Featured Articles
Tony Yoka Has His Eye on the Prize at the Top Rank Gym

Tony Yoka Has His Eye on the Prize
Las Vegas is a magnet for world class boxers from around the world. There is an abundance of gyms with regulation-sized boxing rings and many visiting fighters make the rounds during their stay here. In any sport, one improves by practicing against near-equals or those that are more advanced and Las Vegas invariably offers better sparring than a foreign fighter can find in his homeland. Several months ago, this reporter was tipped off that Great Britain’s Joe Joyce was in town training at Ismael Salas’s gym and this week we encountered Joyce’s great amateur rival (and likely future opponent) Tony Yoka at the Top Rank facility.
Born in Paris to a Congolese father and French mother, Yoka, who speaks perfect English, is from a fighting family. His father Pascal Yoka fought as an amateur and is a full-time boxing coach. Younger brother Victor Yoka is poised to turn pro and a third brother, Axel Yoka, has his sights set on representing France in the 2024 Paris Olympics.
“Axel is a light heavyweight,” says Yoka. “We three brothers come in different sizes.” Standing six-foot-seven, Tony Yoka, 29, towers over middle brother Victor who accompanied him to Las Vegas. Victor, a junior welterweight at the amateur level, is listed by boxrec as five-foot-nine-and-a-half.
Pascal Yoka, the patriarch, was 12 years old and living in Kinshasa in the Republic of the Congo, formerly Zaire and formerly a French colony, when Muhammad Ali and George Foreman came to Kinshasa to do battle in the fight immortalized as the “Rumble in the Jungle.” It was a heady moment for the locals, the whole city was on pins and needles, and a seminal moment for the elder Yoka who was inspired by all the hubbub to embrace the sport of boxing.
Tony Yoka will take an 11-0 (9 KOs) record into his May 14 engagement in Paris with 17-1 Martin Bakole. His amateur career culminated at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio De Janeiro where he won the gold medal in the super heavyweight division. His significant other Estelle Mossely, who competed as a lightweight, accomplished the same feat. They became the darlings of the French sporting press and eventually the parents of two children.
Fairytale stories don’t always have fairytale endings and the twin gold medalists divorced last year. Tony notes that he lives five minutes away from Estelle in Paris which makes it easier for him to keep involved in the lives of their two young sons, aged four and two. (Estelle Mossely, 10-0 as a pro, plans to keep fighting. She recently signed on with Probellum, the company founded by former Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer.)
Yoka scaled high hurdles in Rio. His wins over Croatia’s Filip Hrgovic in the semis and Joyce in the finals came via split decisions. Both bouts were rubber matches. He and Hrgovic first met in 2010 in Baku, Azerbaijan, when both were teenagers. His initial encounter with Joyce came five years later in Baku in the finals of the European Games.
Yoka lost his first meeting with Hrgovic but rebounded to win the Youth Olympic Games tournament three months later in Singapore. His opponent in the finals was Joseph Parker who would go on to win and lose the WBO version of the world heavyweight title and is currently a stablemate of Tyson Fury. He and Parker would spar many times after Parker turned pro, swapping leather at the private training facility of Parker’s coach Kevin Barry in the Greater Las Vegas community of Henderson.
For a few brief days this past January, it appeared that Yoka and Filip Hrgovic would renew acquaintances this Spring in an IBF eliminator. It would have been a joint promotion between Germany’s powerful Team Sauerland and Bob Arum’s Top Rank. However, Yoka was contractually bound to fight Martin Bakole and was forced to back out. If Yoka vs. Bakole had come off on the original appointed date in January — it was pushed back four months by the pandemic — Yoka vs. Hrgovic, a delicious pairing of undefeated young heavyweights, might be coming our way very soon.
“I know I’m a lot better than (Bakole),” says Yoka, “but I know enough not to underestimate anybody. Down the road I would love to fight Hrgovic again.”
As an Olympic gold medalist in boxing’s heaviest division, Tony Yoka has a tough act to follow. His predecessors include George Foreman, Lennox Lewis, Wladimir Klitschko, and Anthony Joshua.
He rattles off their names with the notation that they all went on to win what was once recognized as the richest prize in all of sports, the world heavyweight title.
“I plan to go where they went,” he says without a trace of arrogance. Stay tuned.
Arne K. Lang’s latest book, titled “George Dixon, Terry McGovern and the Culture of Boxing in America, 1890-1910,” will shortly roll off the press. The book, published by McFarland, can be pre-ordered directly from the publisher (https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/clashof-the-little-giants) or via Amazon.
To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE
Featured Articles
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).
To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE
Featured Articles
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.
To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE
Featured Articles
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.
To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE
-
Featured Articles4 weeks ago
Bernard Fernandez Reflects on His Special Bond with George Foreman
-
Featured Articles4 weeks ago
A Paean to George Foreman (1949-2025), Architect of an Amazing Second Act
-
Featured Articles4 weeks ago
Spared Prison by a Lenient Judge, Chordale Booker Pursues a World Boxing Title
-
Featured Articles4 weeks ago
Sebastian Fundora TKOs Chordale Booker in Las Vegas
-
Featured Articles3 weeks ago
Boxing Odds and Ends: The Wacky and Sad World of Livingstone Bramble and More
-
Featured Articles4 weeks ago
Avila Perspective, Chap. 318: Aussie Action, Vegas and More
-
Featured Articles3 weeks ago
Avila Perspective, Chap. 319: Rematches in Las Vegas, Cancun and More
-
Featured Articles3 weeks ago
Ringside at the Fontainebleau where Mikaela Mayer Won her Rematch with Sandy Ryan