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Remembering **World Heavyweight Champion** Lee Savold

On June 7, 1950, Lee Savold defeated Bruce Woodcock before 50,000 at London’s White City Stadium. Savold had all the best of it before Woodcock’s corner pulled him out after four rounds with a badly cut eye.
For Savold, this was the culmination of a long and checkered career. Born on a farm in northwestern Minnesota – Sioux Indian territory – the tenacious leather-pusher of Norwegian stock had paid his dues. With the victory, Savold became the world heavyweight champion in the eyes of a certain segment of the boxing universe.
A little background: On March of the previous year, Joe Louis announced his retirement. Louis had reigned as the world heavyweight champion for nearly 12 years during which he had made 25 successful title defenses. His leave-taking unleashed a battle over control of the abdicated throne and the huge profits that would accrue to the promotional group that won the scrum.
The newly-formed International Boxing Club, of which Joe Louis was ostensibly a partner, had the blessing of the National Boxing Association when it decreed that Jersey Joe Walcott and Ezzard Charles would fight for the vacant title. This wasn’t an attractive pairing. Jersey Joe had lost 15 of his 58 pro fights and was considered past his prime. Ezzard Charles was a solid technician but he was colorless and he wasn’t a full-fledged heavyweight. He had never entered the ring carrying more than 180 pounds.
This edict didn’t go over well in Great Britain where boxing was enjoying a post-war boom. The poohbahs at the British Boxing Board of Control felt snubbed. Undoubtedly at the urging of London promoter Jack Solomons, Mr. Big in British boxing, they decided to recognize the winner of the forthcoming match between Bruce Woodcock and Savold as the world heavyweight champion. The European Boxing Union sided with them.
Lee Savold’s Herky-Jerky Climb Up the Ladder
Lee Savold was 18 years old when he made his pro debut at a county fair in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. For the next-two-half years he plied the Upper Midwest circuit. His most notable match during this period was a bout in Minneapolis with Jack Gibbons. The son of Mike Gibbons and nephew of Tommy Gibbons – both of whom would be elected to the International Boxing Hall of Fame – Jack Gibbons was too slick for Savold and won the decision.
This was a rare 10-rounder for Savold. The loss knocked him back to the preliminary ranks.
In February of 1936, with his career going nowhere, Savold went west. He had his next 16 fights in California where he supplemented his ring earnings as a stevedore. Things went well at first, but then turned sour. He was 9-7 in California rings bringing his overall record to 34-23-2.
Savold returned to his home state and took a job as a bartender in Minneapolis. He was out of the ring for 14 months during which his weight reportedly ballooned to 260 pounds.
Savold was lured back to the ring by Pinkie George, the leading boxing and wrestling promoter in Iowa. Savold had appeared on three cards in Iowa when he was just starting out and flashed enough potential that Pinkie remembered him. He induced Savold to re-settle in Des Moines, put him on a strict regimen that shed pounds and built muscle, and dressed him with a nickname: The Battling Bartender.
Savold, who stood six-foot-one, was a svelte 184 pounds when he returned to the ring on July 7, 1938 at Riverview Park in Sioux City, Iowa. Under Pinkie George’s management, Savold won 14 of 18 matches preceding his Dec. 4, 1939 engagement in Des Moines with Maurice Strickland.
A New Zealander, Strickland was well-touted and folks inside the boxing community took note when Savold knocked him out in the third round.
Strickland’s U.S. representative was “Honest” Bill Daly whose home base was in Englewood, New Jersey.
In boxing, “honest” is a pejorative. As the late, great LA Times wag Jim Murray noted, Daly was honest in the sense that he never stole an elephant or a battleship. But with an assist from Savold’s Iowa trainer Hymie Wiseman, who was given a piece of the action, Honest Bill stole Lee Savold from Pinkie George. Savold went with the flow and moved his tack to the Garden State, taking up residence in Paterson.
With the well-connected Daly calling the shots, Savold procured bouts of international importance. The first of this description was 12-round, non-title fight with reigning light heavyweight champion Billy Conn on Nov. 24, 1940, at Madison Square Garden. The Pittsburgh Kid was too clever for the Battling Bartender and won a wide decision, but Savold broke Conn’s nose during the fight with a punch that Conn would remember as one of the hardest that he ever received.
The Conn fight was a good learning experience for Savold who won 18 of his next 20 fights. Both losses were inflicted by Harry Bobo, a good black boxer from Pittsburgh who never got his proper due.
Savold’s signature win during this run was an eighth-round stoppage of Lou Nova. This was Nova’s first fight since his failed effort at wresting the title from Joe Louis. Nova was no match for the Brown Bomber who stopped him in the sixth frame but he had some good wins on his ledger including two wins inside the distance over Max Baer and Savold would be the underdog when he met up with Nova on a Monday night at Griffith Stadium in Washington DC.
Savold cut Nova to pieces and the referee stopped the fight after seven frames when the gash over Nova’s left eye worsened. The match aired on the Mutual Radio Network which had more than 200 affiliates. The following year, Savold defeated Nova in a more dramatic fashion, knocking him out in the second round at Chicago’s Wrigley Field.
Between these two fights, Savold was his usual erratic self. He split two fights with Tony Musto and came out on the short end of 10-round bouts with Tami Mauriello and Jimmy Bivins. After defeating Nova for the second time, he became even more inconsistent. Mauriello beat him again, he lost two out of three to rugged Joe Baksi, was twice out-pointed by journeyman Phil Muscato, and was knocked out in the second round by fearsome Elmer “Violent” Ray.
Savold’s career was going nowhere again when he accepted a match with Gino Buonvino. Savold took the assignment on 48 hours notice, subbing for Baksi, a late scratch with an ankle injury.
Recognized as the heavyweight champion of Italy, Buonvino was unbeaten in his last 11 starts. In a shocker, Savold knocked him out in 54 seconds, the fastest knockout on record for a main event at Madison Square Garden.
The knockout of Buonvino coupled with two more wins over lesser foes boosted Savold to #3 behind Ezzard Charles and Jersey Joe Walcott in The Ring magazine ratings. That said more about Honest Bill Daly’s negotiation skills than about Savold’s true ability. He maintained that placement after he went to London and lost by disqualification to Bruce Woodcock in what would be the first of their two meetings.
Bruce Woodcock
The son of a former British Army lightweight champion, Bruce Woodcock, born and raised in Doncaster, was nothing special but you couldn’t tell that to the Brits who fervently embraced him after he won the British and British Empire heavyweight titles with a sixth-round knockout of Jack London in 1945. In his most recent bout, he had scored a fourth-round stoppage over American veteran Lee Oma who was felled by a punch that didn’t look especially hard. Spectators tossed pennies into the ring as they did whenever a fight ended suspiciously.
Savold-Woodcock I, contested on Dec. 6, 1948 before a capacity crowd of 10,700 at London’s Haringay Arena, also ended suspiciously. Savold was disqualified in the fourth round for hitting Woodcock below the belt. The crowd booed as Woodcock lay on the canvas, writhing in agony. It struck many that he was play-acting. “Savold lost the fight but showed himself to be the better man,” said the correspondent for the Associated Press.
Woodcock, who had lost only twice in 35 starts, regained his lost prestige with a third-round stoppage of South African heavyweight champion Johnny Ralph in Johannesburg and a beat-down of popular Freddie Mills, conqueror of light heavyweight champion Gus Lesnevich, in London. Mills was on the deck five times before he was counted out in the 14th round.
When the folks at the BBBofC decided that they would not kowtow to American interests in naming a successor to Joe Louis, which ruled out Ezzard Charles and Jersey Joe Walcott, Woodcock and the highly-rated Savold were the logical picks to fight for the vacant title. It helped that promoter Solomons had doctored the film of the first fight. It showed the Englishman out-punching Savold over the first three rounds when the opposite was true.
The blue-collar amusement of greyhound racing was then flourishing in London and Savold-Woodcock II was planted at White City, London’s premier dog racing facility. The stadium was configured to hold 50,000 for the fight, the maximum allowed by the authorities for reasons of traffic control. It would be written that all 50,000 tickets were sold before the ink was dry on them.
Originally set for Sept. 6, 1949, the fight was pushed back 10 months when Woodcock suffered a shoulder injury in an automobile accident; he wrapped his lorry around a tree.
When the fight finally came to fruition, the action in the ring was somewhat similar to the first meeting, only a lot bloodier. When Woodcock’s corner pulled him out after four frames, he was bleeding from his nose and his mouth and had a two-inch gash over his left eye that “spurted blood like a fountain.”
Woodcock caught Savold flush with a number of right hooks but they had no effect; Savold kept moving forward. The American invader, said the ringside reporter for the Nottingham Evening Post, was a “cold, cruel and calculating fighting machine.”
Savold had only two more fights before calling it quits. On June 15, 1951, he met Joe Louis at Madison Square Garden in a fight that was forced out of the Polo Grounds by bad weather. Beset by tax problems, the Brown Bomber had returned to the ring after a 27-month hiatus.
On this night, Savold’s opponent was the cold, cruel, and calculating fighting machine. Louis carved him up before ending matters in round six with a series of punches climaxed by a short, left hook to the jaw that knocked Savold off his pins. He struggled to get upright but wasn’t able to beat the count.
Across the pond, this made Joe Louis the world heavyweight champion once again. It mattered not that Louis had been widely out-pointed by Ezzard Charles in his first comeback fight.
Eight months later, Savold met Rocky Marciano in a 10-rounder at Philadelphia’s Convention Hall. This was a terrible fight. Marciano’s punches were mostly wild but Savold offered little in return and his torso was smeared with blood when his corner pulled him out after six rounds. In an odd comparison, the great sportswriter Red Smith likened Savold’s poor showing to that of a man with a bellyache carrying an armful of packages across Times Square during rush hour.
And so, this is how it ended for Lee Savold, a shell of his former self and his former self was never that great to begin with. His final record, per boxrec, was 98 wins, 41 losses and three draws. He scored 72 knockouts and was stopped 12 times. But for 13 months he reigned as the heavyweight champion of the world in merry old England, the cradle of pugilism, heady stuff for a farm boy from Minnesota who was once a hog-fat bartender.
Having answered the bell for 814 rounds, Savold was a prime candidate for pugilistic dementia but he beat the transmutation to the punch as it were. In April of 1972, he suffered a stroke and died a month later at a rehab hospital in Neptune, New Jersey. He was 58 years old.
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Postscript: The BBBofC never did recognize Ezzard Charles or Jersey Joe Walcott who took turns beating each other in 1951. The title became vacant yet again that year in the eyes of British interests when Louis was knocked out by up-and-comer Rocky Marciano and it remained vacant until Rocky made things whole again. With no viable alternative, the Brits acknowledged the Rock as the true champion after he toppled Walcott on Sept. 23, 1952, felling Jersey Joe, who was ahead on the cards, with a pulverizing punch that would have felled a horse.
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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.
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Australia’s Liam Paro Aims to Steal the Show on the Haney-Prograis Card

These are heady days for the sport of professional boxing in Australia. Cruiserweight Jai Opetaia is the best fighter in his weight class. Tim Tszyu is a major star in the Land Down Under and his younger brother Nikita is lapping at his heels. Then there’s undefeated super lightweight Liam Paro, 27, whose profile will grow immensely if he can get past Cleveland’s Montana Love when they meet on Dec. 9 in San Francisco at the home of the Golden State Warriors. It’s a 12-rounder that will serve as the chief supporting bout to the showdown between Devin Haney and Regis Prograis.
Forget the fact that Matchroom honcho Eddie Hearn has seen fit to dress up this fight with some frivolous title; this is a good match-up. An undefeated southpaw, Liam Paro (23-0, 14 KOs) is coming off the best win of his career. Montana Love (18-1-1, 9 KOs) would likely be undefeated too if not for a bizarre disqualification in his most recent bout. He too is a southpaw.
Paro turned heads in is his last outing when he scored a brutal, one-punch, opening-round knockout of countryman Brock Jarvis. Paro was favored, bur Jarvis, a disciple of Jeff Fenech, Australia’ most famous living boxer, was accorded the better chance of ending the bout with one punch.
Paro vs. Jarvis, staged in October of last year in South Brisbane, marked Matchroom’s first foray into Australia. Paro has had two fights fall out in the interim. The British Boxing Board of Control pulled Paro out of a March 11, 2003 match in Liverpool, England with Robbie Davies Jr. when a routine but mandatory scan showed evidence of a facial fracture. Three months later, Paro was forced to withdraw from a title fight with WBA 140-pound belt-holder Regis Prograis because both of his Achilles tendons were inflamed, compromising his mobility.
The facial fracture, insists Paro, was a false positive; the test was defective. As for the Achilles issue, that’s cleared up. “It’s in my rear-view mirror,” he says.
Paro was raised in the city of Mackay which is near the Coral Sea coast of Queensland. His ancestors migrated here from Italy to work in the sugarcane fields. Unlike so many other dads, his father Errol, a welder in the steel industry, has no boxing background and isn’t directly involved in preparing his son for a fight. Errol is with his son in Las Vegas at the moment (Errol’s first visit to Sin City) and will be there with several other family members to cheer on Liam when he resumes his career in San Francisco on Dec. 9.
When healthy, Liam Paro can usually be found training at the Top Rank Gym in Las Vegas. The boxing infrastructure of the Southern Nevada city draws prizefighters from around the world. He has sparred extensively with Jamel Herring and has boxed with the likes of Shakur Stevenson and Devin Haney. Practicing his craft with fighters of that caliber may give him an edge when he touches gloves with Montana Love.
Montana Love
Montana Love came to the fore in August of 2021 when he stepped up in class and upset Russian tough guy Ivan Baranchyk on a Jake Paul promotion in Cleveland. Baranchyk’s handlers stopped the one-sided affair after seven rounds. Five weeks later, Love signed with Matchroom.

Montana Love
What followed was a third-round blast-out of 29-1 Carlos Diaz followed by a hard-earned 12-round decision over Gabriel Gollaz Valenzuela and then a match with Australia’s Steve Spark which marked Love’s debut as a top-of-the-marquee attraction in his hometown.
The fight between Love and Spark was even on two scorecards after five rounds. In the sixth, shortly after a clash of heads left Love with a bad cut over his left eye, Love pushed Spark out of the ring and was immediately disqualified by referee David Fields. It was a controversial call; a “terrible call” in the words of Eddie Hearn. For the record, after flipping over the top strand of rope, Spark landed on his feet and was fit to continue.
A 28-year-old father of three, Love has always had the vibe of a hungry fighter, a residue of the adversity he has had to overcome. His father died when he was three years old and his mother was only 38 when she passed away from colon cancer. In 2015, as his career was just getting started, he was remanded to prison on theft- and drug-related charges and served 16 months.
It’s rather ironic that Love will be facing an Australian opponent on American soil in back-to-back fights. Needless to say, he hopes that the second installment will go better than the first.
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The Murder of Samuel Teah Calls to Mind Other Boxers Who Were Homicide Victims

There will be a boxing show this Friday at Philadelphia’s 2300 Arena, a low-budget card featuring the return of former IBF 130-pound world title-holder Tevin Farmer. During the event, there will assuredly be a somber moment when those in attendance stand and silently pay homage to Samuel Teah as the timekeeper tolls the traditional 10-bell farewell. Teah passed away last week on Black Friday, Nov. 24, another victim of America’s epidemic of gun violence. He was 36 years old.
Teah was shot in the mid-afternoon during an altercation that spilled onto the sidewalk of a street in Wilmington, Delaware, and died at a Wilmington hospital. As of this writing, there’s been no arrest, but the shooting was apparently not random. A bus driver for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority, Teah was purportedly in Wilmington (roughly 35 miles from his home in Philadelphia) to visit the mother of his child.
Samuel Teah fought as recently as this past May when he suffered a shocking defeat at the hands of journeyman Andrew Rodgers at a show in Pennsylvania’s Newton Township, reducing his record to 19-5-1. Two months earlier he had spoiled the undefeated record of Enriko Gogokhia, an Egis Klimas fighter (think Oleksandr Usyk and Vasily Lomachenko) on a card in Ontario, California. This embellished his reputation as a spoiler. Earlier in his career, he had spoiled the undefeated record of O’Shaquie Foster, winning an 8-round unanimous decision over the man that currently reigns as the WBC world super featherweight champion.
What made Teah’s death more tragic, if that were possible, were all the tragedies that he had overcome. He was born in Liberia when that country was embroiled in a civil war. The family escaped to a refugee camp in Ghana and eventually reached the United States, settling first in New York and then Philadelphia. On the day after Christmas in 2008, when Teah was 21 and working at a Home Depot, he lost six members of his family in a fire that swept his mother’s West Philadelphia duplex after a kerosene heater exploded.
For some, Teah’s violent death may call to mind the murder of another Philadelphia boxer, Tyrone Everett.
That’s an awkward comparison.
Tyrone Everett was a world-class fighter. Six months before he was shot dead by his girlfriend in May of 1977, Everett, then 34-0, lost a 15-round split decision to Puerto Rico’s Alfredo Escalera in a failed bid to win Escalera’s WBC junior lightweight title, a decision so rancid that it stands among the worst decisions of all time. Moreover, the circumstances of Everett’s murder were sordid. His girlfriend, no stranger to the police, fatally shot him after finding him with a transvestite and there was heroin in the apartment they shared. (Editor’s note: For more on this incident, check out the new book by TSS contributor Sean Nam: “Murder on Federal Street: Tyrone Everett, the Black Mafia, Fixed Fights, and the Last Golden Age of Philadelphia Boxing” available on Amazon).
Samuel Teah was no Tyrone Everett. A man of deep faith, Sam’s positive attitude, despite all his tribulations, was infectious. “Everyone liked Teah,” said prominent Philadelphia sports journalist Joe Santoliquito who, upon hearing of Teah’s death, tweeted, “he will always have a special place in my heart.”
While the circumstances are different in every case, Teah joins a long list of boxers who met a violent death. If we limit the list to fighters who were still active at the time of their passing, here are four that jump immediately to mind.
Stanley Ketchel
The fabled Michigan Assassin, Ketchel met his maker on Oct. 15, 1910, at a ranch in Conway, Missouri. In the immortal words of John Lardner, “Stanley Ketchel was twenty-four years old when he was fatally shot in the back by the common-law husband of the lady who was cooking his breakfast.”
Battling Siki
Famed for knocking out Georges Carpentier when the “Orchid Man” held the world light heavyweight title, Siki was only 28 years old when he was gunned down in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan on Dec. 15, 1925, but by then the Senegal-born Frenchman had already degenerated into a trial horse. Siki’s body was found in the middle of the street with two bullets in his back fired at close range by an assailant, never identified, who was thought to be avenging a beating he suffered at one of the speakeasies that Siki was known to frequent.
Oscar Bonavena
At age 33, Oscar Bonavena was still an active boxer when he was gunned down on May 22, 1976, on the outskirts of Reno, Nevada, at the front gate of the infamous Mustang Ranch, a legal brothel. Bonavena had come up short in his biggest fights, losing a 15-round decision to Joe Frazier and losing by TKO in the 15th round to Muhammad Ali, but the rugged Argentine was still a major player in the heavyweight division.
The shooter was a bodyguard for the brothel’s owner Joe Conforte, and rumor has that Conforte was the de facto triggerman, having Bonavena assassinated because the boxer was having an affair with Conforte’s 59-year-old wife Sally who was also Bonavena’s manager of record at this point in the boxer’s career. The story about it spawned “Love Shack,” a 2010 movie that despite a seemingly can’t-miss storyline and a formidable cast (Joe Pesci played Joe and Helen Mirren played Sally) proved to be a box-office dud.
Vernon Forrest
While all homicides are tragic, some are more distressing than others and the death of Vernon Forrest on July 25, 2009, was particularly gut-wrenching. Forrest was shot twice in the back by would-be robbers with whom he exchanged gunfire on July 25, 2009 at a gas station in Atlanta.
Forget the fact that Forrest was a two-division title-holder who had regained the WBC world super welterweight title in his most recent fight with a lopsided decision over Sergio Mora. Few in the sport were as widely admired. His philanthropic work included establishing group homes in Atlanta for the mentally disabled. His death came just two weeks after the death of Arturo Gatti who left the sport following a loss by TKO to Alfonso Gomez in July of 2007 and died under suspicious circumstances at age 37 at a hotel in Brazil.
We here at The Sweet Science send our condolences to Samuel Teah’s family and loved ones. May he rest in peace.
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Benavidez Dismantles Andrade: Will Canelo Be Next?

SHOWTIME aired its final pay-per-view event tonight with a show that aired from Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. The four-fight PPV card included world title fights in the 140 and 130-pound divisions, plus an interim title fight at 168 and the return of former two-division title-holder Jarmall Charlo. The interim title fight was a battle of unbeatens between David Benavidez and Demetrius “Boo Boo” Andrade and that was the featured attraction.
Benavidez, 26, is big for the weight class and lived up to his new nickname, “El Monstro.” He had too much firepower for the 35-year-old Andrade, a 2008 Beijing Olympian who began his pro career at 154 and had won world titles in two lower weight classes. His big moment came in the waning seconds of round four when he knocked Andrade to his knees with a sweeping right hand. The fight turned brutally one-sided at that point although one of the judges had Benavidez ahead by only one point when the sixth round ended. But there would be no seventh round. Andrade’s corner wisely stopped the fight.
A consensus 7/2 favorite in man-to-man betting, Benavidez (28-0, 24 KOs) began his pro career in Mexico at age 16. In his post-fight interview, he called out Canelo Alvarez while brashly predicting that he would be a legend before he left the sport (and you’ll get no argument from this corner). It was the first pro loss for Andrade (32-1).
Co-Feature
Jermall Charlo returned to the ring after a 29-month absence and scored a lopsided 10-round decision over Jose Benavidez Jr. The judges had it 100-90, 99-91, and 98-92.
This bout was slated for the catch-weight of 163 pounds. Charlo came in overweight (166.4) but the match went ahead. Benavides Jr, a world title challenger during his days as a welterweight, had his moments, but was outclassed by Charlo who advanced his record to 33-0 (22). Benavidez falls to 28-3-1.
Matias-Ergashev
In what shaped up as the most action-packed fight of the night, 31-year-old Puerto Rican Subriel Matias retained his IBF 140-pound title, battering Shohjahon Ergashev into submission in a match that was halted by Ergashev’s corner two seconds into the sixth round. The heavy-handed Ergashev, who was undefeated heading in, dominated the first round-and-a-half, but Matias (20-1, 20 KOs) gradually wore him down.
Matias, who avenged his lone defeat to Petros Ananyan with a dominant showing in the rematch, had become something of a forgotten man in the talent-rich 140-pound weight class, but tonight he showed that he belongs among the elite in the division. It was the first pro loss for Egrashev (23-1, 20 KOs), a southpaw from Uzbekistan who fights out of Detroit and had SugarHill Steward (formally Javan “Sugar” Hill) in his corner.
Garcia-Roach
In the pay-per-view opener, Lamont Roach (24-1-1, 9 KOs) wrested the WBA 130-pound title from Hector Garcia (16-2) with a well-earned split decision. The judges had it 116-111 and 144-113 for Roach with the dissenter favoring Garcia 114-113.
A 32-year-old Dominican southpaw, Garcia was making the first defense of the title he won from Roger Gutierrez, a belt he was allowed to keep after moving up to lightweight to challenge Gervonta Davis, a bout he lost on a ninth-round stoppage. Roach, an underdog in the betting making his first start in 16 months, had come up short in a previous world title fight, losing a decision to Jamel Herring in 2019.
Roach was trailing on two of the scorecards through 10 rounds in what had been a ho-hum fight. But he cranked up the juice in the homestretch, rocking Garcia in the 11th and flooring him with a right hook in the final stanza. Take away that knockdown (an illegal punch as it landed behind Roach’s head), and Garcia would have retained his belt with a draw.
Non-PPV
In his first start at 140 pounds, Puerto Rico’s Michel Rivera rebounded from his first pro loss (a wide decision at the hands of Frank Martin) with a unanimous 10-round decision over Sergey Lipinets. The judges had it 96-94 and 97-93 twice. Rivera, who improved to 25-1 (14) patterns his style and his persona after Muhammad Ali with whom he bears a strong facial resemblance.
It was the first fight in 16 months for the 34-year-old Lipinets (17-3-1), from SoCal via Kazakhstan. He rarely took a backward step but it wasn’t effective aggression.
In the opener on Showtime’s YouTube channel. 21-year-old super welterweight Vito Mielnicki Jr, now trained by Ronnie Shields, scored the best win of his career, advancing to 16-1 (11 KOs). The pride of Vineland, NJ, Mielnicki had Alexis Salazar on the canvas three times before the match was halted at the 2:27 mark of the opening stanza. Guadalajara’s Salazar (25-6) had been stopped only once previously.
Photo credit: Amanda Westcott / SHOWTIME
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