Posts tagged Long Reads
Quanitta Underwood and her sister suffered years of sexual abuse from their father. She’s now an Olympic contender in boxing, and a public voice for other survivors:
Underwood, of course, covets a gold medal and the fame that would come with it. “I want to take that ride,” she says. “I want to be a household name.”
But beyond that, she wants to be a symbol of hope to anyone who has ever been sexually abused, though to do so requires something harder for her than a thousand hours of hitting the heavy bag. She has to talk about what happened.
“Quanitta Underwood: A Contender for Olympic Gold and a Survivor.” — Barry Bearak, New York Times
Gabriel Rosado Steals NBC Fight Night Premier in Philly
Gabriel Rosado, post fight
Words and Pictures by Trey Pollard
PHILADELPHIA, PA – If you have to get beat up for money, there are worse places than Philadelphia. Maybe such a thing defies expectations. Philly sports fans, after all, are usually not known for their empathy. Instead, bleacher rat lore here is pocked with stories of Santas booed and batteries thrown.
But those are tales from the hives where the Phillies, Eagles, and Flyers have been disappointing fans for decades. Saturday’s card in the heart of South Philadelphia proved that when it comes to boxing, things here are different.
The ring announcer on Saturday at the Asylum Arena said Philly was “the boxing capital of the world.” I don’t know if I believe that or not, but I’ll at least say there’s an argument. If you can get 1,100 people to brave the bitter cold to stand in a sweltering converted warehouse watching fighters only the hardest of hardcore fans have heard of, I will grant you that your city takes the fight game for serious. And Philadelphia does. Sylvester Stallone knows it, Hollywood knows it, and, thankfully, NBC Sports knows it.
Denis Douglin Upsets Steven Martinez on ESPN
by Gautham Nagesh
Sometimes Momma knows best.
“Da Momma’s Boy” Denis Douglin was one of the East Coast’s brightest prospects at junior middleweight before losing to veteran hardman Doel Carrasquillo last February in Salisbury, Md., in part because he ignored the advice of his mother and trainer Saphya.
The 23-year-old Douglin righted his career trajectory by upsetting unbeaten Bronx prospect Steven Martinez on the ESPN Friday Night Fights season opener in Key West. Douglin squeaked out a split decision by counter-punching and boxing over eight rounds in a highly competitive contest.
Yuriorkis Gamboa sizzles amidst AC sleaze
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J.—If Las Vegas is Disneyland for adults, then Atlantic City is the county fair: an infrequent occasion to revel in the mire where one tolerates conditions that would be considered disgusting under normal circumstances.
Walking the boardwalk last night for the first I experienced something akin to what Detroit’s many critics must see on their visits: a pervasive drabness and decay that is impossible to ignore despite the recent attempts at development. And that is to say nothing of the proliferation of casinos in both places to accelerate the bleeding of the working poor.
The very atmosphere reeks of seediness and scandal. Clearly a fitting second home for the boxing world and appropriate backdrop to the shenanigans that took place at Boardwalk Hall Saturday night. On paper all of the fighters favored to win did so, most notably unbeaten Cuban featherweight phenom Yuriorkis Gamboa. The Olympic gold medalist secured a unanimous technical decision victory in his last fight at 126 lbs. after Daniel Ponce de Leon suffered a cut on a clash of heads in the 8th round.
In actuality, a slew of horrid officiating and uneven application of the rules detracted from what should have been a tremendous night of pugilism.
The Road Back to Broadcast TV
Kevin Iole has a must-read at Yahoo on how Top Rank head honchos Bob Arum and Todd duBoef got boxing back on network television at CBS:
Moonves looked at Arum and duBoef and, referring to the May 7 pay-per-view card, said, “We’ll make this work.” And then, in words that boxing fans in the U.S. have been dying to hear for more than two decades, he added, “I want you guys to figure out how to help me get boxing back [on network television] on Saturday night.”
DuBoef had cut the deal with Moonves a few days earlier, but its genesis was at least 10 years prior, when duBoef began to question why boxing was so willingly pushing its product onto premium cable television channels such as HBO and Showtime.
