`Cold War’ in Boxing Fully Thawed? Maybe So, Maybe Not

The times they are a’changing. Some would say that, in terms of professional boxing at the international level, they already have changed, and for the better.

Others would say that the “Cold War,” which existed from the end of World War II until Dec. 26, 1991, when the Soviet Union officially was voted out of existence by the Supreme Soviet, and which once placed the United States against the USSR in a constant state of mutual distrust, still has a distinct chill. It’s just that the shape of what was and what still might be has undergone alterations over the past 27 years, with the presumed good guys now barely distinguishable from the presumed bad guys.

As fighters from Russia and many of the 14 now-former Soviet republics (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Lithuania, Georgia, Turkmenistan, Belarus, Moldova, Latvia, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Estonia and Tajikistan) now routinely appear on high-visibility cards in America, one veteran U.S. boxing insider insists that some of the familiar tensions still are or should be in play. The conflict now is not necessarily the fault of the fighters from the former USSR who arrived on U.S. shores to advance their careers and quality of their lives, but far higher up, among those in positions of power who allegedly are freer to manipulate the business of the sport since the collapse of the Iron Curtain.

“We still have a Cold War, it’s just different,” said the source, who asked not to be identified. “More and more fighters from those countries are flooding into our country. F— that.

“The Russian mob basically runs boxing. I’ve never seen things more corrupt than they are now. The fact that people (in America) aren’t more up in arms is because they’re stupid.”

That is perhaps an overly harsh assessment, but there can be no denying that fighters from Russia and other Eastern Bloc nations either are or are becoming staples in U.S. arenas and on American television. This Saturday night, DAZN will stream the matchup of established superstar Gennadiy Golovkin (39-1-1, 35 KOs), a native of Kazakhstan who now resides in Los Angeles, and top contender Sergiy Derevyanchenko (13-1, 10 KOs), 31, a Ukrainian who has made himself right at home in Brooklyn, N.Y. The bout, for the vacant IBF middleweight championship, will be staged at Madison Square Garden and marks the 37-year-old Golovkin’s 15th pro ring appearance in the U.S., and ninth at MSG.  For Derevyanchenko, the fight is his 15^th in the U.S. (he has never fought anywhere else) and fifth in New York City.

Two weeks later, on Oct. 18 at the Liacouras Center on the Temple University campus in Philadelphia, the main event, for the unified light heavyweight championship, pits WBC titlist Oleksandr “The Nail” Gvozdyk (17-0, 14 KOs), of Oxnard, Calif., by way of his native Ukraine, against IBF kingpin Artur Beterbiev (14-0, 14 KOs), of Montreal by way of his native Russia. ESPN and ESPN Deportes will televise that fight, as well as a matchup of former WBA welterweight champ Luis Collazzo (39-7, 20 KOs) and No. 1 IBF contender Kudratillo Abdukakhorov (16-0, 9 KOs), now a resident of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, but originally from Uzbekistan.

Elsewhere, signs of the westward migration of world-rated Eastern Europeans are no less evident. On Oct. 12, undisputed cruiserweight champion Oleksandr Usyk (16-0, 12 KOs), who is from Ukraine and actually still lives there, makes his heavyweight debut in Chicago against Tyrone Spong (14-0, 13 KOs), of Miami by way of his native Suriname, a fight to be streamed by DAZN. In the co-featured bout, Dmitry Bivol (16-0, 11 KOs), born in Kyrgyzstan but now living in Russia, defends his WBA light heavyweight belt against the Dominican Republic’s Lenin Castillo (20-2-1, 15 KOs).

A bit further down the road, on Nov. 2 at the Las Vegas’ MGM Grand, WBO light heavyweight ruler Sergey Kovalev (34-3-1, 29 KOs), a Russian who resides in Los Angeles, puts his title on the line against Mexican national hero Canelo Alvarez (52-1-2, 35 KOs), the WBA/WBC middleweight champion who will be moving up two weight classes. That fight also will be streamed via DAZN.

What does this massive influx of fighters from Russia and former Soviet republics, the most celebrated representative of whom might be pound-for-pound lightweight Vasiliy Lomachenko, whose primary residence is in Ukraine but who lives in Oxnard when he is in America to train, mean to U.S. boxing fans? Maybe nothing when placed in an updated context, but there can be no denying the startling difference between now and the world in which American citizens lived during the last couple of generations.

In a 1983 speech by then-President Ronald Reagan, the Gipper referred to the USSR as an “evil empire” and “the focus of evil in the modern world.” Most Americans had no difficulty buying into that concept, just as most Russians were instructed to regard the U.S. as the primary threat to their peace and well-being.

As the global superpowers peered at one another across a chasm of understandable apprehension, boxing, like so many other elements of everyday life, was easily cleaved into us-vs.-them camps. Evidence of that was provided during an Oct. 2, 1990, fight card at Philadelphia’s Blue Horizon, where three Soviets – the first pros from the USSR to be brought here to ply their pugilistic trade – were greeted by a near-record venue turnout of Americans who frequently erupted into chants of “U-S-A! U-S-A!” and treated the visitors as they might any invaders from an enemy regime whose mere presence tapped into their darkest fears.

“He wants so much to be liked that when he hears that `U-S-A, U-S-A’ stuff, he feels like a villain,” Tommy Gallagher, the New York-based trainer of the three Soviets, said of heavyweight Yuri Vaulin, who came away with an eight-round split decision over Philly journeyman William Morris. “He has to learn to deal with that b.s. and to block it out of his mind.”

The Soviets could have been warned beforehand that they were about to be treated by Philly’s notoriously inhospitable sports fans as might members of any visiting pro team from New York City or, even worse, the despised Dallas Cowboys. But old, ingrained habits are hard to break, and especially so for Americans caught up in nationalistic fervor fueled by such movies as Red Dawn (1984) and Rocky IV (1985).

A little more than 14 months after the Soviet trio came to regard the Blue Horizon as their personal house of horrors, the USSR dissolved and U.S. citizens were advised to begin learning the meaning of such Russian words as glasnost (“openness” in the loosening of government restrictions) and perestroika (a reference to the program of economic and political reform initiated by former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbavhev).

And now?

Golovkin should be box-office gold this weekend given his legendary punching power and the fact he appears at the Garden almost as often as the Knicks, Rangers and Billy Joel. But while that might explain why his faceoff with Derevyanchenko is costing a reported $20 million to stage, the unidentified source said it doesn’t explain why “they’ve only sold 3,000 tickets,” a figure I have not been able to verify or disprove.

Nor is the highly attractive unification pairing – on paper, at least — of Gvozdyk and Beterbiev selling like TastyKakes on North Broad Street in Philly, just a few blocks from where the Blue Horizon, now shuttered, catered to some of America’s loudest, most passionate fight fans, not to mention the most hostile to visitors who once bore the mark of the Red Peril. Oh, sure, Gvozdyk and Beterbiev will square off before screaming, flag-waving partisans of their or their forebears’ birth countries, but the locals mostly seem to be unaware of how potentially entertaining and competitive the main event should be.

“There are almost no tickets being sold in Philadelphia for those two guys,” the source said. “I can’t spell the name of either one. If one of them bumped into me in the street, I wouldn’t know who he is. They don’t connect at all with the American public. I don’t know their stories. I don’t know where they’re from. And I don’t give a f— about them.”

Just a thought, but it could just be that the homogenized nature of boxing in the 21^st century has gradually tamped down interest in the U.S., pro or con, for fighters from foreign nations, including those countries whose representatives Americans once loved to hate. Does anyone think the “Miracle on Ice,” in which a hockey team of American college kids shocked a veteran Soviet squad in the semifinals of the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics, would have meant so much had not the red-clad favorites also been cloaked in foreboding mystique? How much different can “they” be from “us” when a Russian billionaire – talk about a strange form of communism – currently owns the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets and Barclays Center?

“Alex’s fans are still mostly Ukrainians, which I think also is the case with Lomachenko and Usyk,” said Teddy Atlas, who will be in Gvozdyk’s corner for the third time on Oct. 18. “But more people are beginning to recognize him here. Fighting on ESPN can only increase (his visibility in America).

“Look, we don’t have the Cold War anymore. We don’t have communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union anymore. There is no Soviet Union anymore. People from those countries have freedom. It’s different when you have freedom. We’re all the same now. There’s no separation.”

Freedom to choose is always good, be it in boxing or anything else. Lack of separation, though, can pose problems for those who find it necessary to pick a side or a fighter to root for, or against.

Pictured: Ukrainian stablemates Usyk, Lomachenko, and Gvozdyk

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