A Boxing Card in Alabama Goes Pfft: A True Tale from the Underbelly of The Sweet Science

A Boxing Card in Alabama Goes Pfft: A True Tale from the Underbelly of The Sweet Science

“I’ve had fights fall out before, but never like this,” said Keith Hunter.

The only saving grace was that Hunter (pictured) was intercepted at the airport before he went off on a wild goose chase to Alabama.

And therein lies a tale that is all too familiar in the netherworld of professional boxing.

Keith Hunter, a junior welterweight (aka super lightweight) sports a 16-2 (10 KOs) record. He is the younger brother of Michael Hunter, a leading heavyweight contender who went 12 rounds with Oleksandr Usyk during their days as a cruiserweight. The brothers are the sons of the late Mike Hunter, a heavyweight of some repute who died in 2006 at age 46 under mysterious circumstances. In tribute to their late father, both brothers adopted his nickname, “The Bounty,” as in the bounty hunter.

Keith Hunter was slated to fight Jose Gonzalez-Ramos this past Saturday, June 28, at Garrett Coliseum, a 12,000-seat arena in Montgomery, Alabama. Hunter vs. Gonzalez-Ramos was part of an 11-bout card billed as The Thump in The Gump. (The city of Montgomery is affectionately called The Gump by the locals.)

On Thursday of last week, the day before the weigh-ins, Keith was at the American Airlines counter at Reid International Airport in Las Vegas when he received a disconcerting text on his phone. Scheduled to depart shortly after 12 noon, he was informed that he had been rebooked on a flight leaving at midnight.

Keith never did make that flight. That afternoon, he learned that the entire card had been cancelled.

Keith would learn that the Alabama Athletic Commission pulled the plug because the promoter failed to post the required surety bond. A surety bond is a financial guarantee that the promoter will fulfill his obligations which includes purchasing insurance to cover any claims resulting from an injury to a participant or spectator or any damage to the venue during the event.

The promoter of record, per boxrec, was Damion Solomon, an alias of Xavier McCaskey. Here the story gets weird.

A Navy veteran with a Ph.D. in pastoral counseling, Xavier McCaskey – Dr. McCaskey to his clients — is a psychotherapist with a clinic in Columbus, Georgia, roughly 80 miles from Montgomery. As a sideline, he is a paralegal and, under his alias, is the founding director of a company called Bounty Hunter Entertainment, no relation to the fighting Hunter brothers.

Xavier McCaskey’s name was thrust into the news in 2023 as a result of a horrible tragedy.

On March 7, 2023, around 11:00 am, Ronisha Anderson, 51, Xavier McCaskey’s former wife (she had continued to work for him after the divorce, handling his billing) and Ronisha’s friend and roommate Juantonja “Toni” Richmond, 52, were found fatally shot in the front yard of the house they shared in a quiet neighborhood in Columbus. Two days later, their next door neighbor and the presumptive killer, a 56-year-old ex-felon and registered sex offender named Solomon Adams, died from a gunshot wound in an apparent suicide. The police did not have sufficient evidence to tie Adams to the murders, but 11 months after the killings they closed the case, citing circumstantial evidence.

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Jose Gonzalez-Ramos, Keith Hunter’s opponent in the aborted fight, had a nice record (26-2) but was 42 years old and had been out of action for almost three full years. Keith was told that the promoter paid to have Gonzalez-Ramos shipped in from Puerto Rico, but on a one-way ticket without any per diem for lodging and meals. (An unfounded rumor? Perhaps.)

Their fight was to be the co-main underneath the featured bout between lightweights Dewayne “One Hitta Quita” Zeigler, a local man, and Miami’s Malik Lewis. The local media were told that this would be a world title fight, sanctioned by the WBA and the IBA, and a TV reporter swallowed it, transmuting the bout into a historic event, the first championship fight in the history of boxing in Montgomery. Neither Zeigler (11-2-1, 7 KOs) nor Lewis (8-1, 5 KOs) had ever appeared in a match slated for more than eight rounds.

Hunter vs. Gonzalez-Ramos was sanctioned for the Intercontinental Super Lightweight Title by the Universal Boxing Federation. The UBF gave their imprimatur to three other bouts on the card including the 8-rounder between Sharif Rahman (9-0 but only two wins over opponents with winning records) and George Sosa (15-12-1, but 0-4-1 in his last five).

In regard to sanctioning bodies, there is a hierarchy beneath the Big Four. At the top is the International Boxing Organization (IBO) which is headquartered in Coral Gables, Florida, and has some currency in Europe. Thronged at  at the bottom, like lobsters about to be tossed into boiling water, are “organizations” that call to mind John Gregory Dunne’s description of a freelance Hollywood producer: a man whose office is the pay phone in his boardinghouse.

The Universal Boxing Federation (motto “Home of Champions”) is based in Chicago. “Unlike the other sanctioning bodies, the UBF strives into keeping the tradition of boxing alive by only sanctioning credible fights against worthy athletes,” it proclaims on its website.

It’s not our business to tell others how to run their business, but it strikes us that the UBF would have a bit more credibility if it hired a publicist who could write better than whoever concocted this banality for their website: “We believe in fundamental principles of ethics, moral, loyalty, honesty, and good faith can be found, considered as the main values which orientates all legitimate activities of [our] Federation.”

Keith Hunter was back at Bones Adams gym on Monday morning, sweating profusely as he went through his paces without a trainer pressing him on. At age 32, he is convinced that he still has a ways to go to reach his peak.

Hunter didn’t seem too bummed by what didn’t happen in Alabama. For some boxers, each unfulfilled promise is like a booster shot, inoculating them against falling into a deeper funk. And what occurred in Montgomery is old hat in the underbelly of prizefighting.

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