A night of high-profile sparring turned into something resembling Fight Club. What went wrong?

The Guardian

a day ago

The videos are troubling. They've made their way online through social media and other postings.
A club fighter, Jacob Solis, is in the ring with a world-class fighter named Marquis Taylor. Both men are wearing headgear. Solis is under the impression that this is a sparring session. Taylor has been incentivized to treat the encounter as something more.
Solis is staggered by a roundhouse right to the side of his head. Lurching forward, defenseless, he's punched hard again; this time by an illegal blow to the back of his head. As he slumps forward, a third roundhouse right – also to the back of his head – drives him to the canvas. There's no referee. No one helps Solis as he struggles to rise and staggers toward a corner.
The overflow crowd loves it. The blow-by-blow commentator calling the livestream, watched by thousands of viewers, sounds enthralled.
Welcome to Sparring Club.
Sparring Club is the creation of BoxRaw, a British company that sells men's and women's apparel and combat sports equipment. Sparring Club is important branding for BoxRaw. Its website features a full-screen video that shows two men in a boxing ring with the superimposed legend: 'SPARRING CLUB: THIS IS KILL OR BE KILLED.'
Recently, BoxRaw entered into a partnership with The Ring, which is owned by Turki al-Sheikh, the most powerful force in boxing.
On 11 July, BoxRaw and The Ring promoted a Sparring Club event at the Greenpoint Terminal Warehouse in Brooklyn. Posts on social media advertised the date, time and site, promised free entry for fans, and described the event as follows: 'Live Pro Sparring from New York's Top Prospects … Raw, Handpicked, Dog Eat Dog … Two fighters competing will be selected to fight on the Canelo vs Crawford undercard.'
The social media posts served the dual purpose of attracting fans and recruiting fighters. A post by trainer Eric Kelly (who served as BoxRaw's point person on the ground on the night of the event) declared, 'Slots is slimming up. There's only a few slots left. I'm only looking for killers! Professional. Who man enough to hop in? You say you can fight right? Let me know!'
A New York trainer who was at the event later told the Guardian, 'Eric Kelly called and told me he was hosting a sparring session that was sponsored by BoxRaw and The Ring and I should tell any pros I have in the gym that it's a big opportunity. If they look good, maybe they can get a spot on the Canelo-Crawford show. So right there; that tells you it won't really be sparring. It's more like a tryout to be on a team. You want to make an impression and leave a mark. And you do that by knocking the other guy out.'
On 14 June, USA Boxing, which oversees amateur boxing in the United States, sent a memorandum to its members in the New York metropolitan area. The memo noted that USA Boxing had received reports of 'an unsanctioned boxing event' titled 'Sparring Club Presents: Dog City, NYC' and reminded members that:
(1) 'Sparring as entertainment, which includes sparring events of any capacity, is prohibited as outlined in the USA Boxing Sanction Manual.'
(2) 'A USA Boxing athlete member shall not box in any boxing competition that is not sanctioned under USA Boxing.'
(3) 'Any boxer, coach or official who participates in an unsanctioned or unregulated combat sport is ineligible to participate in competition as an athlete or non-athlete member of USA Boxing.'
The memorandum closed with the declaration, 'USA Boxing takes the participation in unsanctioned events very seriously, as these events may jeopardize one's standing with USA Boxing while placing innocent lives at risk.'
A 10 July email to all USA Boxing members titled 'Important Notice: Participation in Unsanctioned Dog City Sparring Event' elaborated on that warning and read in part: 'It has come to our attention that an unsanctioned sparring event operating under the name 'Dog City' is circulating within our boxing community. We must strongly advise all USA Boxing members not to participate in this event or any similar activity that is not sanctioned by USA Boxing. Unsanctioned events do not carry the required safety protocols, oversight, or insurance coverage that protect our athletes, coaches, and officials. These events compromise the standards we uphold as the National Governing Body of Olympic-style amateur boxing in the United States.'
Faced with this obstacle, BoxRaw declared that all of the event participants would either be professionals or have the intention to turn pro and would never fight as an amateur again. That solved one regulatory issue but led to another.
All professional boxing activity in the State of New York is subject to regulation by the New York State Athletic Commission. More specifically, the New York General Business Law states, 'The conduct of combative sports outside the supervision of the commission or an authorized sanctioning entity is prohibited.'
The NYSAC Rules and Regulations as they relate to professional fights require:
(1) Pre-fight medical examinations for all combatants.
(2) At least one commission-designated doctor and at least one ambulance with medical personnel consisting of at least one paramedic with appropriate resuscitation equipment to be continuously present at ringside.
(3) A post-fight medical evaluation of each combatant by an on-site commission-designated physician immediately following each match.
Additionally, promoters are required to provide medical insurance for both amateur and professional combat sports events.
Sparring Club took the position that it was not subject to these requirements since its event would consist of 'sparring' rather than actual fights. But the General Business Law includes 'sparring' as a regulated combat sport that must be conducted under the supervision of the commission, albeit with fewer requirements. And the law specifically requires that any entity involved in the conduct of professional sparring first procure a license from the commission. For example, gyms where fighters train are required to have a sparring license.
BoxRaw submitted an application for a sparring license to the New York State Athletic Commission well in advance. But some of material necessary to finalize the application wasn't submitted until the day of the event, adding an element of uncertainty to the proceedings.
The event itself was a huge draw. In addition to the in-ring activity, fans were drawn to the Greenpoint Terminal Warehouse by the promise of free pizza, ice cream, and tickets to the following night's fights at Louis Armstrong Stadium which would include Edgar Berlanga v Hamzah Sheeraz and Shakur Stevenson v William Zepeda. One boxing veteran recounts, 'I was shocked when we got to the terminal. There was a line several blocks long of people waiting to get in. And when we got inside, the place was packed.'
Inside the terminal warehouse, the atmosphere was festive. Turki al-Sheikh was there with promoter Eddie Hearn and Ring Magazine CEO Rick Reeno, who is among Sheikh's most trusted boxing advisors. Hearn left early to attend the fight between Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano at Madison Square Garden. His companions stayed a bit longer.
There was a lot of security outside the ring. Inside the ropes, security was lax.
Trainer Andre Rozier looks back on the event and says, 'It was something new and different. They had, I think it was 26 sparring sessions. Guys were supposed to go three two-minute rounds with 16-ounce gloves. I had six guys there.'
Calvin Ford, the trainer who guided Gervonta Davis to stardom, arrived with a van full of fighters from the Washington DC area.
There were no women on the card.
'There were a lot of fights or sparring or whatever you want to call it,' says a New York trainer who was at the event. 'Some of it was sparring. And some of it was fighting. One problem was, some guys were there to spar and didn't know the guy they were in with was there to fight. And the matchmaking was set up wrong. There was a lot of mismatches. Jacob should never have fought the guy he was in with. Kurt Scoby was in with a guy who had, maybe, 10 amateur fights. I talked one of my fighters out of it when we got there.'
The event was streamed live by The Ring. Some combatants had cornermen. Others didn't. Eric Kelly served as timekeeper and called the action for fans inside the terminal warehouse.
During some of the early fights, a man wearing a blue T-shirt and light-colored slacks was in the ring and told the fighters to break a few times.
'But he wasn't really refereeing,' a member of the on-site production team recalls. 'Just keeping the action going. Then someone decided that having him in the ring made it look too much like fights – which they weren't allowed to do – so they took him out.'
In theory, two slots on the Canelo-Crawford undercard were up for grabs.
Kurt Scoby is a quality fighter; a puncher with 15 knockouts and 17 wins in 18 pro bouts. He was matched against Mike Austin, a fighter who had yet to have a professional fight. Scoby knocked Austin down hard. But when Austin rose, Scoby backed off and didn't press his advantage. That was the right thing to do.
Other 'sparring' was fought to the finish.
James Yarborough from Brooklyn has never had a pro fight. BoxRec.com lists his amateur record as 0-and-1 (the loss being a walkover when he was unable to compete in a scheduled bout). Josh Popper used to spar with Yarborough and was the beneficiary of that walkover.
'I know James,' Popper says. 'He's a nice guy. But I've never seen him win a fight.'
Yarborough was matched against a professional from Baltimore named Ehijele Ubuane, a relative novice with modest skills who is trained by Ford. The first two rounds might have been sparring. Round three was a fight with Yarborough being pummeled and Ubuane's corner urging him on, exultant when the fight was stopped.
'It was fun,' Rozier says. 'The fighters enjoyed it. The crowd enjoyed it. People had a good time.'
Jacob Solis didn't have a good time.
Marquis Taylor was born, raised, and lives in Texas. He's 31 years old and has been fighting professionally for 12 years. His record stands at 18-1-2 and he's ranked as the No 13 middleweight in the world by the World Boxing Council.
Solis, age 33, has been fighting for 19 months and has accumulated a 7-0-1 ledger against fighters who are opponents for opponents. The seven men he beat have a composite ring record of two wins against 31 losses with 22 'KOs by' in their most recent 33 outings.
Think of Taylor and Solis in terms of the difference between a ranked football team from a Power Five conference and a team from the lower echelons of the Ivy League. Wins and losses don't tell the story of the difference between them.
Bobby Harrison, Taylor's manager, told the Guardian, 'I wasn't there. Marquis saw something about it on Instagram; that Turki was giving away opportunities to fight on the Canelo-Crawford undercard. I didn't even know he was going. He jumped on a plane with his father, who's his trainer, got there, set his bag down, and went almost directly into the ring.'
Solis's participation was also arranged without input from his manager. A member of Jacob's team says that Pardeep Singh, a brand director and production director for BoxRaw, contacted Solis directly to make the fight.
Solis went to the Greenpoint Terminal Warehouse expecting a sparring session with an equivalent-level fighter. Late in the afternoon, he learned who he'd be in the ring with.
'Two young women were making the matchups based on approximate weight,' a friend of Solis's says. 'But there was no weigh-in. There wasn't any medical examination either.'
Nor was there a third man in the ring for the Taylor-Solis encounter.
'It wasn't sparring,' a trainer who was onsite recalls. 'Sometimes, when a fighter is preparing for a fight, you have hard sparring that feels like fighting. But if a fighter is hurt, the guy who hurt him backs off. That's what Kurt Scoby did with his guy. Taylor didn't.'
Wade Plemons was the lead commentator for The Ring's video stream. An excerpt from that stream has been posted on YouTube with the title 'INSANE Sparring in Brooklyn! BOXRAW x The Ring Sparring Club.' The Solis knockout segment starts at the 5:06 mark of that excerpt.
'Look at that left hook,' Plemons shouts. 'It's all Taylor on offense right now. A right hand. Ooooooh! Oh, my goodness. That right there, folks; it's going to be the end of this sparring session.'
As Solis staggers to his feet and wobbles to a corner with no assistance of any kind, a voice is heard shouting in the background, 'Get the fuck in the ring. Why y'all ain't getting in the ring!'
Had the session been a properly regulated fight, Taylor would likely have been disqualified for deliberate flagrant fouls.
Solis received no medical attention after he was knocked out.
'There was a woman walking around with 'EMT' on her shirt,' an acquaintance of Solis says. 'But when Jacob went down, we couldn't find her. He went back to the dressing room. No one came back to ask if he was OK. He got dressed, got in an Uber with a friend, and went home.'
Meanwhile, after Taylor knocked Solis out, Taylor went to the ropes, looked out at the crowd, and shouted, 'Where you at, Turki? Where you at? I'm right here. I'm the one you've been looking for, baby.'
Bobby Harrison defends his fighter's conduct, citing the promise that two fighters who participated in the event would be selected to fight on the Canelo-Crawford undercard.
'This was the opportunity of a lifetime for Marquis,' Harrison says. 'No one will fight him. He hasn't lost in 10 years. He's a high-risk, low-reward opponent. He has this great opportunity in front of Turki al-Sheikh to put himself on the biggest card in a decade and he gave it everything. If you are going to create a winner-takes-all gladiator contest, then I suggest you have someone in the ring with those guys to ensure their safety as they are all fighting for a life-changing opportunity.'
Solis could be forgiven if he has a different point of view. He was unprotected before, during and after his Sparring Club ring encounter. A neurologist he saw several days later confirmed that he had suffered a concussion. A 25 July fight that Jacob had scheduled for Atlantic City was canceled. It's unclear when he'll be medically cleared to fight again.
Old-time boxing fans talk fondly about the 'Philly gym wars' of the past. But those fabled sparring sessions in Philadelphia gyms were waged largely between evenly matched fighters. There's no honor in a world-ranked fighter beating up a novice.
And consider the possible consequences. Suppose Solis had suffered a brain bleed or, worse, wound up in a coma. The potential financial liability incurred by BoxRaw's Sparring Club would have been enormous. And the toll in human suffering would have been greater.
Josh Popper, a close friend of Solis, was invited to participate in the Sparring Club event but chose not to attend.
'I don't have much to say about it because I wasn't there,' Popper told the Guardian. 'But I will say that, in sparring, you're not looking for knockouts. There's different levels of sparring. Sometimes there's an understanding that you'll be going hard. Sometimes it's about timing and working on things you're trying to develop. And you might have a one-punch flash knockout. Those things happen. That's just the way it is. But this wasn't a one-punch flash knockout. Jacob went there with the intention of sparring. The other guy? You tell me.'
Several days after the Sparring Club event, Samantha McEachin, counsel for the New York State Athletic Commission, sent an inquiry letter to Pardeep Singh, asking inter alia for a list of participants, injuries and all available videos of the action. Singh did not respond to two requests from the Guardian for an interview to discuss the event.
The NYSAC might determine that no rules, regulations or statutes were broken. Alternatively, it could issue fines, suspend or revoke licenses, or refer the matter to the New York State Attorney General for civil proceedings.
The event was poorly organized from a safety point of view. There were instances where the combatants were mismatched. There was no third man in the ring to properly protect either participant. Common-sense medical safeguards were non-existent. The key legal issue will be where the commission draws the line between sparring and fighting.
Meanwhile, after the event, BoxRaw posted numerous 'Sparring Club' clips on social media.
'Respect isn't given,' the narrator of one clip says. 'It's earned in blood.'
On 30 July, Box Raw posted an invitation for 'the Middle East's top prospects' to appear at a new Sparring Club event to be held in Riyadh on 15 August with the lure of 'food, drinks, chaos' and the promise that '1 fighter will be scouted for a Ring Magazine undercard.'
'No crown without blood,' the post pledged.
And on 30 July, Bobby Harrison told the Guardian, 'We just got an offer for Marquis to fight in Las Vegas during fight week for Canelo-Crawford. The details haven't been worked out yet, but I think it will happen.'
Thomas Hauser's email address is [e-mail]. His next book – The Most Honest Sport: Two More Years Inside Boxing – will be published this month and is available for preorder. In 2019, Hauser was selected for boxing's highest honor - induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.