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R.I.P. Eric Griffin, One of the Greatest Amateur Boxers of All Time
Eric Griffin passed away a week ago Saturday (Oct. 7) at age 55 at a hospital in Lafayette, Louisiana. Griffin was no great shakes as a pro, but the longtime resident of Broussard, Louisiana, was quite simply one of the greatest amateur boxers of all time.
That’s not one man’s opinion.
In 2000, a USA Boxing publication came out with a list of the top ten U.S. amateur boxers of the twentieth century. (USA Boxing, headquartered at the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado, is the governing body of amateur boxing in the United States.)
All of the boxers on the list were former Olympians. No attempt was made to rank-order them. Listed alphabetically, here they are:
Mark Breland (1984, Los Angeles)
Cassius Clay (1960, Rome)
Oscar De La Hoya (1992, Barcelona)
Eddie Eagan (1920, Antwerp)
George Foreman (1968, Mexico City)
Joe Frazier (1964, Tokyo)
Eric Griffin (1992, Barcelona)
Roy Jones Jr. (1988, Seoul)
Sugar Ray Leonard (1976, Montreal)
Floyd Patterson (1952, Helsinki)
All but three of the boxers on this list are enshrined in the International Boxing Hall of Fame. The outsiders are Eddie Eagan, Breland, and Griffin. (FYI, Eddie Eagan never turned pro. The U.S. representative in the light heavyweight class at the 1920 Games in Belgium, he went on to earn a law degree from Yale, attended Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, won a second gold medal at the 1932 Winter Games in Lake Placid, New York, as a member of the U.S. four-man bobsled team, and was the chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission from 1945 to 1951.)
All but two of the top-ten won Olympic titles. Eric Griffin’s name pops up again. Roy Jones Jr. is the other who returned home without a gold medal.
Eric Griffin, who grew to be five-foot-three, won his first amateur tournament at the age of 13. He weighed 80 pounds. In 1988, he suffered one of his rare losses when he was out-pointed by Michael Carbajal in the Olympic Trials. Regardless, Griffin was headed to the Olympic Summer Games in Seoul, Korea, either as the U.S. entrant in the light flyweight (106-pound) class or as an alternate in the event that Carbajal defeated him again in the Olympic Box Offs.
The Box Offs were held at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. The Griffin-Carbajal rematch never materialized. On the eve of the match, Eric was sent home when the results of his drug test were made known. He had tested positive for marijuana, one of three boxers ousted from the Box Offs without throwing a punch. The others were Lavelle Finger and William Guthrie, both from St. Louis, who tested positive for cocaine.
Griffin protested his innocence but fessed up when his coach and sponsor Bob Jordan, an executive with a Houston company that manufactured computers, threatened to sue the UCLA lab that performed the test. Griffin wouldn’t let Jordan, a surrogate father to him – Eric never knew his biological father – go off on a wild goose chase.
Eric Griffin was then 20 years old. In addition to being kicked off the team, he was slapped with a six-month suspension. His next move, logically, was to turn pro, but he was more interested in repairing his image. Money would not wipe away the damage. So, he elected to stay the course in hopes of competing in the next Olympics, the 1992 games in Barcelona.
His relationship with Jordan was ruptured when he confessed to having smoked marijuana. As Sports Illustrated writer William Nack noted, Bob Jordan had grown up in a small town in the 1950s in a place and time where it was thought that anyone who tried marijuana was destined to become a dope fiend. Without Jordan’s financial assistance, Eric took a job washing dishes at a Houston restaurant to make ends meet. The two eventually reconciled and Griffin followed Jordan when Jordan returned to his hometown of Jasper, Tennessee, where Eric lived in a trailer with his wife and their young son.
During the years between the 1988 and 1992 Summer Games, Eric Griffin just kept winning and winning. He won four world titles and was twice a finalist for the Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States. (No boxer has ever won this prestigious annual award which was first issued in 1930.)
Griffin not only made the 1992 U.S. Olympic boxing team but was named a co-captain along with Fort Worth bantamweight Sergio Reyes. The team’s head coach, Joe Byrd, said of Griffin, “he’s our heart, our backbone.”
Heading into Barcelona, the U.S. boxers accorded the best chance of winning a gold medal were Griffin and 19-year-old Los Angeles lightweight Oscar De La Hoya. Griffin was accorded far less ink in the U.S. press than De La Hoya who was more photogenic and had a better back story.
Barcelona 1992
This was the first Olympiad in which a computerized scoring system was used to determine the winner of each boxing match. The impetus was Roy Jones Jr, or rather the judges that ruled against Jones in the gold medal round four years earlier in Seoul, awarding the contest to his South Korean opponent. There have been controversial decisions in every Olympiad, but none aroused more indignation.
In Barcelona, there were five judges plus five alternates in the event of an electronic malfunction. Each of the judges had a metal box with two buttons, one for each fighter. When a punch landed, they pressed the appropriate button. For a punch to count on the master sheet, at least three judges had to hit the button within one second of each other. The boxer that landed the most punches was deemed the winner.
Griffin won his opening match comfortably. In his second bout, he was pit against a local man, Rafael Lozano, against whom he would be credited with landing 31 more punches. But not all of them registered on the official master sheet; only those that satisfied the one-second criterion. In round two, one of Griffin’s punches so buzzed Lozano that the referee issued a standing 8-count, but this punch did not register. At the end, the fight was awarded to the Spaniard by the ludicrous score of 6 to 5. “My stomach sank to the floor [when Lozano had his hand raised],” Griffin told a reporter at the press conference the next day, adding that it felt as if he had swallowed a bowling ball.
Griffin didn’t whine or curse the officials, but U.S. reporters were not so magnanimous. Griffin “traveled thousands of miles expecting to reconcile his sins, only to find that four years of sacrifice and commitment can be swept away in 9 minutes of incompetence,” fulminated George Diaz of the Orlando Sentinel. The judges, noted Bill Varner, a syndicated writer for the Gannett chain of papers, were all middle aged (the youngest was 42), but “were expected to have the reflexes needed to master children’s video games.”
Had Eric Griffin left Barcelona with a gold medal, he would have likely commanded a nice bonus from a major promotional group. But the sport’s heavy hitters – Bob Arum, Don King, and Dan Duva – had no interest in him; he was too small and too black. When he turned pro, it was with Philadelphia promoter Artie Pelullo who had a contract to promote a series of monthly shows at Las Vegas’ Riviera Hotel.
As a Pro
Fighting for Pelullo, Griffin won his first 11 fights. He lost the twelfth to Marcos Pacheco, a journeyman from Mexico, when he dislocated his left shoulder and was pulled out by his corner after six rounds. He avenged that setback in his next fight, winning a lopsided decision, and won three more fights before he suffered a loss that could not be explained away as a fluke. Against Carlos Murillo, a rough customer from Panama, both of Eric’s eyes were nearly shut when he was knocked down with a body punch in round nine and referee Steve Smoger waived it off.
Two more losses would follow, both to Jesus Chong, and they would write the finish to Eric Griffin’s boxing career. Chong stopped him in the seventh in their first encounter and in the second round of the sequel. The rematch at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas was for the WBO world light flyweight title vacated by Venezuela’s Leo Gamez who surrendered the belt when he could no longer make the weight.
Chong, from Durango, Mexico, packed a powerful punch – 28 of his 32 victories would come by knockout – but he was a wild swinger. Could it be that Eric Griffin, now only 29 years old and having answered the bell for only 102 rounds at the pro level, was already a shot fighter?
Yes. Davey Lee Armstrong, a two-time Olympian who fell victim to dementia before he died at age 64, was only 27 years old when his manager/trainer Emanuel Steward saw that his reflexes had dulled and urged him to retire. It wasn’t only that Armstrong had taken up boxing at a very young age, said Steward, but that as the best he was continually fighting the best and that compounded the wear and tear on his body.
After the Fall
When Eric left the sport, he returned to his hometown, Broussard, a city of about 10,000 situated a few miles down the road from Lafayette, the largest city and unofficial capital of Louisiana’s Cajun Country and worked on and off as a short order cook, the same occupation of his maternal grandmother, the woman that raised him. He had no conspicuous cognitive problems said his cousin Jason Papillion, with whom we spoke, but a clump of health issues that Papillion attributed to obesity. The picture of him that accompanied his obituary (the only useful picture that we could find for this story) is incongruent with that of a man who in his athletic heyday weighed less than 110 pounds.
In 1997, when Griffin was preparing for what would be his final fight, Michael Carbajal, his amateur rival, had already broken the glass ceiling for boxers in the smallest weight class, commanding a seven-figure purse for his first fight with Humberto “Chiquita” Gonzalez, and Oscar De La Hoya, Eric’s Olympic teammate, was already a multi-millionaire. Griffin’s last ring appearance was in a world title fight at Caesars Palace, home to some of the grandest boxing events of the era, but don’t be fooled. Griffin-Chong II wasn’t staged in the big outdoor arena under the stars, but in a ballroom. The fight wasn’t nationally televised; it aired exclusively on KCAL-TV in Los Angeles. The attendance, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, was 727, and Griffin’s purse, akin to that of Jesus Chong, was $20,000. That’s $20,000 gross before his manager and Uncle Sam got their cut.
Someone glancing at Griffin’s 16-4 pro record on boxrec, oblivious to his amateur exploits, would be surprised to find his name on a top-ten list with such legends as Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Joe Frazier, and Sugar Ray Leonard. But boxing can be a cruel mistress and even some who achieved great heights in the squared circle have life stories that read as cautionary tales.
Griffin was laid to rest Saturday, Oct. 14. He is survived by, among others, two children, five grandchildren and Ms. Junel Thomas of Opelousas, Louisiana, his companion the last 10 years of his life. We here at TSS send our condolences.
Griffin’s cousin Jason Papillion keeps the flame of boxing alive in Cajun Country. If you are ever down in that neck of the woods, drop by Papillion’s Boxing Club in Lafayette and tell him we said “hi.” Papillion had a solid, if unspectacular, pro boxing career of his own, competing against such notables as Winky Wright, and Jason’s son Keon Papillion is a promising super welterweight prospect with a 6-0-1 record.
We asked Papillion what he would remember about Eric Griffin the man. “He was full of love and got a lot of love in return,” he said. “He was a very humble guy who never forgot where he came from.”
In the grand scheme of things, perhaps that counts for more than an Olympic gold medal.
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Arne K. Lang is a recognized authority on the history of prizefighting and the history of American sports gambling. His latest book, titled Clash of the Little Giants: George Dixon, Terry McGovern, and the Culture of Boxing in America, 1890-1910, was released by McFarland in September, 2022.
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Avila Perspective, Chap. 299: Golden Boy in Saudi Arabia and More
Avila Perspective, Chap. 299: Golden Boy in Saudi Arabia and More
A small brigade of Mexican and Latino-American fighters gathered at the beautiful Mayan Theater in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday.
Their mission: to export Mexican style fighting to the Saudi Arabia desert.
Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez defends the WBA cruiserweight title against WBO cruiserweight titlist Chris Billam-Smith and they will be joined by several other top Golden Boy Promotion fighters on Nov. 16 at the Venue in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
DAZN will stream the Golden Boy and BOXXER promotions card called “The Venue Riyadh Season.”
Mexican fighters are known worldwide for their ferocity and durability. Ramirez, a former super middleweight champion, surprised many with his convincing win over former champion Arsen Goulamirian last March.
Now Ramirez seeks to unify the cruiserweight titles against United Kingdom’s Smith who has never fought outside of his native country.
“I will become the first Mexican cruiserweight unified champion. It’s exciting because my dream will come true this November 16,” said Ramirez.
Smith has a similar goal.
“This opportunity for me is huge,” said Smith. “I’ve been written off many times before.”
The cruiserweights will be joined by two top super lightweight warriors who’ve been itching to face each other like a pair of fighting roosters.
Arnold Barboza, an undefeated super lightweight contender from Los Angeles, has been chasing top contenders and world champions for the past six years. Former super lightweight champion Jose Ramirez simply wants action and a return to elite status.
“I’ve been wanting this fight since 2019 for whatever reason it never happened,” said Barboza. “I want to give credit and thanks to Oscar, he’s a man of his word. When I signed to Golden Boy, he said he was going to give me this fight.”
“It’s honorable Barboza saying he’s been chasing the fight since 2019. Now that he stands in the way for me to reclaim my titles it’s time to get that fight on,” said Ramirez.
Others on the Riyadh fight card include Puerto Rico’s WBO minimumweight world titlist Oscar Collazo defending against Thailand’s Thammanoon Niyomtrong, along with Oscar Duarte and lightweight contenders William Zepeda and Tevin Farmer.
One fighter missing from the card is Charles Conwell, the super welterweight contender they recently signed earlier in the year. He last performed on the Vergil Ortiz Jr. and Serhii Bohachuk clash in Las Vegas.
Conwell has similar talent to those two.
And what about the women fighters”
Yokasta Valle recently re-signed with Golden Boy Promotions. What is her next scheduled fight? She was spotted facing up against Australia’s Lulu “Bang, Bang” Hawton at a fight card. Is that on the horizon?
West Coast venues
Speaking of the Mayan Theater in downtown Los Angeles, its just a few buildings north of the Belasco Theater where Golden Boy was staging its club shows for several years.
A majority of the boxing media favored that location for its cozy atmosphere and proximity to LA Live. A number of prospects that developed into contenders and world champions fought there including Vergil Ortiz Jr., Ryan Garcia, Joshua Franco, and Oscar Duarte.
On any given fight night celebrities like Mario Lopez, George Lopez and others would show up in the small venue that held several hundred fans in its ornate theater setting.
The Mayan Theater and Belasco Theater are still open for business. According to one source, LA Laker owner Jeannie Buss stages a pro wrestling show at one of those theaters.
World title fight
England’s Nick Ball (20-0-1, 11 KOs) defends the WBA featherweight world title against Southern California’s Ronny Rios (34-4, 17 KOs) on Saturday Oct. 5, at M&S Bank Arena in Liverpool, England. Starting time for the Queensberry and Top Rank promotion card is 11 a.m. PT.
Ball was last seen nearly toppling WBC featherweight titlist Rey Vargas but lost last March. He then defeated Ray Ford for the WBA title
Fights to Watch
Fri. ESPN+ 2 a.m. PT Janibek Alimkhanuly (15-0) vs Andrei Mikhailovich (21-0)
Sat. ESPN+ 11 a.m. PT Nick Ball (20-0-1) vs Ronny Rios (34-4)
Photo credit: Cris Esqueda / Golden Boy
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Boxing Odds and Ends: ‘Paint-Gate,’ the Haney-Garcia lawsuit and More
This reporter chanced upon Manny “Flick” Savoy yesterday afternoon at a boxing gym in Las Vegas. That afforded me an opportunity to get his take on “paint gate.”
In case you missed it, Sandy Ryan was splashed with red paint on Friday as she left her hotel for Madison Square Garden where she would be defending her WBO world welterweight title against Mikaela Mayer. Manny Savoy was roughly 10 feet away from her when the incident happened. It happened so fast and was so unexpected that Savoy – who would be Ryan’s chief voice in her corner — never got a good look at the perpetrator who was wearing a hoodie.
A security camera captured the attack and Savoy keeps the little video on his cell phone. In the video that Savoy shared with me, one can see a late-model vehicle pull up and double-park. The man with the hoodie emerges from the passenger side holding a receptacle of some sort and then, moments later, rushes back without it and the car speeds off.
The paint-splashing was part of a multi-pronged assault. Sandy Ryan was defamed in leaflets that appeared around her hotel and near Madison Garden. The leaflets had Ryan’s image and the text, among other things, called her a whore. (We were shown a screenshot of one of the leaflets tacked to a pole, but it was not a close-up and we were only able to make out a few words.)
Who would do such a thing and why? Let’s rule out the possibility that the assault was random; that’s too far-fetched. Someone had to have been tipped-off when Sandy Ryan would emerge from her hotel. The defamatory leaflets, coupled with the paint attack and threatening messages from anonymous callers that Ryan says were left on her phone, are compelling evidence that this was a premeditated and well-thought-out scheme of attack.
Sandy Ryan and Mikaela Mayer were well-acquainted. They had known each other since their amateur days. Mikaela had sparred with Sandy in preparation for the 2016 Olympics. But what had been a warm relationship soured when Ryan hooked up with Mikaela’s coach Kay Koroma in Las Vegas at the same gym where Mayer regularly trained. Mikaela didn’t think that was kosher and eventually ditched Koroma in favor of Kofi Jantuah, a sundering that left hard feelings on both sides.
Ryan is firm in her belief that Mayer’s team was behind the attack. “What else could it be?” she says. Manny Savoy won’t go that far, but notes that Ryan, a British citizen with a home in Portugal, never spent enough time in New York to make any enemies there. Her fight with Mayer was her second fight in the U.S. and her first fight in the Big Apple.
Mikaela Mayer’s manager George Ruiz was quick to respond to Sandy Ryan’s veiled accusation: “Let me be clear. No one associated with Team Mayer had anything to do with the paint assault on you or the leaflets and the alleged anonymous threatening messages you say you received….Mikaela and Team Mayer want the perpetrator(s) found, caught, and punished to the full extent of the law.”
(The view from here is that while it seems logical that someone associated with Mayer orchestrated the attack, we would be shocked if Mikaela had any foreknowledge of it. The lady has far too much common-sense to get involved in a scheme that could ruin her boxing career and her promising post-boxing career as a TV boxing pundit.)
The presumed intent was to psychologically unsettle Sandy Ryan to where she couldn’t bring her A-game. (Sandy was a short favorite and the odds wavered only slightly, diluting the theory that the assault was orchestrated as part of a betting coup.)
As for the fight itself, it was outstanding. If Ryan was rattled, she didn’t show it although she came out on the short end of a majority decision, a decision that was somewhat controversial. (ESPN’s Mark Kriegel had Ryan winning six rounds to four.)
Ryan’s promoter Eddie Hearn has called on the WBO to mandate a rematch. “[Sandy] had to go back to her room, take all her clothes off, take all the paint off her body. [She had to be] emotionally shocked to pieces and yet she gave an incredible performance. The WBO, if they have any compassion, must order an immediate rematch.”
The rematch, if it happens, won’t be in New York. Advised to leave the city for her own safety, Sandy Ryan got out of town in a hurry.
—
In an article published here on June 23, Thomas Hauser wrote about the possible ramifications to Ryan Garcia’s failed PED test beyond the sanctions imposed upon him by the New York State Athletic Commission. Garcia’s victory over previously undefeated Devin Haney at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on April 30, 2024, was a changed to a no-contest when ostarine, a banned substance, was discovered in Garcia’s urine samples.
Hauser speculated that Team Haney might file a lawsuit against Garcia. By using a performance-enhancing substance, Garcia denied Devin a level playing field, yielding a result that adversely affected Devin’s future earnings, or so it would be argued.
Team Haney was paying attention. Six days ago, on Sept. 27, they filed a lawsuit in New York seeking compensation for “battery, fraud, and breach of contract.”
If successful, the lawsuit, which has polarized the boxing community, may benefit the sport. “Win, lose, or draw in court, I think this is actually a good thing to deter fighters from using performance enhancing drugs because the [current] penalty is not strict enough,” said Eddie Hearn in a conversation with Boxing Social.
—
This is a boxing site, but kindly indulge me as I go off-topic and say a few words about Pete Rose who passed away at his home in Las Vegas on Monday, one day after appearing with several of his former Cincinnati Reds teammates at a sports memorabilia show in Nashville.
I never felt sorry for Pete because he was an a-hole. Ask some of the veteran blackjack dealers here in Las Vegas and you will be hard-pressed to find one who has a nice word to say about him. However, whether his lifetime ban from baseball should have been lifted so that he could go into the Hall of Fame while he was still alive…well, that’s a horse of a different color.
Pete Rose was baseball’s all-time hit king, but forget the stats; he transcended the sport.
News of Pete’s death transported me back more than three decades to a conversation I had with my young son who hadn’t yet started kindergarten. He had become a fan of the Atlanta Braves, one of two teams (the other was the Cubs) whose home and away games were nationally televised.
One day, when he was watching baseball and I was in the next room, he came in and said, “dad, so-and-so [the player’s name eludes me] just did a Charlie Hustle.”
I have no idea where he got that from and he likely wouldn’t have recognized Pete Rose if he had bumped into him on the street – Pete had been out of baseball for some time – but I knew exactly what he was talking about. He had just witnessed a player on the Braves beat out an infield hit or maybe a bunt by sliding head-first into first base.
A friend e-mailed me yesterday from North Carolina and said, “From my view, the Hall is diminished by not having him in there rather than the other way around.”
I share that sentiment. If you disagree, we can still be friends.
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Alycia Baumgardner is Legit, but her Title Defense vs Persoon was a Weird Artifice
Women’s fights were bursting out all over this past weekend. The bout that warranted the most attention, one could argue, was the match between Alycia Baumgardner and Delfine Persoon. That’s because it had the most world titles at stake; Baumgardner was recognized as the world super featherweight champion by all four major sanctioning bodies. But this fight got lost in the shuffle because two other female title fights were packaged on larger platforms. On Friday at Madison Square Garden, airing on ESPN, Mikaela Mayer captured the WBO welterweight title from Sandy Ryan. On Saturday in Sheffield, England, airing on Sky Sports in the UK and globally on DAZN, Terri Harper wrested the WBO lightweight title from Rhiannon Dixon.
Baumgardner vs. Persoon, the capstone of an all-female, nine-bout card, was staged before an invitation-only audience at a film and TV production studio situated near Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. The card, all nine bouts, was livestreamed on BrinX.TV, a fledging, sports-oriented streaming platform. We made it a point to check it out, less because we were smitten by the card than because we had heard of BrinX.TV and we didn’t quite understand it.
Baumgardner kept her hardware in a bout that ended inconclusively (more about that later). As for BrinX.TV which bills itself as the next generation of sports and entertainment (company motto: ‘The Kingdom of Awesomeness”), we still don’t quite understand it.
Here’s what we know: BrinX.TV is into niche sports. Examples include freestyle trampolining, downhill skateboarding, powerboat racing, and jai alai. “The more unique the sport, the more passionate its fans,” says BrinX.TV co-founder and spokesperson John Brenkus.
Where it gets weird is that viewers have a chance to compete for cash prizes while watching a competition. However, to have skin in the game, one apparently has to purchase something. There’s a shopping channel component in the BrinX.TV business model.
The chief sponsor of the all-female boxing card was Ninja Pirates Misfits which appears to be a clothing brand with no relation to the 2012 animated film, “The Pirates! Brand of Misfits.” It must be a brand-new brand because the only item offered for sale during the boxing card was a $45 tee shirt. We might be wrong, but we were left with the impression that the player that won the most money finagled his way to the top of the leaderboard by buying the most tee shirts.
One doesn’t merely make a fashion statement by purchasing a Ninja Pirates Misfits tee shirt. A portion of the receipts, we were told, would go to increasing the prize pool for the boxers while, in a wider context, “elevating women in sports.”
The card moved at a brisk pace through the first five fights. It slowed to a crawl when John Brenkhus addressed the audience from the center of the ring. “The energy here is amazing,” said Brinkhus to the largely subdued crowd of perhaps 200 people, some of whom were dressed in formal attire. Later in the show, he brought Laila Ali and then former NFL player Dez Bryant into the ring and gushed over them while they reciprocated by congratulating him for “making history.”
Brenkus intentionally created the impression that this was the first all-female card in the annals of boxing. It was no such thing.
Not quite two years ago, there was an all-female show at London’s O2 Arena, a Matchroom promotion topped by two compelling title fights, Claressa Shields vs Savannah Marshall and Mikaela Mayer vs Alycia Baumgardner, with former Olympians Lauren Price, Caroline Dubois, Karriss Artingstall and Ginny Fuchs showcased in four of the nine supporting bouts.
Moreover, a quick google search reveals that the O2 event wasn’t the first of its kind. On July 13, 1979, there was an all-female card at the LA Sports Center. A very good bantamweight, Graciela Casillas, made her pro debut on the undercard which also included a fight for Mirian “Lady Tyger” Trimiar who would be named to the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2020 along with her cohort, the fraudulent Jackie Tonawanda.
Baumgardner vs. Persoon: The Fight
Alycia Baumgardner, 15-1 with 7 KOs heading in, was a unified champion. In her most recent bout, in July of last year, she avenged her lone defeat with a lopsided decision over Christina Linardatou.
Delfine Persoon, who brought a 49-3 (19) record, will be the first fighter from Belgium to go into the Hall of Fame, of that we are quite certain. Two of her three losses came at the hands of Irish superstar Katie Taylor and the first of those losses, underneath Joshua-Ruiz I at Madison Square Garden, was a barnburner that could have gone either way. There were scattered boos when Taylor was announced the winner by majority decision, notwithstanding the fact that the crowd was teeming with Brits.
But Persoon wasn’t the same fighter against Alycia Baumgardner that she had been back in the day when she touched gloves with Katie Taylor. She was now 39 years old (Baumgardner is 30) and entered the ring wearing a large brace over her right knee, an apparatus that compromised her mobility.
In the first round, Alycia knocked Persoon off-balance with a left-right combination. It was ruled a knockdown when both of Persoon’s gloves brushed the canvas.
In round four, with Baumgardner up by 4 points on all three cards through the three completed rounds, a clash of heads left the Belgian with a nasty gash above her right eye and referee Laurence Cole, on the advice of the ring doctor, stopped the fight. By rule, the bout had to go four full rounds to go to the scorecards. It fell 23 seconds short and was ruled a “no-contest.” Ergo, Baumgardner retained her titles.
Afterthoughts
Of the 18 ladies on the BrinX.TV card, eight were making their pro debut and several of these novices were already in their 30s. But, while they were new to boxing, they were not new to combat sports.
In the new world order, there’s a lot of crossover, especially at the club fight level. Boxrec, the sport’s indispensable record keeper, now carries BK (bare knuckle) and TCL (Team Combat League) results. Add MMA to the mix and there are now four pieces to the combat sports pie, five if one counts kickboxing as a separate entity. And while many women boxers in the past had a kickboxing background, nowadays there is more fluidity across multiple disciplines (a major headache for state boxing commissions).
Of the undercard fighters, we were most impressed by super bantamweight Isabel Vasquez, a 21-year-old Floridian, and junior welterweight Stephanie Simon, a 30-year-old former Marine and former U.S. national amateur champion. Both would appear to have bright futures at the professional level.
A final note: We would be remiss if we failed to note that BrinX.TV is free and that one doesn’t have to jump through hoops to summon it up. Hooray for that. And for the record, this reporter didn’t buy any Ninja Pirates Misfits tee shirts; we already had plenty in the closet (just kidding).
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