Another Tainted Star in the IBHOF

 

He stood five feet, ten inches tall, which was enormous for a featherweight. Compare him to, say, Sandy Saddler, who was considered freakish at five feet eight, and you understand the size of Diego Corrales. Even as a lightweight, he was taller than most. This, possibly, was why opponents came at him so hard. He once said to me, “I can box a lot of different ways, but I always end up in a brawl.” He was a physical anomaly. At full height in the center of the ring, he looked like a King Cobra rising to strike.

Yet he was hardly snakelike. The fact is that Corrales, who will be inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame next June, was more like a junkyard dog, willing to fight with his ears and tail torn off. Alas, it wasn’t until the later days of his career that we truly appreciated Corrales’ fighting spirit. He’d always been a fighter we wanted to see, but near the end, he was a fighter we had to see.

He was always smiling. Smiling at how he had lived his boyhood dream to become a professional fighter; smiling at how he became a titleholder at 23; and absolutely beaming after any of the 40 wins on his record. He reacted to each of his victories like a kid who had been surprised by an unexpected birthday gift.

That’s why it was always hard to reconcile this likable, oversized boy with the fact that he had a history of violence against women and once served 14 months in a state prison for felony spouse abuse. What went on in his mind? We’ll never know.

He was 29 when it all ended. He’d lost three fights in a row, which is hard to come back from. He was on his third marriage, and it, too, was falling apart. He had problems with the IRS and was running out of money. Friends said he was optimistic about his career and his troubled marriage, but Corrales seemed like a man with an uncertain future.  Just weeks after his most recent loss, he was riding his Suzuki motorcycle northbound on Fort Apache Road in the Las Vegas Valley. He was drunk. Along with hitting women, he had a history of drunk driving arrests. On this night he rammed into the back of a car. The impact left the Suzuki looking like a crushed Coke can, and sent Corrales hurtling 100 feet. When Corrales landed, he was struck by another car. He died hard.

He had become a legend of sorts by then, all because of one fight – and it is largely because of that one fight that he has been selected for enshrinement in Canastota – a stunning, 10th round come-from-behind knockout of Jose Luis Castillo in 2005. It was contested in a half-empty Mandalay Bay Center for alphabet belts that no one remembers, but a generation of boxing fans considered it the best fight in history. Who could argue? Corrales and Castillo had battered each other. Their faces and torsos were beaten into colors we’d never seen on human flesh. The bruises weren’t black and blue; they were grey, or muddy brown. It was as if the contusions were in pain, screaming for mercy.

Castillo was about to win, having sent Corrales to the canvas twice in the 10^th, but somehow Corrales landed a right on Castillo’s cast-iron jaw. Jose Luis sagged into the ropes unable to defend himself. Corrales threw a few more punches until referee Tony Weeks stepped in. It was instantly an all-time classic.

“We were going to box,” Corrales said later, “but I kind of shredded that game plan once the fight started. I was just in the mood to fight.”

That gritty side had existed in Corrales all along. There was a bout with Joel Casamayor where Corrales was bleeding so badly from a cut in his mouth that the ringside doctor called for the fight to be stopped. Corrales argued, wanting to continue even as gore spurted from his lips.

The same was true of his loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr. Corrales had been dropped five times and was so far behind on points that his step-father/trainer stopped the fight. Again, Corrales was outraged. There were still two rounds left. When a man can punch like Corrales, he always believes his fortunes can change.

His time at the top was brief. He met Castillo for a rematch five months later and was stopped in four. Two more losses followed. The first war with Castillo made Corrales the toast of boxing, but it also ruined him. He was never the same.

It is possible that Corrales could’ve achieved more in boxing. He always had that urge to show the world what he could do. After his second bout with Casamayor, in which he had boxed with finesse and won by split decision, Corrales turned to the cameras and smiled. He said, “See? I told you I could fight like that.” As much as he loved a good rumble, he wanted us to know he was more than a brawler.

Corrales wasn’t a great fighter, but he was a good one. He was gutsy and he could punch. There was his bout with Acelino Freitas, a strange one that saw Freitas simply stop fighting in the middle of a round and walk to his corner. It was a mystery as to why Freitas surrendered, though his manager later told me the reason. “He said Corrales hit him so hard that he was seeing triple; there were three Corraleses in front of him and he didn’t know what to do.” Such was Corrales’ power.

There were stories of Corrales’ gentler side. He was a gourmet cook who loved TV soap operas and designer clothing. When reporters made fun of him early in his career for having too many piercings, he felt embarrassed and removed them all. He seemed eager to please. He could charm you. I recall his mild voice, excitable but friendly, like a teen. Our few conversations had been nice. He was personable, happy to talk about his career and upcoming fights. But as LA writer Bill Dwyer said of Corrales many years ago, he was “a con artist with a twinkle in his eye.”

Corrales was pleasant to me, but was I just another person taken in by the Corrales con?

“Face to face, he was a wonderful kid,” said publicist Bill Caplan at the time of Corrales’ death.

But when no one was looking, Corrales became something less than wonderful.

Corrales put his second wife in the hospital with a broken collarbone, bruised ribs, and other injuries. She was pregnant at the time. On another occasion she was seen with Corrales’ handprints on her neck. Choke marks. The powerful hands that had made him a champion were used to strangle a woman who was nearly a foot shorter than him, and weighed less than 100 pounds. You don’t put your hands on a woman’s throat unless you mean to kill her. How close did he come to snuffing her out? He’d beaten up his first wife, too, so you can’t say it was just bad chemistry between Corrales and wife number two. The man was a serial abuser.

Corrales hadn’t been a shoe-in for the IBHOF. It took 16 years for him to be inducted. The IBHOF didn’t return calls for this story, but one can imagine the response would be typical of his defenders, something about his personal life not having an effect on his being selected. But one wonders if 16 years were needed because it took that much time for people to forget the worst things about Corrales, and to just remember the fights.

Corrales has always had supporters. Contemporaries who knew him from California gyms will smile and say, “My man, Chico!” Loved ones will cry at his memory. Journalists will try to put a romantic spin on him, saying that he lived recklessly and died recklessly, that he was a thrill seeker. They’ve always done that for Corrales, idealizing him as a “Raging Bull” type of character, a man of extreme emotions, a man with a dark side. They will say his misdeeds are unfortunate because they taint his legacy. I think they’re unfortunate because a couple of women are probably still having nightmares about him.

There’s a history of fighters being given a pass for abusing women. There seems to be an unspoken deal, in that the fighter entertains us, so we forgive his wrongdoings. In that way, boxing fans aren’t much different than the folks in Ozone Park who revered John Gotti, a Mob killer, because on Independence Day he supplied them with fireworks and sausages.

Corrales will be honored this spring. Hardcore fans who make the yearly trek to upstate New York for the inductions will cheer his name. Why not? His fight with Castillo made us all love boxing again, and that may be reason enough to place him among the great ones. And he’s certainly not the only wife beater in the hall. He’s just the latest.

Inducting Corrales gives people a chance to recall his best moments in the ring, but it will also give us a chance to think about the way we continue to glorify these men who hurt women. To say Corrales served his time is far too simplistic, as is the tendency to glamorize him as a man tortured by demons. The tough guy who thrives in a violent profession but beats his wife is an archetype that has been around too long, and one we no longer need.

 

- Don Stradley

Nick Charles, Hall of Famer

 

He was ill. Everybody knew it. But some kind people at HBO invited Nick Charles of Showtime onto one of their Boxing After Dark broadcasts and let him commandeer a mic. It was for an undercard bout, not the main event,  but he handled it with the grace and professionalism that had been his trademark. In no more than 12 or 15 minutes, he put on a clinic of how to lead a boxing broadcast. 

Did I imagine it, or did I hear a kind of joy in Nick Charles' voice that night in 2011? He'd let it be known that he wanted to call one more fight before his time on Earth ended. Some people did the right thing and let him work. As I listened to him, I felt I was hearing a man doing what he loved one last time, and he was relishing every second of it.

In the annals of people on their last legs putting in a command performance, I think of Nick Charles' last call  and I rate it up there with some of the all time greats: John Wayne suffering through The Shootist; Warren Zevon pulling himself together to record one last album; David Bowie doing the same. Yes, I put a boxing commentator in the same breath as actors and singers because for Nick Charles, broadcasting was his art.  Some were more famous, but few were better.

A dozen years later it is still incredibly moving to think about that final call. It wasn't just the smoothness of his delivery - he'd turn it over to analyst Max Kellerman like Bob Cousy doing one of those behind the back passes - but we could almost sense him taking in the fight atmosphere, absorbing it, breathing it all in, trying to take it with him, wherever he was going. He had lived a rich life full of children and grandchildren and awards. Yet boxing had a special place for him. Nick Charles really loved boxing. He loved the fighters, and he loved the milieu. Maybe that's what I was hearing.

My first encounter with Nick came after I'd written a story about women's boxing and all of its problems. He contacted me to say he agreed that the women were struggling. At that time, a lot of the women in the business didn't know  the fundamentals. Many of those early women's bouts looked like two ladies flailing away in a parking lot. It wasn't fun to watch. He thought women's boxing was going to fail, simply because there weren't enough women at the top level to sell it. The women eventually improved, but it took a long time.

In that conversation, I could sense how much he loved boxing, how he admired the best practitioners, and how it actually hurt him to think of these fledgling women being thrown into the ring just for the sake of novelty. I thought at the time, this guy really loves boxing. He cared about it. I've met other broadcasters, and not all of them cared as much as Nick Charles did.

To look at him, you'd think he was just a garden variety TV personality. He would've fit in on any morning show, or  news program, any place you could stick him before a camera. In fact, he was CNN's anchorman on their 1980s show, Sports Tonight. He was once voted "America's Sexiest Sportscaster" by the U.S. Television Fan Association, a distinction he accepted with grace and humor. 

True, he had a great look and was always immaculate. He was a bit like that other "Nick Charles," the famous fictional detective of The Thin Man movie series played by William Powell. I guess if you're named Nick Charles, there is a chance you'll be a suave and sophisticated chap. And while I can't vouch for William Powell, I can say with confidence that Nick Charles looked that way all the time. I saw him a few times during off hours, with no cameras around, and he was still immaculate. He was one of those guys who could walk through a rainstorm and not get wet.

But the handsome clotheshorse was drawn to boxing. It was his juice. Even when he was ill, he used boxing jargon to talk about it. "I'm in the late rounds," he wrote to me in an e-mail. "And I'm behind on points. But I plan to score a come from behind knockout."

Once, at an HBO event in Madison Square Garden, I noticed him and his Showtime broadcasting partner, Steve Farhood. They were sitting together a few seats away from me. Why were they there? They weren't working. Farhood may have been writing a story for a magazine. But Nick? He was just there to enjoy the action. He could've taken the night off and watched from home. But there he was, looking as clean and pressed as if he were  ready to go on camera. And with each fight on a rather bland undercard, his eyes were riveted on the ring. He wasn't there to schmooze with people or be seen with other celebrities. He was just a fan watching the fights.

Showtime's Saturday afternoon show, ShoBox: The New Generation, was a pet project of his. He purportedly helped create it, and his presence gave the show some class. He thought it was important to introduce new fighters, and he was right. He'd had a long career, and as it was winding down, he was telling us about the young boxers who were hoping to make an impression. 

Nick Charles will be inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame next June. If inductees were elected based on how much they cared about the business, he would've been in a long time ago. I wish he was still around because I would love to hear his acceptance speech. I know it would be elegant and professional. And I know he'd talk about his love of boxing, and how proud he was of ShoBox.

Posthumous inductions are always bittersweet.  It's nice that Nick Charles will be honored, but sad that he won't be there. Of course, it gives us one more chance to remember him, which is also nice. I'll remember his style. I'll remember his kindness. And I'll always remember his gallant last stand on HBO, the way he sounded as he made what he must've known was his final call. 

And I'll think of that mysterious quality in his voice that night, and what I imagine he was telling us. 

Do what you love. Love it a lot. Love it like you'll never see it again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last Days of the Wolf

 

Wolf Larsen was not yet 30-years-old when he made the long walk down Woodhull Street in Brooklyn on his way to the Bethesda Mission. With his busted up features and cauliflower ears - unfortunate reminders of his career as a prizefighter - made worse by the bloating effects of liquor, Larsen didn't look like a young man. Most thought he was well into his 40s. Maybe a few people recognized him. Maybe they'd seen him brawling with cops, or singing in the street in a loud, drunken voice. Maybe he just looked like another local mug going to the mission for help. The kind people there took him in. They let him rest on a cot.

He would be dead inside of 18 months, worn down by a decade of heavy drinking and reckless living. But as he did in many of his fights, he managed a rally. There was almost always a moment in Larsen's fights, usually when he was well behind, when he'd start throwing haymakers, gambling on his heavy right hand. Those desperate moments were exciting, but ultimately, he'd just tire himself out and barely make it to the final gong. That is, if he didn't get knocked cold. The way he rallied at the mission was by making himself useful as a cook, handyman, and night watchman, fixing things and sweeping up and being respectful. But as usually happened when Larsen tried one of his late round bursts, it wasn't enough. Still, the people at the mission spoke well of him when he died. They said he was a good guy. He’d been helpful in his final months. 

It was as if Wolf Larsen knew his days were numbered and he wanted to change the way people saw him. 

He was born Magnes Andreas Larsen Ros on May 14, 1901 in Ostre Moland, Norway. According to legend, or the imaginings of a slick press agent, he was the grandson of the sea captain Wolf Larsen, a character fictionalized by Jack London for his novel  The Sea Wolf. Like most of the men in his family, he became a seaman at a young age. For amusement he would often box his fellow seafarers. At age 18 he found himself face to face with none other than Battling Siki, the great Senegalese fighter who would soon be the light heavyweight champion. 

Like any folk tale, the Siki story was told in many ways. Sometimes it happened on a ship, or at a circus. The most fantastic was that Siki was scheduled to fight but his opponent didn't show, and Larsen came out of the crowd to fill in. However it was told, it always ended with Larsen and Siki in an impromptu 10-rounder, with Larsen getting the best of it.

When Siki went on to win the light heavyweight title from Georges Carpentier of France, it was Larsen himself who told a version of the tale to The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, explaining that he and Siki had been sparring partners at the Amsterdam Club gymnasium in Holland. 

"He was striving to pick up the fine points of the game," Larsen said, "and was anxious to have me box with him. He knew little about boxing, but possessed some hitting ability. I was very much his master at that time, and still think I am, granting that he has improved much since then."

But even this version of the story is suspect. From what we know of Larsen  - a New York writer once described his style being as "wide open as a Havana cafe" -  we can't imagine him at 18 being remotely familiar with the "fine points of the game." Also, by 1919, Siki had been a professional for years, and had earned medals for bravery during the war.  It's doubtful he would be schooled by Larsen, a novice. 

Regardless, after the alleged encounter with Siki, Larsen left Holland for Australia, did a bit of boxing down there, and then shipped off for the states. Once in New York, some buddies coaxed him into entering an amateur tournament. Larsen was a thrill seeker, and brawling for an audience seemed more exciting than being an anonymous figure on a schooner. At the time, Jack Dempsey was the biggest thing in the country, and boxing was enjoying unprecedented coverage. It's no wonder Larsen wanted in.

By dominating the local amateurs in New York, and winning the AAU title at 175 pounds, Larsen became a hero to the Norwegian Turn Society, a collection of immigrants that had started their own athletic organization. Though boxing wasn't as popular among Norwegians as gymnastics and wrestling, Larsen won his countrymen over with his free-swinging style.

Larsen entered the professional ranks on the winds of blowhard manager Tom O'Rourke. We can probably thank O'Rourke for the hype that accompanied Larsen during the early months of his career. This included everything from Harry Greb wanting to fight him, to Dempsey wanting to hire him as a sparring partner. This was probably all nonsense, but it was good stuff. It could almost distract you from the fact that Larsen lost his first two professional bouts.

The downhill skid was on.

With only five fights on his resume, Larsen found himself matched against Gene Tunney.  O'Rourke should've been strung up by his ears for putting a rookie in with a sharpshooter like Tunney, who at the time was undefeated in 42 professional bouts. On October 25, 1921, at New York's Pioneer Sporting Club, Tunney stopped Larsen in seven rounds. The New York Tribune called it "a slaughter, pure and simple," and reported that Larsen  "absorbed enough punishment to put the average boxer in the hospital for several months." Other reports describe Larsen as "clearly outclassed," and "cut to ribbons." Tunney would recall Larsen a few years later as a "powerful and rushing slugger," but "an easy one, a 'wolf' in name only."

Larsen's next handful of opponents were unknowns - soldiers returning from the war, a local fireman who had taken up boxing to cash in on the Dempsey craze, young Irish and Jewish men trying to make a buck with their fists - perhaps fed to him to rebuild his confidence; he knocked most of them kicking. 

There was more talk, obviously planted by O'Rourke, that Larsen was being groomed to meet Dempsey. In reality, Larsen had all he could handle from such characters as Tarzan Larkin, the "Minnesota Cave Man," who decked Larsen six times before finding himself on the wrong end of Larsen's right hand. 

More often than not, Larsen simply got his head beat in. He became known as an entertaining opponent, a lovable loser. His October 1922 loss to California's Billy Shade earned raves from The New York World, particularly in the late rounds when, "to the astonishment of the spectators," Larsen "suddenly braced and stuck his stout jaw out inviting Shade to hit (him) at will." 

By 1923, New Yorkers had seen enough of Larsen. Under the guidance of new manager Jim Buckley, Larsen began a two-year stint in the Boston area with a few stops in Maine and Canada. He lost most of those fights, too. He was often matched against bigger men, on a schedule that saw him fighting (and losing) sometimes three times per month. In one of his Boston bouts, Larsen grew angry when he thought the referee had tried to trip him; he let his frustration out by knocking the ref down with a single crack on the chin. Not waiting to hear that he'd been disqualified, Larsen fled the ring and went home. 

Still, Larsen kept fighting. Boston newspapers called him the "Swinging Swede.” After a TKO loss to Hambone Kelly at Mechanics Hall in Boston, Larsen collapsed and had to be taken to a local hospital. It turned out he was fighting too soon after an appendix operation and shouldn't have been in the ring, anyway. 

Larsen never got near Dempsey, but he did fight and lose to some pretty good men, including Kid Norfolk, Ad Stone, and Lou Bogash. A valiant losing effort against heavyweight prospect Jim Maloney earned him praise from The Portsmouth Herald's Norman Brown. Larsen, Brown wrote, "gave Maloney one of his toughest battles," and nearly "knocked him cuckoo."  

Boston dried up, and then it was back to New York where the losses continued. By the summer of 1926, after a 'no contest' in Brooklyn with a character named Johnny Urban, Larsen disappeared from the scene. According to one columnist, an altercation with the police had left him with such injuries that he had to stop boxing for a while.

Why didn't Larsen live up to the promise he'd shown as an amateur? True, he didn't exactly look after himself. He preferred drinking to training, and his management treated him like a piece of meat. But the real reason may go back to the Tunney fight. When Larsen saw how a seasoned professional handled him with ease, he may have realized that he was simply an awkward second rater. So, in the words of one journalist, he decided to  "live a life of enjoyment." By the time Larsen heard the news that his old sparring partner Siki had died in the gutter, he was well aware that being a top fighter didn't guarantee a good life.

When he couldn't get fights, Larsen worked as a seaman on the Great Lakes, or bounced around Red Hook. Though he tried to present himself as a sort of roguish playboy, he was just a local lunatic, a rock-bottom alcoholic known for crazy street brawls that sound like the stuff of silent movies. He once knocked a man through a wooden wall at the Columbia Street subway station. "He won plenty of decisions," Buckley said. "But more of them were against cops than prizefighters."

Larsen became a kind of walking urban legend. Among the slew of farfetched tales he inspired was one that involved his attempt to steal a pony from a neighborhood fish peddler. As legend has it, Larsen simply picked the animal up and started walking in the direction of the nearest pawnshop. When the police asked him where he was going with the pony, Larsen said, "Pony? I thought it was a calf."

But not all the stories were fun. On one of his aimless strolls along the waterfront, Larsen saw a couple of men breaking into a speakeasy. Thinking this might be a nice way to score some liquor, he tried to assist the robbers. They responded by cutting Larsen's face and leaving him for dead. He survived, though. In January 1929 he was stabbed again in a restaurant brawl in Red Hook. 

Larsen's final ring appearance took place in April 1929 against journeyman Joe Lill at the New Broadway AC in Philadelphia. John Webster of The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that Larsen, "gamely stood up under a hail of leather until the referee halted the bout in the third." Fittingly, Larsen went out with an "L." His record was approximately 28-40-2, but anyone who says they know Larsen's exact record is a liar.

By 1930, Larsen was homeless, sleeping in a stable, and seen regularly in New York breadlines and Salvation Army kitchens. 

"Broadway is a funny place," Larsen said. "Everybody'll give you a drink, and nobody'll  give you anything to eat."

Ironically, a successful film version of Jack London's The Sea Wolf began playing in New York around that same time. There was a "Wolf Larsen" on the big screen, played by Milton Sills. There would also be, in the ensuing years, a number of "Wolf Larsens" in football, baseball, and wrestling. But the Wolf Larsen of boxing was now on the streets of New York, drinking as if he had a personal vendetta against the Volstead Act.

At the Bethesda Mission, Larsen behaved himself. He never mentioned having a home or a family; it was as if he'd been born simply to drink and fight. For several months, he was a model citizen. Then, during the first week of July, 1931, he wandered out into the evening and returned drunker than he'd been in a long time. He died a few days later at King's County Hospital of pneumonia.

But, if one may use this soggy old cliche, he was a fighter to the end, literally, as a mission volunteer named John Olsen recounted. Upon hearing Larsen had died, Olsen told the press, "I saw a fellow he hit the night before he went to the hospital, and the fellow was still bent over, a cripple."

 Why write about Wolf Larsen? Well, fighters like him provide the grease and fuel on which the boxing machine runs. Sometimes they're named Wolf Larsen. Sometimes they're named Augustus Burton, or Garing Lane. Without them, how would the young, well-connected contenders fatten their records? Dismiss Larsen as cannon fodder if you like, and maybe you wouldn't want to be around him when he was drunk, but he deserves a tip of the cap. Besides, he spent the last months of his life cooking for other lost souls at the Bethesda Mission. That deserves a tip of the cap, too.

- Don Stradley

Adieu, Boo Boo

 

 

 

He looked tired and confused. He looked the way fighters do when suddenly they have no answers. 

"Stop it," he said. 

The television microphones picked up his plea to surrender.

He looked old, too, as any 35 year-old fighter does when he's been punched hard for a few rounds. His corner men hovered around like doting aunts over a sick child.

The self-assurance that was his trademark had been smacked out of him. Had there been a reason for him to be so cocksure in the first place? Sure, he had speed and skill and all the tools. For a short time it had seemed like Demetrius "Boo Boo" Andrade had the world at his feet. Now, the viewers at home were watching his Waterloo: "Stop it."

It seemed a lifetime ago when he was fighting in New England casinos. Back then he was a heralded amateur making careful inroads into the professional ranks. His management was feeding him journeymen and unknowns and he was chopping them up. 

They always fell before Boo Boo in those days. He was quick, like a martial arts master in the movies, the hands a blur. He used to beat those early opponents so badly that they needed help out of the ring, like they were being pulled from the wreckage of a car crash. That's what happened when you fought Boo Boo Andrade of Rhode Island.

When I met him in those days, a few things struck me. He was being managed not by experienced boxing people, but by a mom and pop outfit that seemed like managers of a local ice cream store. They were friendly, but protective of him. They were wary of anyone who might have deep roots in Las Vegas or the dark world of boxing. They'd be happy if they could keep him fighting in small New England venues forever.

The other thing that struck me  was that no matter how humble and well-meaning the people around him were, they were convinced that Boo Boo would be greater than Sugar Ray Leonard and Muhammad Ali combined. He couldn't fail. It was a strange, mixed message - the kid had to be protected, but he was the next icon. They never explained how he might attain this greatness if he never left the Dunkin' Donuts Center in Providence.

He won some title belts - usually vacated ones for the WBO - but there always seemed to be something amiss. He was inactive for large chunks of time, always on the verge of signing for a big fight, then disappearing again. He fought infrequently, usually in some faraway boxing outpost: Boston, Miami, Manchester, New Hampshire. Keeping him out of Las Vegas was one thing, but his career became ridiculous. When, we wondered, would they ever take the training wheels off?

He never developed a following. He had fans in Rhode Island, but otherwise he was a footnote on the fringes of the sport, a guy with a funny name and a tinpot title belt. But you always had a sense that those people who had looked out for Boo Boo were still telling him he was greatness personified, and that his career was moving along perfectly. "We don't want people to take advantage of him," they'd said. 

I remember the way he carried himself at the beginning. He was a cocky, smirking kid. There was a bout at a Connecticut casino when he sauntered in late for a meeting with the commission. They fined him for being late; he shrugged and smirked. He had a little posse of gym rats and buddies around him. They smirked, too. Here was boxing's next big star, and he was doing a cheap imitation of the clowns he'd seen in gangsta rap videos. His managers would make you jump through hoops to ask a few questions. Once you were alone with him he'd just shrug and smirk and give you nothing.

By 2018 he was busted for illegal possession of a handgun. He said he needed it for his "wealth and fame." Boo Boo had just beaten a Namibian fellow named Walter Kautondokwa for another of those vacant WBO straps. It meant very little, but maybe in Boo Boo's mind he was Mike Tyson.

Now and then there would be a shakeup at the Andrade camp. People were fired and hired, which isn't unusual in boxing. People in his circle said Boo Boo was still the same likable kid, but "the wrong people got in his ear." 

Victor Conte came onboard recently. He's the training guru who served four months in prison for money laundering and selling illegal drugs to athletes.  Conte has supposedly turned his life around, but he has that thing in his personality that we also see in  defense attorneys and used car salesmen. Nothing he says sounds true. 

Conte brought Boo Boo into his California science lab before his latest fight. He measured and probed him like a lab rat. Conte's big on oxygen now. He fits his fighters with special masks and puts them in tents so they can breathe like superman. He told ESPN that Boo Boo was like the son he'd never had. "I'm looking out for him," Conte said. This sounded familiar. People are always looking out for Boo Boo.

In a way, Conte and Boo Boo were a good match. You looked at each guy and thought, "Is he still around?" Conte talked about this fight as a sort of big comeback for both himself and Boo Boo. What a story that would've been, the forgotten fighter and the disgraced steroid salesman, bringing it all back home. 

It was a Las Vegas bout, a pay-per-view main event pitting Boo Boo against David Benavidez, the super middleweight titleholder known as "The Mexican Monster." It was the biggest fight of Boo Boo’s career, his first time in such a lavish program. His first, honest to goodness Las Vegas spectacle. He was also trying out a new weight class. 

He looked good for the first few rounds. He was moving in and out, using all of the old southpaw tricks. He looked fast.

The footwork was fine. His timing was perfect. He wasn't bothered by Benavidez' size or reputation.  When they tussled along the ropes, Boo Boo held his own. The question was whether he could maintain this for 12 rounds. 

It all fell apart at the end of the fourth when Benavidez smashed him to the canvas. A caveman with a war club couldn't have done any better. Boo Boo was hurt.

He got up and survived into the next round, but the tide of the bout had turned. Every time Benavidez hit him, Boo Boo would wobble and wince. The Monster was connecting now.

The sixth was bad for Boo Boo. Benavidez stalked him, rattled him with punches to the head and body. Boo Boo took the shots, but he looked like a man trying to survive an avalanche. He didn't come out for the seventh. Later, with heartbreak in his voice, he said something about not being used to the weight class. He said he'd fight again.

Of course he will. He's still youngish. But it'll be different this time. He'll be repackaged for less money. He'll be back in the New England casinos, only the crowds will be smaller. His fights will be part of weekend package deals. There will be a prime rib dinner, an Eagles cover band in the theater, and Boo Boo fighting some guy you never heard of. That'll get him through a few years, and then he'll complain that he can't get the big fights. We can hear him already. It will always be someone else's fault.

They tore him apart on social media. There's little patience for fallen fighters nowadays. And where Boo Boo was concerned, there was never going to much sympathy after his first loss.

But how you felt about Boo Boo may reflect where you are in life. There was something poignant about the scene in his corner. You may have recalled the early days, when Boo Boo acted like he was destined for greatness. Blink an eye, and he's asking his team to stop the fight. That's how it goes. One minute you're young and full of yourself. A moment later you're done. That's life.

That's life whether or not you had good management. 

That's life whether you fought in Lincoln, R.I., or in Las Vegas. 

That's life for Boo Boo Andrade. 

That's life for you and me.

 

 

Crawford - old school magic

In the second round a sneaky punch from Terrence Crawford put Errol Spence Jr.  on the canvas. It was the first time Spence had ever been down as a professional fighter, and the expression on his face was like that of a child  caught doing something naughty, with all of the inherent guilt, shame, and surprise that you'd expect from a kid who had never been caught before. 

He managed to get up, sheepishly, but there was a sense that Crawford had just shown him who was boss. It was a simple message, sent directly on the wings of a lightning right uppercut as Spence was leaning in. For the next several rounds the same scene continued to play out, with Crawford catching Spence with similar sneaky shots. It was as if no matter what Spence tried, Crawford had a quick answer for him. 

Spence was knocked down twice more in the seventh. By then his face was swollen from Crawford's consistently well-placed counters. The fight was finally stopped at 2:32 of the ninth, with Spence still on his feet but taking too much punishment. The so-called "Fight of the Year," "Fight of the Century," "Fight of the Epoch," was over, and it had been none of the above. Rather, it had been a dismantling. 

There was now hope that Terrence Crawford, a quiet practitioner of this ancient combat sport, would get the recognition that has eluded him. Sure, there were a lot of welterweight title belts  at stake last night in Las Vegas, but the value of boxing belts is dubious these days, even if you have filled a closet with them. For the man  known simply as "Bud," the fight was about being acknowledged as the best of his era. 

Though he showed he could take a loss like a gentleman, Spence proved little else in what was his first defeat in 29  bouts. 

Spence looked befuddled throughout. He was hardly the electrifying battler we've watched for several years. He wast more like a clumsy, outclassed journeyman being led to his doom by a relaxed and confident ring general.

The event was heralded as the first "super fight" of its type in decades, with two undefeated titleholders clashing for dominance. Yet there were some major differences in comparison to big bouts of the past. For one, we weren't bludgeoned daily with announcements of the fighters' paychecks. In the old days, the massive paydays of major championship fights were part of the promotion, so us average Joes at home could speculate about how many punches we'd take for a few million bucks. This time, the paydays were only hinted at, as if to speak of such things was gauche. 

And despite the endless talk about the "importance" of the fight, there was a lack of pageantry going into the contest. Las Vegas had its usual big fight ambience but not more so - a  strangely subdued Mike Tyson oversaw a coin toss to decide which fighter would enter the ring first, and Eminem, a somewhat faded rap artist, accompanied Spence for his ring walk - but outside of Dallas and Omaha, the respective hometowns of Spence and Crawford, the fight was virtually a secret event. Sports Illustrated all but ignored it, placing YouTube celebrity Jake Paul on the cover during fight week. SI lacks the clout it once had,  but putting Paul on the cover shows us where boxing stands at this time in history. 

In a way, it was a fight fan's fight dressed up as mainstream event, as if some Hollywood studio had picked an interesting independent movie and decided to market it like a summer blockbuster. It is not an insult to say Crawford and Spence aren't magnetic personalities. Spence tries a little bit. Crawford doesn't bother. Neither man could liven up a party. Yet for hardcore fans, this was the fight they'd waited years to see. They didn't get the great contest they may have expected, but they witnessed a great performance from Crawford.

It has already been compared by some to the best nights of the two Sugar Rays, Leonard and Robinson, but hyperbole of that type is not needed. Crawford proved himself to be a master of his profession, a brilliant strategist with a magical right hand. Comparing him to Ray Robinson would probably embarrass the man.

"I showed poise, I showed smarts, I got the job done," Crawford told ESPN after his victory. "They've got to give me my credit now. '"  

If anyone thinks Crawford created some kind of blueprint to defeat Spence, they'd be mistaken. To understand that Crawford beat Spence with perfect timing, finely parceled aggression, and with a right uppercut that seemed guided by the gods is one thing, but to try to execute that strategy yourself is quite another. Any opponent thinking Spence is now an easy target would be wrong, and they'd probably be whipped if they tried to emulate what Crawford did on July 29 at the T-Mobile Arena.      . 

In a period that broadcasters obnoxiously refer to as "the four belt era," Crawford has won belts from all four sanctioning bodies in two separate weight classes, an impressive feat that almost makes one forget how stupid it is that the boxing business has become so fractured.

Crawford's greatness has nothing to do with the gimcrack belts draped across his body, but everything to do with his style. Few fighters have ever  terrorized opponents with such basic  execution of the fundamentals. Alexis Arguello used to do it. And Marvelous Marvin Hagler. And yes, Robinson. Crawford is a throwback. He's like a fighter from the distant past, coming back to show a new generation how to do this thing. He's 40-0, with 32 knockouts. He's won his last  11 in a row by KO. He will be 36 his next birthday. We probably saw him at his fighting peak last night.

Spence has already talked about a rematch, but he's a brash young guy.  Crawford would beat him again. Besides, the contest didn't really elevate the sport to any degree. To the general public, it was just another fight. A run-of-the-mill UFC show that took place in Utah on the same night trended longer and higher on social media. If Crawford is the king, he reigns over an empire that has seen better days. Yet  his victory will be remembered by those who saw it. It was something for the connoisseur. Long live King Bud.

- Don Stradley