THE HAT

Published

13 years ago

March 26, 2012

??Thanks to Randy Gordon for sharing this piece with us. This Hearns issue, which they put out together, is the best-selling Ring of all time.

It was in late June, 1979, that I received a phone call at home.??

“Hi, Randy!” boomed the powerful voice on the end of the phone. “This is Bert Randolph Sugar.”??

“Bert Sugar, the boxing writer,” I asked? “That Bert Sugar?”??

“No, not that Bert Sugar. This Bert Sugar,” replied the powerful voice.??

“Hello, Bert, to what do I owe the honor of this phone call?”

??“I have an offer to make to you,” said Bert. “A job offer.”??

My eyes opened wide in wonderment.??

“What kind of job offer, Bert?” I asked.??

“Well, how about you meet me for lunch in New York City. If you can't get out of work for lunch, we can do dinner. We can do a Saturday. You tell me.”??

At the time, I was working for a small publishing company called G.C. London Publishing Corp. We published boxing and wrestling magazines. I was the company's Assistant Editor. I was making $12,500. That wasn't per month. That was my annual salary. Of course I'd listen to Bert Randolph Sugar. I told the owner, Stanley Weston, I had a dental appointment. ??I met Sugar two days later at a restaurant/bar called O'Reilly's Pub. It was just up the block from both Madison Square Garden and the offices of Ring Magazine. He was sitting at a table near the door. Sugar was hard to miss, wearing a black fedora, smoking a large cigar and bellowing laughter while holding court with around a half dozen patrons.??I walked over to him and extended my hand.??

“Bert Sugar, I'm Randy Gordon.”??

“RANDY!” Bert shouted. He stood up and shook my hand. Then he announced, “Everyone, this is Randy Gordon. He is going to be my new Editor-in-Chief.”??

All over the restaurant, patrons lofted their drinks.??

“Huh? What's going on?” I wondered. The owner came over and congratulated me and told me he'd like to buy me a drink. I didn't dare tell the owner of an Irish pub that I had to go back to work and wouldn't be having a drink. I ordered a beer.??

“I'll bring you two!” he said. “We must celebrate your new job.”

??I looked at Sugar and asked, “What new job? What have I accepted that I haven't been told about yet?”

?Sugar leaned forward and became serious.

??“What do you know about the current status of Ring Magazine?” he asked.?? I didn't have to think. The granddaddy of all boxing magazines was, in boxing terms, “shot.” Finished. Washed up. Its fighter ratings had been at the center of a highly publicized scandal in which promoter Don King and ABC television were also involved. It became known as the King/Ring/ABC scandal. Of the three, ABC and Don King flourished. Ring Magazine, however, was (excuse the pun) floored by the scandal. Boxing fans found it inexcusable for the 75-year-old magazine to have knowingly and purposefully tweeked their once-respected ratings and allowed in fighters who had no right being listed among the best in the world. Sales of the magazine took it from champion to street-corner bum in a very short time. My boss, Stanley Weston, had spoken about purchasing the magazine. Bert Sugar beat him to it.??I told Sugar I know that Ring Magazine had become an unreadable rag, that it was a joke from cover to cover.

??“You are 100% correct,” said Sugar. “The magazine is dead. I bought it for a song and a dance, that's how dead it is.”??

“So, you are now the Publisher of a dead magazine and are now announcing to everyone that I am your new Editor? What are we the Publisher and Editor of?”??

“We are now in control of one of the biggest names in the publishing industry,” said Bert. “Ring Magazine. The Ring. The Bible of Boxing. And I'd like to correct you. The Ring is not dead. It's on life support. You and I are the doctors who will revive it. I know we can.”

??Then he looked me in the eyes and said, “Look, I won't blame you if you turn me down. You have a fulltime job. You receive a check every week. After one issue, we may be out of business and you'll be out of work. But I believe in us. I believe you and I can build The Ring, not only back to respectability, but to being bigger and more popular than ever before. I want to do this and I believe you are the man to do it with me. Go home, discuss it with your wife. Take a few days and let me know.”??

I didn't need to discuss it. I knew then and there that a new chapter in boxing's long, storied history was about to be written, and that Bert Sugar and I would play a large part in writing it.??

“When do I start?” boss, I asked Sugar. I didn't even ask about money. I didn't even care about money. I was about to be made Editor of The Ring. Riches? Bert had just made me rich by asking me to become the Editor.??

“You'll accept?” asked Bert excitedly. I nodded my head.??“I accept,” I said.?? To the 30 or so patrons in the restaurant, Bert shouted, “HE ACCEPTS! RANDY ACCEPTS! DRINKS ARE ON ME!”

The place stood and cheered. ??I didn't start with Bert for almost a month. During that time, we remained tight-lipped about my hiring. Well, Sugar remained tight-lipped. Mine flapped a bit. I told my two closest colleagues at G.C. London of my intended move. One was Bill Apter, pro-wrestling's top reporter and journalist. The other was the man who would replace me as the top boxing writer at G.C. London, Steve Farhood. Farhood is currently a boxing analyst on Showtime. Both Apter and Farhood, these 35 years later, remain as two of my closest friends. Both were able to stay as tight-lipped as Sugar. ??I began the first week of July. Our first issue was the October 1979 edition. It had Muhammad Ali on the cover in a tight face shot. Sales went from near zero to record numbers. Together, we churned out issue after issue of record-selling boxing magazines.??When we covered a fight, we shared a room on the road. We were indeed the Odd Couple. Many times in Las Vegas, when I'd be getting up to run on The Strip at 5:00 a.m., he'd just be getting in after a night of drinking and story-telling with the best boxing writers in the world.??

In 1980, while covering the Larry Holmes-Muhammad Ali fight, columnist Dick Young asked me “You share a room with Bert Sugar. Does he always wear that hat? I mean ALWAYS? Does he sleep with that thing on?”

??I said “Yes, he does, Dick. He never takes it off.”??

“Never?” questioned Young.??

“Never!” I replied.??

“I'll have to see for myself,” said the widely-read columnist.?? The next morning, around 8:00 a.m.–a day before the fight—I was at a desk in the room I shared with Sugar, working on editing galleys for the next edition of The Ring. Bert was in the shower. There was a knock on the door. I went to the door, looked through the peep-hole, and saw it was Dick Young. ??I turned, pushed open the bathroom door and whispered, “Bert, Dick Young is outside. He wants to see if you always wear your hat.”

Bert and I were on the same page.??“Quickly, throw me my hat and get my cigar,” whispered Bert, who then yelled, “WHO'S THERE?”

??From the other side of the door we heard, “It's Dick Young, Bert. You got a second?”??

“Sure, Dick. Here I come.”

Bert put on his black fedora and put the cigar in his mouth. No towel. No pants. Just his fedora and a towel. Then he opened the door. Young, who had himself been smoking a cigar, just stood there frozen, his mouth agape. The cigar hung from his mouth.

??“Hi Dick, what's going on?” asked Bert.

??“I don't believe it,” he mumbled. “I just don't believe it.”

He walked away mumbling.??

The next day, in his column, “Young Ideas, Camp Confidential,” there were items about Muhammad Ali…about Larry Holmes…there were quotes from both of them…there were quotes from Angelo Dundee and from celebrities. Young ended his column with, “And yes, Bert Sugar ALWAYS wears his hat.”

??Bert was generous to a fault. From the first week we began working together, we used to have breakfast at the small diner next door to The Ring. After our very first breakfast, we walked out of the diner and saw a homeless guy rummaging through a garbage can. Bert reached into his pocket, pulled out a wad of bills, walked over and handed it to the man. We walked away and entered our building. Throughout the remainder of the day, homeless men and women came into our office, looking for handouts. Our front office staff chased them away. We later found out that the homeless guy Bert had given money to earlier in the day had told other homeless individuals that a nice guy with a hat and cigar had given him lots of cash, and that they should see if he'd do the same with them.??

“How much did you give him, Bert?” I asked.

??“I had played poker last night,” he replied. “I gave him my winnings. What the hell. I'll win more in tomorrow's game.”

??“Well, how much was it?” I wanted to know.

??“Twenty five hundred,” he said.??

Bert Sugar loved boxing. He loved reading about boxing, talking about boxing, watching boxing, studying boxing, doing interviews and writing about boxing. ??On flights to cover various events, time would pass so quickly, as we talked and talked and talked about every facet of boxing. We talked of its past, we talked of the current scene and we speculated about its future. Every road trip was an experience. ??On March 31, 1980, I was standing in a line with Sugar in Knoxville, Tennessee, waiting to pick up our press credentials to the double title fight that evening: John Tate vs Mike Weaver for the WBA Heavyweight Title and Marvin Johnson vs Eddie Gregory for the WBA Light Heavyweight Title. As we waited our turn at the press desk, the two guys in front of us were asked by the people handing out credentials, “Your names, please.”

We were stunned at what we heard.??“I'm Bert Sugar,” said one guy, “and this is Randy Gordon.”

Bert and I just looked incredulously at each other. We tapped them on their shoulders.??

“Will the real Bert Sugar and Randy Gordon please stand up,” said Bert. “Will the imposters kindly take off!”

??“Hey, we wanted to see these fights so bad,” said one of the guys, “that we figured we'd try anything.”??

They settled for taking pictures with us. ??As much as Bert Sugar loved boxing, its fans, its fighters and its insiders loved him even more. Oh, he wasn't without flaws, but then, who is. ??He was so proud of his son and daughter and of his beautiful wife, Suzy, and all their grandchildren.?? It's not how Bert Sugar died that any of us will remember. It's how he lived, and what he brought to this world while he was here.??Tonight, I'm gonna' stay up late and look through all the copies of The Ring that Bert Sugar and I—and the team we built—put out. While I'm doing that, I'm gonna' pop open a few cold ones.?? This is for you, Bert. R.I.P.

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

Published

5 hours ago

April 18, 2025

David A. Avila

Avila-Perspective-Chap-322-Super-Welter-Week-in-SoCal

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

TSS-Salutes-Thomas-Hauser-and-his-Bernie-Award-Cohorts

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

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

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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