Charles Martin: “I’m a young 37 and have never been more passionate about boxing”

Published

2 years ago

June 26, 2023

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Jared Anderson was slated to fight Kazakhstan’s Zhan Kossobutskiy on July 1 on ESPN in a match emanating from the 9,000-seat Huntington Center in Toledo, Ohio. That match-up fell out, purportedly because Kossobutskiy had visa problems. In steps Charles Martin and now the stakes are higher for Jared Anderson.

Anderson, a mere pup for a heavyweight at twenty-three years of age, has knocked out all 14 of his opponents at the professional level. Only two lasted beyond the third round. Hailed as the next great American heavyweight and a sure-shot future world champion, the Toledo native is on the path to becoming a very rich man.

Zhan Kossobutskiy’s record is no less impressive: 19-0 with 18 knockouts. However, Charles Martin (29-3-1, 26 KOs) is in some ways a more credible opponent.

Won-loss records in boxing are notoriously misleading and that’s especially true for a relative unknown who has never fought on American soil. Knowledgeable fans who have studied Kossubutskiy’s fights on youtube have told this reporter that he is legit and it’s worth noting that he defeated future Olympians Vassiliy Levit, Guido Vianello, and Frazer Clarke in his amateur days. However, the fact remains that as a pro, akin to Jared Anderson, he has yet to fight a reputable opponent. One of the few recognizable names on his ledger is Philadelphia journeyman Joey Dawejko. The Kazakh stopped him in the second round in Hamburg Germany, but the usually durable Dawejko came in overweight (a career-high 266 ¾ pounds) and fought as if he were just there for the payday.

If Anderson had fought Kossobutskiy and had blown him away, many pundits would have cushioned their kind words with the caveat that Jared still hasn’t been properly tested. If, perchance, Anderson blows away Charles Martin on July 1, retrospectives won’t command a caveat. “Prince Charles” has certainly been found wanting on occasion, but the St. Louis native has been in with some of the division’s hardest hitters and has the added beguilement of having once been a world title-holder.

His reign didn’t last long. Not quite three months after capturing the vacant IBF title with a quirky third-round stoppage of Vyacheslav Glazkov at Barclays Center in Brooklyn (Glazkov fell and suffered a knee injury), Martin went to London and was blasted out in the second round by Anthony Joshua. He is 6-2 since that mishap, most recently a fourth-round stoppage of 2004 U.S. Olympian Devin Vargas.

Charles Martin

2014 insert

Martin, pictured above with the late Michael King in a 2014 photo, is one of the last remnants of a grand experiment that bore little fruit.

A TV mogul – the family business, King World Productions, syndicated such powerhouses as “Oprah” and “Wheel of Fortune” — Michael King was a diehard boxing fan who built a state-of-the-art gym in Carson, California, with an eye to growing the next generation of great American heavyweights. He thought blue-chip athletes toiling in other sports like football and basketball were the best prospects.

King funneled millions into his pet project with the little to show for it. Six-foot-seven Dominic Breazeale, a former college quarterback, made the U.S. Olympic team and was a two-time world title challenger, but manufacturing a world champion proved to be elusive and King wasn’t there to celebrate when Charles Martin held the IBF belt aloft at the Barclays Center. The previous year, he contracted pneumonia and passed away at age sixty-seven.

Charles Martin, who comfortably carries 245 pounds on a six-foot-five frame, has the look of someone who would have excelled on the hardwood or the gridiron. However, that wasn’t the case. Unlike other heavyweights sponsored by Michael King, Martin, one might say, fell through the cracks.

“I was real skinny in high school and my mother didn’t want me to play football,” says Martin who bounced around in his schoolboy days and was living in Phoenix when he left school in the 11^th grade. And basketball? “I was okay playing in the street,” he says, “but lousy in a structured environment.”

What, then, was his best sport? “Bowling,” he says matter-of-factly. He currently plays in two leagues and avouches that his best game was a 269.

Another surprise awaited when Martin was asked to name his favorite boxers. The first name that popped out of his mouth was a Welshman, Joe Calzaghe. The two would seem to have little in common other than both being southpaws.

Since winning the title, Martin’s career has been choppy but there were underlying factors. “I lost my love for boxing after what happened in the Joshua fight,” he says. A full year elapsed before Martin fought again.

Then there was Covid. He’s had two encounters with the debilitating virus, the first popping up following his 2018 match with Adam Kownacki wherein he lost a 10-round decision.

“When I got to JFK Airport, it hit me,” he says. “They say that some people lose their sense of taste and sense of smell when they get it. I didn’t, but when I got home, I was so fatigued that all I wanted to do was stay in bed.”

Martin says that he had another brush with it after visiting his wife’s family in Atlanta. That begs the question of whether he was 100 percent on New Year’s Day of 2022 when Cuban slugger Luis “King Kong” Ortiz saddled him with his third loss. Martin was upright but on unsteady legs when the bout was waived off in the sixth frame.

Martin had Ortiz down twice before the roof fell in. He was ahead on all three cards through the five completed rounds.

“I don’t want to take anything away from Ortiz,” he says. “He hit me with some good shots. But something was wrong with me. After five rounds, I didn’t have any bounce in my legs.”

The setback to Ortiz, he says, had the exact opposite effect of his setback to Anthony Joshua. “After Joshua,” he says, “you couldn’t get me back in the gym unless I had a fight in the works. Now I couldn’t wait to get back in the gym.”

Martin now resides in Las Vegas where there is a sizeable colony of heavyweights. Veterans like Jonnie Rice and Michael Hunter, up-and-comers like Jeremiah Milton, Skylar Lacy, and Patrick Mailata, and a steady stream of European visitors like Joe Joyce have created something of a round-robin vibe in the local gyms where they spar. Oddly, although southpaws are always in demand as sparring partners, Martin says that he has never sparred with Jared Anderson. “I think it’s better that way,” he says, alluding to the fact that neither will enter the ring with any preconceptions.

Martin is the father of seven children. “One of my goals,” he says, “is to get all my kids under the same roof.” The youngest of his children, two-year-old twin boys, have been diagnosed as autistic. He plans to use his upcoming fight as a platform to make the public more aware of this complex disorder.

In handicapping the Anderson-Martin fight, the age gap looms large. “I know this is a young man’s game,” he says, “but I am a young thirty-seven.” And while Martin will be fighting in a hostile setting – this is a “welcome home” fight for Anderson who will be making his first start as a pro in the city where he was born and raised – the match is something of a homecoming fight for him as well. Martin finished his amateur career at a tournament in Toledo.

Based on the odds, Jared Anderson should have little trouble advancing his record to 15-0. Charles Martin stands ready to gum up the works.

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Arne K. Lang

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

Published

4 hours ago

May 8, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Arne’s Almanac: The Good, the Bad, and the (Mostly) Ugly; a Weekend Boxing Recap and More

Published

2 days ago

May 6, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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Arne’s Almanac: The Good, the Bad, and the (Mostly) Ugly; a Weekend Boxing Recap and More

It’s old news now, but on back-to-back nights on the first weekend of May, there were three fights that finished in the top six snoozefests ever as measured by punch activity. That’s according to CompuBox which has been around for 40 years.

In Times Square, the boxing match between Devin Haney and Jose Carlos Ramirez had the fifth-fewest number of punches thrown, but the main event, Ryan Garcia vs. Rolly Romero, was even more of a snoozefest, landing in third place on this ignoble list.

Those standings would be revised the next night – knocked down a peg when Canelo Alvarez and William Scull combined to throw a historically low 445 punches in their match in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 152 by the victorious Canelo who at least pressed the action, unlike Scull (pictured) whose effort reminded this reporter of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” – no, not the movie starring Paul Newman, just the title.

CompuBox numbers, it says here, are best understood as approximations, but no amount of rejiggering can alter the fact that these three fights were stinkers. Making matters worse, these were pay-per-views. If one had bundled the two events, rather than buying each separately, one would have been out $90 bucks.

****

Thankfully, the Sunday card on ESPN from Las Vegas was redemptive. It was just what the sport needed at this moment – entertaining fights to expunge some of the bad odor. In the main go, Naoya Inoue showed why he trails only Shohei Ohtani as the most revered athlete in Japan.

Throughout history, the baby-faced assassin has been a boxing promoter’s dream. It’s no coincidence that down through the ages the most common nickname for a fighter – and by an overwhelming margin — is “Kid.”

And that partly explains Naoya Inoue’s charisma. The guy is 32 years old, but here in America he could pass for 17.

Joey Archer

Joey Archer, who passed away last week at age 87 in Rensselaer, New York, was one of the last links to an era of boxing identified with the nationally televised Friday Night Fights at Madison Square Garden.

Joey Archer

Archer made his debut as an MSG headliner on Feb. 4, 1961, and had 12 more fights at the iconic mid-Manhattan sock palace over the next six years. The final two were world title fights with defending middleweight champion Emile Griffith.

Archer etched his name in the history books in November of 1965 in Pittsburgh where he won a comfortable 10-round decision over Sugar Ray Robinson, sending the greatest fighter of all time into retirement. (At age 45, Robinson was then far past his peak.)

Born and raised in the Bronx, Joey Archer was a cutie; a clever counter-puncher recognized for his defense and ultimately for his granite chin. His style was embedded in his DNA and reinforced by his mentors.

Early in his career, Archer was domiciled in Houston where he was handled by veteran trainer Bill Gore who was then working with world lightweight champion Joe Brown. Gore would ride into the Hall of Fame on the coattails of his most famous fighter, “Will-o’-the Wisp” Willie Pep. If Joey Archer had any thoughts of becoming a banger, Bill Gore would have disabused him of that notion.

In all honesty, Archer’s style would have been box office poison if he had been black. It helped immensely that he was a native New Yorker of Irish stock, albeit the Irish angle didn’t have as much pull as it had several decades earlier. But that observation may not be fair to Archer who was bypassed twice for world title fights after upsetting Hurricane Carter and Dick Tiger.

When he finally caught up with Emile Griffith, the former hat maker wasn’t quite the fighter he had been a few years earlier but Griffith, a two-time Fighter of the Year by The Ring magazine and the BWAA and a future first ballot Hall of Famer, was still a hard nut to crack.

Archer went 30 rounds with Griffith, losing two relatively tight decisions and then, although not quite 30 years old, called it quits. He finished 45-4 with 8 KOs and was reportedly never knocked down, yet alone stopped, while answering the bell for 365 rounds. In retirement, he ran two popular taverns with his older brother Jimmy Archer, a former boxer who was Joey’s trainer and manager late in Joey’s career.

May he rest in peace.

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Bombs Away in Las Vegas where Inoue and Espinoza Scored Smashing Triumphs

Published

4 days ago

May 4, 2025

David A. Avila

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Japan’s Naoya “Monster” Inoue banged it out with Mexico’s Ramon Cardenas, survived an early knockdown and pounded out a stoppage win to retain the undisputed super bantamweight world championship on Sunday.

Japan and Mexico delivered for boxing fans again after American stars failed in back-to-back days.

“By watching tonight’s fight, everyone is well aware that I like to brawl,” Inoue said.

Inoue (30-0, 27 KOs), and Cardenas (26-2, 14 KOs) and his wicked left hook, showed the world and 8,474 fans at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas that prizefighting is about punching, not running.

After massive exposure for three days of fights that began in New York City, then moved to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and then to Nevada, it was the casino capital of the world that delivered what most boxing fans appreciate- pure unadulterated action fights.

Monster Inoue immediately went to work as soon as the opening bell rang with a consistent attack on Cardenas, who very few people knew anything about.

One thing promised by Cardenas’ trainer Joel Diaz was that his fighter “can crack.”

Cardenas proved his trainer’s words truthful when he caught Inoue after a short violent exchange with a short left hook and down went the Japanese champion on his back. The crowd was shocked to its toes.

“I was very surprised,” said Inoue about getting dropped. ““In the first round, I felt I had good distance. It got loose in the second round. From then on, I made sure to not take that punch again.”

Inoue had no trouble getting up, but he did have trouble avoiding some of Cardenas massive blows delivered with evil intentions. Though Inoue did not go down again, a look of total astonishment blanketed his face.

A real fight was happening.

Cardenas, who resembles actor Andy Garcia, was never overly aggressive but kept that left hook of his cocked and ready to launch whenever he saw the moment. There were many moments against the hyper-aggressive Inoue.

Both fighters pack power and both looked to find the right moment. But after Inoue was knocked down by the left hook counter, he discovered a way to eliminate that weapon from Cardenas. Still, the Texas-based fighter had a strong right too.

In the sixth round Inoue opened up with one of his lightning combinations responsible for 10 consecutive knockout wins. Cardenas backed against the ropes and Inoue blasted away with blow after blow. Then suddenly, Cardenas turned Inoue around and had him on the ropes as the Mexican fighter unloaded nasty combinations to the body and head. Fans roared their approval.

“I dreamed about fighting in front of thousands of people in Las Vegas,” said Cardenas. “So, I came to give everything.”

Inoue looked a little surprised and had a slight Mona Lisa grin across his face. In the seventh round, the Japanese four-division world champion seemed ready to attack again full force and launched into the round guns blazing. Cardenas tried to catch Inoue again with counter left hooks but Inoue’s combos rained like deadly hail. Four consecutive rights by Inoue blasted Cardenas almost through the ropes. The referee Tom Taylor ruled it a knockdown. Cardenas beat the count and survived the round.

In the eighth round Inoue looked eager to attack and at the bell launched across the ring and unloaded more blows on Cardenas. A barrage of 14 unanswered blows forced the referee to stop the fight at 45 seconds of round eight for a technical knockout win.

“I knew he was tough,” said Inoue. “Boxing is not that easy.”

Espinoza Wins

WBO featherweight titlist Rafael Espinosa (27-0, 23 KOs) uppercut his way to a knockout win over Edward Vazquez (17-3, 4 KOs) in the seventh round.

“I wanted to fight a game fighter to show what I am capable,” said Espinoza.

Espinosa used the leverage of his six-foot, one-inch height to slice uppercuts under the guard of Vazquez. And when the tall Mexican from Guadalajara targeted the body, it was then that the Texas fighter began to wilt. But he never surrendered.

Though he connected against Espinoza in every round, he was not able to slow down the taller fighter and that allowed the Mexican fighter to unleash a 10-punch barrage including four consecutive uppercuts. The referee stopped the fight at 1:47 of the seventh round.

It was Espinoza’s third title defense.

Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank

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