Algieri Upsets Provodnikov, Women's Boxing Steps Up
Photo of Provodnikov-Algieri by Suzan Classen; Photos of Hardy-Trivilino by Sue Jaye Johnson
by Sarah Deming
Ruslan Provodnikov lost his junior welterweight title on a split decision Saturday night at the Barclays Center, and I lost some of my faith in my powers of observation.
As a rule, converted kickboxers don’t make great boxers, nor do men with master’s degrees and faces like an actor in The O.C. Who would have thought Chris Algieri (20-0, 8 KOs) could take the belt from the Siberian wildman who concussed Tim Bradley in 2013’s consensus fight of the year?
Provodnikov (23-3, 16 KOs) smiled as he made his ring walk to Eye of the Tiger. Perhaps he was reciting Russian poetry in his head or practicing a Vulcan mind meld with trainer Freddie Roach. He did not seem worried in the slightest about Chris Algieri, the local boy who hadn’t yet learned to lose.[[MORE]]
In the first round, Ruslan knocked him down twice: once with a spectacular hook, the second time from an accumulation of damage.
“There are two types of boxers,” said Fedor Papazov, a stablemate of Provodnikov who had won by stoppage on the undercard. His friend Oleg Kovalchuk translated.
“The first type hits like a nail. The second type hits like a horse. Ruslan is the second type of boxer. If he hits your head, you feel it in your whole body.”
The power differential was astonishing, and I expected a knockout to come at any time during the first three rounds. When he cared to, Ruslan bobbed below Algieri’s jab, but often he couldn’t be bothered. Algieri’s fists pattered against his face like raindrops on a tank.
Algieri kept on boxing. By the third, his feet were steady, and he was snapping the double left hook to the body and the head. He won the fourth and the fifth on all three judges’ cards.
Perhaps the early knockdowns had gone to Ruslan’s head. He had abandoned the bob-and-weave and threw no jabs, laying instead for the one big shot. Whatever Freddie Roach was telling him wasn’t working.
Algieri tightened his circles, eroding Ruslan’s control of center ring. We now felt he could go the distance, although his babyface was swollen and streaked with blood and a breeze blew over press row every time Ruslan missed him with a hook.
It was hard to say who won the sixth through tenth rounds. Would you rather be the brave, bleeding boxer or the guy with the heavy hands?
Ruslan came on in the final two as though he thought he needed a knockout to win, and it turns out he did.
“I worry about Ruslan because I knew him since he was nobody and I really care about him,” Fedor Papazov said. “He gives everything to boxing.”
It wasn’t enough. Max Deluca scored it 117-109 for Provodnikov, overruled by Tom Schreck and Don Trella, who both had Algieri winning 114-112.
Nobody could seem to agree. Twitter was leaning heavily Algieri, but most of my buddies ringside thought the champion got robbed. His power was persuasive up close, and his face told a winner’s story. Everyone was promising to re-score the bout at home, but I’ll just read some Russian poetry instead.
The co-main on HBO Boxing After Dark was a first defense cakewalk for junior middleweight champion Demetrius “Boo Boo” Andrade (21-0, 14 KOs) of Providence against mandatory challenger Brian Rose (25-2-1, 7 KOs). The buzz was that the young champion needed to look great winning.
Unless you have a problem with patience, Boo Boo looked outstanding. He dropped the Brit in round one with a straight left off an educated right jab. The 1,2 kept landing all night long; it must be hard to find good southpaw sparring in Manchester. Rose was cut over the nose and eating uppercuts when the referee and corner stopped it at 1:19 of the seventh.
In the untelevised ghetto of the undercard, junior featherweights Heather “The Heat” Hardy and Jackie “The Force” Trivilino met for the first women’s professional bout at the Barclays Center.
Hardy is a single mother who attacks her boxing career with the same determination with which she twice overcame the loss of her house. If fire and floods can’t stop her, neither can the indifference of the establishment. She sold $24,000 of tickets to Saturday’s fights, going from Irish pub to Irish pub.
“The only way people are gonna believe in women boxers is if we put bodies in the seats,” she said.
Trivilino is a union electrician and veteran contender who has lost to the best. She came out fast, backing Hardy up throughout the first two rounds, although Hardy countered well with straight shots that split the guard.
Trivilino’s aggression drove the third and fourth. She leaned on Hardy, exacerbating the cut that had opened next to her right eye from a headbutt in the second. Neither woman showed much defense, and their power was comparable.
The fifth and sixth were close again, Trivilino initiating, Hardy countering. I was worried for Heather, whom I have followed long enough to love. Her pale face ran with blood and her white skirt had two spreading blotches of red. Another accidental butt in the seventh left her cut deeply on the forehead, and the doctor stopped it just before the bell rang for the eighth.
“Jackie told me she was sorry after the second headbutt,” Heather said later as she iced her stitched-up face. She had taken the split decision, 68-65, 67-66, 66-67.
The vibe in both women’s dressing rooms was funereal.
“We got robbed,” said Trivilino’s trainer Rick Sweeney. “It’s worse when that happens to the girls.”
He got quiet. This had been his first fight in Trivilino’s corner and she had done everything he told her to do.
“Because I get more attached to them,” he said.
“Because we don’t get as many opportunities to perform on this level,” said her sparring partner Sarah Kuhn. “We just want a fair shake.”
Women boxers always battle on multiple fronts – against their opponents, against their promoters, for access, parity, attention, respect – and so perhaps it was emblematic of the state of the game that this battle left both sides feeling beaten. The next fight will be better.