Claressa Shields & Tiara Brown Win Titles At Nationals

Marlen Esparza. Photos by Raquel Ruiz.

by Sarah Deming

SPOKANE, Wash.–“Grandfather Creator, it makes us happy and it lifts our hearts to see these young warriors.”

The Kalispel Elder’s blessing set the right tone for the last session of the 2014 USA Boxing National Championships. These young warriors do indeed lift our hearts, even though we get a little tired by tournament’s end. All the late nights in the disco were probably not the best idea, but it is hard to resist dancing with Raquel Ruiz.

Olympic bronze medalist Marlen Esparza wasn’t worried about her flyweight final against fellow Texan Virginia Fuchs.

“Ginny can’t handle upper body movement,” said Esparza. “All you have to do is break from the waist.”

Franchon Crews (left) and Claressa Shields (right)[[MORE]]

The last time these two met, we thought Fuchs took it. This time it was Esparza who asserted her will, doing especially well with rights downstairs. Although Fuchs kept scoring with the straight left, Esparza won almost every round. We were happy to see her get the Most Outstanding Female Boxer of the Tournament, and we like her new red hair. Esparza has stepped up her game and could better her bronze in Rio.

The men’s bantamweights had similar styles, but Jarico O’Quinn was just a bit faster, and could switch hit. In the third round his power started to tell and Sharone Carter of St. Louis looked gassed. “Rico” took the unanimous decision, and his Detroit corner rejoiced.

I left press row to offer stool and spit bucket services to bantamweight Christina Cruz, the last fighter standing from Atlas Cops & Kids. Cruz had a relatively easy time with Amanda Pavone of Burlington, Vermont, although she could have made it easier with the jab. Always an honor to be in her corner.

The men’s lightweights featured a rematch between Stiff Jab favorite Genaro “El Conde” Gamez and his fellow Californian Jousce Gonzalez, who had just defeated Gamez at PALs.

The first round started slow, both men circling and finding distance with the jab. Then everything changed. Gonzalez got lazy with his left and Gamez came over the top with a hooking right that buckled Gonzalez’s knees.

El Conde knows how to close, something extremely rare in the amateurs. He ran to Gonzalez, firing nonstop combinations to the body and the head. The stoppage came right before the end of the first round.

Last year Gamez wasn’t ready to reveal the secret meaning of his ring nickname. Tonight he gave it up.

“In a castle there is a king and a queen and a prince,” said Gamez. “El Conde is the one who takes care of the king and the queen and the prince and the castle. My dad put that nickname on me. He has a queen, who is my mom, and he has a prince, who is my brother, and I look out for everybody.”

Games has extraordinary finesse in the ring for someone just eighteen years old.

“I have been boxing since I was in the womb,” he told Raquel Ruiz. “I did not stop kicking inside my mother.”

In the women’s featherweight final, defending champion Tiara Brown of D.C. fended off a strong challenge from Lisa Porter of Valley Village, Calif. in an ugly bout with a lot of wrestling. Brown looked uncharacteristically sluggish, but everyone has their off nights, even superheroines.

The fighting Estradas of Hillsboro, Oregon walked to the ring en masse for eldest son Efrain’s brief stand against Albany’s Abraham Nova.

“I saw his left was low,” said Nova. “So I kept backing away with my hands down, making him come to me.”

A perfect right to the chin put Estrada down. This was the kind of flash knockdown from which pros recover all the time, and the crowd joined the Estrada corner in booing the stoppage, but we need to remember that these are still amateurs. Good call by referee Kristi Rosario.

“I was going to stop him anyway,” Nova assured us. “His legs were gone.”

Then it was time for chapter four of Mikaela Mayer and Queen Underwood’s delicious rivalry. This is a classic boxer versus puncher pairing, and you can see it from the women’s builds: Mayer (blue), tall and lanky; Underwood (red), compact and powerfully muscled.

Mayer came out fast in the first and boxed beautifully. This was the only round that was a clear win for one or the other boxer. In the second, Underwood took control early with some clean, heavy shots, but Mayer got back on the jab and closed well. The third was another close one. Mayer moved well and scored with her classic combinations, but at the end of the round Underwood was finding her with the right. The final round saw both women trade heavily, but trading always favors the slugger, and Underwood’s punches looked like they did more damage.

We scored this a draw and approved of the split nod to Underwood, who showed more power and control of the ring’s center, but three high-level coaches we surveyed saw Mayer winning clearly.

“Mikaela outboxed her every round except maybe the last one,” said local legend Rowdy Welch. Then again, Rowdy called the Estrada stoppage “gay” and said it was proof that women shouldn’t be referees.

Welterweight Chordale Booker of Brooklyn is a bob and weave southpaw who looks like a little Tyson. He tired in the closing rounds and let long, strong Jose Alday come on. Another national title for Alday, who hails from Odessa, Texas.

Trainer Jason Crutchfield says it has been hard for his gold medalist Claressa “T-Rex” Shields to get proper training now that she is a full time college student, living an hour and a half away from Flint. Shields got off to a slow start against Baltimore’s Franchon Crews, who did good work in the first with the lead right.

Then Shields awoke. Over the final three rounds, she built to a dominant finish that left her standing in center ring like a mountain. Glad to see T-Rex back in the elites where she belongs.

Men’s middleweights closed the show. Long Island’s LeShawn Rodriguez had looked pretty indomitable in the preliminaries. He got a run for his money in counterpuncher Anthony Campbell of Covington, Vermont, but Rodriguez kept control and pulled out the unanimous decision.

Afterwards in the casino bar, Tiara Brown filled out the W-4 for her new stipend. USA Boxing will now be extending support to all ten women’s champions, not just the three from the Olympic classes. ‘Bout time.

Also encouraging is the shift to 10-point scoring. There is still a lot of confusion about what constitutes a winner in this new system: out of 20 final bouts, a third were split decisions, provoking the usual cries of “robbery” from boxers and coaches.

In the end, though, we thought the right boxer’s hand got raised in almost every bout. The time-honored formula “Which fighter would you rather be during that round?” is a better way to score a fight than the old amateur method of counting punches. It favors aggression, but so does life, and mobile boxers like Leroy Davila, Jose Alday, and Christina Cruz were still able to pull clear wins by playing the matador to their opponents’ bull.

The headgear issue, on the other hand, is one that I pray gets overturned. I’ve added my signature to the petition up at Change.org. When a pro boxer gets cut, he is given a suspension to recover. Here a kid might get stitched up and have to fight again the next three days. A light heavyweight told me his tooth was loosened by a head butt, and the guys from Atlas Cops & Kids reported headaches after their bouts. This morning in the Spokane airport, I saw three young men heading home with bandaged faces.

“Once you get a cut, that could haunt you for the rest of your career,” said cutman Mike Bazzel, who is a strength coach to both Marlen Esparza and Nonito Donaire. “I don’t like it. These kids are amateurs. They’re supposed to be learning.”