Danny Garcia Looked Very Sharp in Ring Return, Not That Everyone Noticed

Published

2 years ago

July 31, 2022

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After a career-long 19 months away from the ring, Danny “Swift” Garcia marked his victorious return in a new weight class with misty eyes that were not entirely shedding tears of joy. More like tears of relief, actually. The former super lightweight and welterweight world champion was discussing the reason why he had taken so much time off to reassess his life and the necessity to get his mind right in addition to whipping his body back into fighting shape.

“I was going through some mental things,” Garcia told SHOWTIME Championship Boxing interviewer Jim Gray after he had outpointed Jose Benavidez Jr. at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center in his super welterweight debut. “I felt a little dark. I went through some anxiety and depression. I was just trying my best to stay strong.

“It was just the pressure of life, the pressure of boxing. Of being a good dad. It weighed on me for a year and a half. I knew the only way to get better was to fight, and to win. I’m a fighter. That’s what I do and I love to do. If you battle anxiety and depression, get over it. That is what I did tonight. I came here and fought my heart out. I do have some dark days but I do my best to stay positive. But I felt good tonight.”

Well, the 34-year-old Garcia (37-3, 21 KOs) could be excused for shedding a tear of anguish when the first scorecard was read by ring announcer Jimmy Lennon Jr. after he had schooled Benavidez (27-2-1, 18 KOs) in so nearly flawless a performance that SHOWTIME’S unofficial scorer, Steve Farhood, had the Philadelphian winning 11 of 12 rounds, giving only the ninth to Benavidez. That 114-114 tally submitted by judge Waleska Roldan defied not only probability, but called into question the lady’s vision. Fortunately, the other two judges, Tony Paolillo and Glenn Feldman, ensured that a Brink’s Job-level robbery would not take place by favoring Garcia by margins of 117-111 and 116-112, respectively, although even those numbers were overly generous to Benavidez, the Phoenix fighter who had derided the eventual winner beforehand by claiming he was a one-trick pony, with no special quality other than a left hook which he could and would easily nullify.

Not one to easily give credit where credit was due, which would have been to acknowledge the superiority of the other guy on this particular night, Benavidez told Gray that “I’m happy with my performance. I feel like I did a good job. I took his punches like they were nothing. I honestly thought I won, but it is what it is. I’m not going to let this bring me down. A loss just makes you stronger.”

Asked if he would fight again, Benavidez – whose father-trainer, Jose Benavidez Sr., had said earlier in the day that “My son has to win tonight, or his career is basically over” – the younger man said, “Hell, yeah, I’d like to continue. I want a rematch.”

If it happens, which it almost certainly won’t, it’s reasonable to assume that Roldan won’t be seated at ringside with a pencil and score pad if the bout is held in the Big Apple or anywhere else in the Empire State. In this era of female empowerment, this latest head-scratcher from the New York City resident brought memories of another woman judge, C.J. Ross, whose qualifications for working major bouts was so called into question that she submitted her resignation from the Nevada State Athletic Commission – possibly not of her own volition — to then-executive director Keith Kizer shortly after she saw the Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Canelo Alvarez bout in September 2013 as a 114-114 standoff. The other two judges had Mayweather, who appeared to win as handily as did Garcia against Benavidez, winning by margins of 117-111 and 116-112, making the Barclays bout nearly nine years later as a virtual repeat.

A bad night, if it is rare enough, can be excused, but not if it seemingly is part of a pattern. Ross had raised eyebrows by being one of two judges who had Timothy Bradley Jr. dethroning WBO welterweight titlist Manny Pacquiao on a 12-round split decision on June 9, 2012, but that was a bit closer than Garcia-Benavidez was, although a majority of ringside reporters and other knowledgeable observers felt Pacquiao had done enough to get the victory. Roldan’s companion piece to that curious call was her 117-111 card favoring Jeff Horn in his WBO welterweight title-wresting unanimous decision over Pacquiao in Horn’s home country of Australia, another instance where many media types covering the event believed “PacMan” to have won at least semi-convincingly.

Roldan declined to comment on her rationale for scoring Saturday night’s fight as she did, and the New York State Athletic Commission also was mum, ostensibly until it has the opportunity to speak to Roldan. It will be interesting to learn if NYSAC executive director Kim Sumbler is amenable to whatever Roldan has to say and gives her more judging assignments. But justifying that scorecard might require the verbal dexterity of the late F. Lee Bailey.

“How Waleska Roldan got the score she got, I have no idea,” Farhood opined. “She had Benavidez ahead after 11 rounds. She scored it even only because she gave Garcia the 12^th. I saw a totally different fight. I saw total domination by Danny Garcia.”

Punch statistics, never an indisputable method of determining who should or should not deserve to win a fight, would appear to support the notion of Garcia deserving better than a majority decision. Although he out-landed in total punches, 233 of 746 (32.1 percent) to 117 of 600 (19.5 percent), the gap in body shots was Grand Canyonesque. Garcia connected on 153 body blows to just 12 for Benavidez.

But Roldan’s scorecard wasn’t the only mess the NYSAC might have to sweep under the rug. In the first of the three PBC on SHOWTIME televised bouts, referee Shada Murdagh waved off further action 50 seconds into the sixth round of the scheduled 10-rounder between super lightweights Gary Antuanne Russell (16-0, 16 KOs) and former two-division world champ Rances Barthelemy (29-2-1, 15 KOs) after Russell, a southpaw, registered a knockdown with a ripping right hook. Barthelemy beat the count and did not appear to be unduly damaged, but Murdagh showed he had a quicker trigger finger than Wild Bill Hickock.

“No, no, they shouldn’t have stopped the fight,” Barthelemy complained. “This is not the first time I’ve fallen and gotten up. I felt good. It was a good shot, I’m not denying that, but they shouldn’t have stopped the fight.”

Russell, fighting for the first time without his late father Gary Russell Sr. as his chief second, figured the ending was preordained regardless of whether Murdagh was hasty in making the call that he did.

“If they would have let the fight continue, I’m pretty sure later on down the road, the same outcome would have been it,” he said.

The middle bout paired 513 pounds of fleshy heavyweights, Poland-born, Brooklyn-based Adam Kownacki (20-3, 15 KOs) and Turkish national Ali Eren Demirezen (17-1, 12 KOs). Kownacki, fighting at Barclays Center for the 11^th time, started fast, winning the first two rounds, but he faded thereafter in losing a 10-round unanimous decision. It was the third straight loss for Brooklyn favorite Kownacki, who hinted at retirement, if not immediately, then soon.

“I have two kids,” he said. “I’ll have a long talk with my wife to see what I want to do. I’ve had so many fights here, so many great memories. I don’t want to go out like a loser. I would like another fight to leave my fans with a win.”

Back to the main event. Roldan’s dubious arithmetic did not and should not overshadow the excellent work done by Garcia, who claimed to feel comfortable at a career-high 152¾ pounds, but it will take more than one good win at super welter to validate him as a legitimate player in his new division, even if the WBC did list him as its No. 5 contender without his fighting even once at the heavier weight. Former IBF super welterweight champ Tony Harrison was in the house – as were Philly fighters Jaron “Boots” Ennis and Stephen Fulton Jr., supporting their hometown buddy — and he said he’d like to be the next man up for Garcia.

“It’s a logical next fight,” SHOWTIME analyst Al Bernstein said of the idea of a Garcia-Harrison pairing. “What Danny Garcia showed tonight is that technically he’s a proficient fighter, he still is a good fighter. What he would like to show now is that he can beat a proper 154-pounder – and maybe he can. Tony Harrison would be a perfect example of a really good 154-pounder for him to face.”

That is a roundabout way of saying that maybe Benavidez, 30, wasn’t, even though his record and his lineage (he has two other brothers who are quite accomplished pros) suggest otherwise. But Benavidez had his own comeback story to tell in the lead-up to the fight, and it was equal to or even more interesting than Garcia’s. He was shot in his right leg in August 2016 while walking his cat, of all things, and for a time it appeared he might never fight again. He was inactive for three years, gorging his way past 210 pounds and spending his afternoons watching soap operas as a couch potato eating, well, potato chips. He had to pare 70 pounds in order to procure his most recent bout prior to Garcia, in which he had to settle for a 10-round majority draw with Francisco Torres on Nov. 13, 2021.

All three SHOWTIME fights were worthy of viewer attention from a strictly boxing standpoint. It’s unfortunate that a referee and a judge siphoned off some of the spotlight by insinuating themselves, intentionally or not, into the narrative.

Photo credit: Amanda Westcott / SHOWTIME

Bernard Fernandez, named to the International Boxing Hall of Fame in the Observer category with the Class of 2020, was the recipient of numerous awards for writing excellence during his 28-year career as a sports writer for the Philadelphia Daily News. Fernandez’s first book, “Championship Rounds,” a compendium of previously published material, was released in May of last year. The sequel, “Championship Rounds, Round 2,” with a foreword by Jim Lampley, is currently out. The anthology can be ordered through Amazon.com and other book-selling websites and outlets.

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 289: East LA, Claressa Shields and More

Published

1 day ago

July 25, 2024

David A. Avila

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 289: East LA, Claressa Shields and More

East Los Angeles has long been a haven for some of the best fighters around if you can keep them out of trouble. For every Oscar De La Hoya or Seniesa Estrada there are thousands derailed by crime, drugs or drinking.

Boxing has always been a favorite sport of East L.A. Every family has an uncle or two who boxes.

On Friday, 360 Promotions’ Omar Trinidad (15-0-1) fights Viktor Slavinskyi (15-2-1) in the main event at Commerce Casino, in Commerce, CA. UFC Fight Pass will stream the fight card.

The City of Commerce used to be part of East L.A. until 1960 when it incorporated. It’s still considered to be part of East Los Angeles, but informally.

Plenty of fighters come out of East L.A. but few make it all the way like De La Hoya and Estrada. Will Trinidad be the one?

The first world champion from East L.A. or “East Los” as some call it, was Solly Garcia Smith back in the late 1800s. Others were Richie Lemos, Art Frias and Joey Olivo. There is also 1984 Olympic gold medalist Paul Gonzalez.

Once again 360 Promotions brings its popular brand of fights to the area. On this fight card includes two female bouts. One features Roxy Verduzco (1-0) the former amateur star fighting Colleen Davis (3-1-1) in a featherweight fight.

All that action takes place on Friday.

Elite Boxing

The next day, also in East L.A., Elite Boxing stages another boxing card at Salesian High School located at 960 S. Soto Street in the Boyle Heights area of East Los Angeles.

Elite Boxing has promoted several successful boxing cards at the Catholic high school grounds. The area is saturated by many of the best eateries in Los Angeles. Don’t take my word for it. Check it out yourself and grab some of that delicious food.

Boxing has long been a favorite sport of anyone who lives in East L.A. It’s a fight town equal to Philadelphia, Brooklyn or Detroit. There’s something different about the area. For more than 100 years some of the best fighters continue to come out of its boxing gyms. Some will be performing on these club shows.

For tickets or information go to www.eliteboxingusa.com

Claressa Shields in Detroit

Speaking of fight towns, pound-for-pound best Claressa Shields who won two Olympic Gold Medals in boxing, moves up another weight division to tackle the WBC heavyweight world champion Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse on Saturday, July 27, at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit, Michigan.

DAZN will stream the heavy-duty fight card.

Shields (14-0) cleaned out the super welterweight, middleweight and super middleweight divisions and now wants to add the big girls to her conquests. She will be facing Canada’s Lepage-Joanisse (7-1) who holds the WBC belt.

The last time Shields gloved up was more than a year ago when she fought Maricela Cornejo. Don’t blame Shields. She loves to fight. She loves to win. The last time Shields lost a fight was in the amateurs and that was three presidential administrations ago.

Shields doesn’t lose.

I wonder if Las Vegas even takes bets on her fights?

The only fight she may have been an underdog was against Savannah Marshall who was the last opponent to defeat her. And that was in 2012 in China. When they met as pros two years ago, Shields avenged her loss with a blistering attack.

Don’t get Shields mad.

Perhaps her toughest foe as a pro was in her pro debut when she clashed with Franchon Crews-Dezurn in Las Vegas. It was four rounds of fists and fury as the two pounded each other on the undercard of Andre Ward and Sergey Kovalev in November 2016.

That was a ferocious debut for both female pugilists.

Assisting Shields on this fight card will be several intriguing male bouts. One guy you should pay special attention is Tito Mercado (15-0, 14 KOs) a super lightweight prospect from Pomona, California.

Many excellent fighters have come out of Pomona including Sugar Shane Mosley, Shane Mosley Jr., Alberto Davila and Richie Sandoval who just passed away this week.

Sandoval was best known for his 15-round war with Philadelphia’s Jeff Chandler for the bantamweight world title in 1984. Read the story by Arne K. Lang on this link: https://tss.ib.tv/boxing/featured-boxing-articles-boxing-news-videos-rankings-and-results/81467-former-world-bantamweight-champion-richie-sandoval-passes-away-at-age-63 .

Fights to Watch

Fri. UFC Fight Pass 7 p.m. Omar Trinidad (15-0-1) vs Viktor Slavinskyi (15-2-1).

Sat. ESPN+ 12:30 p.m. Joe Joyce (16-2) vs Derek Chisora (34-13).

Sat. DAZN 3 p.m. Claressa Shields (14-0) vs Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse (7-1), Michel Rivera (25-1) vs Hugo Roldan (22-2-1); Tito Mercado (15-0) vs Hector Sarmiento (21-2).

Omar Trinidad photo by Lina Baker

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Arne’s Almanac: Jake Paul and Women’s Boxing, a Curmudgeon’s Take

Published

2 days ago

July 24, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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Jake Paul can fight more than a little. The view from here is that he would make it interesting against any fringe contender in the cruiserweight division. However, Jake’s boxing acumen pales when paired against his skill as a flim-flam artist.

Jake brought a 9-1 record into last weekend’s bout with Mike Perry. As noted by boxing writer Paul Magno, Jake’s previous opponents consisted of “a You Tuber, a retired NBA star, five retired MMA stars, a part-time boxer/reality TV star, and two undersized and inactive fall-guy boxers.”

Mike Perry, a 32-year-old Floridian, was undefeated (6-0, 3 KOs) as a bare-knuckle boxer after forging a 14-8 record in UFC bouts. In pre-fight blurbs, Perry was billed as the baddest bare knuckle boxer of all time, but against Jake Paul he proved to have very unrefined skills as a conventional boxer which Team Paul undoubtedly knew all along. Perry lasted into the eighth round in a one-sided fight that could have been stopped a lot sooner.

Jake Paul is both a boxer and a promoter. As a promoter, he handles Amanda Serrano, one of the greatest female boxers in history. That makes him the person most responsible (because the buck stops with him) for the wretched mismatch in last Saturday’s co-feature, the bout between Serrano and Stevie Morgan.

Morgan, who took up boxing two years ago at age 33, brought a 14-1 record. Nicknamed the Sledgehammer, she had won 13 of her 14 wins by knockout, eight in the opening round. However, although she resides in Florida, all but one of those 13 knockouts happened in Colombia.

“We found that in Colombia there were just more opportunities for women’s boxing than in the United States,” she told a prominent boxing writer whose name we won’t mention.

The truth is that, for some folks, Colombia is the boxing equivalent of a feeder lot for livestock, a place where a boxer can go to fatten their record. The opportunities there were no greater than in Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1995. It was there that Peter McNeeley prepped for his match with Mike Tyson with a 6-second knockout of professional punching bag Frankie Hines. (Six seconds? So it would be written although no one seems to have been there to witness it.)

Serrano vs Morgan was understood to be a stay-busy fight for Amanda whose rematch with Katie Taylor was postponed until November. Stevie Morgan, to her credit, answered the bell for the second round whereas others in her situation would have remained on the stool and invented an injury to rationalize it. Thirty-eight seconds later it was all over and Ms. Morgan was free to go home and use her sledgehammer to do some light dusting.

The Paul-Perry and Serrano-Morgan fights played out in a sold-out arena in Tampa before an estimated 17,000. Those without a DAZN subscription paid $64.95 for the livestream. Paul’s next promotion, where he will touch gloves with 58-year-old Mike Tyson (unless Iron Mike pulls a Joe Biden and pulls out; a capital idea) with Serrano-Taylor II the semi-main, will almost certainly rake in more money than any other boxing promotion this year.

Asked his opinion of so-called crossover boxing by a reporter for a college newspaper, the venerable boxing promoter Bob Arum said, “It’s not my bag but folks who don’t like it shouldn’t get too worked up over it because no one is stealing from anybody.” True enough, but for some of us, the phenomenon is distressing.

—

The next big women’s fight happens Saturday in Detroit where Claressa Shields seeks a world title in a third weight class against WBC heavyweight belt-holder Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse.

A two-time Olympic gold medalist, undefeated in 14 fights as a pro, Shields is very good, arguably the best female boxer of her generation which makes her, arguably, the best female boxer of all time. But turning away Lepage-Joanisse (7-1, 2 KOs) won’t elevate her stature in our eyes.

Purportedly 17-4 as an amateur, the Canadian won her title in her second crack at it. Back in August of 2017, she challenged Cancun’s Alejandra Jimenez in Cancun and was stopped in the third round. Entering the bout, Lepage-Joanisse was 3-0 as a pro and had never fought a match slated for more than four rounds.

Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse

True, on the women’s side, the heavyweight bracket is a very small pod. A sanctioning body has to make concessions to harness a sanctioning fee. Nonetheless, how absurd that a woman who had answered the bell for only 11 rounds would be deemed qualified to compete for a world title. (FYI: Alejandra Jimenez was purportedly born a man. She left the sport with a 12-0-1 record after her win over Franchon Crews Dazurn was changed to a no-contest when she tested positive for the banned steroid stanozolol.)

Following her defeat to Jimenez, Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse, now 29 years old, was out of action for six-and-a-half years. When she returned, she was still a heavyweight, but a much slender heavyweight. She carried 231 pounds for Jimenez. In her most recent bout where she captured the vacant WBC title with a split decision over Argentina’s Abril Argentina Vidal, she clocked in at 173 ¼. (On the distaff side, there’s no uniformity among the various sanctioning bodies as to what constitutes a heavyweight.)

Claressa Shields doesn’t need Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse to reinforce her credentials as a future Hall of Famer. She made the cut a long time ago.

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Former World Bantamweight Champion Richie Sandoval Passes Away at Age 63

Published

4 days ago

July 22, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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Richie Sandoval, who won the WBA and lineal bantamweight title in one of the biggest upsets of the 1980s and then, not quite two years later, suffered near-fatal injuries in a title defense, has passed away at the age of 63.

News circulated fast in the Las Vegas boxing community on Monday, July 22, the grapevine actuated by a tweet from Hall of Fame matchmaker Bruce Trampler: “Boxing and the Top Rank family lost one of our own last night in the passing of former WBA bantamweight champion Richie Sandoval. It hurts personally and professionally to know that Richie is gone at age 63. RIP campeon.”

Details are vague but the cause of death was apparently a sudden heart attack that Sandoval experienced while visiting the Southern California home of his son of the same name.

Richie Sandoval put the LA County community of Pomona, California, on the boxing map before Shane Mosley came along and gave the town a more frequently-cited mention in the sports section of the papers. He came from a fighting family. An older brother, Albert “Superfly” Sandoval, became a big draw at LA’s fabled Olympic Auditorium while building a 35-2-1 record that included a failed bid to capture Lupe Pintor’s world bantamweight title.

Richie was a member of the 1980 U.S. Olympic boxing team that was stranded when U.S. President Jimmy Carter (and many other world leaders) boycotted the event as a protest against Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan.

As a pro, Sandoval’s signature win was a 15^th-round stoppage of Jeff Chandler. They fought on April 7, 1984 in Atlantic City. Chandler was making the tenth defense of his world bantamweight title.

Despite being a heavy underdog, Sandoval dominated the fight, winning almost every round until the referee stepped in and waived it off. Chandler, who was 33-1-2 heading in and had avenged his lone defeat, never fought again.

Sandoval made two successful defenses before risking his title against Gaby Canizales on the undercard of Hagler-Mugabi in the outdoor stadium at Caesars Palace. In round seven, Sandoval, who had a hellish time making the weight, was knocked down three times and suffered a seizure as he collapsed from the third knockdown. Stretchered out of the ring, he was rushed to the hospital where doctors reduced the swelling in his brain and beat the odds to save his life. This would be Richie’s lone defeat. He finished his pro career with a record of 29-1 (17 KOs).

Bob Arum cushioned some of the pain by giving Richie a $25,000 bonus and offering him a lifetime job at Top Rank which Richie accepted. And let the record show that Arum was good to his word.

A more elaborate portrait of Richie Sandoval was published in these pages in 2017. You can check it out HERE. May he rest in peace.

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