Brin-Jonathan Butler Reflects on Cuban Boxers, Mike Tyson, Roy Jones Jr and More

Published

2 years ago

February 12, 2023

Rick Assad

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Brin-Jonathan Butler Reflects on Cuban Boxers, Mike Tyson, Roy Jones Jr and More

In the truest sense of the word multimedia, Brin-Jonathan Butler more than holds his own.

An author, freelance journalist, documentary filmmaker, Amazon interviewer, and host of the podcast “Tourist Information,” Butler’s works have appeared in Harper’s, ESPN The Magazine, The Paris Review, The Daily Beast, SB Nation, Salon.com and the Huffington Post, among others. He also has a keen interest in boxing manifested in two acclaimed books that he wrote: “A Cuban Boxer’s Journey: Guillermo Rigondeaux, From Castro’s Traitor To American Champion” and “The Domino Diaries: My Decade Boxing With Olympic Champions And Chasing Hemingway’s Ghost In The Last Days Of Castro’s Cuba.”

A native of Vancouver, British Columbia, Butler’s fascination with the island nation began when he was quite young. “Very early on in my life, my father told me stories about how the closest the world had ever come to nuclear oblivion was during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 1962. He told me terrifying stories about being a child in school learning procedures, along with his classmates, of how to hide under his school desk if the United States and Soviet Union escalated their standoff.”

“Growing up, the way Cuba was presented to me in Canada through American media with such intensity, made Cuba seem both radioactive and utterly fascinating. The iconography of Cuba and Fidel Castro was mesmerizing, deeply troubling, and also very confusing.”

Butler draws a parallel with the movie Rocky IV which came out when he was six years old.

“Sylvester Stallone’s Ivan Drago is basically a Frankenstein-like monster created by a robotic, diabolical system. Drago shows no sign of humanity after killing Apollo Creed. He takes steroids. He’s miserable. Drago’s country appears to live in a suffocating, year-round, utterly depressing winter. Rocky Balboa and everything he represents to [Ronald] Reagan’s America is the exact opposite.”

Butler, who is now a New York City resident, went on: “So I suppose Rocky IV pro wrestling-style, jingoistic propaganda just made meeting Cuban athletes that much more shocking for me. Not only was I unprepared, but I was also very much programmed to see them a certain way that did not line up in almost any way with what I encountered.”

“In 1992, Cuba basically rolled over the world in boxing. How could this happen? And then they were even more dominant around the globe with baseball!…I didn’t understand why I only saw Cuban athletes during amateur athletic competitions when they clearly had the ability to not just compete at the professional level but dominate. Then I learned about many of the greatest Cuban athletes refusing to leave Cuba and turn professional citing that they competed for something more important than money.”

Butler never had a doubt about making his way to Cuba and interviewing some of its greatest athletes. “I dreamed very early on of having the opportunity to meet the most famous boxers who rejected millions to leave Cuba, especially Teofilo Stevenson and Felix Savon turning down the opportunities to face Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson for profound sums of money,” he said. “It still seems beyond surreal that I had an opportunity to walk into the houses of both Stevenson and Savon in Havana to have a conversation about their legacies.”

Butler spent a fair amount of time around Tyson and found it illuminating and instructional. “Tyson probably had the greatest emotional intelligence in terms of reading other people that I’ve ever encountered,” he said.

“My feeling from meeting Tyson was that he created the artifice of being the most intimidating person in the world to cover up the fact that he always felt like one of the most sensitive and intimidated people in the world,” he offered. “From one extreme he created the other.”

Tyson was mercilessly picked on and abused throughout his childhood and was always far too timid to ever fight back,” he continued. “He felt shame, embarrassment, humiliation, and ridicule about nearly all aspects of his identity and circumstances during that time. I think 999 out of a 1000 people in the milieu he grew up in would have imploded and it’s a miracle he survived adolescence. I think his feelings of worthlessness and acute sense of cowardice drove him to be incredibly disciplined with boxing early on. He told me when I first met him, ‘Everyone that’s great has the same thing in common. We all feel worthless. Why else would anyone strive? Contented people don’t have to.’ ”

“Like so many boxers, the ring probably felt like the safest place on earth for Tyson. Every fight he participated in wasn’t just an audition for his place in boxing or even boxing history, it was an audition to be accepted outside the ring.”

“Tyson is the most interesting boxer I’ve been around. Andre Ward was probably the most complex. If boxing operates as a kind of casino, most of the great boxers have been gamblers who thought they could beat the house again and again despite all the odds against them,” he stated. “Ward was the only boxer I’ve met who wanted to work in the casino as a dealer rather than gamble. He’s the only boxer I’ve ever met who bragged about the money he’d saved rather than spent.”

Another world-class boxer struck Butler’s fancy.

“The boxer I found the most fascinating to spend time with was Roy Jones Jr. For anyone who saw Jones and Floyd Mayweather Jr. in their respective primes, I have not met a single person who ranked Mayweather higher,” he says.

“Jones was a sublime talent. But I couldn’t stand his personality. After he mocked opponents and seemed to revel in humiliating them, I swore if he stuck around the sport too long and somebody beat him, I’d never feel sorry for him. And then in 2004 Antonio Tarver knocked him out cold. And, despite my best intentions, I felt horrible for Jones. Spending a week with Jones in Pensacola, Florida, for a profile, talking for several hours with his wife and kids and extended family, I adored everybody he introduced me to. And Jones is impossible to spend any time with in private and not have him grow on you. He’s extremely intelligent, sensitive, and one of the most decent people I’ve ever met.

“Unexpectedly he took me to meet his dad. They hadn’t spoken to each other in years, and it was one of the most-tense family meetings I’ve ever witnessed. It lasted for about eight seconds before Jones drove off and left me alone with his dad. Jones was willing to offer a backstage pass to his life that I don’t think the public had ever been aware of. It was one of the most unsettling profiles I’ve ever written, and I heard from some people high up at HBO that when he came into the office everyone was pretty scared to ask him directly if what had been written was true. Finally, someone did approach him to ask, and Roy didn’t say anything beyond nodding that it was true.”

Being a member of the media allows one to be close to the action without being a participant.

“Boxing has stakes that are just so incredibly frightening and intoxicating to witness,” Butler said. “The dominance and fragility of winners and losers. Life. The demonstration and performance of willpower and the risk that at any moment a human being could be rendered helpless and separated from their consciousness or even their life. I think the sport brings out a lot of the best and worst qualities from writers.”

Why then are so many boxers willing to tell their stories even if it’s sometimes unsavory?

“I think the isolation and humility at the heart of the experience of being a fighter creates that,” Butler said. “There are exceptions, but boxers I’ve encountered over the years have routinely been some of the most kind, decent, and gentle people I’ve ever met. I suspect a reason is that they’ve had to look at who they are through boxing a lot more deeply than most other people are required to in their lives and work. Greatness in boxing is almost always sharpened by fear. Very few people in the sport didn’t enter it at the outset on the basis of some kind of damage or trauma also.”

Butler said he respects and admires what boxers bring to the grandest stages.

“I think I’d just say that I love almost all boxers I’ve met and have become ever more conflicted about the sport and how it treats the individuals risking their lives,” he said. “I still think more than any other sport and occasionally more than any art form, boxing can reveal the watermark in a human soul more powerfully than anything else we have. And sometimes those characters boxing reveals also illuminate a great deal about the society and time in which they fight.”

Butler continued: “In terms of social status, you could argue the seating arrangement on the Titanic was the most important seating arrangement of the 20^th century. In the 21st Century, crazily enough, the same might be said for 2015’s Mayweather-[Manny] Pacquiao fight seating arrangement: $370,000 for one chair? Think of who was there and think what assembly of colorful characters equals it from all walks of entertainment, finance, sports, politics, whatever? Nothing comes close. Why is boxing the accident through which that group gathered to watch a terrible fight that earned two guys a quarter-billion to basically play tag across 12 rounds? I have no idea. But a commodity’s value is dependent on our desire for it. That desire for what boxing can offer, in extremely rare moments, remains undimmed.”

This alone is what makes boxing different from every other form of athletic competition and entertainment.

Photo: Brin-Jonathan Butler with Guillermo Rigondeaux

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Late Bloomer Anthony Cacace TKOs Hometown Favorite Leigh Wood in Nottingham

Published

3 hours ago

May 10, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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Frank Warren’s Queensberry Promotions was at Motorpoint Arena in Nottingham, England, tonight with a card featuring hometown favorite Leigh Wood against Ireland’s Anthony “Apache” Cacace.

Wood, a former two-time WBA featherweight champion, known for dramatic comebacks in bouts he was losing, may have reached the end of the road at age 36. He had his moments tonight, rocking Cacace on several occasions and winning the eighth round, but he paid the price, returning to his corner after round eight with swelling around both of his eyes.

In the ninth, Cacace, an 11/5 favorite, hurt Wood twice with left hands, the second of which knocked Wood into the ropes, dictating a standing 8-count by referee John Latham. When the bout resumed, Cacace went for the kill and battered Wood around the ring, forcing Wood’s trainer Ben Davison to throw in the towel. The official time was 2:15 of round nine.

Akin to Wood, Northern Ireland’s Cacace (24-1, 9 KOs) is also 36 years old and known as a late bloomer. This was his ninth straight win going back to 2017 (he missed all of 2018 and 2020). He formerly held the IBF 130-pound world title, a diadem he won with a stoppage of then-undefeated and heavily favored Joe Cordina, but that belt wasn’t at stake tonight as Cacace abandoned it rather than fulfill his less-lucrative mandatory. Wood falls to 28-4.

Semi-Wind-Up

Nottingham light heavyweight Ezra Taylor, fighting in his hometown for the first time since pro debut, delighted his fan base with a comprehensive 10-round decision over previously undefeated Troy Jones. Taylor, who improved to 12-0 (9) won by scores of 100-90, 99-91, and 98-92.

This was Taylor’s first fight with new trainer Malik Scott, best known for his work with Deontay Wilder. The victory may have earned him a match with Commonwealth title-holder Lewis Edmondson. Jones was 12-0 heading in.

Other Bouts of Note

In his first fight as a featherweight, Liam Davies rebounded from his first defeat with a 12-round unanimous decision over Northern Ireland’s previously undefeated Kurt Walker. Davies, who improved to 17-1 (8), staved off a late rally to prevail on scores of 115-113, 116-112, and 117-111. It was the first pro loss for the 30-year-old Walker (12-1), a Tokyo Olympian.

In a mild upset, Owen Cooper, a saucy Worcestershire man, won a 10-round decision over former Josh Taylor stablemate Chris Kongo. The referee’s scorecard read 96-94.

Cooper improved to 11-1 (4). It was the third loss in 20 starts for Kongo.

A non-televised 8-rounder featured junior welterweight Sam Noakes in a stay-busy fight. A roofer by trade and the brother of British welterweight title-holder Sean Noakes, Sam improved to 17-0 (15 KOs) with a third-round stoppage of overmatched Czech import Patrik Balez (13-5-1).

Photo credit: Leigh Dawney / Queensberry

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 326: Top Rank and San Diego Smoke

Published

1 day ago

May 9, 2025

David A. Avila

Avila Perspective, Chap. 326: Top Rank and San Diego Smoke

Years ago, I worked at a newsstand in the Beverly Hills area. It was a 24-hour a day version and the people that dropped by were very colorful and unique.

One elderly woman Eva, who bordered on homeless but pridefully wore lipstick, would stop by the newsstand weekly to purchase a pack of menthol cigarettes. On one occasion, she asked if I had ever been to San Diego?

I answered “yes, many times.”

She countered “you need to watch out for San Diego Smoke.”

This Saturday, Top Rank brings its brand of prizefighting to San Diego or what could be called San Diego Smoke. Leading the fight card is Mexico’s Emanuel Navarrete (39-2-1, 32 KOs) defending the WBO super feather title against undefeated Filipino Charly Suarez (18-0, 10 KOs) at Pechanga Arena. ESPN will televise.

This is Navarrete’s fourth defense of the super feather title.

The last time Navarrete stepped in the boxing ring he needed six rounds to dismantle the very capable Oscar Valdez in their rematch. One thing about Mexico City’s Navarrete is he always brings “the smoke.”

Also, on the same card is Fontana, California’s Raymond Muratalla (22-0, 17 KOs) vying for the interim IBF lightweight title against Russia’s Zaur Abdullaev (20-1, 12 KOs) on the co-main event.

Abdullaev has only fought once before in the USA and was handily defeated by Devin Haney back in 2019. But that was six years ago and since then he has knocked off various contenders.

Muratalla is a slick fighting lightweight who trains at the Robert Garcia Boxing Academy now in Moreno Valley, Calif. It’s a virtual boot camp with many of the top fighters on the West Coast available to spar on a daily basis. If you need someone bigger or smaller, stronger or faster someone can match those needs.

When you have that kind of preparation available, it’s tough to beat. Still, you have to fight the fight. You never know what can happen inside the prize ring.

Another fighter to watch is Perla Bazaldua, 19, a young and very talented female fighter out of the Los Angeles area. She is trained by Manny Robles who is building a small army of top female fighters.

Bazaldua (1-0, 1 KO) meets Mona Ward (0-1) in a super flyweight match on the preliminary portion of the Top Rank card. Top Rank does not sign many female fighters so you know that they believe in her talent.

Others on the Top Rank card in San Diego include Giovani Santillan, Andres Cortes, Albert Gonzalez, Sebastian Gonzalez and others.

They all will bring a lot of smoke to San Diego.

Probox TV

A strong card led by Erickson “The Hammer” Lubin (26-2, 18 KOs) facing Ardreal Holmes Jr. (17-0, 6 KOs) in a super welterweight clash between southpaws takes place on Saturday at Silver Spurs Arena in Kissimmee, Florida. PROBOX TV will stream the fight card.

Ardreal has rocketed up the standings and now faces veteran Lubin whose only losses came against world titlists Sebastian Fundora and Jermell Charlo. It’s a great match to decide who deserves a world title fight next.

Another juicy match pits Argentina’s Nazarena Romero (14-0-2) against Mexico’s Mayelli Flores (12-1-1) in a female super bantamweight contest.

Nottingham, England

Anthony Cacace (23-1, 8 KOs) defends the IBO super featherweight title against Leigh Wood (28-3, 17 KOs) in Wood’s hometown on Saturday at Nottingham Arena in Nottingham, England. DAZN will stream the Queensberry Promotions card.

Ireland’s Cacace seems to have the odds against him. But he is no stranger to dancing in the enemy’s lair or on foreign territory. He formerly defeated Josh Warrington in London and Joe Cordina in Riyadh in IBO title defenses.

Lampley at Wild Card

Boxing telecaster Jim Lampley will be signing his new book It Happened! at the Wild Card Boxing gym in Hollywood, Calif. on Saturday, May 10, beginning at 2 p.m. Lampley has been a large part of many of the greatest boxing events in the past 40 years. He and Freddie Roach will be at the signing.

Fights to Watch (All times Pacific Time)

Sat. DAZN 11 a.m. Anthony Cacace (23-1) vs Leigh Wood (28-3).

Sat. PROBOX.tv 3 p.m. Erickson Lubin (26-2) vs Ardreal Holmes Jr. (17-0).

Sat. ESPN 7 p.m. Emanuel Navarrete (39-2-1) vs Charly Suarez (18-0); Raymond Muratalla (22-0) vs Zaur Abdullaev (20-1).

Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank

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“Breadman” Edwards: An Unlikely Boxing Coach with a Panoramic View of the Sport

Published

2 days ago

May 8, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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Stephen “Breadman” Edwards’ first fighter won a world title. That may be some sort of record.

It’s true. Edwards had never trained a fighter, amateur or pro, before taking on professional novice Julian “J Rock” Williams. On May 11, 2019, Williams wrested the IBF 154-pound world title from Jarrett Hurd. The bout, a lusty skirmish, was in Fairfax, Virginia, near Hurd’s hometown in Maryland, and the previously undefeated Hurd had the crowd in his corner.

In boxing, Stephen Edwards wears two hats. He has a growing reputation as a boxing coach, a hat he will wear on Saturday, May 31, at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas when the two fighters that he currently trains, super middleweight Caleb Plant and middleweight Kyrone Davis, display their wares on a show that will air on Amazon Prime Video. Plant, who needs no introduction, figures to have little trouble with his foe in a match conceived as an appetizer to a showdown with Jermall Charlo. Davis, coming off his career-best win, an upset of previously undefeated Elijah Garcia, is in tough against fast-rising Cuban prospect Yoenli Hernandez, a former world amateur champion.

Edwards’ other hat is that of a journalist. His byline appears at “Boxing Scene” in a column where he answers questions from readers.

It’s an eclectic bag of questions that Breadman addresses, ranging from his thoughts on an upcoming fight to his thoughts on one of the legendary prizefighters of olden days. Boxing fans, more so than fans of any other sport, enjoy hashing over fantasy fights between great fighters of different eras. Breadman is very good at this, which isn’t to suggest that his opinions are gospel, merely that he always has something provocative to add to the discourse. Like all good historians, he recognizes that the best history is revisionist history.

“Fighters are constantly mislabled,” he says. “Everyone talks about Joe Louis’s right hand. But if you study him you see that his left hook is every bit as good as his right hand and it’s more sneaky in terms of shock value when it lands.”

Stephen “Breadman” Edwards was born and raised in Philadelphia. His father died when he was three. His maternal grandfather, a Korean War veteran, filled the void. The man was a big boxing fan and the two would watch the fights together on the family television.

Edwards’ nickname dates to his early teen years when he was one of the best basketball players in his neighborhood. The derivation is the 1975 movie “Cornbread, Earl and Me,” starring Laurence Fishburne in his big screen debut. Future NBA All-Star Jamaal Wilkes, fresh out of UCLA, plays Cornbread, a standout high school basketball player who is mistakenly murdered by the police.

Coming out of high school, Breadman had to choose between an academic scholarship at Temple or an athletic scholarship at nearby Lincoln University. He chose the former, intending to major in criminal justice, but didn’t stay in college long. What followed were a succession of jobs including a stint as a city bus driver. To stay fit, he took to working out at the James Shuler Memorial Gym where he sparred with some of the regulars, but he never boxed competitively.

Over the years, Philadelphia has harbored some great boxing coaches. Among those of recent vintage, the names George Benton, Bouie Fisher, Nazeem Richardson, and Bozy Ennis come quickly to mind. Breadman names Richardson and West Coast trainer Virgil Hunter as the men that have influenced him the most.

We are all a product of our times, so it’s no surprise that the best decade of boxing, in Breadman’s estimation, was the 1980s. This was the era of the “Four Kings” with Sugar Ray Leonard arguably standing tallest.

Breadman was a big fan of Leonard and of Leonard’s three-time rival Roberto Duran. “I once purchased a DVD that had all of Roberto Duran’s title defenses on it,” says Edwards. “This was a back before the days of YouTube.”

But Edwards’ interest in the sport goes back much deeper than the 1980s. He recently weighed in on the “Pittsburgh Windmill” Harry Greb whose legend has grown in recent years to the point that some have come to place him above Sugar Ray Robinson on the list of the greatest of all time.

“Greb was a great fighter with a terrific resume, of that there is no doubt,” says Breadman, “but there is no video of him and no one alive ever saw him fight, so where does this train of thought come from?”

Edwards notes that in Harry Greb’s heyday, he wasn’t talked about in the papers as the best pound-for-pound fighter in the sport. The boxing writers were partial to Benny Leonard who drew comparisons to the venerated Joe Gans.

Among active fighters, Breadman reserves his highest praise for Terence Crawford. “Body punching is a lost art,” he once wrote. “[Crawford] is a great body puncher who starts his knockouts with body punches, but those punches are so subtle they are not fully appreciated.”

If the opening line holds up, Crawford will enter the ring as the underdog when he opposes Canelo Alvarez in September. Crawford, who will enter the ring a few weeks shy of his 38^th birthday, is actually the older fighter, older than Canelo by almost three full years (it doesn’t seem that way since the Mexican redhead has been in the public eye so much longer), and will theoretically be rusty as 13 months will have elapsed since his most recent fight.

Breadman discounts those variables. “Terence is older,” he says, “but has less wear and tear and never looks rusty after a long layoff.” That Crawford will win he has no doubt, an opinion he tweaked after Canelo’s performance against William Scull: “Canelo’s legs are not the same. Bud may even stop him now.”

Edwards has been with Caleb Plant for Plant’s last three fights. Their first collaboration produced a Knockout of the Year candidate. With one ferocious left hook, Plant sent Anthony Dirrell to dreamland. What followed were a 12-round setback to David Benavidez and a ninth-round stoppage of Trevor McCumby.

Breadman keeps a hectic schedule. From Monday through Friday, he’s at the DLX Gym in Las Vegas coaching Caleb Plant and Kyrone Davis. On weekends, he’s back in Philadelphia, checking in on his investment properties and, of greater importance, watching his kids play sports. His 14-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son are standout all-around athletes.

On those long flights, he has plenty of time to turn on his laptop and stream old fights or perhaps work on his next article. That’s assuming he can stay awake.

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