Boxing Stung by Arizona Law

"Arizona is a state steeped in boxing tradition. Native son Louie Espinoza was the first pugilist to reach stardom when he took the WBA super bantamweight crown in July of 1987. Almost six years later, Arizonan Michael Carbajal was the first junior flyweight in history to earn a million dollars for his groundbreaking pay-per-view performance against Humberto Gonzalez. In June of 2000, 14,870 fans packed the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix to watch Julio Cesar Chavez fight Kostya Tszyu.

However, recent events have caused all eyes on the state to venture from the square ring to the political arena. Turn on your local station, CNN, or even Fox News, and the topic on everyone’s tongues has echoed similarly from the Grand Canyon to Capitol Hill; Governor Jan Brewer’s signing of Arizona Senate Bill 1070 into law has been one of the most polarizing issues in years...

The announcement caught many off-guard, especially coming off the heels of WBC president Jose Sulaiman’s decreeing his Mexico City-based organization’s boycott of the state. The statement reads, “[We] will not authorize Mexican boxers to leave the country to fight professionally in Arizona, United States, due to the shameful, inhumane, and discriminatory anti-immigration law, which is no other thing than a flagrant violation to the basic principles of dignity and equality between races.”...

“At first I was excited when they announced the fight, but once I thought about it, my family and friends came to mind,” shared Jose Jr. “I’m really against this law. I think it’s wrong that you could get pulled over for the wrong reasons. I’m Hispanic; my mother and little brother are Hispanic, and I have friends who are Hispanic. Besides, with all the protests going on, I don’t know who would want to go to the fight.”...(READ MORE)