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

Published

2 hours ago

April 18, 2025

David A. Avila

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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).

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TSS Salutes Thomas Hauser and his Bernie Award Cohorts

Published

2 days ago

April 16, 2025

TSS Press

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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.

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

Published

3 days ago

April 15, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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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.

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