Former LA Times Scribe Steve Springer Reflects on His Days on the Boxing Beat

Published

2 years ago

May 7, 2023

Rick Assad

Former-LA-Times-Scribe-Steve-Springer-Reflects-on-his-Days-on-the-Boxing-Beat

Nestled in Southern California’s San Fernando Valley, Steve Springer, a former sportswriter who for nearly 35 years covered several sports including the world of boxing, is at peace.

Springer, who spent 25 years at the Los Angeles Times, is definitely thankful for the opportunity to be ringside, which he was for 23 years, but doesn’t miss those days when he covered boxing.

“I really don’t keep up with it like I used to. I don’t find many of today’s fighters interesting or exciting and I don’t have any interest in MMA or WrestleMania,” he said. “Yes, I know, I’m just an old guy living in the past, but it was a glorious past.”

In what way is boxing different for Springer, who wrote 14 books including three bestsellers?

“It’s changed, but not for the better. A century ago, the top sports columnists basically covered only four sports: boxing, baseball, horse racing and college football. Boxing’s popularity had faded by the time I covered the sport (1985 to 2008), but was still relevant,” he offered. “Today, however, it ranks third in popularity among combat sports behind MMA and WrestleMania. Back when I covered boxing, Butterbean, an overweight four-round fighter, was a novelty act, comic relief before the big matches. Today, Jake Paul, another gimmick, wannabe boxer, is a main attraction. Sad, but true.”

Springer didn’t intend to become a sportswriter. Instead he hoped to be the second coming of Vin Scully, the legendary Dodgers announcer who for 67 years was the voice of the team.

Springer did play-by-play for basketball, football and baseball at California State University Northridge, where he graduated in 1968 with a broadcasting degree and later did play-by-play for high school football in El Centro from 1969 through 1972.

Springer kicked off his writing career in 1974 at the Thousand Oaks News Chronicle where he later became sports editor and won various awards, then left in 1979 when he joined the Orange County Register where he worked until 1983, covering the Lakers before being hired by the Times that same year.

Once assigned to boxing, what was the attraction for Springer?

“The opportunity to cover dramatic life-and-death events and write about colorful, fascinating people who have often had to battle all their lives just to survive,” he said of what made boxing exciting. “Every fighter has a story and no one in boxing ever refuses to tell it to you unless it’s because they have just been knocked out.”

Interviewing some of the legends was for Springer the whipped cream on the ice cream sundae.

“Given an opportunity to talk to Muhammad Ali, Don King, Mike Tyson, Bob Arum, Floyd Mayweather Jr., George Foreman and Joe Frazier, to name just a few, there’s no chance you’ll walk away without a dozen or more new stories floating around in your head,” he said.

And if you’re lucky, you might speak with someone not entirely famous but still worthy of your time.

“Actually, everybody in the sport has a tale worth telling, from the trainers and corner men to the promoters and managers,” Springer said. “There was a little-known member of King’s organization who once gave me a line that kind of summed up the richness of the material generated by those in the fight game. “I was in boxing for 40 years,” he said. “The first three years were about boxing. The last 37 were about revenge.”

Sometimes what happens inside the ring during the course of a career has debilitating results.

This wasn’t pleasant for Springer, who was inducted into the Southern California Jewish Hall of Fame and was the recipient of the Nat Fleischer Award given by the Boxing Writers Association of America.

“I didn’t like the results of the brutality in the ring. I covered two fights that ended with one of the boxers dying,” he pointed out. “I wrote a story about a fighter named Bobby Chacon who had to carry a map of his neighborhood in his shirt pocket because he couldn’t remember how to find his way home. He was 44 years old at the time. And, of course, there was the sadness of watching Ali in his final years. Very few boxing stories end happily.”

A featherweight and super featherweight champion, Chacon passed away in 2016 at the age of 64.

Springer covered the entirety of Oscar De La Hoya’s epic career and co-wrote a biography with the 1992 Olympic gold medalist titled “American Son: My Story.”

insert

De La Hoya is a complex person and one Springer knows fairly well.

“Oscar has two passions outside of boxing: golf and singing. He often insisted that he was going to try to join the Senior PGA golf tour when he qualified by reaching the age of 50. He hit that milestone several months ago, but there are no signs yet that he’s seriously considering trying to take that big leap,” he said.

“Oscar has a great sense of humor on the golf course. Playing with him one time, I hit my tee shot into a ravine so far down that I couldn’t see the flag on the green. With Oscar waiting for me on that green, I hit a blind shot that somehow landed in the cup. From then on, Oscar always called me Mr. Hole-In-Two.”

Springer spoke about De La Hoya’s fondness for music.

“His love of music came from his mother, Cecilia, who died of cancer at 39. He still remembers the day he got into his mother’s car to join her in a loud duet in the driveway of their family home,” he said. “Oscar went on to sing a song that was nominated for a Grammy for Best Latin Pop Performance.”

Springer quoted De La Hoya. “If I boxed because of my father,” he said, “why not sing because of my mother?”

When Mike Tyson was the heavyweight kingpin, noted Springer, anything could happen inside or outside the ring.

“The obvious choice [for the most bizarre fight that I covered] had nothing to do with the skills of the fighters. It was because of the jarring end of the fight after Tyson bit off part of Evander Holyfield’s right ear and spit it out on the canvas in the third round, then bit Holyfield’s left ear before the round was over,” he said of that eventful evening at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in 1997.

Springer was also there at Tyson’s hearing on the matter.

“At a hearing later held by the Nevada State Athletic Commission to decide if Tyson should be stripped of his license, he was asked if he wished to say anything before a vote was taken,” Springer said. “All I have to say,” Tyson said, “is, I’m not Mother Teresa, but I’m not Charles Manson either.”

Springer added: “I was also present five years later at a New York press conference for a Tyson-Lennox Lewis match that turned into a brawl which ended with Tyson sinking his teeth into one of Lewis’ legs,” he recalled. “Tyson was definitely the Hannibal Lecter of the ring.”

Springer’s coverage and storylines included numerous all-time greats, whom he admired for different reasons.

“Manny Pacquiao for his ability to stretch his talent all the way from flyweight to junior middleweight, while winning the lineal championship in five weight divisions (flyweight, featherweight, super featherweight, light welterweight and welterweight) in a career that spanned four decades,” he said, “George Foreman and Bernard Hopkins for their longevity, each fighting for 28 years with Foreman becoming the oldest heavyweight champion at 45, then retiring at 48, Hopkins at 51, and Floyd Mayweather for going 50-0, beating the record of the legendary Rocky Marciano.”

Boxers have a vested interest in speaking with the press according to Springer.

“I’ve never had a boxer say, “No comment.” In other sports, athletes are exposed to the media for months at a time through a long season,” he said. “They get tired of talking to reporters, especially when they are in a slump. There is no pressure on them to talk because, if they duck reporters, they are still assured of their playing time as long as they produce.”

This isn’t true for boxers. “Fighters, on the other hand, have no guarantees about future bouts. If they are ambitious young fighters, they need to make a name for themselves. If they are serious contenders, they need a title-holder to agree to fight them. Even if they themselves hold a title, they need publicity to beef up interest in their next fight, thus beefing up the size of their purse,” he said. “The more time they can get their face on TV or their name in the papers or on the Internet, the more opportunities they will have for fame and fortune. ‘No comment’ doesn’t cut it.”

There were some negatives covering the manly sport according to Springer.

“I never felt conflicted. I certainly didn’t like seeing fighters sadly losing their lives or, even if they survived, losing their minds, suffering from pugilistic dementia, a condition often referred to as punch drunk,” he said. “It’s the risk they all knowingly take because, in so many cases, it’s the best path open to them to escape the poverty and despair that plagues so many of them and their families.”

What does Springer believe will make boxing more palatable for the viewer?

“The biggest problem facing boxing is the sanctioning bodies, the WBC, WBA, IBF, WBO and several smaller organizations,” he said. “This alphabet soup spells disaster for the sport. While the WBC is the biggest and most authentic of the group, even though it too has flaws, the others often have their own designated champions. Every titleholder is forced to pay exorbitant sanctioning fees in order to keep their championship belts.”

Springer does reference the good old days when he was on the boxing beat.

“Long gone and never to return are the days when there was only one recognized champ in each weight division and many qualified contenders,” he said. “Back then, every sports fan, a follower of boxing or not, knew the name of the one and only heavyweight champion.”

The offshoot is that there are additional hurdles for everyone involved.

“As a result of this mishmash system, the best fights often never happen because of disputes over money, rankings of the fighters and other issues,” Springer said. “If there was a national boxing commissioner and he or she had the power to establish national rankings and order fights between champions of various sanctioning bodies, boxing itself would be the winner. Imagine if the Dodgers refused to play the Giants or the Lakers wouldn’t schedule the Celtics for whatever reason. It wouldn’t take long for fans of MLB or the NBA to start looking elsewhere to spend their dollars.”

Springer concluded his thought: “I can’t foresee this radical change to ever happen in boxing,” he said. “Too much money and too much power would be lost by the powers that be. The biggest losers with the status quo are the boxing fans.”

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 0

Share The Sweet Science experience!

Rick Assad

Up Next

The Hauser Report: The DAZN Experiment

Don't Miss

Canelo Alvarez Dominates but Goes the Distance with Stubborn John Ryder

Avila Perspective, Chap. 322: Super Welter Week in SoCal

Published

7 hours ago

April 18, 2025

David A. Avila

Avila-Perspective-Chap-322-Super-Welter-Week-in-SoCal

Two below-the-radar super welterweight stars show off their skills this weekend from different parts of Southern California.

One in particular, Charles Conwell, co-headlines a show in Oceanside against a hard-hitting Mexican while another super welter star Sadriddin Akhmedov faces another Mexican hitter in Commerce.

Take your pick.

The super welterweight division is loaded with talent at the moment. If Terence Crawford remained in the division he would be at the top of the class, but he is moving up several weight divisions.

Conwell (21-0, 16 KOs) faces Jorge Garcia Perez (32-4, 26 KOs) a tall knockout puncher from Los Mochis at the Frontwave Arena in Oceanside, Calif. on Saturday April 19. DAZN will stream the Golden Boy Promotions card that also features undisputed flyweight champion Gabriela Fundora. We’ll get to her later.

Conwell might be the best super welterweight out there aside from the big dogs like Vergil Ortiz, Serhii Bohachuk and Sebastian Fundora.

If you are not familiar with Conwell he comes from Cleveland, Ohio and is one of those fighters that other fighters know about. He is good.

He has the James “Lights Out” Toney kind of in-your-face-style where he anchors down and slowly deciphers the opponent’s tools and then takes them away piece by piece. Usually it’s systematic destruction. The kind you see when a skyscraper goes down floor by floor until it’s smoking rubble.

During the Covid days Conwell fought two highly touted undefeated super welters in Wendy Toussaint and Madiyar Ashkeyev. He stopped them both and suddenly was the boogie man of the super welterweight division.

Conwell will be facing Mexico’s taller Garcia who likes to trade blows as most Mexican fighters prefer, especially those from Sinaloa. These guys will be firing H bombs early.

Fundora

Co-headlining the Golden Boy card is Gabriela Fundora (15-0, 7 KOs) the undisputed flyweight champion of the world. She has all the belts and Mexico’s Marilyn Badillo (19-0-1, 3 KOs) wants them.

Gabriela Fundora is the sister of Sebastian Fundora who holds the men’s WBC and WBO super welterweight world titles. Both are tall southpaws with power in each hand to protect the belts they accumulated.

Six months ago, Fundora met Argentina’s Gabriela Alaniz in Las Vegas to determine the undisputed flyweight champion. The much shorter Alaniz tried valiantly to scrap with Fundora and ran into a couple of rocket left hands.

Mexico’s Badillo is an undefeated flyweight from Mexico City who has battled against fellow Mexicans for years. She has fought one world champion in Asley Gonzalez the current super flyweight world titlist. They met years ago with Badillo coming out on top.

Does Badillo have the skill to deal with the taller and hard-hitting Fundora?

When a fighter has a six-inch height advantage like Fundora, it is almost impossible to out-maneuver especially in two-minute rounds. Ask Alaniz who was nearly decapitated when she tried.

This will be Badillo’s first pro fight outside of Mexico.

Commerce Casino

Kazakhstan’s Sadriddin Akhmedov (15-0, 13 KOs) is another dangerous punching super welterweight headlining a 360 Promotions card against Mexico’s Elias Espadas (23-6, 16 KOs) on Saturday at the Commerce Casino.

UFC Fight Pass will stream the 360 Promotions card of about eight bouts.

Akhmedov is another Kazakh puncher similar to the great Gennady “GGG” Golovkin who terrorized the middleweight division for a decade. He doesn’t have the same polish or dexterity but doesn’t lack pure punching power.

It’s another test for the super welterweight who is looking to move up the ladder in the very crowded 154-pound weight division. 360 Promotions already has a top contender in Ukraine’s Serhii Bohachuk who nearly defeated Vergil Ortiz a year ago.

Could Bohachuk and Akhmedov fight each other if nothing else materializes?

That’s a question for another day.

Fights to Watch

Sat. DAZN 5 p.m. Charles Conwell (21-0, 16 KOs) vs. Jorge Garcia Perez (32-4, 26 KOs); Gabriela Fundora (15-0) vs Marilyn Badillo (19-0-1).

Sat. UFC Fight Pass 6 p.m. Sadriddin Akhmedov (15-0) vs Elias Espadas (23-6).

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 0

Share The Sweet Science experience!

TSS Salutes Thomas Hauser and his Bernie Award Cohorts

Published

2 days ago

April 16, 2025

TSS Press

TSS-Salutes-Thomas-Hauser-and-his-Bernie-Award-Cohorts

The Boxing Writers Association of America has announced the winners of its annual Bernie Awards competition. The awards, named in honor of former five-time BWAA president and frequent TSS contributor Bernard Fernandez, recognize outstanding writing in six categories as represented by stories published the previous year.

Over the years, this venerable website has produced a host of Bernie Award winners. In 2024, Thomas Hauser kept the tradition alive. A story by Hauser that appeared in these pages finished first in the category “Boxing News Story.” Titled “Ryan Garcia and the New York State Athletic Commission,” the story was published on June 23. You can read it HERE.

Hauser also finished first in the category of “Investigative Reporting” for “The Death of Ardi Ndembo,” a story that ran in the (London) Guardian. (Note: Hauser has owned this category. This is his 11^th first place finish for “Investigative Reporting”.)

Thomas Hauser, who entered the International Boxing Hall of Fame with the class of 2019, was honored at last year’s BWAA awards dinner with the A.J. Leibling Award for Outstanding Boxing Writing. The list of previous winners includes such noted authors as W.C. Heinz, Budd Schulberg, Pete Hamill, and George Plimpton, to name just a few.

The Leibling Award is now issued intermittently. The most recent honorees prior to Hauser were Joyce Carol Oates (2015) and Randy Roberts (2019).

Roberts, a Distinguished Professor of History at Purdue University, was tabbed to write the Hauser/Leibling Award story for the glossy magazine for BWAA members published in conjunction with the organization’s annual banquet. Regarding Hauser’s most well-known book, his Muhammad Ali biography, Roberts wrote, “It is nearly impossible to overestimate the importance of the book to our understanding of Ali and his times.” An earlier book by Hauser, “The Black Lights: Inside the World of Professional Boxing,” garnered this accolade: “Anyone who wants to understand boxing today should begin by reading ‘The Black Lights’.”

A panel of six judges determined the Bernie Award winners for stories published in 2024. The stories they evaluated were stripped of their bylines and other identifying marks including the publication or website for which the story was written.

Other winners:

Boxing Event Coverage: Tris Dixon

Boxing Column: Kieran Mulvaney

Boxing Feature (Over 1,500 Words): Lance Pugmire

Boxing Feature (Under 1,500 Words): Chris Mannix

The Dixon, Mulvaney, and Pugmire stories appeared in Boxing Scene; the Mannix story in Sports Illustrated.

The Bernie Award recipients will be honored at the forthcoming BWAA dinner on April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in the heart of Times Square. (For more information, visit the BWAA website). Two days after the dinner, an historic boxing tripleheader will be held in Times Square, the logistics of which should be quite interesting. Ryan Garcia, Devin Haney, and Teofimo Lopez share top billing.

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 0

Share The Sweet Science experience!

Mekhrubon Sanginov, whose Heroism Nearly Proved Fatal, Returns on Saturday

Published

3 days ago

April 15, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Mekhrubon-Sanginov-whose-Heroism-Nearly-Proved-Fatal-Returns-on-Saturday

To say that Mekhrubon Sanginov is excited to resume his boxing career would be a great understatement. Sanginov, ranked #9 by the WBA at 154 pounds before his hiatus, last fought on July 8, 2022.

He was in great form before his extended leave, having scored four straight fast knockouts, advancing his record to 13-0-1. Had he remained in Las Vegas, where he had settled after his fifth pro fight, his career may have continued on an upward trajectory, but a trip to his hometown of Dushanbe, Tajikistan, turned everything haywire. A run-in with a knife-wielding bully nearly cost him his life, stalling his career for nearly three full years.

Sanginov was exiting a restaurant in Dushanbe when he saw a man, plainly intoxicated, harassing another man, an innocent bystander. Mekhrubon intervened and was stabbed several times with a long knife. One of the puncture wounds came perilously close to puncturing his heart.

“After he stabbed me, I ran after him and hit him and caught him to hold for the police,” recollects Sanginov. “There was a lot of confusion when the police arrived. At first, the police were not certain what had happened.

“By the time I got to the hospital, I had lost two liters of blood, or so I was told. After I was patched up, one of the surgeons said to me, ‘Give thanks to God because he gave you a second life.’ It is like I was born a second time.”

“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have happened in any city,” he adds. (A story about the incident on another boxing site elicited this comment from a reader: “Good man right there. World would be a better place if more folk were willing to step up when it counts.”)

Sanginov first laced on a pair of gloves at age 10 and was purportedly 105-14 as an amateur. Growing up, the boxer he most admired was Roberto Duran. “Muhammad Ali will always be the greatest and [Marvin] Hagler was great too, but Duran was always my favorite,” he says.

During his absence from the ring, Sanginov married a girl from Tajikistan and became a father. His son Makhmud was born in Las Vegas and has dual citizenship. “Ideally,” he says, “I would like to have three more children. Two more boys and the last one a daughter.”

He also put on a great deal of weight. When he returned to the gym, his trainer Bones Adams was looking at a cruiserweight. But gradually the weight came off – “I had to give up one of my hobbies; I love to eat,” he says – and he will be resuming his career at 154. “Although I am the same weight as before, I feel stronger now. Before I was more of a boy, now I am a full-grown man,” says Sanginov who turned 29 in February.

He has a lot of rust to shed. Because of all those early knockouts, he has answered the bell for only eight rounds in the last four years. Concordantly, his comeback fight on Saturday could be described as a soft re-awakening. Sanginov’s opponent Mahonri Montes, an 18-year pro from Mexico, has a decent record (36-10-2, 25 KOs) but has been relatively inactive and is only 1-3-1 in his last five. Their match at Thunder Studios in Long Beach, California, is slated for eight rounds.

On May 10, Ardreal Holmes (17-0) faces Erickson Lubin (26-2) on a ProBox card in Kissimmee, Florida. It’s an IBF super welterweight title eliminator, meaning that the winner (in theory) will proceed directly to a world title fight.

Sanginov will be watching closely. He and Holmes were scheduled to meet in March of 2022 in the main event of a ShoBox card on Showtime. That match fell out when Sanginov suffered an ankle injury in sparring.

If not for a twist of fate, that may have been Mekhrubon Sanginov in that IBF eliminator, rather than Ardreal Holmes. We will never know, but one thing we do know is that Mekhrubon’s world title aspirations were too strong to be ruined by a knife-wielding bully.

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 0

Share The Sweet Science experience!