By Brent Matteo Alderson 

Boxing is back in Inglewood. Throughout the eighties and nineties, Forum Boxing kept the boxing circuit alive in Southern California and introduced the fight-game to a number of stars such as Marco Antonio Barrera, Juan Manuel Marquez, and Mark "Too Sharp" Johnson and provided Los Angeles with some legendary bouts like the Banke-Zaragoza wars, Gonzalez-Sorjaturong, and McKinney-Barrera. 

After the Staples Center opened and became the new home of the Los Angeles Lakers, the Forum’s tenure as a major sports arena subsided and Forum Boxing stopped promoting fights on a regular basis and eventually disbanded. The end of their Budweiser boxing series, which developed new talent and provided opportunities for local fighters, severely weakened the sport in the Los Angeles area. 

Today Thompson Boxing is picking up the slack and is regularly putting on solid boxing cards in the Inland Empire and Roy Englebrecht continues to have success in Orange County with his shows that regularly sell out at the Irvine Marriot. 

Still on a weekday afternoon with traffic, those venues are at least two hours away from downtown Los Angeles so its good for the Southern California boxing scene that Art of Boxing Promotions is establishing a regular boxing series that could help revive professional boxing in the area.  Kahren Harutyunyan’s company has already successfully promoted a number of events in the San FernandoValley area and is putting on an excellent card this Saturday at the Hollywood Park Casino which is about 10 minutes away from where the Forum boxing shows used to take place. 

The card features a solid bout between Roman Karmazin 36-3-1 (23KOs), the man that was avoided by Oscar De La Hoya at the turn of the millennium and Bronco McKart 51-8-1 (31KOs), a former WBO champion that has tangled with some of the best fighters in the sport.  McKart is on the downside of his career, but he’s still hovering around the top twenty and it usually takes a very good fighter to beat him.  In his most recent start last March, he had a draw with Raul Marquez.  The fight also entails world title implications since it’s for the NABF as well as the IBF Intercontinental regional titles.

The card also features the undefeated Vitality Demyanenko from Kazakhstan, the WBA’s ninth ranked welterweight contender and son of 1980 Silver Medalist Viktor Demyanenko, as well as a number of other competitive matches.

BoxingScene.com spoke with Kahren via telephone, “This is a really good card. Vitality Demyanenko is one of the top prospects in the eastern-Europe-Central Asian region and Medina is a good fighter and there are two belts on the line between McKart and Karmazin, and the winner is going to get a title shot.  This is just really a good card and I hope the boxing community supports it.”  The first bout begins at 6:00PM and tickets start at 50$.      

Notes:

For tickets for the event call (818) 749-1571

In all I attended around twelve Forum Boxing cards in the 90s.  Two of the best fights I ever saw live were McKinney-Barrera, the inaugural HBO After Dark and Humberto Gonzalez’s epic bout with Sorjaturong which was very similar to his first fight with Michael Carbajal.  I just enjoyed going to watch live boxing locally and was disappointed when Laker’s owner Jerry Buss abandoned the boxing game. 

I’ve been fortunate to see some great fights.  I went to the first Morales-Barrera, but regrettably I missed the first Corrales-Castillo fight.  A number of friends and I had planned on attending a fight that spring and chose the ESPN pay per view card.  It was a gamble, but Kermit Cintron was undefeated at the time and I thought his bout with Margarito was going to be a war.  Plus Mosley was on the card along with a good heavyweight scrap between McCline and Brock.  Also Juan Diaz had originally been scheduled to fight that night.  Thus some friends and I chose the ESPN card and missed one of the ten greatest fights in the history of the sport.  I can see making it number one, but I think it's missing the social importance necessary to elevate it to that lofty position.  It was a great fight, but the world wasn’t waiting for the bout's outcome like it did with Jack Johnson-James Jeffries, Ali-Frazier, or Louis-Schmeling.     

Brent Matteo Alderson, a graduate of UCLA, has been part of the staff at BoxingScene.com since 2004. Alderson's published work has appeared in publications such as Ring Magazine, KO, World Boxing, Boxing 2008, and Latin Boxing Magazine. Alderson has also been featured on the ESPN Classic television program “Who’s Number One?”  Please e-mail any comments to BoxingAficionado@aol.com