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The Hauser Report: The Return of Deontay Wilder

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The Hauser Report:  The Return of Deontay Wilder

Deontay Wilder, as expected, confirmed his status as a major player in the heavyweight division with a one-punch, first-round round knockout of Robert Helenius at Barclays Center on Saturday night.

Wilder, age 36, had fought twice in the preceding 34 months and been knocked out each time by Tyson Fury. Those fights showed that Deontay is exciting to watch, brave, and tough. They also showed that, while he takes a good beating, he doesn’t take a particularly good punch. And his defensive skills, such as they are, are rooted in his offense.

In some ways, Wilder’s irrational, mean-spirited response to his first defeat against Fury caused as much damage to his image as Fury’s fists did. After that loss, Deontay claimed that the costume he’d worn during his ring walk was too heavy and had robbed him of his strength. Then, without evidence, he accused Fury of fighting with loaded gloves and referee Kenny Bayless of either being drunk on fight night or taking part in a conspiracy against him. Finally, again without evidence, he claimed that Mark Breland (his trainer at the time) had tampered with his water bottle and prematurely stopped the fight.

All of that ran counter to the narrative that Premier Boxing Champions (Wilder’s promoter) was trying to build in support of the notion that Wilder is a role model. After Deontay’s second loss to Fury, in the pursuit of image control, PBC issued a statement in his name that read in part, “I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t disappointed in the outcome. But after reflecting on my journey, I now see that what God wanted me to experience is far greater than what I expected to happen. We didn’t get the win, but a wise man once said the victories are within the lessons. I would like to congratulate Tyson Fury for his victory and thank you for the great historical memories that will last forever.”

That was preferable to the diatribe that had followed loss number one. But then, when asked by Brian Custer during a September 2022 interview whether he would consider a rapprochement with Fury, Wilder replied, “Nah, never, because I know the truth behind that. I don’t condone cheating and shit like that. I know that no matter what people say. You got analysts that say, ‘If he did have something in his glove, why did you not go to the authorities?’ Why the f*%! would I go to the authorities when I have an opportunity to release my own energy and put my hands up on him in the possibility of trying to kill him and get paid millions of dollars doing it. Okay, go to the authorities and they lock him up. Then what’s next? That’s it. We proved our case. Nobody getting fed. What justice has that done? That don’t make no sense.”

In sum, people have grown accustomed to strange ramblings from Wilder. Indeed, in a February 2022 podcast with Byron Scott, Deontay addressed his decision-making process regarding his ring future with the advisory, “I’m thinking about doing Ayahuasca [a psychedelic tea that originated in South American religious rites]. That’s gonna be my decision-making process. Boxing’s put a bad taste because of what it’s done to me. It’s dangerous, politics, cheating.”

Here, one might note that Healtline reports, “Those who take Ayahuasca can experience symptoms like vomiting, diarrhea, feelings of euphoria, strong visual and auditory hallucinations, mind-altering psychedelic effects, fear, and paranoia. Some experience euphoria and a feeling of enlightenment while others go through severe anxiety and panic.”

Sounds like a plan.

Then, in May, Wilder announced during the unveiling of a statue in his honor in his hometown of Tuscaloosa that he would fight again and proclaimed, “I’m coming back on popular demand because that’s all I’ve been hearing from high and low. From homeless people all the way up to millionaires. You feel me? It’s just been an amazing feeling. So many people reaching out, telling me it’s important because, without an American, heavyweight boxing really isn’t exciting.”

Later, Deontay augmented that sentiment to include, “I knew that I had to come back because I motivate and inspire so many around the world. What really got me back to this point was like, damn, the world really needs me.”

The designated victim for Wilder’s comeback fight was Robert Helenius. Born in Sweden, now living in Finland, Helenius had compiled a 31-3 (20 KOs) ring record marked by two victories over Adam Kownacki and marred by stoppage losses at the hands of Gerald Washington and Johann Duhaupas. During the Wilder-Helenius promotion, he was hyped as “Finland’s finest” (which is a bit like being a snowball’s warmest).

Helenius had never beaten a world-class fighter and wasn’t about to start on October 15. If one were to take a computer and design a perfect opponent for Wilder to stop in two rounds or less, Robert would be the guy. Years ago, I described him as having the movement of a stalagmite. Now 38 years old, he had gotten slower and easier to hit since then.

Wilder had sparred with Helenius numerous times preparatory to fighting Tyson Fury. That experience confirmed that Helenius was a “safe” opponent. Very safe. The feeling was that this would be a payday for Deontay, not a test.

Neither Wilder nor Helenius attended the August 30 kick-off press conference at Barclays Center, addressing the media electronically instead. Later, Deontay declared, “October 15 is the return of the king. My second reign is going to be filled with joy and excitement for me and those who support me.” Wilder also advised, “I want to get back to the big fights and to giving the fans what they want to see. I’m doing it for the people this time.”

One might question whether charging $74.99 to see Deontay fight Helenius on pay-per-view was doing it for the fans or to the fans.

October 15 promised to be a long night at Barclays Center with eleven bouts on the card. The first fight was scheduled to begin at 5:00 PM. The four-bout pay-per-view telecast didn’t start until nine o’clock.

The early undercard bouts were contested in a virtually empty arena and distinguished by the fact that, in one of them, both fighters (Keeshawn Williams and Julio Rosa) wore pink trunks.

In the first pay-per-view bout of the evening, Emmanuel Rodriguez dominated Gary Antonio Russell throughout the fight. Then, in the latter stages of round nine, Russell headbutted Rodriguez, who suffered a cut beneath his right eye and fell to the canvas, stunned. Rodriguez appeared to be in no condition to continue. But inexplicably, referee Benji Esteves (who has Magomed Abdusalamov vs. Michael Perez and Arturo Gatti vs. Joey Gamache on his refereeing resume) allowed the fight to go on. Fortunately, there were only fifteen seconds left in the round. Rodriguez survived those seconds, after which Nitin Sethi (chief medical officer for the New York State Athletic Commission) stopped the bout. The fight went to the scorecards because it had been terminated as the result of a headbutt (ruled “accidental” by Esteves – a questionable determination) and Rodriguez won a lopsided unanimous decision.

Then Frank Sanchez stopped Carlos Negron in round nine of a predictably one-sided fight that referee Ricky Gonzalez stopped at precisely the right time.

That was followed by the co-featured bout of the evening – Caleb Plant vs. Anthony Dirrell in a fight styled by the WBC as a 168-pound title-elimination contest.

One year ago, Plant had a 21-0 record with 12 knockouts and was the IBF 168-pound beltholder. Then he learned the hard way in a knockout defeat that Canelo Alvarez is better than Caleb Truax, Vincent Feigenbutz, and Mike Lee (the guys Plant had defended his title against).

Dirrell, who came into the bout with a 34-2-2 (26 KOs, 1 KO by) ring ledger, is seven years older than Plant. Eight years ago, Anthony held the WBC 168-pound belt before losing to Badou Jack in his first title defense.

At the August 30 kick-off press conference, Dirrell had played the role of loud-mouthed instigator, calling Plant a pussy, etcetera, etcetera, and so forth. His infantile behavior continued through the final pre-fight press conference.

Plant took it all in stride, responding, “I definitely feel there’s a lot of jealousy there. I don’t give a fuck about where he’s from or what he says. That don’t mean nothing to me. When I beat him, it will be because I’m better than him. But he already knows that.”

Plant was an 8-to-1 betting favorite.

The fight began with Dirrell, the quicker man, looking to counter. Plant kept trying to get untracked and make something happen but couldn’t. Dirrell fought a chippy fight, fouling repeatedly in the clinches. That should have earned a warning followed by a point deduction but didn’t. Finally, in round eight, Plant took matters into his own hands and threw Dirrell to the canvas during a clinch.

Meanwhile, Dirrell had slowed down and was posturing more than fighting. The boos from the crowd were raining down.

In round nine, the boos turned to BOOM!

Plant hooked to the body and followed with a hook up top that landed flush on Dirrell’s jaw, rendering Anthony unconscious. Immediately after the knockout, with Dirrell still out cold, Caleb pantomimed shoveling dirt onto his grave.

Bad feelings between the two? Absolutely! Dirrell had been shooting off his mouth throughout the promotion as though he were to have the final word on the subject. He didn’t.

Then it was time for the main event. Wilder was a 7-to-1 betting favorite. His presence at the top of the card made the evening a happening even if Wilder-Helenius didn’t shape up as a competitive fight. That said; ticket sales had been slow. It took steep discounts and a lot of freebies to fill in the lower regions of Barclays Center. No celebrities were shown on the big overhead screen at ringside.

It should also be noted that no sport other than boxing starts its signature competitions a half-hour after midnight. Fans who had arrived at Barclays Center when the doors opened had spent more than eight hours in their seats when the bell for round one of Wilder-Helenius sounded.

They didn’t have to wait long afterward.

Wilder is a vicious puncher with an aura of menace about him. Opponents know that he wants to hurt them, short-circuit their brains. And with a single punch delivered at any time, he can do it. His record (now 43-2-1 with 42 knockouts) stands testament to that fact.

This was the first time since 2019 that Wilder had fought someone other than Tyson Fury. It had to be a relief for him to see someone other than The Gypsy King standing across the ring from him when the bell for round one sounded. Helenius had promised to bring his A-game. And maybe he did. But the fight was about Deontay, not Robert.

Helenius moved forward clumsily at the opening bell behind a pawing jab that he brought back slowly and low. Wilder bided his time; waited until Helenius leaned forward head-first while overreaching with a lunging left to the body that fell short; and closed the show with a compact righthand that landed smack in the center of Robert’s face at 2:57 of the first stanza. Referee Michael Griffin didn’t bother to count. Helenius was unconscious before he hit the canvas.

As for what comes next; on September 6, WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman announced that the winner of Wilder-Helenius would face Andy Ruiz in a final elimination bout to determine the mandatory challenger for Tyson Fury’s WBC title. If Fury were to retire, presumably Wilder-Ruiz would then be for the WBC belt. Or the WBC might engage in some sort of slight-of-hand nonsense, designate Fury a “franchise” champion, “super” champion, or some other kind of champion, and proclaim that the winner of Wilder-Ruiz will be the WBC “world” heavyweight champion.

Twenty-nine men held a recognized version of the heavyweight championship between 1885 (John L. Sullivan) and 1979 (Larry Holmes). Then the world sanctioning organizations and their enablers took control of boxing. There have been 53 claimants since then. That’s 29 champions in 94 years as opposed to 53 “champions” in 43 years. Those numbers speak for themselves.

Meanwhile, a lot of knowledgeable people think that Deontay Wilder is the second-best heavyweight in the world today. I’m one of them.

Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His most recent book – In the Inner Sanctum: Behind the Scenes at Big Fights – was just 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, Hauser 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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A Paean to George Foreman (1949-2025), Architect of an Amazing Second Act

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George Foreman had two careers as a prizefighter. He finished his first career with a record of 45-2 and his second career with a record of 31-3.

The two careers were interrupted by a 10-year intermission. During the lacuna, George morphed seamlessly into a different person. The first George Foreman was menacing and the second George Foreman was cuddly. But in both incarnations, Foreman was larger than life. It seemed as if he would be with us forever.

George Foreman, born in 1949 in Marshall, Texas, a suburb of Houston, learned to box in the Job Corps, a federally-funded vocational training program central to President Lyndon Johnson’s anti-poverty initiative. He was already well-known when he made his pro debut in 1969 on a card at Madison Square Garden topped by an alluring contest between Joe Frazier and Jerry Quarry.

The previous year, at the Olympic Summer Games in Mexico City, George endeared himself to the vast majority of white Americans (and many African-Americans too) by parading around the ring clutching a tiny American flag in his right hand after winning his gold medal match with a second-round stoppage of his Russian opponent. The scene was viewed by millions on television and the picture of it graced the front page of many large-circulation American papers.

The image would not have resonated as strongly if not for the actions of medal-winning American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos. Ten days earlier, at the same Summer Games, Smith and Carlos stood on the podium with their black-gloved fists clenched high in a black power salute during the playing of the National Anthem. Big George, although only 19 years old, was hailed as a patriot, an antidote to those that would tear apart (or further rent) the fabric of American society.

Foreman squandered the admiration that flowed his way with his disposition. He didn’t handle the demands of celebrityhood very well. Reporters found him stand-offish if not downright surly. But he kept winning.

Foreman was never better than on the night of Jan. 22, 1973, when he conquered defending heavyweight champion Joe Frazier in less than two rounds at Kingston, Jamaica. Frazier, like Foreman, unbeaten and a former Olympic gold medalist, was as high as a 5/1 favorite in U.S. precincts, but George demolished him. Frazier was up and down like a yo-yo, six times in all, during the brief encounter.

In his next two fights, Foreman knocked out veteran Puerto Rican campaigner Joe Roman in the opening round and took out Ken Norton in the second frame, the same Ken Norton who had fought 24 rounds with Muhammad Ali, winning and losing split decisions.

Then came the iconic Rumble in the Jungle and we know what happened there. Riding a skein of 24 wins inside the distance, Foreman entered that contest with a record of 40-0 and the prevailing sentiment among the cognoscenti was that he would horizontalize Muhammad Ali in the same fashion as he had starched most of his other victims.

Following this setback, Foreman sat out all of 1976. He would have six more fights before his goodbye starting with a bout at Caesars Palace with Ron Lyle.

Foreman bombed out Lyle in the fifth frame of a back-and-forth slugfest that would be named The Ring magazine Fight of the Year. Four more knockouts would follow beginning with a fifth-round stoppage of Joe Frazier in their second and final meeting and then came a date in San Juan with Jimmy Young, a cutie from Philadelphia.

Foreman and Young met on a sultry afternoon in March of 1977 at the Roberto Clemente Coliseum, a building with no air-conditioning. Foreman nearly took Young out in the seventh round of the 12-round contest but ran out of gas and lost a unanimous decision.

In his dressing room after the fight, Foreman experienced an epiphany and became a born-again Christian. His trainer Gil Glancy rationalized the voices that Foreman heard in his head as a hallucination born of heat prostration, but George was having none of it. He returned to Houston where he could be found evangelizing on street corners or preaching as a guest pastor in storefront churches. His Rolls Royce was gone, replaced by a Volkswagen, and he found coveralls more to his liking than the fancy silk suits he had once purchased in bulk. He eventually established his own church, the Church of Lord Jesus Christ, and became an ordained minister.

ACT TWO

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “There are no second acts in American lives,” but Fitzgerald never met Reverend George Foreman.

Foreman’s second act began on March 9, 1987, before an announced crowd of 5,555 at Arco Arena in Sacramento with a fourth-round stoppage of journeyman Steve Zouski. He told reporters in attendance that he would use his purse, reportedly $24,000, to build a youth center but the cynics were of the opinion that every penny would go into his coffers as expensive divorces and other burdens had exhausted his savings. When George passed the collection plate at his church, wisecracked the wiseguys, all that came back was lint.

Although Foreman had been out of action for a decade, it seemed much longer. By then, Muhammad Ali had fallen into decrepitude, dating an entire generation of heavyweights as relics. In appearance and in fighting style, Foreman scarcely resembled his former self which had the sensory effect of elongating the gap in his timeline. The new George Foreman shaved his head bald and his torso was more massive. When he sallied out of his dressing room, Hall of Fame boxing writer Graham Houston likened the impression to that of an ancient battleship coming out of the mist.

This reporter was ringside for Foreman’s second comeback fight at the Oakland Coliseum where he was paired against Charles Hostetter, a smallish heavyweight packaged as the heavyweight champion of Texas. Hostetter folded his tent in the third round, taking a knee like a quarterback running out the clock at the end of a football game. Foreman carried 247 pounds, 20 pounds less than what he had carried for Zouski but nearly 30 pounds more than what he had carried in his first meeting with Joe Frazier.

The Hostetter fight was a set-up, as were many of Foreman’s fights in the first two years of his comeback, but Big George never cheated himself. Away from the probing eye of reporters, he always went the extra mile in his workouts.

Foreman stayed busy, but his comeback proceeded in fits and starts. In his eighth comeback fight, he stopped Dwight Muhammad Qawi in the seventh round (more exactly, Qawi quit, turning his back on the referee to signal that he was finished) at Caesars Palace, but it was a lackluster performance by George whose punches were slow and often missed the mark. This was the same Dwight Muhammad Qawi who had given Evander Holyfield a tough tussle in a 15-round barnburner when both were cruiserweights, but against Foreman the “Camden Buzzsaw” was a bloated butterball, carrying 222 pounds on his five-foot-seven frame.

The bout’s promoter, Bob Arum, exhorted Foreman go back to the bushes to freshen-up and when George returned to the ring nine weeks later it was in Alaska in an off-TV fight against an opponent with a losing record.

But Foreman’s confidence never wavered and when he finally lured a big-name opponent into the ring, Gerry Cooney, he was more than ready. They met on Jan. 16, 1990, at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City.

At age 33, Cooney was also on the comeback trail. He hadn’t fought in two-and-half years, not since being stopped in the fifth round by Michael Spinks in this same ring. Since his mega-fight with Larry Holmes in mid-1982, he had answered the bell for only 12 rounds. But, rusty or not, Cooney still possessed a sledgehammer of a left hook.

Cooney landed the harder punches in the first round and won the round on all three cards, but Big George was just warming up. In the second stanza, he decked Cooney twice. The second knockdown was so harsh that referee Joe Cortez waived the fight off without starting a count.

“He smote him,” wrote Phil Berger for his story in the New York Times. “The Punching Preacher gained a flock of converts,” said Bernard Fernandez in the Philadelphia Daily News.

Foreman called out Mike Tyson after the fight. The wheels were set in motion when they shared top billing on a card at Caesars Palace in June of 1990 (Tyson knocked out former amateur rival Henry Tillman in the opening round; Foreman dismissed the Brazilian, Adilson Rodrigues, in round two), but the match never did come to fruition and Foreman, tired of waiting, set his sights on Evander Holyfield who owned two of the three meaningful pieces of the world heavyweight title.

An Adonis-physiqued gladiator renowned for his vitality, Holyfield, 28, figured to be too good and too fast for Foreman. If Evander set a fast pace, Foreman, it seemed, would eventually crumble from exhaustion. “Hopefully Holyfield will take it easy on him,” wrote the sports editor of the Tennessean. “There’s no glory to be gained in mugging a senior citizen.”

Holyfield won the fight, but Foreman – the oldest man to challenge for a world title in any weight division to that point in time — won the hearts of America with his buoyant performance. On several occasions Holyfield rattled him, but Big George kept coming back for more and at the finish it was he, improbably, who seemed to have more fuel in his tank. After trouncing Gerry Cooney, casual fans, at least most of them, finally took him seriously and with his gallant performance against Holyfield, he graduated into a full-fledged American folk hero. One would be hard-pressed to find an example of a boxer elevating his stature to such an extent in a match that he lost.

There was more to George Foreman’s growing popularity. He proved to be a great salesman, leavening his fistic fearsomeness with self-effacing humor. He developed an amusing shtick that played off his fondness for cheeseburgers and he became a popular guest on the talk show circuit. “Is this Adilson Rodrigues a good fighter?” inquired Johnny Carson. “I sure hope not,” deadpanned Foreman.

History would show that Big George wasn’t done making miracles, but there were potholes in his path. He had ended the Holyfield fight with a puffy face and with swelling around both of his eyes, but he looked a lot worse following his 10-round match with Alex Stewart in April of 1992. At the final bell, his face was a bloody mess and both of his eyes were swollen nearly shut. Fortunately, he scored two knockdowns in the second stanza, without which he would have been on the wrong side of a split decision.

Two fights later, he was out-pointed by Tommy Morrison in a bout sanctioned as a world title fight by the fledgling and lightly-regarded World Boxing Organization (WBO). Purportedly a distant relative of John Wayne, “Tommy the Duke” had the equalizer, a Cooney-ish left hook, but there were holes in his defense. A slugfest on paper, this bout played out like a chess match. Go figure.

Eighteen months after his lackluster showing against Morrison, Foreman got another shot at the world heavyweight title, thrust against Michael Moorer who had upset Holyfield to win the WBA and IBF (and lineal) titles. (The WBC version was held by Lennox Lewis; Mike Tyson was in prison.) A former light heavyweight champion who had successfully defended that diadem nine times, Moorer, not quite 27 years old, was undefeated in 35 fights with 30 knockouts.

The match-up was widely disparaged because of the alphabet soup nonsense and because Foreman was coming off a loss. “Big George has been good for the game, but has outstayed his welcome,” wrote Harry Mullen. The noted British scribe, who had been ringside for Larry Holmes’ beatdown of Muhammad Ali, told his readers that he wouldn’t be going to Las Vegas to see the fight because he just couldn’t stomach yet another dispiriting spectacle. “The most likely outcome,” he said, “is a prolonged and painful beating.”

At this juncture of his life, Foreman didn’t need the money. Although his TV sitcom “George” had been cancelled after only eight episodes (George played a retired boxer who starts an after-school program for inner-city kids), he had money rolling in from a slew of endorsements. McDonald’s, KFC, Frito-Lay, Oscar Meyer – you name it – and Big George was a “brand ambassador.” With his purse of no great importance in the big picture, George’s only incentive for defeating Moorer was his pride.

Through nine rounds, Moorer vs. Foreman was a tedious affair. Moorer was ahead by a commanding 5 points on two of the scorecards while the third judge had Moorer ahead by only 1. Foreman, who scored 68 knockouts over the course of his pro career, always had a puncher’s chance, no matter the opponent, but there was no inkling of the thunderclap that would come. This was shaping up as the sort of fight that would have the patrons streaming to the exits before the final bell.

The thunderclap arrived in the final minute of the 10th frame. It was a classic British punch in execution, a stiff right hand delivered straight from the shoulder. The punch didn’t travel far, but landed smack on Moorer’s jaw. His face went blank and he fell to the canvas where he lay prone as the referee counted him out. Before the stupefied crowd had a chance to soak it all in, Foreman dropped to his knees in prayer. Many were misty-eyed as ring announcer Michael Buffer made it formal, orating the particulars.

Six days after the 20th anniversary of the Rumble in the Jungle, Big George Foreman had rolled back the clock, recapturing the world heavyweight title, or at least pieces of it, capping the most astonishing comeback in the history of human endurance sports.

Foreman would have four more fights before leaving the sport for good two months shy of his 49th birthday. We won’t delve into those bouts other than noting that he was fortunate to get the nod over Axel Schulz and unfortunate to lose to Shannon Briggs in his farewell fight, a narrow decision widely assailed as a heist.

And the money kept rolling in. In 1994, the year that Foreman conquered Michael Moorer, a portable indoor grill that came to be called the George Foreman Lean Mean Fat Reducing Grilling Machine was introduced to the public. The contraption proved so popular that Foreman, the TV pitchman and the face of it, reaped a reported $200 million in royalties, more money than he had earned in all of his prizefights combined.

They say you can never go home again, to which Big George replied , “bah, humbug.”

Foreman’s heroics during his Second Act put a spring my step and had the same effect on many others. In the words of the inimitable Jim Murray, he was a hero to every middle-aged man and older who looked in the mirror and saw some stranger looking back at him.

Thank you, George, thanks for the memories. Rest in peace

***

Note: TSS editor-in-chief Arne K. Lang is the author of five books including “Prizefighting: An American History,” released by McFarland in 2016 and re-released in a paperback edition in 2020. Several of the passages in this story were extracted from that book.

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Sebastian Fundora TKOs Chordale Booker in Las Vegas

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Sebastian Fundora proved too tall and too powerful for challenger Chordale Booker in retaining the WBC and WBO super welterweight titles by TKO on Saturday in Las Vegas.

Despite a year off, Fundora (22-1-1, 14 KOs) showed the shorter fellow southpaw Booker (23-2) that rust would not be a factor in front of the crowd at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.

“I felt ready this whole time. I’ve been working very hard,” said Fundora.

Behind a massive height advantage Fundora jabbed away at Booker, the subject of an award-winning documentary called “The Boxer” in 2016. It portrayed his journey from nearly being imprisoned and having boxing as an outlet to success on the streets.

Booker tried to offset Fundora’s height but could not.

Fundora established his long spearing jab to maintain a zone of safety and when Booker ventured past the zone, he was met with uppercuts and lefts.

It was a puzzle Booker could not figure out.

Fundora won the WBO and WBC titles with an upset over Australia’s much heralded Tim Tszyu. Though accepting the fight within mere weeks of the fight to replace Keith Thurman, the fighter known as the “Towering Inferno” was able to out-fight the favored Aussie to win by split decision.

Nearly a year passed since winning the titles and the months without action did not deter him from stepping on the gas second round and overwhelming the shorter Booker with a blistering attack.

Booker tried to survive and counter but no such luck.

In the fourth round a right hook by Booker was met with a thunderous four-punch combination by Fundora. A left uppercut snapped the head back of Booker who was clearly dazed by the blow. Another three-punch combination and the fight was stopped at 2:51 of the fourth round.

Fundora retained the WBC and WBO titles by technical knockout.

“We were training to wear him down,” said Fundora. “I’m a powerful fighter. With this fight I guess it showed even more.”

The two-belt champion is now smack in the middle of one of the most talented weight division in men’s boxing.

“I would love to be undisputed like my sister,” said Fundora of his sister Gabriela Fundora the undisputed flyweight world champion. “

Other Bouts

Arizona’s Jesus Ramos Jr. (23-1, 19 KOs) knocked out Argentina’s Guido Schramm (16-4-2) in the seventh round of their super welterweight match. Ramos, a southpaw, caught Schramm with a left that paralyzed him along he ropes. The referee stopped the match at 1:38 of the seventh.

Arizona’s Elijah Garcia (17-1, 13 KOs) survived a knockdown by talented veteran Terrell Gausha (24-5-1) in the first round to mount a rally and win by split decision after 10 rounds in a middleweight match up.

Photo credit: Ryan Hafey / Premier Boxing Champions

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Bernard Fernandez Reflects on His Special Bond with George Foreman

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Bernard Fernandez Reflects on His Special Bond with George Foreman

For pretty much the entirety of my career as a sportswriter, I have doggedly adhered to the principle that there is a line separating professional integrity from unabashed fandom, and for me to cross it would be a violation of everything I believed in as a representative of whatever media outlet I was writing for at the time. In 50-plus years, only once did I cross that line. It was when I was in Canastota, N.Y., for an International Boxing Hall of Fame induction weekend and I had submitted the winning bid in a silent auction for an autographed photo of the great Carmen Basilio, being hoisted onto the shoulders of trainer Angelo Dundee and another cornerman after winning a title bout. I have that photo, which also was signed by Angelo, hanging on the wall of my apartment.

I broke my self-imposed rule by asking Carmen to pose with me holding the photo because he was my father’s favorite fighter, and thus mine when I was a little kid watching the Gillette Cavalcade of Sports Friday Night Fights with my dad, a former pro welterweight and Navy veteran of World War II in the Pacific before he became a much-decorated police officer. Anyway, Carmen was long-since retired and I chose to believe that on the grand scale of professional propriety, my posing with him was nothing more than a small blip on a very large radar screen.

But with the shocking news that George Foreman had passed away on March 21, at the age of 76, it suddenly occurred to me that my idealistic principles have forever prevented me from having an autographed photo of Big George hanging on the same wall with the one of Basilio, which I no doubt will regret to my dying day. If I had bent my own standards of how a sportswriter should act in his dealings with one of his interview subjects, I might even have had one of George and I together, side by side, as is the case with any number of my colleagues who asked for and were granted photo op access to the famous athletes they covered.

Why do I now place George Foreman in a separate category from so many other elite fighters I have covered during my career? Had I not rigidly held to my belief that it was unprofessional and maybe even a bit unethical to cross that inviolable line, I might now have photos of myself standing alongside Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, Lennox Lewis, Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran, Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Tommy Hearns, Bernard Hopkins, Oscar De La Hoya, Roy Jones Jr. and Felix Trinidad, not to mention such legends of other sports as Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Walter Payton, Wayne Gretzky, Wilt Chamberlain, Julius Erving and the quarterbacking family of Archie, Peyton and Eli Manning.

I had, of course, covered a number of Big George’s fights, but although he knew of me, it was not to the extent that he considered me to be a friend. All that changed, however, through the intercession of a mutual friend, boxing publicist Bill Caplan, whose relationship with George was longstanding and so deeply ingrained as to be almost familial.

My newspaper, the Philadelphia Daily News, had sent me to Los Angeles to cover a bout in which Julio Cesar Chavez was to fight Philly’s Ivan Robinson. Despite increasing pain, I somehow managed to file features on both main-event participants in the days before fight night prior to my arrival at the Staples Center in a condition that had gone from bad to worse. Bill noticed my distress in the press room and said he was going to get a ringside physician to check me out. “Maybe after the fight I came here to cover is over,” I told him, grimacing through gritted teeth. But Bill insisted that I get a medical opinion, and quickly, and the doctor who took my blood pressure said it was at a near-stroke level and that I needed to be transported by ambulance to a hospital ASAP. In the emergency room, it was determined that I was suffering from an unpassed kidney stone, a problem I had had several times previously, but not to this extent. I did not cover the fight I had come to see, of course, but I was able to make it back home alive and reasonably well before receiving additional treatment.

George Foreman did the foreword for my first boxing anthology, Championship Rounds, but he consented to do so only after he consulted with Bill Caplan to inquire if I was a writer who could be trusted not to twist his words to fit my own narrative. Bill told him I was a fair guy and that he should do the foreword once he had read the manuscript and deemed it worthy of an endorsement. It didn’t hurt that when I spoke with George by telephone, I remarked that he “owed” me. “Why do I owe you?” he asked, seemingly amused. “Because I bought two of your grills,” I replied, which drew the chuckle from him I had hoped to get.

More than a few of my colleagues at various media outlets can accurately say that George considered them to be his friends, but my relationship with him continued to grow. It didn’t hurt that I was on very amicable terms with his younger brother Roy Foreman, who lives just outside Atlantic City, and whenever I needed to speak to George directly he either answered right away or returned my call at his earliest convenience. I also don’t think it hurt that my father had once appeared in a primary undercard bout of a show in San Diego in the 1940s that was headlined by the great Archie Moore, who would later serve as one of George’s most trusted advisers. Before George’s very respectable but losing performance against heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield, the challenger confided that “Archie is the only one who can tell me anything. When Archie Moore takes you to the side to tell you something, you can’t argue because he knows. I can’t argue with Archie Moore. When he tells me something, I have to say, `Yes, sir, that’s right.’”

Maybe the only person George trusted as much as the “Old Mongoose” was Bill Caplan, and it was Bill who told his dear friend of the abject grief my family and I were enduring after my wife, who had been battling stage 4 pancreatic cancer, passed away on May 5 of last year. I would prefer not to divulge any details of something that shall forever remain private, but what George did in support of me and mine, and to honor the memory of a great lady who he never met, went above and beyond.

I included stories I did on George in three of my five boxing anthologies that already are in print (a sixth likely will come out this June), and I’d like to believe that our connection was solid enough that he shared the sort of insights that revealed him to be so much more than a devastating puncher inside the ropes. He was a quality human being in his everyday life, an individual who was widely admired and deserved to be recognized as such. But even if that were not the case, he would stand nearly alone for his ability to hit as hard as any heavyweight who ever lived. In recalling what it was like to share the ring with Big George in the epic “Rumble in the Jungle,” which Ali won by eighth-round knockout on Oct. 30, 1974, the victor said, “If you take any two heavyweights you can think of, and multiply (their punching power) by two, that’s George Foreman.”

Maybe Foreman might have fared better in that much-hyped bout in Kinshasa, Zaire, had he paced himself a bit more, but then that would not have been in keeping with his long-held belief that it did not pay for a powerful puncher to parcel his energy in measured doses.

“When you’re a puncher, it’s a real mysterious, almost magical thing,” he told me. “Guys who can’t punch, one thing they got to have is a lot of bravery because they knew they had to go 10 rounds, 12 rounds, 15 rounds almost every time. Punchers live with the fear if a fight keeps going another round, another round, they’re somehow going to lose. Every fight I ever had, I went for the knockout and nothing else. I didn’t really think I could win a decision. Even when I won on points, I felt like I failed.”

But even Big George didn’t have enough power to kayo the Grim Reaper indefinitely, although he might have dared to believe he could make that happen by dint of his indomitable will. After he won his first heavyweight championship, dethroning Joe Frazier by registering six knockdowns in less than two rounds on Jan. 22, 1973, in Kingston, Jamaica, the new king of the big men said, “All of a sudden I’m beating a guy like Joe Frazier, who could punch like he could and never stop coming at you? I left there thinking, `Nobody can stand up to me.’ I just believed that if I caught anybody with a right uppercut or a left hook, he’s gone. I could knock anybody out with either hand. It seemed impossible to me that I could lose.”

In posting a 76-5 career record with 68 victories inside the distance, Big George didn’t lose often. Now that he’s taken his earthly leave, I can only regret the fact that I didn’t cross that line and ask him to pose for a picture with me. I hope he somehow knows that I shall forever be in debt for the graciousness he exhibited toward my wife and my family when we needed just such a gesture not only from a legendary fighter, but a true friend.

Editor’s note: Bernard Fernandez entered the International Boxing Hall of Fame in the Observer category with the class of 2020. The greatly-admired publicist Bill Caplan, now in his late 80’s, entered the Hall in 2022.

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