A Knockout Night at Broadway Boxing
Photo courtesy of Krystyna Rodriguez for The Purple Corner
by Sarah Deming
New York is in a GGG state of mind. Hours after the final presser for Gennady Golovkin’s Saturday night fight at Madison Square Garden, those still in a boxing mood gathered at BB Kings for a Dibella card with the highest kayo percentage in recent memory.
GGG himself rolled in for the main event. If the week’s shilling had tired him – signing caps for Kazakhs on Brighton Beach, skipping rope at Mendez, taking a turn in Broadway’s Rocky – he did not show it. He looked young and fresh in his tracksuit, the best student in the class, his arm draped across the shoulder of trainer Abel Sanchez and his face fixed in the earnest smile that is almost as famous as his ferocity.
The undefeated heavyweight in the ring, “Prince” Charles Martin, 18-0-1 (16 KOs) had trained alongside GGG at Big Bear and was defending his NABO belt against Kerston Manswell of Tobago, 24-9 (18 KOs). A tall southpaw trained by the great Henry Tillman, Martin fought off the back foot with reticence and looked so green I was surprised to hear his people were eying the winner of Jennings-Perez on the GGG undercard.
[[MORE]]Manswell was a tubby, cautious journeyman whose tactic of laying for the overhand right counter then swooping in for a bear hug was solid strategic thinking. It would have worked if he had heavier hands; Martin ate an inauspicious number of right hands while waiting for Manswell to gas out. A hard left uppercut to Manswell’s soft midsection set up the first of three knockdowns in the third round, prompting the stoppage at 2:33.
GGG left after this fight, as did a lot of press. Why was an eight-round junior lightweight bout scheduled after a ten-round heavyweight defense? Because it marked the Dibella debut of Patrick Hyland of Dublin. Being Irish has to be the most lucrative ethnicity in boxing, pound for pound. Imagine the revenue HBO could generate by sending GGG to Dublin long enough to get a brogue.
Southpaw Noel Echevarria of Guayama, Puerto Rico had accumulated some moves with his 11-3 record, but he backpedalled and was in poor shape to deal with Hyland’s high work rate and rough stuff on the inside. The referee stepped in at 0:54 of the fourth after Echevarria took about a dozen unanswered shots.
“Yo, fuck him up, Patrick,” yelled one of the more loathsome fans. “For Dublin!”
In a thematically identical undercard bout, cruiserweight Joe “The Irish Bomber” Smith, 15-1-0, (above) clubbed away at Tyrell “Los Angeles” Hendrix, 11-4-2 until the ref put an end to our suffering at 1:45 of the third. The best part of this fight was Hendrix’s oddly feminine trunks, visible in the photo above.
Middleweight Sergiy Derevyenchenko made a six-round pro debut against Cromwell Gordon of Los Angeles, who could not answer the bell for the third round and fell to 11-5-2. Derevyenchenko has been fighting in the World Series of Boxing, AIBA’s semi-pro league, since representing Ukraine in the Beijing Games. He joins a strong team of young pros training under Gary Starks of Staten Island, including fellow Olympians Marcus Brown and Ievgen Khytrov.
Of the young New York prospects, our favorite might be middleweight Patrick Day, 8-0-1 (5 KOs). Brad Jackson, 15-10-1, dropped early in the first from Day’s classic 1,2. Later that round, Day got caught in the middle of an exchange and touched a glove to the canvas
This was one of those episodes of spontaneous learning that are so fun to witness in prospects. You could almost feel Day master his anger and go back to the game plan, closing the round with several brutal hooks, again off the 1,2. Trainer Joe Higgings must have said something good in the corner, because Day ran right to Jackson off the opening bell of the second, putting him down at 0:15 with another right hand.
Super middleweight Avtandil Khurtsidze of Georgia, 27-2-2 (17 KO’s) landed hooks to every available part of Allen Conyers’ head, stopping him after one minute and twenty-three seconds. He fell to 12-10. We were rooting for Conyers because Ivan Gonzalez held his spit bucket.
In the sole decision, welterweights Danny “El Gallo” Gonzalez, 6-0-1 (3 KOs) and Brooklyn’s Ray Velez, 3-5-1 (1 KO) fought a rematch of their entertaining draw. This time around, the rooster put more distance between his sharpshooting and Velez’s raw aggression, taking it 59-55 (twice), 58-56.
With so much firepower on display, this could have been a tough night for the refs, but all the stoppages were good. David Berlin, the enterprising new Executive Director of the New York State Athletic Commission, watched carefully from ringside. Last week Berlin held a healthcare information session at the commission offices and signed up seven boxers for Obamacare; there’s another session this Wednesday. Good looking out.