Stan Hoffman and Mitchell Rose: Anecdotes from the Pen of a Veteran Boxing Writer

Published

4 years ago

February 14, 2021

Anecdotes.

Everybody who has spent any appreciable amount of time in and around boxing has ’em, personal memories of notable and not-so-notable figures in the sport that are interesting, but not generally included in the obit/tributes of and to those individuals in the immediate aftermath of their taking the eternal 10-count that awaits us all.

Not so very long ago, I regretfully declined an offer by TSS editor Arne K. Lang to do such a story on Pennsylvania promoter Mike Acri, with whom I had some dealings, because I have authored so many farewell pieces for this site and had, quite frankly, tired of writing about death. But life inevitably goes on and then ends for everyone, and as we are now in the second year of the global pandemic that seemingly has accelerated the exit process, I have been asked again by Arne to provide a couple of personal anecdotes about manager Stan Hoffman, who was 89 when he passed away on Feb. 8, and former heavyweight Mitchell “The Cigarette Man” Rose, just 51 when he breathed his last on Feb. 12.

Hoffman, a native of Brooklyn – the New York borough that has birthed so many fight fixtures, and even more anecdotes – spent nearly 50 years as a manager and adviser, during which time he worked with 38 future, then-current or past world champions, James Toney, Iran Barkley, Hasim Rahman, Michael Bentt and Hasim Rahman among the most notable.

But the Stan story that has always stuck with me involves one of his fighters, former WBO middleweight champion Doug DeWitt, who was to defend that title against Canadian knockout artist Matthew Hilton on Jan. 15, 1990, the primary lead-in to a card topped by the ballyhooed “Geezers at Caesars” heavyweight matchup of George Foreman and Gerry Cooney in Atlantic City’s Convention Center (now Boardwalk Hall).

On Jan. 11, I was in town to do an advance on DeWitt-Hilton and was in the gym after DeWitt, a native of Youngstown, Ohio, who had relocated to Yonkers, N.Y., finished his workout. “The Cobra’s” most obvious physical characteristic was a nose so flattened into his face that I observed it was “crumpled in, like an aluminum can that someone had stepped on.”

Um, what about that misshapen proboscis?

“So many people say, `Oh, Doug, you used to be so good-looking,’” said DeWitt, then 27, who had traded punches with nearly every tough guy in the 160-pound weight class in a blue-collar career that had risen to a new level when he won the vacant WBO title on a 12-round split decision over Robbie Sims, Marvin Hagler’s half-brother, on April 18, 1989, also in Atlantic City. “That kind of talk (snide remarks about his nose) bothers me sometimes. I mean, I’m human. I care about how I look. Not that I’m ugly now, but my nose definitely hinders my appearance.

“Coming out of high school my nose was straight. I was handsome. I walk around with this nose now, and it bothers me. The day I retire, I’m getting it fixed.”

While DeWitt didn’t much care for the condition of his nose then, given his intention to have it eventually restored, at least one fighter considered it a badge of distinction and courage.

“You know, it’s funny,” Hoffman told me. “This junior welterweight, Ricky Meyers, and I were at one of Dougie’s workouts this week and (Meyers) said, `Stan, I’m a fighter and I really want to look and feel like a fighter. Do you think someone could remove the cartilage from my nose so I can look just like Doug?’

“I guess that just goes to show you that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.”

DeWitt, in his one and only successful title defense, was ahead on all three official scorecards when he registered what many believed to be at least a minor upset as Hilton, both his eyes nearly swollen shut, did not come out for the 12^th round. The Cobra was dethroned in his next outing, on an eighth-round stoppage by England’s Nigel Benn, on April 29, 1990. He would fight three more times, going 1-1-1, his final bout a sixth-round stoppage loss to, ironically, James Toney, my other most memorable anecdotal link to Hoffman, on Dec. 5, 1992.

To this day, I still haven’t found out if Doug DeWitt followed up on his vow to himself to get his nose fixed, as was the case with Leon Spinks, the former heavyweight champion who was 67 when he died on Feb. 5. The older of boxing’s two champion Spinks brothers (the other being Michael) was best known for his title-annexing upset of Muhammad Ali and, just a bit less so, for his gap-toothed smile. “Neon Leon,” tired of all the jokes made about the yawning, empty space in his top row of teeth, did later undergo dental surgery that provided him with a full set of chompers.

Toney had had some ups and downs, in and out of the ring, when, sometime in the early 1990s, I went to Las Vegas to cover a fight involving, I think, Mike Tyson, although I can’t recall the specific bout. In any case, a select few writers, including me, were invited to a private workout by Toney, who was not on the card we had come to see, but during which “Lights Out” would presumably demonstrate how he was new and improved.

The gym was insufferably hot, so high was the heat turned up, but the volume of the gangsta rap to which Toney went through his drills was even higher, jet-aircraft-taking-off, eardrum-bursting high. The one thing I do remember is that the lyrics were frequently punctuated with screamed variations of the f-word, so much so that the constant barrage seemed excessive even to this Marine Corps veteran. I thought it interesting that James’ mother, who owned and operated a bakery in Ann Arbor, Mich., sat off to the side during her son’s training session, reading a book or something, seemingly oblivious to the profane clatter.

When the workout was over, Stan invited the writers to meet with Toney in the relative privacy of a side office – other fighters were continuing to train in the gym, to music, still very loud, of their preference. Some questions were asked by us and answered by Toney, who at one point made a reference to an “effing” something or other. He actually said “effing,” not the actual word.

When I inquired about that, Stan interjected, “James is trying to clean up his vocabulary,” to which I said, “Yeah, but what about the tape that was playing during his workout with his mom sitting there?”

Now, about Mitchell Rose, another Brooklyn native whose youthful success as a New York Golden Gloves boxer didn’t translate to his pro career, which was hindered by a disinclination to train with any appreciable degree of dedication or enthusiasm. Rose (pictured on the left) retired with a 2-11-1 record with two knockout wins and five losses inside the distance.

mitchell

Seldom, however, has any fighter with such a nondescript record milked more notoriety out of a single victory. Largely because he had demonstrated little or none of his Golden Gloves promise, Rose was penciled in to provide the low-risk opposition to Top Rank’s novelty act heavyweight Eric “Butterbean” Esch, the erstwhile “King of the Four-Rounders,” on Dec. 15, 1995, for a show headlined by WBO lightweight champ Oscar De La Hoya’s second-round stoppage of Jesse James Leija at Madison Square Garden. Butterbean came in at 15-0 with 10 KOs, Rose at 1-7-1 with one KO and four defeats in abbreviated fashion.

But in a low-rent version of how Buster Douglas ascended to a career peak by knocking out Mike Tyson, in no small part because he had dedicated that fight to the memory of his recently deceased mother, Lula Mae, Rose – with an uncommonly long five weeks (for him) to train – showed a flash or two of his old GG form in stopping Butterbean 48 seconds into the second round, which was definitely not the result Top Rank founder Bob Arum wanted. The fight almost certainly was legit, but no pairing needs to be fixed for an outcome to be semi-preordained. Major favorites matched soft can and do lose occasionally.

Interestingly, I saw a very forlorn Butterbean at Pennsylvania Station the next day as I prepared to take a train back to Philadelphia and The Bean to wherever it was that he was headed. Maybe because he had become so accustomed to winning easily and quickly, he felt he had let a lot of people down, even if he had entered the ring the night before, he said, a bit under the weather.

Butterbean, however, would rebound nicely and went on to continue his unlikely advance to stardom of sorts as a bald and blubbery blaster. In his only non-four-rounder, he lost on points to former heavyweight champion Larry Holmes, a matchup that legitimized his credentials as much or more than all the whackings of the steady stream of palookas he had become accustomed to. For historical perspective, it hardly seemed to matter that the “Easton Assassin” was 52 years old and, at 254 pounds, had love handles nearly as ample as Butterbean’s lapping over his waistband.

“Here I am, feeling sorry for myself, when this man comes over and asks if I would say hello to his kid, who was in a wheelchair,” Butter said of the early-morning New York hours after he had tasted his first pro defeat. “I go over and meet the kid, who is really in a bad way. But he seemed so happy to see me.

“Right then, I decided I had no problems. So what if I lost a fight? My feeling was that I’d just go out and win the next one.”

As for Rose, he wrote two self-published books, one of which was titled The Man That Beat Butterbean, which played fast and loose with the truth. It might be accurate that Rose describes his takedown of Eric Esch’s alter ego as “the highlight of my life, my version of the Thrilla in Manila.” Many of his other assertions, however, would appear to be pure flights of fantasy.

Rose would later claim he had refused a $5,000 bribe to go into the tank against Butterbean, and that he was subsequently blacklisted for the audacity of winning a fight he was supposed to lose. I’m not sure either statement comes close to passing any credible sniff test. He did say his purse for the Butterbean fight was $1,500, which might be accurate, but he also said the corpulent crusher received $750,000. For an undercard four-rounder! That figure is so patently false as to be laughable.

Stan Hoffman and Mitchell Rose – Leon Spinks, too – have crossed over onto the other side of the great divide that separates heaven and earth. Maybe only absolute truth matters over there, but maybe celestial anecdotes are just as much cause for fun and lively discussion as they are here, in the land of the living.

A New Orleans native, Bernard Fernandez retired in 2012 after a 43-year career as a newspaper sports writer, the last 28 years with the Philadelphia Daily News. A former five-term president of the Boxing Writers Association of America, Fernandez won the BWAA’s Nat Fleischer Award for Excellence in Boxing Journalism in 1998 and the Barney Nagler Award for Long and Meritorious Service in 2015. In December of 2019, Fernandez was accorded the highest honor for a boxing writer when he was named to the International Boxing Hall of Fame with the Class of 2020. Last year, Fernandez’s anthology, “Championship Rounds,” was released by RKMA Publishing.

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Remembering the Macho Man, Hector Camacho, a Great Sporting Character

Published

1 day ago

November 23, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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Twelve years ago tomorrow, on Nov. 24, 2012, Hector Camacho was officially declared dead. He was effectively dead before then, having suffered a heart attack in the hospital after his spinal cord had been severed by a bullet, but his attendants at the hospital in Bayamon, Puerto Rico, waited until his mother had arrived from New York to remove him from life support.

At the age of 50, one of the most charismatic personalities in the sporting life of America was silenced forever.

Hector “Macho” Camacho, the Macho Man, was flamboyant – boy was he ever – but he was also a great talent. A three-time New York City Golden Gloves champion, reputedly 96-4 as an amateur, he was undefeated in 31 bouts at 135 pounds and below and went on to conquer some of the sport’s biggest names – Boom Boom Mancini, Vinny Pazienza, Roberto Duran (twice), Sugar Ray Leonard – before the sun set on his long career.

Camacho was born in Bayamon but grew up in Spanish Harlem where his mother moved when he was four. He was 21 years old and 21-0 as a junior lightweight when he was first profiled in Sports Illustrated, then the best medium for enhancing the marketability of a young athlete. At this juncture in his life, Hector, who became a father at age 17, was still living in a Spanish Harlem housing project, sharing an apartment with his 38-year-old mother, his stepfather, three siblings, a niece and a nephew.

By then he had already been expelled from six schools and was no stranger to the legal system, having spent 3 ½ months at New York’s notorious Rikers Island for — as Pat Putnam phrased it — borrowing other people’s automobiles without their permission.

The story in S.I. noted that Camacho’s reflexes were so quick that he could play two video games at once. Among his many physical attributes, it was his hand speed that attracted the most attention. When he ramped up his offense, his fists were a blur. But eventually, when folks thought of Camacho, what they remembered was his choirboy face with the spit curl in the middle of his forehead and his outrageous ring costumes which ran the gamut from a loincloth to a dress.

Hot-dogging came natural to Hector Camacho; it was embedded in his DNA. And in common with Muhammad Ali, he could be arrogant without coming across as arrogant. There was an impish quality to his bravado. He was fun to be around and, in his own words, could light up a room like a Christmas tree.

What Camacho lacked was any capacity for embarrassment.

Former WBA super bantamweight champion Clarence “Bones” Adams, who is now the proprietor of a Las Vegas gym that bears his name, became fast friends with the Macho Man when both trained in Las Vegas, the host city for their most lucrative fights. Mention Camacho’s name to Adams and a smile creases his face if he doesn’t burst out laughing.

“One day after Hector and I had gone jogging,” recollects Adams, “we drove over to the old White Cross Drugs [on the north Strip near the Stratosphere] to grab a bite to eat at their lunch counter. When we left and were standing outside by the car, Hector said, ‘Hold on a minute, I have to go pee.’ I said I’ll wait for you but then I noticed he was already peeing. Some cars honked as they passed by.

“Greg Hannely, my manager at the time, and I went to Detroit in 2000 to support Hector who was on the undercard of a show featuring Thomas Hearns. At the weigh-in, Hector wore a long shirt with nothing underneath it. This wasn’t apparent until he stepped off the scale and started doing jumping jacks.

“Hector,” continues Adams, “once had a Ferrari that he misplaced; he couldn’t remember where he parked it. He never did recover that car, but he wasn’t too bothered by it. His attitude was, ‘there’s always more where it came from.’” (Presumably this was the same Ferrari that Camacho was driving when he was ticketed for driving too slow with a suspended license on a Florida highway while being pleasured by a woman sitting astride him.)

Historians would compartmentalize Camacho’s career into two segments. Part One ended with his successful lightweight title defense against Edwin Rosario at Madison Square Garden on June 13, 1986.

Camacho kept his undefeated record intact, prevailing on a split decision, but ended the fight looking as if he had taken all the worst of it. Badly hurt in the fifth round and again in the 11^th, he repaired to his dressing room with a swollen nose and two black eyes.

This fight, reads a story in a Canadian paper, “persuaded him to scale back his ultra-aggressive style in favor of a more cerebral, defensive approach.” That’s a diplomatic way of saying that Camacho devolved into a runner.

In his next fight, Camacho proved too clever for Cornelius Boza-Edwards, winning a unanimous decision, but the crowd didn’t like it when Hector spent the last two rounds on his bicycle and there were boos aplenty as the match wended to its conclusion. This would be the Macho Man’s final fight as a lightweight. He moved up to 140 where a slew of attractive match-ups awaited, notably a showdown with Julio Cesar Chavez.

Camacho and Chavez touched gloves in Las Vegas on Sept. 13, 1992, before an announced crowd of 19,100 at the UNLV basketball arena in what reportedly was the fastest sellout in Las Vegas boxing history up to that date. Chavez, widely seen as the top pound-for-pound fighter in the sport, advanced his record to 82-0 with a lopsided decision, winning all 12 rounds on the card of one of the judges. The Macho Man, who had avenged his lone defeat to Greg Haugen, declined to 41-2.

This wasn’t a milquetoast performance by Camacho. He simply couldn’t deal with Chavez’s unrelenting pressure. LA Times scribe Alan Malamud wrote that Hector showed unexpected grit by trading with Chavez after his legs were gone, thereby reducing him to a stationary target. But more brickbats came Camacho’s way following setbacks to Felix Trinidad and Oscar De La Hoya. He lasted the distance in both bouts but was roundly out-pointed. By the third round of the De La Hoya fight, wrote Kevin Iole, it was a foregone conclusion that De La Hoya would win.

Between the Trinidad and De La Hoya fights, staged 44 months apart, Camacho had 21 fights and won them all. His victims were mostly journeyman with two notable exceptions. On June 22, 1996, he scored a 12-round unanimous decision over 45-year-old Roberto Duran. Eight months later, he defeated another faded legend when he stopped Sugar Ray Leonard in the fifth round. Leonard, who had been out of the ring for six years, was forever retiring and unretiring and Camacho retired him for good. Both bouts were in Atlantic City.

A wag wrote that Sugar Ray was 40 years old going on 41 and that Camacho was 35 years old going on puberty.

Camacho’s advisors kept him busy to keep his name in the news and Hector did his part by making the news for bad behavior outside the ring. In January of 2005, he was arrested for the November 2004 burglary of a computer store in Gulfport, Mississippi. He went there to retrieve a laptop that was being repaired but entered the property after hours by way of the ceiling. An illegal drug, ecstasy, was found in his hotel room when he was placed under arrest.

After serving five months in jail, Camacho was released with the understanding that he would be placed under house arrest for one year when he returned to Puerto Rico but, by all accounts, the authorities in Puerto Rico were never notified of this arrangement.

Camacho’s frequent misdeeds, once seen as the amusing antics of a fun-loving man-child, came to be seen in a different light as he grew older; as a pattern of behavior that betrayed a dark side in his personality.

In a 1985 conversation with New York Times boxing writer Michael Katz, Camacho’s estranged manager Billy Giles said, “someday he’ll wind up like Tyrone Everett, maybe worse,” the reference to a talented junior lightweight from Philadelphia who was murdered under sordid circumstances.

That proved to be eerily prophetic.

Camacho had 20 more fights after his hollow performance against Oscar De La Hoya, ending his career as a bloated middleweight. His only noteworthy opponent during this final phase of his boxing career was Duran who was then 50 years old when they clashed in Denver. In a bout that echoed their first meeting, Hector won a unanimous decision. This was Roberto Duran’s farewell fight. Camacho soldiered on for eight more bouts, winning five.

In November of 2012, thirty months after his last ring assignment, Hector Camacho and a companion were ambushed as they sat in a car in the darkened parking lot of a Bayamon, Puerto Rico bar. The companion died instantly in the hail of bullets. Police found nine packets of cocaine on the decedent and an open packet of cocaine in the car.

Camacho’’s funeral was held at Harlem’s landmark Saint Cecilia’s Church. Hundreds of mourners stood in the cold outside the church as his casket was being placed in the funeral car. They cheered and shouted Camacho’s battle cry, “Macho Time,” as the hearse pulled away.

They say you shouldn’t speak bad about the dead, so we will let Bones Adams have the last word. “Hector had his demons,” says Adams, “but he was a great friend, a nice, kind, and caring guy.”

—

Editor’s note: For more on Hector Camacho, check out Christian Giudice’s biography, “Macho Time: The Meteoric Rise and Tragic Fall of Hector Camacho,” published by Hamilcar in 2020.

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 304: A Year of Transformation in Boxing and More

Published

2 days ago

November 22, 2024

David A. Avila

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A subtle transformation in professional boxing is taking place with the biggest fights no longer placed in Las Vegas, New York or Los Angeles. Instead, they are heading to the Middle East.

Golden Boy Promotions joined the crowd last week with one of their stronger fight cards taking place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The main attractions were new unified cruiserweight champion Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez of Mexico along with Puerto Rico’s diminutive Oscar Collazo unifying the minimumweight division.

And there is more to come.

Matchroom Boxing seemed to lead the way in this rerouting of major boxing events. It goes as far back as December 2019 when Anthony Joshua fought Andy Ruiz in a rematch for the heavyweight championship in Diriyah, Saudi Arabia.

Little by little major fights are being rerouted to Saudi Arabia.

Is it a good thing or not?

For promoters looking to cut costs it’s definitely welcomed. But what does it do for the fan base accustomed to saving their money to buy tickets for one or two major events?

Now there is talk of Shakur Stevenson, Devin Haney and Terence Crawford heading to the Middle East to fight on major cards sponsored by “Riyad Spring.” It’s a new avenue for the sport of pro boxing.

This past week Golden Boy and its roster of Latino fighters took its turn and showed off their brand of aggressive fights. Some like Collazo and Arnold Barboza made the best of their moments. And, of course, Zurdo proved he should have moved up in weight years ago. He could be the Comeback Fighter of the Year.

Benavidez vs Morrell

Interim light heavyweight champion David Benavidez accepted a challenge from WBA light heavyweight titlist David Morrell to meet on Feb. 1 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

Bad blood between the two tall fighters already exists.

Morrell claims Benavidez is over-rated.

“I’m getting the knockout. 100%. He’s all talk and no bite. He can’t do what he thinks he’s gonna do,” said Morrell. “He has no idea what he’s talking about, but he’s provoking me and now I want to go out there and beat the crap out of him. I’m here now and none of that talk matters.”

Benavidez begs to differ.

“Here we are again. I told you that I was going to give you the fights you want to see, and now we’re here,” Benavidez said while in Los Angeles. “Morrell has been talking about me for a while and disrespecting me. He wanted to make it personal with me, so I’m personally going to break his mouth. That’ll give him something to remember me by.”

Also scheduled to fight on the fight card are Isaac Cruz, Stephen Fulton, Brandon Figueroa and Jesus Ramos Jr.

Netflix

No surprise for me with the massive success of the Jake Paul and Mike Tyson event on the Most Valuable Promotions boxing card last week.

According to Netflix there were 108 million people tuned into the event last Friday that also featured the incredible Amanda Serrano and Katie Taylor rematch. Another exciting card was the men’s welterweight clash between Mario Barrios and Abel Ramos that ended in a draw.

If fans weren’t satisfied with the Paul fight, they certainly got their fulfillment with the world title fights, especially Serrano and Taylor who were estimated to be viewed by more than 72 million people. No female fight in history can touch those numbers.

So, what’s next for Netflix in terms of boxing?

West Coast Blues

Southern California is usually a hotbed for boxing events no matter what time of the year. But this year only a few boxing cards are taking place within a driving distance until the end of the year.

Las Vegas is in slumber and Southern California has a few smaller boxing cards still on schedule. Arizona has a significant Top Rank fight card in a few weeks as does Golden Boy Promotions in the Inland Empire.

Here are some upcoming fight events worth noting:

Dec. 5 – at OC Hangar in Costa Mesa, Calif. Vlad Panin vs Sal Briceno by SOCA Fights.

Dec. 7 – at Footprint Center in Phoenix, Rafael Espinoza vs Robeisy Ramirez and Oscar Valdez vs Emanuel Navarrete by Top Rank.

Dec. 13, at Chumash Casino 360 in Santa Ynez, Calif. Carlos Balderas vs Cesar Villarraga by 360 Promotions.

Dec. 14 at Toyota Arena in Ontario, Calif. Alexis Rocha vs Raul Curiel by Golden Boy Promotions.

Turkeys in East L.A.

The 25^th annual Turkey Giveaway by Golden Boy takes place on Saturday Nov. 23, at Oscar De La Hoya Animo High School starting at 11 a.m.

It’s incredible that 25 years have passed since the inception of this yearly event. Many current and past fighters for the promotion company will be passing out turkeys and meeting fans. Among those expected to appear are Alexis Rocha, Victor Morales, Joel Iriarte, Bryan Lua and others.

Photo: Eddie Hearn, Frank Warren, and HE Turki Alalshikh at the Joshua-Dubois fight

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Philly’s Jesse Hart Continues His Quest plus Thoughts on Tyson-Paul and ‘Boots’ Ennis

Published

3 days ago

November 21, 2024

Luis A. Cortes III

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Jesse Hart (31-3, 25 KOs) returns to the ring tomorrow night (Friday, Nov. 22) on a Teflon Promotions card at the Liacouras Center on the campus of Temple University. During a recent media workout for the show, which will feature five other local fighters in separate bouts, Hart was adamant that fighting for the second time this year at home will only help in his continuing quest to push towards a second chance at a world championship. “Fighting at home is always great and it just makes sense from a business standpoint since I already have a name in the sport and in the city,” said Hart (pictured on the left).

Hart’s view of where his career currently resides in relation to the landscape in the light heavyweight division leads you to believe that, at the age of 35, Hart is realistic about how far he can go before his career is over.

“Make good fights, win those fights, fight as much as I can and stay busy, that’s the way the light heavyweight division won’t be able to ignore me,” he says. Aside from two losses back in 2017 and 2018 to current unified cruiserweight champion Gilberto Ramirez at super middleweight, Hart’s only other defeat was to Joe Smith during Smith’s most successful portion of his career.

When attempts to make fights with (at the time) up-and-coming prospects like Edgar Berlanga and David Benavidez were denied with Hart being viewed as the typical high risk-low reward opponent, it was time to find another way. So, Hart decided to stay local after splitting with Top Rank Promotions post-surgery to repair his longtime right-hand issues and hooked up with Teflon Promotions, an upstart company that is the latest to take on the noble endeavor of trying to return North Broad Street and Atlantic City to boxing prominence.

In essence, it is a calculated move that is potentially a win-win situation for all parties. Continued success for Hart along with some of the titles at light heavyweight eventually being released from Artur Beterbiev’s grasp due to outside politics, and Jesse Hart just may lift up Teflon Promotions into a major player on the regional scene.

Tickets for Friday’s show are available on Ticketmaster platforms.

As we entered November, a glance at the boxing schedule made me wonder if it was possible for the sport to have a memorable month — one that could shine a light forward in boxing’s ongoing quest to regain relevance in today’s sports landscape. Having consecutive weekends with events that could spark interest in the pugilistic artform and its wonderful characters was what I was hoping for, but what we got instead was more evidence that boxing isn’t immune to modern business practices landing a one-two punch on the action both inside and outside of the ring.

Jaron “Boots” Ennis was expected to make a statement in his rematch with Karen Chukhadzian on Nov. 9, a statement to put the elite level champions around his weight class on notice. What we witnessed, however, was more evidence of how current champions in their prime can be hampered by having to navigate a business that functions through the cooperation of independent contractors. Ennis got the job done – he won – but it was a lackluster performance.

It’s time for Ennis to fight the fighters we already thought we would have seen him fight by now and I do believe there is some truth to Ennis rising to the occasion if there was a more noteworthy name across the ring.

—

Some positives emerged from the Mike Tyson-Jake Paul event the following week. Amanda Serrano, Katie Taylor, and women’s boxing are finally getting the public recognition they deserve. Mario Barrios’s draw against the tough Abel Ramos, also on the Netflix broadcast, was an action-packed firefight. So, mainstream America and beyond got to witness actual fights before being subjected to Paul’s latest circus.

Unfortunately for fans, but fortunately for Paul, the lone true boxing star in the main event dimmed out from an athletic standpoint decades ago. In this instance modern business practices allowed for a social media influencer to stage his largest money grab from a completely unnuanced public.

As Paul rose to the ring apron from the steps and looked around “Jerry’s World,” taking in the moment, it reminded me of an actual fighter when they’re about to enter the ring taking in the atmosphere before they risk their lives after a lifetime of dedication to try and realize a childhood dream. In this case though, this was a natural-born hustler realizing as he made it to the ring apron that his hustle was likely having its moment of glory.

In boxing circles, Jake Paul is viewed as a “necessary evil.” What occurs in his fights are merely an afterthought to the spectacle that is at the core of the social media realm that birthed him. Hopefully the public learned from the atrocity that occurred once the exhibition started that smoke and mirrors last for only so long. Hopefully Paul’s moment of being a boxing performer and acting like a true fighter comes to its conclusion. But he isn’t going away anytime soon, especially since his promotional company is now in bed with Netflix.

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