Let’s start with some caveats. Clark was a member of Browne’s team in Grozny, so his objectivity might be questioned. Also, Chagaev–Browne wasn’t a real-world championship fight. But sanctioning-body belts, no matter how bogus they might be, are important to fighters.
Clark has an easy-to-read writing style. He describes Grozny as a beehive swarming with Chechen rebels, a spawning ground for Islamic extremists, and a safe harbor for the Russian mob.
The climactic fight is well told. Chagaev dominated in the early going. Browne was badly cut, lost a tooth, and endured a stream of damaging body blows. Round six, when Chagaev dropped Browne and had him in trouble, was three minutes fifteen seconds long. Round seven, when Browne turned the tide and staggered Chagaev, was forty-four seconds short.
The battle ended in round ten, when referee Stanley Christodoulou wrapped his arms around a defenseless Chagaev to protect him from further harm. At that point, there was significant concern for Browne’s safety. Rather than celebrate in the ring, Team Browne retreated to the dressing room as quickly as possible.
Sadly, Browne never got his championship belt. After the fight, he was told that it would be sent to him within two weeks. But a post-fight urinalysis by the Voluntary Anti-Doping Association revealed traces of clenbuterol in his system.
Clenbuterol, a banned drug, is used primarily to help athletes lose weight. That made no sense in Browne’s situation, since a 250-pound heavyweight has no need to make weight. Also, all VADA testing of Browne prior to the fight was negative insofar as illegal performance-enhancing drugs were concerned. That lent credence to the theory that Browne was a “clean” athlete and that either he had inadvertently eaten contaminated meat or his food had been deliberately laced with clenbuterol.
However, the rules of the game are clear. Athletes are responsible for what goes into their system. Browne was stripped of his title and suspended by the WBA for six months.
“Now,” Clark writes, “it was almost as if the fight had never happened. The achievement had been wiped from the records, the glory had been tarnished, and the story had been retold with the hero cast as the villain.”
Then an even more troubling eventuality occurred. In November 2016, a random test sample taken from Browne by VADA pursuant to the WBC Clean Boxing Program tested positive for ostarine (a banned drug that produces effects similar to anabolic steroids).
That leaves Clark to acknowledge, “As with the previous positive result, Browne was unable to explain the finding. This time, sabotage or eating contaminated foods could be immediately dismissed. All notions of a wronged fighter seeking redemption had been blown away. The sporting public hardens its heart very quickly to a man who fumbles his second chance.”
James Lawton calls boxing “the world’s oldest and most embattled sport.” A Ringside Affair: Boxing’s Last Golden Age (Bloomsbury Publishing) recounts his sojourn through the sweet science as lead sportswriter for the Independent and Daily Express in London.
Lawton’s remembrance begins with what he calls “the first significant fight” he covered, the 1977 matchup between a fading Muhammad Ali and Earnie Shavers.
Ali, Lawton writes, “was so much more than a fabled sportsman. He was a touchstone for the possibilities of life, for the rewards of courage. He had no rival in his genius for touching people.”
After Ali–Shavers, Madison Square Garden matchmaker Teddy Brenner said sadly, “I never thought I’d live to see the day when Muhammad Ali’s greatest asset was his ability to take a punch.”
Three years later, Lawton was at ringside to witness Ali’s destruction by Larry Holmes. “It wasn’t that Ali didn’t fight,” he writes. “The problem was much more fundamental. He couldn’t fight. He had become disabled.”
Recollections of Larry Holmes, Mike Tyson, Buster Douglas, Evander Holyfield, Riddick Bowe, and Lennox Lewis follow.
One of the most poignant passages in A Ringside Affair concerns Eddie Futch recalling how he decided to train Bowe, the fighter who ultimately broke his heart.
“I loved what I had seen of his talent,” Futch observed. “For a big man, he moved beautifully. He had the balance and the grace of a real fighter, and that was exciting. You can go a long time in boxing without seeing such qualities leaping out at you. But it doesn’t mean anything if the guy deep down doesn’t really want to fight.”
Lawton also re-creates the glorious round-robin combat amongst Sugar Ray Leonard, Thomas Hearns, Marvin Hagler, and Roberto Duran.
“Any lover of the fights,” he writes, “the real ones that forced men into every resource at their disposal and reminded all who watched them why this was the most ancient and durable of sports, would surely say, ‘You gave us your best.’”
Of Leonard–Hearns, Lawton notes, “Leonard was accused of impertinence when he took the appellation ‘Sugar.’ It was, some said, an affront to the achievements of a man still regarded by many as the greatest pound-for-pound fighter of all time. But not any more.”
Outraged by the judges’ decision in Hagler–Leonard, Lawton declares, “Some fights are never over, whatever the ringside adjudication. They go on down through the years, harboring old regrets, spawning fresh anger.”
But Lawton concedes that a poor fight plan that saw Hagler switch from southpaw to an orthodox stance in the early rounds contributed to The Marvelous One’s loss (“He resembled someone running through his keyring, confused that a familiar lock refused to open”). And he acknowledges that, from Leonard’s point of view, “A knockout was not the point of the exercise. He had gone to beat Hagler within the rules of boxing. He had seen and exploited the way to reduce him with his speed and flair and ineffable self-belief. He hadn’t gone to floor Hagler but to scale him down, to say that his own talent was of a different and superior kind.”
Hagler–Hearns is deftly described with an observation from Budd Schulberg: “I never thought I’d see anything so intense outside of war.”
Of Roberto Duran, Lawton says simply, “He might have come not from the raw and volatile streets of Panama City but from a separate planet devoted exclusively to waging war.”
There’s very little in A Ringside Affair that knowledgeable readers don’t already know. But the familiar is well-told. The big fights are nicely recounted. And there’s a thoughtful digression in the form of a chapter about Pat Putnam, the award-winning writer for Sports Illustrated, who wove a false narrative about years spent as a prisoner of war in Korea when, in fact, he hadn’t served in the military at all.
Keystone Cops at the New York State Athletic Commission
For far too long, the New York State Athletic Commission has been a comedy of errors courting a tragedy.
In the early days of silent film, Americans were entertained by the exploits of a group of incompetent policemen known as “The Keystone Cops.” The Keystone Cops had very little idea what they were doing but expended a great deal of energy running around in an uncoordinated manner, screwing things up.
There are times when the New York State Athletic Commission resembles the Keystone Cops.
In a series of investigative articles in 2016, I cataloged the problems that plague the commission. Many of the concerns expressed in these articles were confirmed in a report issued by the Inspector General of the State of New York. All of them were viewed against the backdrop of the horrific injuries suffered by Magomed Abdusalamov in a November 2, 2013, fight at Madison Square Garden.
Referencing the sloppy procedures and practices ingrained at the NYSAC that led to the Abdusalamov tragedy, I observed, “A motorist can run a red light ten times without adverse consequences. Then, one day, there’s a truck.”
The NYSAC is still running red lights with regard to fighter safety.
Let’s start with a given. There are some dedicated, hardworking, public servants who work for the New York State Athletic Commission. One of them is acting executive director Tony Giardina, who has been thrust into a position he didn’t seek or want. Giardina assume
d his present position in August 2016 out of loyalty to New York governor Andrew Cuomo. While with the NYSAC, he has played by the rules of his profession. Unfortunately, these rules sometimes place a premium on political considerations.
Recent fight cards in New York have revealed a commission that’s continuing to spiral downward. There has been significant improvement in some medical protocols. But overall, the NYSAC has been undermined by poor performance on the part of too many commission personnel. In the most dangerous of these situations, a fighter was allowed to fight without undergoing the mandatory fight-night physical examination.
Moreover, not only is the commission endangering the lives of fighters, some of its own personnel now feel endangered by the erratic behavior of other NYSAC personnel.
Further contributing to the problems, NYSAC director of boxing Eric Bentley will leave the commission on April 21, 2017, for a job in the private sector. Bentley was one of the few commission employees who understood the sport and business of boxing and tried to do his job without giving in to the political forces that have weakened the commission. He was also on the short list of NYSAC employees who spoke openly and honestly with investigators from the Inspector General’s office regarding problems at the commission.
The March 17, 2017, St. Patrick’s Day fight card at Madison Square Garden headlined by Michael Conlan vs. Tim Ibarra exemplified the problems facing the NYSAC.
New York requires that all fighters be examined by a commission doctor on fight night prior to entering the ring. In the past, an NYSAC doctor would come to the dressing room and conduct this examination. Current procedures call for the commission inspector assigned to a fighter to bring the fighter to a designated area for examination. This examination is crucial to protecting the health and safety of the fighter.
On March 17, Jean Seme was assigned to work as an inspector with Jhovany Collado, a fighter with a 4–11–2 (1 KO) record who was in the fourth bout of the evening. Seme failed to take his fighter to the mandatory pre-fight physical examination. Then, when deputy commissioner Anthony Careccia visited the dressing room prior to the fight and asked if the pre-fight physical examination had been conducted, Seme misstated the facts and told him “yes.”
The consequences that could have followed from this breach of protocol were potentially devastating. Suppose Collado had developed a medical problem subsequent to the previous day’s physical examination and was seriously injured during the fight?
Collado lost a unanimous six-round decision. Later that evening, when the oversight was discovered, Seme was terminated as an inspector. With better procedures, the error would have been discovered before Collado fought, not after.
But that’s not the end of the story. Multiple sources say that Seme waited in the Theater at Madison Square Garden where the fights were held and confronted Giardina, Bentley, MMA project coordinator Kim Sumbler, and athletic activities assistant Matt Delaglio as they left the arena and demanded to “see the commissioners.” Giardina told Seme that any complaint he might have should be directed to the Department of State’s Human Resources Department. Seme is said to have responded, “You fucked me good.” Soon after, Sumbler passed Seme on the street and heard him shouting into his cell phone, “These motherfuckers can’t do that. I’ll kill them all.” The matter was referred to the state police, who, sources say, visited Seme to discuss the incident.
The following week, Seme filed a complaint with the Human Resources Department, claiming that Giardina had discriminated against him because he’s black and that his termination was, at least in part, an act of retaliation against him because he’d filed earlier discrimination complaints against two other commission employees. The earlier complaints had been dismissed after an investigation into the allegations led to a finding that they were unfounded.
The NYSAC has also been put on notice that three other commission employees have exhibited what was perceived by one or more co-workers as unusually aggressive, hostile behavior. In one of these situations, John Signorile (an NYSAC commissioner since 2013) filed a formal complaint with Human Resources, stating that he’d been physically threatened by Deputy Commissioner Mario Mercado prior to a December 31, 2016, World Series of Fighting card at Madison Square Garden and that Mercado put his hands on Signorile in an aggressive threatening manner. Human Resources found “no cause” to take action against Mercado. Signorile has filed a second complaint with the New York State Inspector General’s office.
Meanwhile, one night after the March 17 show at Madison Square Garden, the sweet science returned to the Mecca of Boxing. And again, there was regulatory chaos.
The co-featured bouts on March 18 were Gennady Golovkin vs. Danny Jacobs and Roman Gonzalev vs. Srisaket Sor Rungvisai. At the pre-fight rules meeting, John Hornewer (a lawyer for K2, which was promoting the event) asked when a championship fight would become official in the event the fight was stopped because of an accidental foul.
The Unified Rules of Boxing promulgated by the Association of Boxing Commissions and adopted by the State of New York specifically provide that a fight will go to the scorecards in the event of a stoppage “after four rounds have occurred.”
The commission representative mistakenly stated that the fight would not become official “until the bell for round five rings.”
There’s a difference. And given the dangerous cut sustained by Gonzalez early in his fight against Rungvisai, that difference could have been crucial.
Also, the Golovkin–Jacobs weigh-in was conducted at the unusually early hour of nine o’clock on Friday morning (more than thirty-eight hours before the bell for round one) because the New York State Athletic Commission felt it would be difficult to handle an early-afternoon weigh-in on the same day that it was overseeing the 7:00 p.m. Conlan–Ibarra fight card.
Golovkin vs. Jacobs was for the WBC, WBA, and IBF 160-pound titles. At the official weigh-in on Friday morning, Golovkin weighed in at 159.6 pounds and Jacobs at 159.8.
The IBF has a mandatory morning weigh-in on the day of its championship fights that limits middleweights to 170 pounds. After this second weigh-in, a fighter can put on as much additional weight as he wants. When the Golovkin camp agreed to the 9:00 p.m. Friday weigh-in, it did so in the belief that Jacobs would have to weigh-in at 170 pounds or less on Saturday morning. But Jacobs failed to appear at the fight-day weigh-in. The NYSAC could have forced a fight-day weigh-in of Jacobs because it was in the contracts for the fight. But it chose to not do so.
Then a more serious weight problem occurred. One day before the April 8 UFC 210 card at Keybank Arena in Buffalo, Daniel Cormier weighed in.
Cormier was slated to fight Anthony Johnson in a cruiserweight title bout that was the main event on a thirteen-bout card. The UFC cruiserweight limit is 205 pounds. Cormier stripped naked and, with two defenders of public decency holding a towel in front of him to shield his genitals, weighed in at 206.2 pounds.
Then things got crazy.
Literally 143 seconds later, Cormier returned to the scale and weighed in at 205 pounds.
How did Cormier lose 1.2 pounds in 143 seconds?
He didn’t. Video evidence shows that, on the second weigh-in attempt, Cormier was holding onto the towel and pressing downward, an age-old con used by amateur wrestlers in poorly-regulated competitions to make weight.
Thereafter, an article on Deadspin referred to “bureaucratic shenanigans.” MMA Weekly referenced a “weigh-in debacle.” Writing for ESPN.com, Brett Okamoto observed, “Cormier clearly pushed down on the towel, which would presumably offset his weight slightly.” Brian Campbell of CBS Sports.com noted that, by using the towel, Cormier “likely shifted his body weight just enough to affect the scale.”
The following night, Cormier won by submission over Johnson in the second round.
The NYSAC’s handling of a scheduled UFC 210 bout between Cynthia Calvillo and Pearl Gonzalez was also farcical.
The NYSAC Medical Manual states, “Due to the concern over ru
pture, boxers who have breast implants are not eligible to box in New York.”
Gonzalez disclosed in writing that she has breast implants when she applied to the commission for her license weeks in advance of the fight. Then, at the weigh-in, she was told that her fight was off. But after UFC officials voiced their displeasure, the commission reversed itself based on the sophistry that its medical manual refers to boxers, not MMA contestants.
Apparently the people running the NYSAC think that getting punched in the breast by a gloved fist is more dangerous than getting punched, kneed, and kicked in the breast by a trained mixed martial artist.
Meanwhile, Gonzalez was displeased that the NYSAC had announced to the world that she has breast implants. “At the end of the day, it’s out,” she said. “There’s nothing I can do about it. I’m not going to dwell about it. I don’t think I wanted the world to know about my surgery and to be talked about like this.”
The UFC 210 co-main event—Gegard Mousasa vs. Chris Weidman—also posed problems.
The Unified Rules for Mixed Martial Arts—which New York purports to adhere to—provide that it’s illegal to kick or knee a downed opponent in the head. A fighter is considered down when he, or she, has both hands on the canvas. Mousasa delivered a knee to Weidman’s head while Weidman was on the canvas. Referee Dan Miragliotta ruled the knee illegal and gave Weidman five minutes to recover. Then Miragliotta consulted with NYSAC officials at ringside, who viewed a video replay and told him that the knee was legal because Weidman was not “down.” At that point, instead of the fight continuing, Mousasa was declared the winner. However, the use of video review as a tool in making in-fight decisions is not allowable under New York law.
Writing for Bleacher Report, Scott Harris declared, “The co-main event of UFC 210 was marred by controversy and ineptitude on the part of the New York State Athletic Commission officials in attendance. No one seemed to know what was going on. No one seemed to fully understand the rule about strikes to downed opponents or how it was supposed to be applied. It was a messy situation that harmed everyone involved, and it was an unfortunate end to a bout that was shaping up to be a great contest.”
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