It was a middle-aged East Coast-based boxing fan’s dream: a stacked boxing card (the most stacked card I’ve ever seen, on paper), very affordably priced, starting at 10:30am. and scheduled to end around dinner time. If the organizers stuck to the schedule, there would be no struggling to keep the ol’ peepers open as the broadcast cut to the main-event fighters gloving up in their dressing rooms after midnight. Instead, we’d be getting a full day of championship-level boxing, with almost zero downside.
If ever a boxing card called for this particular washed Philly-area boxing writer to invite over what few friends he has and pen a “running diary” article chronicling the experience, it was “The Last Crescendo.” And who knows? Maybe this article will be well-received and I’ll be inspired to do it again and prove I have a few more crescendos left in me.
Anyway, the last time I did one of these, it was just me, my dog Otis, and, for about half the show, my longtime friend and former podcast partner Bill Dettloff at my pay-per-view “party.” This time, it actually resembled a real party, scare-quotes not required. I invited Dettloff, International Boxing Hall of Famer (and my former boss at The Ring) Nigel Collins, hardcore boxing fan David Kushin, and day-job co-worker (and Low Rollers podcast co-host) and casual fight fan Jeff Edelstein.
There would be a PPV.com feed, there would be alcohol, there would be pizza, there would be an abundance of middle-aged (or older) men, and there would be no dozing. We were living the dream. (At least in a relative sense, for our stations in life, however many crescendos deep we each are.)
Let’s get to the running diary (all times Eastern):
10:30am: The broadcast begins! No guests yet, but I know David will be here soon, as he is both the punctual type and a true “I’d rather not miss a single round if I can help it” boxing fan.
10:33: Ring announcer Thomas Treiber is introducing the fighters for the opening six-rounder (there are two prelims before the seven advertised 12-rounders begin), undefeated Saudi welterweight Ziyad Almaayouf and Brazilian no-hoper Jonatas de Oliveira. I think I spy Buddy McGirt over Treiber’s right shoulder. I don’t think I spy a single fan in any seat anywhere in the venue in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which, according to BoxRec, is known as “The Venue Riyadh Season.” Treiber pulls that sneaky move where he introduces de Oliveira as “a veteran of 26 professional bouts” rather than spell out that he has a record of 6-20.
10:37: First doorbell. (Well, not really. I saw David approaching through my front window and opened the door just before he could ring the bell, since my two teenagers upstairs were still sleeping and I was taking a precaution to avoid a ringing bell and a barking dog.) Anyway, David arrives; it’s officially a party. He comes bearing vegan apple pie and vegan cookies from a place near his house called Papa Ganache (more on those later) as well as a toy for Otis with a Phillies logo on it. David is pulling out all the stops to get on his host’s good side.
10:45: It’s Todd Grisham, Sergio Mora, and Chris Mannix on the call, and my conversation with David (and his new bestie Otis) turns to which boxing blow-by-blow broadcasters we hate the most — a conversation inspired, Mr. Grisham will be happy to know, by the fact that he is not on that list; we like Todd just fine, especially relative to the broadcasters we’re venting about, who shall not be named here.
11:00: Referee and sole judge Howard Foster (British Boxing Board of Control rules are in effect in Saudi Arabia) has it 60-54 for Almaayouf. One fight down, eight to go.
11:38: The combatants in the second fight, lightweights Mohammed Alakel and Engel Gomez, are finally starting their ringwalks, 38 minutes after the previous fight ended. There is just no excuse, ever, unless Brother Naazim is in the dressing room catching a trainer putting plaster inserts in the hand wraps, to make viewers wait that long between fights. There was a whole schedule released beforehand that had the first of the seven main-card fights scheduled for 11:45am, so we’re already a full fight behind schedule for absolutely no reason. This does not bode well for the washed and/or narcoleptic among us.
11:42: I’m not paying close attention during Treiber’s introductions, but I assume Gomez, who sports a record of 8-42-3, gets the “veteran of 53 professional bouts” treatment.
11:45: Nigel shows up. If it wasn’t a party before, now it definitely is.
11:58: Even though Gomez is Nicaraguan, not Mexican, and appears to be in decent shape, Nigel goes on a brief tangent about how “I like when they bring in the out-of-shape Mexican and they win.” Alas, Gomez does not appear on his way to pulling the upset, but he does appear more competent than his record would suggest. About that record: Gomez began his career 8-0-1. This 0-42-2 streak he’s on is the quite the rough patch. But I’m sure he’ll turn things around.
12:09pm: Referee and sole arbiter Kieran McCann makes the undefeated Alakel a 60-54 winner. Not a lot of excitement on this card yet. Extremely skip-able prelims.
12:20: More exciting and less skip-able: Nigel tells the story of a friend who acquired a substantial amount of pharmaceutical cocaine from a veterinarian. (Told ya it was a real PPV party now.) Cheap plug: If you want to learn more, the story is told in detail in Nigel’s 2015 book, Travels with Mary Jane: Confessions of a 70-year-old Stoner, published under a pseudonym, but Nigel now freely acknowledges he’s “The Old Head.”
12:27: There’s not as much time wasted between the second and third fights, as introductions are underway for the first real fight on the show, between British light heavyweights Joshua Buatsi and Callum Smith. This is as good a time as any to mention that David and I each placed a seven-leg parlay bet the day before, trying to pick all the winners on the main card. His begins with Buatsi, mine with Smith, so one of them is guaranteed to be alive heading into the second fight. And we’ve made a deal that whoever loses can then buy a percentage of the other’s action so the sweat doesn’t end after one fight. My parlay includes more underdogs than David’s (including Smith) and thus potentially pays a little over 42-to-1, whereas his parlay is poised to pay a bit over 16-to-1.
12:30: Opening bell of Buatsi vs. Smith. We are officially 45 minutes behind schedule.
12:40: Buatsi hurts Smith to the body in the third round, as a fight that was entertaining right from the outset continues gathering steam. Moments later, Dettloff arrives — he had family obligations and got here as soon as he could, and thus is pleased with the card having fallen a bit behind schedule. He is less pleased with my decision to wear my new Saquon Barkley Eagles jersey specifically to taunt him. Bill is a Giants fan. He had better get used to seeing me in my Saquon jersey, because it’s the only shirt Bill will see me in at pay-per-view parties for the rest of our lives.
12:52: Here’s the one hitch in my plans for a dream boxing PPV party: My son needs to be somewhere at 1:00, and I’m the only driver in the family available. I knew going in that I was going to have to miss about 20 minutes of the card. It just sucks that I have to leave right at the end of a fantastic sixth round between Smith and Buatsi. I’ve placed pizza orders — one with cheese, one without for those of us who don’t get along well with lactose — and I’ve timed it so I can drop off my son and then pick up the pizzas on my way home. I’m trying to make the best of an unfortunate “life getting in the way of boxing” situation.
1:15: I’m back, the fight is in round 12. Nigel, Bill, and David inform me I’ve missed a hell of a scrap and it’s not clear who’s winning.
1:22: My friends unanimously groan when the first score, 119-110 by judge Steve Gray, is announced. But the other two are a more reasonable 116-112 and 115-113, all for Smith. My parlay is alive, David’s is dead, and David will now be buying half my action. Which will cost him a dollar. Yes, I really am that much of a gambling nit. (Remember, I co-host a podcast called Low Rollers.) Anyway, we now each stand to win about 42 bucks if my other six legs come in. Also, I have no more driving obligations, so I crack open a Surfside Peach Tea & Vodka.
1:34: The opening bell rings for the next fight, between heavyweights Agit Kabayel and Zhilei Zhang, or perhaps Zhang Zhilei — he’s been in our lives for over a decade now and still none of us know which is his first name and which is his last name. This is the fight Bill wanted to make sure to arrive in time for, as apparently one of his daughters has a crush on Zhang (to each their own, I guess) and Bill is intrigued by the matchup. I need a Kabayel win to keep my seven-fight parlay going. The pace is fierce — at least for giant heavyweights — from the start, and Zhang lands both a sizzling southpaw left hand and a nice right hand in the opening round.
1:40: Kabayel is delivering serious body shots in the second — and Zhang is returning fire to Kabayel’s flanks as well. Meanwhile, Otis is going from person to person begging for pizza, and makes his way over to Dettloff. Bill’s declaration to Otis: “Dude, I didn’t get this body by giving my food away to dogs.”
1:48: This has been one hell of a heavyweight scrap. “I don’t want to jinx it,” I say, “but this card is exceeding all expectations so far.” (Narrator: Raskin should have kept his mouth shut.)
1:51: Zhang drops Kabayel in the fifth round with a massive left hand — and Kabayel is lucky he stumbled backward and down to the canvas, so Zhang, who remained in pursuit, couldn’t land another punch. The undefeated German beats the count and seems OK, which is bad news for Zhang, who looks exhausted. His mouth is wide open, and his arms are at his sides. It’s not often you’d rather be the knockdown-ee than the knockdown-er, but in this case, I’d much rather be Kabayel.
1:55: Kabayel hurts Zhang with a brutal body punch in round 6, and referee Mark Lyson jumps in to rule a knockdown … but Zhang doesn’t quite go down, and now Lyson is in a tough spot. He’s separated the fighters and bought Zhang time, and there’s no undoing that. An innocent officiating mistake, but a bad one.
1:56: And an inconsequential one. Moments later, Kabayel sends Zhang to the floor with another hammer to the body, and the stamina-challenged Chinese giant can’t beat the count. It’s all over at 2:29 of the sixth. The parlay rolls on.
1:58: Oleksandr Usyk, the one and only actual heavyweight champion of the world, is seen in the ring strapping a stupid interim belt on Kabayel. Come on, Usyk. You’re better than that. Anyway, it’s worth marveling at the emergence of Kabayel. A little over a year ago, he wasn’t on anyone’s radar. Now he’s beaten Arslanbek Makhmudov, Frank Sanchez, and Zhilei Zhang back-to-back-to-back, all by knockout within seven rounds, and is a top-four contender to Usyk’s throne.
2:01: Bill, David, and I pass the time between fights throwing random favorite Seinfeld quotes around (while Nigel, not the Seinfeld super-fan we are, politely smiles). Turns out David does a strong Costanza impression. But there’s not a ton of time for us to kill quoting Costanza (or Homer Simpson, or Tommy from Goodfellas) because…
2:06: Israil Madrimov is making his ringwalk for his showdown with Vergil Ortiz Jnr, a fight that was originally slated for 1:40 p.m., so, gotta give ‘em credit, they’re keeping the show moving and are inching toward getting back on schedule.
2:13: Ortiz-Madrimov opening bell, we’re officially 33 minutes off schedule, not bad at all. My “I don’t want to jinx it” comment begins to bite me, as Madrimov is in extreme mover mode from the start and Ortiz is following him around without punching much.
2:20: The final guest, Jeff, arrives. As noted at the top of the diary, he’s at best a casual fight fan. Or perhaps you’d call him a lapsed fight fan, as he was into boxing as a teenager in the ‘80s, but not so much since. He has somewhere he needs to be in the early evening, so he’s just popping in for a fight or two and having a beer and a slice of pizza — like all of us, temporarily reclaiming his manhood before he returns home to his wife and children.
2:33: The conversation turns to Jeff’s boxing-watching peak and some of the Four Kings fights, which leads to Nigel telling tales of being at Hagler-Hearns and Leonard-Hagler in person. I will never tire of hearing Nigel recall how at the end of the first round of Hagler-Hearns, he found himself standing on his seat with no recollection of how he’d gotten there.
2:40: Madrimov’s movement has slowed a bit by the middle rounds and the action has gone from outright dull to halfway decent. I have Ortiz to win in my parlay, but regardless, we’re all rooting for Ortiz just because none of us are enjoying Madrimov’s style. Nigel recommends Ortiz get inside and punch Madrimov in the nuts to slow him down, figuring the point deduction will be worth it.
2:46: Ortiz is getting the job done without resorting to straying low, clearly hurting Madrimov two separate times in round nine with body shots. Between rounds, we’re all making fun of Oscar De La Hoya’s eyeglasses, which place him somewhere between a Zoolander villain and a Kardashian sister.
2:57: Madrimov gets a stern warning from referee McCann in round 12 for leading with his head, the third warning he’s received (each for a different type of foul), but McCann opts not to take a point this late in the fight. It shouldn’t matter anyway, as we all feel Ortiz did enough to win with a bit of room to spare. Nigel is the only one in the room formally keeping score, and he has it 117-112 for Ortiz.
3:02: The judges score 117-111 and 115-113 twice, all for Ortiz, and the parlay rolls on. All in all, an impressive win for the 26-year-old Ortiz. He just beat Madrimov slightly more convincingly than Terence Crawford did seven months earlier.
3:04: Dessert time! We’re busting open the vegan pie and cookies from Papa Ganache. The cookies are fine, if a bit heavy. But, wow — the apple pie. Unreal. Turns out butter is a non-essential pie ingredient.
And I hope endings are a non-essential running diary ingredient, because you’re not getting one today. The dramatic conclusion, a.k.a. “Part II,” will be coming to BoxingScene shortly…
Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with more than 25 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of CasinoReports and the author of 2014’s The Moneymaker Effect. He can be reached on X, BlueSky, or LinkedIn, or via email at RaskinBoxing@yahoo.com.
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