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Home > What's New > The Club Fight Renaissance
The Club Fight Renaissance
Posted: Monday, April 10, 2006
By Gregory Mottola
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In 1956, boxing writer A. J. Liebling blamed "a ridiculous gadget called television" for the demise of the club fight, as well as the club fighter. Free boxing broadcasts on television, Liebling believed, "knocked out of business the hundreds of small-city and neighborhood boxing clubs where youngsters had a chance to learn their trade and journeymen to mature their skills." Liebling died in 1963, never getting the opportunity to comment on the newer boxing phenomenon of Pay Per View. Just as TV eliminated many club fights, cable television dissolved most of the free boxing telecasts.
Nowadays, any significant fight runs about $50 on PPV. Virtually every other major sport can be seen on network or cable television. But PPV might be just what the club fight needs. I contemplated this on the bus as I sat in traffic in the Lincoln Tunnel on my way to some club fights in North Bergen, New Jersey. Tickets for club fights cost around $25, and because the venues are small, there are really no bad seats. There has been a resurgence of the club fight in New York City, only there's one thing missing from these gritty bouts: smoke. Since the city banned smoking in 2003, boxing has been smoke-free, even though something seems wrong with church basement fights that don't have layers of smoke in the air. So this was why I was willing to tolerate Jersey traffic -- to watch a lineup of no-name fighters while I smoked a cigar. For the evening anyway. A smoking ban has passed in Jersey, too, but it doesn't go into effect until this Saturday, which gave me one last opportunity.
Across the Hudson River, the bus dropped me off on Bergenline Road, and after walking the disorienting streets of Union City for a while, I found my way to a venue called Scheutzen Park for a fight card billed Back to the Future II, put on by Main Events. It is across the street from a McDonald's and sits at the epicenter of a sunken parking lot. When I walked in, the overlit ballroom was still mostly empty. Its water-stained drop ceiling, tacky carpet and ‘70s' style paneling looked more appropriate for lodge meetings and budget weddings than club fights, but no matter. I arrived early enough to get a seat only three rows back from the ring.
Some recurrent character types usually appear before this kind of show, and they were all there that evening. There are the whisperers. There are the elderly men who pantomime jabs and crouches as they speak to whoever is listening. There are the promoters' assistants circling around the ring frantically. There are the fighters' family members who sit very still and do not talk much to one another, but stare vacantly into the empty ring. There are the spent young fighters who have had a dozen or so pro bouts under their belts, but have fallen out of shape and into the bad graces of their training camps. They have not fought in a while and simply lurk in plain clothes. The dying aura of a fighter still surrounds them, if you know how to see it. Finally, there are the ring card girls who stick together for whatever reason. I wouldn't necessarily call this somber pre-fight period a calm. Rather, the empty ring looms much like an altar before a church service. Then the room fills with a primarily blue-collar crowd and there's a counterbalance of energy, an equalization I welcome.
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So as things started to pick up, I reached into my inside pocket and pulled out the evening's cigar, a Fuente Fuente OpusX. But this was no ordinary OpusX. This was a limited-edition BBMF, which incidentally, stands for Big Bad Mother…you know. It is indeed an intimidating sight with its odd mop-top head and bulbous salamone body that tapers to a nipple foot. It is the Sonny Liston of cigars, and I put it back in my pocket when the announcer introduced the first fighters.
The opening four-rounder featured cruiserweights Gregory Somzyski of Kraków, Poland, and a dreadlocked Lloyd Wilson, out of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The fight was action-packed, if not sloppy. No shortage of heart here, only a shortage of experience. To the delight of the audience, the fighters were willing to trade punches in a wall-to-wall slugfest each round. There was the occasional slipped jab or roll, but these guys ate as many punches as they threw, and this was fine by the crowd. The average boxing spectator would rather see a clumsily thrown haymaker hit its mark, than watch an expertly thrown hook artfully dodged and countered. When a hard hit connects, the crowd instantly reacts. If the audience smells a knockdown, they will rise out of their seats, many throwing jabs and uppercuts of their own into the air. This is true of any boxing event, but the energy of a club fight during an active round is far more concentrated than that of a huge arena. One also feels more acutely the collective prayer for blood. Granted, club fighters are very green in their craft, and this can be painful, even embarrassing to watch, but the fights are genuine and uncorrupted by the big-money prize racket. The opener ended with no knockdowns. I scored it in favor of the guy from Poland and so did the judges.
The next fight pitted a local middleweight from Lyndhurst, New Jersey, named Wayne Johnson against undefeated pugilist Clifton Roberson from Ripley, Tennessee. Roberson showed a lot of promise in the first round. He had a crouching, forward-moving style that kept him perfectly poised and balanced for hard follow-ups every time he threw a punch. Like the previous bout, both fighters were content to absorb each other's punches rather than slip them. Hard-hitting Roberson landed many power shots, but ate an extraordinary amount of jabs and crosses in the process. Eventually, he tired, leaving himself open to an unending combination of shots. Roberson crumbled to the canvas. The fifth-round knockdown was the first of the night and the crowd screamed with an instantaneous supercharge before the ref stopped the fight.
Towards the end of a sloppy six-round heavyweight bout, I decided to go to the bar and light up that widow maker of an OpusX. The back row of seats segued right into the bar area, putting the fight in perfect view. Not that I'd be missing much. A doughy fighter from Kraków was leaning on a shorter, stockier fighter from San Diego. Real soft touches, but the only heavyweights of the night. I approached the bar and was delighted to see Arturo Gatti ordering a drink. The junior welterweight's hand was bandaged from surgery, and he was waving and smiling to the other attendants. Gatti belongs to Main Events as well, and is without a doubt the company's biggest fighter.
The BBMF is packed with a shot of high-octane maduro wrapper at the foot. Carlos "Carlito" Fuente Jr. put it there to give the cigar an opening kick. I lit up as the main event started. A young Dominican junior middleweight named Giovanni Lorenzo was about to trade punches with Armenian Archak Ter-Meliksetian. When the opening bell rang, I took those preliminary puffs, and was utterly shocked at the raw power of this cigar. Now I knew it was going to be strong, but after only a few puffs I felt as though the last three generations of Fuentes had suddenly back-handed me in rapid succession. This cigar was clearly going for the early knockout. My tumbler of Johnny Black did me no good at all. The Opus devoured any flavor the Scotch had to offer, completely having its way with my palate. I continued to puff, and to my disbelief, the cigar actually got stronger. I have not quit on a cigar in years. The last time I did that was in 1998 with a Cuban Montecristo No. 2 that was so overcooked it literally blurred my vision. I thought of this as I continued to smoke the Opus and realized that if this got any stronger, I'd be defeated. But then something happened. The cigar started to settle down and began to give me some of that classic Opus flavor. It burned wonderfully, and I began picking up the spice and those subtle dried fruit notes that are always so prevalent in the nose of the Opus wrapper. By the fourth round of the match, flavors really started to come in -- more spice, coffee bean, even slight currant notes. Never mind that I had a strong buzz -- I had found my stride, and went the distance smoking the BBMF to the band.
The fight ended between the seventh and eighth rounds when the Armenian fighter vomited in his corner, unable to answer the bell. I couldn't help but laugh at how similar our fates almost were.
It will be a while before I smoke a BBMF again. Years, probably, and to tell the truth, I don't mind. Cigar Aficionado is in the business of judging cigars, but I can definitively say that this was the first time I ever felt that a cigar had judged me. It was an odd feeling, and particularly sad when coupled with the fact that this would be the last time in the tri-state area that a boxing fan could smoke a cigar and watch a live fight.
Click here, to read about senior editor Dave Savona's rocky foray into the world of amateur boxing.
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