By Bernard Fernandez
Linda Peltz, J Russell Peltz’s wife of 42 years, said her husband has “been dropping hints for 15 years” about permanently relocating to Florida and doing whatever it is that so many septuagenarian East Coast snowbirds do when taking up residence in the land of sun and sand.
But while the legendary Philadelphia boxing promoter (pictured in his younger days), who celebrated his 50 years in the sport Friday night with a nine-bout card at the 2300 Arena in South Philly, might again be entertaining thoughts of retirement, he apparently is not prepared to fully turn himself over to a less stressful, boxing-free existence of shuffleboard and occasional excursions to the jai alai arena and greyhound track.
Oh, sure, the Peltzes will return to Florida in mid-November, as they routinely have in recent years, but the time Russell spends away from his hometown and the sport which he never quite seems to let go of, or it of him, is primarily for the purpose of recharging batteries that sometimes run down but are never completely sapped dry.
“He has another fight card on the 31[SUP]st[/SUP] of January at Parx (Casino and Racing, in Bensalem, Pa.),” Linda Peltz noted, a sure sign that Russell will again be returning to familiar turf like a swallow finding its way back to Capistrano.
But what about Russell’s increasingly frequent suggestions that he is finally prepared to whittle down his boxing duties, if not eliminate them altogether?
“It’s up to him,” Linda said. “I just want to see him happy. Whatever makes him happy makes me happy.”
The man himself certainly seemed content enough during an event that had been labeled as “Blood, Sweat & 50 Years,” the culmination of a week’s worth of kudos that included his ceremonial signing of the “Spectrum S,” the oversized letter that hung on the iconic South Philly sports and music venue until it was demolished in 2009. The space where the Spectrum, for which Peltz was director of boxing from 1972 to ’80, once stood is now a parking lot adjacent to Citizens Bank Park, home of baseball’s Philadelphia Phillies. Members of the Philadelphia City Council also presented a resolution honoring Peltz’s contribution to the city over the past half-century.
“I think everybody had a good time,” said Peltz, who did not address the near-capacity-crowd but was conspicuously visible in his front-row ringside seat. “It was a nice evening. I’m very honored and humbled by it.”
For the record, the main event was a six-round unanimous decision for 20-year-old junior welterweight Colombian Victor Padilla (6-0, 5 KOs), now living in Berlin, N.J., over Romain Tomas (8-3, 1 KO), a Frenchman now living in Brooklyn, N.Y. It marked the first time in Peltz’s five-decade career he had been involved in a card headlined by a six-rounder, but then the all the fighters who took their turn in the ring had to understand that their roles were in support of someone who might never have another night quite like this.
“It was a lot of stress putting this show together and keeping it together,” Peltz said. “We had nine competitive fights, and I’m glad about that. Honestly, I just want to manage and advise fighters in the future. Making matches is too hard today. If you knew what we had to go through, bailing one guy out of jail this week and having another guy pull out with some bogus illness …”
Peltz made his reputation by making competitive fights, not by feeding a procession of imported designated victims to house fighters with artificially inflated records, which makes him even more of an anachronism than he would be had he shown up for his golden anniversary in the polyester leisure suits he favored for a time in the 1970s. He said too many managers just want to pad their fighters’ records with setups on the way to undeserved big paydays, a trend which he said is even more insidious and difficult to eliminate now than it has been in the past.
The likelihood is that Peltz will eventually turn over even more of his business operation to Michelle Rosado, of Raging Babe Promotions, a protégé who said boxing in general, and specifically in and around Philadelphia, would suffer if her mentor holds fast to his intention to wash his hands of matchmaking. It was Rosado, better-versed in social media and other 21[SUP]st[/SUP] century marketing strategies than her old-school role model, who orchestrated most if not all of the golden anniversary festivities
“Matchmaking alone is like a full-time job,” Rosado said. “There’s an art to it. You really have to be crafty at it, and nobody is better at doing it than Russell. I tell him, `You just do the matchmaking, because you’re a genius at it, and I’ll do everything else.’”
Obviously, Peltz and Rosado will have to put their heads together to come up with a distribution of duties that can leave both parties satisfied.
“I can’t let him leave yet,” Rosado said of Peltz’s eyeing of any sort of exit. “I’m not ready for him to retire, I’m not ready for him to go to Florida. He’s still too good and still too sharp to give this up. Philly needs him. I need him. I’m not letting him go anywhere.”
Although there were many faces present that were or should have been familiar to knowledgable boxing people – among those in attendance were Bernard Hopkins, Teddy Atlas, WBC light heavyweight champion Oleksandr Gvozdyk (who takes on IBF titlist Artur Beterbiev in a unification showdown at the 2300 Arena on Oct. 18), Lou DiBella and Golden Boy president Eric Gomez – it was curious that the only fighters who had fought on Peltz shows were Hopkins (two bouts at the Blue Horizon early in B-Hop’s career), George Hill (now a ringside judge, but a onetime heavyweight who appeared on Peltz’s debut card on Sept. 30, 1969) and former IBF super welterweight champion Robert “Bam Bam” Hines. It would have been nice if some of Peltz’s most popular regulars, like “Joltin’” Jeff Chandler, Charles Brewer, “Rockin’” Rodney Moore, Stanley “Kitten” Hayward, Bobby “Boogaloo” Watts and Eugene “Cyclone” Hart had dropped by, but that might be a matter for another day.
In other bouts:
*Junior middleweights Isaiah Wise (7-2-2, 4 KOs), of North Philadelphia, and Roque Zapata (6-2-5), of Culpepper, Va., by way of his native Panama, fought to a six-round draw in a do-over of their Dec. 2, 2016, bout, which Zapata won on a four-round majority decision.
*Sydney Maccow (7-8, 3 KOs), a junior welter from Brooklyn, scored a six-round UD over North Philadelphia’s Marcel Rivers (7-2, 4 KOs), a fight in which both participants went down once.
*Lightweight Gerardo Martinez (5-1, 1 KO), of Coatesville, Pa., by way of Mexico, scored a five-round – yes, that’s right – unanimous decision over veteran journeyman Osnel Charles (13-20-1, 2 KOs), of Atlantic City, N.J.
*Welterweight Shinard Bunch (3-1, 3 KOs), of Trenton, N.J., took care of business quickly in scoring a first-round knockout of Baltimore’s Kevin Womack (9-19-3, 7 KOs).
*West Philly lightweight Shamar Fulton Banks (4-0-1, 3 KOs) also made it a short night in scoring a first-round stoppage of Leonardo Kenon (3-8, 1 KO), of Quincy, Fla.
*Sahret Delgado (8-0, 7 KOs), a Puerto Rican heavyweight now fighting out of Berlin, N.J., was obliged to go the four-round distance for the first time in winning a four-round UD over Joel Caudle (8-4-2, 5 KOs), of Raleigh, N.C. Their combined weight was 520.4 pounds.
*Lightweight Christopher Burgos (2-4-1, 1 KO) scored a four-round UD over Tyree Arnold (0-3) in an all- North Philly pairing.
*Seifullah Jihad Wise (4-7, 1 KO), a North Philly lightweight, came away with a four-round UD over Vinnie Denierio (3-7, 1 KO), of Elmira, N.Y.
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