Kathy Duva Speaks Out On…Well, Everything (Part 2)

Published

10 years ago

May 6, 2014

Kathy Duva 2d0dd

Trying to fully unify a world championship in the fragmented arena of professional boxing – any world championship, in any weight class – is proving more difficult than super-gluing the fragmented, war-torn ethnic regions of the former Yugoslavia, or maybe prying Crimea from Russian control.

Certainly, the power brokers of boxing seem more intent on solidifying their own spheres of influence than in sitting down at a conference table, or maybe picking up a telephone, and working out an arrangement that would at least partially appease the most abused segment of the fight game, namely the fans who pay the freight with their hard-earned pay-for-view dollars.

Those diehard fans – the ones who once pined to see Mike Tyson swap punches with his homeboy from the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, Riddick Bowe, or for Bowe to get it on with Lennox Lewis in a rematch of the 1988 Olympic super heavyweight gold medal bout — are still waiting for that megafight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao to be made. But the odds of it ever taking place are longer than, say, an overweight plumber getting a call to fix a leaky faucet in a rundown neighborhood and somehow winding up in a ménage a trois with a Victoria’s Secret model and the cover girl from the most recent Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.

We all want to win the Powerball Lottery, don’t we? But pipe dreams almost never become reality, and no one understands frustration more than the boxing buff who knows which entree he truly hungers for, but too often is obliged to settle for some substitute item from the Column B side of the pugilistic menu.

Latest case in point: the light heavyweight division, so teeming with attractive, big-name talent, yet so isolated in terms of who will or won’t fight whom because of the entrenched positions of various entities who’d rather reconstruct a figurative Berlin Wall than find a way to achieve peace in our time.

Simply put, unless something changes very dramatically and very soon, there won’t be a unification showdown between WBA 175-pound ruler Adonis Stevenson and IBF champ Sergey Kovalev. That much-anticipated pairing – an updated version of Mayweather-Pacquiao, if you will – appeared to be nearly signed and sealed not that long ago. But it can’t be delivered because Stevenson, having turned his career over to Mayweather’s chief negotiator, the shadowy Al Haymon, jumped ship from HBO to rival Showtime, for whom he will fight exclusively for at least the foreseeable future. By all accounts it was a lucrative deal, financially, for Stevenson, but the bottom line is still this: Not only will we not get to see Mayweather-Pacquiao, we can’t hope to witness its near-equivalent, Stevenson-Kovalev. Instead, we get a matchup of Stevenson (23-1, 20 KOs) and Andzej Fonfara (25-2, 15 KOs) on regular Showtime on May 24. That fight comes on the heels of the HBO-televised seventh-round knockout victory by Kovalev (24-0-1, 22 KOs) of Cedric Agnew (26-1, 13 KOs) on April 29.

Such real or imagined mismatches are not just substitutions from the Column B side of the menu, but week-old slices of stale pie from Joe’s Greasy Spoon Diner.

As might be expected, Stevenson and Kovalev, prohibited from trading actual haymakers in the ring, took verbal or social-media potshots at one another.

“Adonis Stevenson is a piece of (crap),” Kovalev said while being interviewed in the ring. “I will fight any champion in my division. I want to get another title. I am ready for anyone.”

Stevenson fired back on Twitter, telling Kovalev that “You just a real slow BUM with no defence. Easy work! You can’t fight for (crap)! Tell mama Duva to call Al Haymon and Yvon Michel (Stevenson’s promoter) so I can have an easy pay day.”

Sticks and stones, folks. Again.

“Mama Duva” – that would be Kovalev’s promoter, Main Events CEO Kathy Duva – does have a horse in this race, so her thoughts on the current state of affairs might be interpreted as being at least somewhat biased. Then again, how could they not be, given the fact that Duva has just filed a suit against Stevenson, Golden Boy Promotions, Showtime and Michel, alleging breach of contract. But her views are interesting in any case, when one considers that she has taken a twirl in this kind of circle dance before. Although Duva’s company gets many of its television dates on NBC SportsNet these days, she and her late husband, Dan, did or do far more business with HBO than Showtime, and she believes that Showtime’s apparent interest in rounding up many of the currently formidable light heavies – in the process isolating Kovalev – will prove to be an exercise in futility because boxing is cyclical. Today’s hot division is tomorrow’s tepid leftovers.

“People think Sergey Kovalev is toast now because two guys from Canada (Stevenson and former – light heavyweight titlist Jean Pascal) went to Showtime,” Duva said in a far-ranging interview that touched on multiple topics. “You’re looking at a 49-year-old champion (IBF/WBA ruler Bernard Hopkins), a 36-year-old champion (Stevenson) and some French-Canadian guy (Pascal) who fought on HBO a few times and got not very impressive ratings at all, certainly not as impressive as Sergey got for fighting a guy (Agnew) that nobody knew.

“For anyone to say, `Showtime’s got it now. They’ve locked up the light heavyweight division,’ well … they might determine who the light heavyweight champion of Canada is. Maybe that guy will wind up fighting a 50-year-old champion (Hopkins) at some point. But I’m taking the long view. In five years, I think Sergey Kovalev will be a really big star and it really doesn’t matter who fights him now, or who ducks him now. Clearly, Stevenson was the express train to that kind of attention, but on the other hand HBO really has no choice but to focus on Sergey now.”

Duva said she can wait for Kovalev’s emerging star power to blossom, but she said the posturing between boxing’s perceived superpowers – Showtime and Golden Boy on one side, HBO and Top Rank on the other – is like dripping acid on the fabric of a sport that can ill-afford to have any more of its fan base eroded. Unlike the NFL, NBA, NHL and Major League Baseball, boxing does not operate under a singular authority that has the authority to do the right thing, or some reasonable proximity. No matter the intemperate words that sometimes come out of the mouths of the various principals, who’s going to slap them down like NBA commissioner Adam Silver did to dumb-ass Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling? Unlike the hazy notion of Mayweather-Pacquiao or Stevenson-Kovalev ever being staged, NBA fans know they’ll get LeBron James vs. Kevin Durant if their teams win their way into the Finals. Other sports are true meritocracies in that respect, boxing a traveling crapshoot.

“The big fights are boxing’s Super Bowls, its World Series, its Kentucky Derbies,” Duva continued. “Those are the times when fans that like sports but are not necessarily that much into boxing come and watch us. When you don’t have those events, or they don’t happen often enough, the whole sport suffers.”

To be fair, both HBO and Showtime have, at various times, tried to come up with multi-tiered formats that would give long-suffering fans some of what they want. Thirteen years ago HBO and promoter Don King staged a four-man middleweight unification tournament, its participants being IBF champion Bernard Hopkins, WBC champ Keith Holmes, WBA titlist William Joppy and Felix Trinidad, the WBA/IBF junior middleweight ruler who was moving up from 154 pounds. Hopkins won the event, memorably stopping the previously undefeated Trinidad in 12 rounds on Sept. 29, 2001, in Madison Square Garden.

Showtime cobbled together a similar coalition for its “Super Six” super middleweight tournament that took place from 2009 to 2011, the lineup consisting of WBA champion Mikkel Kessler, WBC titlist Carl Froch, 2004 Olympic gold medalist Andre Ward, former middleweight champs Jermain Taylor and Arthur Abraham, and 2004 Olympic bronze medalist Andre Dirrell.

Ward outpointed Froch in the finale, on Dec. 17, 2011, in Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall, in the process establishing himself as one of the premier pound-for-pound fighters. But while the end result was mostly positive, there were glitches: IBF champ Lucian Bute was not invited to participate; Taylor and Kessler withdrew during the course of the tournament and had to be replaced by Glen Johnson and Allan Green, pinch-hit assignments that are fine in baseball but warped the original premise almost to the point of it being unrecognizable. Maybe that’s why neither Showtime nor HBO have tried to launch a similarly ambitious project in another weight class.

Even if the premium-cable outlets and their partners did deign to undertake such a mission, boxing’s various sanctioning bodies would probably strip the last man standing of one or more of his titles with alarming speed. Like HBO/Top Rank and Showtime/Golden Boy, the WBC, WBA, IBF and WBO are highly protective of their turf because it’s really not in their best interests for anyone to be seen as the undisputed kingpin of a particular weight class. The WBC, now under the direction of Jose Sulaiman’s son, Mauricio, has already declared it will vacate the title of any WBC champion if he has the temerity to fight for another organization’s bejeweled belt.

In the meantime, Duva is left to wistfully contemplate the near-deal she thought she had struck to put Kovalev in with Stevenson, on HBO, in what could have been a career-defining slugfest for either or maybe even both power-punchers.

“You have a situation here, unless I’m missing the boat, that’s a first,” she said. “I’m used to other promoters coming along and trying to screw up my deal. It’s part of what I live with. But in this case you had a manager (Haymon) and a television network (Showtime) actively come in and screw up a deal. I thought that was interesting.

“In the beginning, Stevenson’s promoter (Michel) was completely on board with the deal until (Stevenson and Haymon) they changed his mind.

“It was early February when I learned Al Haymon was talking to Stevenson. It was pretty clear to me where this was going. But what I didn’t know was that Al was talking to Stevenson as far back as last October or November. If had known that then, I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised. There are other people who shouldn’t have been surprised, but they’re not me.”

To be sure, not everyone agrees with Duva’s take on the situation. Stephen Espinoza, the executive vice president and general manager of Showtime Sports and Event Programming, told TSS editor Michael Woods that he’d love to stage a Stevenson-Kovalev fight, provided Stevenson survives a unification match with ageless wonder Hopkins, hardly a given.

“If Kovalev’s available,” he said. “Except for some reason Kathy Duva seems interested only in HBO and not maximizing revenues.”

Part 3 of 3 details the similarities and possible ramifications, in Duva’s opinion, of Golden Boy’s decision to exclusively align itself with Showtime, much as Don King did in the 1990s.

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Bernard Fernandez

Ramon Cardenas Channels Micky Ward and KOs Eduardo Ramirez on ProBox

Published

7 hours ago

April 24, 2024

Arne K. Lang

Ramon-Cardenas-Channels-Micky-Ward-and-KOs-Eduardo-Ramirez-on-ProBox

The Wednesday night bi-monthly series of fights on the ProBox TV platform is the best deal in boxing; the livestream is free with no strings attached! Tonight’s episode was headlined by a super bantamweight match between San Antonio’s Ramon Cardenas and Eduardo Ramirez who brought a caravan of rooters from his hometown in Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico.

Cardenas, coached by Joel Diaz, entered the contest ranked #4 by the WBA. He was expected to handle Ramirez with little difficulty, but this was a close, tactical fight through eight frames when lightning struck in the form of a left hook to liver the from Cardenas. Ramirez went down on one knee and wasn’t able to beat the count. It was as if Cardenas summoned the ghost of Micky Ward who had a penchant for terminating fights with the same punch that arrived out of the blue.

The official time was 1:37 of round time. Cardenas improved to 25-1 with his14th win inside the distance. Ramirez, who was stopped in the opening round by Nick “Wrecking” Ball in London in his lone previous fight outside Mexico, falls to 23-3-3.

Co-Feature

In an upset, Tijuana super welterweight Damian Sosa won a split decision over previously undefeated Marques Valle, a local area fighter who was stepping up in class in his first 10-round go. Sosa was the aggressor, repeatedly backing his taller opponent into the ropes where Valle was unable to get good leverage behind his punches.

The 25-year-old Valle, managed by the influential David McWater, was the house fighter. This was his 10^th appearance in this building. He brought a 10-0 (7) record and was hoping to emulate the success of his younger brother Dominic Valle who scored a second-round stoppage of his opponent in this ring two weeks ago, improving to 9-0. But Sosa, who brought a 24-2 record, proved to be a bridge too high.

The judges had it 97-93 and 96-94 for the Tijuana invader and a disgraceful 98-92 for the house fighter.

Also

In a fight whose abrupt ending would be echoed by the main event, 34-year-old SoCal featherweight Ronny Rios, now training in Las Vegas, returned to the ring after a 22-month hiatus and scored a fifth-round stoppage over Nicolas Polanco of the Dominican Republic.

A three-punch combo climaxed by a left hook to the liver took the breath out of Polanco who slumped to his knees and was counted out. A two-time world title challenger, Rios advanced to 34-4 (17 KOs). Polanco, 34, declined to 21-6-1. The official time was 0:54 of round five.

—

The next ProBox show (Wednesday, May 8) will have an international cast with fighters from Kazakhstan, Japan, Mongolia, and the United Kingdom. In the main event, Liverpool’s Robbie Davies Jr will make his U.S. debut against the California-based Kazakh Sergey Lipinets.

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Haney-Garcia Redux with the Focus on Harvey Dock

Published

2 days ago

April 22, 2024

Arne K. Lang

Haney-Garcia-Redux-with-the-Focus-on-Harvey-Dock

Saturday’s skirmish between Ryan Garcia and WBC super lightweight champion Devin Haney was a messy affair, and yet a hugely entertaining fight fused with great drama. In the aftermath, Garcia and Haney were celebrated – the former for fooling all the experts and the latter for his gallant performance in a losing effort – but there were only brickbats for the third man in the ring, referee Harvey Dock.

Devin Haney was plainly ahead heading into the seventh frame when there was a sudden turnabout when Garcia put him on the canvas with his vaunted left hook. Moments later, Dock deducted a point from Garcia for a late punch coming out of a break. The deduction forced a temporary cease-fire that gave Haney a few precious seconds to regain his faculties. Before the round was over, Haney was on the deck twice more but these were ruled slips.

The deduction, which effectively negated the knockdown, struck many as too heavy-handed as Dock hadn’t previously issued a warning for this infraction. Moreover, many thought he could have taken a point away from Haney for excessive clinching. As for Haney’s second and third trips to the canvas in round seven, they struck this reporter – watching at home – as borderline, sufficient to give referee Dock the benefit of the doubt.

In a post-fight interview, Ryan Garcia faulted the referee for denying him the satisfaction of a TKO. “At the end of the day, Harvey Dock, I think he was tripping,” said Garcia. “He could have stopped that fight.”

Those that played the rounds proposition, placing their coin on the “under,” undoubtedly felt the same way.

The internet lit up with comments assailing Dock’s competence and/or his character. Some of the ponderings were whimsical, but they were swamped by the scurrilous screeching of dolts who find a conspiracy under every rock.

Stephen A. Smith, reputedly America’s highest-paid TV sports personality, was among those that felt a need to weigh-in: “This referee is absolutely terrible….Unreal! Horrible officiating,” tweeted Stephen A whose primary area of expertise is basketball.

Harvey Dock

Dock fought as an amateur and had one professional fight, winning a four-round decision over a fellow novice on a show at a non-gaming resort in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. He says that as an amateur he was merely average, but he was better than that, a New Jersey and regional amateur champion in 1993 and 1994 while a student New Jersey’s Essex County Community College where he majored in journalism.

A passionate fan of Sugar Ray Leonard, he started officiating amateur fights in 1998 and six years later, at age 32, had his first documented action at the professional level, working low-level cards in New Jersey. The top boxing referees, to a far greater extent than the top judges, had long apprenticeships, having worked their way up from the boonies and Dock is no exception.

Per boxrec, Haney vs Garcia was Harvey Dock’s 364^th assignment in the pros and his forty-second world title fight. Some of those title fights were title in name only, they weren’t even main events, but, bit by bit, more lucrative offerings started coming his way.

On May 13, 2023, Dock worked his first fights in Nevada, a 4-rounder and then a 12-rounder on a card at the Cosmopolitan topped by the 140-pound title fight between Rolly Romero and Ismael Barroso. It was the first time that this reporter got to watch Dock in the flesh.

Ironically (in hindsight), the card would be remembered for the actions of a referee, in this case Tony Weeks who handled the main event. Barroso was winning the fight on all three cards when Weeks stepped in and waived it off in the ninth round after Romero cornered Barroso against the ropes and let loose a barrage of punches, none of which landed cleanly. Few “premature stoppages” were ever as garishly, nay ghoulishly, premature.

With all the brickbats raining down on Weeks, I felt a need to tamp down the noise by diverting attention away from Tony Weeks and toward Harvey Dock and took to the TSS Forum to share my thoughts. Referencing the 12-rounder, a robust junior welterweight affair between Batyr Akhmedov and Kenneth Sims Jr, I noted that Dock’s Las Vegas debut went smoothly. He glided effortlessly around the ring, making him inconspicuous, the mark of a good referee. (This post ran on May 15, two days after the fight.)

Folks at the Nevada State Athletic Commission were also paying attention. Dock was back in Las Vegas the following week to referee the lightweight title fight between Devin Haney and Vasyl Lomachenko and before the year was out, he would be tabbed to referee the biggest non-heavyweight fight of the year, the July 29 match in Las Vegas between Terence Crawford and Errol Spence Jr.

The Haney-Garcia fight wasn’t Harvey Dock’s best hour, I’ll concede that, but a closer look at his full body of work informs us that he is an outstanding referee.

—

While the Haney-Garcia bout was in progress, WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman threw everyone a curve ball, tweeting on “X” that Devin Haney would keep his title if he lost the fight. Everyone, including the TV commentators, was under the impression that the title would become vacant in the event that Haney lost.

Sulaiman cited the precedent of Corrales-Castillo II.

FYI: The Corrales-Castillo rematch, originally scheduled for June 3, 2005 and aborted on the day prior when Castillo failed to make weight, finally came off on Oct. 8 of that year, notwithstanding the fact that Castillo failed to make weight once again, scaling three-and-a-half pounds above the lightweight limit. He knocked out Corrales in the fourth round with a left hook that Las Vegas Review-Journal boxing writer Kevin Iole, alluding to the movie “Blazing Saddles,” described as Mongo-esque (translation: the punch would have knocked out a horse). After initially insisting on a rubber match, which had scant chance of happening, WBC president Jose Sulaiman, Mauricio’s late father, ruled that Corrales could keep his title.

Whether or not you agree with Mauricio Sulaiman’s rationale, the timing of his announcement was certainly awkward.

Haney’s mandatory is Spanish southpaw Sandor Martin (42-3, 15 KOs), a cutie best known for his 2021 upset of Mikey Garcia. A bout between Haney and Martin has the earmarks of a dull fight.

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In a Shocker, Ryan Garcia Confounds the Experts and Upsets Devin Haney

Published

4 days ago

April 21, 2024

David A. Avila

In-a-Shocker-Ryan-Garcia-Confounds-the-Experts-and-Upsets-Devin-Haney

Its good to be crazy. Like a fox.

Ryan “KingRy” Garcia knocked down WBC super lightweight titlist Devin Haney three times to remind everyone of his fighting abilities in winning by majority decision on Saturday.

“I just knew what I could do,” Garcia said.

Fans will not forget the lanky kid from Victorville, California now.

Garcia (25-1, 20 KOs) fooled everyone in playing crazy weeks before the fight, then showed shocking power to hand Haney (30-1, 15 KOs) his first loss as a professional at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

Haney’s WBC super lightweight title was not at stake for Garcia because he weighed three pounds over the limit.

After Garcia seemingly acting out of control on social media, Haney’s guard must have slipped in the first round during the first few seconds as Garcia connected with that hellish left hook and Haney, with a look of shock in his eyes, almost went down. He barely survived the first round.

“He caught me with it,” said Haney.

During the next few rounds, Haney proceeded to advance toward Garcia seemingly fully aware of the lethal left hook. He used feints and rights to score with a busier approach as Garcia seemed cocked and ready to counter with a left hook.

In the fourth round it seemed Haney was confident he had regained control of the fight, but every time he opened up with more than a two-punch combination Garcia reminded him whose hands were faster and more dangerous.

Though Garcia seldom jabbed he seemed bent on looking for the right moment to unleash his deadly left hook. And every time the Southern California fighter opened up with a combination he scored and Haney dare not exchange.

A few times Haney smiled as if signifying he escaped.

In the seventh round Haney looked to punish Garcia’s body and instead was met with a three-punch combination included a left hook to the chin and down went Haney slumped on the ground. He managed to beat the count and as soon as Garcia came within reach Haney wrapped his arms around him with a python grip. Despite the warnings by referee Harvey Dock, the fallen fighter would not release and Garcia impatiently fired a weak punch during the break. The referee deducted a point from Garcia though he could have deducted a point from Haney for not obeying his instructions to release his hold. Haney actually went down three times in the round but only one was counted by the referee.

From that point on Haney was very cautious but still looking to win by decision.

Though Garcia kept using a shoulder-roll defense that left his body exposed, he would retaliate with three and four punch combinations that usually Haney could defend against other fighters.. But Garcia’s blazing combinations were too fast to defend.

In the 10^th round Haney looked to attack and was countered by Garcia’s right and a blinding left hook to the chin and another two blows that sent the former undisputed lightweight champion to the floor again.

It didn’t look good for Haney to survive.

Garcia walked into the 11^th round still composed and never out-of-control He dared Haney to exchange and when within striking distance Garcia unleashed another lightning combination and down went Haney again with a defeated look.

Both fighters had fought each other as amateurs six times so there were no surprises between them. But Garcia’s power and speed were superior and that was the difference in a professional fight.

In the final round both were cautious with Garcia’s combination punching proving too dangerous for Haney to open up. Garcia celebrated early as the round ended confident of victory.

After 12 rounds Garcia was seen the victor by majority decision 112-112, 114-110, 115-109.

“You really thought I was crazy,” Garcia told the interviewer and the crowd. “You guys hated on me.”

Other Bouts

Arnold Barboza (30-0) won a curious split decision victory over United Kingdom’s Sean McComb (18-2) in a 10-round super lightweight fight. McComb’s long reach and busy southpaw style gave Barboza trouble. But he managed to win the fight though the crowd was not pleased.

Bektemir Melikuziev (14-1, 10 KOs) defeated France’s Pierre Dibombe (22-1-1) by technical decision after eight rounds due to a cut on his eye from an accidental head butt. It was a very competitive super middleweight fight.

Costa Rica’s David Jimenez (16-1, 11 KOs) outworked John “Scrappy Ramirez (13-1, 9 KOs) in a 12-round scrap to upset the Los Angeles based fighter. After a few close rounds Jimenez simply bullied his way inside and forced Ramirez against the ropes and unloaded his guns.

After 12 rounds two judges saw it 117-111 and 116-114 all for Jimenez.

“I’m a hard-working man from Cartago I come from nothing,” said Jimenez. “My corner told me I had to work inside.”

Charles Conwell (19-0, 14 KOs) stepped on the gas early with vicious body shots and uppercuts and blasted through the resilient Nathaniel Gallimore (22-8-1, 17 KOs) for several rounds. After a brutal fifth and sixth round the referee halted the one-side beating in favor of Conwell who was fighting for the first time under the Golden Boy banner.

Another winner was Sergiy Derevyanchenko (15-5) by decision over Vaughn Alexander (18-11-1) in a super middleweight match.

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