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Looking Ahead to a Bustling Boxing Weekend

In boxing, it never rains but it pours. Last weekend was dead. There were no fights of major significance. Tomorrow (Saturday, April 9) all three leading networks – Showtime, ESPN, and DAZN – have compelling offerings and they will be going head-to-head.
The Showtime tripleheader, which will air from the Virgin Hotels in Las Vegas, has a central theme. All six fighters on the TV portion of the card campaign in the 154-pound division. And judging by the prevailing odds, all three bouts will be competitive. (Kudos to the fan-friendly matchmaker.)
A bout between southpaws Erickson Lubin (24-1, 17 KOs) and Sebastian Fundora (18-0-1, 12 KOs) tops the bill. It’s being packaged as a WBC interim title fight with the winner theoretically poised to get the next shot at the winner of the May 14 match between Jermell Charlo and Brian Castano.
Lubin will be rooting for Charlo. He would love to get another crack at the man that saddled him with his lone defeat. Charlo knocked him out in the opening round with one punch, a picture-perfect right hand that brought a shocking conclusion to what had been a feeling-out round.
Since that mishap in 2017, Lubin, 26, has won six straight. He will dress as the favorite vs. Sebastian Fundora who has attracted early money, depressing the odds to 3/2.
Fundora, like Lubin a native Floridian, has been living and training in Coachella, CA, but moved his camp to Las Vegas for this bout. He stands six-foot-six, hence his nickname, “The Towering Inferno.”
Lubin vs. Fundora will be preceded by a 10-round match between Sergio Garcia (33-1, 14 KOs) and Tony Harrison (28-3-1, 21 KOs). Garcia, a 29-year-old Spaniard, will be looking to rebound from his lone defeat which he suffered at the hands of Fundora in what was his U.S. debut.
The oddsmakers like his chances. He opened a 5/2 favorite over Detroit’s Harrison, a third-generation prizefighter who briefly held the WBC version of this belt. (Old-timers will remember Harrison’s grandfather Henry Hank, a hard-punching middleweight who appeared numerous times on television during the early 1960s.)
The opening bout of the telecast pits Bryant Perrella (17-3-1, 14 KOs) against Kevin Zambrano (14-0, 9 KOs).
Perrella, a 33-year-old southpaw from Fort Myers, Florida, is better than his record. In his most memorable fight, he out-boxed Abel Ramos for nine rounds only to unravel in the final minute of the contest and get stopped with one second remaining in the bout. In his last outing, he battled Tony Harrison to a 12-round draw. It was his first start with new trainer Roy Jones Jr.
Zambrano, from Mexico City, has been training in San Antonio. Something of a mystery fighter — this is his U.S. debut – he is the younger brother of Carlos Salgado Zambrano, a former two-time world super featherweight champion.
Costa Mesa, CA
The Hangar, an exposition center and concert hall at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa, will be the site of Top Rank’s offering on ESPN. Top Rank has been here before, most notably on March 23, 2019, when Kubrat Pulev celebrated his TKO of Bogdan Dinu by kissing a female reporter which caused a big snit.
Former U.S. Olympian Mikaela Mayer (16-0, 5 KOs) is the headline attraction. She defends her WBO and IBF world featherweight titles against El Paso veteran Jennifer Han (18-4-1, 1 KO).
San Diego southpaw Giovani Santillan (28-0, 15 KOs) meets Colombia’s Jeovanis Barraza (23-2, 15 KOs) in the co-feature and both Moloney twins will appear in supporting bouts.
The popular Aussies – Jason is a bantamweight and Andrew a super flyweight – sport identical 22-2 records. Jason Moloney opposes Tijuana’s Francisco Pedraza-Portillo (17-10-2, 10 KOs) in a scheduled 10-rounder. His twin brother opposes Modesto, CA journeyman Gilberto Mendoza (19-11-3, 10 KOs) in a bout slated for eight.
U.S. Olympians Duke Ragan and Virginia “Ginny” Fuchs will also be in action. It’s the fifth pro fight for Ragan (4-0, 1 KO), a silver medalist in Tokyo. The 34-year-old Fuchs, an LSU grad with a compelling back story, will be making her pro debut.
San Antonio
The return of undefeated Ryan Garcia who has been out of action for 15 months is the main allurement of the Golden Boy Promotions show at the Alamodome on DAZN. Garcia, a big star on social media with a large female following, opposes Ghana’s Emmanuel Tagoe. (For more on this fight, check out David Avila’s pre-fight report.)
Garcia vs. Tagoe, a 12-rounder, is braced by an exceptionally strong undercard that includes five 10-round fights. In addition to the co-feature, an intriguing super middleweight clash between Gabriel Rosado and Shane Mosley Jr, Brazil’s Patrick Teixeira, a former world super welterweight title-holder, and super bantamweight Azat Hovhannisyan, a former world title challenger, will appear in separate bouts.
Hovhannisyan, from LA by way of Armenia, has won six straight since suffering a loss on points to undefeated Rey Vargas, the reigning WBC world title-holder. He will oppose 15-1 Dagoberto Aguerro from the Dominican Republic.
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The good news is that tomorrow’s lid-lifter will run unopposed. The bad news is that one will have to get up at an ungodly early hour to monitor the developments in Saitama, Japan, where Gennadiy Golovkin meets Ryota Murata in a bout where the stakes are huge.
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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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