Kudos to Smithville promoter Carla Hill, who teamed with New York promoter/matchmaker Sal Musumeci for a terrific boxing card last night at Resorts Casino Hotel.
Hill's first venture into promoting featured five entertaining fights, topped by an exciting main event that saw Maurice Harris retain his USBA heavyweight title via a 12th-round TKO over former Boston College DE Derric Rossy.
All three Atlantic City fighters - bantamweight Qa'id Muhammad, middleweight Isiah Seldon and light-heavyweight Lavarn Harvell - stepped it up a notch and prevailed against tougher opposition.
It was especially good to see Muhammad (6-0, 5 KOs 0 in the ring again after a 2-year layoff. He looked sharp in his 4-round unanimous decision over Jose Rivera. (3-3-2)Â Hopefully, he'll be back in the ring rather soon.
Seldon (5-0, 2 KOs), son of former heavyweight champion Bruce Seldon, continued his steady progress with a 4-round unanimous decision over Artie Bembury (3-5). Seldon has shown marked improvement, considering he had no amateur background.
Harvell (8-0, 3 KOs) had his best win with a 4-round split decision over Hamid Abdul Mateen (2-2). Harvell showed that he can handle tougher foes by prevailing in the most entertaining fight of the night.
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Before the fight, promoter Alfredo Marchio and trainer Pat Doran approached me with an intriguing way to end some of the mismatches you see on undercards.
They want to attempt to institute a winner-take-all format for a card, where the winner gets 100 percent of the purse and the loser walks away with zilch. In their minds, it would prevent overmatched fighters from just showing up to make a few hundred bucks.
Sounds like an interesting idea.
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