Malik Jackson Wins Title At USA Boxing National Championships
Alex Love in blue, Natalie Gonzalez in red. Photos by Raquel Ruiz
by Sarah Deming
SPOKANE, Wash.—We’re down to the finals of the USA Boxing National Championships at the Northern Quest in Spokane.
The afternoon session saw Alex Love start a bit slowly against New Rochelle’s Natalie Gonzalez but build to a dominating third and fourth rounds. Love is a versatile little puncher who uses angles well and mixes it up to the body and head. When we met her at the 2012 Olympic Trials, she was a ronin who travelled from gym to gym, but now she’s found her home with Army coach Charles Leverette in her corner.
Light flyweight Leroy Davila (below) of Trenton looked huge compared to San Antonio’s Josh Franco and made this final look like a sparring match, circling around the perimeter and landing hard counters from the southpaw and orthodox stances. Brave Franco just kept coming forward, walking into those huge hooks and uppercuts. A cut opened over his right eye in the second.
Davila was one of the few American men to have some success internationally in 2013, but he choked at the World Championships in Kazakhstan.
“I didn’t take it seriously,” he admitted. [[MORE]]
He has stepped up his training since then and promises to stick around for Rio in 2016. At this point, Davila is one of the few men here who look like they could even qualify for the Olympics, much less medal.[[MORE]]
In women’s light welterweights, Destiny Chearino of Warwick, Rhode Island took a unanimous decision over Californian Jasmine Singh. Both are novices who need a lot of work to reach world class.
Duke Ellington once said, a propos of the unfortunate jazz tradition of obligatory bass solos, “Those bass solos just keep coming up like commercials.” This is how I feel about the women’s weight classes above 132 pounds, with the exception of Claressa Shields’.
USA Boxing would be wise to forgo inviting these weak non-Olympic weight champions to the 2014 Women’s World Championships in Korea and instead to fan out stronger boxers from the Olympic weight classes, (e.g., moving up this year’s lightweight silver medallist to light welter, dropping Raquel Miller down to welter, etc.) Let’s take the most skillful women to Worlds and not penalize the ones who were ambitious enough to vie for the stipend-bearing Olympic classes.
The men’s flyweight final was a rematch of last year’s slugfest won by D.C.’s Malik Jackson. Shawn Simpson told us he had been training all year for the rematch, but evidently Jackson had been training, too.
The fierce Lime Lite southpaw came out fast in the first, pushing Simpson back with his stiff right jab, but Simpson showed evasiveness on the inside and countered well. The second round was more of the same, Malik pressing, Simpson sometimes making him miss and sometimes making him pay. There was plenty of rough stuff on the inside; three times they threw each other to the canvass.
Both men wanted it so bad you could feel it. Talent this year has been thin, and few divisions offered two finalists as strong-willed and technically accomplished as these big little men.
Simpson took control in the third, getting the better of a furious initial exchange in the corner. He seemed to have figured out Jackson’s jab and began slipping it well, then countering with good straight rights and hooks. We saw Jackson winning the bout two rounds to one. The judges agreed, giving him a split decision.
The smarmy AIBA bigwigs seated in front of press row – who had paid little attention throughout the bout – did not even applaud its end, causing your humble boxing journalist to seethe with rage.
Next was the women’s welterweight final, in which Danyelle Wolf of San Diego defended her title against Melissa Kelly of Sommerville, Massachusetts in typically robotic fashion. While I’m seething with rage, let me just mention watching as the male sportswriter for the Spokane Register made his decision about which of the female boxers to feature.
“I’m intrigued by Wolf,” he commented, opening his browser to the Google image results of her posed in bikinis and sports bras.
In the relatively weak men’s light heavyweight class, enormous Jasper McCargo circled around Julius Butler of St. Louis, occasionally poking out a jab or straight right. Butler had the better skills and grasp of distance and did a good job getting inside the big man’s reach to land quick flurries to the body and head. McCargo landed a right-left combo just beneath the ribs that looked like it hurt, but Butler boxed well until the end, taking the unanimous nod.
The female light heavyweights were next, a weight class fielding only two combatants. Dara Shen of Alexandria, Virginia, a veteran campaigner, took the sloppy win over Minnesotan Heidi Henriksen. We don’t envy these women their headaches tomorrow
Flint’s Berston Field House crew swaggered to ringside in their purple and gold for the heavyweight final, which paired their sleepy southpaw Sardius Simmons (above) against Al Mitchell’s knockout artist Josh Temple (below).
Simmons put on a great show in the first, catching Temple with sneaky lead lefts, but Temple had all the power and landed some crushing right hands downstairs that you could hear as they landed. In the second, Temple started putting the left hook behind them. A hard uppercut knocked out Simmons’s mouthpiece.
In the third, Simmons came back to take the round with good straight shots through Temple’s guard. Simmons showed huge heart here, standing toe to toe with the stronger man and trading as he bled from the mouth. Had this match been scored on the old points scoring, it would have gone to the young man from Flint, but the split decision nod to the more powerful Temple seemed correct.
Afterward the two great trainers shook hands, and each praised the other’s fighter.
“I had it dead even,” said Al Mitchell. “Your boy just tired out a little bit at the end.”
“That was a tough one,” said Simmons’ trainer Jason Crutchfield, smiling.
“The fight of the day,” said Mitchell.
Krystal Dixon in blue, Denise Rico in red.
Women’s heavyweights are often embarrassing, but this final was an exception. Both Denise Rico of California and Krystal Dixon of New Rochelle showed excellent skills and rhythm in their entertaining slugfest. Dixon came on huge in the first and continued to land heavy combinations throughout the fight, but we thought the more experienced and better-conditioned Rico stole the latter three rounds with well-timed flurries. The judges disagreed, giving Dixon a surprising unanimous win.
Cam F Awesome pulled out a split win in the men’s super heavyweights over Elvis Garcia of Tacoma, to thunderous boos.