A Massive Upset in Detroit Evokes Memories of Eugene “Silent” Hairston

A Massive Upset in Detroit Evokes Memories of Eugene “Silent” Hairston

On the face of it, last Saturday’s super lightweight contest in Detroit between Shohjahon Ergashev and Julian Smith was a mismatch. Ergashev, once a member of Uzbekistan’s formidable national team, was fighting in his adopted hometown. As a pro he was 24-1 with 21 knockouts with his only setback coming in a world title fight. His opponent, 33-year-old Julian Smith, was 8-2 and as a pro had answered the bell for only 46 rounds.

Someone forgot to tell Smith (pictured) that he was supposed to lose. In the second round, he served notice that he wasn’t there just for a paycheck when he put the Uzbek on the canvas with a hard right hand. The punch landed a second before the bell signaling the end of the round and was improperly ruled a slip.

Three rounds later, Smith put Ergashev on the canvas once again, decking him with a counter left hook. They couldn’t take this one away from him and it proved to be the difference when the scores were tallied. Smith continued to out-work the house fighter in the ensuing rounds of the 10-round contest and was awarded a split decision that most everyone thought should have been unanimous.

Smith’s performance in overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds was made more inspiring by the fact that he is deaf. A bout of viral meningitis when he was six months old left him unable to hear. He can read lips, but some interviews require the services of a middleman who can translate questions into sign language. His speech is thick, typical of the hard to hear, and requires the full attention of a stranger.

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If Julian Smith were looking for inspiration, he could find it in the true story of Eugene Hairston. A fighter from the Bronx, active from 1947 to 1953, Hairston spent 27 months in The Ring’s Top 10 at middleweight, debuting in October of 1950 and rising as high as #2 in the magazine’s ratings. Akin to Smith, Hairston’s hearing loss was attributed to a bout of meningitis suffered when he was a toddler.

Hairston’s big break came in August of 1950 when he upset Lee Sala at a baseball park in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Sala, a Pennsylvanian, was 61-1 and had avenged his lone defeat. The fight was carried coast-to-coast on a national radio network.

Hairston had an anxious moment in round four when he was knocked completely out of the ring by a counter left hook, but otherwise dominated the fight, winning by scores of 8-2, 7-1-2, and 7-3.

“Eugene (Dummy) Hairston scored a stunning fistic upset..” began the post-fight story by the ringside correspondent for the Associated Press. (The term Dummy was commonly used to describe a deaf mute. America’s first prominent deaf athlete, turn-of-the-century baseball outfielder William Ellsworth Hoy, was known as Dummy Hoy. However, as Hairston became more prominent, reporters abandoned the insensitive term Dummy in favor of Hairston’s preferred cognomen “Silent.”)

After defeating Sala, Hairston forged two more upsets, winning a split decision over future world welterweight champion Kid Gavilan and a majority decision over Joe Louis’s stablemate Lester Felton. And then, in the following year, 1951, he scored what in hindsight stands as his signature triumph, a fast and thorough beatdown of Paul Pender on Pender’s turf in Boston. Hairston had Pender on the deck four times before Pender’s corner stopped the carnage with five seconds remaining in the third round. (Paul Pender held the world middleweight title when he retired in 1962, having regained the belt in a rematch with England’s Terry Downes.)

Hairston had back-to-back fights with Jake LaMotta in 1952, Hairston falling short in the second encounter after the first meeting was ruled a draw. The two Bronxites fought in Detroit where the rugged LaMotta had built up a big following. Later that year, in what would be his next-to-last fight, Hairston was stopped by Bobo Olson at Madison Square Garden in a match billed as an eliminator for Sugar Ray Robinson’s world middleweight title (a moot point as Robinson had retired following his loss to Joey Maxim and wouldn’t return to the ring until two years had passed).

The Hairston-Olson fight was stopped by the ringside physician after six rounds because of a bad cut over Eugene’s right eye.

Eugene “Silent” Hairston was only 23 years old when he walked away from boxing, having crammed 63 fights into his brief pro career. The eye that was damaged in the Olson fight never did heal properly, aborting a comeback. He finished 45-13-5.

Excluding two instances where he was stopped on cuts, Hairston was stopped only once, that coming early in his career against journeyman Teddy Pritchard when he lost track of the count, unable to hear the referee in the din. They fought again six days later and Hairston flattened Pritchard in the second round.

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Hairston’s biggest fan was his dad, a house painter by trade, who attended most of his fights. “He used to sit around the house by himself thinking he didn’t belong,” reminisced the proud papa. “Since he has been boxing, he has pride. He knows he is as good as the next fellow. I’ll never regret letting him fight.”

The elder Hairston’s sentiments were echoed by Julian Smith’s mother Natalie Bibbs in a 2021 conversation with Joe Santoliquito writing for The Ring magazine. Noting that her son was bullied by neighborhood kids as a boy simply because he was different – Julian had no friends other than his classmates at the special school he attended and they were scattered about the metropolis – Bibbs acknowledged the role that boxing played in Julian’s emotional development, ameliorating his pent-up rage and giving him confidence that he might not otherwise have.

Now married and the father of a young boy, Smith carries with him the memory of his older brother Brandon each time he enters the ring. It was Brandon who bought him his first pair of boxing gloves. Seven years older than Julian, he died in 2012, a victim of gun violence in the township of Robbins on Chicago’s gang-plagued southwest side.

For the record, Julian Smith’s fight with Shohjahon Ergashev, livestreamed globally on DAZN, was a supporting bout to Claressa Shields’ bout with Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse. As for the inspirational Eugene “Silent” Hairston, in retirement he worked for UPS and was a volunteer coach at a Long Island boxing gym. He passed away in 2014 at age 85.

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