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The Hauser Report: Dmitry Bivol, Canelo Alvarez, and DAZN

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On May 7, Rich Strike, an 80-to-1 longshot, turned thoroughbred horse racing upside down by winning the Kentucky Derby. That night, Dmitry Bivol scored an upset of even greater consequence when he outboxed Canelo Alvarez at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas to earn a unanimous decision over boxing’s reigning pound-for-pound king.

Alvarez (now 57-2-2, 39 KOs) is 31 years old. In recent years, he has been boxing’s premier fighter, a magnet for high-rollers, and a massive pay-per-view draw. As Paul Magno recently wrote, “He has become the best in the world in a very old school way – by developing his game in the gym and adding respectable names to his resume.”

At the start of this year, Canelo was also a promotional and network free agent. He’d fought six consecutive fights on DAZN with Golden Boy or Matchroom as his promoter and then jumped ship to fight Caleb Plant on Showtime-PPV under the Premier Boxing Champions banner. His victory over Plant was followed by spirited bidding for his services. PBC hoped to match Canelo against Jermall Charlo. Matchroom Boxing CEO Eddie Hearn was pushing Bivol as the opponent.

In late-January, Eddy Reynoso (Canelo’s trainer) opined, “I think a Charlo fight is more media-friendly. Charlo is a fighter that sells more, a fighter that more people follow. And because of that, it’s a more attractive fight.”

And also a less dangerous fight.

But DAZN was anxious to get back in the Canelo business. And Len Blavatnik (the Ukrainian-born, multi-billionaire whose exceedingly deep pockets finance DAZN) took an interest in Canelo. The two had lunch together in Miami last year the day after Canelo beat Avni Yildirim.

Also, on February 11, Charlo was arrested on a charge of felony assault (later dismissed) in Texas. That added an element of uncertainty to any Canelo-Charlo venture.

On February 26, it was announced that Canelo had signed a two-fight deal with Matchroom and DAZN. The first fight would be in Las Vegas for Bivol’s WBA 175-pound belt in conjunction with Cinco de Mayo weekend. The second was provisionally scheduled for September 17 in conjunction with Mexican Independence Day weekend against Gennady Golovkin at a site to be determined. Canelo’s minimum purse for fighting Bivol was reported as $40 million with a $60 million payday should he fight Golovkin in September. The contract was said to include an option in Matchroom’s favor for a third fight against an unspecified opponent and an option for a rematch in Canelo’s favor should he (ha ha; no way it will happen) lose to Bivol.

Bivol (now 20-0, 11 KOs) is five months younger than Canelo. He won the WBA 175-pound title in 2017 by knocking out the undistinguished Trent Broadhurst and had defended his belt seven times against largely pedestrian opposition. His previous six opponents had gone the distance against him.

After Canelo’s choice of opponent was announced, there was some sniping that, in fourteen fights dating back to 2015, he’d faced only one Black opponent (Danny Jacobs). Charlo and Spence would have run counter to that trend.

Canelo-Bivol was Canelo’s fifteenth fight in Las Vegas, where he has taken part in three of the five highest-grossing gates in state history. Alvarez was a 9-to-2 betting favorite. Those odds seemed long. Sergey Kovalev’s reach and jab had given Canelo trouble when they fought in 2019. Bivol has a better jab than Kovalev and his footwork is far superior to Sergey’s. Most likely, Dmitry would have been favored over all of Canelo’s previous opponents with the possible exception of Golovkin.

“He has good power,” Bivol said of Canelo. “He has good skills. First of all, he’s a good fighter. But he’s a man and he had a loss and draw. If you believe in your skills, if you’re a good boxer, you could make him one more loss. I have enough to win this fight.”

“I chose Bivol because he’s a great fighter,” Canelo said in response. “He’s a fighter who fights at distance, good distance. He moves; he’s fast for the division; he’s strong. He’s, for me, the best fighter at 175. I saw him many times. He knows what to do in the ring. He’s a champion for a long time. I know what kind of fighter he is but I don’t care. I’m in my prime and I have a lot of skills. I want to make history in my career and I’m gonna continue doing it with this guy.”

*

I didn’t watch Canelo-Bivol live on Saturday night. That might sound odd for a writer who would be writing about the fight. But it was a matter of principle.

I admire Canelo Alvarez as a fighter and a person. I’ve been in his dressing room in the hours before and after five of his biggest fights and hope to be there again in the future. But Bivol (who was born in Kyrgyzstan) is a Russian citizen and has lived in Russia since age eleven. I agree with Vitali and Wladimir Klitschko who voiced the view that, given Russia’s brutal aggression in Ukraine, Bivol shouldn’t have been chosen to fight Canelo. That, to me, would have been an appropriate extension of the economic sanctions currently in place against Russia.

DAZN and Matchroom took a contrary view. So did the world sanctioning organizations. On March 28, the WBA announced that it would sanction Canelo-Bivol for its 175-pound title (and the lucrative sanctioning fee that accompanied its sanction).

Two days later, after a trip to the Middle East that saw him wholeheartedly endorse Daniel Kinahan’s involvement in boxing, WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman declared, “I’m glad that this fight is taking place and when they are in that ring, they can show that boxing is far above politics. It is a sensitive issue because of what is happening, but we have also said that the boxers are not to blame for anything. I am happy that this fight is taking place. It has nothing to do with the conflict.”

But sports are not “above politics.” For the past century, sports have been very much a part of politics. Adolph Hitler weaponized the 1936 Olympics as a propaganda weapon for Nazi Germany. Sports boycotts were an important tool in the struggle to overcome apartheid in South Africa. The Saudi Arabian government is currently engaged in “sports washing” at the highest level. As things now stand, Russian players will not be allowed to compete at Wimbledon this year because of the invasion of Ukraine.

Cinco de Mayo weekend celebrates Mexico’s victory over the French Empire (another invading force) at the Battle of Pueblo in 1862. The choice of Bivol as Canelo’s opponent on May 7 was ill-matched to that remembrance. I decided long ago that, as a personal protest, I wouldn’t buy the fight on pay-per-view. After it was over, I watched it on YouTube.

Each fighter had weighed in on Friday within a shade of 175 pounds. Bivol likely weighed significantly more on fight night. At six-feet tall, Dmitry enjoyed a four-inch advantage in height over Canelo with a commensurate edge in reach.

The Mexican and United States national anthems were sung in the ring prior to the fight but not the Russian anthem.

Before the fight, Bivol had said, “This is my chance to show all people my skills. And if I want to show my skills, I have to take the risks. This is a fight against the best fighter in the world, and you use everything. You have to risk every time when you see it. Not sometimes, every time.”

That said; Bivol fought a cautious fight. There were few if any highlight-reel moments. Dmitry used deft footwork to maximize his advantage in size and reach and, with his jab, dictate the distance between the fighters for most of the night. Canelo was rarely able to land cleanly. When he did, Dmitry took the punches well. And because Canelo was unable to launch a sustained body attack, he was unable to wear Bivol down and come on strong in the late rounds as he often does.

Jack Blackburn (Joe Louis’s trainer) was once asked to explain the key to boxing and answered, “If you get hit, hit the other fellow before he can hit you again.”

Against Bivol, Canelo couldn’t do that. According to CompuBox, he landed only 84 punches over twelve rounds and was out-landed in every stanza. The fight was reminiscent of his 2013 outing against Floyd Mayweather except, with Bivol, size was a more important factor than experience. Canelo could only do his best. And his best on Saturday night wasn’t good enough against a highly-skilled, bigger, equally determined opponent.

The judges (Tim Cheatham, Dave Moretti, and Steve Weisfeld) scored the fight identically. Each one gave rounds one through four and round nine to Canelo for a 115-113 tally in Bivol’s favor. Many observers felt that the judges were kind to Canelo with regard to rounds one through four.

As for what comes next; prior to Canelo-Bivol, the road map for Canelo seemed clear. There were plans for him to fight Gennady Golovkin on September 17. And Canelo had expressed the desire to unify the four major 175-pound belts as he’d done with the titles at 168 pounds. “I like the idea to be undisputed in two weight classes,” he said. “For me, it’s a really good thing for my legacy.” There was even talk of Canelo moving up further on the scales to fight Oleksandr Usyk at contract weight of 201 pounds. “I like it,” Canelo said. “Why not?”

The best move for Canelo now might be to say, “I’m at my best at 168-pounds; that’s where I want to stay,” and fight Golovkin in September. But that fight is currently on hold and, as a consequence of Canelo-Bivol, will be somewhat devalued if it happens. Alternatively, Canelo has a contractual right to an immediate rematch against Bivol and could exercise that right.

After Canelo-Bivol, Eddie Hearn declared, “The big rematch with Dmitry Bivol in September is now in play.” When asked if he wanted the rematch, Canelo responded, “Of course I do. It doesn’t end like this.”

That might not be a wise move for Canelo.

Meanwhile, apart from its merits as a fight, Canelo-Bivol was significant because of what it told boxing fans about DAZN.

On May 10, 2018, Eddie Hearn and Perform Group CEO Simon Denyer announced a joint venture at a press conference in New York. Speaking about what was touted as a one-billion-dollar, eight-year joint licensing agreement to provide content for DAZN, Hearn proclaimed, “We’re here to change the game and elevate boxing to a new level for fight fans in America. We have the dates, the money, and the platform. We were dangerous without this. But with this money and this platform, omigod! We have by far the biggest rights budget in the sport of boxing and we’re going to be ultra-competitive. We’re going to put on the greatest shows with the greatest talent. This is a brand new era for boxing in the U.S. We’re here and we mean business. We have money never seen before in the sport of boxing. If I fail here, I’m a disgrace.”

DAZN tried to position Matchroom as the UFC of boxing and Hearn as Dana White. It didn’t work. The network that assured boxing fans that “pay-per-view is dead” doesn’t looking so healthy itself these days.

It’s not enough to be a streaming network. A streaming network has to stream content that the public wants.

Last year, Hearn told IFL TV, “Our sport, our brand, needs to thrive. But you only do that by making the big fights and making the fights that people want to see. We cannot afford sh** fights where fighters get a fortune but don’t deliver for the broadcasters because they will kill the sport. I want to show how great boxing is. But we only do that by showing great fights.”

Unfortunately, DAZN has given the public very few great fights. Nor (with the exception of raising Katie Taylor’s profile in the United States) has it made any stars. If anything, it has taken already-made stars and made them smaller.

DAZN doesn’t release subscription numbers. But SportBusiness.com has reported that the network lost $1.4 billion in 2019 and $1.3 billion dollars in 2020. DAZN’s boxing operation might be the biggest money-loser in the history of boxing.

Part of the problem has been that, when DAZN signed its multi-year deal with Matchroom, it made the same mistake that too many other networks make. It gave away its biggest bargaining chip – dates.

HBO Boxing was as good as it was during the glory years, in part, because Time Warner Sports president Seth Abraham resisted the temptation to align the network with one promoter. One of the key factors in the subsequent decline of HBO Sports was the decision by Abraham’s successor to heavily align the network with Al Haymon.

DAZN would have been better served by launching as an open shop and forcing promoters to compete for its dollars. It might have taken a few years for the contracts that some promoters had with other networks to run out. But DAZN said it was in boxing for the long haul.

Now, four years after its launch, where is DAZN? Keith Idec answered that question when he referenced DAZN’s schedule for early-2022 as “heavy on fights in England and short on meaningful fights in its underserved U.S. market.”

Indeed, DAZN appears to have largely abandoned its plans to conquer America. Last year, DAZN Group chairman Kevin Mayer was interviewed by Alex Sherman on CNBC and asked, “Is there any avenue that you can foresee that would allow DAZN to be a bigger factor in the United States?”

“It’s conceivable,” Mayer answered, “in the future, theoretically, that DAZN could make inroads here. I just think that, for the time being and for the medium term, we really need to focus on Europe and Asia.”

In addition to its reliance on Matchroom, DAZN has also done business with Golden Boy Promotions. It was Golden Boy that originally brought Canelo (as well as Ryan Garcia, Vergil Ortiz, and Jaime Munguia) to DAZN. But Matchroom will be DAZN’s primary content provider for the foreseeable future. In June 2021, DAZN and Matchroom announced a five-year deal that calls for at least sixteen Matchroom fight cards in the United Kingdom to be available exclusively to DAZN subscribers in the UK and Ireland each year. These fights and other Matchroom offerings will also be shown on DAZN in the United States and other designated markets around the world.

More significantly, perhaps, DAZN has abandoned its previous pledge that boxing fans will see the best fights on DAZN for one low monthly subscription price.

As noted above, DAZN streamed six of Canelo Alvarez’s previous outings as part of its subscription package. Canelo-Bivol was a pay-per-view event that cost current DAZN subscribers $59.99 and was sold to others for $79.99. Oleksandr Usyk’s upcoming title defense against Anthony Joshua is also expected to be on DAZN-PPV.

Pay-per-view is dead?

“I’m not personally shirking away from comments we made about pay-per-view four years ago,” DAZN executive vice president Joe Markowski said recently. “I’m not gonna try and pretend that was just a marketing campaign or I was just poking the bear. We’re humble enough and honest enough to admit that we maybe, in hindsight, got that wrong. I’d be insincere if I said, ‘You know, we were only joking about that.’ We believed it at the time.”

But there are questions as to whether DAZN’s hybrid subscription-pay-per-view model will be any more successful than its previous business plan. Canelo’s most recent fight (against Caleb Plant) generated an estimated 800,000 pay-per-view buys, showing that his economic appeal remains strong. But Canelo-Plant had the enormous CBS-Showtime platform to sell pay-per-view buys. DAZN only has DAZN.

Canelo Alvarez was DAZN’s standard bearer and the best hope to lead DAZN out of the wilderness. Let’s face it. The outcome of Canelo-Bivol was not good for DAZN. Anthony Joshua (even though he wasn’t locked into a long-term contract with the network) was a standard bearer of sorts for DAZN in the United States. Then Joshua suffered a shocking loss to Andy Ruiz. But Joshua-Ruiz was an exciting fight that boxing fans wanted to see again. Raise your hands. How many people reading this column want to pay $79.99 to watch Canelo-Bivol II?

Thus, the following colloquy that’s making the rounds:

Genie: I will grant you one wish.

Aladdin: I want to live forever.

Genie: I can’t grant wishes like that.

Aladdin: Okay; I want to live until DAZN turns a profit.

Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His most recent book – Broken Dreams: Another Year Inside Boxing – was published by the University of Arkansas Press. In 2004, the Boxing Writers Association of America honored Hauser with the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism. In 2019, he was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

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Thomas Hauser is the author of 52 books. In 2005, he was honored by the Boxing Writers Association of America, which bestowed the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism upon him. He was the first Internet writer ever to receive that award. In 2019, Hauser was chosen for boxing's highest honor: induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Lennox Lewis has observed, “A hundred years from now, if people want to learn about boxing in this era, they’ll read Thomas Hauser.”

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Floyd Mayweather has Another Phenom and his name is Curmel Moton

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Floyd Mayweather has Another Phenom and his name is Curmel Moton

In any endeavor, the defining feature of a phenom is his youth. Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Bryce Harper was a phenom. He was on the radar screen of baseball’s most powerful player agents when he was 14 years old.

Curmel Moton, who turns 19 in June, is a phenom. Of all the young boxing stars out there, wrote James Slater in July of last year, “Curmel Moton is the one to get most excited about.”

Moton was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. His father Curtis Moton, a barber by trade, was a big boxing fan and specifically a big fan of Floyd Mayweather Jr. When Curmel was six, Curtis packed up his wife (Curmel’s stepmom) and his son and moved to Las Vegas. Curtis wanted his son to get involved in boxing and there was no better place to develop one’s latent talents than in Las Vegas where many of the sport’s top practitioners came to train.

Many father-son relationships have been ruined, or at least frayed, by a father’s unrealistic expectations for his son, but when it came to boxing, the boy was a natural and he felt right at home in the gym.

The gym the Motons patronized was the Mayweather Boxing Club. Curtis took his son there in hopes of catching the eye of the proprietor. “Floyd would occasionally drop by the gym and I was there so often that he came to recognize me,” says Curmel. What he fails to add is that the trainers there had Floyd’s ear. “This kid is special,” they told him.

It costs a great deal of money for a kid to travel around the country competing in a slew of amateur boxing tournaments. Only a few have the luxury of a sponsor. For the vast majority, fund raisers such as car washes keep the wheels greased.

Floyd Mayweather stepped in with the financial backing needed for the Motons to canvas the country in tournaments. As an amateur, Curmel was — take your pick — 156-7 or 144-6 or 61-3 (the latter figure from boxrec). Regardless, at virtually every tournament at which he appeared, Curmel Moton was the cock of the walk.

Before the pandemic, Floyd Mayweather Jr had a stable of boxers he promoted under the banner of “The Money Team.” In talking about his boxers, Floyd was understated with one glaring exception – Gervonta “Tank” Davis, now one of boxing’s top earners.

When Floyd took to praising Curmel Moton with the same effusive language, folks stood up and took notice.

Curmel made his pro debut on Sept. 30, 2023, at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on the undercard of the super middleweight title fight between Canelo Alvarez and Jermell Charlo. After stopping his opponent in the opening round, he addressed a flock of reporters in the media room with Floyd standing at his side. “I felt ready,” he said, “I knew I had Floyd behind me. He believes in me. I had the utmost confidence going into the fight. And I went in there and did what I do.”

Floyd ventured the opinion that Curmel was already a better fighter than Leigh Wood, the reigning WBA world featherweight champion who would successfully defend his belt the following week.

Moton’s boxing style has been described as a blend of Floyd Mayweather and Tank Davis. “I grew up watching Floyd, so it’s natural I have some similarities to him,” says Curmel who sparred with Tank in late November of 2021 as Davis was preparing for his match with Isaac “Pitbull” Cruz. Curmell says he did okay. He was then 15 years old and still in school; he dropped out as soon as he reached the age of 16.

Curmel is now 7-0 with six KOs, four coming in the opening round. He pitched an 8-round shutout the only time he was taken the distance. It’s not yet official, but he returns to the ring on May 31 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas where Caleb Plant and Jermall Charlo are co-featured in matches conceived as tune-ups for a fall showdown. The fight card will reportedly be free for Amazon Prime Video subscribers.

Curmel’s presumptive opponent is Renny Viamonte, a 28-year-old Las Vegas-based Cuban with a 4-1-1 (2) record. It will be Curmel’s first professional fight with Kofi Jantuah the chief voice in his corner. A two-time world title challenger who began his career in his native Ghana, the 50-year-old Jantuah has worked almost exclusively with amateurs, a recent exception being Mikaela Mayer.

It would seem that the phenom needs a tougher opponent than Viamonte at this stage of his career. However, the match is intriguing in one regard. Viamonte is lanky. Listed at 5-foot-11, he will have a seven-inch height advantage.

Keeping his weight down has already been problematic for Moton. He tipped the scales at 128 ½ for his most recent fight. His May 31 bout, he says, will be contested at 135 and down the road it’s reasonable to think he will blossom into a welterweight. And with each bump up in weight, his short stature will theoretically be more of a handicap.

For fun, we asked Moton to name the top fighter on his pound-for-pound list. “[Oleksandr] Usyk is number one right now,” he said without hesitation,” great footwork, but guys like Canelo, Crawford, Inoue, and Bivol are right there.”

It’s notable that there isn’t a young gun on that list. Usyk is 38, a year older than Crawford; Inoue is the pup at age 32.

Moton anticipates that his name will appear on pound-for-pound lists within the next two or three years. True, history is replete with examples of phenoms who flamed out early, but we wouldn’t bet against it.

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Arne’s Almanac: The First Boxing Writers Assoc. of America Dinner Was Quite the Shindig

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The first annual dinner of the Boxing Writers Association of America was staged on April 25, 1926 in the grand ballroom of New York’s Hotel Astor, an edifice that rivaled the original Waldorf Astoria as the swankiest hotel in the city. Back then, the organization was known as the Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York.

The ballroom was configured to hold 1200 for the banquet which was reportedly oversubscribed. Among those listed as agreeing to attend were the governors of six states (New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Maryland) and the mayors of 10 of America’s largest cities.

In 1926, radio was in its infancy and the digital age was decades away (and inconceivable). So, every journalist who regularly covered boxing was a newspaper and/or magazine writer, editor, or cartoonist. And at this juncture in American history, there were plenty of outlets for someone who wanted to pursue a career as a sportswriter and had the requisite skills to get hired.

The following papers were represented at the inaugural boxing writers’ dinner:

New York Times

New York News

New York World

New York Sun

New York Journal

New York Post

New York Mirror

New York Telegram

New York Graphic

New York Herald Tribune

Brooklyn Eagle

Brooklyn Times

Brooklyn Standard Union

Brooklyn Citizen

Bronx Home News

This isn’t a complete list because a few of these papers, notably the New York World and the New York Journal, had strong afternoon editions that functioned as independent papers. Plus, scribes from both big national wire services (Associated Press and UPI) attended the banquet and there were undoubtedly a smattering of scribes from papers in New Jersey and Connecticut.

Back then, the event’s organizer Nat Fleischer, sports editor of the New York Telegram and the driving force behind The Ring magazine, had little choice but to limit the journalistic component of the gathering to writers in the New York metropolitan area. There wasn’t a ballroom big enough to accommodate a good-sized response if he had extended the welcome to every boxing writer in North America.

The keynote speaker at the inaugural dinner was New York’s charismatic Jazz Age mayor James J. “Jimmy” Walker, architect of the transformative Walker Law of 1920 which ushered in a new era of boxing in the Empire State with a template that would guide reformers in many other jurisdictions.

Prizefighting was then associated with hooligans. In his speech, Mayor Walker promised to rid the sport of their ilk. “Boxing, as you know, is closest to my heart,” said hizzoner. “So I tell you the police force is behind you against those who would besmirch or injure boxing. Rowdyism doesn’t belong in this town or in your game.” (In 1945, Walker would be the recipient of the Edward J. Neil Memorial Award given for meritorious service to the sport. The oldest of the BWAA awards, the previous recipients were all active or former boxers. The award, no longer issued under that title, was named for an Associated Press sportswriter and war correspondent who died from shrapnel wounds covering the Spanish Civil War.)

Another speaker was well-traveled sportswriter Wilbur Wood, then affiliated with the Brooklyn Citizen. He told the assembly that the aim of the organization was two-fold: to help defend the game against its detractors and to promote harmony among the various factions.

Of course, the 1926 dinner wouldn’t have been as well-attended without the entertainment. According to press dispatches, Broadway stars and performers from some of the city’s top nightclubs would be there to regale the attendees. Among the names bandied about were vaudeville superstars Sophie Tucker and Jimmy Durante, the latter of whom would appear with his trio, Durante, (Lou) Clayton, and (Eddie) Jackson.

There was a contraction of New York newspapers during the Great Depression. Although empirical evidence is lacking, the inaugural boxing writers dinner was likely the largest of its kind. Fifteen years later, in 1941, the event drew “more than 200” according to a news report. There was no mention of entertainment.

In 1950, for the first time, the annual dinner was opened to the public. For $25, a civilian could get a meal and mingle with some of his favorite fighters. Sugar Ray Robinson was the Edward J. Neil Award winner that year, honored for his ring exploits and for donating his purse from the Charlie Fusari fight to the Damon Runyon Cancer Fund.

There was no formal announcement when the Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York was re-christened the Boxing Writers Association of America, but by the late 1940s reporters were referencing the annual event as simply the boxing writers dinner. By then, it had become traditional to hold the annual affair in January, a practice discontinued after 1971.

The winnowing of New York’s newspaper herd plus competing banquets in other parts of the country forced Nat Fleischer’s baby to adapt. And more adaptations will be necessary in the immediate future as the future of the BWAA, as it currently exists, is threatened by new technologies. If the forthcoming BWAA dinner (April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in mid-Manhattan) were restricted to wordsmiths from the traditional print media, the gathering would be too small to cover the nut and the congregants would be drawn disproportionately from the geriatric class.

Some of those adaptations have already started. Last year, Las Vegas resident Sean Zittel, a recent UNLV graduate, had the distinction of becoming the first videographer welcomed into the BWAA. With more and more people getting their news from sound bites, rather than the written word, the videographer serves an important function.

The reporters who conducted interviews with pen and paper have gone the way of the dodo bird and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A taped interview for a “talkie” has more integrity than a story culled from a paper and pen interview because it is unfiltered. Many years ago, some reporters, after interviewing the great Joe Louis, put  words in his mouth that made him seem like a dullard, words consistent with the Sambo stereotype. In other instances, the language of some athletes was reconstructed to the point where the reader would think the athlete had a second job as an English professor.

The content created by videographers is free from that bias. More of them will inevitably join the BWAA and similar organizations in the future.

Photo: Nat Fleischer is flanked by Sugar Ray Robinson and Tony Zale at the 1947 boxing writers dinner.

A recognized authority on the history of prizefighting and the history of American sports gambling, TSS editor-in-chief Arne K. Lang is the author of five books including “Prizefighting: An American History,” released by McFarland in 2008 and re-released in a paperback edition in 2020.
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Gabriela Fundora KOs Marilyn Badillo and Perez Upsets Conwell in Oceanside

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It was just a numbers game for Gabriela Fundora and despite Mexico’s Marilyn Badillo’s elusive tactics it took the champion one punch to end the fight and retain her undisputed flyweight world title by knockout on Saturday.

Will it be her last flyweight defense?

Though Fundora (16-0, 8 KOs) fired dozens of misses, a single punch found Badillo (19-1-1, 3 KOs) and ended her undefeated career and first attempt at a world title at the Frontwave Arena in Oceanside, California.

Fundora, however, proves unbeatable at flyweight.

The champion entered the arena as the headliner for the Golden Boy Promotion show and stepped through the ropes with every physical advantage possible, including power.

Mexico’s Badillo was a midget compared to Fundora but proved to be as elusive as a butterfly in a menagerie for the first six rounds. As the six-inch taller Fundora connected on one punch for every dozen thrown, that single punch was a deadly reminder.

Badillo tried ducking low and slipping to the left while countering with slashing uppercuts, she found little success. She did find the body a solid target but the blows proved to be useless. And when Badillo clinched, that proved more erroneous as Fundora belted her rapidly during the tie-ups.

“She was kind of doing her ducking thing,” said Fundora describing Badillo’s defensive tactics. “I just put the pressure on. It was just like a train. We didn’t give her that break.”

The Mexican fighter tried valiantly with various maneuvers. None proved even slightly successful. Fundora remained poised and under control as she stalked the challenger.

In the seventh round Badillo seemed to take a stand and try to slug it out with Fundora. She quickly was lit up by rapid left crosses and down she went at 1:44 of the seventh round. The Mexican fighter’s corner wisely waved off the fight and referee Rudy Barragan stopped the fight and held the dazed Badillo upright.

Once again Fundora remained champion by knockout. The only question now is will she move up to super flyweight or bantamweight to challenge the bigger girls.

Perez Beats Conwell.

Mexico’s Jorge “Chino” Perez (33-4, 26 KOs) upset Charles Conwell (21-1, 15 KOs) to win by split decision after 12 rounds in their super welterweight showdown.

It was a match that paired two hard-hitting fighters whose ledgers brimmed with knockouts, but neither was able to score a knockdown against each other.

Neither fighter moved backward. It was full steam ahead with Conwell proving successful to the body and head with left hooks and Perez connecting with rights to the head and body. It was difficult to differentiate the winner.

Though Conwell seemed to be the superior defensive fighter and more accurate, two judges preferred Perez’s busier style. They gave the fight to Perez by 115-113 scores with the dissenter favoring Conwell by the same margin.

It was Conwell’s first pro loss. Maybe it will open doors for more opportunities.

Other Bouts

Tristan Kalkreuth (15-1) managed to pass a serious heat check by unanimous decision against former contender Felix Valera (24-8) after a 10-round back-and-forth heavyweight fight.

It was very close.

Kalkreuth is one of those fighters that possess all the physical tools including youth and size but never seems to be able to show it. Once again he edged past another foe but at least this time he faced an experienced fighter in Valera.

Valera had his moments especially in the middle of the 10-round fight but slowed down during the last three rounds.

One major asset for Kalkreuth was his chin. He got caught but still motored past the clever Valera. After 10 rounds two judges saw it 99-91 and one other judge 97-93 all for Kalkreuth.

Highly-rated prospect Ruslan Abdullaev (2-0) blasted past dangerous Jino Rodrigo (13- 5-2) in an eight round super lightweight fight. He nearly stopped the very tough Rodrigo in the last two rounds and won by unanimous decision.

Abdullaev is trained by Joel and Antonio Diaz in Indio.

Bakersfield prospect Joel Iriarte (7-0, 7 KOs) needed only 1:44 to knock out Puerto Rico’s Marcos Jimenez (25-12) in a welterweight bout.

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