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

Published

1 year 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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Avila Perspective, Chap. 282: Ryan’s Song, Golden Boy in Fresno and More

Published

6 hours ago

April 26, 2024

David A. Avila

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Don’t call it an upset.

Days after Ryan Garcia proved the experts wrong, those same experts are re-tooling their evaluation processes.

It’s mind-boggling to me that 95 percent thought Garcia had no chance. Hear me out.

First, Garcia and Haney fought six times as amateurs with each winning three. But this time with no head gear and smaller gloves, Garcia had to have at least a 50/50 chance of winning. He is faster and a more powerful puncher.

Facts.

Haney is a wonderful boxer with smooth, almost artistic movements. But history has taught us power and speed like Garcia’s can’t be discounted. Think way back to legendary fighters like Willie Pep and Sandy Sadler. All that excellent defensive skill could not prevent Sadler from beating Pep in three of their four meetings.

Power has always been an equalizer against boxing skill.

Ben Lira, one of the wisest and most experienced trainers in Southern California, always professed knockout power was the greatest equalizer in a fight. “You can be behind for nine rounds and one punch can change the outcome,” he said.

Another weird theory spreading before the fight was that Garcia would quit in the fight. That was a puzzling one. Getting stopped by a perfect body shot is not quitting. And that punch came from Gervonta “Tank” Davis who can really crack.

So how did Garcia do it?

In the opening round Ryan Garcia timed Devin Haney’s jab and countered with a snapping left hook that rattled and wobbled the super lightweight champion. After that, Garcia forced Haney to find another game plan.

Garcia and trainer Derrick James must have worked hours on that move.

I must confess that I first saw Garcia’s ability many years ago when he was around 11 or 12. So I do have an advantage regarding his talent. A few things I noticed even back then were his speed and power. Also, that others resented his talent but respected him. He was the guy with everything: talent and looks.

And that brings resentment.

Recently I saw him and his crew rapping a song on social media. Now he’s got a song. Next thing you know Hollywood will be calling and he’ll be in the movies. It’s happened before with fighters such as Art Aragon, the first Golden Boy in the 50s. He was dating movie stars and getting involved with starlets all over Hollywood.

Is history repeating itself or is Garcia creating a new era for boxing?

Since 2016 people claimed he was just a social media creation. Now, after his win over Devin Haney a former undisputed lightweight champion and the WBC super lightweight titleholder, the boxer from the high desert area of Victorville has become one of the highest paid fighters in the world.

Ryan Garcia has entered a new dimension.

Golden Boy Season

After several down years the Los Angeles-based company Golden Boy Promotions suddenly is cracking the whip in 2024.

Avila

Vergil Ortiz Jr. (20-0, 20 KOs) returns to the ring and faces Puerto Rico’s Thomas Dulorme (26-6-1, 17 KOs) a welterweight gatekeeper who lost to Jaron “Boots” Ennis and Eimantas Stanionis. They meet as super welterweights in the co-main event at Save Mart Arena in Fresno, Calif. on Saturday, April 27. DAZN will stream the Golden Boy Promotions card live.

It’s a quick return to action for Ortiz who is still adjusting to the new weight division. His last fight three months ago ended in less than one round in Las Vegas. It was cut short by an antsy referee and left Ortiz wanting more after more than a year of inactivity in the prize ring.

Ortiz has all the weapons.

Also, Northern California’s Jose Carlos Ramirez (28-1, 18 KOs) meets Cuba’s Rances Barthelemy (30-2-1, 15 KOs) in a welterweight affair set for 12 rounds.

It’s difficult to believe that former super lightweight titlist Ramirez has been written off by fans after only one loss. That was several years ago against Scotland’s Josh Taylor. One loss does not mean the end of a career.

“My goal is to get back on top and to get all those belts back. I still feel like I am one of the best 140-pounders in the division,” said Ramirez who lives in nearby Avenal, Calif.

An added major attraction features Marlen Esparza in a unification rematch against Gabriela “La Chucky” Alaniz for the WBA, WBC, WBO flyweight titles. Their first fight was

a controversial win by Esparza that saw one judge give her nine of 10 rounds in a very close fight. Those Texas judges.

In a match that could steal the show, Oscar Duarte (26-2-1, 21 KOs) faces former world champion Jojo Diaz (33-5-1, 15 KOs) in a lightweight match.

Munguia and Canelo

Don’t sleep on this match.

Its current Golden Boy fighter Jaime Munguia facing former Golden Boy fighter Saul “Canelo” Alvarez in a battle between Mexico’s greatest sluggers next week at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on May 4.

“I think Jaime Munguia is going to do something special in the ring,” said Oscar De La Hoya, the CEO for Golden Boy.

Tijuana’s Munguia showed up at the Wild Card Boxing gym in Hollywood where a throng of media from Mexico and the US met him.

Munguia looked confident and happy about his opportunity to fight great Canelo.

“It’s a hard fight,” said Munguia. “Truth is, its big for Mexico and not only for Mexicans but for boxing.”

Fights to Watch

Fri. DAZN 6 p.m. Yoeniz Tellez (7-0) vs Joseph Jackson (19-0).

Sat. DAZN 9:30 a.m. Peter McGrail (8-1) vs Marc Leach (18-3-1); Beatriz Ferreira (4-0) vs Yanina Del Carmen 14-3).

Sat. DAZN 5 p.m. Vergil Ortiz (20-0) vs Thomas Dulorme (26-6-1); Jose Carlos Ramirez (28-1) vs Rances Barthelemy (30-2-1); Marlen Esparza (14-1) vs Gabriela Alaniz (14-1).

Photo credit: Cris Esqueda / Golden Boy Promotions

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Ramon Cardenas Channels Micky Ward and KOs Eduardo Ramirez on ProBox

Published

2 days ago

April 24, 2024

Arne K. Lang

Ramon-Cardenas-Channels-Micky-Ward-and-KOs-Eduardo-Ramirez-on-ProBox

The Wednesday night bi-monthly series of fights on the ProBox TV platform is the best deal in boxing; the livestream is free with no strings attached! Tonight’s episode was headlined by a super bantamweight match between San Antonio’s Ramon Cardenas and Eduardo Ramirez who brought a caravan of rooters from his hometown in Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico.

Cardenas, coached by Joel Diaz, entered the contest ranked #4 by the WBA. He was expected to handle Ramirez with little difficulty, but this was a close, tactical fight through eight frames when lightning struck in the form of a left hook to the liver from Cardenas. Ramirez went down on one knee and wasn’t able to beat the count. It was as if Cardenas summoned the ghost of Micky Ward who had a penchant for terminating fights with the same punch that arrived out of the blue.

The official time was 1:37 of round nine. Cardenas improved to 25-1 with his14th win inside the distance. Ramirez, who was stopped in the opening round by Nick “Wrecking” Ball in London in his lone previous fight outside Mexico, falls to 23-3-3.

Co-Feature

In an upset, Tijuana super welterweight Damian Sosa won a split decision over previously undefeated Marques Valle, a local area fighter who was stepping up in class in his first 10-round go. Sosa was the aggressor, repeatedly backing his taller opponent into the ropes where Valle was unable to get good leverage behind his punches.

The 25-year-old Valle, managed by the influential David McWater, was the house fighter. This was his 10^th appearance in this building. He brought a 10-0 (7) record and was hoping to emulate the success of his younger brother Dominic Valle who scored a second-round stoppage of his opponent in this ring two weeks ago, improving to 9-0. But Sosa, who brought a 24-2 record, proved to be a bridge too high.

The judges had it 97-93 and 96-94 for the Tijuana invader and a disgraceful 98-92 for the house fighter.

Also

In a fight whose abrupt ending would be echoed by the main event, 34-year-old SoCal featherweight Ronny Rios, now training in Las Vegas, returned to the ring after a 22-month hiatus and scored a fifth-round stoppage over Nicolas Polanco of the Dominican Republic.

A three-punch combo climaxed by a left hook to the liver took the breath out of Polanco who slumped to his knees and was counted out. A two-time world title challenger, Rios advanced to 34-4 (17 KOs). Polanco, 34, declined to 21-6-1. The official time was 0:54 of round five.

—

The next ProBox show (Wednesday, May 8) will have an international cast with fighters from Kazakhstan, Japan, Mongolia, and the United Kingdom. In the main event, Liverpool’s Robbie Davies Jr will make his U.S. debut against the California-based Kazakh Sergey Lipinets.

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Haney-Garcia Redux with the Focus on Harvey Dock

Published

4 days ago

April 22, 2024

Arne K. Lang

Haney-Garcia-Redux-with-the-Focus-on-Harvey-Dock

Saturday’s skirmish between Ryan Garcia and WBC super lightweight champion Devin Haney was a messy affair, and yet a hugely entertaining fight fused with great drama. In the aftermath, Garcia and Haney were celebrated – the former for fooling all the experts and the latter for his gallant performance in a losing effort – but there were only brickbats for the third man in the ring, referee Harvey Dock.

Devin Haney was plainly ahead heading into the seventh frame when there was a sudden turnabout when Garcia put him on the canvas with his vaunted left hook. Moments later, Dock deducted a point from Garcia for a late punch coming out of a break. The deduction forced a temporary cease-fire that gave Haney a few precious seconds to regain his faculties. Before the round was over, Haney was on the deck twice more but these were ruled slips.

The deduction, which effectively negated the knockdown, struck many as too heavy-handed as Dock hadn’t previously issued a warning for this infraction. Moreover, many thought he could have taken a point away from Haney for excessive clinching. As for Haney’s second and third trips to the canvas in round seven, they struck this reporter – watching at home – as borderline, sufficient to give referee Dock the benefit of the doubt.

In a post-fight interview, Ryan Garcia faulted the referee for denying him the satisfaction of a TKO. “At the end of the day, Harvey Dock, I think he was tripping,” said Garcia. “He could have stopped that fight.”

Those that played the rounds proposition, placing their coin on the “under,” undoubtedly felt the same way.

The internet lit up with comments assailing Dock’s competence and/or his character. Some of the ponderings were whimsical, but they were swamped by the scurrilous screeching of dolts who find a conspiracy under every rock.

Stephen A. Smith, reputedly America’s highest-paid TV sports personality, was among those that felt a need to weigh-in: “This referee is absolutely terrible….Unreal! Horrible officiating,” tweeted Stephen A whose primary area of expertise is basketball.

Harvey Dock

Dock fought as an amateur and had one professional fight, winning a four-round decision over a fellow novice on a show at a non-gaming resort in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. He says that as an amateur he was merely average, but he was better than that, a New Jersey and regional amateur champion in 1993 and 1994 while a student New Jersey’s Essex County Community College where he majored in journalism.

A passionate fan of Sugar Ray Leonard, he started officiating amateur fights in 1998 and six years later, at age 32, had his first documented action at the professional level, working low-level cards in New Jersey. The top boxing referees, to a far greater extent than the top judges, had long apprenticeships, having worked their way up from the boonies and Dock is no exception.

Per boxrec, Haney vs Garcia was Harvey Dock’s 364^th assignment in the pros and his forty-second world title fight. Some of those title fights were title in name only, they weren’t even main events, but, bit by bit, more lucrative offerings started coming his way.

On May 13, 2023, Dock worked his first fights in Nevada, a 4-rounder and then a 12-rounder on a card at the Cosmopolitan topped by the 140-pound title fight between Rolly Romero and Ismael Barroso. It was the first time that this reporter got to watch Dock in the flesh.

Ironically (in hindsight), the card would be remembered for the actions of a referee, in this case Tony Weeks who handled the main event. Barroso was winning the fight on all three cards when Weeks stepped in and waived it off in the ninth round after Romero cornered Barroso against the ropes and let loose a barrage of punches, none of which landed cleanly. Few “premature stoppages” were ever as garishly, nay ghoulishly, premature.

With all the brickbats raining down on Weeks, I felt a need to tamp down the noise by diverting attention away from Tony Weeks and toward Harvey Dock and took to the TSS Forum to share my thoughts. Referencing the 12-rounder, a robust junior welterweight affair between Batyr Akhmedov and Kenneth Sims Jr, I noted that Dock’s Las Vegas debut went smoothly. He glided effortlessly around the ring, making him inconspicuous, the mark of a good referee. (This post ran on May 15, two days after the fight.)

Folks at the Nevada State Athletic Commission were also paying attention. Dock was back in Las Vegas the following week to referee the lightweight title fight between Devin Haney and Vasyl Lomachenko and before the year was out, he would be tabbed to referee the biggest non-heavyweight fight of the year, the July 29 match in Las Vegas between Terence Crawford and Errol Spence Jr.

The Haney-Garcia fight wasn’t Harvey Dock’s best hour, I’ll concede that, but a closer look at his full body of work informs us that he is an outstanding referee.

—

While the Haney-Garcia bout was in progress, WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman threw everyone a curve ball, tweeting on “X” that Devin Haney would keep his title if he lost the fight. Everyone, including the TV commentators, was under the impression that the title would become vacant in the event that Haney lost.

Sulaiman cited the precedent of Corrales-Castillo II.

FYI: The Corrales-Castillo rematch, originally scheduled for June 3, 2005 and aborted on the day prior when Castillo failed to make weight, finally came off on Oct. 8 of that year, notwithstanding the fact that Castillo failed to make weight once again, scaling three-and-a-half pounds above the lightweight limit. He knocked out Corrales in the fourth round with a left hook that Las Vegas Review-Journal boxing writer Kevin Iole, alluding to the movie “Blazing Saddles,” described as Mongo-esque (translation: the punch would have knocked out a horse). After initially insisting on a rubber match, which had scant chance of happening, WBC president Jose Sulaiman, Mauricio’s late father, ruled that Corrales could keep his title.

Whether or not you agree with Mauricio Sulaiman’s rationale, the timing of his announcement was certainly awkward.

Haney’s mandatory is Spanish southpaw Sandor Martin (42-3, 15 KOs), a cutie best known for his 2021 upset of Mikey Garcia. A bout between Haney and Martin has the earmarks of a dull fight.

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