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The Hauser Report: The Script for Lamar Odom vs. Aaron Carter

The Hauser Report: The Script for Lamar Odom vs. Aaron Carter
The sweet science is being inundated by a wave of what one might call “trash boxing.” YouTube personalities, social media influencers, and long-past-their-prime ring greats are capitalizing on the confusion created by hundreds of “championship” belts and the void resulting from the failure of the boxing establishment to make entertaining match-ups with the best fighting the best.
There have always been circus-like sideshows in boxing. In the 1800s, John L. Sullivan fought all comers in tours around the country. Muhammad Ali squared off against Antonio Inoki and Lyle Alzado, while Chuck Wepner faced Andre the Giant. Mark Gastineau, Jose Canseco and others tried – or pretended to try – their hand at ring combat. The difference now is that the sideshows are becoming boxing’s main event. Trash boxing is how the sport is being portrayed to the general public with paydays ranging from minimal to millions of dollars.
On June 11, 2021, former NBA basketball player Lamar Odom squared off against rapper Aaron Carter in the main event of an Official Celebrity Boxing card at the Showboat Hotel in Atlantic City. The event was available on pay-per-view through FITE for $29.99. Bovada (an online sports betting site) listed Odom as a -400 favorite. The odds on Carter were +250.
The event was marketed to the public as a legitimate fight. Prior to it, Odom told TMZ, “I’m prepared. I don’t know who he’s sparring against, but I know my gym is full of guys that can fight and I’ve been sparring with and I have a really good trainer. He’s been talking sh**, but I’m gonna put him to sleep early. I asked his girlfriend yesterday, ‘Which round do you want to wake him up in.'”
Retired UFC star Chuck Liddell, who served as the referee, told TMZ, “I just wanna see how Odom is gonna fight Aaron. I’ll let them fight to some extent. Obviously, it’s a celebrity fight. I’m not gonna let him get too hurt. I’ll protect either one from either of them no matter who’s getting hurt. We don’t want them to get hurt, but you gotta let them fight. People are paying to watch you fight. You’re getting paid to fight. You wanna make some money, you gotta fight.”
But that was hype. In reality, the fight took place pursuant to a script that was submitted in advance to the New Jersey State Board of Athletic Control. In other words – despite the existence of a betting line and the manner in which the event was marketed to the public – the fight was “fixed.”
Odom-Carter was promoted by Damon Feldman, a former Philadelphia fighter who crafted a 9-and-0 record in a four-year career that ended in 1992. His first eight opponents had a composite ledger of 8 wins against 50 losses. His last opponent had lost 10 of 12 previous fights. Give Feldman credit for knowing what it means to be in a boxing ring.
In 2011, as reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer on March 8, 2011, Feldman was sentenced to two years probation after pleading no contest to charges that he had fixed fights and promoted fights without a license in Pennsylvania.
More trouble followed. According to an April 29, 2020, article by Jack McCaffery of 21st-Century Media, Feldman was incarcerated for thirteen months ending in December of 2017 after a plea deal tied to charges of domestic violence that had been lodged against him. As recounted in a May 22, 2018, article in Philadelphia Magazine, the charges stemmed from an incident that occurred at the home of a woman who Feldman had previously been romantically involved with. The woman, who was bleeding profusely, told police that he had punched her several times in the face. Feldman told police that there had been a physical altercation between them and that the woman was injured when he threw her off of his back, causing her to fall down the stairs. The physical evidence was inconsistent with Feldman’s statement.
Feldman promoted his first “celebrity boxing” event in 2008. Over the years, his promotions have featured the likes of Tonya Harding, Paula Jones, and Joey Buttafuoco. “My dream,” he has said, “is to do a fight with Sylvester Stallone. If I could make money promoting regular fights, I would. But I can’t, so I’m doing this.”
That brings us to the June 11 encounter between Lamar Odom and Aaron Carter.
Odom is 6-feet-10-inches tall. He played in the NBA for fourteen seasons, seven of them with the Los Angeles Lakers. From 2009 to 2016, he was married to Khloe Kardashian.
In October 2015, Odom was found unconscious in a Nevada brothel after ingesting a combination of cocaine, alcohol, and other drugs. As reported by the Los Angeles Times, he suffered six heart attacks and twelve strokes. He’s now 41 years old.
Carter, a 33-year-old rapper whose music career has been in decline in recent years, has struggled publicly with substance abuse and other issues.
Odom-Clark was scheduled for three ninety-second rounds with headgear. Paulie Malignaggi, Ice-T, and Coco provided the pay-per-view commentary. Multiple websites – many of them respected boxing and MMA outlets – reported on the encounter as though it was a real fight.
Sam Quinn of CBS Sports.com wrote, “On Friday night, we saw one of the most anticipated celebrity boxing matches of the year. On paper, the fight looked like a mismatch. The 6-0 Carter is almost a foot shorter than Odom, and the difference in their weight and reach is similar. Odom has physical gifts that the rest of us simply don’t and he showed it in knocking Carter out.”
Mark Lelinwalla of DAZN News reported, “Despite giving up 10 inches in height, 64.5 pounds, and 11 inches in reach to Odom, Carter enjoyed early success with a barrage of lefts and rights that connected to his taller, larger opponent’s head in the opening round. However, Odom got his bearings, went to the outside, and placed a right jab-left hook combination which dropped Carter. The pop star of the 90s didn’t have his legs under him and wisely held on to survive the round. But he wouldn’t make it against Odom much longer. The second round had Odom spinning Carter around and around before delivering several unanswered lefts to drop the singer once again. Special guest referee Chuck Liddell began counting, as Carter indicated that he was no longer fit to continue.”
Nick Selbe of Sports Illustrated recounted, “The stoppage occurred in the second of the fight’s three, 90-second rounds, as Carter failed to put up much defense against Odom’s flurry of punches.”
One might ask, “Where was the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board in all of this?” After all, the NJSACB is charged with regulating combat sports in New Jersey. And as earlier noted, Odom-Carter was marketed to the public as a legitimate boxing match. Odds on the outcome were posted on gambling sites such as Bovada. Normally, this would place the event within the purview of the NJSACB.
The answer is that the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board didn’t have jurisdiction over the event because it wasn’t a “real” fight. It was scripted entertainment.
Celebrity Boxing (Feldman’s promotional company) represented to the NJSACB that Odom-Clark was “scripted,” not a combat sports competition. Thus, it was no more subject to regulation by the NJSACB than professional wrestling.
Further to that point, in advance of the event, the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board asked Celebrity Boxing to send it a copy of the script. On May 23, the promotion emailed the script to Deputy Attorney General Nick Lembo (who oversees legal matters for the NJSACB). Once the script was received, NJSACB commissioner Larry Hazzard was advised by the Attorney General’s office that he had no jurisdiction over the event.
In mid-June, this writer learned about the existence of the script. On June 30, pursuant to the New Jersey Open Public Records Act, I filed a request for documents from the Office of the Attorney General of the State of New Jersey. More specifically, I asked for “All documents relating to the June 11, 2021, boxing exhibition at the Showboat Hotel featuring Lamar Odom and Aaron Carter, including but not limited to any script for the main event.”
On July 2, my request for documents was denied in its entirety by the Custodian of Records for the Attorney General’s Office. Three grounds were listed for the denial:
(1) “The event referred to in your request was not subject to the regulatory purview of the State of New Jersey Athletic Control Board.”
However, the fact that the event was not subject to the regulatory purview of the NJSACB had no bearing on the existence of the documents.
(2) “Your request is overly broad and improper.”
I did not believe that to be the case. However, in response, I told the Custodian of Records that, for the time being, I would be satisfied with receiving “any script for the main event” pursuant to my request.
(3) “To the extent that any such script may exist, it would be the confidential and proprietary property of Celebrity Boxing.”
To support this claim, the Custodian of Records stated, “Celebrity Boxing Entertainment LLC (CBE), the organizer of the June 11, 2021, boxing exhibition, repeatedly marked information, documents, and correspondence to the SACB as confidential and proprietary business information [and] stated that the release of the requested information would cause irreparable harm to CBE, its shareholders, investors and participants.”
However, just because someone writes “confidential” and “proprietary” on a document and claims that the document is exempt from production doesn’t make it so. Also, since the scripted June 11 event had already occurred, there was no longer anything confidential about the script.
Following proper procedure, I asked the Custodian of Records to reconsider my request. Again, the request was denied. This time, the Custodian of Records abandoned her first two objections to production, restated her position that the documents were exempt from production because they contain confidential and proprietary information, and added a new excuse – that the documents “were obtained as part of SACB’s review of the event” and thus are exempt from release because they are “records concerning background investigations or evaluations for public employment, appointment to public office, or licensing, whether open, closed, or inactive.”
That was blatant nonsense. The “investigation” exemption under New Jersey law applies to instances where an individual has submitted an application for public employment, appointment to public office, or licensing by the State of New Jersey and an investigation of the applicant followed. There was no such application in this matter.
On July 21, I took things to the next level and filed a complaint with the New Jersey Government Records Council. In response, the Custodian of Records conceded that the script at issue exists and had been transmitted by email to Deputy Attorney General Nick Lembo on May 23, 2021. But the Custodian continues to claim that the script is exempt from production for the reasons stated above.
The Custodian has also refused to identify or produce relevant documents other than the script, claiming, “as Mr. Hauser failed to identify with specificity the records he sought, aside from requesting a copy of the script, it was not possible to determine the full universe of records that could be responsive.”
This is a ridiculous assertion. It’s impossible for me to “identify with specificity” the records sought because I don’t know with specificity what these records are. I do know that the universe of documents responsive to my request is small and easily reviewable. Indeed, in one of its responses, the Custodian states, “the organizer of the June 11, 2021, boxing exhibition repeatedly marked information, documents, and correspondence to the SACB as confidential and proprietary business information.” So obviously, the Custodian has already reviewed the documents.
That’s where things stand at the moment. My request for documents is still before the Government Records Council. Conceivably, the Custodian of Records will force the matter to full-blown litigation.
There are serious issues involved here. If Odom-Carter was in fact “scripted” (which now appears to be conceded, given the acknowledgment that there was a script), then the NJSACB was correct in not exercising jurisdiction over it. However, if Odom-Carter was scripted, it was marketed in misleading fashion to the public. Pursuant to this marketing, at least some consumers were deluded into paying money for on-site tickets and pay-per-view buys. And more troubling, legal gaming companies posted odds and took bets on a “fixed” match.
On the other hand, if the event was not “scripted,” then the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board should have exercised jurisdiction over it.
The New Jersey Open Public Records Act was enacted to protect the public through the free flow of information. Hiding the truth of this matter through a disingenuous response to a valid Open Public Records Act request is a disservice to the public and also a violation of the act. I’d like to think that the denial of my request was an inadvertent error by a well-intentioned public servant and not an act designed to cover up possible wrongdoing by a well-connected private entity.
Meanwhile, according to TMZ and the Celebrity Boxing website, Odom has signed a contract to fight 54-year-old, former heavyweight champion Riddick Bowe in Florida on October 2. The bout is slated to be contested with 23-ounce gloves and will consist of three two-minute rounds. It’s not clear at the present time whether headgear will be worn.
Bowe hit rock bottom on February 25, 1998, when he kidnapped his estranged wife and their five children in a frightening irrational attempt to reunite his family. After lengthy pre-trail maneuvering, he pled guilty to criminal charges and was imprisoned for seventeen months. In conjunction with Bowe’s plea bargain and sentencing, his attorneys submitted evidence to the court stating that Riddick’s conduct resulted from brain damage sustained as a consequence of boxing. More specifically, Dr. Neil Blumberg interviewed Bowe at length, studied the results of an MRI and various cognitive tests, and testified that, as a consequence of multiple blows to the head, Bowe suffered from a brain impairment known as frontal lobe syndrome. Blumberg further testified that this condition was “not curable.”
One has to wonder how many of the other fights that boxing fans have seen in recent months have been scripted? One should also note that boxing is a dangerous game. Eventually, a YouTuber or old-timer will be seriously hurt. What then?
Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His next book – Broken Dreams: Another Year Inside Boxing – will be published this autumn 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, he was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
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Avila Perspective, Chap. 322: Super Welter Week in SoCal

Two below-the-radar super welterweight stars show off their skills this weekend from different parts of Southern California.
One in particular, Charles Conwell, co-headlines a show in Oceanside against a hard-hitting Mexican while another super welter star Sadriddin Akhmedov faces another Mexican hitter in Commerce.
Take your pick.
The super welterweight division is loaded with talent at the moment. If Terence Crawford remained in the division he would be at the top of the class, but he is moving up several weight divisions.
Conwell (21-0, 16 KOs) faces Jorge Garcia Perez (32-4, 26 KOs) a tall knockout puncher from Los Mochis at the Frontwave Arena in Oceanside, Calif. on Saturday April 19. DAZN will stream the Golden Boy Promotions card that also features undisputed flyweight champion Gabriela Fundora. We’ll get to her later.
Conwell might be the best super welterweight out there aside from the big dogs like Vergil Ortiz, Serhii Bohachuk and Sebastian Fundora.
If you are not familiar with Conwell he comes from Cleveland, Ohio and is one of those fighters that other fighters know about. He is good.
He has the James “Lights Out” Toney kind of in-your-face-style where he anchors down and slowly deciphers the opponent’s tools and then takes them away piece by piece. Usually it’s systematic destruction. The kind you see when a skyscraper goes down floor by floor until it’s smoking rubble.
During the Covid days Conwell fought two highly touted undefeated super welters in Wendy Toussaint and Madiyar Ashkeyev. He stopped them both and suddenly was the boogie man of the super welterweight division.
Conwell will be facing Mexico’s taller Garcia who likes to trade blows as most Mexican fighters prefer, especially those from Sinaloa. These guys will be firing H bombs early.
Fundora
Co-headlining the Golden Boy card is Gabriela Fundora (15-0, 7 KOs) the undisputed flyweight champion of the world. She has all the belts and Mexico’s Marilyn Badillo (19-0-1, 3 KOs) wants them.
Gabriela Fundora is the sister of Sebastian Fundora who holds the men’s WBC and WBO super welterweight world titles. Both are tall southpaws with power in each hand to protect the belts they accumulated.
Six months ago, Fundora met Argentina’s Gabriela Alaniz in Las Vegas to determine the undisputed flyweight champion. The much shorter Alaniz tried valiantly to scrap with Fundora and ran into a couple of rocket left hands.
Mexico’s Badillo is an undefeated flyweight from Mexico City who has battled against fellow Mexicans for years. She has fought one world champion in Asley Gonzalez the current super flyweight world titlist. They met years ago with Badillo coming out on top.
Does Badillo have the skill to deal with the taller and hard-hitting Fundora?
When a fighter has a six-inch height advantage like Fundora, it is almost impossible to out-maneuver especially in two-minute rounds. Ask Alaniz who was nearly decapitated when she tried.
This will be Badillo’s first pro fight outside of Mexico.
Commerce Casino
Kazakhstan’s Sadriddin Akhmedov (15-0, 13 KOs) is another dangerous punching super welterweight headlining a 360 Promotions card against Mexico’s Elias Espadas (23-6, 16 KOs) on Saturday at the Commerce Casino.
UFC Fight Pass will stream the 360 Promotions card of about eight bouts.
Akhmedov is another Kazakh puncher similar to the great Gennady “GGG” Golovkin who terrorized the middleweight division for a decade. He doesn’t have the same polish or dexterity but doesn’t lack pure punching power.
It’s another test for the super welterweight who is looking to move up the ladder in the very crowded 154-pound weight division. 360 Promotions already has a top contender in Ukraine’s Serhii Bohachuk who nearly defeated Vergil Ortiz a year ago.
Could Bohachuk and Akhmedov fight each other if nothing else materializes?
That’s a question for another day.
Fights to Watch
Sat. DAZN 5 p.m. Charles Conwell (21-0, 16 KOs) vs. Jorge Garcia Perez (32-4, 26 KOs); Gabriela Fundora (15-0) vs Marilyn Badillo (19-0-1).
Sat. UFC Fight Pass 6 p.m. Sadriddin Akhmedov (15-0) vs Elias Espadas (23-6).
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TSS Salutes Thomas Hauser and his Bernie Award Cohorts

The Boxing Writers Association of America has announced the winners of its annual Bernie Awards competition. The awards, named in honor of former five-time BWAA president and frequent TSS contributor Bernard Fernandez, recognize outstanding writing in six categories as represented by stories published the previous year.
Over the years, this venerable website has produced a host of Bernie Award winners. In 2024, Thomas Hauser kept the tradition alive. A story by Hauser that appeared in these pages finished first in the category “Boxing News Story.” Titled “Ryan Garcia and the New York State Athletic Commission,” the story was published on June 23. You can read it HERE.
Hauser also finished first in the category of “Investigative Reporting” for “The Death of Ardi Ndembo,” a story that ran in the (London) Guardian. (Note: Hauser has owned this category. This is his 11th first place finish for “Investigative Reporting”.)
Thomas Hauser, who entered the International Boxing Hall of Fame with the class of 2019, was honored at last year’s BWAA awards dinner with the A.J. Leibling Award for Outstanding Boxing Writing. The list of previous winners includes such noted authors as W.C. Heinz, Budd Schulberg, Pete Hamill, and George Plimpton, to name just a few.
The Leibling Award is now issued intermittently. The most recent honorees prior to Hauser were Joyce Carol Oates (2015) and Randy Roberts (2019).
Roberts, a Distinguished Professor of History at Purdue University, was tabbed to write the Hauser/Leibling Award story for the glossy magazine for BWAA members published in conjunction with the organization’s annual banquet. Regarding Hauser’s most well-known book, his Muhammad Ali biography, Roberts wrote, “It is nearly impossible to overestimate the importance of the book to our understanding of Ali and his times.” An earlier book by Hauser, “The Black Lights: Inside the World of Professional Boxing,” garnered this accolade: “Anyone who wants to understand boxing today should begin by reading ‘The Black Lights’.”
A panel of six judges determined the Bernie Award winners for stories published in 2024. The stories they evaluated were stripped of their bylines and other identifying marks including the publication or website for which the story was written.
Other winners:
Boxing Event Coverage: Tris Dixon
Boxing Column: Kieran Mulvaney
Boxing Feature (Over 1,500 Words): Lance Pugmire
Boxing Feature (Under 1,500 Words): Chris Mannix
The Dixon, Mulvaney, and Pugmire stories appeared in Boxing Scene; the Mannix story in Sports Illustrated.
The Bernie Award recipients will be honored at the forthcoming BWAA dinner on April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in the heart of Times Square. (For more information, visit the BWAA website). Two days after the dinner, an historic boxing tripleheader will be held in Times Square, the logistics of which should be quite interesting. Ryan Garcia, Devin Haney, and Teofimo Lopez share top billing.
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Mekhrubon Sanginov, whose Heroism Nearly Proved Fatal, Returns on Saturday

To say that Mekhrubon Sanginov is excited to resume his boxing career would be a great understatement. Sanginov, ranked #9 by the WBA at 154 pounds before his hiatus, last fought on July 8, 2022.
He was in great form before his extended leave, having scored four straight fast knockouts, advancing his record to 13-0-1. Had he remained in Las Vegas, where he had settled after his fifth pro fight, his career may have continued on an upward trajectory, but a trip to his hometown of Dushanbe, Tajikistan, turned everything haywire. A run-in with a knife-wielding bully nearly cost him his life, stalling his career for nearly three full years.
Sanginov was exiting a restaurant in Dushanbe when he saw a man, plainly intoxicated, harassing another man, an innocent bystander. Mekhrubon intervened and was stabbed several times with a long knife. One of the puncture wounds came perilously close to puncturing his heart.
“After he stabbed me, I ran after him and hit him and caught him to hold for the police,” recollects Sanginov. “There was a lot of confusion when the police arrived. At first, the police were not certain what had happened.
“By the time I got to the hospital, I had lost two liters of blood, or so I was told. After I was patched up, one of the surgeons said to me, ‘Give thanks to God because he gave you a second life.’ It is like I was born a second time.”
“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have happened in any city,” he adds. (A story about the incident on another boxing site elicited this comment from a reader: “Good man right there. World would be a better place if more folk were willing to step up when it counts.”)
Sanginov first laced on a pair of gloves at age 10 and was purportedly 105-14 as an amateur. Growing up, the boxer he most admired was Roberto Duran. “Muhammad Ali will always be the greatest and [Marvin] Hagler was great too, but Duran was always my favorite,” he says.
During his absence from the ring, Sanginov married a girl from Tajikistan and became a father. His son Makhmud was born in Las Vegas and has dual citizenship. “Ideally,” he says, “I would like to have three more children. Two more boys and the last one a daughter.”
He also put on a great deal of weight. When he returned to the gym, his trainer Bones Adams was looking at a cruiserweight. But gradually the weight came off – “I had to give up one of my hobbies; I love to eat,” he says – and he will be resuming his career at 154. “Although I am the same weight as before, I feel stronger now. Before I was more of a boy, now I am a full-grown man,” says Sanginov who turned 29 in February.
He has a lot of rust to shed. Because of all those early knockouts, he has answered the bell for only eight rounds in the last four years. Concordantly, his comeback fight on Saturday could be described as a soft re-awakening. Sanginov’s opponent Mahonri Montes, an 18-year pro from Mexico, has a decent record (36-10-2, 25 KOs) but has been relatively inactive and is only 1-3-1 in his last five. Their match at Thunder Studios in Long Beach, California, is slated for eight rounds.
On May 10, Ardreal Holmes (17-0) faces Erickson Lubin (26-2) on a ProBox card in Kissimmee, Florida. It’s an IBF super welterweight title eliminator, meaning that the winner (in theory) will proceed directly to a world title fight.
Sanginov will be watching closely. He and Holmes were scheduled to meet in March of 2022 in the main event of a ShoBox card on Showtime. That match fell out when Sanginov suffered an ankle injury in sparring.
If not for a twist of fate, that may have been Mekhrubon Sanginov in that IBF eliminator, rather than Ardreal Holmes. We will never know, but one thing we do know is that Mekhrubon’s world title aspirations were too strong to be ruined by a knife-wielding bully.
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