Boxing Notes and Nuggets from Thomas Hauser
The annual “Battle of the Badges” which matches amateur boxers from the New York City Fire Department against firefighters from around the world took place at Madison Square Garden’s Infosys Theater on March 6. John Duddy was one of the fans on site. And it gave him an opportunity to reflect on an experience that he had in the main arena at MSG twenty years ago.
On June 10, 2006 (the eve of New York’s annual Puerto Rican Day Parade), Miguel Cotto successfully defended his 140-pound world title against Paulie Malignaggi before 14,369 screaming fans. Antonio Tarver and Bernard Hopkins were fighting in Atlantic City on the same night. HBO chose to televise Tarver-Hopkins. So Top Rank promoted Cotto-Malignaggi as an independent pay-per-view event and brought in George Foreman (who had left HBO by then) as its expert commentator.
Four past or future world champions – Kevin Kelley, Juan Manuel Lopez, Peter Quillin, and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr – were on the undercard. Duddy (a rising star with a 16-0 ring ledger) was matched against Alfredo Cuevas in one of the main supporting bouts. Cuevas’s corner stopped the fight after the seventh round.
“I boxed well,” Duddy says of that night. “And it was a big win for me because Cuevas had gone the distance [twelve rounds] against Jermaine Taylor. I was in the changing room after the fight. I heard this loud voice: ‘Where is he? Where is that kid?’ The room went silent. I look up. And there’s George Foreman. He comes over to me, wraps his arms around me, and lifts me up. My head was up in the air above his. I felt like a bear cub being picked up by its father. And he says to me, ‘You’re going to be a world champion.’
“There are moments in your life that you remember forever,” Duddy notes. “That was one of them. I’d watched George Foreman fight when I was a kid. I’d just won a fight at Madison Square Garden. And now George Foreman is in my dressing room, holding me up in the air, telling me that someday I’m going to be a world champion. I remember thinking, ‘Is this is a dream? Is this really happening?’ Before I could take everything in, he put me down and was out the door. And I’m asking myself, ‘Was that real? Did anyone get a photograph? Omigod! That was George Foreman!’
“Unfortunately, nobody took a photograph,” Duddy says in closing. “But every time I think about that moment, I smile. It was one of the great experiences in my life. When George died, I was heartbroken.”
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The proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery by Netflix has fallen through. It now appears as though WBD will be acquired by Paramount Skydance. HBO Max is part of the WBD portfolio. Paramount+ is part of the Paramount Skydance empire.
Paramount+ has announced itself as “the exclusive home” of Zuffa Boxing in the United States, Canada, and Latin America. However, it may, at its option, simulcast select Zuffa events on CBS and other Paramount platforms. Meanwhile, on March 2, Paramount announced that Paramount+ and HBO Max will likely merge into a single streaming platform.
There was a time when HBO was “the heart and soul of boxing.” No other sport and network have been as intertwined in the public mind. HBO Sports was boxing’s version of Camelot, presiding over the last “golden age of boxing.” Then Seth Abraham and Lou DiBella (the architects of HBO’s boxing program) left the network. A long slow decline followed and Camelot withered away. HBO’s last fight aired on December 8, 2018.
Now, in some circles, wistful thinking is combining with a bit of cynicism. Given the institutional recognition that attaches to the HBO boxing brand, why not put Zuffa’s biggest fights on HBO?
I can hear it now: “HBO Boxing is back! . . . Zuffa’s big events remind me of HBO World Championship Boxing! . . . Zuffa’s young fighters remind me of what I used to see on HBO Boxing After Dark!”
Maybe that branding will happen. But if it does, boxing fans who long for a return to the sport’s last golden era might be disappointed.
When HBO Boxing was at its peak, it put on its share of clunkers. But it also gave fans a lot of good, very good, and great fights. Zuffa is entitled to a grace period to develop its young talent. But at present, there’s no indication that it will come close to matching the enthralling fights that introduced the likes of Arturo Gatti, Marco Antonio Barrera, Erik Morales, Johnny Tapia, Shane Mosley, and Vernon Forrest to the public on Boxing After Dark. Let alone the legendary match-ups on HBO World Championship Boxing.
And there’s another factor to consider. When HBO Boxing was at its peak, it had truth-tellers like Larry Merchant behind the microphone. Paramount+, at the moment – let’s be honest – has mostly shills.
* * *
On the Line – a documentary directed by Francesco Saviano – made its U.S. premiere on March 19 at the Perez Art Museum in Miami. It’s a good-faith effort to show the realities of boxing through the prism of three young men pursuing their dreams in a dangerous sport.
Saviano began tracking the fighters in 2013. Danny Jacobs was six years into his ring career and trying to rebuild after a loss to Dmitry Pirog. Will Rosinsky was near the end of his sojourn as an active fighter. Patrick Day was near the beginning. The filming continued on and off for ten years. Saviano and his wife financed it and probably won’t see a full return on their investment. But creative artists aren’t necessarily driven by cash.
“I’m a boxing fan,” Saviano says. “And I’m grateful for the opportunity that these young men gave me to go into their world.”
A series of talking heads augment the footage. These include (alphabetically) Chris Algieri, Jean-Philippe Day, David Diamante, Lou DiBella, Heather Hardy, Joe Higgins, Sebastian Junger, Sonya Lamonakis, Seanie Monaghan, Colin Quinn, Moises Roman Jr, and Ryan Songalia.
Jacobs’s extraordinary comeback after being operated on for near-fatal bone cancer and Rosinsky’s transition from boxing to a career as a New York City firefighter are discussed at length. Day (as boxing fans know) died on October 16, 2019, from injuries suffered in a knockout loss to Charles Conwell.
On the Line is nicely filmed. And some of the comments strike a responsive chord. A few of my favorites are:
* Ryan Songalia: “All fighters are underdogs.”
* Joe Higgins: “Even when you’re getting better, you’re still getting punched in the face.”
* Lou DiBella: “It’s troubling to me to think that people I like and care about, twenty years and twenty-five years down the road, are going to pay a price for a dream in a sport that never got them to where they wanted to be.”
On the down side; the film is long (one-hour-fifty-minutes) and drags a bit. It glosses over Jacobs’s loss to Gennady Golovkin and never mentions his losing efforts against Canelo Alvarez and John Ryder.
Also, if a viewer knows of Patrick Day’s death, On the Line has poignancy as it unfolds. Otherwise, the treatment of his death at the end of the documentary seems almost hollow.
And most important, the film advances a narrative regarding Day’s death that I don’t think is fully accurate. I don’t think Patrick should have been in the Conwell fight to begin with. He’d absorbed a pretty bad beating at the hands of Carlos Adames less than four months earlier. A lesser opponent (even if it meant a smaller payday) would have been appropriate.
Moreover, the Conwell fight could – and, I think, should – have been stopped after the eighth round. The film-makers leave the impression that Patrick’s head hitting the canvas after the final knockdown in round ten was a major contributing factor to his death. And yes, that might have exacerbated his brain bleed. But if one examines video of the fight (which is available on YouTube but not included in the documentary), it’s clear that Patrick was incapacitated by the brain bleed before the final punch. It also appears as though the referee was out of position when the final punch landed. Had he intervened, Patrick would have been spared both the final punch and his head hitting the canvas. Patrick’s brother, Jean-Philippe, touches on some of these issues in the documentary but not as directly or extensively as he has in other forums.
“The tragedy of Patrick’s death threw everything into a spin,” Saviano acknowledges. “Obviously, when we started working on the film, no one expected that would happen. His death is a crushing part of the story and we tried to handle it with grace. We weren’t sure how far to go. We didn’t want to exploit it, and I didn’t feel comfortable getting into the nuances of blame. I have my beliefs. I don’t think Patrick should have been in that fight to begin with. But we left that and other issues of blame open to interpretation.”
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Thomas Hauser’s email address is [email protected]. His most recent book – The Most Honest Sport: Two More Years Inside Boxing – is available at https://www.amazon.com/Most-Honest-Sport-Inside-Boxing/dp/1955836329/ref=sr_1_1?crid=MLXL6UHY8O9E&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.NZgHyDuy4gb1i6YPJ_9vmAMw3oLJh1d9Sxs-G8xJoJY.67ftevZ4BImTjJoSlE9uPWJz-j5i5wJGtSrlNDVZw-g&dib_tag=se&keywords=the+most+honest+sport+hauser&qid=1750773774&sprefix=the+most+honest+sport+hauser%2Caps%2C65&sr=8-1
In 2019, Hauser was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
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