Chill Out! Pro Boxing Returns To Anchorage Alaska After 13 Years
By Robert Brizel, Head RCM Boxing Correspondent
Plenty of people in Alaska fish for a living or work on oil rigs, with the occasional prospector looking for gold. Summertime is the best time to stop bears in tourist visits to the national parks. In January 2014, super middleweights Tim Field of Noorvik, Alaska, and Fathlum Zhuta of Struga, Macadonia will slug it out with gusto.
Wait a minute……………professional boxing in Alaska?
Strangely, the BoxRec advertisements appearing on both Fields and Zhuta’s fight records pages includes a color ad for tourism in the Hawaiian Islands Kauai, Oahu, Maui and The Big Island, stating ‘Living in the Moment in the Hawaiian Islands’, and free cell phones from A T & T with a two year agreement voice and data plans or Mobile Share plans required while supplies last.
Undoubtedly, one place most native Alaskans as well as other Americans would prefer to be in in Hawaii over Alaska, especially during the recent Arctic wave of wind chill snowy weather sweeping over the Continental United States turning Christmas into a sort of forever Ice Age oblivion. For those in Alaska, truth be told, a free cell phone in the middle of dog sled country is probably a handy item to have if your cell phone doesn’t freeze out in sub zero degree temperatures.
Alaska has had only one boxing card in the past 17 years. In that card in 2001 at Sullivan Arena in Anckorage, there were four bouts. Heavyweights Jason Nicholson and Lorenzo Boyd fought to a No-Contest in four rounds of a scheduled eight. Light heavyweight Uriah Grant of Jamaica, who once beat Thomas Hearns, stopped Freddie Guzman of San Antonio, Texas in three rounds. French welterweight kick boxer Valerie Henin, defended her WIBF Women’s International Boxing Federation Welterweight title by 10 round majority draw over Patricia Demick of Chile. Female light welterweight Marischa Sjauw of the Netherlands won an eight rounder over Kelly Ann Whaley of Cedah City, Utah. In May 2004, Sjauw was unsuccessful in her final pro bout in Germany, getting stopped in her second attempt at a women’s WIBF International title.
In the lone bout fought in Alaska in 1997, ‘The Alaskan Assassin’ the late heavyweight southpaw Cody Koch of Anchorage, knocked out Mark Young of North Carolina. Both heavyweights were subsequently knocked out by Wladimir Klitschko in Germany. Koch was knocked out in the fouruth round of a WBC International Heavyweight title bout by Klitschko in his final professional bout in 1998. Young got beaten by many top fighters at the end of his career, getting stopped by such names as Iron Mike Tyson, Shannon Briggs, Zeljko Mavrovic, Jeremy Williams, Hasim Rahman. George Kandelaki, Greg Page, Alex Stewart, Glenn McCrory, Alex stewart, Jose Ribalta and George Foreman, Gary Mason, Bernard Benton and Bert Cooper in addition to Klitschko.
The big question was: why were all of these fighters fighting in the strange locale of Alaska in the first place? Well, if you go to the BoxRec archives at
you will discover five pages of pro bouts in Alaska. Most cards were held in Anchorage, but also rarely in Juneau, Fairbanks, Nome, Ketchikan, Rampart and Port Valdez. Alaska has an amazing history of boxing going back to July 1898, when Australian featherweight Young Pluto (who would fight Hall of Fame World Featherweight champion George Dixon for the World Featherweight title in January 1899 in New York City and get knocked out in the tenth round) knocked out Kid Williams of Alaska in the second round. Kid Pluto had gone to the Alaskan Yukon during the Gold Rush of July 1897.
Every now and then at the press tables at boxing events, this reporter would overhear other sports writers lament how Alaska never had boxing anymore, so it appeared an interesting challenge to follow up when the Alaskan card suddenly appeared on the BoxRec out of geographical sync under the Northeastern boxing schedule, a location not close to Russia. It was the miscategorization of the pending boxing event which got my attention.
By strange coincidence, this reporter remembers what was likely the last televised boxing card held in Alaska. It occurred on CBS television on February 12, 1983, at Bunker Fieldhouse in Anchorage, when future Hall of Famer Hector Macho Camacho knocked out Johnny Montes in the first round of their lightweight bout, and future IBF Lightweight champion Harry Arroyo won a ten round decision over the well-travelled Kelvin Lampkin as part of a seven bout card.
The CBS bout, the only bout of its kind telecast from Alaska, called by Tim Ryan and the late Bill Clancy, refereed by the late Davey Pearl of Las Vegas, can be found on YouTube at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3tWYQIe-TM
This was the first time Montes had been knocked out. Montes was stopped only twice in his 49 bout career, and perhaps the strange locale of Alaska had thrown off his momentum. After all these years, it’s hard to say, as neither fighter had any kind of an edge fighting in Anchorage, though Montes never got a world title shot in his 15 year career. Camacho sneakily held the back of Montes’ head with his right glove and pulled him down, then hooked with a short power left hook underneath. Bill Clancy noted “Montes never saw the punch coming.” There was more commentary. “There is chaos in the ring, with the victorious Hector Camacho scoring a starting first round knockout!” noted Tim Ryan.
There was a tender on camera moment where Camacho was hugged by his mother Maria. “How ‘bout another fight in Alaska?” questioned Ryan. “Oh beautiful. Make love! Right quick! Right quick!” answered Camacho. “Are you planning on entering the Iditarod Dog sled race?” asked Ryan of a stupefied Camacho at some a ridiculous question in network television. “Oh man! I should get that vacation now. Yeah! All right vacation!” answered Camacho in good humor. “All right, Hector Macho Camacho wants to enter The Iditarod, that’ll be covered here on CBS in a couple weeks, and we thank you for another outstanding display, and congratulations to everybody concerned here in Alaska, you put on a great show for us here at Fort Richardson here in Anchorage. And now, once again, let’s return to our studios in New York and Brent Musberger.”
Ironically, Lampkin would go on to lose a 15 rounder for the IBF World Lightweight title to Min-Keun Oh in Seoul, South Korea in 1984. Noted Michigan State Light Heavyweight Mickey Goodwin also appeared on this card, knocking out Ronnie Brown in the third round. Goodwin went a most respectable 40-2-1 with 28 knockouts between 1977 and 1984, but never got an American or world title shot.
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