Reflections on Yoenli Hernandez and the New Wave of Outstanding Cuban Boxers

Published

7 months ago

September 17, 2024

Reflections on Yoenli Hernandez and the New Wave of Outstanding Cuban Boxers

Cuban boxers were 2-0 at the T-Mobile Arena on Mexican Independence Day weekend in Las Vegas. Erislandy Lara toyed with listless Danny Garcia for nine rounds before Garcia’s corner stopped the bout. Yoenli Hernandez improved to 5-0 with his fifth knockout, dismissing his Mexican opponent in the second round.

Lara, who was appearing his nineteenth 12-round fight, is 41 years old. Yoenli Hernandez (pictured) is 27. However, although separated by only 14 years, they effectively represent two different generations of Cuban boxers. Hernandez is part of the new wave that includes super-hot prospects Arlen Lopez and Andy Cruz.

A light heavyweight, Lopez, 31, was an Olympic gold medalist in Rio and in Tokyo, but came up short in his bid to become only the fourth boxer (and third Cuban) to achieve the Olympic hat trick, losing a split decision to Ukraine’s Oleksandr Khyzhniak in the semi-final round of the recent Paris Games. As a pro, he’s 3-0 (2 KOs).

A lightweight, Andy Cruz, 29, was 4-for-4 against Keyshawn Davis as an amateur, with the last of those four wins coming in the gold medal round of the Tokyo Olympiad. He’s 4-0 (2 KOs) as a pro with all four of those wins coming against experienced opponents in matches slated for 10 rounds.

Yoenli Hernandez (sometimes identified as Yoenlis Feliciano) wasn’t an Olympian, but he was a World Amateur Champion who finished his amateur career with 26 straight wins. He turned pro along with Arlen Lopez and four other elite Cuban amateurs on May 20, 2022 in Aguascalientes, Mexico, an historic day in the history of Cuban boxing as it was the first time that members of the Cuban National Team competed as pros with the blessing of the Cuban government.

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Cuba has spawned a number of notable boxers over the years. Kid Gavilan, the Cuban Hawk, master of the bolo punch, won the world welterweight title in 1951 with a unanimous decision over Johnny Bratton at Madison Square Garden and successfully defended it seven times. By some accounts, he was Cuba’s first true world title-holder. Kid Chocolate (Eligio Sardinas) captured world titles as a featherweight and a junior lightweight in the early 1930’s, but neither title was recognized overseas — the junior lightweight division then lacked traction and his featherweight diadem was the New York State version of it.

Kid Gavilan and Kid Chocolate have plaques in the International Boxing Hall of Fame as does Luis Rodriguez who captured the world welterweight title at LA’s Dodger Stadium in 1963 in his second of four meetings with arch-rival Emile Griffith. Rodriguez and his compatriot Florentino Fernandez, a world title challenger as a middleweight, both had their first U.S. fights in 1959, the year that Fidel Castro’s rebels overthrew the Batista regime. They trained at Chris Dundee’s iconic Miami Beach gym alongside the fighter who would take the name Muhammad Ali.

Two future greats — featherweight Ultiminio “Sugar” Ramos and welterweight Jose “Mantequilla” Napoles — left Cuba a bit later and settled in Mexico. Although they won world titles in U.S. rings, they never left their adopted home. Both were residents of Mexico City at the time of their passing.

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As is well known, Fidel Castro abolished professional sports. Moreover, there was a long lag after he came to power before elite Cuban boxers had the temerity to defect.

Cuban boxers dominated the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, sending nine of a possible 12 boxers to the gold medal round, seven of whom emerged victorious. Of the medal winners, only bantamweight Joel Casamayor left for the United States, and he did not defect until four years later on the eve of the Atlanta Summer Games. Eventually 12 other Cuban boxers – several who arrived in the U.S. before him — would join Casamayor in a stable that took the name Team Freedom. Casamayor was the best of the bunch, winning world titles as a pro at 130 and 135 pounds.

Team Freedom evolved into Warriors Boxing. The South Florida agency, run by Luis De Cubas Sr. and Leon Margules, is the dominant force in the Cuban-American boxing community. De Cubas, who once owned a piece of Roberto Duran, was born in Cuba and spent his formative years in Minnesota before settling in Miami at age 24. His business partner Margules is a Fort Lauderdale attorney.

Yoenli Hernandez’s manager of record is Providence, Rhode Island businessman Robert Valle, but Warriors Boxing, which also controls WBA (regular) light heavyweight champion David Morrell, has its fingers in the pie. Virtually every boxer who defected from Cuba during the Castro years was helped along the way by Luis De Cubas and his associates. His name now appears on the ballot for the International Boxing Hall of Fame and it’s a fair guess that he will go in with the next class of inductees.

In many ways, things have gotten worse in Cuba since Fidel Castro passed away in 2016. More than a million Cubans – roughly 10 percent of the population – left the island nation between 2022 and 2023, the largest wave of out-migration in Cuba’s history. Of that number, more than 400,000 settled in the Unites States, mostly in the Miami area.

Within that diaspora were many of Cuba’s most talented boxers. Those that leave for greener pastures are no longer stamped an enemy of the state. Restrictions have been eased for people traveling back and forth between the two countries.

Cuban boxers were well-represented on the rosters of the teams in the newfangled Team Combat League where men compete in one-round matches across six weight categories. One doesn’t have to like the concept to appreciate the fact that the TCL has been a godsend to boxers who would otherwise have trouble staying busy while also putting a few dollars in their pocket to help pay the bills during the lacuna between conventional prizefights.

The novice professionals from Cuba who have competed in these events tend to be younger than their predecessors who left Cuba to launch their pro careers. To take but two examples, light heavyweight Brayon Leon and welterweight Darian Castro, both strong prospects who excelled at the TCL brand of fisticuffing (a combined 22-2) are 22 and 21 years old respectively.

The takeaway is that we will be hearing a lot more about Cuban boxers in the next few years. And if Yoenli Hernandez becomes a big name in the sport, remember that you heard it here first.

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Arne K. Lang

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

Published

4 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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