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Lloyd Price, Music, and Boxing (1933-2021)
Music was the lifeblood of the youth culture when I was young. I came of age during the “Golden Age of Rock and Roll” and expanded my appreciation to other eras. I’ve been fortunate in that the profession I’ve chosen has enabled me to spend time with some of the icons of my youth. Muhammad Ali heads the list. But there have been many others, including some from the world of music.
Over the years, I’ve been privileged to meet Ella Fitzgerald, Harry Belafonte, Little Richard, Chubby Checker, Glen Campbell, Mary Travers, Ramsey Lewis, and others. I also spent time with Lloyd Price. Lloyd died in a longterm care facility in suburban New York on May 3 at age 88. A word of remembrance is in order.
Price was born in Louisiana in 1933 and grew up in the segregated American south. He was one of the early pioneers of rock and roll at a time when major radio stations in the United States wouldn’t play rock and roll by Black recording artists. Nat King Cole and Johnny Mathis were given airtime. But “race music” was forbidden. That gave rise to a phenomenon known as the “white cover” version. A Black artist like Little Richard would write and record a song like Tutti Frutti that received limited exposure. Then Pat Boone or another white singer would release a “socially acceptable” version that might sell a million copies.
In the mid-1950s, a white disk jockey in New York named Alan Freed began playing “race music”. The time was right. The Civil Rights Movement was gathering steam. In February 1959, for the first time ever, a rock and roll song sung by a Black recording artist became the best-selling “pop 45” in the nation. The singer was Lloyd Price.
In 1952 at age 19, Price had written and recorded a song called “Lawdy Miss Clawdy.” In 1958, he updated and recorded a song called Stagger Lee that dated back to 1911. Stagger Lee rocketed to #1 on the Billboard charts in the United States. One year later, Price wrote and recorded Personality which became an international hit.
What does this have to do with boxing?
Price had appeared in small clubs after the release of Lawdy Miss Clawdy. As Stagger Lee rose to the top of the charts, he was booked into the Top Hat Lounge in Louisville, Kentucky. When he arrived at the club, a tall good-looking teenager was waiting outside for him.
âI was on tour,â Price told me years later. âAli was sixteen years old, sitting outside because he was underage and they wouldnât let him in. When I got to the lounge, this crazy kid rushed over, saying, âMr. Price, Iâm Cassius Marcellus Clay; Iâm the Golden Gloves Champion of Louisville, Kentucky; someday Iâm gonna be heavyweight champion of the world; I love your music; and Iâm gonna be famous like you.â I just looked at him, and said, âKid, youâre dreaming.â But we got along. You couldnât help but like him. The Top Hat Lounge was a popular place, and each time I played there, I saw him. After a while, I started looking for him and bringing him in with me. He had all sorts of questions – about music and traveling, but mostly he wanted to know about girls. There were a lot of things he didnât know, and he asked me how to make out with girls. He was very sincere about it. I told him, âJust be yourself, and the girls will like you.â Although as part of the lesson, I gave him a couple of dollars and said, âAlways have some money. Thatâs the beginning of hanging out with the foxes.ââ
Thus began a lifelong friendship.
“You have to remember what America was like at that time,” Price explained later. “In parts of the country, Iâm being booked into white clubs. Iâm being booked to do white dances. But I canât stay at the white hotel and I have to go around to the back door if I want a sandwich. I went to some [Nation of Islam] meetings with Ali. For the first time in my life – as a grown man who was a star who had sold millions of records – I heard somebody saying, âYou are somebody.â The language gave you such a lift. You left feeling good about yourself. In the end, it wasnât my thing. But I can understand how Ali got hooked.
“That’s how our friendship started,” Lloyd continued. “Then, after he turned pro, he came to New York and stayed with me at my apartment several times. Right before he fought Doug Jones, I drove him around town to publicize the fight. That was my red Cadillac he was in.”
Price was a savvy businessman. He kept the copyright to most of the songs he wrote and founded several record labels. He’s also the man who introduced Ali to Don King.
“I used to go to Cleveland because my song-writing partner, Harold Logan, lived there,” Lloyd reminisced. “I knew all the people Harold knew and, through him, I got friendly with Don. One day, I was over at Donâs place in the kitchen talking about Muhammad. Donâs daughter Debbie said, âI want to meet him.â It was her birthday. She was about five. So I telephoned Muhammad and he sang Happy Birthday to her over the phone. Then Don got on and started talking. He was strictly a Cleveland man at the time. He didnât know anything about New York or Chicago or Los Angeles. And he was into numbers, not boxing. But that was the introduction. He and Ali got together – once I think it was – and then Don went to prison. But when he got out, you could see the wheels turning in his mind.â
After King was released from prison, he prevailed upon Price to call Ali and ask if Muhammad would box in a charity exhibition to benefit the Forest City Hospital in Cleveland. Ali did it for free. History suggests that the primary financial beneficiary of the event was King, not the hospital. Later, Price was a key figure in orchestrating the Zaire 74 music festival in Kinshasa held in conjunction with the historic “Rumble in the Jungle” between Ali and George Foreman. And in 1980, he tried his best to talk Ali out of coming out of retirement to fight Larry Holmes.
“I kept thinking about a day Iâd spent in New York with Ali and Joe Louis maybe ten years earlier,” Price told me. “Joe had been with me because there was a little bird singing in my band who he liked a lot, and Ali and I had been friends for years. Somehow or other, we got together and they were talking, mostly about boxing. I was listening. They got along well that day, no tension of any kind between them. Ali asked, ‘Joe, tell me something. What happens in the ring when you get old?’ He was asking about Joeâs fight against Rocky Marciano, when Joe was 37 years old with that bald spot in the middle of his head, when he got knocked through the ropes and was counted out. Joe said, ‘Ali, let me tell you something. When I was young and wanted to throw a punch, I could throw it as fast as I wanted. But when I got old, my brain would tell me to do something and my arms just wouldnât do it.'”
“Don’t fight Holmes,” Price told Ali. “It’s over. Father Time is calling. You’ve got to hear the bell.”
“You don’t know nothing about boxing and getting old,” Ali retorted. “You’re a singer, not a fighter.”
Then Price told Ali a story about going out on a national tour in 1963. As a favor to a friend who was trying to break into the music business, he agreed to let one of the friend’s groups open for him. The arrangement lasted until Price realized that the warm-up act was getting more applause than he was. So being a showman, he sent them packing with the request that his friend send him a different opening group.
“Who did you get rid of?” Ali asked.
“Some guys I’d never heard of before,” Price told him. “Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. And the next opening act made me look even worse. The first night they were on, when they finished their set, there was such pandemonium that I told the band to take a ten-minute break before I went out so the audience could calm down and I wouldn’t look bad by comparison.”
“Who were they?”
“Three Black chicks called the Supremes.”
Price then called his friend (who, of course, was Berry Gordy in the process of launching Motown records) and told him to stuff his groups where the sun didn’t shine. “Just send me one guy to open,” he instructed.
Whereupon Berry Gordy sent Marvin Gaye.
“And that was it,” Price told Ali. “I said to myself, ‘I don’t know what these folks have. But whatever it is, I don’t have it.’ So I took myself off the road, bought a club in New York [that he called Turntable], and signed a fifteen-year contract to promote concerts for Motown in Manhattan. I heard the bell.”
Over the years, I saw Lloyd maybe a dozen times. The most memorable of these occasions was a night when he and Ali were guests for dinner at my apartment. After dinner, I put an old LP of Lloyd Price’s Greatest Hits on the turntable and we sang along. There were seven of us. Ali was beginning to have trouble speaking at that time in his life. But that night he sang louder than the rest of us.
The last time I saw Lloyd, he was well into his eighties, thinner than before and walking with a cane. But his voice was clear. There was a gleam in his eye. And his contagious laugh still filled the room. I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to know him.
Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His most recent book â Staredown: Another Year Inside Boxing â 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 boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
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Avila Perspective, Chap. 282: Ryanâs Song, Golden Boy in Fresno and More
Donât call it an upset.
Days after Ryan Garcia proved the experts wrong, those same experts are re-tooling their evaluation processes.
Itâs mind-boggling to me that 95 percent thought Garcia had no chance. Hear me out.
First, Garcia and Haney fought six times as amateurs with each winning three. But this time with no head gear and smaller gloves, Garcia had to have at least a 50/50 chance of winning. He is faster and a more powerful puncher.
Facts.
Haney is a wonderful boxer with smooth, almost artistic movements. But history has taught us power and speed like Garciaâs canât be discounted. Think way back to legendary fighters like Willie Pep and Sandy Sadler. All that excellent defensive skill could not prevent Sadler from beating Pep in three of their four meetings.
Power has always been an equalizer against boxing skill.
Ben Lira, one of the wisest and most experienced trainers in Southern California, always professed knockout power was the greatest equalizer in a fight. âYou can be behind for nine rounds and one punch can change the outcome,â he said.
Another weird theory spreading before the fight was that Garcia would quit in the fight. That was a puzzling one. Getting stopped by a perfect body shot is not quitting. And that punch came from Gervonta âTankâ Davis who can really crack.
So how did Garcia do it?
In the opening round Ryan Garcia timed Devin Haneyâs jab and countered with a snapping left hook that rattled and wobbled the super lightweight champion. After that, Garcia forced Haney to find another game plan.
Garcia and trainer Derrick James must have worked hours on that move.
I must confess that I first saw Garciaâs ability many years ago when he was around 11 or 12. So I do have an advantage regarding his talent. A few things I noticed even back then were his speed and power. Also, that others resented his talent but respected him. He was the guy with everything: talent and looks.
And that brings resentment.
Recently I saw him and his crew rapping a song on social media. Now heâs got a song. Next thing you know Hollywood will be calling and heâll be in the movies. Itâs happened before with fighters such as Art Aragon, the first Golden Boy in the 50s. He was dating movie stars and getting involved with starlets all over Hollywood.
Is history repeating itself or is Garcia creating a new era for boxing?
Since 2016 people claimed he was just a social media creation. Now, after his win over Devin Haney a former undisputed lightweight champion and the WBC super lightweight titleholder, the boxer from the high desert area of Victorville has become one of the highest paid fighters in the world.
Ryan Garcia has entered a new dimension.
Golden Boy Season
After several down years the Los Angeles-based company Golden Boy Promotions suddenly is cracking the whip in 2024.
Vergil Ortiz Jr. (20-0, 20 KOs) returns to the ring and faces Puerto Ricoâs Thomas Dulorme (26-6-1, 17 KOs) a welterweight gatekeeper who lost to Jaron âBootsâ Ennis and Eimantas Stanionis. They meet as super welterweights in the co-main event at Save Mart Arena in Fresno, Calif. on Saturday, April 27. DAZN will stream the Golden Boy Promotions card live.
Itâs a quick return to action for Ortiz who is still adjusting to the new weight division. His last fight three months ago ended in less than one round in Las Vegas. It was cut short by an antsy referee and left Ortiz wanting more after more than a year of inactivity in the prize ring.
Ortiz has all the weapons.
Also, Northern Californiaâs Jose Carlos Ramirez (28-1, 18 KOs) meets Cubaâs Rances Barthelemy (30-2-1, 15 KOs) in a welterweight affair set for 12 rounds.
Itâs difficult to believe that former super lightweight titlist Ramirez has been written off by fans after only one loss. That was several years ago against Scotlandâs Josh Taylor. One loss does not mean the end of a career.
âMy goal is to get back on top and to get all those belts back. I still feel like I am one of the best 140-pounders in the division,â said Ramirez who lives in nearby Avenal, Calif.
An added major attraction features Marlen Esparza in a unification rematch against Gabriela âLa Chuckyâ Alaniz for the WBA, WBC, WBO flyweight titles. Their first fight was
a controversial win by Esparza that saw one judge give her nine of 10 rounds in a very close fight. Those Texas judges.
In a match that could steal the show, Oscar Duarte (26-2-1, 21 KOs) faces former world champion Jojo Diaz (33-5-1, 15 KOs) in a lightweight match.
Munguia and Canelo
Donât sleep on this match.
Its current Golden Boy fighter Jaime Munguia facing former Golden Boy fighter Saul âCaneloâ Alvarez in a battle between Mexicoâs greatest sluggers next week at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on May 4.
âI think Jaime Munguia is going to do something special in the ring,â said Oscar De La Hoya, the CEO for Golden Boy.
Tijuanaâs Munguia showed up at the Wild Card Boxing gym in Hollywood where a throng of media from Mexico and the US met him.
Munguia looked confident and happy about his opportunity to fight great Canelo.
âItâs a hard fight,â said Munguia. âTruth is, its big for Mexico and not only for Mexicans but for boxing.â
Fights to Watch
Fri. DAZN 6 p.m. Yoeniz Tellez (7-0) vs Joseph Jackson (19-0).
Sat. DAZN 9:30 a.m. Peter McGrail (8-1) vs Marc Leach (18-3-1); Beatriz Ferreira (4-0) vs Yanina Del Carmen 14-3).
Sat. DAZN 5 p.m. Vergil Ortiz (20-0) vs Thomas Dulorme (26-6-1); Jose Carlos Ramirez (28-1) vs Rances Barthelemy (30-2-1); Marlen Esparza (14-1) vs Gabriela Alaniz (14-1).
Photo credit: Cris Esqueda / Golden Boy Promotions
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Ramon Cardenas Channels Micky Ward and KOs Eduardo Ramirez on ProBox
The Wednesday night bi-monthly series of fights on the ProBox TV platform is the best deal in boxing; the livestream is free with no strings attached! Tonightâs episode was headlined by a super bantamweight match between San Antonioâs Ramon Cardenas and Eduardo Ramirez who brought a caravan of rooters from his hometown in Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico.
Cardenas, coached by Joel Diaz, entered the contest ranked #4 by the WBA. He was expected to handle Ramirez with little difficulty, but this was a close, tactical fight through eight frames when lightning struck in the form of a left hook to the liver from Cardenas. Ramirez went down on one knee and wasnât able to beat the count. It was as if Cardenas summoned the ghost of Micky Ward who had a penchant for terminating fights with the same punch that arrived out of the blue.
The official time was 1:37 of round nine. Cardenas improved to 25-1 with his14th win inside the distance. Ramirez, who was stopped in the opening round by Nick âWreckingâ Ball in London in his lone previous fight outside Mexico, falls to 23-3-3.
Co-Feature
In an upset, Tijuana super welterweight Damian Sosa won a split decision over previously undefeated Marques Valle, a local area fighter who was stepping up in class in his first 10-round go. Sosa was the aggressor, repeatedly backing his taller opponent into the ropes where Valle was unable to get good leverage behind his punches.
The 25-year-old Valle, managed by the influential David McWater, was the house fighter. This was his 10th appearance in this building. He brought a 10-0 (7) record and was hoping to emulate the success of his younger brother Dominic Valle who scored a second-round stoppage of his opponent in this ring two weeks ago, improving to 9-0. But Sosa, who brought a 24-2 record, proved to be a bridge too high.
The judges had it 97-93 and 96-94 for the Tijuana invader and a disgraceful 98-92 for the house fighter.
Also
In a fight whose abrupt ending would be echoed by the main event, 34-year-old SoCal featherweight Ronny Rios, now training in Las Vegas, returned to the ring after a 22-month hiatus and scored a fifth-round stoppage over Nicolas Polanco of the Dominican Republic.
A three-punch combo climaxed by a left hook to the liver took the breath out of Polanco who slumped to his knees and was counted out. A two-time world title challenger, Rios advanced to 34-4 (17 KOs). Polanco, 34, declined to 21-6-1. The official time was 0:54 of round five.
—
The next ProBox show (Wednesday, May 8) will have an international cast with fighters from Kazakhstan, Japan, Mongolia, and the United Kingdom. In the main event, Liverpoolâs Robbie Davies Jr will make his U.S. debut against the California-based Kazakh Sergey Lipinets.
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Haney-Garcia Redux with the Focus on Harvey Dock
Saturdayâs skirmish between Ryan Garcia and WBC super lightweight champion Devin Haney was a messy affair, and yet a hugely entertaining fight fused with great drama. In the aftermath, Garcia and Haney were celebrated â the former for fooling all the experts and the latter for his gallant performance in a losing effort â but there were only brickbats for the third man in the ring, referee Harvey Dock.
Devin Haney was plainly ahead heading into the seventh frame when there was a sudden turnabout when Garcia put him on the canvas with his vaunted left hook. Moments later, Dock deducted a point from Garcia for a late punch coming out of a break. The deduction forced a temporary cease-fire that gave Haney a few precious seconds to regain his faculties. Before the round was over, Haney was on the deck twice more but these were ruled slips.
The deduction, which effectively negated the knockdown, struck many as too heavy-handed as Dock hadnât previously issued a warning for this infraction. Moreover, many thought he could have taken a point away from Haney for excessive clinching. As for Haneyâs second and third trips to the canvas in round seven, they struck this reporter â watching at home â as borderline, sufficient to give referee Dock the benefit of the doubt.
In a post-fight interview, Ryan Garcia faulted the referee for denying him the satisfaction of a TKO. âAt the end of the day, Harvey Dock, I think he was tripping,â said Garcia. âHe could have stopped that fight.â
Those that played the rounds proposition, placing their coin on the âunder,â undoubtedly felt the same way.
The internet lit up with comments assailing Dockâs competence and/or his character. Some of the ponderings were whimsical, but they were swamped by the scurrilous screeching of dolts who find a conspiracy under every rock.
Stephen A. Smith, reputedly Americaâs highest-paid TV sports personality, was among those that felt a need to weigh-in: âThis referee is absolutely terribleâŠ.Unreal! Horrible officiating,â tweeted Stephen A whose primary area of expertise is basketball.
Harvey Dock
Dock fought as an amateur and had one professional fight, winning a four-round decision over a fellow novice on a show at a non-gaming resort in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. He says that as an amateur he was merely average, but he was better than that, a New Jersey and regional amateur champion in 1993 and 1994 while a student New Jerseyâs Essex County Community College where he majored in journalism.
A passionate fan of Sugar Ray Leonard, he started officiating amateur fights in 1998 and six years later, at age 32, had his first documented action at the professional level, working low-level cards in New Jersey. The top boxing referees, to a far greater extent than the top judges, had long apprenticeships, having worked their way up from the boonies and Dock is no exception.
Per boxrec, Haney vs Garcia was Harvey Dockâs 364th assignment in the pros and his forty-second world title fight. Some of those title fights were title in name only, they werenât even main events, but, bit by bit, more lucrative offerings started coming his way.
On May 13, 2023, Dock worked his first fights in Nevada, a 4-rounder and then a 12-rounder on a card at the Cosmopolitan topped by the 140-pound title fight between Rolly Romero and Ismael Barroso. It was the first time that this reporter got to watch Dock in the flesh.
Ironically (in hindsight), the card would be remembered for the actions of a referee, in this case Tony Weeks who handled the main event. Barroso was winning the fight on all three cards when Weeks stepped in and waived it off in the ninth round after Romero cornered Barroso against the ropes and let loose a barrage of punches, none of which landed cleanly. Few âpremature stoppagesâ were ever as garishly, nay ghoulishly, premature.
With all the brickbats raining down on Weeks, I felt a need to tamp down the noise by diverting attention away from Tony Weeks and toward Harvey Dock and took to the TSS Forum to share my thoughts. Referencing the 12-rounder, a robust junior welterweight affair between Batyr Akhmedov and Kenneth Sims Jr, I noted that Dockâs Las Vegas debut went smoothly. He glided effortlessly around the ring, making him inconspicuous, the mark of a good referee. (This post ran on May 15, two days after the fight.)
Folks at the Nevada State Athletic Commission were also paying attention. Dock was back in Las Vegas the following week to referee the lightweight title fight between Devin Haney and Vasyl Lomachenko and before the year was out, he would be tabbed to referee the biggest non-heavyweight fight of the year, the July 29 match in Las Vegas between Terence Crawford and Errol Spence Jr.
The Haney-Garcia fight wasnât Harvey Dockâs best hour, Iâll concede that, but a closer look at his full body of work informs us that he is an outstanding referee.
—
While the Haney-Garcia bout was in progress, WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman threw everyone a curve ball, tweeting on âXâ that Devin Haney would keep his title if he lost the fight. Everyone, including the TV commentators, was under the impression that the title would become vacant in the event that Haney lost.
Sulaiman cited the precedent of Corrales-Castillo II.
FYI: The Corrales-Castillo rematch, originally scheduled for June 3, 2005 and aborted on the day prior when Castillo failed to make weight, finally came off on Oct. 8 of that year, notwithstanding the fact that Castillo failed to make weight once again, scaling three-and-a-half pounds above the lightweight limit. He knocked out Corrales in the fourth round with a left hook that Las Vegas Review-Journal boxing writer Kevin Iole, alluding to the movie âBlazing Saddles,â described as Mongo-esque (translation: the punch would have knocked out a horse). After initially insisting on a rubber match, which had scant chance of happening, WBC president Jose Sulaiman, Mauricioâs late father, ruled that Corrales could keep his title.
Whether or not you agree with Mauricio Sulaimanâs rationale, the timing of his announcement was certainly awkward.
Haneyâs mandatory is Spanish southpaw Sandor Martin (42-3, 15 KOs), a cutie best known for his 2021 upset of Mikey Garcia. A bout between Haney and Martin has the earmarks of a dull fight.
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