Terry McGovern: The Year of the Butcher, Part One – A Man Invincible

Published

2 years ago

March 1, 2023

Terry-McGovern-The-Year-of-the-Butcher-Part-One-A-Man-Invincible

It is the night of September ninth 1899 and Pedlar Palmer is dreaming of home, the pattering of rain against New York glass carrying him back, perhaps, to his native England. Palmer had won the world’s bantamweight title in London and had defended it in London turning away both the best of British and the Americans that dared to sail. Now, he had sailed, to defend his status as the very best in the world. The blood that whispered in his veins was fighting blood; his grandfather boxed Abe Belasco, a technician of the bare-knuckle era, and ran with Daniel Mendoza, the godfather of scientific pugilism; his great grandfather boxed the legendary Tom Belcher.

For him, it was always to be the cobbles and history records only a sliver of his combat. It records not a single loss. Palmer slept well the night of September ninth 1899, the sleep of a man invincible.

In the city, Terry McGovern dreamed too. Blood-sodden punches tearing the life from helpless giants. Within the next twelve months he will defeat, by destructive knockout, the reigning bantamweight, featherweight and lightweight champions of the world. It will be easy.

It is the Year of the Butcher.

Just as the wolf does not train to be the wolf, Palmer did not spar in preparation for the looming confrontation but rather honed himself to a vibrating peak under the tutelage of a man from the same pack, former lightweight contender Sam Blakelock. Blakelock spoke little and laughed less, but walked with Palmer before breakfast, ran with him after, read the newspapers with him before lunch, worked with him after, steam billowing from his body just as it steamed from Palmer’s when the heat left the day. They were a team, one of the most formidable in the world.

For all that, they were different, both as men and as fighters. Palmer spoke lightly and made friends wherever he went, though he disliked crowds and attention. Where Blakelock had embraced a more direct style in his doomed pursuit of the great Jack McAuliffe, Palmer wore his alias “Box O’ Tricks” proudly and was often described as the cleverest man in his division. A deluxe spoiler and multi-range stylist he was adept at solving his opponent over the canvas, and the fact that he had never seen McGovern lift his hands in the ring did not concern him.

“I never fight two men the same way,” he explained when pressed by American journalists for strategy. “A man can never tell how he is going to fight until he feels his opponent out.”

The press felt sure though that it would be Palmer victory on points or a Palmer loss by knockout. McGovern was not yet known to be the forefather of every destroyer who would ever box under the Marquis of Queensberry Rules, but he was already regarded by boxing scribe Willie Green as “a miniature John Sullivan” and “the hardest hitting little man in the ring.”

He stayed in Brooklyn, close to home, unperturbed by the stream of company that caused Palmer to shift camps although he did insist, unusually, upon a degree of privacy for his training. He did spar, savagely and relentlessly, in the main with the lightweight contender Tim Kearns, and from bright eyes and giddy face he did claim to love to fight, whoever, wherever.

He “took enough wallops to unnerve an ordinary scrapper,” reported The New York Sun. “He got it hard on the jaw often, but all the blows did was shake him a trifle.”

To take it. The definitive mission for the true ring savage who would be great, to take it and to prove you could take it, to oneself first and foremost, to the world and everything in it besides.

“Well, you see, I take a punch to give two,” McGovern offered. “I feel out my man to see if he’s a hard hitter…the only way to ascertain this is to take one or two you know.”

They ran him like a dog and then rubbed him down with witch-hazel. They fed him meat, which he loved and was “given to as much as possible.” Then they took turns fighting him and by nine he was in bed and asleep. When he reached the required poundage, everything stopped, he rested, suddenly and preternaturally still, patiently awaiting the removal of the invisible chain.

McGovern opened a narrow betting favourite and the odds widened the nearer came the fight, to the great consternation of newspapermen. “There should be no odds,” argued The St. Paul Globe. “The men are so evenly matched that the betting should be the same…Palmer is far and away the better boxer as far as skill is concerned [and] the Britisher’s record is superior.”

The great heavyweights agreed to a man, Bob Fitzsimmons picking Palmer to win by experience, John L. Sullivan, James J Corbett and Jim Jeffries all declining to make a pick, calling an even fight. Tom Sharkey stuck out his neck in predicting a late knockout for McGovern.

The day before the combat, Palmer visited with the Westchester Athletic Club in Tuckahoe, New York, and examined the canvas, tightened the ropes. McGovern reclined among newspapers, his eyeballs drying in the stillness of his head, his captivity lengthened by a twenty-four-hour delay enforced by weather. Having risen that morning before the truth of dawn to weigh in comfortably under the 116lb limit, each man bathed in the luxury of a rehydration period close to thirty-six hours after the champion refused to be re-weighed on the fight’s new date; they would bring the best of themselves to the ring the next day.

Thirty-six hours trickled by. At the site of the fight, pandemonium. An unexpectedly huge and enthusiastic turnout saw a scrum in the cheap seats that took the best part of an hour to settle and did irretrievable damage to the wardrobe of numerous spectators. Both fighters eschewed the crowd’s intensity, McGovern smiling his way to the ring behind his younger brother, who brandished both the American and the Irish flag. Palmer seemed even more relaxed, “all agility” according to one ringsider, moving lightly from one rope to the other, smiling, almost sanguine, once more a man invincible.

The-Scene-at-Tuckahoe

He was “the cleverest fighter in the world in the opinion of many” according to one preview and was expected to control McGovern in the early stages even by those that predicted a win for the challenger. He had controlled, after all, the immortal George Dixon some three years earlier in a six round draw at Madison Square Garden. The final round had been tough for the Englishman, but early he easily nullified Dixon’s aggression with his dazzling speed, stiff left hand and tactical brilliance. Notably the smaller man in that contest, it was considered unlikely that if Dixon, in his genius, could not place Palmer under control early, McGovern, who was no bigger than Palmer and had but a sliver of Dixon’s art, would struggle.

A little over two minutes after the opening bell Palmer was roiling on the canvas in a semi-conscious stupor, lunging for and missing the bottom rope in a heartfelt but futile attempt to rise. McGovern had turned his brain in his head with a devastating combination landed behind punishment that the wire-report called “swift and terrible, his hands working like piston-rods.” Palmer was not just beaten but outclassed by an opponent who kept his promise to “take one or two” to measure the champion’s artillery, and found it wanting. Palmer, for all his cleverness and experience, was doomed from that moment as McGovern elected merely to walk through him and “batted him to semi-insensibility.”

McGovern bared his teeth when Palmer landed those two blows and the whirlwind attack that followed “carried his opponent’s cleverness before him like chaff” according to The Brooklyn Eagle. A right hand to the heart seemed momentarily to stiffen the champion and perhaps even force him to take a belated knee, though he received no count.

“McGovern’s body work was simply awful,” The Eagle continued, “and the beating on the diaphragm…left Palmer in much the same condition as Corbett [in his fight with Bob Fitzsimmons]. His body was temporarily paralyzed from the blows.”

At the crucial moment the surrealism which infused the venue in the presence of the enormous black Kinetoscope and the trampling of the brisling crowd deepened when the timekeeper’s hand slipped and the round came to a sudden and premature end after just a minute of action. Referee George Siler waved them back in and a stunned Palmer, clearly shocked by the brutality of the assault surrounding him, attempted to clinch; McGovern fought and writhed his way free and Palmer clinched again – and again. Finally, McGovern ripped free and landed a whistling hook on or just above the jaw and Palmer was over.

Up at five he tried to stall but finally was cornered by a fighter so bent upon his destruction that he had begun to miss, until at last McGovern found him flush with an uppercut that drove his head up and away. As he reeled the new champion landed the left-hook that was likely the punch most responsible for his victory and as he tried to fall McGovern found him again with a right hand to the temple, turning his brain in a third new direction in just a single second. Not all accounts of the fight have the referee bothering to finish the count before he raised McGovern’s hand in triumph.

“What was it hit me?” the deposed champion asked when at last he could speak.

“Palmer kept falling over,” complained Mrs. McGovern as her husband cooed their newborn baby on his knee, his face unmarked. “It wasn’t very exciting?”

“It came off much quicker than I expected,” McGovern agreed, directing his remarks towards the pressmen that surrounded him. “I thought it would go at least ten rounds and maybe seventeen,” he added with disturbing specificity. “But I had no doubt as to the result. I am now ready to meet them as they come. Starting with George Dixon.

“Isn’t he big for his age?” he asked, offering the child.

Dixon had instructed his manager to challenge the winner, though he did not attend himself. The two men split around $26,000 in cash and assets, an enormous purse for bantamweights and not something Dixon could ignore any more than he could have ignored the sense that he was about to become a part of another man’s destiny. But George Dixon was not so assailed. He had defended his featherweight title eight times in 1899 and was relaxed about making the latest in a long line of new sensations his first defence of the new century.

“I’ll finish him before the tenth,” McGovern insisted, still smiling.

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Results and Recaps from Riyadh where Artur Beterbiev Unified the 175-Pound Title

Published

14 hours ago

October 12, 2024

Arne K. Lang

Resukts-and-Recaps-from-Riyadh-where-Artur Beterbiev-Unified-the-175-Pouns-Title

For the first time in the history of the 175-pound class, all four meaningful belts were on the line when Artur Beterbiev locked horns with Dmitry Bivol today at Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. When the smoke cleared, Beterbiev prevailed on a majority decision, adding Bivol’s WBA and lineal title to his own collection of belts to emerge as the undisputed light heavyweight champion.

This was a classic confrontation between a boxer and a puncher. Beterbiev had won all 20 of his pro fights inside the distance. Bivol was also undefeated but had scored only nine stoppages among his 23 wins and nine of his 10 previous fights had gone the full 12 rounds. As an amateur, Beterbiev had lost twice to Oleksandr Usyk, the second of those setbacks in the quarterfinal round of the 2012 London Olympics, and it was no surprise that the 33-year-old Bivol, the younger man by six years, went to post a small favorite.

This proved to be a tactical fight that was a disappointment when measured against the pre-fight hype. Neither man was ever in jeopardy of going down and at the conclusion both acknowledged they could have done better.

In the first two rounds, Bivol was credited with out-landing Beterbiev 26-10. But the template was set. Although Bivol landed more punches in the early-going, one could see that Beterbiev was stronger and that his straight-line pressure would likely pay dividends over his opponent who burned up more energy moving side-to-side.

Beterbiev showed no ill effects from the torn meniscus that forced him to withdraw from the originally scheduled date (June 1). At the conclusion, two of the judges favored him (116-112, 115-113) and the other had it a draw (114-114).

IBF Cruiserweight Title Fight

Australian southpaw Jai Opetaia, widely regarded as the best cruiserweight on the planet, took charge in the opening round and wore down Jack Massey whose trainer Joe Gallagher wisely pulled him out at the two-minute mark of the sixth round.

Opetaia, who repeated his win over Maris Briedis in his previous bout, sending the talented Latvian off into retirement, improved to 26-0 (20 KOs) in what was his third straight appearance in this ring. A 31-year-old Englishman, Massey lost for the third time in 25 pro starts.

Opetaia’s next fight is expected to come against the winner of the forthcoming match between Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez and Chris Billam-Smith. They risk their respective belts next month on a Golden Boy Promotions card here in Riyadh.

Other Bouts of Note

The bout between heavyweights Fabio Wardley and Frazer Clarke was the semi-wind-up. It was a rematch of their March 31 tussle in London. At the end of that bruising 12-round barnburner, Wardley was more marked-up but remained undefeated and retained his British title when the judges returned a draw. Clarke likewise skirted defeat after opening his pro career 8-0.

Today’s sequel was a brutal, one-sided fight that never saw a second bell. It was all over at the 2:22 mark of the opening round, dictating a long intermission before the featured attraction even though it would commence 15 minutes ahead of schedule, going off at 3 pm PT.

Both men came out swinging but the Ipswich man, Wardley, had heavier ammunition. A big right hand left Clarke with a visible dent near his left ear. When the end came, Clarke, was slumped against the ropes, his eyes glazed and his jaw looking as if it may have been broken. (He was removed to a hospital where he was reportedly being treated for a fractured cheekbone.)

Wardley, who carried 242 pounds on his six-foot-five frame, never had a proper amateur career, but having knocked out 17 of his 19 opponents, he stands on the cusp of some big-money fights. “I’d be shocked if he’s not fighting for a world title next year,” said his promoter Frank Warren.

In a battle between two 35-year-old middleweights, Chris Eubank Jr advanced to 34-3 (25 KOs) with a seventh-round stoppage of Poland’s Kamil Szeremeta (25-3-2). A 25/1 favorite, Eubank had his Polish adversary on the canvas four times before the bout was halted at the 1:50 mark of the seventh frame. The match played out in a manner mindful of Szeremeta’s bout with Gennady Golovkin in 2020, another bad night at the office for the overmatched Pole.

The knockdowns came in rounds one, six, and twice in round seven. The final knockdowns were the result of body punches. Szeremeta had his moments, but these were due largely to Eubank’s lapses in concentration; he was never really in any danger.

After Eubank had his hand raised, Conor Benn entered the ring and confronted him. The sons of British boxing luminaries were initially set to fight on Oct. 8, 2022. That match, expected to draw a full house to London’s 20,000-seat O2 Arena, was shipwrecked by the British Boxing Board of Control. Benn’s antics in Riyadh are an indication that it may yet come to fruition.

In a 10-round contest, Skye Nicolson outclassed Raven Chapman, winning by scores of 99-91 and 98-92 twice. The Aussie was making her fourth start of 2024 and the third defense of her WBC featherweight title.

Nicolson, who improved to 12-0 (1), hopes that her next title defense is in Australia where she has fought only once since turning pro, that back in 2022, but she would gladly put that on the backburner for a date with Amanda Serrano. It was the first pro loss for Chapman (9-1), a 30-year-old Englishwoman.

Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 300: Eastern Horizons — Bivol, Beterbiev and Japan

Published

2 days ago

October 11, 2024

David A. Avila

Avila Perspective, Chap. 300: Eastern Horizons — Bivol, Beterbiev and Japan

All eyes are pointed east, if you are a boxing fan.

First, light heavyweights Artur Beterbiev and Dmitry Bivol meet in Saudi Arabia to determine who is the baddest at 175 pounds. Then a few days later bantamweights and flyweights tangle in Japan.

Before the 21^st century, who would have thought we could watch fights from the Middle East and Asia live.

Who would have thought Americans would care.

Streaming has changed the boxing landscape.

Beterbiev (20-0, 20 KOs), the IBF, WBC, WBO light heavyweight titlist meets WBA titlist Bivol (23-0, 12 KOs) for the undisputed world championship on Saturday Oct. 12, at the Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The entire card will air on DAZN pay-per-view. In the United States, the main event, expected to start at 3:15 pm PT, will also be available on ESPN+.

A few decades ago, only Europeans and Asians would care about this fight card. And only the most avid American fight fan would even notice. Times have changed dramatically for the worldwide boxing scene.

In the 1970s and 80s, ABC’s Wide World of Sports would occasionally televise boxing from other countries. Muhammad Ali was featured on that show many times. Also, Danny “Lil Red” Lopez, Salvador Sanchez and Larry Holmes.

Howard Cosell was usually the host of that show and then denounced the sport as too brutal after 15 rounds of a one-sided match between Holmes and Randall Cobb at the Astrodome in Houston, Texas in 1982.

That same Cobb would later go into acting and appear in films with Chuck Norris and others.

Streaming apps have brought international boxing to the forefront.

Until this century heavyweights and light heavyweight champions were dominated by American prizefighters. Not anymore.

Beterbiev, a Russian-born fighter now living in Canada, is 39 years old and has yet to hear the final bell ring in any of his pro fights. He sends all his opponents away hearing little birdies. He is a bruiser.

“I want a good fight. I’m preparing for a good fight. We’ll see,” said Beterbiev.

Bivol, 33, is originally from Kyrgyzstan and now lives in the desert town of Indio, Calif. He has never tasted defeat but unlike his foe, he vanquishes his opponents with a more technical approach. He does have some pop.

“Artur (Beterbiev) is a great champion. He has what I want. He has the belts. And it’s not only about belts. When I look at his skills, I want to check my skills also against this amazing fighter,” said Bivol.

The Riyadh fight card also features several other world titlists including Jai Opetaia, Chris Eubank Jr and female star Skye Nicolson.

Japan

Two days later, bantamweight slugger Junto Nakatani leads a fight card that includes flyweight and super flyweight world titlists.

Nakatani (28-0, 21 KOs), a three-division world titlist, defends the WBC bantamweight title against Thailand’s Tasana Salapat (76-1, 53 KOs) on Monday Oct. 14, at Ariake Arena in Tokyo. ESPN+ will stream the Teiken Promotions card.

The left-handed assassin Nakatani has a misleading appearance that might lead one to think he’s more suited for a tailor than a scrambler of brain cells.

A few years back I ran into Nakatani at the Maywood Boxing club in the Los Angeles area. I thought he was a journalist, not the feared pugilist who knocked out Angel Acosta and Andrew Moloney on American shores.

Nakatani is worth watching at 1 a.m. on ESPN+.

Others on the card include WBO super flyweight titlist Kosei Tanaka (20-1, 11 KOs) defending against Phumelele Cafu (10-0-3); and WBO fly titlist Anthony Olascuaga (7-1, 5 KOs) defending against Jonathan “Bomba” Gonzalez (28-3-1, 14 KOs) the WBO light fly titlist who is moving up in weight.

It’s a loaded fight card.

RIP Max Garcia

The boxing world lost Max Garcia one of Northern California’s best trainers and a longtime friend of mine. He passed away this week.

Garcia and his son Sam Garcia often traveled down to Southern California with their fighters ready to show off their advanced boxing skills time after time.

It was either the late 90s or early 2000s that I met Max in Big Bear Lake at one of the many boxing gyms there at that time. We would run into each other at fight cards in California or Nevada. He was always one of the classiest guys in the boxing business.

If Max had a fighter on a boxing card you knew it was trouble for the other guy. All of his fighters were prepared and had that extra something. He was one of the trainers in NorCal who started churning out elite fighters out of Salinas, Gilroy and other nearby places.

Recently, I spotted Max and his son on a televised card with another one of his fighters. I mentioned to my wife to watch the Northern California fighter because he was with the Garcias. Sure enough, he battered the other fighter and won handily.

Max, you will be missed by all.

Fights to Watch

(all times Pacific Time)

Sat. DAZN pay-per-view, 9 a.m. Beterbiev-Bivol full card. Beterbiev (20-0) vs Dmitry Bivol (23-0) main event only also available on ESPN+ (3:15 pm approx.)

Mon. ESPN+ 1 a.m. Junto Nakatani (28-0) vs Tasana Salapat (76-1).

Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank

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Junto Nakatani’s Road to a Mega-fight plus Notes on the Best Boxers from Thailand

Published

3 days ago

October 10, 2024

Arne K. Lang

Junto Nakatani’s Road to a Mega-fight plus Notes on the Best Boxers from Thailand

WBC bantamweight champion Junto Nakatani, whose name now appears on several of the Top 10 pound-for-pound lists, returns to the ring on Monday. His title defense against Thailand’s Petch CP Freshmart is the grand finale of a two-day boxing festival at Tokyo’s Ariake Arena.

One of several Thai boxers sponsored by Fresh Mart, a national grocery chain, Petch, 30, was born Tasana Salapat or Thasana Saraphath, depending on the source, and is sometimes identified as Petch Sor Chitpattana (confusing, huh?). A pro since 2011, he brings a record of 76-1 with 53 TKOs.

In boxing, records are often misleading and that is especially true when referencing boxers from Thailand. And so, although Petch has record that jumps off the page, we really don’t know how good he is. Is he world class, or is he run-of-the-mill?

A closer look at his record reveals that only 20 of his wins came against opponents with winning records. Fifteen of his victims were making their pro debut. It is revealing that his lone defeat came in his lone fight outside Thailand. In December of 2018, he fought Takuma Inoue in Tokyo and lost a unanimous decision. Inoue, who was appearing in his thirteenth pro fight, won the 12-rounder by scores of 117-111 across the board.

A boxer doesn’t win 76 fights in a career in which he answers the bell for 407 rounds without being able to fight more than a little, but there’s a reason why the house fighter Nakatani (28-0, 21 KOs) is favored by odds as high as 50/1 in the bookmaking universe. Petch may force Junto to go the distance, but even that is a longshot.

Boxers from Thailand

Four fighters from Thailand, all of whom were active in the 1990s, are listed on the 42-name Hall of Fame ballot that arrived in the mail this week. They are Sot Chitalada, Ratanopol Sor Varapin, Veeraphol Sahaprom, and Pongsaklek Wonjongham. On a year when the great Manny Pacquiao is on the ballot, leaving one less slot for the remainder, the likelihood that any of the four will turn up on the dais in Canastota at the 2025 induction ceremony is slim.

By our reckoning, two active Thai fighters have a strong chance of making it someday. The first is Srisaket Sor Rungvisai who knocked Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez from his perch at the top of the pound-for-pound rankings in one of the biggest upsets in recent memory and then destroyed him in the rematch. The noted boxing historian Matt McGrain named Sor Rungvisai (aka Wisaksil Wangek) the top super flyweight of the decade 2010-2019.

The other is Knockout CP Freshmart (aka Thammanoon Niyomstrom). True, he’s getting a bit long in the tooth for a fighter in boxing’s smallest weight class (he’s 34), but the long-reigning strawweight champion, who has never fought a match scheduled for fewer than 10 rounds, has won all 25 of his pro fights and shows no signs of slowing down. He will be back in action next month opposing Puerto Rico-born Oscar Collazo in Riyadh.

The next Thai fighter to go into the IBHOF (and it may not happen in my lifetime) will bring the number to three. Khaosai Galaxy entered the Hall with the class of 1999 and Pone Kingpetch was inducted posthumously in 2023 in the Old Timer’s category.

Nakatani (pictured)

Hailing from the southeastern Japanese city of Inabe, Junto Nakatani is the real deal. In 2023, the five-foot-eight southpaw forged the TSS Knockout of the Year at the expense of Andrew Moloney. Late in the 12^th round, he landed a short left hook to the chin and the poor Aussie was unconscious before he hit the mat. In his last outing, on July 20, he went downstairs to dismiss his opponent, taking out Vincent Astrolabio with a short left to the pit of the stomach. Astrolabio went down, writhing in pain, and was unable to continue. It was all over at the 2:37 mark of the opening round.

It’s easy to see where Nakatani is headed after he takes care of business on Monday.

Currently, Japanese boxers own all four meaningful pieces of the 118-pound puzzle. Of the four, the most recognizable name other than Nakatani is that of Takuma Inoue who will be making the third defense of his WBA strap on Sunday, roughly 24 hours before Nakatani touches gloves with Petch in the very same ring. Inoue is a consensus 7/2 favorite over countryman Seiga Tsatsumi.

A unification fight between Nakatani and Takuma Inoue (20-1, 5 KOs) would be a natural. But this match, should it transpire, would be in the nature of an appetizer. A division above sits Takuma’s older brother Naoya Inoue who owns all four belts in the 122-pound weight class but, of greater relevance, is widely regarded the top pound-for-pound fighter in the world.

A match between Junto Nakatani and the baby-faced “Monster” would be a delicious pairing and the powers-that-be want it to happen.

In boxing, the best-laid plans often go awry, but there’s a good possibility that we will see Nakatani vs. Naoya Inoue in 2025. If so, that would be the grandest domestic showdown in Japanese boxing history.

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