Super Bowl Sunday Special Edition: Remembering Lyle Alzado and Shane Dronett

Published

3 years ago

February 13, 2022

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Lyle Alzado played in the 1978 Super Bowl as a member of the Denver Broncos and in the 1984 Super Bowl as a member of the Los Angeles Raiders. Shane Dronett, like Alzado a defensive end who tragically died young, was a key component of the 1998 Atlanta Falcons squad that advanced to Super Bowl XXXIII.

If football hadn’t come calling, Alzado and Dronett would have likely made their mark in the sweet science. Both were outstanding amateur boxers.

Lyle Alzado was born in Brooklyn, the son of a Spanish-Italian father and a Jewish mother of Polish descent. At Lawrence High School in the Long Island village of Cedarhurst, he excelled on the gridiron, but his grades were so poor that no major football school was willing to take a chance on him. After a stint at a junior college in Texas, he surfaced at Yankton College in South Dakota, a small private college that no longer exists; it went bankrupt in 1984 and is now the site of a federal prison.

One guesses that Alzado missed a lot of classes at Yankton because he popped up repeatedly in Omaha,160 miles away. He went there to resume his amateur boxing career. A story in an Omaha paper reported that he was 27-1 in New York area rings before heading west. As Alzado’s legend grew, so also did his ring record which was inflated in news reports to 44-1.

In Omaha, Alzado frequently sparred with Ron Stander. On Feb. 4, 1969, they fought in a semi-final match-up in the Omaha City Golden Gloves tournament. Stander got the nod, a decision that was roundly booed according to a story in the Lincoln Star.

Ron Stander lived across the river from Omaha in Council Bluffs, Iowa – hence his nickname, the Bluffs Butcher. As a pro, his signature win was a fifth-round KO of Earnie Shavers. He went on to fight Joe Frazier in the first and only heavyweight title fight ever staged in Omaha.

The Bluffs Butcher talked a good fight. “If we were fighting in an alley,” he said, “Frazier wouldn’t stand a chance.” But they didn’t fight in an alley and Joe butchered him. Stander was a bloody mess when his corner pulled him out after four rounds.

Alzado was selected in the fourth round of the 1971 NFL Draft and went on to become a cornerstone of Denver’s “Orange Crush” defense. In 1977, Denver’s Super Bowl season, Alzado was named the NFL Defensive Player of the Year in a poll by the United Press.

The Broncos lost the Jan. 19, 1978 Super Bowl to the Cowboys by a 27-10 score despite a strong game by Alzado who constantly pressured quarterback Roger Staubach while registering two sacks.

Alzado had another fine season in 1978, earning first-team All-Pro honors. By then, his exploits in the ring as an amateur boxer had become well-publicized and an enterprising promoter arranged a match with Muhammad Ali who had regained the world heavyweight title the previous year in his second meeting with Leon Spinks.

An 8-round exhibition, the match played out on July 14, 1979 at Denver’s Mile High Stadium, home of the Broncos, on a sweltering Saturday afternoon when the temperature reached 100 degrees. Contested before 20,000 (far below expectations), the match was tame, but Alzado made a credible showing and Ali would pay him the ultimate compliment, saying he had the makings of a champion if he chose to pursue a boxing career full-time. (Who would have guessed that when he and Ron Stander were sparring at a little boxing gym in Omaha that one would go on to share the ring with the most famous man on the planet and the other with his famous arch-rival?!)

Alzado was mired in a contract dispute with the Broncos when he fought Ali and the club shipped him off to the Cleveland Browns where he had three solid seasons. In 1982, he was traded to the former and future Oakland Raiders who were in their first season of their Los Angeles phase.

The Raiders with their bad-ass reputation and Lyle Alzado were a perfect fit. In Alzado’s first season in LA, with future Hall of Famer Howie Long manning the opposite flank, the Raiders led the league in sacks. The following year, Alzado was one of the linchpins of the Raiders team that won the NFL’s ultimate prize, knocking off the favored Washington Redskins 38-9 in the Super Bowl.

Shane Dronett

Shane Dronett, who grew up in Bridge City, Texas, took up boxing at the age of 11. As a senior in high school, he was a Texas Golden Gloves champion. He also excelled on the gridiron, earning All-State honors as a tight end and linebacker.

Dronett enrolled at the University of Texas where he grew into a six-foot-six, 265-pound defensive end. He cracked the starting lineup midway through his freshman season, was All-Conference as a sophomore and again as a junior when he made several All-America teams and then left school for the NFL with a year of eligibility remaining.

Selected in the second round of the 1992 NFL Draft by the Denver Broncos, Dronett had 19 ½ sacks in his first three seasons and set a franchise record in 1994 with four blocked field goals. When his production tailed off, the Broncos let him go and, similar to Alzado, he would enjoy a late career surge with a new team, in his case the Falcons.

Dronett couldn’t get Atlanta over the hump in the Jan. 31, 1999 Super Bowl. The Falcons fell to the Broncos, 31-19. But he played so well that year and again the following year that he was tendered a five-year, $20 million contract. It proved to be a bad deal for the Falcons as, bedeviled by knee and shoulder injuries, he played only one more full season.

—

Lyle Alzado and Shane Dronett had a lot in common besides the fact they were outstanding amateur boxers who played defensive end for the Denver Broncos. On the practice field they were known for their fiery personalities. And both were not far removed from their playing days when they left this mortal earth, their lives cut short by brain disease.

Alzado, who parlayed his notoriety on the football field into an acting career, spent the last year of his life on a mission to educate others about the dangers of steroid use. In a July 8, 1991 Sports Illustrated cover story, he confessed that his denials about using anabolic steroids and human growth hormones were a big lie. He blamed the steroids on the inoperable brain tumor that was slowly eating away at him, convinced that the drugs had compromised his immune system. He died on May 14, 1992, at age 43 at the home of his fourth wife in Lake Oswego, Oregon, and was buried in Portland.

The circumstances surrounding the death of Shane Dronett are more distressing.

In 2006, Dronett began acting erratically; at various times confused, delusional, and paranoid. Doctors discovered a small benign tumor on his brain. They removed it, but Dronett’s problems continued. On Jan. 21, 2009, at his home in Georgia, he brandished a handgun at his wife and then turned it against himself, committing suicide. He was 38 years old. He left behind two young daughters, the oldest of whom, Hayley, chose to remember her father from her younger days: “He was the best dad in the world.”

Dronett’s personality change was mindful of some retired boxers whose autopsies showed evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (“CTE”), a progressive degenerative disease of the brain associated multiple concussions. “This was not the man I married,” said his wife, Christine, who consented to have his brain tissue examined by Boston University neuropathologist Dr. Ann McKee whose pioneering work and that of several of her colleagues is detailed in “Damage,” boxing writer Tris Dixon’s widely acclaimed new book. Dr. McKee confirmed that Shane Dronett had CTE.

—

Regarding Lyle Alzado, no link has been found between steroid use and brain cancer. However, by warning athletes away from performing-enhancing drugs, Alzado performed a needed service. And likewise, the widow of Shane Dronett did her part to make the sport of football safer for future participants by willingly assisting Dr. McKee in her groundbreaking research which forced the NFL to acknowledge the seriousness of concussions and do something about it.

Perhaps Alzado and Dronett would have lived longer and left this world on a less sorrowful note if they had chosen a career in boxing instead of football, but then again, they became pillars of teams that made it all the way to the Super Bowl, America’s biggest annual sporting spectacle, and that must have been quite a rush.

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

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2 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

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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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