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Brin-Jonathan Butler Reflects on Cuban Boxers, Mike Tyson, Roy Jones Jr and More
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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 20th 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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Cain Sandoval KOs Mark Bernaldez in the Featured Bout at Santa Ynez
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Northern California’s Cain Sandoval remained undefeated with a knockout win over Mark Bernaldez in a super lightweight battle on Friday on a 360 Promotions card.
Sandoval (15-0, 13 KOs) of Sacramento needed four rounds to figure out tough Filipino fighter Bernaldez (25-7, 14 KOs) in front of a packed crowd at Chumash Casino in Santa Ynez.
Bernaldez had gone eight rounds against Mexico’s very tough Oscar Duarte. He showed no fear for Sandoval’s reputed power and both fired bombs at each other from the second round on.
Things turned in favor of Sandoval when he targeted the body and soon had Bernaldez in retreat. It was apparent Sandoval had discovered a weakness.
In the beginning of the fourth Sandoval fired a stiff jab to the body that buckled Bernaldez but he did not go down. And when both resumed in firing position Sandoval connected with an overhand right and down went the Filipino fighter. He was counted out by referee Rudy Barragan at 34 seconds of the round.
“I’m surprised he took my jab to the body. I respect that. I have a knockout and I’m happy about that,” Sandoval said.
Other Bouts
Popular female fighter Lupe Medina (9-0) remained undefeated with a solid victory over the determined Agustina Vazquez (4-3-2) by unanimous decision after eight rounds in a minimumweight fight between Southern Californians.
Early on Vazquez gave Medina trouble disrupting her patter with solid jabs. And when Medina overloaded with combination punches, she was laced with counters from Vazquez during the first four rounds.
Things turned around in the fifth round as Medina used a jab to keep Vazquez at a preferred distance. And when she attacked it was no more than two-punch combination and maintaining a distance.
Vazquez proved determined but discovered clinching was not a good idea as Medina took advantage and overran her with blows. Still, Vazquez looked solid. All three judges saw it 79-73 for Medina.
A battle between Southern Californian’s saw Compton’s Christopher Rios (11-2) put on the pressure all eight rounds against Eastvale’s Daniel Barrera (8-1-1) and emerged the winner by majority decision in a flyweight battle.
It was Barrera’s first loss as a pro. He never could discover how to stay off the ropes and that proved his downfall. Neither fighter was knocked down but one judge saw it 76-76, and two others 79-73 for Rios.
In a welterweight fight Gor Yeritsyan (20-1,16 KOs) scorched Luis Ramos (23-7) with a 12-punch combination the sent him to the mat in the second round. After Ramos beat the count he was met with an eight punch volley and the fight was stopped at 2:11 of the second round by knockout.
Super feather prospect Abel Mejia (7-0, 5 KOs) floored Alfredo Diaz (9-12) in the fifth round but found the Mexican fighter to be very durable in their six-round fight. Mejia caught Diaz with a left hook in the fifth round for a knockdown. But the fight resumed with all three judges scoring it 60-53 for Mejia who fights out of El Modena, Calif.
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The Return of David Alaverdian
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By TSS Special Correspondent David Harazduk — After David Alaverdian (8-0-1, 6 KOs) scored a gritty victory against a tough Nicaraguan journeyman named Enrique Irias, his plans suddenly changed. The flashy flyweight from Nahariya, Israel hoped to face even tougher opposition and then challenge for a world title within a year or so. But a prolonged illness forced David to rip up the script.
The Irias fight was over 22 months ago. On Saturday, Feb. 22, Alaverdian will be making his first appearance in the ring since that win when he faces veteran road warrior Josue “Zurdo” Morales (31-16-4, 13 KOs) at the Westgate Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. It’s the fifth promotion by Las Vegas attorney Stephen Reid whose inaugural card was at this venue on Feb. 13, 2020.
“I’m excited to come back,” Alaverdian declared.
During his preparation for Irias two years ago, Alaverdian felt fatigue after a routine six-round sparring session. “It was on April 1, 2023, about ten days before my fight. It felt like an April Fool’s joke,” he said. He came down with a sore throat, a headache, and congestion. He soon developed trouble breathing. At first, he thought his seasonal asthma had flared up, but his condition soon worsened. No matter what he did, Alaverdian could no longer take deep breaths. Fatigue continued to plague him. His heart constantly raced. Instead of breathing from his diaphragm, he was breathing from his chest. He sought out numerous doctors in the United States and in Israel.
His symptoms were finally diagnosed as Dysfunctional Breathing (DB). DB is a condition that can stem from stress and is often misdiagnosed. Its symptoms include dyspnea and tachycardia, both of which David experienced.
While receiving treatment, the Vegas-based pro went back to Israel where he coached aspiring fighters. “David’s influence on Israeli boxing is amazing, because he shows we can succeed in a big business even though we come from a small country,” said another undefeated Israeli flyweight, 20-year-old Yonatan Landman (7-0, 7 KOs). “A lot more Israelis are going to dare to succeed.”
Landman was able to work with Alaverdian during David’s return to Israel. “He is a great guy and a friend,” Landman said. “He has a lot of willingness to help, share his knowledge, and help you move forward.”
Alaverdian finally started to feel like he could compete again eight months ago. He won last year’s Israeli national amateur championship and competed in Olympic qualifiers. Now, he’s preparing to fight as a professional once again. “He doesn’t mention anything about [his breathing issues] like he did before,” his coach Cedric Ferguson said about this camp. “He’s been working like there’s no issue at all.”
It has been a whirlwind week for the 31-year-old Alaverdian. In addition to putting the finishing touches on his preparation ahead of Saturday’s comeback fight, David got married on Tuesday. His mom came over from Israel for the wedding and will stay for the fight. “It’s a good distraction,” David said of this week’s significant events. “It helps me. That way I don’t have to focus on the fight all day.”
Josue Morales, a 32 year old from Houston, hopes to play spoiler on Saturday. The crafty southpaw has never been stopped during his 52-fight career. “He’s a seasoned guy with a lot of experience,” Alaverdian said of Morales. “He knows how to move around the ring and is more of a technical boxer. He’s a tough opponent for someone who has been out of the ring for two years.”
A win Saturday night would complete a monumental week for David Alaverdian, both in and out of the ring, repairing the once-shredded script.
Doors open at the Westgate fight arena at 6:30 pm. The first bout goes at 7:00. Seven fights are scheduled including an 8-round female fight between Las Vegas light flyweight Yadira Bustillos and Argentine veteran Tamara Demarco.
NOTE: Author David Harazduk has run The Jewish Boxing Blog since 2010. You can find him at Twitter/X @JewishBoxing and Instagram.
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Two Candidates for the Greatest Fight Card in Boxing History
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Two Candidates for the Greatest Fight Card in Boxing History
Saturday’s fight card in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, topped by the rematch between Artur Beterbiev and Dmitry Bivol for undisputed light heavyweight supremacy, was being hyped as the greatest boxing card ever. That was before Daniel Dubois took ill and had to pull out of his IBF world heavyweight title defense against Joseph Parker, yielding his slot to last-minute replacement Martin Bakole.
The view from here is that the card remains in the running for the best fight card ever, top to bottom. The public didn’t view Dubois as the legitimate heavyweight champion. That distinction goes to Oleksandr Usyk.
Terms like “greatest” are, of course, subjective. Are we referring to the most attractive match-ups or the greatest array of talent, or the card that gives the most satisfaction by churning out a multiplicity of entertaining fights?
We won’t know how satisfying this card is until after the fact. We won’t know whether the talent on display was the greatest ever assembled on one night until many years have passed. Contestants such as Shakur Stevenson, Vergil Ortiz Jr, and Hamzah Sheeraz are still in their twenties (Stevenson is the oldest of the three at age 27) and it’s too soon to gauge if they will leave the sport with a great legacy.
As for which fight card in history had the deepest pool of attractive match-ups, this is a query that is amenable to an operational definition. Betting lines are a useful tool for informing us whether or not a fight warrants our attention if the likelihood of witnessing a closely-contested bout is our primary consideration.
Based on these factors, I would submit that the current leader in the race for the best card ever assembled goes to Don King’s May 7, 1994 promotion at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
Six future Hall of Famers – Julio Cesar Chavez, Ricardo Lopez, Azumah Nelson, Terry Norris, Julian Jackson, and Christy Martin — were on that card, an 11-fight, eight-hour marathon with five WBC world title fights, four of which were rematches.
These were the five title fights:
140 pounds: Julio Cesar Chavez (89-1-1, 77 KOs) vs. Frankie Randall (49-2-1, 39 KOs)
Odds: Chavez 3/1 (minus-300)
154 pounds: Terry Norris (37-4, 23 KOs) vs. Simon Brown (41-2, 30 KOs)
Odds: even (11/10 and take your pick)
160 pounds: Gerald McClellan (30-2, 28 KOs) vs. Julian Jackson (48-2, 45 KOs)
Odds: McClellan 7/2 (minus-350)
130 pounds: Azumah Nelson (37-2-2, 26 KOs) vs. Jesse James Leija (27-0-2, 13 KOs)
Odds: Nelson 17/10 (minus-170)
105 pounds: Ricardo Lopez (36-0, 27 KOs) vs. Kermin Guardia (21-0, 14 KOs)
Odds: none
Results
Chavez-Randall — Julio Cesar Chavez avenged his loss to Frankie Randall, but not without controversy. An accidental clash of heads in the eighth round left Chavez with a bad gash on his forehead. Ring physician Flip Homansky would have allowed the bout to continue if that had been Chavez’s preference, but El Gran Campeon wasn’t so inclined. A WBC rule specified that in the event of a significant injury accruing from an accidental head butt, the less-damaged fighter is penalized a point. The fight went to the scorecards where Chavez won a split decision that would have been a draw without the point deduction. The crowd was overwhelmingly pro-Chavez, but the big bets were mostly on Randall and the odds got nicked down on the day of the fight.
Brown-Norris — In their first meeting in December of the previous year, Simon Brown dominated Terry Norris from the opening bell before stopping him in the fourth round. It was a massive upset. Norris was in the conversation for the top pound-for-pound fighter in the sport. In the rematch, Norris opened a slight favorite, but the late money was on Brown. And, once again, the so-called “sharps” were on the wrong side. Terry Norris, the would-be avenger, won a comfortable decision.
McClellan-Jackson — A murderous puncher, Gerald McClellan bombed out Julian Jackson in 83 seconds, or four rounds quicker than in their first engagement. Jackson was also a murderous puncher and attracted money in the sports books, lowering the price on the victorious McClellan who yet remained a solid favorite.
Nelson-Leija – WBC President Jose Sulaiman mandated this rematch after the first meeting ended in a draw after an error was found in the tabulation of one of the scorecards, overturning the original verdict which had Nelson retaining his title on a split decision. Leija thought he was robbed and was the rightful winner in the do-over, outworking Nelson to win a unanimous decision. At age 35, Azumah was getting long in the tooth.
Lopez-Guardia – Before the digital age, bookmakers didn’t trifle to post lines on bouts that on paper were egregious mismatches, save perhaps a fight of great magnitude. Guardia, the Colombian challenger, overachieved by lasting the distance in a fight with no knockdowns, but “Finito” won a lopsided decision.
A Note on Odds
Betting lines serve a useful purpose for boxing historians; they quantify the magnitude of an upset. However, quoting odds is tricky because they are fluid and vary somewhat from place to place. What this means is that two journalists can quote different odds on the same event and they both can get it right – unless there is a significant disparity. The odds quoted above are the closing lines at the MGM Grand or, at the very least, a very close approximation.
Saturday in Riyadh
One reason why tomorrow’s fight card is the best ever, said the tub-thumpers, is that the card (in its original conformation) included seven world title fights. But that’s no big deal There are so many title fights nowadays that the term “world title” has been trivialized. And what wasn’t acknowledged is that three of the title fights were of the “interim” stripe.
However – and this is a big deal — a glance at the odds informs us that tomorrow’s card is chock-full of competitive match-ups (at least on paper) and from that aspect, a blend of quality and quantity, it is a doozy of a boxing card.
The greatest boxing linemaker of my generation, now deceased, once told me that any fight where the “chalk” was less than a 3/1 favorite is essentially a “pick-‘em” fight. Yes, I know that makes no sense mathematically. However, I know what he was getting at. In a baseball game, for example, it’s very rare to find a team favored by odds of more than 3/1. In boxing, where self-serving promoters are constantly feeding us King Kong vs. Mickey Mouse, odds higher than 3/1 are the norm.
As this is being written, there are six fights on Saturday’s card where one could play the favorite without laying more than 3/1. I believe this is unprecedented. Moreover, the main event and a fascinating match-up on the undercard, Vergil Ortiz Jr vs Israil Madrimov, are virtual toss-ups with the favorites, Beterbiev and Ortiz, currently available at 5/4 (minus-125). Another very intriguing fight is the heavyweight contest between late bloomers Agit Kabayel and Zhilei Zhang which finds the less-heralded Kabayel cloaked as a small favorite. And kudos to Joseph Parker for accepting Martin Bakole when he could have held out for a lesser opponent. If Bakole is in shape (a big “if”), he will be a handful.
And so, where does tomorrow’s card rank on the list of best boxing cards ever? Right up there near the top, we would argue, and, if the bouts in large part are memorably entertaining, we would push it ahead of Don King’s May 7, 1994 extravaganza.
That’s the view from here. Feel free to dissent.
Postscript: If you plan to watch the entire card ($25.99 on DAZN for U.S. buyers), it would help to stock up on some munchies. The first fight (Joshua Buatsi vs. Callum Smith) is scheduled to kick off at 8:45 a.m. for us viewers in the Pacific Time Zone / 11:45 a.m. ET. If the show adheres tight to its schedule (no guarantee), Beterbiev and Bivol are expected to enter the ring at 3:00 p.m. PT/6:00 p.m. ET.
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