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“Sivenathi is supposed to beat Suganob,” according to South African boxing kingpin Andile Sidinile. “Suganob has no power to scare off Sivenathi. He’s just a good fighter.”
This is as succinct a summary of this weekend’s superb clash between elite 108lb contenders Sivenathi Nontshinga (11-0), out of South Africa, and Filipino Regie Suganob (13-0) as can be made. Nontshinga, ranked #5, has the makings of a special fighter. This Sunday, on home soil in East London, SA, he will make the first defence of a strap he won in the hostile territory of Mexico against Hector Flores Calixto, via decision. Aged just twenty-four, “The Special One” surprised in this fight, his coming of age, in choosing war over crafty boxing. Styled from the footwork up to a ramrod jab, he stopped throwing that punch in the fourth, a 2022 round of the year contender, arguably exceeded in some senses by the fifth before he and Calixto took turns brutalising each other in the sixth. Nontshinga received a complete gut, chin and stamina check all in one brutal Mexican evening.
Blood drenched even the ringside paperwork by the end of the fight; Nontshinga had his hand raised on a split. I saw the South African’s superior work edging him home by a narrow margin over the Mexican’s exhausted volume, but a card for Calixto would not have been a robbery. Right-handed quality in the early part of the fight is what brought him the decision on my card and perhaps he should be thankful to have been treated so fairly so far from home.
Pitching the Calixto win is key to understanding Nontshinga, who, after all, was taking a big step up in a difficult learning fight. It is a fact, however, that Calixto was stopped in ten by journeyman flyweight Mario Gutierrez earlier this year. It could be that Nontshinga brutalised the best out of Calixto, such was the violence of that encounter, but it could be that Nontshinga’s punches have been overestimated by the weaker company he kept before that step up. The punches look the part, certainly, but power can be difficult to appraise without the competition to provide the test. Enter Regie Suganob, who is actively looking for a rerun of the Nontshinga-Calixto war.
Manager Floriezyl Podot has repeated often in the build-up that he hopes Nontshinga doesn’t “run” while mysteriously referencing “two areas” they feel they can exploit. Goading the man who splattered ringsiders with Calixto’s blood is a brave strategy indeed, but Suganob is not a man unaccustomed to overcoming the odds.
Suganob was little more than a handy undefeated local in his elimination match with more colourful countryman Mark Vicelles, but it was clear from the very first that this was going to be something different. Vicelles won that first round, but Suganob demonstrated three fascinating traits – a skill at countering the Vicelles jab; a nice counter left hook; and most of all, a watchfulness, a stillness and composure that allowed him to make use of these. This last should be noted because if Suganob is to defeat Nontshinga that patience in reading is going to be the key. It breathes life into a foraging, improvised style.
In the fourth round of his fight with Vicelles, Suganob added a straight-right to his hook, and countered his bigger opponent to the canvas at which point he assumed control of both the round and the fight. By the sixth the fight was a technical mismatch. Suganob was landing lead right hands before a left hook finally finishing the combination on another right-hand, outrageous combination-punching against a favoured fighter but simply put, Suganob saw and read his man before punishing him accordingly. It took half of the scheduled twelve for him to unpick the opposition’s style and then correctly identify the punches that would most punish him. This is not the work of a 13-0 combat athlete.
But nor does Nontshinga box like an 11-0 combat athlete. There are, however, certain shortfalls in amongst his speed, fleet-footwork and apparent power that might make him vulnerable to an ad-libbed strategy built from a technically sure base. Nontshinga’s jab is a hurtful, well-formed punch but he does not use it with the variety of a veteran. Nor does Suganob, but the important difference here is that Suganob specialises in countering this punch. Suganob is no more proven against quality opposition, or quality jabs, than Nontshinga, but Nontshinga lost his jab in the Calixto win, too. This may have been a matter of choice rather than a forced adaptation, but I do feel that Nontshinga’s jab has been predictable and that might play right into the left-hook/straight right combination punching of Suganob. He might be able to time Nontshinga’s speed, and his jab, both.
“I don’t underestimate him, I respect him as a boxer,” Nontshinga has said of Suganob. “But we’re going to win this fight by knockout.”
I liked reading this. This, in combination with Podot’s jibe about Nontshinga “running” makes me wonder if perhaps we won’t see a re-run of Nontshinga’s last, thrilling fight, although it should be noted that brawling is not Suganob’s primary style, either. It is more likely that Suganob wants Nontshinga attacking because it gives him more opportunities to score high-class counter combos for points. It would be unusual and delightful both if Suganob elected to plant his feet and duke it out but this fight doesn’t need early drama to develop into a classic. Disputed early rounds could bait a war out of these two men in the second half of the fight and calling it would be difficult, not despite their inexperience but because of it. There is no way to know how Nontshinga would react to being out-sniped, and no way to know how Suganob would respond to the attack Nontshinga laid down upon Calixto.
In the final analysis, Nontshinga should probably be favoured but I think Suganob is a very live dog. Catching this one may be difficult. It is listed on the DAZN slate with first bell around 9 am ET/2 pm BST, but there remains some question about whether the streaming platform will pick it up at this late date. Personally, I am just happy to see it going ahead given how close it seemed to being cancelled. Already postponed once from mid-June, reportedly for South African broadcast purposes, it was alleged that the fight was in jeopardy due to money the IBF had not been paid by Rumble Africa Promotions who did work for Nontshinga. He has since signed with Matchroom.
If this one drops to politics it will be the third such fight to evaporate this year already, and a tragedy. I hesitate to suggest this will be another fight of the year contender, but it is also true that I slept on Nontshinga-Calixto. Whether on DAZN or another platform –  and there are usually late carriers for these more minor title fights — this one will be worth tracking down.

The Dempsey-Gibbons Fiasco: An Odd Duck in Boxing’s Rollicking Summer of ‘23
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This coming Fourth of July marks the 100^th anniversary of one of the oddest promotions in boxing history, the heavyweight championship fight between Jack Dempsey and Tommy Gibbons in remote Shelby, Montana. TSS special correspondent Rich Blake, an authority on prizefighting during the so-called Golden Age of Sports, looks back at that bizarre event.
Around midnight one evening in mid-May of 1923, the 20th Century Limited, crown jewel of American passenger rail travel, came streaking through central New York’s Mohawk Valley en route to Chicago.
Riding in a luxury Pullman car was Jack “Doc” Kearns, a focal point of the sporting world as he attempted to pull off one of the most outlandish sporting schemes ever conceived. A raconteur in a flashy suit, Kearns was the manager of Jack Dempsey, the world heavyweight champion. Throughout that night, the 40-year-old Kearns played cards with scoop-hungry scribes and an old friend, Benny Leonard, then reigning lightweight champion.
Before climbing aboard, Kearns reportedly had arranged for one final meeting with the fight game’s foremost promoter, George “Tex” Rickard, who not only ran Madison Square Garden but also had wangled permission to stage outdoor bouts that summer at the newly opened, 58,000-seat Yankee Stadium.
Garrulous, manipulative, Kearns was sticking it to Rickard by way of an ambitious plot to circumvent the boxing world’s Mecca. Kearns had arranged to stage Dempsey’s next fight – a July 4th championship extravaganza against Tommy Gibbons – in the middle of nowhere. A 34-year-old light heavyweight from the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, Gibbons was known for his speed and clever tactics.
Rickard didn’t flinch. At age 53, the former gold prospector and casino operator was under siege by headline writers, not to mention state boxing authorities, over a string of sensational scandals, including ticket gouging allegations.
Nevertheless, Rickard was quietly reasserting control over the lease on the Garden (the property was owned by the New York Life Insurance Company) and holding sway over issues such as who should challenge Dempsey for the title, where would that fight be held, and how much the least expensive tickets would cost?
Kearns connivingly outmuscled Rickard (and his hefty cut of the gate) earlier that spring by striking a deal with a group of Shelby, Montana, oil field operators reimagining their cowpoke settlement near the Canadian border as the host of a world-class sporting event.
Kearns insisted on a $300,000 payday, extracting one-third of it up front. Shelby’s residents tapped all possible resources to get the money together and started scrambling to build a giant wooden stadium. All the while, Kearns was still playing the angles.
So, was Rickard willing to match the Shelby offer?
“I wouldn’t pay a nickel to see Tommy Gibbons,” Rickard reportedly said, turning Kearns down.
What eventually played out in remote northwest Montana in that rollicking summer of ’23 remains the stuff of cultural lore, a glorious fiasco that is still talked- about one century later.
***
The decade that roared, as of the midpoint of 1923, was not yet in full-throated form, at least in terms of sheer, unbridled jazz-and-hooch-infused zeitgeist energy.
Dempsey’s exploits dominated headlines. But boxing was teeming with colorful characters and contenders. Talented fighters in every weight class made a living competing in rings found in virtually every city in every state.
To rediscover this specific, fascinating slice of a so-called “golden age” is both an intoxicating thrill-ride and a sobering wake-up call. Boxing dominated society as it never had before, and reflected it, for better and for worse.
An endlessly rich tapestry of pugilistic storylines filled the pages of magazines such as The Police Gazette, The Ring and The Boxing Blade. Two dozen or more sportswriters were on the beat – just in New York City, where every neighborhood had its champion. It was a flag of ethnic pride, as Jack Newfield once explained to PBS. “Rivalries were built on ethnic tension,” he said. “You could get ten thousand people for a fight between two neighborhood heroes.”
Boxing flourished almost everywhere. In New York City, each of the five boroughs had multiple boxing clubs. A regional city, such as Buffalo, N.Y., supported two major boxing events per week at the 10,000-seat Broadway Auditorium. Fighters could earn a decent living in the middle-tier markets all while hoping to catch the attention of some manager or matchmaker in the Big Town. A Boxing Blade issue from around this time chronicled a week’s worth of noteworthy fights in New York and Boston, Detroit and Philadelphia, Buffalo and Milwaukee, as well as in Erie, Pa., Sandusky, Ohio, Newark, N.J., Staten Island, N.Y., Flint, Mich., Wichita, Kan., Springfield, Ill. and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, just to list a small sample of locales during one seven-day stretch.
Summertime, the outdoor season – that’s when the brightest stars came out to shine. Fights were staged at ballparks, velodromes and seaside resorts.
After boxing in New York was re-legalized under the liberal Walker Law in 1920, it exploded into a full-fledged industry with its informal headquarters at Madison Square Garden, operated by Rickard. The bulk of his public relations wound up essentially outsourced to a murderers row of syndicated sportswriters – Damon Runyon and Grantland Rice, to name two of the most iconic.
Stephen Dubner, co-author of the popular “Freakonomics” book series, unearthed research by the American Society of Newspaper Editors that showed one out of four readers bought a paper for the sports page. The editors voted Dempsey the “greatest stimulation to circulation in twenty years.”
***
Of course, no retrospective on boxing circa the summer of ’23 can sidestep a fight that should have been – but never was.
Dempsey always insisted he was open to taking on black opponents. The leading heavyweight challenger heading into that summer of ’23 was 34-year-old Harry Wills, dubbed the world’s “colored” heavyweight champion. As such, Wills proved a reliable draw among white audiences, provided he took on a black challenger.
Wills was a burly ex-dockworker from New Orleans, transplanted from the Big Easy to the Big Apple. He was growing old waiting for authorities to force Dempsey to accept his challenge. Frustrated, his career going in circles (he fought Sam Langford at least 17 times), Wills would eventually align himself with a couple of Irishmen. He sought out a new manager, Paddy Mullins, a Bowery bar owner who grew up staging backroom fights, and who was old friends with a Queens promoter named Simon Flaherty who was keen to build a stadium suitable for putting on Dempsey-Wills.
The stadium, situated across from Manhattan in Long Island City, got built, got shut down by the fire department, was refurbished and then re-opened. But Wills’ title shot never happened.
Historians have blamed public sentiment alongside powerful figures such as Rickard (who once supposedly, infamously, told one financial backer the title would be worthless if a black man ever won it) and William Muldoon, the head of the New York Boxing Commission, an avowed opponent of interracial matches in his younger days.
(In Edward Van Every’s biography of Muldoon, “The Solid Man of Sport,” there’s a reference — repeated in Roger Kahn’s biography of Dempsey, “A Flame of Pure Fire” — to a Dempsey-Wills championship match supposedly, at least momentarily, having been made by Rickard who penciled in the Polo Grounds, a sporting coliseum near Yankee Stadium, as a possible location. But the white establishment of 1923 so loathed the thought of a black champion that the idea was quashed. And while the Muldoon-led boxing governing body at one point publicly demanded Dempsey sign papers to fight Wills or forfeit his crown — curiously flouting formal and informal rules forbidding mixed-race bouts — there were also reports that, concurrently, behind the scenes, Albany politicians pressured Muldoon and Rickard to scrap the idea.)
Additionally, Montreal was also considered as a location until, per Van Every, Her Majesty’s government quietly intervened.
Wills had defended what sports pages called his colored heavyweight championship in the fall of ’22 against Clem Johnson at Madison Square Garden (then located on Twenty-Second Street). Wills knocked him out in front of 10,000 fans. Sportswriters were divided on the top contender’s performance. “The giant New Orleans black challenger for the world’s heavyweight boxing title, held by Jack Dempsey, last night battered his way to victory,” the New York Times said.
“That dismal exhibition put up by Harry Wills against Clem Johnson in the Garden may have been the one thing needed to make a Dempsey-Wills bout possible,” the New York Sun said. “Jack Kearns has been telling the boys that Wills has gone back so far that he is not one-fourth as good as he was a few years ago.”
Kearns may have been right, the newspaper added. “But it is possible that he does not pay as much attention to the fact that Wills did not train very seriously for the Johnson affair. With two or three months of real training under his belt, Harry may prove to be a different sort of a fighter.”
So, sportswriters of the day wanted to see Dempsey-Wills and treated “The Black Panther” as a legitimate challenger, stoking curiosity in a bout supposedly the public did not want to see.
As Boxing Scene once put it, citing historian Kevin Smith, Wills’ primary asset was his strength.
“He could move other men around the ring as he pleased,” Smith said.
Considered a top contender for almost seven years, Wills never could fathom or accept being denied a title shot.
“No number one contender could be ignored for that long today,” Smith said. “But the racial tones of that time simply would not allow such a bout.”
Kahn would write that with Rickard, “the issue was money, not prejudice. Or, anyway, money before prejudice.”
***
The scuttling of the Dempsey-Wills match, were it ever really in the cards to begin with, opened the door to a curious chain of events that led to one of the craziest boxing tales of all time.
Loy J. Molumby, an ex-fighter pilot and the cowboy-boots-wearing head of Montana’s American Legion, tracked down Dempsey’s manager in a New York hotel, after being stood-up in Chicago. Molumby carried with him a satchel filled with $100,000. It was the one-third (of the total guaranteed $300,000) that Kearns had demanded up front before he would even discuss such a preposterous concept.
Shelby’s residents tapped all possible resources to get the money together and started scrambling to make arrangements. Roads needed paving. The little railroad depot needed to be expanded. A local lumberyard sprang for $80,000 worth of pine boards for the hasty construction of an open-air octagon.

In 1923, Shelby was a community with “visions – delusions, as it turned out – of boom-town grandeur,” said Jeff Welsch, a Montana sportswriter. Three years earlier, according to the decadal census, fewer than 600 people lived there.
Did we mention there were no paved roads?
An oil strike on a nearby ranch the previous year sparked fantasies of Shelby as the “Tulsa of the West,” according to Welsch.
After giving Rickard a chance to match the Shelby offer, Kearns headed off to rendezvous with Dempsey who was doing some fly fishing on the Missouri River.
The plan was to meet at a training camp being established on the grounds of an old roadhouse on the outskirts of Great Falls, Montana, some 90 miles south of the proposed site of the Independence Day spectacle. The Dempsey faction – Jack’s brother, Johnny, the trainers, and a bull terrier mascot – were preparing the camp. Meanwhile, Kearns put together a deep stable of sparring partners, 17 and counting. Kearns wanted speedy fighters to get the champ prepared for Gibbons, known for being fast with his punches, but Kearns was also widening his talent stable. Red Carr, manager of then-19-year-old Jimmy Slattery, a future light heavyweight champion, would be enticed by an offer from Kearns to send his then-ripening speed boy out to Great Falls, but Red, after giving his blessing, reversed course and nixed the idea.
As for the July 4th heavyweight championship fight staged in the tiny town of Shelby, Montana, it would rank among the most monumental fiascos in the history of sports.
Molumby paid up the second $100,000 installment two months before the fight.
With a week to go, the mayor of Shelby visited Kearns in Great Falls. They only had $1,600 of the final payment. Might he consider accepting 50,000 sheep instead of hard cash?
Dempsey, listless in training, beat, but never dominated Gibbons in a tedious affair witnessed by fewer than 20,000 spectators, half of whom crashed the gates.
The temperature at ringside was close to 100 degrees.
The big takeaway: Dempsey, two years idle from ring activities, failed to knock Gibbons out.
Dempsey and Kearns, along with an armed security detail, fled the scene as fast as they could by private train.
Kearns got out of town with the gate receipts. The banks of Shelby, which had underwritten the event, went bankrupt.
As for Tommy Gibbons, who wound up with nothing, he went on to become the long-serving sheriff of Minnesota’s Ramsey County, home to the State Capitol of St. Paul. As for Dempsey, he would soon journey back east to begin training for his next opponent Luis Angel Firpo, but that’s a story for another day.
Editor’s postscript: The population of Shelby is now a shade over 3,000. The locals no longer consider the fight a civic embarrassment, but rather as something to commemorate. This year, the July 4 festivities will be wrapped around the centennial of Shelby’s “Fight of the Century.” Months of planning have gone into making this Shelby’s grandest Fourth of July ever. Contact the Shelby Area Chamber of Commerce (406-434-7184) for more information.
Rich Blake is a journalist and the author of four non-fiction books, including 2015’s “Slats: The Legend & Life of Jimmy Slattery.”
 
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 Jared Anderson was slated to fight Kazakhstan’s Zhan Kossobutskiy on July 1 on ESPN in a match emanating from the 9,000-seat Huntington Center in Toledo, Ohio. That match-up fell out, purportedly because Kossobutskiy had visa problems. In steps Charles Martin and now the stakes are higher for Jared Anderson.
Anderson, a mere pup for a heavyweight at twenty-three years of age, has knocked out all 14 of his opponents at the professional level. Only two lasted beyond the third round. Hailed as the next great American heavyweight and a sure-shot future world champion, the Toledo native is on the path to becoming a very rich man.
Zhan Kossobutskiy’s record is no less impressive: 19-0 with 18 knockouts. However, Charles Martin (29-3-1, 26 KOs) is in some ways a more credible opponent.
Won-loss records in boxing are notoriously misleading and that’s especially true for a relative unknown who has never fought on American soil. Knowledgeable fans who have studied Kossubutskiy’s fights on youtube have told this reporter that he is legit and it’s worth noting that he defeated future Olympians Vassiliy Levit, Guido Vianello, and Frazer Clarke in his amateur days. However, the fact remains that as a pro, akin to Jared Anderson, he has yet to fight a reputable opponent. One of the few recognizable names on his ledger is Philadelphia journeyman Joey Dawejko. The Kazakh stopped him in the second round in Hamburg Germany, but the usually durable Dawejko came in overweight (a career-high 266 ¾ pounds) and fought as if he were just there for the payday.
If Anderson had fought Kossobutskiy and had blown him away, many pundits would have cushioned their kind words with the caveat that Jared still hasn’t been properly tested. If, perchance, Anderson blows away Charles Martin on July 1, retrospectives won’t command a caveat. “Prince Charles” has certainly been found wanting on occasion, but the St. Louis native has been in with some of the division’s hardest hitters and has the added beguilement of having once been a world title-holder.
His reign didn’t last long. Not quite three months after capturing the vacant IBF title with a quirky third-round stoppage of Vyacheslav Glazkov at Barclays Center in Brooklyn (Glazkov fell and suffered a knee injury), Martin went to London and was blasted out in the second round by Anthony Joshua. He is 6-2 since that mishap, most recently a fourth-round stoppage of 2004 U.S. Olympian Devin Vargas.
Charles Martin

Martin, pictured above with the late Michael King in a 2014 photo, is one of the last remnants of a grand experiment that bore little fruit.
A TV mogul – the family business, King World Productions, syndicated such powerhouses as “Oprah” and “Wheel of Fortune” — Michael King was a diehard boxing fan who built a state-of-the-art gym in Carson, California, with an eye to growing the next generation of great American heavyweights. He thought blue-chip athletes toiling in other sports like football and basketball were the best prospects.
King funneled millions into his pet project with the little to show for it. Six-foot-seven Dominic Breazeale, a former college quarterback, made the U.S. Olympic team and was a two-time world title challenger, but manufacturing a world champion proved to be elusive and King wasn’t there to celebrate when Charles Martin held the IBF belt aloft at the Barclays Center. The previous year, he contracted pneumonia and passed away at age sixty-seven.
Charles Martin, who comfortably carries 245 pounds on a six-foot-five frame, has the look of someone who would have excelled on the hardwood or the gridiron. However, that wasn’t the case. Unlike other heavyweights sponsored by Michael King, Martin, one might say, fell through the cracks.
“I was real skinny in high school and my mother didn’t want me to play football,” says Martin who bounced around in his schoolboy days and was living in Phoenix when he left school in the 11^th grade. And basketball? “I was okay playing in the street,” he says, “but lousy in a structured environment.”
What, then, was his best sport? “Bowling,” he says matter-of-factly. He currently plays in two leagues and avouches that his best game was a 269.
Another surprise awaited when Martin was asked to name his favorite boxers. The first name that popped out of his mouth was a Welshman, Joe Calzaghe. The two would seem to have little in common other than both being southpaws.
Since winning the title, Martin’s career has been choppy but there were underlying factors. “I lost my love for boxing after what happened in the Joshua fight,” he says. A full year elapsed before Martin fought again.
Then there was Covid. He’s had two encounters with the debilitating virus, the first popping up following his 2018 match with Adam Kownacki wherein he lost a 10-round decision.
“When I got to JFK Airport, it hit me,” he says. “They say that some people lose their sense of taste and sense of smell when they get it. I didn’t, but when I got home, I was so fatigued that all I wanted to do was stay in bed.”
Martin says that he had another brush with it after visiting his wife’s family in Atlanta. That begs the question of whether he was 100 percent on New Year’s Day of 2022 when Cuban slugger Luis “King Kong” Ortiz saddled him with his third loss. Martin was upright but on unsteady legs when the bout was waived off in the sixth frame.
Martin had Ortiz down twice before the roof fell in. He was ahead on all three cards through the five completed rounds.
“I don’t want to take anything away from Ortiz,” he says. “He hit me with some good shots. But something was wrong with me. After five rounds, I didn’t have any bounce in my legs.”
The setback to Ortiz, he says, had the exact opposite effect of his setback to Anthony Joshua. “After Joshua,” he says, “you couldn’t get me back in the gym unless I had a fight in the works. Now I couldn’t wait to get back in the gym.”
Martin now resides in Las Vegas where there is a sizeable colony of heavyweights. Veterans like Jonnie Rice and Michael Hunter, up-and-comers like Jeremiah Milton, Skylar Lacy, and Patrick Mailata, and a steady stream of European visitors like Joe Joyce have created something of a round-robin vibe in the local gyms where they spar. Oddly, although southpaws are always in demand as sparring partners, Martin says that he has never sparred with Jared Anderson. “I think it’s better that way,” he says, alluding to the fact that neither will enter the ring with any preconceptions.
Martin is the father of seven children. “One of my goals,” he says, “is to get all my kids under the same roof.” The youngest of his children, two-year-old twin boys, have been diagnosed as autistic. He plans to use his upcoming fight as a platform to make the public more aware of this complex disorder.
In handicapping the Anderson-Martin fight, the age gap looms large. “I know this is a young man’s game,” he says, “but I am a young thirty-seven.” And while Martin will be fighting in a hostile setting – this is a “welcome home” fight for Anderson who will be making his first start as a pro in the city where he was born and raised – the match is something of a homecoming fight for him as well. Martin finished his amateur career at a tournament in Toledo.
Based on the odds, Jared Anderson should have little trouble advancing his record to 15-0. Charles Martin stands ready to gum up the works.
 
 
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Sometimes a fight seems like a wake with the body in the ring. That was the feeling I had at Madison Square Garden on Saturday night when Adam Kownacki fought Joe Cusumano in the chief support bout for Edgar Berlanga vs. Jason Quigley.
Kownacki (now 20-4, 15 KOs, 3 KOs by) was once groomed as an opponent for Deontay Wilder. But Robert Helenius stopped him twice. Then Adam lost his third fight in a row (by decision against Ali Eren Demirezen).
Cusumano (22-4, 20 KOs, 1 KO by) had been knocked out in the first round by Daniel Dubois in his only outing against a world-class opponent and was as “safe” an opponent for Kownacki as promoter Eddie Hearn could get past the New York State Athletic Commission.
There was talk that Hearn was considering Kownacki as an opponent for Anthony Joshua’s next outing in August. But first, Adam had to get by Cusumano.
Kownacki was a heavy betting favorite, in large measure because of Cusumano’s shortcomings. It was a “must-win” fight for Adam. But his last three outings had also been must-win fights. And Adam had lost all of them.
Against Cusumano, things went wrong for Kownacki from the start. Cusumano shook him with right hands in round one and dropped him face first with fifteen seconds left in the stanza. Adam struggled to his feet, not just because he was supposed to but because he’s a fighter at heart and was still trying to win the fight. The bell saved him.
Kownacki rallied to win rounds two and three. There was no quit in him. But there wasn’t much else either except his heart. He’d come into the fight with a gas tank that was close to empty, and now the engine was running on fumes.
Both fighters were slow, lumbering, and easy to hit. Both men threw punches in bunches. And very few of those punches missed. The main question regarding the outcome was how Cusumano’s chin would hold up if Kownacki hit him flush. But Adam doesn’t hit as hard as he once did. In the ring, he’s now a shell of his former self.
The end came two minutes into round eight with Kownacki being battered around the ring, woozy but still on his feet, and his corner throwing in the towel. The fight was too sad to be entertaining but it was dramatic.
I’ve known Adam for a long time. I like him. He shouldn’t fight anymore. I don’t want to hear, “Oh, I hope Adam doesn’t fight again but he’s going to fight anyway, so I’ll do the best I can to protect him.”
Adam shouldn’t get hit in the head anymore. Not in sparring and not in a fight. Shame on anyone who, in any way, facilitates his fighting again.
* * * *
Saturday night marked a return to the scene of an ongoing problem that has long plagued the New York State Athletic Commission. Too often, the judging in New York is atrocious.
Two weeks ago, Teofimo Lopez fought Josh Taylor at Madison Square Garden. Lopez outlanded Taylor by a two-to-one margin and also landed the heavier blows. It was hard to find more than three rounds that could be credibly scored for Taylor. But two judges (Joe Pasquale and Steve Gray) gave him five. Indeed, had Taylor won the last round, the fight would have been declared a draw. And if Taylor had scored a flash knockdown, he would have won the fight. But since (according to CompuBox), Taylor was outlanded 20-to-2 in the final stanza, not even Pasquale and Gray could score that round for him.
Steve Weisfeld had Joe Cusumano ahead of Adam Kownacki by a 68-64 margin when that fight was stopped (which, in the eyes of this observer, was the correct score). Ken Ezzo’s scorecard was even, which was beyond the pale.
That brings us to Berlanga-Quigley.
Berlanga began his career with a gaudy streak of sixteen consecutive first-round knockouts. Then the competition got tougher. He’d been taken the distance in his last four fights. Quigley had never beaten a world-class fighter, was knocked out by Tureano Johnson and Demetrius Andrade, and had fought only once since 2021. That fight, in Dublin, was a ten-round decision over a Hungarian fighter named Gabor Gorbics who has now lost forty times and is winless in his last 31 outings.
Hearn was hoping to groom Berlanga as an opponent for Canelo Alvarez. Indeed, in the build-up to Berlanga-Quigley, Edgar posted on social media, “If me and Canelo fought, easily we’ll do over 1.5 million in PPV buys.” That was a silly assertion, but indicative of the path that he and Hearn hoped to follow. Then, hours after the final pre-fight press conference for Berlanga-Quigley, Canelo announced that his next fight would be in September with Premier Boxing Champions on Showtime PPV. That fight, it was later reported, would be the first under a three-bout contract.
Berlanga talks the talk. But so far, he hasn’t stepped into the ring against a world-class opponent to walk the walk. Against Quigley, he looked one-dimensional. Jason had faster hands and better footwork but lacked the power to hurt Edgar. Berlanga dropped him in round three. And the normally-reliable Harvey Dock mistakenly called a knockdown in round five when Quigley slipped and hit the canvas. But Jason fought his way back into the fight, finding a home for some sharp right hands. Then Edgar finished strong, dropping Quigley twice in the twelfth round.
I gave Quigley five rounds. Two of the judges gave him four. Judge Nicolas Esnault gave him two, which wasn’t a credible scorecard.
The New York State Athletic Commission might say, “Well, Lopez-Taylor was a WBO title fight, so we didn’t appoint the judges.” But the NYSAC had jurisdiction over the fight and final approval of the judges. The Commission might also say with regard to all three fights, “The right guy won, so what’s the problem?”
The problem is that, too often, the wrong guy (or woman) wins in New York. And the New York State Athletic Commission doesn’t correct the situation. It doesn’t even acknowledge that the problem exists.
The day after Taylor-Lopez, I emailed the public relations officer for the NYSAC asking for comment from executive director Kim Sumbler regarding the judges’ scoring of that fight. There was no response. Nine days later, I followed up with a second email. Again, there was no response.
Judges are entrusted with the livelihood and legacy of every fighter who participates in a bout that they watch over. That’s a huge responsibility. Too often, it’s placed in the hands of men and women who aren’t up to the task.
Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His most recent book – In the Inner Sanctum: Behind the Scenes at Big Fights – was published by the University of Arkansas Press. In 2004, the Boxing Writers Association of America honored Hauser with the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism. In 2019, Hauser was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
 Photo credit: Ed Mulholland / Matchroom
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