July 2nd 2014.
In 1968 under the leadership of Jim Deskin, from Nevada, and Honorary Lifetime WBC President, Jose Sulaiman, the North American Boxing Federation was founded.
It’s one of the most important federations in boxing which is in charge of sanctioning professional boxing matches for: Canada, United States and Mexico.
The goals have always been to look for and discover great boxers throughout the North American Region, and hard work, which has developed a great regional Federation, that is now, one of the most important that have ever existed in professional boxing.
The first members of the NABF were: California, Mexico, and Nevada with Oregon and some time later Washington.
The first fight sanctioned by the NABF was the Leotis Martin and Sonny Liston bout on June 12th 1969. Martin was losing on points, but he threw a devastating punch to win the Title. However, he had to relinquish his championship after a few months, because it was detected that he suffered a detached retina in that fight.
Among the best NABF champions, we can point to hierarchy of brillance including: Muhammad Ali, Marco Antonio Barrera, Mike Ayala, Lucien Bute, Hector “Macho” Camacho, Donald Curry, George Foreman, Vernon Forrest, Ray Mancini, Terry Norris, Erik Morales, Ken Norton, Michael Nunn, Kelly Pavlik, Pernell Whitaker, Daniel Zaragoza, Brian Viloria, Nonito Donaire and Antonio Tarver….among many others!
Those who’ve led the NABF are : Bill Houston, Jim Deskin, Jose Sulaiman, Jimmy Rondeau, Robert Shields, Bob Turley, Bob Busse, Jack Davis, Jean-Guy Prescott, Bobby Lee, Sam Macias, Dick Cole, Mario Latraverse, Claude Jackson, Rex Walker, Joe Dwyer and now Duane Ford, who assumed the charge last year
As in September, I once again ran out of gas in the 10th & 11th championship rounds of October & November with this column, but I recovered to complete them and will unleash a few more flurries to close out the 12th and final round.
In the first week of October, Hassan N’Dam won a UD over Curtis Stevens in an eliminator for the right to challenge Jermaine Taylor who defeated aging Sam Soliman to regain the IBF Middleweight title. How Taylor even earned this title shot is another story altogether, but it is all irrelevant as he is now the champion. However he will not have too much time to savor his victory as he has assault and battery charges pending against him and an upcoming court fight that may turn out to be the toughest fight of his life, just when things started to look up for him in boxing, we wish him luck.
