Observations from DC and Fisherville!

In Charles Dickens’s classic book “A Tale of Two Cities,” the author writes, “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.”

If you reverse the order of that familiar opening line, you have a good description of this past weekend’s Beltway Boxing action.

It was as contrasting a boxing weekend as I have ever been a part of. Two cards in a 24-hour period that showed the true highs and lows of this business.

Washington, DC showed how NOT to put on a boxing show on April 27. Credit should be given to the boxers themselves for keeping that show from being more of an unmitigated disaster than it already was.

Please read Thom Loverro’s column in the April 28 Washington Times “ESPN2 Shows Mess of an Event” to get a true and accurate description of what took place. I truly cannot dispute what Loverro said, nor is there too much I can add except for this:

If the DC Boxing and Wrestling Commission do not put some true and knowledgeable boxing people on its team, boxing in the Nation’s Capital will be in more trouble than it already is.

The biggest mistake the Commission made was not advising Ron Remus Promotions to put more Beltway Boxers on the card. Yes, ESPN made the Darling Jimenez-Mike Anchondo bout. Yes. Vernon Paris is a Ron Remus fighter. But they would have been better off matching Paris against a local fighter instead of Alain Hernandez. At least the fans would have heard of one of the two fighters.

But that wasn’t the biggest mistake the promoters made. Their biggest mistake was trying to rely on a government that has NEVER, EVER outwardly supported boxing. DC Mayor Adrian Fenty – A former DC athlete – couldn’t clear his schedule enough to come to the press conference. City Councilmember Kwame Brown – the person most associated with the DC Sports and Entertainment Commission – did not attend the conference.

But in almost 20 years of covering the Beltway, the DC Government has not made a big deal of supporting its Beltway Boxers. To go that route was a criminal mistake for the promotion and they dearly paid for it.

If you saw the card on TV, you know about the mistakes that were made during the card (the two-minute round during the main event, referee Kenny Chevalier wearing no gloves, Chevalier’s very quick stoppage, etc.) The sad part about this is that these are situations that have happened before in DC and no one seems to know what to do about it.

Remus told me personally that he will not have his scheduled October date in DC. The question that now remains is – will ESPN honor the May 25th show at the Armory featuring Tony Thompson and the Peterson Brothers? My assumption is yes because these are boxers that Beltway fans know and support and want to see. But I think that the possibility exists that ESPN could change its mind, based on what they saw this weekend.

To see how a boxing card should be put on, I had to take a three-hour trip to Fisherville, VA on Saturday. I entered the Augusta Expoland 20 minutes after the weigh-in was scheduled to begin at noon. Twenty minutes later, the weigh-in was over, with everything that to be done completed. There were no arguments, no complaining. All the boxers were on time with all their paperwork and the process ran smoothly.

Where in DC there were only a few boxers anyone knew, the Fisherville card was loaded with Virginia fan favorites. The excitement came along with those boxers as well. Juan Carlos Robles came to the ring led by four Harley Davidson motorcycles. “White Lightning” Todd Wilson entered to the sounds of live bagpipers. “War Time” George Rivera was led to the ring by his fan base “La Familia.” The crowd may have been small in number (about 500 – more than DC had at the Armory the night before) but it was huge in enthusiasm and all of those boxers and others performed well on the card.

This card had no true controversies and where there seemed to be an army of DC commission members running about, Virginia had everything under control with just a few people who knew what they had to do and they did it. The days of the problems the Virginia Commission had in the past are long gone. This commission, led by David Holland, has everything under control and I predict they will do some great things in the very near future.

So we have Virginia in good shape and Maryland is continuing its excellence in holding boxing matches. However, when people think about what happens along the Beltway, they think of DC first, because it is the Nation’s Capital. That is why it is absolutely paramount that the DC Boxing and Wrestling Commission get its act together. My suggestion is that the DC Sports and Entertainment Commission take the Boxing Commission over and fill it up with the JD Browns, Paul Artissts and Gilbert Wares of the area. Those are the type of people that need to be a major part of whatever boxing takes place in DC.

Hopefully, that would get us to a point where everything works according to plan all throughout the Beltway.