As Don King makes the rounds on talk shows and judges make incomprehensible decisions that are baffling to the viewing public, the sport sinks deeper and deeper into the abyss of fringe sports that…
On the surface, boxing can seem like an ugly sport.
As Don King makes the rounds on talk shows and judges make incomprehensible decisions that are baffling to the viewing public, the sport sinks deeper and deeper into the abyss of fringe sports that catch our attention when somebody dies or when Mike Tyson is fighting or getting arrested.
That’s a long way from the days of Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, when fans cared about the fighters, who aren’t obscured by football helmets and are close enough to touch.
Thomas Hauser, Ali’s biographer penned the book: “A Beautiful Sickness,” and for those of us who love boxing, that’s an accurate description of what the sport tastes like sometimes.
But we love it and hang around it hoping that better days lie ahead and because no other endeavor captures the “thrill of victory” and “the agony of defeat” like boxing. Over the summer, the TimesLedger will present a series of stories chronicling ‘The Sweet Science,” the ups and downs, the good, the bad. Hopefully, it will be a better barometer of what the sport has to offer then some of the decisions recently.
— Mitch Abramson
By Mitch Abramson
First in a series
Tanzee Daniel treats every minute like it’s her last, and in a way every minute is her last.
Daniel, a resident of Jamaica, wakes up every morning at 3 a.m. to go to work at Delta Airlines, where she’s employed in customer service.
The last voices she hears at night belongs to “Everybody Loves Raymond,” and the final conversation she has with friends is at the Starrett City Boxing Club in Brooklyn, where she trains every evening like clockwork.
Between work and gym comes sleep.
Every minute in Daniel’s life is choreographed and well rehearsed like a presidential speech. It’s her ambition that sets her apart from other over-achievers.
According to USA Boxing, the national governing body for amateur boxing in the United States, Daniel, 25, is the top-ranked fighter in the 189-pound weight division in the country.
Although she is a four-time New York Golden Gloves winner and one of the best female fighters in the country, that distinction won’t pay her way on July 26 to the 2004 Nationals in Spokane, Wash., where she was hoping to parlay a good performance into the start of a professional boxing career.
If she doesn’t go, her ranking will slip and her reputation may suffer.
“It won’t be a good situation if I don’t make the trip,” said Daniel, a graduate of Hillcrest High. “A lot of important people are going to be there.”
A Man’s World
If boxing grudgingly rewards its most talented fighters with fame and fortune like Oscar De La Hoya, the sport’s “Golden Boy,” then women’s boxing is the bastard stepchild whose birthday check got lost in the mail.
The USOC provides $950,000 each budget year to men’s amateur boxing in the United States to encourage fighters to go out for the Olympics.
Women’s boxing doesn’t become an Olympic sport until 2008, according to Sandy Martinez-Pino, chairwoman of the Amateur International Boxing Association. Until then, women will have to prepare for their fights with their checkbooks in hand.
“Women are in the sport because they love it,” she said. “There’s a lot of magazines and print media that advertise the use of fitness for women’s boxing, but the women who box have to pay to travel to matches and for everything else. They’ll have to wait for the Olympics for the money to come.”
Daniel will probably dip into the pocket of Jimmy O, her benefactor and founder of the Starrett City Boxing Club to pay for travel and expenses.
Last year, Jimmy O, whose real name is Jimmy O’Pharrow, shelled out around $1,500 for trips to the PAL and US Nationals, tournaments she won, and he’s bracing for another windfall.
“She’s rated, but they don’t give her any money. It’s disgraceful,” Jimmy O said.
So while Daniel conjures up images of imaginary bake sales and get-rich schemes, the boys, some of whom may represent the United States in the Olympics one day, are taken care of by USA Boxing.
These days, fighters with famous names like Laila Ali, the daughter of Muhammad Ali and someone Daniel wants to fight some day, and women with sensational story lines like Tonya Harding, steal the headlines in the pros.
The sport has room for glamor girls with nominal talent like Mia St. John, but for the most part women with legitimate ring aspirations are hidden from the public like government witnesses, sequestered at the end of shows when the customers have already gone home.
“What is someone like Mia St. John doing for the sport?” Daniel asked. “All she is is a little sex symbol, but that’s what they want to see.”
Daniel understands that boxing is a man’s world, and women who enter boxing gyms — the last frontier of athletic clubs — walk a tightrope of trying to prove their toughness while preserving their femininity.
Cindy “Checkmate” Serrano, a professional super featherweight from Ridgewood with a record of 5-0 (3 KOs) trains at the Glendale Boxing Club, which announces that it is “Elegantly Hardcore” on a sign outside. She makes a habit of getting her hair and nails done every Sunday, her only day off from training. It’s the ritual of being pampered that she clings to like a childhood blanket.
“Boxers are the most grittiest people in the world who say the most no holds barred things,” said Daniel, the only steady woman at her gym. “I’ve heard everything. You would think that because a woman is present, they would change the conversation a little, but it doesn’t happen. I just go along with them. I crack jokes, too.”
Locker Room Attitudes
Along with battling “locker room” attitudes, women also face resistance at home, where mothers look to the heavens and pray that this “boxing thing” is nothing more then a phase like punk music and coloring your hair.
At first, Serrano’s mother was afraid she would “mess up her face.” Once her career took off, she took to the neighborhood to tell people that her daughter would be a champion some day.
“She changed her attitude,” Serrano said.
Watching Daniel and Serrano fight in the ring, it is hard to separate them from the men they spar with, an observation that comes in focus when they explain how they got into boxing.
Serrano, 22, was often the target of ridicule in high school, where she starred on Bushwick High School’s softball team, but was told by a teacher that, she “would never amount to anything.”
Now her goal is to return to Bushwick a world champion, similar to another famous alumni, former bantamweight champion, Junior “Poison” Jones, who returned a conquering hero and presented his title to the school.
“I was always a clown in school,” she said. “People never took me seriously. People were always picking on me and throwing apples at me. I was always tough though, and my softball coach said he knew that I would be an athlete or something. I went to the school recently and signed autographs. Now people idolize me there. It’s a great feeling.”
Daniel was a basketball star in high school and was awarded a scholarship to play at Alcorn State, where Steve McNair once starred.
A street ball talent, Daniel clashed with the coach over playing time and left for the playgrounds where she never backed down from anybody.
“The guys don’t like when the girls beat them,” said Daniel, who moved to the United States from Trinidad when she was three. “When you play ball in the ‘hood, you have a lot of hotheads, and it gets hot in the summer time. I could always fight. One time I hit this guy and he flew over a car…and someone saw me and told me I should be a boxer.”
It wasn’t until a co-worker at the airport gave her a Starrett City business card that she gave the sport a try. Always up for a challenge, Daniel flourished in boxing’s individualistic setting and basketball became an afterthought.
Turning Pro
The next step for her is the professional ranks, where almost every fight men are brought to their knees and women are basically limited to appearing briefly in between rounds wearing swimsuits and holding hefty ring cards telling while the men in the attendance whistle approvingly.
“This is a terrible sport for women,” said Serrano’s trainer, Jordan Maldonado, the owner of the Glendale Boxing Club. “If you want to get fights, then the amateurs is the way to go. In the pros, you can select who you want to fight.
“In the amateurs, they make the schedule and you have to fight whoever it is they tell you to. The problem in the pros is that the trainers treat their fighters like girls, and they sidestep opponents.”
To keep her busy, Maldonado uses his promotional connections to get Serrano fights in locales such as Delaware, Baltimore, and most recently Bermuda, where she fought on the same card as Bayside heavyweight Vinny Maddalone.
To keep her viable, Maldonado has Serrano fighting often. But to insure she doesn’t scare off potential opponents, he protects Serrano burgeoning reputation as a fighter by keeping the hype surrounding her down to a minimum.
It’s getting hard.
Two sanctioning bodies have already ranked her in the top-15, although her limited experience — she’s been boxing for two years — is an advantage, as is her handful of fights. The blueprint seems to be working as Serrano has fights scheduled for July 7 in West Virginia and on the 11th in Allentown, PA.
Playing the Race Card
It also helps to be Native American, since many casinos carrying boxing cards are built on Indian reservations.
Jamaica resident Thaddine Johnson, a Golden Gloves winner whose mother is Blackfoot Indian, forged a relationship with a promoter from Colorado while training for the 2003 Native American National Championships in Michigan. He was so smitten with her boxing style and the way she connected with fans that he offered her a fight deal that begins Aug. 7 in Michigan on an Indian reservation in her pro debut.
“I know that if I wasn’t native American, I would not have gotten the contract with a promoter,” said Johnson, 27, a graduate of St. Francis Prep. “You need to have an angle to succeed in women’s boxing. You need to catch the people’s eye.”
Reach Reporter Mitch Abramson by E-mail at TimesLedger@aol.com or call 718-229-0300, Ext. 143.
