Percy Pugh, Gone at 81, Deserved More Acclaim in His New Orleans Hometown

Published

3 years ago

January 27, 2022

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Maybe former welterweight contender Percy Pugh would have gotten his chance to deliver the acceptance speech he had rehearsed who knows how many times in his mind had he had a better campaign manager than me making his case for induction into the Greater New Orleans Sports Hall of Fame.

Maybe Pugh (pictured on the right with Joe Frazier and opponent Adrian Davis) would have gotten the call to his hometown’s hall had he been a much-harder-hitting puncher instead of a pugilistic Fred Astaire, winning only five of his 47 professional victories by knockout.

Maybe he would have become more of an enduring local hero had he fought for and won the world championship he was denied for years because the powers-that-be who could have made it happen treated him as if he was the spreader of a communicable disease.

And maybe he’d now have a plaque hanging in the Caesars Superdome had more members of the GNOSHOF selection committee actually seen him fight during his 1960s prime, or did enough research to realize that his not terribly impressive 47-30 career record and low KO percentage did not come close to telling the entire story of someone whose bouts regularly sold-out Municipal Auditorium and whose skill set, even without a power component, dazzled audiences around the country.

That’s a slew of maybes, and even if at some future point the electorate that has rejected his candidacy on an annual basis does an about-face and inducts him posthumously, it will be a hollow victory for his diminishing number of contemporaries who still cling to the hope that he eventually will get his due. Percy’s friends and relatives are aging fast or already gone, and the reality of any Hall of Fame is that all potential inductees would much prefer to enjoy the moment while they’re still breathing and on this side of the grass.

In a story authored by John Reid that appeared in the July 13, 2000, issues of The Times-Picayune, the headline read that Percy Pugh, who once was boxing’s No. 1-ranked welterweight, was “…one of the best boxers the world never saw.”

There is so much going on in today’s world, what with the pandemic that is now in its third year, skyrocketing inflation, political turmoil and international intrigue, that the death of an 81-year-old fighter whose ring career as an active participant ended on May 18, 1974, with the last of 10 consecutive defeats, does not rate much, if any, attention. But maybe it shouldn’t be totally overlooked, either.

As a native New Orleanian who saw Percy Pugh fight live and in person on several occasions, making for some indelible memories, I felt compelled to make his case for induction into the GNOSHOF, as I had successfully done for three other athletes who I thought merited such recognition (a basketball player, tennis player and football player). It wasn’t as if I thought Percy deserved inclusion in the International Boxing Hall of Fame; I acknowledge his career had little to no chance of clearing the extremely high bar for admission to that exclusive club in Canastota, N.Y. But in New Orleans, which once had been a hotbed of boxing, his prime years as a popular and accomplished main-event attraction seemed to me worthy of serious consideration.

The boxing contingent in the GNOSHOF includes former world champions Pete Herman (inducted in 1971), Willie Pastrano (1973), Joe Brown (1977), Ralph Dupas (1978) and Tony Canzoneri (1984), as well as non-champions Bernard Docusen (1976), Marty Burke (1978) and Jimmy Perrin (1979). Dr. Eddie Flynn (1981) was never a pro, but he was honored for being an NCAA boxing champion as well as a member of the 1932 U.S. Olympic boxing team. Other inductees affiliated with boxing include trainer Whitey Esneault (2006), referee Elmo Adolph (2000) and promoter/manager Les Bonano (2021).

Where Philadelphia is renowned for its assembly line of left-hooking knockout artists, New Orleans was better known as the birthing place of slick boxers with fancy footwork, active jabs and negligible pop. That subset includes Herman, Dupas, Pastrano (some of whose moves were copied by the young Cassius Clay) and, for a heady time in the ’60s, Pugh.

Les Bonano, whose half-century in boxing was rewarded with his 2021 induction into the GNOSHOF, recalled happy times when he was involved with Pugh in various capacities. “Percy and I traveled the world together,” Bonano told writer Ted Lewis for the obituary of Pugh that appeared in the The New Orleans Advocate/Times-Picayune. “And everywhere we went, we ran into people who knew Percy. He loved to make people laugh when he was in the ring, and he loved to tell boxing stories. How could you not love a guy like that?”

But time passes and memories fade, and by and by those who appreciated Pugh as a stick-and-move escape artist who could make opponents look foolish either took their own eternal 10-count or moved on to other objects of fascination.

Two-time former heavyweight champion Chris Byrd once explained why his mobile, quick-hitting style, which might be described as a larger, left-handed version of Pugh’s, so infuriated opponents. “Nobody likes getting clowned,” he said, “clowning” being the ability to frustrate even good opponents who’d prefer that the other guy stay put and linger in the hitting zone.

“Tat-tat-tat, that’s how fast I was,” Pugh said in the 2000 story written by Reid. “I could bounce, move and stick my punches. A lot of people didn’t see them coming.”

Possibly one of the people who didn’t want to get hit with something he didn’t see, or miss with something he was trying to hit himself, was welterweight champion Curtis Cokes. Although Cokes dropped more than a few hints that he would eventually get around to sharing a ring with Pugh, the fight never happened. Nor would it, once Pugh suffered a couple of close losses that dropped him from his No. 1 ranking.

“I know I should have gotten my shot,” Pugh, still displeased decades after being passed over, recalled in 2000. “Everybody knows it.”

Minus the title bout he never got to appear in, the career high points for Pugh were his two showdowns with Jerry Pellegrini, a fellow main-eventer in New Orleans who was everything Pugh wasn’t: white, a big puncher and not nearly as fleet-footed and fast-handed. Pugh won both bouts by unanimous decision, the first a 10-rounder and the second a 15-rounder in which he annexed Pellegrini’s Southern 147-pound title. Each fight drew a sellout crowd of 5,000-plus in Municipal Auditorium, with segregated seating.

“The first fight should have been called a draw, but the second one he outscored me over 15 rounds,” Pellegrini recalled. “Percy was a good fighter. He was No. 1 in the world.

“But you know, Percy had white supporters and I had black supporters. I think people rooted for me because I got a lot of knockouts and they rooted for Percy because of the way he could move. But we both filled up the auditorium.”

One of my most lasting memories of Percy Pugh came on Feb. 24, 1989. I was in Las Vegas to cover Mike Tyson’s first of two fights with England’s Frank Bruno which would take place the following night at the Las Vegas Hilton. A large tent with a big-screen TV had been set up in the hotel’s parking lot so media members could watch the fight in snowy Atlantic City in which Roberto Duran again defied Father Time to dethrone WBC middleweight champion Iran Barkley by split decision.

I was talking outside the tent with Les Bonano, whom I had known for many years, when Percy Pugh, who was training one of Bonano’s fighters who would appear on the Tyson-Bruno undercard, dropped by. “Percy, I want to introduce you to Bernard Fernandez, the boxing writer for the Philadelphia Daily News,” Les said. I stuck out my hand to shake Percy’s, which he did with a limp grip and no enthusiasm for having just made my acquaintance.

“But you don’t understand,” Les told him. “Bernard is from New Orleans. He saw you fight several times.”

“Including both times you beat Jerry Pellegrini in Municipal Auditorium,” I told Percy, who perked up immediately. We spent the next 15 minutes discussing those fights (full disclosure: Jerry Pellegrini is a friend of mine) at some length, and I could sense that his being remembered, maybe particularly for those two fights, had the effect of making him feel that his past had not completely faded away, that there were still people who appreciated who and what he had been when he was at his best.

I can only speculate as to how fulfilling it would have been for Percy Pugh to have been accorded the recognition from the Greater New Orleans Sports Hall of Fame that Les Bonano and I believed then, and still do, he deserved.

Image: 1970 NOLA file photo

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 322: Super Welter Week in SoCal

Published

3 hours ago

April 18, 2025

David A. Avila

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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

Published

2 days ago

April 16, 2025

TSS Press

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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 11^th 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

Published

3 days ago

April 15, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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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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