On August 30, 2017, the Inspector General’s office released the same letter to this writer pursuant to an identical Freedom of Information Law request.
The May 23 letter from the Inspector General stated that former NYSAC athletic activities assistant Mario Mercado had been “forced to resign in or about February 2015 due, in part, to his having used his state-issued credit card for a personal expense,” but was then rehired by the NYSAC as a per diem deputy commissioner. Leahy Scott’s letter concluded that Mercado’s appointment as a deputy commissioner should be “reconsidered.”
Sports can lead to a loss of objectivity. That’s particularly true when it comes to scoring a fight.
Lou DiBella is one of the most knowledgeable boxing people I know. Over the years, we’ve watched countless fights together. Our scorecards are almost always similar. Except when Lou has a significant vested interest in one of the fighters. In those instances, without fail, Lou’s scorecard is more heavily weighted toward his guy than mine is.
People in a fighter’s camp tend to view fights through rose-colored glasses. Almost always, their scorecards are more heavily weighted toward their fighter than the judges’ scorecards and consensus media scoring. I can count on one hand the times when the opposite was true.
This phenomenon extends far beyond boxing. Jim Harbaugh isn’t the only football coach who goes into conniptions and rages against the inequities of life when a penalty call goes against his team. We’ve come to expect similar behavior from most coaches and athletes.
That leaves open the question of whether the people involved with a fighter are oblivious to the fact that they’re scoring a fight badly or refuse to acknowledge their bias. Probably, it’s a bit of both. It also leads me to recall a moment that highlights the respect I had for former WBC 140-pound champion Billy Costello, who died of cancer six years ago.
In 1999, at age forty-three, Costello made an ill-advised return to the ring to fight 40-year-old Juan LaPorte on a “legends” card in North Carolina. Billy won a split decision in a bout that most observers thought should have been scored the other way.
“To be honest with you,” Costello said during a post-fight interview, “I think a draw would have been fairer.”
Over the years, thousands of participants and observers have tried to explain why boxing is important. ESPN commentator Teddy Atlas recently put his imprint on the subject in a conversation with this writer.
“It’s real simple what it is about boxing more than any other sport that sends shockwaves, that gets people’s attention,” Atlas said. “It’s that, in a world where life is often unfair, on one given night if it means enough to you, if you have trained yourself hard enough, if you are determined enough, if it’s inside of you; you are going to go in that ring no matter where you came from, no matter what you didn’t have growing up, no matter who your parents were, no matter what your ethnicity was, your religion, anything, no matter how poor you were; you can get in that ring and you can make things right on one given night. If you want to be champion bad enough, you can be the best in the world. You can even the playing field in an unfair world. That’s magic. That makes this sport special.”
A video review of ESPN’s Vasyl Lomachenko vs. Guillermo Rigondeaux telecast reveals that Anatoly Lomachenko (Vasyl’s father and chief second) wore either an earbud or a hearing aid in the corner during the fight. Both are legal. But should an earbud be?
Boxers, like all athletes, are always looking for an edge. The classic example of this dates to Muhammad Ali’s 1977 fight against Earnie Shavers at Madison Square Garden.
NBC, which televised the bout, was allowed by the New York State Athletic Commission to see and tell viewers at home the judges’ scores after each round. Angelo Dundee, who trained Ali, arranged for a Baltimore matchmaker named Eddie Hrica to watch the broadcast on television in the arena and relay the scoring to Dundee via hand signals as it was announced. After twelve rounds, Angelo knew that, under the round system in effect in New York, Ali was leading 8 to 4 on two judges’ cards and 8–3–1 on the third. That dictated his strategy for the final three rounds.
Suppose a TV telecast picks up a fighter telling his trainer, “I think my hand is broken” or “my ribs hurt.”
Knowledge is power.
Earbuds shouldn’t be allowed in the corner during fights. The trainers aren’t listening to Ella Fitzgerald.
Veteran sportswriter Robert Lipsyte has covered his share of fights over the decades, starting with Cassius Clay vs. Sonny Liston in Miami Beach on February 25, 1964. Reflecting on those years, Lipsyte recently observed, “One thing about covering boxing was that, if it was a major fight, you got to spend a few days in the training camp of the fighters, talking to them, talking to their handlers. And in the course of those days, it was very hard not to become emotionally invested with the fighters. In some cases, I loved every moment of the coverage until the bell for the first round. Then these two guys, who I had come to like in the last month, were now trying to give each other brain damage.”
The State of New York has agreed to pay $22,000,000 to Magomed Abdusalamov and his family following almost four years of litigation in the New York State Court of Claims.
Abdusalamov suffered grievous injuries and irreversible brain damage in a fight against Mike Perez at Madison Square Garden on November 2, 2013. Subsequent investigations, including a thirty-two-month probe by the New York State Inspector General’s office, found the New York State Athletic Commission at fault.
More specifically, the Inspector General’s report declared, “Many Athletic Commission practices, policies and procedures were either non-existent or deficient, specifically those relating to post-bout medical care, tactical emergency plans and communication, and training.” The Inspector General also found a lack of appropriate engagement and oversight by Athletic Commission commissioners and its chair.
The settlement was agreed to during the week of July 10, 2017, but was not announced until September 8 because it required the pro forma signing of an order by Jeanette Rodriguez-Morick, the New York State Court of Claims judge overseeing the case. It’s unclear why it took the judge two months to sign the order. However, the delay made it more difficult for the Abdusalamov family (which has been living on loans) to repay the loans and fund annuities in a timely manner.
Paul Edelstein, the lead attorney for Magomed and his family, had initiated the proceeding in the Court of Claims because, as a state entity, the New York State Athletic Commission is statutorily immune to suit in the regular courts and can be sued only in the Court of Claims.
On March 26, 2014, Edelstein filed a separate lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court against five commission doctors (Barry Jordan, Anthony Curreri, Osric King, Gerard Varlotta, and Avery Browne), Matt Farrago (the NYSAC inspector assigned to Abdusalamov’s dressing room), Benjy Esteves (who refereed the fight), K2 Promotions (which promoted the bout), and Madison Square Garden.
The $22,000,000 settlement releases only the New York State entities and two individuals who were classified as direct employees of the state (Barry Jordan and Matt Farrago). The case against Esteves as well as doctors Curreri, King, and Varlotta will proceed in New York State Supreme Court. Edelstein previously offered to settle with the doctors for an amount equal to the limits of their individual insurance policies (a total of $6,000,000). But that offer was rejected.
K2 Promotions, Madison Square Garden, and Avery Browne were dismissed as defendants in the Supreme Court case at an earlier date.
The $22,000,000 to be paid in settlement is more than all but a handful of boxers have earned in an entire ring career. The number reflects both the nature of the injuries suffered by Abdusalamov and the inexcusable manner in which his medical care was mishandled by the New York State Athletic Commission.
A note on the photograph of Evander Holyfield that graces the cover of this book.
Wojtek Urbanek was born in Poland in 1975. He came to the United States in 2012 and is no
w global creative director for Springer Nature, which publishes Nature, Scientific American, and several other prestigious magazines.
He’s a brilliant photographer in his own right.
The photo in question was taken on September 6, 2017. Holyfield was in New York on business for Real Deal Sports & Entertainment, his recently formed promotional company. Wojtek brought his equipment to Evander’s room at the Crowne Plaza Hotel near JFK Airport.
“Evander opened the door,” Wojtek recalls. “And I was like, ‘Omigod! It’s really Evander Holyfield.”
While Urbanek set up his equipment, Holyfield fiddled with his iPad. Then Evander hit a button and the Commodores started playing.
“If I only knew how to sing,” Evander said wistfully.
Then, at Wojtek’s request, Holyfield took off the white T-shirt he was wearing.
“I only shot for a few minutes,” Urbanek remembers. “I felt I should honor his time. At one point, I asked him to hold his hands in prayer. And Evander started praying. He looked very peaceful. Then I asked for a staredown and his face became dangerous. I think he was a little angry, actually, that I interrupted his prayer.”
Holyfield is often referred to as one of boxing’s quintessential warriors. Wojtek’s photograph captures this essence. Evander was fifty-four years old when the photo was taken. He’s at rest in a hotel room, not fighting. But this is what opponents saw when they entered the ring to do battle against him. Hands clasped in prayer, he looks very much like a wrathful god.
I’ve always been a collector. When I was a kid, I collected baseball cards and comic books. Eventually, my mother gave the comic books to a local children’s hospital and I sold the baseball cards for a fraction of what they’re worth today. That’s life. If everyone kept their old treasures, they’d be less rare and, hence, less valuable.
Still, over the years, I’ve amassed some pretty good collectibles. I have documents signed by every president of the United States except for the current White House occupant. My favorite is a handwritten legal brief penned by Abraham Lincoln in 1855.
England is well represented in my collection in the form of a cut signature from Queen Victoria and a note signed by Charles Dickens in 1862 on stationery from his Gad’s Hill Place home.
There’s a lot of sports memorabilia, most notably, boxing. I have an enormous amount of Muhammad Ali memorabilia and dozens of uncut tickets from major fights.
My favorite ticket is from the September 7, 1892, bout at the Olympic Club in New Orleans, when James J. Corbett wrested the heavyweight championship from John L. Sullivan. The most valuable of my tickets would have gained admission to the July 3, 1905, contest when Marvin Hart claimed the heavyweight throne by knocking out James Root.
I have uncut tickets from eleven fights where a new heavyweight champion was crowned. (Corbett, Hart, Jack Dempsey, Gene Tunney, Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Ingemar Johansson, Sonny Liston, Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield, and Riddick Bowe). Also, an uncut ticket from the night of October 4, 1940, (when Sugar Ray Robinson made his pro debut at Madison Square Garden on the undercard of Henry Armstrong vs. Fritzie Zivic) and the September 3, 1906, confrontation between Battling Nelson and Joe Gans in Goldfield, Nevada.
The July 4, 1910, “great white hope” fight between Jack Johnson and Jim Jeffries is in my collection, as are the two confrontations between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling. Not to mention oddities like a Christmas card signed by both Don King and Bob Arum. How many of those do you think are around?
But one piece has a special place in my heart.
In the mid-1980s, I authored a book about the sweet science entitled The Black Lights. The book explored the sport and business of boxing through the prism of WBC 140-pound champion Billy Costello. After it was published, I asked Billy to inscribe it for me. He wrote, “To Tom, a great friend and pal, the best always, Bill Costello.”
Thus, a new pursuit was born.
That was in 1985. Since then, I’ve brought the book to numerous boxing-related events and asked world champions to sign it. My criteria are simple. The signer must have held a recognized world title. Currently the WBC, WBA, IBF, and WBO merit inclusion. To date, 188 champions have signed my copy of The Black Lights. Some simply wrote their name. Others inscribed longer messages.
The signees include alltime greats like Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, George Foreman, Larry Holmes, Archie Moore, Gene Fullmer, Carmen Basilio, Emile Griffith, Jake LaMotta, Joey Maxim, Reuben Olivares, and Willie Pep.
Also, modern superstars like Mike Tyson, Lennox Lewis, Evander Holyfield, Vitali Klitschko, Wladimir Klitschko, Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran, Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Thomas Hearns, Julio Cesar Chavez, Alexis Arguello, Pernell Whitaker, Roy Jones, and Manny Pacquiao. Plus the likes of Marco Antonio Barrera, Erik Morales, Juan Manuel Marquez, Joe Calzaghe, Bernard Hopkins, Felix Trinidad, Miguel Cotto, and Oscar De La Hoya.
Thirty-nine heavyweight champions (Jersey Joe Walcott, Floyd Patterson, and Ingemar Johansson among them) signed the book. The fact that I wrote a book that has been signed by thirty-nine heavyweight champions is pretty cool. The fact that we live in an era when boxing is so fragmented that I’ve been able to meet thirty-nine heavyweight champions isn’t.
The New York State Athletic Commission lost a valuable asset when Keith Sullivan resigned as a deputy commissioner on November 13, 2017. Sullivan joined the NYSAC in 2012. A lawyer by trade, he brought an understanding of the sport and business of boxing as well as his legal acumen to the commission. He knows who the players are, both at the commission and in the boxing community at large.
Before joining the NYSAC, Sullivan represented Joey Gamache in a lawsuit against the commission that stemmed from irregularities at the weigh-in prior to the fighter’s February 26, 2000, bout against Arturo Gatti at Madison Square Garden. Gamache was brutally knocked out in that bout and suffered a career-ending brain bleed.
In the past, Sullivan has also represented fighters in contractual matters. His decision to leave his per diem position with the NYSAC was spurred in part by the desire to become more involved in boxing as a practicing attorney.
Sullivan is widely respected within the boxing community. The NYSAC’s loss is a potential gain for fighters and anyone else who’s looking for an honest, competent lawyer with knowledge of boxing.
As Miguel Cotto’s illustrious ring career comes to an end, it’s appropriate to acknowledge a special friendship.
Miguel and Bryan Perez met in 2002. Bryan was recording a demo show for what he hoped would be a new boxing program. Miguel was his first interview. Over the next five years, they grew closer. They’ve been together on a fulltime basis since 2007 as business associates and friends.
Bryan is rarely in the spotlight. He’s not one of those guys who push and shove to be on camera and walk around on fight night shouting, “You da man.” His official title is vice president of operations for Cotto Promotions. But he’s much more than that.
Let Miguel tell the tale:
Bryan and I see each other every day. I spend more time with Bryan than with anybody else, including my wife. Bryan wants me to be safe and happy. There have been many times when he could take advantage of a situation to do for himself. But he never does. Always, he thinks about me first and putting me in a safe place in business and every other way. Many times, he takes better care of me than he takes of himself.
Being with Bryan makes me feel comfortable and secure. Around him, I can be me. And Bryan is my conscience. He makes me a better Miguel. When I was young, I had a lot of trouble in my marriage. Bryan spoke to me brother to brother and helped me to understand certain things. He taught me to do things better for me, for my wife, for my whole family.
My time in boxing is ending now, but Bryan will always be with me. If we went together into a war, Bryan would put my life ahead of his own. I really believe that. This is love, man love as a true brother and friend. And I would do for Bryan what he does for me.
Jake LaMotta, who died
on September 19, 2017, left a mixed legacy. He was good fighter but a shabby human being who was physically abusive to more than one of his six wives.
That said, LaMotta understood boxing. So he knew how much about the sweet science he didn’t know.
“There are times,” LaMotta acknowledged, “when boxing makes you stop and realize that it will always have the ability to surprise you. You try to read a fight, imagine how it will go based on your knowledge and experience. And then something else happens to blow your mind.”
The dialogue over racial prejudice in the United States has gotten uglier the past few months. Let me add an experience I had years ago to the discussion.
I had a friend who was in my home with his wife on a number of occasions. They were African American. I live in a highrise apartment building in a residential neighborhood on the west side of Manhattan. One evening after dinner, I went down to the street with my friend, his wife, and another guest to help them into a taxi for the ride back to their hotel.
A taxi was coming toward us. The “on duty” light was on and there were no passengers in the back seat. I stepped off the curb and flagged the driver down. He blinked his lights in acknowledgement. The taxi slowed. Then the driver saw that I was with two black men and a black woman, assumed the taxi was for them (which it was), and drove off.
The three people left standing at the curb were Muhammad Ali, Lonnie Ali, and Ali’s closest friend, Howard Bingham.
The Bittersweet Science
Again and again, The Bittersweet Science makes the point: Longterm physical damage to fighters isn’t just possible or likely. It’s nearly inevitable.
The Bittersweet Science (edited by Carlo Rotella and Michael Ezra, University of Chicago Press) is a collection of fifteen essays about the sport and business of boxing by contemporary writers. Some of the pieces have been previously published. Others were written exclusively for this book. As with any anthology, some entries are better than others. Ten of the pieces merit particular praise. Listed alphabetically by author, they were written by Robert Anasi, Brin-Jonathan Butler, Donovan Craig, Charles Farrell, Rafael Garcia, Gordon Marino, Hamilton Nolan, Carlo Rotella, Sam Sheridan, and Carl Weingarten.
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