40 Years Ago This Week: Sugar Ray Leonard TKOs Thomas Hearns in an Instant Classic

Published

3 years ago

September 14, 2021

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Whoever coined the phrase that “you can’t please ’em all” might have been referring to someone like Doug Blackburn, one of the rare dissenters in assessing what he had seen during the classic welterweight unification showdown of Sugar Ray Leonard and Thomas Hearns on Sept. 16, 1981, in the outdoor stadium at Las Vegas’ Caesars Palace.

Writing for the Town Talk in that noted boxing hotbed of Alexandria, La., Blackburn, who saw the fight at a closed-circuit venue, wrote a column in which he offered his opinion that the matchup of two great champions in their prime “like many heavily-hyped, much anticipated meetings, failed to live up to prefight expectations. Despite Sugar Ray’s dramatic rally, neither man can be too satisfied with the way he fought.”

Yeah, well, there are still people here and there who insist that the Earth is flat and the sun revolves around the moon. But for most fight fans fortunate enough to have witnessed Leonard-Hearns I – there would be a too-long-delayed rematch, on June 12, 1989, which ended in a desultory split draw that many thought should have gone Hearns’ way – the classic original, in which Leonard, trailing on all three scorecards, staged a dramatic rally to win on a 14th-round stoppage, is a gold standard for what such megafights are supposed to be, but frequently aren’t.

Think not? In the 40 years since Leonard and Hearns made ring magic, similarly stratospheric hopes were tied to the Sept. 18, 1999, unification bout between undefeated welterweight titlists Oscar De La Hoya and Felix Trinidad, which was not exactly a thrillfest when measured against Leonard-Hearns I. The outcome was tinged in controversy, true, but only because De La Hoya, mistakenly thinking he was too far ahead on points to lose on the scorecards, coasted the last three rounds and was stunned when Tito was awarded a majority-decision victory. There would be no rematch.

In a financial sense, the May 2, 2015, pairing of celebrated welterweight champs Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao obliterated all revenue records with an overall take of $600 million, far outdistancing the then-high-water mark of $50 million-plus nearly 34 years earlier for Leonard-Hearns I, when the technology for milking every available dollar from fights of that scope was still comparatively primitive. But Mayweather, an indisputably great fighter whose strengths are pinpoint counterpunching and impenetrable defense, was content to craft another workmanlike performance in handily outpointing “PacMan,” who claimed he was hindered by a shoulder injury. Both fighters greatly enriched themselves, but the fight, which was generally conceded to be four to five years past its optimal date, did little to satisfy most fans’ craving for the kind of two-way action that was promised but not delivered.

Leonard-Hearns I, on the other hand, had more than its share of exclamation-point moments, for each fighter, the most obvious being the finishing flurry in which Leonard, his left eye badly swollen and increasingly aware that the victory he had presumed would be his was becoming less and less likely, seized command in the 14th round with, depending on whose count you choose to believe, 23, 25 or 28 unanswered blows. It was left to referee Davey Pearl to rescue the dazed and defenseless Hearns after an elapsed time of 1 minute, 45 seconds.

At the post-fight press conference, Leonard, his ugly, purplish left eye and puffy cheekbone hidden behind oversized dark glasses, explained why and how he had been able to mine a vein of toughness many had presumed the 1976 Olympic gold medalist lacked.

“I was afraid of the right hand of his until the very end,” Leonard admitted of Hearns’ vaunted power. “He dropped some real bombs on me, and I knew he had another one left.

“I pulled this one out by reaching down into my guts, into my heart. I knew I was behind. I knew I had to keep the pressure up. There wasn’t anything I could do but find out what was inside me.”

Sometimes, the beauty of boxing is most illustrated by the unsightly. Leonard, whose inner iron had been glimpsed most notably in his close, unanimous-decision loss to Roberto Duran on June 20, 1980, in Montreal, demonstrated to any remaining doubters that he was so much more than the possessor of a dazzling smile, matinee-idol looks and a glib way in expressing himself.

John Schulian, the outstanding sports columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, described Leonard’s come-from-behind surge thusly:

After all those miles and all those smiles, Sugar Ray Leonard wasn’t pretty any more. He was a one-eyed man in an ugly fight that had nothing to do with the glitz and glamor that have been his calling card. There had been a time when he could have avoided this grim marathon, a time in the sixth and seventh rounds when he could have added Thomas Hearns to his list of victims. But the moment had passed and Hearns had escaped, and now Leonard, his handsome face a scowling bruise, was struggling for survival.

And this, from the New York Daily News’ Mike Lupica:

Away from the ring he fools you with the con man’s smile and the smooth patter and the slick attitudes about his own high finance …This is Ray Charles Leonard, child of hype, maker of millions, the 25-year-old man who will soon be the richest fighter in the history of the game. And that is why he fools you when he steps out of Dun and Bradstreet and into a pair of boxing trunks and becomes Sugar Ray Leonard. Boxing will never seem hard enough, dirty enough, bloody enough for Sugar Ray Leonard. Only in special moments will we see the man’s steel, and heart, and extraordinary ability to bang and grapple when a fight is on the line. Only when someone tries to take his title away from him will we realize there is a hoodlum inside the tuxedo.

To the winner go the spoils, or at least that is what usually happens. While Leonard added another layer to his burgeoning reputation as a special fighter, a historically significant fighter, the vanquished Hearns – not known as a fount of nifty sound bites and attention-grabbing quotes – might have gained nearly as much in defeat as had the triumphant Leonard. It had been generally conceded going in that, were the fight to end in the early rounds, it would be Hearns who would have his hand raised. If enough rounds tolled by, perhaps all the way to the conclusion of the scheduled 15, the momentum would necessarily shift to Leonard (30-1 with 21 KOs entering the bout), widely seen as a less devastating puncher than Hearns (32-0, 30 KOs) but also as a more polished stylist and executor of strategical options. That scenario was repeated so often during the run-up to the bout that it almost came to be accepted as incontrovertible fact.

Team Leonard, for the most part, rolled with the notion that Hearns was a human robot whose Plan A was to land that pulverizing overhand right, as early as possible and as often as necessary. His Plan B would be … well, there really wasn’t one, if Leonard and his crafty trainer, Angelo Dundee, were to be believed.

“This is the first time in my career I’ve had visions of a fight,” Leonard said a few days before he would get the opportunity to implement his imagination. “I see thousands and thousands of people. I see Hearns missing and being aggravated and frustrated. I see me raising my hands. I’ve had this dream, this vision, for over two months. It just has to come true.

“I’ve said Hearns fights one way and can’t fight no other way. I heard he might try to box me. I wish he would try. Hearns is a puncher. With that reach of his, well, he’s a freak, really. He comes straight at you. He doesn’t need to think.”

And if the “Motor City Cobra” did find that he might need to think?

“He’ll blow a fuse.”

Added Dundee: “Hearns might be 6-foot-2, (actually 6’1”) but he spreads his legs and that will bring him eyeball-to-eyeball with Leonard. He tries to sucker you by carrying the left real low like Bobby Foster used to do, and then he rears back and nails you with the right. But Leonard isn’t going to fall for any of those traps. It will be interesting to see what happens to Hearns if he sees he can’t take Leonard out in a few rounds. Will he panic and punch himself out like Foreman did against Ali?”

Like Ali, Leonard was a master of mind games meant to mentally discombobulate an opponent if possible. But Hearns’ manager-trainer, Emanuel Steward, had worked with Hearns since he was 12, and he insisted that Leonard’s taunts and posturing would have no effect on his guy.

“Both (Wilfredo) Benitez and Duran took a lot out of Leonard, physically and mentally,” Steward suggested. “I know that after the Benitez fight Leonard was mentally exhausted. Besides, now that he has made all those millions from all those fights, he no longer has that burning ambition. The fire is gone out of him.”

Perhaps the most prescient prefight comment came from Ferdie Pacheco, Muhammad Ali’s longtime personal physician, who insisted that Hearns was hardly the one-trick pony described by Leonard. Pacheco predicted that Hearns’ 78-inch reach, unusually long for a welterweight, would help Hearns control the flow of the fight until the proper moment presented itself for him to deliver a put-away right.

“Leonard will have to pay an awful toll to travel down that 78-inch speedway,” Pacheco said. “Thomas will control him with his long, hard jab, and somewhere along the way Leonard will move into a right hand he won’t see. It will be like a fuse going off in his brain. All the lights will go out.”

Truth be told, Steward’s fight plan did indeed call for heavy usage of Hearns’ jab, the presumed key which would serve to open the door to Leonard’s chin for that concussive right. And even if a terminating detonation of the right never occurred, what exactly would be wrong if Hearns confounded all the prefight conjecture by outboxing Leonard over the long haul? He’d still come away as the unified 147-pound champion, adding Leonard’s WBC and The Ring magazine straps to his own WBA strap. It was the same conservative mindset De La Hoya had in putting as much distance between himself and the dangerous Trinidad in those final three rounds 18 years later, with one difference – De La Hoya’s lead was not as wide as Hearns’. Leonard had won only four of the 13 completed rounds on two judges’ cards at the time Pearl waved the fight off, and five of 13 on the third judge’s tally.

But in the 14th round Hearns – who had overcome shaky rounds in the sixth and seventh to again gain the upper hand — chose to engage Leonard in another in-tight exchange, and got popped with a hard left hook that instantly shifted momentum. Leonard tore into Hearns with a renewed sense of purpose, and it wasn’t long before Pearl stepped in.

“It was kind of silly,” Duke Durden of the Nevada State Athletic Commission said. “All Hearns had to do was either stay away, or grab and hold Leonard – spit in his eye, or anything – the rest of the way, and the fight was his.”

Although he never could hope to match Leonard as a media darling, in losing his first bout as a professional Hearns demonstrated that he had ample charisma of his own, and a willingness to go for broke where it counted, inside the ropes, stamping his future fights moving as must-see events. Now 62, he is as fondly remembered for losing his epic, throw-caution-to-the-wind three-round war with Marvelous Marvin Hagler on April 15, 1985, as for his spectacular, second-round stoppage of Roberto Duran on June 15, 1984.

Given all that they had shared, and the place each holds in the other’s legacy, it should not come as a surprise that Leonard was Hearns’ presenter when his former arch-rival was inducted into the Boxing Hall of Fame in Las Vegas in Aug. 2017.

“We’re friends now,” Leonard said in introducing Hearns. “Tommy had the whole package. He was a freak of nature with his height, with his reach, with his power, with his speed.”

FACTS ABOUT LEONARD-HEARNS I

*Main Events president Dan Duva served as lead promoter, another building block in the march toward big-time status for the New Jersey-based company, which was founded in 1979 as a mom-and-pop operation. Main Events took another major leap forward following the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics when it signed U.S. Olympians Evander Holyfield, Pernell Whitaker, Meldrick Taylor, Mark Breland and Tyrell Biggs.

*Leonard opened as a 2-to-1 favorite, but by fight time enough money had come in on Hearns that he went off as a 13-10 wagering choice.

*At a Leonard workout in Vegas, Muhammad Ali was asked who he liked in the fight. “I pick Leonard ’cause he’s just like me, fast and pretty. He’ll dance circles around Hearns,” Ali replied. Then, at a Hearns workout an hour later, Ali said the Detroit scrapper “is awesome, man. Tommy Hearns is sooo big to be a welterweight. He should knock out Sugar Ray.”

*Celebrity quote of fight week came from Charo: “I think the beeg one – Hearns – will cuchi-cuchi Sugar to sleep.”

*The live attendance at Caesars Palace was 24,083, with 1,100 credentialed media members.

*Hearns’ best quote during fight week: “Everybody talks about how great a boxer Ray Leonard is, especially Ray Leonard.”

*Because of the television lights, the temperature in the ring at the time the main event started was right at 100 degrees.

*According to Emanuel Steward, preliminary negotiations for a rematch began on Sept. 21, five days after the fight. Hearns-Leonard II, however, did not take place until June 12, 1989, nearly eight years later.

Editor’s Note: Bernard Fernandez, named to the International Boxing Hall of Fame in the Observer category with the class of 2020, was the recipient of numerous awards for writing excellence during his 28-year career as a sportswriter for the Philadelphia Daily News. Fernandez’s first book, “Championship Rounds,” a compendium of previously published material, was released in May of last year. The sequel, “Championship Rounds, Vol. 2,” with a foreword by Jim Lampley, arrives this fall. The book can be ordered through Amazon.com, in hard or soft cover, and other book-selling websites and outlets.

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 282: Ryan’s Song, Golden Boy in Fresno and More

Published

19 hours ago

April 26, 2024

David A. Avila

Avila-Perspective-Chap-282-Ryan's-Song-Golden-Boy-in-Fresno-and-More

Don’t call it an upset.

Days after Ryan Garcia proved the experts wrong, those same experts are re-tooling their evaluation processes.

It’s 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 Garcia’s can’t 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. “You can be behind for nine rounds and one punch can change the outcome,” 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 “Tank” Davis who can really crack.

So how did Garcia do it?

In the opening round Ryan Garcia timed Devin Haney’s 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 Garcia’s 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 he’s got a song. Next thing you know Hollywood will be calling and he’ll be in the movies. It’s 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.

Avila

Vergil Ortiz Jr. (20-0, 20 KOs) returns to the ring and faces Puerto Rico’s Thomas Dulorme (26-6-1, 17 KOs) a welterweight gatekeeper who lost to Jaron “Boots” 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.

It’s 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 California’s Jose Carlos Ramirez (28-1, 18 KOs) meets Cuba’s Rances Barthelemy (30-2-1, 15 KOs) in a welterweight affair set for 12 rounds.

It’s 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 Scotland’s Josh Taylor. One loss does not mean the end of a career.

“My 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,” said Ramirez who lives in nearby Avenal, Calif.

An added major attraction features Marlen Esparza in a unification rematch against Gabriela “La Chucky” 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

Don’t sleep on this match.

Its current Golden Boy fighter Jaime Munguia facing former Golden Boy fighter Saul “Canelo” Alvarez in a battle between Mexico’s greatest sluggers next week at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on May 4.

“I think Jaime Munguia is going to do something special in the ring,” said Oscar De La Hoya, the CEO for Golden Boy.

Tijuana’s 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.

“It’s a hard fight,” said Munguia. “Truth is, its big for Mexico and not only for Mexicans but for boxing.”

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

Published

2 days ago

April 24, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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! Tonight’s episode was headlined by a super bantamweight match between San Antonio’s 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 wasn’t 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 “Wrecking” 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 10^th 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, Liverpool’s 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

Published

5 days ago

April 22, 2024

Arne K. Lang

Haney-Garcia-Redux-with-the-Focus-on-Harvey-Dock

Saturday’s 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 – the former for fooling all the experts and the latter for his gallant performance in a losing effort – 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 hadn’t previously issued a warning for this infraction. Moreover, many thought he could have taken a point away from Haney for excessive clinching. As for Haney’s second and third trips to the canvas in round seven, they struck this reporter – watching at home – 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. “At the end of the day, Harvey Dock, I think he was tripping,” said Garcia. “He could have stopped that fight.”

Those that played the rounds proposition, placing their coin on the “under,” undoubtedly felt the same way.

The internet lit up with comments assailing Dock’s 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 America’s highest-paid TV sports personality, was among those that felt a need to weigh-in: “This referee is absolutely terrible….Unreal! Horrible officiating,” 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 Jersey’s 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 Dock’s 364^th assignment in the pros and his forty-second world title fight. Some of those title fights were title in name only, they weren’t 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 “premature stoppages” 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 Dock’s 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 wasn’t Harvey Dock’s best hour, I’ll 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 “X” 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 “Blazing Saddles,” 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, Mauricio’s late father, ruled that Corrales could keep his title.

Whether or not you agree with Mauricio Sulaiman’s rationale, the timing of his announcement was certainly awkward.

Haney’s 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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