Junior Wright and Stivens Bujaj Wage Even Battle In Brighton Beach
by Sarah Deming
BROOKLYN–You could tell Thursday’s card was a Dmitri Salita (center) production because the guys handing out credentials wore yarmulkes. The Millennium Theatre in Brighton Beach had comfy seats and a vibe of crumbling glory. A guy in the lobby was selling tires.
“It feels like we’re not in Brooklyn anymore,” my friend Jean said.
At the presser, the main event had been touted as having Fight of the Year potential. Two juicy cruiserweights were putting their perfect records on the line: Chicago’s Junior “Hurricane” Wright (10-0, 9 KOs) versus Albanian Brooklynite Stivens “Superman” Bujaj (12-0, 9 KOs) (above).
I liked Wright’s swagger and his trainer/manager Rick Wilson, a fitness maverick with a porno mustache. Wilson told me his fighter was born to fight ten-rounders: “That’s why I put the nickname Hurricane on him. He starts slow, but by the end of the night he’ll be blowing off the roof.”
Both men fought like their cities: the Midwestern brawler, earnest and crude, against the New York sophisticate. In the first round, the faster, more technical Bujaj looked in a different class, countering Wright at will. Both opened up in the second, Bujaj again getting the better of it. Wright grinned and motioned to bring it on.[[MORE]]
“Stevie! Stevie!” chanted the crowd. Someone waved around an Albanian flag.
The third was fairly even. I wondered why Bujaj was letting Wright get in close, when he should have been keeping things at the range that favored his superior technique and fast hands. The fourth was when the momentum shifted definitively. Wright stayed on Bujaj’s chest, scoring with loads of short, slapping hooks to the temple.
In the fifth, both men looked tired. Wright’s balance, not great from the get-go, was now simply awful, but he didn’t have to look pretty because he was fighting his fight. In the sixth, he landed a big, overhand right that was the best punch of the night. It left Bujaj holding and bleeding from the mouth.
“It looks like they’re making out,” my husband said.
It was true that they hugged a lot. Neither boxer looked in condition to go six rounds, let alone ten. Fatigue was like another fighter in there, battering them both.
Early in the seventh, Wright trapped Bujaj in the corner and landed some big hooks. A minute later, he got him against the ropes again and landed three more hooks in a row. Bujaj’s legs were noodles. This was the moment that Wright should have gone for the stoppage.
Bujaj spent the eighth looking woozy and eating more hooks. The crowd was silent. Their favorite was on the verge of dropping when referee Shada Murdaugh mysteriously called a halt to the action to give Bujaj time to recover from a low blow that nobody I spoke to had seen (with the exception of Bujaj’s trainer Billy Giles, who said Wright had been hitting them low all night. This was not true. Bujaj was the one who had been throwing the low blows. Wright had been holding and hitting. It kind of evened out.)
The ninth was a very close round that saw Bujaj muster some quick, sharp counters. In the tenth, Bujaj somehow found the energy to pull out a last stand. He let his hands go – and they were so fast! The crowd was screaming, and Wright was staggering back against the ropes, at Bujaj’s mercy, when a loose piece of tape saved him. Shada Murdaugh stopped the action once again, long enough for Wright to escape kayo.
We voted for Chicago but could smell the draw from afar, like home cooking. It was 96-94 Wright; 96-94 Bujaj; and 95-95.
On the undercard, California-Russian Alexey Zubov (2-0, 2 KOs) pummeled poor Glenn Thomas (1-2) unrequitedly, stopping him after a minute and forty-five seconds.
Lightweight Marcos Suarez, Jr. (2-0-1) of the Bronx used his long arms to keep Ian James (2-6-1) at bay. All three judges had it 39-37.
Akil Auguste, a strong southpaw middleweight who trains at Atlas Cops and Kids, improved to 4-1 with a stoppage 1:59 into the first of soft touch Juan Zapata (3-8-1).
Kazakh Dimash Niyazov (5-0-2) had a lot of friends in the house to cheer his victory over Jose Del Valle (2-5-3) of Puerto Rico, a 6’2” lightweight with the build of a stick bug. Niyazov took a while to figure out the distance and start landing the overhand right. The judges had it 40-36 (twice), 39-37.
In the six-rounders, sculpted southpaw welterweight Mikkel Lespierre (4-0-1), whom Jean dubbed “Glamor Boy,” pot-shotted the stationary, bleeding target of Raphael Luna (4-8-3), who was fighting in tennis shoes and, my husband correctly pointed out, actually physically resembled a tomato can.
Lespierre lacked power and fought in spurts. The best thing about him was his defense, which alternated between a tight, forearm-to-forearm guard and Mayweather-style shoulder rolls. All three judges scored it a shutout for Lespierre, and the crowd applauded Luna as he was helped off by his cornermen.
Steve Martinez (14-1-0, 11 KOs) of the Bronx fought southpaw Antonio Chavez Fernandez (4-17-2) in a battle of awkward junior middleweights with great abs. Fernandez was wobbled by a left hook right before the end of the first round, but he had come all the way from Brockton and hung on until 2:04 of the fifth.
A 263-pound man shouldn’t wear trunks as short as Jarrell “Big Baby” Miller’s. We tried not to look too closely at his upper thighs while he mauled Joshua Harris (9-7-1) of Youngstown, Ohio. Harris gave up 50 pounds and was a last-minute replacement for the original opponent, who had been arrested for six armed bank robberies.
The stoppage came at 1:53 of the second round. Big Baby claims to be “America’s Last Hope.” Hopefully that’s not true.