The Greatest Boxing Book Never Written and More Literary Notes

Published

2 years ago

January 11, 2023

The-Greatest-Boxing-Book-Never-Written-and-More-Literary-Notes

Sooner or later, most important boxing personalities put their name on an autobiography or cooperate in the writing of a major biography by a third-party author. But one book that would be among the most consequential and interesting boxing books ever will probably never be written.

Don King was black and from the streets. Rather than hide it, he stuffed it in people’s faces. He forced America to accept him as he was on his terms. We’re not talking about an athlete, singer, or movie star who made his mark by entertaining people. We’re talking about commerce and economic control. King shaped boxing for decades and bent it to his will. The stones he cast into the water sent ripples throughout America.

But only one major biography of King has been written – Only in America: The Life and Crimes of Don King by Jack Newfield. It’s a warts-and-all story without the all and a book that King despises.

So why hasn’t King written his own story? There have been many lucrative offers. And Don has never been at a loss for words.

Years ago, Alan Hopper (then director of public relations for Don King Productions) told me, “Don cares about his place in history. He wants his due in terms of historical perspective. But I also think that Don is motivated by a fear of sorts. He’ll keep going and won’t retire because, if he did, he’d have to reflect. And in that reflection, he’d be forced to face his own mortality.”

Writing an autobiography requires reflection. King is choosing to not do it. His book, if well-crafted, would be wonderful. But like all great magicians, Don is likely to exit the stage without telling anyone the full story behind how his tricks were performed.

* * *

Good writers do more than write their own lines. They have an ear for quotes from others. Hall of Fame boxing writer Bernard Fernandez has just released his third collection of boxing articles. Like its predecessors, Championship Rounds: Round Three covers a wide range of personalities and issues. And once again Fernandez serves up an array of quotes in the context of his articles that are worth requoting. Ten of my favorites are:

* Sugar Ray Leonard: “I could always tell in the dressing room when I was warming up if it was going to be a good night or a long night. If you don’t feel like you have it that night, it is the most frightening feeling for a fighter. It’s like you have a vision you’re about to die and you can’t do anything about it.”

* Ricky Hatton (after being knocked out by Vyacheslav Senchenko in the final fight of his ring career): “I have to be a man and say, ‘It’s the end of Ricky Hatton.'”

* Bert Sugar (on whether fight fixers, steroid cheats, and other miscreants should be inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame): “You can always make a case for somebody’s exclusion. It depends on how moralistic you want to be. But remember, this is boxing we’re talking about.”

* “Michael Spinks (after announcing his retirement at age 31 following his first-round loss to Mike Tyson): “Maybe I am too young to retire. But if people are waiting for the day I step back into the ring, they’ll be surprised.”

* Oliver McCall: “For today, yes, I’m clean and sober. But when it comes to drugs and alcohol, you’re never completely past it. You know when it’ll be completely past for me? When I’m laid to rest.”

* Deontay Wilder: “When people get dressed up and come out at night to a fight, they come to see knockouts.”

* Jim Lampley (on the death of Harold Lederman): “No one in the sport had more friends because no one in the sport was more deserving of friends.”

* Bernard Hopkins (after being knocked out in the last fight of his long sojourn through boxing): “All credit to Joe Smith. He did what he had to do. But it was Father Time helping him. I stayed in the game too long. I admit it.”

* Mia St. John: “I wasn’t the best. But I fought the best.”

* Buster Mathis Sr: “I was never a champion but I was fortunate enough to get close. That’s more than a lot of people in this business can say.”

In this latest volume of his Championship Rounds series, Fernandez recounts how Howard Cosell once dismissed him as “another no-talent newspaper hack.”

Cosell was wrong.

* * *

Hamilcar Publications was created in 2019 for the purpose of publishing books about boxing. Editorially, its track record has been excellent. Damage by Tris Dixon heads a list of notable offerings. But publisher Kyle Sarafeen has been faced with a difficult reality since his company’s inception. Boxing books are a hard sell. Thus, to keep the company economically viable, he has added books about music and true crime to its catalog. Roadhouse Blues: Morrison, the Doors, and the Death Days of The Sixties by Bob Batchelor is its latest offering.

Music was a crucially important lifeline for the youth culture of the 1960s. The Beatles were a catalyst for change in ways that were almost unimaginable. “One analogy,” Batchelor writes, “might be to think about their influence like the rise of the internet or cell phones. One moment, nobody had heard of these things. And in seemingly the next, they were staples in people’s lives.”

A wave of new groups joined the Beatles in providing the soundtrack for a global counterculture. 1967 (the summer of love) was followed by 1968 (the year of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr and Robert Kennedy, unrestrained police brutality at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and inner-city riots across America).

“The Doors,” Batchelor states, “invaded the music scene in parallel with the expansion of the war in Vietnam and its stranglehold on the nation’s consciousness. There was no way to unravel the fighting in Southeast Asia and the global protest movement from what was happening in popular culture.”

Within that framework, the Doors created a unique sound and an almost apocalyptic vision of society. “Their allure,” Batchelor writes, “was rooted in a combination of [lead singer Jim Morrison’s] satanic poet-prince persona and the pounding psychedelic sound the band created.”

Morrison had a seductive velvety voice that could turn in an instant into a shriek or howl. He was intense, brooding, melancholy, angelic-looking at times and seemingly deranged at others. The three musicians backing him (keyboard player Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger, and drummer John Densmore) were remarkably talented in their own right. They provided, in Densmore’s words, “the perfect sound bed for Jim to lie down in.”

No other group sounded like the Doors. Their music was their own and instantly recognizable. “Light My Fire” – their signature song – was released in 1967 and climbed to the #1 slot on the Billboard 100 in addition to anchoring their debut album. It expanded their fan base and brought the group to the masses.

But there was a problem. A big one. Morrison didn’t struggle with alcohol and drugs. He reveled in them. LSD was his drug of choice and he frequently drank himself into a whiskey-induced stupor.

Mick Jagger could be wild onstage but he always seemed to be in control. Morrison was unhinged.

“The more successful the Doors became,” Batchelor writes, “the more erratic Jim got. The situation deteriorated to the point that they just tried to keep him as sober as possible on show nights.” There were times when Morrison was “so loaded he could barely stand up; he was slurring and staggering.” Away from the stage, he was “drinking until he passed out and frequently waking up – literally – in a gutter or somewhere on the street. Jim was in free fall, and no one had figured out how to help him.”

“You couldn’t tell Jim Morrison what to do,” Robbie Krieger acknowledged. “And if you tried, he would make you regret it. Anyone who attempted to step into a role of authority over him became the target of his unresolved rage.”

Morrison’s conduct onstage was part and parcel of his self-destruction. He was, in Batchelor’s words, “caught up in finding out if there were limits – and then exceeding them.”

Journalist Hank Zevallos described the scene at one Doors performance: “Girls press forward against the stage. Morrison grunts, begins squirming, singing. The music weaves and screams into one climax after another. Morrison is literally raping the microphone between his quivering thighs, advancing toward the hungry girls pressing against the stage.”

Morrison was arrested twice during concerts. The first time was in 1967 after a verbal altercation with a police officer in Connecticut that resulted in the singer being maced. The second (more serious) incident occurred in Florida on March 1, 1969. Morrison was drunk and verbally abusive to the audience and simulated masturbation. He was arrested and charged with multiple criminal offenses including inciting a riot and indecent exposure. A forty-day trial followed.

“The key piece of evidence was missing,” Batchelor writes. “No one had proof that Jim exposed himself. Even for those who swore he did, their distance from the stage would have made it impossible to really see anything. There were hundreds of photos from the show. Not one proved a thing.”

The jury returned a verdict of guilty on the charge of indecent exposure. Morrison was sentenced to six months in prison but allowed to remain free on bail pending the outcome of his appeal. The case was never resolved. He died in Paris on July 3, 1971, at age 27. The cause of his death is unknown.

“What we have,” Batchelor concludes, “is speculation and educated guesses. Jim may have accidentally overdosed, snorting heroin and/or cocaine in the bathroom of a seedy Paris drug den that fronted as a nightclub. He could have done drugs with Pam [his girlfriend at the time] in their apartment and died with or without her knowledge. She was hooked on heroin, but Jim hated needles so there’s little chance that he injected himself. There is also a possibility that Jim died of a heart attack brought on by alcohol addiction and stress.”

Batchelor writes well and his narrative flows smoothly. His work is an insightful look at the Doors as creative artists and a compelling portrait of Morrison. But there are areas where Roadhouse Blues falls short of the mark.

In that regard, allow me a personal note. I was born in 1946 and came of age in the 1960s. I listened to the Doors and their contemporaries in real time and experienced the touchstones of that era as it unfolded. I was a student at Columbia when student protests shut down the university. As a young lawyer, I traveled to Ohio and Mississippi to play a small role in litigation that resulted from the killing by law enforcement authorities of four students at Kent State University and two at Jackson State College.

Batchelor takes a darker view of the 1960s than I think is warranted. Yes, the country was divided. And established institutions were fraying at the edges. But the arc of history seemed to be moving toward social justice.

The biggest concern I have with Roadhouse Blues is that Batchelor keys repeatedly on the war in Vietnam as defining The Sixties and gives short shrift to the civil rights movement. “Everything that happened in the Sixties,” he writes, “culturally, politically, economically, or socially – must be viewed through the lens of Vietnam. The war and the activism it sparked served as the wellspring for everything that happened thereafter.”

But the civil rights movement was a moral crusade and dividing force of equal magnitude.

I should also note that there’s a lot of material in Roadhouse Blues about Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, and the Beatles but not a single mention of Motown (which played a major role in defining the music and culture of The Sixties).

Moreover, as good as the Doors’ music was, there are places where Batchelor goes overboard in stating the group’s importance. “The goal of Roadhouse Blues, “he writes, “is straightforward – to examine how the Doors became the Doors [and to] think through their lasting impact on American and global culture.”

In service of that end, Batchelor says of Jim Morrison, “Few cultural icons have had a more lasting impact.” And he concludes, “The Doors can be used as a lens for looking at the era. Their experiences help us see it clearer and give us context for the whole scope of American history including the country’s present and future.”

That, to me, is an overstatement.

What’s incontrovertible, though, is that the Doors’ music speaks for itself.

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

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Thomas Hauser

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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Boxing Odds and Ends: Roiman Villa’s Remarkable Rally and More

Avila Perspective, Chap. 316: Art of the Deal in Boxing and More

Published

7 hours ago

March 6, 2025

David A. Avila

Avila-Perspective-Chap-316-Art-of-the-Deal-in-Boxing-and-More

So, they want to save boxing?

A group of guys with recent ties to the sport of boxing and bags of money suddenly believe they can save a sport that is older than any other sport since the dawn of mankind.

Boxing is the oldest sport.

When cavemen roamed the planet, you can believe one tribe bet another tribe their guy could whip the other guy. Thus began the sport of boxing. There was no baseball, soccer or horse racing.

Even the invention of the wheel was still a few generations away when men were duking it out with other men for sport.

Throughout history mentions of one man fighting another man without arms are written in the Tales of Ulysses and other literary references.

Boxing will never die. Period.

Here is the reason why?

Boxing requires only two men in their underwear with no weapons and no requirement of classes in jujitsu, kickboxing, wrestling or advance training facilities. You can prepare in your backyard with one heavy bag and a pair of boxing gloves. It’s simple.

MMA, on the other hand, requires money.

Boxing is for the poor. Any kid can walk into a gym and begin training. When they become adults, then they start paying to use the gym.

Don’t let people fool you and tell you “boxing is dying.”

People have been saying those same words since John L. Sullivan in the late 1800s. You can look it up.

The phrase “boxing is dying,” is said by people who want you to pay them money to save it. Kind of sounds like the guy currently sitting in the White House who is going to save America by firing Americans from their jobs and allowing Russia to take over Ukraine.

Don’t believe these people.

Boxing does not need saving.

Why would Dana White, who has stated for decades that MMA is bigger than boxing, though no MMA fighter can equal the purses of a Saul “Canelo” Alvarez or Tyson Fury, why is he involved in boxing?

There is big money to be made in boxing, especially with internet gambling sites being allowed all over the world. And boxing is popular all over the world. MMA is not.

More people know who Canelo is than UFC’s Alex Pereira.

I respect the UFC fighters. They put in hard work and battle injuries throughout their careers. But MMA is simply not as big as boxing. The purses of MMA fighters at the top level don’t come close to boxing’s top money earners.

Why did Conor McGregor, Nate Diaz and others quickly switch to boxing when called?

The money in boxing is much bigger.

Follow the money.

NYC

A rumble is planned for Times Square in New York City.

Vatos from Southern California are fighting dudes from Nevada and Brooklyn. Sounds like a script from the Gangs of New York.

Where is Leonardo DiCaprio when you need him?

Ryan “KingRy” Garcia (24-1, 20 KOs) will meet Rollie Romero (16-2, 13 KOs) in a welterweight match set for May 2, on Times Square in mid-Manhattan. This is one of three marquee bouts planned to be streamed on DAZN.

Others matched will be Arnold Barboza (32-0, 11 KOs) versus super lightweight titlist Teofimo Lopez (21-1, 13 KOs), and Devin Haney (31-0, 15 KOs) against Jose Carlos Ramirez (29-2, 18 KOs) in a welterweight contest.

This is the proposed match by The Ring magazine backed by Turki Alalshikh who along with Golden Boy Promotions and Matchroom Boxing are sponsoring this fight card.

It was also announced that Alalshikh along with TKO Group Holdings and Sela are forming a promotion company.

TKO owns UFC and WWE.

SoCal Fights

Southern California will be busy with boxing cards this weekend.

This Thursday, March 6, is Golden Boy Promotions with a boxing card featuring Manny Flores (19-1, 15 KOs) versus Jorge Leyva (18-3, 13 KOs) in a super bantamweight match at Fantasy Springs Casino. DAZN will stream the boxing card from Indio, California.

On Saturday, March 8, the Fox Theater in Pomona, California hosts a boxing card featuring super middleweights Ruben Cazales (10-0) vs Adam Diu Abdulhamid (18-16). Also, super featherweights Michael Bracamontes (10-2-1) meets Eugene Lagos (16-9-3) at the historic venue promoted by House of Pain Boxing.

On Saturday March 8, Elite Boxing hosts a boxing card at Salesian High in East Los Angeles featuring East L.A. native Merari Vivar (8-0) against Sarah Click (2-8-1) and several other fights.

On Saturday, March 8, an event hosted by House of Champions features top contenders Joet Gonzalez (26-4) vs Arnold Khegai (22-1-1) in a featherweight main event at Thunder Studios in Long Beach, Calif.

A Big All-Female Card in London

On Friday, March 7, the historic Royal Albert Hall in the Kensington borough of London will host an all-female card with two world title fights including a unification fight in the welterweight division.

Natasha Jonas (16-2-1) and Lauren Price (8-0) meet 10 rounds for the IBF, WBC, and WBA belts.

Jonas, 40, the current WBC and IBF titlist, recently defeated Ivana Habazin and before that edged past Mikaela Mayer in a win that could have gone the other way very easily. She will be facing Price, an Olympic gold medalist and current WBA and IBO titlist.

Price, 30, hails from Wales and has an aggressive pressure style that saw her win a battle between punchers with a third-round knockout of Colombia’s Bexcy Mateus this past December in Liverpool. Before that she defeated the always tough Jessica McCaskill.

In the co-main event, lightweights Caroline Dubois (10-0-1) and Bo Mi Re Shin (18-2-3) meet for the WBC world title.

Me Re Shin, 30, fights out of South Korea and has knockout power. She was one of only two fighters to stop Venezuela’s Ana Maria Lozano who has 38 pro fights. That says something. She lost a split decision to Delfine Persoon in Belgium. That really says something.

Dubois had two competitive fights, first, against Jessica Camara that ended in a technical draw due to a clash of heads. Before that she defeated Maira Moneo. Dubois has very good talent and is still young at 24. Is she ready for Mi Re Shin?

Times Square photo credit: JP Yim

Fights to watch:

Thurs., March 6: DAZN, Manny Flores (19-1) vs. Jorge Leyva (18-3)

Fri., March 7: free on DAZN, Lucas Bahdi (18-0) vs. Ryan James Racaza (15-0)

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A Wide-Ranging Conversation on the Ills of Boxing with Author/Journalist Sean Nam

Published

1 day ago

March 5, 2025

Rick Assad

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During the last decade covering boxing, Sean Nam has tackled, without fear or favor, many interesting and thought-provoking subjects.

Nam’s feature on Ukrainian ringmaster Vasiliy Lomachenko, which ran in May 2024 in The Sunday Long Read, falls into this category. “I had been hearing whispers, mainly from Internet chatter, that Lomachenko had something of a contested reputation in his native Ukraine,” said Nam, who found it curious that Lomachenko draped the municipal flag of his hometown over his shoulders rather than the national flag of his country after defeating Richard Commey at Madison Square Garden. “[Those whispers] piqued my interest because that was not the narrative boxing consumers in the United States were given. ESPN, which has long showcased Lomachenko, ran a spot touting his bonafides as a beloved war hero.

“I figured someone from our media establishment, or whatever remains of that shambolic, penny-click bazaar, would write it up, but a year passed, and I didn’t come across anything close to attempting to dissect what was going on with Lomachenko and his country’s people.

“The response [to my story] was overwhelmingly positive. The general reaction was one of shock. I even had a lot of native Ukrainians thank me for shedding light on an admittedly angst-ridden situation; many of them saw their frustrations with Lomachenko reflected in the piece. I am eager to see how it all plays out for Lomachenko, who seems to be on the verge of retirement.”

At the urging of a fellow boxing writer, Nam, whose work has appeared in such periodicals as (British) Boxing News, USA Today, The Sweet Science, and Boxing Scene, found time to write a well-received first book, “Murder On Federal Street: Tyrone Everett, The Black Mafia, Fixed Fights And The Last Golden Age Of Philadelphia Boxing.”

“My close friend and mentor, the writer Carlos Acevedo, suggested it one day in an attempt to get me to write a book,” he said. “Carlos is also the reason I started writing about boxing in the first place.”

“Tyrone Everett is a more or less obscure name in boxing history, but the fact he was part of not just one, but two unsettling tragedies in the sport makes him a standout case – and this is a sport in which there is no shortage of sad stories,” he said. “Here was an opportunity, in other words, to present a story that had legitimate intrigue and, crucially, had not been over-chronicled.”

Philadelphia, which spawned such fighters as Joe Frazier, Bernard Hopkins, Bennie Briscoe, Matthew Saad Muhammad, Danny Garcia and Jaron “Boots” Ennis, has long been a hotbed of boxing talent.

“For a brief spell in the mid-1970s, Everett was a hot property on the sports scene of Philadelphia. His lone title shot, in 1976, against Alfredo Escalera, has long been considered one of the greatest ring injustices: Everett lost a decision despite seemingly out-boxing the Puerto Rican champion for the majority of the 15 rounds,” Nam said. “Noted ringside observers like Harold Lederman had Everett winning handily on their scorecards.”

Nam, who double-majored in English and philosophy at a liberal arts college in Pennsylvania, went on: “Then there was the matter of Everett’s tragic death, six months later, at the hands of his live-in girlfriend, Carolyn McKendrick, who shot him in the face with a pistol. Everett was only 24 years old. The ensuing trial was a tabloid circus. Everett’s sexuality came under heavy scrutiny, as the lone witness to the shooting was a gay, crossdressing drug pusher, whom McKendrick and Everett had allegedly been in bed with on the morning of the shooting.…But Everett’s outré sexual habits were far from the only issues that were being dangled daily to the public. He was also accused of beating McKendrick and dealing drugs himself. In my book, I try to rectify some of the misconceptions that have come down to us over the years from that trial, while also playing up some of the street talk (i.e. the infamous Black Mafia) that most media at the time had snubbed.”

The fight game is a curious suitor but one that can entangle even the best and smartest of us.

“I suppose on some elemental level I enjoy watching people getting punched in the face, to put it somewhat glibly. (I don’t feel any need to over-intellectualize this.) If a poor schlub is getting the tar beat out of him by the proverbial favorite in the name of “good matchmaking,” I don’t see much there to enjoy, but when you have two skilled, evenly matched fighters, sometimes what happens inside the ropes approaches the sublime.

“A corollary to this is upsets. Since so much of boxing is engineered to produce outcomes favorable to the house fighter, when upsets happen, they almost seem like a miracle – a momentary glitch in the machine. Like when Andy Ruiz dethroned Anthony Joshua in 2019. Or consider a far more humble proceeding, an eight-round contest that took place this past year between Kurt Scoby and Dakota Linger.”

Nam talked about the particulars of that super lightweight bout.

“Scoby, the clear-cut A-side, was a ballyhooed prospect touted by his veteran promoter Lou DiBella as a future world champion and Linger was a little-known ham-and-egger from West Virginia, as crude and unheralded as they come,” he stated. “But Linger ended up stopping Scoby, seemingly with nothing more than a decent chin, above-average power, and stubbornness. Guys like Linger cut through all the hype and bull.”

Long before Las Vegas was the boxing capital of the world, New York City held that title.

“At risk of sounding like a curmudgeon, boxing in New York City has not been elite for a long time. It’s a joke, really. You can see this decline in both the amateur and pro ranks. (Indeed, the problem is interconnected.) The Daily News ditched the Golden Gloves brand and promoters seldom stage fights here anymore. By my count there were only 16 fights in the entire state of New York in 2023.

“Anecdotally, I’ve had conversations with a few amateur coaches who tell me that there has been a demonstrative drop-off in the talent level of the average open-class amateur boxer compared to even just 10 or 20 years ago,” said Nam. “This goes back to what the historian Mike Silver argues persuasively in his book, ‘The Arc Of Boxing: The Rise And Decline Of The Sweet Science,’ that there needs to be a culture and industry in place for boxing to thrive, and we simply do not have that anymore. What drives this home are the ubiquitous, white-collar boutique boxing gyms that have popped up around the city. In the neoliberal hellscape of Manhattan today, there is no place for Jimmy Glenn’s Times Square Gym or Cus D’Amato’s Gramercy Gym.”

For the most part, boxing is doing well but there are always issues that prevent the sport from fully flourishing.

“For years promoters and their apparatchiks insisted that boxing was on the upswing. There was Premier Boxing Champions and its audacious play to bring boxing back to network television. There was Top Rank and their own rights deal with ESPN. And there was the UK-based Matchroom, which barged its way into the United States market with the backing of DAZN, the streaming platform that pledged a billion dollars to this crusade. All three outfits have essentially failed to see their initial prognostications pan out. PBC is running (underwhelming) shows exclusively on Amazon Prime, Top Rank seems to be winding down its deal with ESPN and has few if any fighters on its rosters that are legitimate stars, and DAZN (along with Matchroom), after bleeding more than two billion dollars, shifted its priorities to the UK. Golden Boy, which also has a deal with DAZN, seems to be one Ryan Garcia meltdown away from tottering into oblivion.

“Now we’re seeing similar pronouncements made about Saudi Arabian chieftain Turki Alalshikh, who has quickly established himself as the savior du jour.

Major fights have been made under Alalshikh’s dictates, but is boxing healthy?

I fail to see how a sport that is being artificially propped up by a totalitarian state, with numerous human rights abuses can be considered healthy,” said Nam. “Once the spigot is turned off – and I assure you, it most certainly will – the sport will be worse off than before.”

In year’s past, there was one champion for each weight class. Now there are multiple boxers holding titles in one weight class.

“Of course there are too many champions in a single division. It is also true that this problem, diagnosed and groused about by every forum poster, blogger, journalist, and talking head, is the biggest fig leaf in the sport. Of all the jeremiads one could come up with, the ones leveled at the alphabet soup organizations are the most fatuous and exist at this point none other than to flatter the fancies of would-be moralizers,” Nam said.

“Sanctioning bodies are a problem, sure, but they are simply a symptom of a larger predicament, the sport’s inherent fragmentation. I don’t mean to sound fatalistic, but boxing’s problems are not going to go away because the WBA decides to do away with their “interim” championship belts or that every major promotional outfit starts to adhere to the rankings of The Ring magazine.”

Nam continued: “A couple of years ago I broke a story that examined the conduct between the WBA and a promoter. Using legal transcripts and business documents, I showed how, by all appearances, a promoter was paying the sanctioning body to gain favorable rankings for his fighters in a brazen pay-to-play scheme,” he said. “What happened? In any other sport there may have been a reckoning of sorts. Maybe 30 years ago the federal government might have given this a looksee. I was informed that a remonstration of sorts was coming my way. But the WBA to my knowledge never ended up responding to the points made in the article. That turned out to be a canny move. Keeping quiet actually helped defang the story. The episode highlighted a few things, chiefly of which is that, in the absence of a legitimate judicial apparatus in boxing, there are simply no consequences in the sport.”

Perhaps someone to oversee boxing would help, but this isn’t likely to happen.

“Boxing needs more than a commissioner to cure it of its myriad chronic illnesses. Would it help? Maybe. But I have a hard time believing that any meaningful form of organization will materialize in the sport anytime soon, in part because all the key industry players, i.e. the promoters, managers, and network executives, are not interested in reforming it to begin with,” Nam said. “The appeal of the sport has to do with its fundamentally decentralized nature, the fact that there is no barrier to entry and that, in theory, anyone with cash to burn and some patience, can end up with a staggering windfall.

“Ironically, boxing, despite its increasingly marginalized status, still remains a capitalist juggernaut, capable of generating obscene sums of money in a single night, with very little regulatory oversight. It’s a breeding ground for lowlifes, not surprisingly. I don’t see any meaningful change happening in the sport on the structural level. Even though there are a ton of things the individual state commissions can do to shore up the sport, that really only goes for the strong ones, like New York or California. Promoters can simply bop over to a more lenient one, a regulatory backwater like Oklahoma or Florida. That’s exactly what Eddie Hearn did recently with Conor Benn.”

This is what boxing is and what boxing does, and despite its various and sundry problems, it still captures our imagination.

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Boxing Odds and Ends: Mikaela Mayer on Jonas vs. Price and More

Published

2 days ago

March 4, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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The marquee match on this week’s fight docket takes place on Friday at London’s historic Royal Albert Hall where Natasha Jonas (16-2-1, 9 KOs) meets Lauren Price (9-0, 2 KOs). At stake are three of the four meaningful pieces of the female world welterweight title.

Price, an Olympic gold medalist in Tokyo and arguably the best all-around female athlete ever from Wales, holds the WBC and IBF versions of the title. Liverpool’s Jonas, unbeaten in her last seven since losing a narrow decision to Katie Taylor, holds the WBA belt.

Southern California native Mikaela Mayer owns the other piece of the 147-pound puzzle. If Mayer can get over her next hump – a rematch with Sandy Ryan – she would be in line to fight the Price-Jonas winner for the undisputed title. She and Ryan will collide on the 29^th of this month on a Top Rank card at the Fontainebleau in Las Vegas.

We caught up with Mikaela yesterday (Monday, Feb. 3) after she had finished a strenuous workout at the DLX Gym in Las Vegas to get her thoughts on the Jonas-Price encounter. Mikaela has a history with Jonas. They fought in January of last year on Jonas’s turf in Liverpool and Mayer came out on the short end of a very close and somewhat controversial decision.

Price is favored in the 4/1 range. To the oddsmakers, it matters greatly that there is a 10-year gap in their ages. Natasha Jonas turned 40 last year. However, Mayer, who would tell you that female boxers as a rule peak later than men (they take less damage because they don’t hit as hard and they absorb fewer punches fighting two-minute rounds) believes that the odds are askew.

“In my mind, this is a 50/50 fight,” she says. “Price’s former opponents were right there to be hit. Jonas doesn’t have a lot of wear and tear and I believe she has better spatial awareness inside the ring. The key will be if she can handle Price’s movement. I can see Price winning but, in my mind, she is no shoo-in. I think it will be a close fight.”

Carson Jones

Bobby Dobbs, the former manager of Carson Jones, has set up a Go Fund Me page in the name of Jones’ mother to defray the boxer’s funeral expenses. The Oklahoma City journeyman, active as recently as 2023, passed away on Feb. 28 at age 38 following an operation for achalasia, a rare swallowing disorder.

We are reminded that among Jones’ 38 wins was a match that originally went into the books as a “no-decision.” Nowadays, it’s no big surprise when a victory is amended to a “no-decision” – the adjudication usually comes after the fact because of a failed drug test – but the opposite is very uncommon.

The bout in question happened on May 5, 2011 in a hotel ballroom in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Jones was defending his USBA welterweight title against Ohio campaigner Michael Clark.

In the second round, Jones landed a punch that hit Clark in the family jewels and Clark wasn’t able to continue. The Oklahoma commission overturned the “no-decision” upon learning that Clark had forgot to bring his groin protector.

Fighter of the Month

The TSS Fighter of the Month for February is Keyshawn Davis who unseated WBO lightweight champion Denys Berinchyk on Bob Arum’s Valentine’s Day card before a sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden’s Hulu Theater. It was the first world title for Davis, the former Olympic silver medalist who had the noted trainer Brian “Bomac” McIntyre in his corner.

Davis was a solid favorite. At age 36, his Ukrainian opponent had a lot of mileage on his odometer (Berinchyk purportedly had in the vicinity of 400 amateur fights). However, Berinchyk was also undefeated (19-0) and wasn’t expected to be such an easy mark.

Davis decked Berinchyk with a left hook to the liver in the third round and ended the contest with the same punch, only harder, in the next frame.

A pre-fight story in Forbes called Keyshawn Davis a mega-star on the cusp. It remains to be seen if he has the personality to transcend the sport, but one thing that’s certain is that he has made great gains since his Oct. 14, 2023 bout in Rosenberg, Texas with Nahir Albright. That fight went the full “10” and although Davis won, it transmuted into a “no-decision” after he tested positive for marijuana, a substance banned by the hidebound Texas commission.

Ketchel

A note from matchmaker, booking agent, and boxing historian Bruce Kielty informs us that the Polish Historical Society of Grand Rapids, Michigan, is $1,025 short of the $2,000 required to produce a new concrete base at the tombstone of Stanley Ketchel at Grand Rapids Holy Cross Cemetery.

Ketchel, the fabled “Michigan Assassin,” was born Stanislaw Kiecel in Grand Rapids in 1886. A two-time world middleweight champion, he was the premier knockout artist of his era, scoring 46 of his 49 wins inside the distance.

Ketchel was murdered in 1910 while staying at the ranch of a wealthy friend near Springfield, Missouri. The great sportswriter John Lardner revisited the incident and Ketchel’s tumultuous career in a widely anthologized 1954 story for True magazine. Lardner’s opening sentence is considered by some aficionados to be the best lede ever in a sports story: “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.”

The collar of Ketchel’s tombstone is cracked, weather-damaged, and falling apart. Any donation, however small, is welcomed. Contributions made by check should include the note “Ketchel Monument.” The address is Polish Historical Society, P.O. Box 1844, Grand Rapids, MI 49501.

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