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Every Joe Gans Lightweight Title Fight – Part 8: Willie Fitzgerald

Gans is a wonderful fighter, but his showing in his fights during the last five months indicates that he has gone back to some extent. – The New York Evening World, January 9th, 1904.
A fighter’s prime is a thing of tentative certainty. Whether or not a fighter remains “prime” is a debate that rages on internet messaging boards, twitter and among gamblers in perpetuity – whether a fighter remains within the range of his very best as a boxer is among the most important factors in determining both the future and the past in all matters fistic.
This is because it is not just a matter of predicting the fight or remaining a gambler in the black, but a matter of proper historical contextualisation. Instinctively, we understand that this matters, this is why you never hear people shouting about the ease with which Larry Holmes defeated Muhammad Ali, or with which Rocky Marciano defeated Joe Louis.
Each fighter is different, and each fighter’s prime is different, which is why deciphering it can be so difficult, but if we take a modern great like Manny Pacquiao, we probably see his very best years as being from 2006 when he legitimately got his weaker hand working, to his desperately close fight with Juan Manuel Marquez in 2008 when his calves started to bother him. Boxing is complex. It took eleven years for Pacquiao to reach his technical summit and when he did, he had but twenty-seven short months in which to enjoy it before his body began to betray him.
Every fighter is different, because every fighter relies upon technical acumen, physical capability and experience to a different degree. Bernard Hopkins at his best knows angles, distance and timing as well as any fighter of the last fifty years, and so his prime landed late, as he took advantage of experience to season his expertise. Roy Jones, on the other hand, peaked earlier and dipped off more dramatically because the fountain of his greatness was speed. Pacquiao required a glorious blend. What of Joe Gans?
Gans is not unusual in that he became his best self the day he picked up his title. In the past seven instalments, I hope I have managed to trace Gans from incomplete contender to dominant world-champion, a man whose experience bought him generalship to match his physical gifts and technical acumen. For Gans, make no mistake, was as much Bernard Hopkins as Roy Jones and in this, more like Manny Pacquiao in arc than either. The difference: Gans fought more often and over longer distances than any of them. In the first year of his prime, Pacquiao managed twenty-nine rounds, a lot for an elite fighter this century; Gans, despite winning mostly by knockout, fought a hundred in his. The wear and tear on even a genius like Gans was significant.
It is little wonder then that in the winter of 1903, talk began to turn to Joe Gans having “gone back.” He had by this time been in his prime nearly as many months as Manny Pacquiao would remain in his more than a hundred years later.
So, when he emerged from the breakneck barnburning tour which followed his longest break since he became champion, having suffered indifferent results and even a defeat, questions manifested for the first time since he ended Frank Erne’s championship reign. His next title opponent, in early January 1904, was to be Willie Fitzgerald, an Irishman who had relocated to New York City in pursuit of the riches the new pugilism enjoyed.
Fitzgerald was real. His career had brought him victories over Mike Sullivan, Charley Seiger and Gus Gardner; in April of 1903, he had been matched with the uncomfortably titled “white” lightweight champion and perpetual drawer of the colour-line, Jimmy Britt.
Fitzgerald seemed for a moment on the verge of a genuine upset when he dropped Britt in the final minute of the very first round. Appearing both bigger and stronger, Fitzgerald cut a figure standing over his more prestigious foe; in truth though, Britt was for the most part unharmed. Fitzgerald put a minor hurting on the world’s number one lightweight contender in the twentieth and final round, but in between, Britt was the man in control. He consistently targeted Fitzgerald’s gut and torso with what amounted to lightweight’s finest body attack. Fitzgerald dropped an uncontroversial points loss but Britt was impressed.
“He is a better man than Frank Erne,” he claimed. “He can take a punch and go the pace at a greater speed.”
Now things complicate themselves a little so I’m going to restate the timeline:
In April of 1903, Jimmy Britt defeated Fitzgerald over twenty rounds. Just before this, Gans had fought a title-fight with Steve Crosby, winning in eleven. The rest of 1903 was relatively quiet for Gans and included that three-month layoff before boxing that barnburning tour that included his most indifferent work post his title win. In January of 1904 he was to be matched with Fitzgerald.
However, before his three-month break but after he defeated Crosby, before he dropped points losses to welterweights Jack Blackburn and Sam Langford, Gans met Fitzgerald for a first time.
This is an intriguing move on the part of Joe Gans. As we discussed in Part 6, Britt’s anointing himself the “white lightweight champion” was problematic for Gans. It offered the public a choice in champions, and it was very possible that the public might conclude that Britt was to be preferred. Further muddying the waters was Britt’s outright refusal to meet the true champion on the grounds of his race. So just four weeks after the Britt fight, Gans met Fitzgerald on a clear mission to do what the white champion had been unable to do: stop him inside the distance.
On May 29th, 1903 on Britt’s turf in San Francisco, Gans did just that, taking Fitzgerald out in ten rounds having failed to make weight for what was billed in some quarters as a title fight. No titles were going to change hands with the champion weighing in at just under 140lbs though, and the first real sign of indiscipline on the part of the champion manifested. Not in the ring though. He took the unsporting advantage and turned it into perhaps the most beautiful knockout of his career.
The San Francisco Call described “A jolty left which travelled but a few inches…Gans landed [the short left] then a right to the jaw with the precision and power of a steam hammer, turning Fitzgerald completely around.”
Fitzgerald then “sank slowly to his knees and then lay prone on the matt” while ten was intoned over his still form.
The press were besides themselves in praise for this performance. Gans was a “wonder” who fought “aggressively throughout” although “all styles of going seemed to suit him.”
Gans had the result he wanted, and it was straight up reported that Fitzgerald had been less impressive against Gans than he had been against Britt. Britt was piqued. Surrounded by pressmen he repeatedly stated that he felt Gans would not be able to land upon him as he had Fitzgerald and, eventually, yes, he would meet the champion but only if Gans would agree to make 133lbs.
Gans then, had succeeded in baiting Britt into a commitment, for all that it called for Gans to make a weight he did not favour. Furthermore, he had proven himself ahead of Britt insofar as the wider lightweight field went; referee Eddie Graney named Gans “in a class of his own.” This opinion was echoed behind this fight.
It is worth noting down Joe’s own opinion on the fight, summarised here from several different accounts:
“There was never a time in the fight I thought I would lose…He can hit hard with either glove and I was there to prevent his glove landing on my jaw…He did not hurt me at any stage of the battle…I did not find him hard to hit.”
This then, was the problem Gans had when it came to his first defence of 1904: he had already proven himself the direct superior to his challenger. Not three years before – months before. It underlined the problem a fighter of Joe’s class was faced with, how to find challenges on a landscape he had scorched free of all resistance. It was little wonder, perhaps, that his interest had begun to wane.
The fight was made at 135lbs at the Light Guard Armory, Detroit, on January 12th, 1904. To the satisfaction of nobody, the fight was to be staged over ten rounds which was all that the law then permitted in these parts.
Gans stalked into Detroit on the 4th; he seemed in no mood, maintaining silence while eager Detroit pressmen peppered him with questions. “He says little,” reported The Detroit Free Press, “leaving his manager to do the talking…in street attire Gans does not look like a lightweight. On close inspection, however, one can note his strong build.” The following day, Gans was in training, sparring a local middleweight at the Media Baths. Fitzgerald, meanwhile, set up at Cameron Cottage, accompanied by the famed Italian Iron Man Joe Grim who appeared to be coaching him as well as feeding him copious servings of spaghetti which he insisted reduced his chances of being knocked out. Harry Tuthill, who trained Young Corbett, arrived a few days later to finish up his training.
It snowed that week, the temperature dropping as far as fourteen degrees below zero; Gans took to the road, putting in five miles every day, not excessive but enough to keep him well in sight of 135lbs. For his part, and despite the preponderance of pasta in his diet, Fitzgerald curtailed his training on the seventh, finding himself below the required weight and a little sore from apparent over-training. Gans trained publicly that same day, impressing onlookers with the quickness of his work. There seemed indecision as to whether his “eastern critics” were off the mark in suggesting his decline was at hand, but it is equally clear that many of the Detroit newspapermen were seeing the champion in the flesh for the first time.
Both training camps proceeded efficiently and both men impressed the locals so the line was unmoved by fight night with Joe Gans a 2-1 favourite. This sent Al Herford charging about town offering to bet five-hundred dollars that Gans would win and five hundred dollars that he would do so within the ten scheduled rounds. It is strange to hear of a fighter’s organisation barrelling around during fight week looking for takers but not only was this normal but it was also freely reported by a cheerful press, whose offices were sometimes even the site of large-stake exchanges. Whether or not Herford found a home for his money is unrecorded, but it is known that if he made his bet on Gans inside the distance, he lost that money.
Gans, who hit his mark at the 6pm weigh in with ease, took control of the fight early in a way that must have seemed familiar to both he and Fitzgerald. His specific method was a short left jab to the face, a punch that must have looked dangerous to Fitzgerald given what happened to him in San Francisco, followed by a right hand to the body. It sounds simple, like something an experienced pugilist like Fitzgerald should have been able to solve, but these two punches worked as counters to almost any shot Fitzgerald could muster. “Confidently the aggressor,” reported The Free Press, “he followed the Brooklyn boy about the ring, the latter showing that he feared Gans in every exchange and frequently covering up and allowing the champion to punch at him at will.”
These words will now be familiar to readers of this series, another Gans opponent, another man passive with fear, another easy evening for the great champion. Surely this suggests to all that Gans remained in his prime? It certainly is possible. After flashing Fitzgerald to the canvas in the first with a left hook, Gans spent most of the first half of the fight in complete control. The fight was slow, but in every exchange Gans had the last word, sometimes doubling up with rights to the body. Fitzgerald was criticised for underusing his right hand in the early going, but it is a fact that Gans countered this punch mercilessly, dropping him off a right hand in the fourth.
At the bell to end the fifth though, the two were “swinging wild at the gong” according to The Philadelphia Inquirer, which had Fitzgerald frantically giving way after sucking up a Gans right-uppercut but continuing to fight even as he broke ground. Fitzgerald was dropped again in the eighth, either by a left-hand to the jaw or bundled over underneath that punch in something more akin to a slip; after eight he had yet to win a round on most ringside cards, but in the ninth, something changed.
The round started as any other, Fitzgerald landing meaningless, light punches, Gans landing hurtful ones, staggering his man with one chopping right, but instead of moving back, Fitzgerald closed and landed either three or four hard left hands to the body and a left hand to the jaw. Gans, caught out by an unexpected charge, shipped these punches and immediately began showing signs of distress. The bell spared him further punishment.
According to the Detroit Free Press, Gans returned to his corner “vomiting.” This was reported elsewhere, The Washington Times claiming “Gans went to his corner vomiting and to a certain extent in distress.” This then was the greatest crisis Joe’s ring career had suffered since Erne opened the finishing cut upon him in his very first title fight; he toed the line for the tenth with gritted teeth.
Champions are champions and despite the heavy punches he absorbed in the ninth, Gans contested the tenth. My sense though is that Fitzgerald took it away from him at the bell, The Free Press reporting a “straight left to Gans’s face and right to head and left to body and crosses right to jaw” to punctuate the round.
The Chicago Tribune was unimpressed with Gans, noting that “the champion is backing up” and was “in distress at the final gong, and had the contest been fifteen rounds instead of ten, he would have left the ring a beaten man.”
This is debatable, obviously, and based on the punishment Gans had dished out and the closeness of the tenth my suspicion is that he would have re-emerged as the general, but it is not possible to find this type of criticism of Gans in a title fight before the Fitzgerald rematch.
This was inconvenient for the champion. His greatest challenges, and the fights that would come to define him, still lay ahead, including the fight he most wanted. Joe’s next title defence would be against Jimmy Britt.
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With Valentine’s Day on the Horizon, let’s Exhume ex-Boxer ‘Machine Gun’ McGurn

With Valentine’s Day on the Horizon, let’s Exhume ex-Boxer ‘Machine Gun’ McGurn
Feb. 14, which this year falls on a Friday, is Valentine’s Day, more formally St. Valentine’s Day. It’s a day identified with romance, but for students of organized crime, it summons up an image of a different sort. On Valentine’s Day in 1929, at a warehouse in the Lincoln Park district of Chicago, seven men were lined up against a wall and murdered in cold blood by four intruders with machine guns and shotguns. The infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre was the most sensational news story during the Prohibition Era when many of America’s cities, most notably Chicago, were roiled by deadly turf wars between rival bootlegging factions.
It shouldn’t surprise us that a former boxer was one of the alleged perpetrators. During the Prohibition years, bootleggers were well-represented among the ranks of boxing promoters and managers. Philadelphia’s Max “Boo Boo” Hoff reportedly had the largest boxing stable in the country. In New York, Owney Madden was purportedly the brains behind the consortium that controlled future heavyweight champion Primo Carnera.
That brings us to Jack McGurn, but first a little context. Prohibition was the law of the land from 1920, when the Volstead Act took effect, until 1933 when the ill-conceived law was repealed. Prohibition did not fetter America’s thirst for alcoholic beverages but arguably encouraged it. Confirmed beer drinkers didn’t stop drinking beer because it was illegal. Restaurateurs at high-end establishments didn’t stop selling cognac and brandy; they just did it more discreetly. Speakeasies became fashionable.
Big money awaited entrepreneurs willing to risk arrest by flouting the law, either by opening distilleries and breweries or importing alcohol with Canada the leading supplier.
In Chicago and environs, circa 1929, two of the kingpins of the bootlegging trade were “Scarface” Al Capone and George “Bugs” Moran. They were bitter rivals. The warehouse at which the seven men were assassinated housed some of Moran’s delivery trucks. The victims were members of his gang.
Al Capone wasn’t directly involved. On Feb. 14, he was in Florida where, among other things, he was finalizing arrangements to host a bevy of A-list sportswriters at his lavish Miami Beach estate; the scribes were coming to town to cover the heavyweight title eliminator between Jack Sharkey and Young Stribling. But the hired guns, who stormed into Moran’s warehouse at 10:30 on a snowy Valentine’s Day morning, were presumed to be working for Capone and the one henchman whose name stood out among the usual suspects was Jack McGurn. He had purportedly saved Capone’s life on two occasions by intercepting would-be assassins out to kill his boss and shooting them dead. Of all his underlings, Capone was said to be especially fond of McGurn.

Machine Gun Jack McGurn
It had long been the custom of Jewish and Italian boxers to adopt Irish-sounding ring names. McGurn was born Vincenzo Gibaldi in 1902 in the Sicilian seaside city of Licata and lived in Brooklyn before moving with his widowed mother to Chicago. He had his first documented prizefight in 1921. The bout was held on a naval training ship, the U.S.S. Commodore. Prizefighting was then illegal in the Windy City, a residue of the malodorous 1900 fight between Terry McGovern and Joe Gans, but the ship was docked outside the Chicago city limits.
McGurn would have five more documented fights, the last against Bud Christiano on a strong card in Aurora, Illinois. Their six-round bout was the semi-windup. The main go was a 10-round contest between bantamweights Bud Taylor, the Terre Haute Terror, and Memphis Pal Moore, both of whom are enshrined in the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
By law, these were no-decision fights with wagers resting on the opinion of one or more ringside reporters. McGurn really had no business in the same ring with Christiano, an 84-fight veteran who had won two of three from future world lightweight title-holder Jimmy Goodrich. He took the worst of it, but was still standing at the final bell. And that was that. After only six pro fights, he hung up his gloves to pursue other endeavors and, in time, when his name appeared in the newspapers, it invariably appeared as Machine Gun Jack McGurn, the reference to the newfangled Thompson Machine Gun, colloquially the Tommy Gun, a tool with which McGurn was said to be very proficient.
The police found McGurn holed up in a Chicago hotel where he was staying with his girlfriend, Louise Rolfe, a 22-year-old “professional model and cabaret entertainer” with a 5-year-old daughter from a previous relationship that was being raised by her mother.
Louise testified that on the day of the massacre, they were in bed until noon. She said that she and McGurn had seldom left the room during their 13-day stay, having their food brought up from the hotel’s kitchen.
Louise held tight to her story and the police never did have sufficient evidence to charge the ex-boxer in connection with the crime. However, whenever the authorities were frustrated in sending a perp to prison, they had other weapons at their disposal to get their pound of flesh.
In the case of Scarface Al Capone, it was the 1913 law that authorized a federal income tax. The feds had enough circumstantial evidence to show that Al hadn’t been paying his fair share of taxes and succeeded in removing him from society. (After serving almost eight years in federal prisons, mostly Alcatraz, Capone returned to civilian life a sick man and passed away in Florida at age 48.)
In the case of Machine Gun Jack McGurn and his paramour, later his wife, the wedge was the Mann Act of 1910.
The Mann Act, most famously used to waylay heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, was aimed at brothel-keepers and immigrant flesh peddlers but was worded in such a way that it could be deployed when there was no commerce involved. It prohibited the interstate transportation of “any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose.” (The law remains on the books but has been watered-down to decriminalize sexual activity between consenting adults.)
The feds spent thousands of hours digging up evidence to show that the couple had violated the Mann Act. They eventually got hotel receipts showing that they had registered as Mr. and Mrs. under assumed names at hotels in Florida and Mississippi during a motor trip down south. Jack was sentenced to two years in Leavenworth and Louise to four months in the county jail, but their convictions were later overturned by the Illinois Supreme Court.
What comes around, goes around, goes the saying, and it figured that Machine Gun Jack McGurn would die a violent death. The ex-boxer met his maker at 1 a.m. on Feb. 15, 1936, at a second-floor bowling alley in Chicago where he was fatally shot by two gunmen who opened fire as his back was turned. There were at least 20 people present said the story in the Chicago Tribune, but “the wall of silence, traditional among the gangsters and the people who know them, was erected high and tight.”
Was McGurn’s murder retaliation for the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre? The answer appears to be a resounding “yes.” Had the deed happened before the stroke of midnight, it would have happened on a St. Valentine’s Day, the seventh anniversary of the infamous event.
The police found a crumpled comic Valentine’s card next to McGurn’s body. On the front of the card were the figures of a man and a woman in their underwear. The verse inside read:
You’ve lost your job, You’ve lost your dough;
Your jewels and cars and handsome houses;
But things could still be worse you know
At least you haven’t lost your trousers.
Was this card intentionally left there by the assassins? We don’t know, but the view from here (pardon the wisecrack) is that if one were to receive a card on Valentine’s Day bearing this poem, perhaps it would be best not to leave the house.
Postscript #1: Jack McGurn’s wife, the former Louise Rolfe, routinely referenced in the press as his blonde alibi, continued to have her name pop up in the news after he died. In February of 1940, police found a gun used in a burglary in a drawer in her apartment. In 1943, she was arrested on a charge of disorderly conduct after police found her in the company of a 25-year-old Army deserter.
Postscript #2:
Al Capone refused to pose for photographs, but made an exception for his friend Jack Sharkey, the future heavyweight champion. Sharkey is pictured on the right next to Capone in this 1929 photo.
****
The Mob Museum, officially the National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement, opened 13 years ago on Feb. 14, 2012 in an old three-story building in downtown Las Vegas that was originally a federal courthouse. So, each Valentine’s Day is a special occasion at the Mob Museum, an anniversary celebrated with special events, free admission for Nevada residents, and steep discounts for tourists. (On other days of the year, a single admission during peak hours is $34.95, but there are always discounts available on-line.)
A permanent display is a reconstructed portion of the wall where the seven victims were murdered. The garage where the killings happened was demolished in 1967, but before it was torn down a collector rescued many of the bricks, some with blood-stained bullet holes, which the Mob Museum acquired. Other artifacts on display this Friday will be the two Tommy Guns used in the assault, a one-day loan from the Berrian County Sheriff’s Department in Michigan which recovered the weapons from the home of a bank robber.
For the record, there is also a mob museum, called the Gangster Museum of America, in Hot Springs, Arkansas.
A recognized authority on the history of prizefighting and the history of American sports gambling, TSS editor-in-chief Arne K. Lang is the author of five books including “Prizefighting: An American History,” released by McFarland in 2008 and re-released in a paperback edition in 2020.
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More ‘Dances’ in Store for Derek Chisora after out-working Otto Wallin in Manchester

Tonight’s fight at Co-op Live Arena in Manchester between Derek Chisora and Otto Wallin bore the tagline “Last Dance.” The reference was to Chisora who at age 41 was on the cusp of his last hurrah. However, when the IBF went and certified the match as an eliminator, that changed the equation and, truth be told, Chisora would have likely soldiered on regardless of the outcome.
The UK boxing fans have embraced Chisora, an honest workman, never an elite fighter, but always a tough out. They certainly hope to see him in action again and they will get their wish. Tonight, he made more fans with a hard-earned, unanimous decision over 34-year-old Swedish southpaw Otto Wallin who went to post a small favorite.
Chisora came out fast, pressuring the Swede while keeping his hands busy. He was comfortably ahead after five rounds, but was seemingly ripe for a comedown after cuts developed above and below his right eye. Fortunately for him, he had the prominent Canadian cutman Russ Amber in his corner.
Chisora scored two knockdowns before the fight was finished. The first came in round nine when Chisora caught Wallin with a punch that landed high on his temple. In a delayed reaction, Wallin went flying backward, landing on his butt. Wallin recovered nicely and had his best round in the next frame.
Wallin appeared to be winning the final round when Chisora put the explanation point on his performance just as the final bell was about to ring, catching the Swede off-balance with a cuffing right hand that sent him to the floor once again. If not for that knockdown, there would have been some controversy when the scores were read. The tallies were 117-109, 116-110, and 114-112, the latter of which was too generous to Wallin (27-3).
“I love the sport and I love the fans,” said Derek Chisora (36-13, 23 KOs), addressing the audience in his post-fight interview. His next bout will likely come against the winner of the match between Daniel Dubois and Joseph Parker happening later this month in Saudi Arabia.
Semi-wind-up
Stoke-on-Kent middleweight Nathan Heaney disappointed his large contingent of rooters when he was upset by French invader Sofiane Khati. The 35-year-old Heaney, who was 18-1-1 heading in, started well and was slightly ahead after six frames when things turned sour.
Both landed hard punches simultaneously in round seven, but the Frenchman’s punch was more damaging, knocking out Heaney’s mouthpiece and putting him on the canvas. When he arose, Khati, a 6/1 underdog, charged after him and forced the referee to intrude, saving Heaney from more punishment. The official time was 1:08 of round seven. It was the sixth win in the last seven tries for Khati (18-5, 7 KOs) who, akin to Chisora, is enjoying a late-career resurgence.
Other Bouts of Note
Lancashire junior welterweight Jack Rafferty was an 18/1 favorite over Morecambe ditch digger Reece MacMillan and won as expected. MacMillan’s corner tossed in the towel at the 1:08 mark of round seven. Rafferty’s record now stands at 25-0 (16 KOs), giving him the longest current unbeaten run of any British boxer. It was the second loss in 19 starts for MacMillan.
In a lackluster performance, Zach Parker, now competing as a light heavyweight, improved his record to 26-1 (19) with a 10-round decision over France’s Mickael Diallo (21-2-2) who took the bout on five days’ notice after Parker’s original opponent Willy Hutchinson suffered a bad shoulder injury in sparring and had to withdraw. The scores were 98-92, 98-93, and 97-94.
Parker’s lone defeat came in a domestic showdown with John Ryder, a match in which he could not continue after four rounds because of a broken hand. The prize for Ryder was a date with Canelo Alvarez. Mickael Diallo has another fight booked in four weeks in Long Beach, California.
Also
Featherweight Zak Miller scored the biggest win of his career, capturing a pair of regional trinkets with a 12-round majority decision over Masood Abdulah. The judges had it 115-113, 115-114, and 114-114.
Heading in, Miller was 15-1 but had defeated only one opponent with a winning record. It was the first pro loss for Abdulah (11-1), an Afghanistan-born Londoner.
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Avila Perspective, Chap. 313: The Misadventures of Canelo and Jake Paul (and More)

Avila Perspective, Chap. 313: The Misadventures of Canelo and Jake Paul (and More)
Boxing news has taken a weird arc.
For the past 20 years or so, social media has replaced newspapers, radio and television as a source for boxing news.
And one thing is certain:
You cannot truly rely on many social media accounts to be accurate. Unless they are connected to actual reputable journalists. There are not that many.
Claims of Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Jake Paul reaching an agreement to fight each other this year were rampant on social media sites. No contracts had been signed between the two parties, but several social media accounts claimed the fight was happening. One claimed: “it was official.”
It is not happening as of Friday Feb. 7. 10 a.m. Pacific Time.
A statement by Most Valuable Promotions was sent Friday Feb. 7, to various boxing publications that emphasized the Canelo-Paul fight is not official.
“MVP was deep in negotiations for a blockbuster fight between Jake Paul and Canelo Alvarez on Cinco de Mayo weekend in Las Vegas…This situation is a reminder not to believe everything you read.”
The past few days numerous social media accounts were posting erroneously that Paul and Canelo Alvarez were fighting on a certain date and place. It was jumped on by other social media accounts like Piranhas and gobbled up and spit out as actual verified news.
Fake news is happening more and more. I hate that term but it’s becoming more common.
Many accounts on social media sites are not trained journalists. They don’t understand that being the first to spit out news is not as important as being accurate.
Also, there is no such thing as using the term “according to sources” without naming the source. Who made the claim?
Third, verification of a fight comes from the promoters. They are the most reliable methods of verifying a pending fight. It’s their job. Don’t rely on a fighter, a trainer or somebody’s friend. Call the promoter involved and they will verify.
Otherwise, it’s just rumor and exaggeration.
There are social media accounts with trained journalists. Find out which social media accounts are connected to actual news media sources and established by trained journalists. A real journalist verifies a story before it is published.
R.I.P. Michael Katz
Recently, a highly respected journalist, Michael Katz, passed away. He wrote for various newspapers including the New York Times and for various boxing web sites such as Maxboxing.com and a few others.
Katz covered prize fights beginning in 1968 with the heavyweight fight between Floyd Patterson and Jimmy Ellis. Read the full story in www.TheSweetscience.com by Arne Lang.
I first came across Katz probably in 1994 when I began covering boxing events as a writer for the L.A .Times. During media press conferences Katz was one of the more prominent writers and very outspoken.
The New York-bred Katz could tell you stories about certain eras in boxing. I happened to overhear one or two while sitting around a dinner buffet in the media rooms in Las Vegas. He always had interesting things to say.
Boxing writers come in waves during each era. Today this new era of boxing writers has dwindled to almost nothing. Writing has been overtaken by boxing videographers. The problem is during an actual fight, videographers cannot record the fight itself. The media companies sponsoring the fight cards don’t allow it. So, after a fight is completed, very few descriptions of a fight exist. Only interviews.
Written journalism is shrinking due to the lack of newspapers, magazines and periodicals. The only sure way to know what happened is by seeing the fight on tape. You won’t see many stories on a bulletin board at a boxing gym because there are fewer boxing writers today. The written history of a championship fight has shrunk to almost nothing.
Katz was one of the superb writers from the 1960s to the 2000s. It’s a shrinking base that gets smaller every day. It’s a dying breed but there are still some remaining.
Fights in SoCal
All Star Boxing returns with two female fights on the card on Saturday Feb. 8, at Commerce Casino in Commerce, Calif.
Stephanie Simon (1-0) and Archana Sharma (3-2) are scheduled to headline the boxing card in a super lightweight main event. Others on the boxing event include Ricardo De La Torre, Bryan Albarran and Jose Mancilla to name a few.
Doors open at 6 p.m. No one under 14 will be admitted. For more information call (323) 816-6200.
Fights to Watch
Sat. DAZN 10:30 a.m. Derek Chisora (35-13) vs Otto Wallin (27-2).
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