THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

Big boxing card tonight on Showtime
By Don Steinberg 
FOR THE INQUIRER

www.philly.com/inquirer

     The heavyweight division, formerly dominated by big Americans, has been outsourced to other countries. Today's champs come from Ukraine and Kazakstan and Russia and Nigeria.
Joey Abell grew up playing football in Coon Rapids, Minn., and Brookings, S.D., before he became a professional boxer in 2005. He's been boarding international flights now that he's trying to make a living in the globalized heavyweight class. He flew to Sweden twice this year to score two quick knockouts, and this week he landed at a resort on tropical St. Lucia, where he will headline a boxing card to be televised at 11 tonight on Showtime.

For a while, the farthest Abell had traveled for a fight was to the Blue Horizon on North Broad Street in Philadelphia. There, he has fought eight times and become a sort of surrogate Rocky, a lefthanded heavyweight who fights with a big heart and heavy fists but not the world's most refined style. In 18 fights, he has 17 knockout wins and one knockout loss.

Veteran promoter and Blue Horizon matchmaker Don Elbaum, always on the make for a prospect, discovered Abell fighting at the Seven Clans Casino in Minnesota. And since 2005, he has been toting the 245-pound former all-conference defensive end from South Dakota State wherever the global market will support a good fight.

Elbaum has experience in this regard. In 1972, he flew a Detroit heavyweight named Al "Blue" Lewis to Dublin to fight Muhammad Ali.

So tonight, it's a rumble at the Beausejour Cricket Club on St. Lucia, a Caribbean island nation, where records indicate there have been only six professional boxing events since 1934.

"It's beautiful here," Abell said this week after spending a day at the resort. "But it's real muggy. I like the weather in Sweden better."

In a perfect world, Abell wouldn't have accepted his first high-profile match on two weeks' notice, as he did for this 10-round bout against Teke Oruh. Oruh, undefeated at 14-0, is a 250-pound Nigerian who has fought exclusively in the United States.

But Oruh's scheduled opponent, rising contender Chris Arreola, had to back out because of the death of a friend, and Elbaum was quick to get Abell the gig.

"It would have been good to have more time to prepare for a fight on TV like this," Abell said. "But I never really left the gym."

Abell has been working on his defense and preserving energy in the ring, a tactic that will come in handy if, for the first ever time in an Abell fight, no one gets knocked out.

"The main thing I'm learning is how to relax, so I can stay in the ring for however long it takes," Abell said.

Relaxing in St. Lucia certainly seems like the way to go.

Locals in Atlantic City. Four Philadelphia prospects will fill the undercard tomorrow night at the Borgata in Atlantic City on a card televised by HBO.

Demetrius Hopkins (27-0), a top 10 junior welterweight according to Ring magazine, fights the tough Enrique Colin (23-3-3), and junior welterweight Rock Allen (11-0) fights Braulio Lopez (6-5-1).

Exciting rookies Karl Dargan and Danny Garcia, both of whom were eliminated in late stages of qualifying for the 2008 Olympics, will make their pro debuts in separate bouts.

The televised main event is a super-featherweight title clash between undefeated Joan Guzman (27-0) and contender Humberto Soto (43-5). The 9:45 p.m. telecast will start with a rerun of the Miguel Cotto-Shane Mosley welterweight title fight.

Abell to make history
Posted on Tue, Jan. 23, 2007
Bernard Fernandez |
BOUT IN SWEDEN A TUNEUP FOR REMATCH WITH LYONS

     HEAVYWEIGHT prospect Joey "Minnesota Ice" Abell makes history of sorts on Saturday, when he appears on the first professional boxing card to be staged in Sweden in 37 years.
Abell (10-1, 10 KOs), who has fought six times at the Blue Horizon, takes on Argentina's Cesar Acevedo (6-7-2, 1 KO) in a scheduled four-rounder in Gothenburg, Sweden, for rookie promoter Robert Nordman, a Swede and former cruiserweight whose last five bouts in a 3-3-1 ring career were at the Blue.

The link between Abell and Nordman, aside from their multiple appearances at the historic fight club in North Philadelphia, is Don Elbaum, the veteran matchmaker who lives in Exton and advises both.

"It should be interesting," Abell, speaking last week from his home in suburban Minneapolis, said of his impending visit to the land of the Nobel Prize, Ingrid Bergman, Bjorn Borg, Volvo and little meatballs. "I'm looking forward to it."

Interestingly, Abell, who lives in the Upper Midwest, a region densely populated by persons of Scandinavian descent, says his ancestry is mostly Polish.

"They've been asking me if I have any Swedish blood," Abell said of inquiries by Gothenburg reporters into his ethnic background. "I said I don't think so, but my grandfather is looking into it."

But if Sweden can't claim kinship to him, at least Abell has been more or less adopted by Blue Horizon regulars, who don't lavish their affection on just anyone.

All of which makes Abell's Feb. 9 rematch with Aaron Lyons (5-0, 4 KOs) at the Blue even more compelling to him than his European adventure. Against Lyons, Abell will attempt to put an eraser to the only blemish on his record.

It was Lyons, from Hurricane Katrina-ravaged Gulfport, Miss., who stunned a pro-Abell crowd, not to mention Abell himself, by scoring a first-round technical knockout on Dec. 1.

A three-punch combination rocked Abell, who instinctively backed into a corner, when referee Hurley McCall leaped in and waved the fight off after an elapsed time of only 77 seconds.

"He landed some good punches," Abell said of Lyons. "I felt one more than the others. It was to the back of my head. But I've been hit with punches like that before, although, thankfully, not too often.

"I definitely think it was a premature stoppage. I think I should have been given more of an opportunity to fight my way out of trouble. It's been on my mind ever since that night."

But it was Lyons' actions after the fight ended that have lodged in Abell's throat like a chunk of tainted sturgeon.

"The way he was acting afterward, like I was nothing, I didn't appreciate that at all," Abell said. "It does make you want to go in there and make amends."

Lyons said wishing won't make it so for Abell, which is why he has no qualms about returning to Abell's quasi-home turf.

"He's so easy to beat," said Lyons, a diehard New Orleans Saints fan. "I know the same thing will happen again. What makes me mad up there is that the people don't want to give me my props. What are they going to say when I beat [Abell] again?"

Cauthen in paradise
Terrance Cauthen (32-3, 9 KOs) defends his newly won USBA junior middleweight championship against Raul Frank (27-5-3, 13 KOs) Thursday night in the main event at the Paradise Theater in the Bronx, N.Y.

Cauthen, the Trenton, N.J., southpaw who was a bronze medalist at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, said he sees this bout as another step in his progression toward a shot at a world title.

"Frank is a gamer. He's been around for a while now and has a good reputation," said Cauthen, 30, now ranked No. 7 by the IBF and No. 14 by the WBA. "I'm very excited. This is another chance for me to move on to bigger fights, bigger paydays, bigger everything."

Speaking of bigger everything, Cauthen said he is comfortable fighting at 154 pounds after years of trying to starve himself down to the junior welterweight limit of 140.

"At first, the division seemed a little big to me, but I'm more accustomed to the weight and have grown into it," Cauthen said. "I also think the added weight has made me a bigger and more effective puncher."

Cauthen's fleshed-out body, his stylistic revisions and a more positive mental outlook have served to reinvigorate him.

"I'm like a newborn," he declared. "My mind is still open. I'm willing to soak up all the knowledge I can."


Punch lines
Randy Griffin (24-1-2, 12 KOs), the Northeast Philly middleweight who now lives in and fights out of Atlanta, is now the WBA's No. 1-ranked 160-pounder. Griffin, 30, says he'd like to mix it up with 42-year-old Bernard "The Executioner" Hopkins (47-4-1, 32 KOs), the longtime former middleweight champ and Philadelphia icon who has indicated he is interested in coming out of retirement. Hopkins, however, is angling for a rematch with Roy Jones Jr. (50-4, 38 KOs), who outpointed him in 1993 . . . Camden's Prince Badi Ajamu (26-3-1, 15 KOs) so battered 39-year-old former contender Craig Cummings (53-7-1, 43 KOs) that he did not come out for the third round of a scheduled 12-rounder Friday night in Olive Branch, Miss. *

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