Boxing is not everyone’s cup of tea. All that sweat and blood and raw violence can turn the stomach of the squeamish. To sit ringside is to risk getting sprayed by bodily fluids. That’s where you will find me Saturday night, when local boxer Lamont Peterson tries to knock off champ Amir Khan. Back in the day, prizefighters from the District were feared throughout the land. We think of Sugar Ray Leonard as a local, though he hailed from Camp Springs, Md. He was one of many.
“D.C. boxers always had the respect of New York, Philadelphia and Jersey,” boxing great Bernard Hopkins told a press conference Wednesday at the Wilson Building. “For years it’s been missing. D.C. is a hot spot.”
It’s going to be a hot scene at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center on Saturday night. Billed as the Capital Showdown, the showcase will feature seven under card fights and the main event, Khan versus Peterson, for the super lightweight championship of the world. HBO will televise it, making it a huge coup for the District.
Khan is a Brit who showed up in the capital with “Khan’s Army” of noisy hangers-on. He’s favored to keep his belt against Peterson. If you love a hard-luck story, you won’t find a more compelling one than Lamont and his brother, Anthony. Homeless and parentless at 8 on the streets of D.C., they found a home in the ring at Bald Eagle Recreation Center, hard by the city’s border with Prince George’s County. They are authentic street fighters, with a chance to make it big.
Behind the two local boxers and the city’s big boxing comeback, there are two unsung heroes.
Lamont was 11 when a relative took the brothers to a boxing gym and introduced them to Barry Hunter, a legend among boxing teachers.
“He saw we weren’t eating,” Lamont told me back in 2007. Said Anthony: “You could see where I was headed if I didn’t hook up with Barry.”
Hunter coached the Petersons to Golden Glove champions and made successful prizefighters of both. “Now I’m teaching them patience,” he told me Thursday. “Boxing is not just about brute strength; it takes intelligence in the ring to be a champ.”
It took an attorney named Jeff Fried to bring this major match to D.C. Mayor Vince Gray pointed to Fried on Thursday and said: “This man has done so much for the District of Columbia.”
A Brooklyn boy, Fried helped turn Riddick Bowe from a loser to heavyweight champ in 1992. He stayed in the boxing game and set his sights on making Washington a boxing capital, once again. He watched the Lamont Brothers progress, bonded with Hunter and used his connections, deep and wide, to bring the Khan-Peterson promoter together with HBO in the District.
“Jeff promised he would make a championship fight happen here,” said Events DC President Greg O’Dell. “He did.”
“I insisted and guaranteed a successful event,” he told me.
With a bit of luck, so it shall be.
Harry Jaffe’s column appears on Tuesday and Friday. He can be contacted at [email protected].
