

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 309: 360 Promotions Opens with Trinidad, Mizuki and More

Published

5 days ago

January 16, 2025

David A. Avila

Avila Perspective, Chap. 309: 360 Promotions Opens with Trinidad, Mizuki and More

Best wishes to the survivors of the Los Angeles wildfires that took place last week and are still ongoing in small locales.

Most of the heavy damage took place in the western part of L.A. near the ocean due to Santa Ana winds. Another very hot spot was in Altadena just north of the Rose Bowl. It was a horrific tragedy.

Hopefully the worst is over.

Pro boxing returns with 360 Boxing Promotions spotlighting East L.A.’s Omar Trinidad (17-0-1, 13 KOs) defending a regional featherweight title against Mike Plania (31-4, 18 KOs) on Friday, Jan. 17, at the Commerce Casino in Commerce, Calif.

“I’m the king of L.A. boxing and I’ll be ready to put on a show headlining again in the main event. This is my year, I’m ready to challenge and defeat any of the featherweight world champions,” said Trinidad.

UFC Fight Pass will stream the Hollywood Night fight card that includes a female world championship fight and other intriguing match-ups.

Tom Loeffler heads 360 Promotions and once again comes full force with a hot prospect in Trinidad. If you’re not familiar with Loeffler’s history of success, he introduced America to Oleksandr Usyk, Gennady “GGG” Golovkin and the brothers Wladimir and Vitaly Kltischko.

“We’ve got a wealth of international talent and local favorites to kick off our 2025 in grand style,” said Loeffler.

He knows talent.

Trinidad hails from the Boyle Heights area of East L.A. near the Los Angeles riverbed. Several fighters from the past came from that exact area including the first Golden Boy, Art Aragon.

Aragon was a huge gate attraction during the late 1940s until 1960. He was known as a lady’s man and dated several Hollywood starlets in his time. Though he never won a world title he did fight world champions Carmen Basilio, Jimmy Carter and Lauro Salas. He was more or less the king of the Olympic Auditorium and Los Angeles boxing during his career.

Other famous boxers from the Boyle Heights area were notorious gangster Mickey Cohen and former world champion Joey Olivo.

Can Trinidad reach world title status?

Facing Trinidad will be Filipino fighter Plania who’s knocked off a couple of prospects during his career including Joshua “Don’t Blink” Greer and Giovanni Gutierrez. The fighter from General Santos in the Philippines can crack and hold his own in the boxing ring.

It’s a very strong fight card and includes WBO world titlist Mizuki Hiruta of Japan who defends the super flyweight title against Mexican veteran Maribel Ramirez. It’s a tough matchup for Hiruta who makes her American debut. You can’t miss her with that pink hair and she has all the physical tools to make a splash in this country.

Mizukii Hiruta

Two other female bouts are also planned, including light flyweight banger L.A.’s Gloria Munguilla (6-1) against Coachella’s Brook Sibrian (5-1) in a match set for six rounds. Both are talented fighters. Another female fight includes super featherweights Iyana “Right Hook Roxy” Verduzco (2-0) versus Lindsey Ellis (2-1) in another six-rounder. Ellis can crack with all her wins coming via knockout. Verduzco is a multi-national titlist as an amateur.

Others scheduled to perform are Ali Akhmedov, Joshua Anton, Adan Palma and more.

Doors open at 4:30 p.m.

Boxing and the Media

The sport of professional boxing is currently in flux. It’s always in flux but no matter what people may say or write, boxing will survive.

Whether you like Jake Paul or not, he proved boxing has worldwide appeal with monstrous success in his last show. He has media companies looking at the numbers and imagining what they can do with the sport.

Sure, UFC is negotiating a massive billion dollar deal with media companies, as is WWE, both are very similar in that they provide combat entertainment. You don’t need to know the champions because they really don’t matter. Its about the attractions.

Boxing is different. The good champions last and build a following that endures even beyond their careers a la Mike Tyson.

MMA can’t provide that longevity, but it does provide entertainment.

Currently, there is talk of establishing a boxing league again. It’s been done over and over but we shall see if it sticks this time.

Pro boxing is the true warrior’s path and that means a solo adventure. It’s a one-on-one sport and that appeals to people everywhere. It’s the oldest sport that can be traced to prehistoric times. You don’t need classes in Brazilian Jiujitsu, judo, kick boxing or wrestling. Just show up in a boxing gym and they can put you to work.

It’s a poor person’s path that can lead to better things and most importantly discipline.

Photos credit: Lina Baker

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