Bernard Fernandez Hits Another Home Run with ‘Championship Rounds, Round 2’

When Hall of Fame boxing writer Bernard Fernandez set about compiling his anthology (Championship Rounds, published in 2020) he had some hard decisions to make. During his career as a sportswriter, a career now in its fifth decade, he produced a massive amount of material. There was too much stuff to fit into a single volume and we’re talking about stuff too good to leave on the cutting-room floor.

The only solution was a second book, a companion piece as it were, and boxing fans who appreciate good writing will enjoy Championship Rounds, Round 2, a compendium of 46 stories published between 1985 and 2020.

Fernandez, whose first bylines appeared in his hometown New Orleans Times-Picayune where he spent a charmed summer as a copy boy between his junior and senior years of high school, spent the last 28 years of his newspaper career at the Philadelphia Daily News. There he was matched tough, so to speak. “No city has produced more meaningful boxing writers than Philadelphia,” noted Jim Lampley in his foreword to “…Round 2.”

As a boxing writer in Philadelphia, Fernandez stood on the shoulders of giants and in time came to be recognized by his peers as a giant himself.

The digital revolution was a two-edged sword for newspapermen. It killed jobs at traditional papers which had trouble keeping subscribers and advertisers, but it also provided a safety net for disenfranchised newspapermen who had a burning need to keep writing.

Working for a major metropolitan daily was prestigious. It certified that one had made it in his chosen field of journalism. An online writer, unless he works for one of the few outlets that is known to pay well, doesn’t have that feeling of satisfaction because anyone can produce content – skilled and unskilled writers alike, the internet doesn’t discriminate – and the good stuff floats around in a sea of sludge.

But newspaper reporters who transitioned to the internet were freed from the constraint imposed by spatial considerations. Editors weren’t hovering about with figurative pruning shears, poised to shave their copy to fit a box with inflexible dimensions. If they had a bent for long-form storytelling, the internet gave them the freedom to explore it.

Bernard Fernandez authored many long pieces while at the Philadelphia Daily News. This reviewer’s personal favorite is a Jan. 11, 2000 story about the movie The Hurricane, a biopic that smeared the reputation of former middleweight champion Joey Giardello. In the pivotal fight scene in the movie, Rubin “Hurricane” Carter finishes with a flourish, battering Giardello from pillar to post in the 15th and final round only to be robbed by the judges, consistent with the movie’s narrative that Carter was a victim of racial injustice.

Fernandez could have pointed out the discrepancy to his readers and left it at that, but he took it a step further, rounding up Giardello, then 69 years old, so that the two of them could sit and watch the movie together. What could have been a generic movie review became something more; a poignant portrait of one of Philadelphia’s most venerated boxers. (This story, like many in Fernandez’s anthologies, commanded an epilogue. Fernandez noted that Giardello was awarded a substantial sum from the makers of the movie.)

One could argue that while the potential was always there, Fernandez’s talent as a long-form storyteller didn’t blossom until he quit the newspaper business. His second anthology is top-heavy with stories published after 2012, his last year with the Daily News. And more than a few, we are pleased to note, had their first blush right here at The Sweet Science.

The longest of the entries from the TSS font is an in-depth story about the corruption that has persistently defiled the Olympics, particularly as it pertains to boxing. Keen observations from the late Emanuel Steward and from the unabashedly blunt Teddy Atlas, a TV boxing commentator at four Olympics, assist in painting a bleak picture of the Olympics and its overseer, the International Olympic Committee, which long ago enabled corruption and made a mockery of the amateur ideal.

Readers will enjoy Fernandez’s portraits of old-time fighters like Floyd Patterson and Emile Griffith and retired fighters of more recent vintage such as Razor Ruddock and the enigmatic Riddick Bowe, not to mention cult fighter Eric “Butterbean” Esch, the King of the 4-Rounders. But there are insightful stories about non-boxers too, e.g., the famous trainer Angelo Dundee, rest in peace, and second-generation ring announcer Jimmy Lennon Jr., two of boxing’s genuine nice guys, plus little-known Joe Hand Sr, a Philadelphia transit policeman who ponied up $250 to purchase a share of Cloverlay, the consortium that was the original manager of Joe Frazier, and enjoyed quite a ride as Smokin’ Joe rose to prominence, culminating in his first meeting Muhammad Ali in the Fight of the Century (for the record, the only Fight of the Century labeled as such before and after the fact).

Unlike many old-time boxing aficionados, Fernandez isn’t rooted in the past. One of the entries in “…Round 2” discusses Tyson Fury’s stylistic makeover under new trainer Javan “Sugar” Hill (who would legally change his name to SugarHill Steward) preceding the Gypsy King’s second match with Deontay Wilder. Fernandez may have wanted to expunge that story if the makeover had been a complete flop but, to the contrary, it was anything but. Years from now, one won’t be able to write the life story of Tyson Fury without reference to it and the guess is that Fernandez’s article will be widely footnoted.

Fernandez throws his readers a curveball in the book’s final section, a collection of six non-boxing stories from his days at the Philadelphia Daily News. Occasionally circumstances dictated that he put aside his hat as a boxing writer to focus on other sports such as basketball, hockey, or tennis. While these detours were not, as a rule, to his liking, he rose to the occasion.

One wonders if “Championship Rounds” will bubble into a trilogy and if “Round 3” will be stories from his days in “alien” press boxes? Don’t bet against it.

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