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Jaime Munguia Stops Erik Bazinyan on a Show with a Shocking Upset on the Undercard

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Jaime Munguia Stops Erik Bazinyan on a Show with a Shocking Upset on the Undercard

Top Rank was at the Desert Diamond Arena in the Phoenix suburb of Glendale, Arizona, tonight with a 10-bout card topped by a 12-round super middleweight contest between Jamie Munguia and Erik Bazinyan. A former world title-holder at 154 pounds, Munguia was making his first start since taking Canelo Alvarez the distance this past May.

Tijuana’s Munguia, who had Hall of Famer Erik Morales in his corner, emerged victorious, advancing his record to 44-1 (35 KOs) with a 10th-round stoppage. It was the first pro loss for Bazinyan (32-1-1), a native of Armenia who trains in the same Quebec gym with Artur Beterbiev and Christian Mbilli.

Using his jab effectively, Bazinyan appeared to be slightly ahead after five frames. Munguia had a strong sixth round and had more steam on his punches as the fight progressed. In the 10th, he stunned Bazinyan with a left uppercut and then stormed after him, nailing the Armenian with a barrage of punches that knocked him to all fours, unable to beat the count of referee Tom Taylor. The official time was 2:36 of round 10.

Co-Main

Richard Torrez Jr continued his ascent up the heavyweight ladder when veteran Joey “Tank” Dawejko was disqualified in the fifth round after spitting out his mouthpiece for the fifth time. Torrez, with his high-octane, herky-jerky attack, had won every round prior to the stoppage including a 10-7 round without a knockdown in the fourth stanza when Dawejko had two points deducted for mouthpiece infractions. It was the eleventh straight win for Tulare, California’s Torrez, a silver medalist at the Tokyo Olympics.

The official time was 2:02 of round five. Dawejko, who had been staying busy competing for the Philadelphia entry in the Team Combat League, declined to 28-12-4.

In the opener on the main ESPN platform, fast-rising 20-year-old junior welterweight Emiliano Vargas scored a fifth-round stoppage over intrepid Larry Fryers. A straight left put Fryers on the canvas and referee Raul Caiz Jr – aware that Fryers’ corner had him on a short leash – waived the fight off immediately. The official time was 1:23 of round five.

Vargas, the best of three fighting sons of former Olympian and two-weight title-holder “Ferocious” Fernando Vargas, improved to 12-0 with his tenth win inside the distance. Fryers, a 34-year-old father of four from Albany, New York, via Clones, Ireland, falls to 13-7-1.

Undercard

In the last of the prelims on ESPN+, super featherweight Charly Suarez, a 36-year-old Filipino with a wealth of international amateur experience, scored a third-round TKO over Jorge Castaneda. Suarez, ranked #6 by the WBO and IBF, hurt Castaneda and put him on the canvas with a left hook. When the bout resumed, Suarez went for the kill and forced the stoppage at the 2:22 mark. Suarez (18-0, 10 KOs) has yet to lose at the pro level. Castaneda (17-4) was a late sub for Andres Cortes who suffered an undisclosed injury in training.

Shocking Upset

Undefeated and fast rising Alan “Kid Kansas” Garcia, a 21-year-old lightweight, was seemingly matched against the perfect B-side opponent in seemingly feather-fisted Ricardo Fernandez, a native of Bolivia who brought 15-13 record but would be giving up four inches in height and had registered only one win by stoppage in his entire career. Things were going well for Garcia who was comfortably ahead through four-plus rounds until he forgot to duck and was knocked into dreamland with a looping right hand.

Kid Kansas crashed to the canvas under the lower strand of rope and the “10-count” issued by referee Raul Caiz Jr was just a formality. The official time was 2:25 of round five.

Also

Las Vegas native Demler “DJ” Zamora III, a 21-year-old Filipino-American lightweight, won a wide decision over Argentina’s Gerardo Antonio Perez, winning by tallies of 79-73 and 80-72 twice to improve his ledger to 14-0 (9). The scores were misleading as this was a spirited battle.

A protégé of the late Roger Mayweather, Zamora has fast hands and is very fluid, but needs to tighten his defense. Perez (12-6-1) has a fight booked next month in Panama City, Panama.

Junior bantamweight Steven Navarro, a blue-chip prospect from Los Angeles, blew away overmatched Oscar Arroyo who was on the canvas twice before the match was halted at the 2:35 mark of round three. Navarro (4-0, 3 KOs); Arroyo, a Nicaraguan residing in West Hempstead, NY, declined to 3-3.

A super welterweight contest slated for “10” was over in 46 seconds. Jorge Garcia, a 27-year-old Mexican, caved in Ilias Essaoudi with a right hook to the rib cage. He followed up with thee more punches as Essaoudi was on his way down. A 34-year-old German making his U.S. debut, Essaoudi was counted out on his knees, grimacing in pain. It was the 31st win in 35 starts for the heavy-handed Garcia, who is big for the weight class. It was the U.S. debut for Essaoudi (22-3).

In the lid-lifter, a super bantamweight contest slated for eight rounds, youth prevailed as 23-year-old Tijuana prospect Sebastian Hernandez advanced to 17-0 (16) at the expense of 38-year-old Venezuelan journeyman Yonfrez Parejo (24-7-1) whose corner pulled him out after four one-sided stanzas.

Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank

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

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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

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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 11th 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

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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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