Lev Jackson had been scheduled to fight Mathusan Mahindas in a junior welterweight bout in Toronto tomorrow. Jackson is now off the card and Mahindas is slated to fight Viacheslav Shulevskyi. A week and a half ago, Jackson told The Jewish Boxing Blog that the fight was up in the air. He had said that he felt “chunky” weighing 138 pounds for his last fight, so it was surprising to see the fight with Mahindas scheduled for junior welterweight. The cancellation was surely disappointing for Jackson, who had his heart set on this matchup. Hopefully, Jackson will get a fight soon ..read more

A writer once dubbed Willie Jackson "possibly the best club fighter of this or any other century." It was actually an unfair declaration. More than a club fighter, Jackson developed into one of the best boxers in the featherweight and lightweight divisions in the world during the late 1910s and early 1920s. Oscar Tobinsky was born in New York, New York on July 11, 1897 (see notes). The oldest of Samuel and Ester's seven children, Oscar spent his formative years in the Lower East Side before the family moved to the Bronx. His parents had immigrated to the United States from the Pale of Se ..read more

Former world champion Hagar Finer is scheduled to box in an exhibition as part of a Gloves and Doves show on May 9 at the Camden Boxing Club in London, England. Finer held the WIBF super flyweight world title from 2007-2008 and then captured the WIBF bantamweight world title in 2009. After four successful defenses, she retired in 2012. Finer has made Evgheni Boico's list of the top five Jewish Israeli boxers of all-time and Malissa Smith's list of the top 5 Jewish female boxers in history. The 39 year old currently runs the Finer Boxing and Martial Arts Club in Tel Aviv and has staged numerou ..read more

Lev Jackson is scheduled to fight Mathusan Mahindas on April 21 at the Rebel Entertainment Complex in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in a junior welterweight contest. The show is promoted by Lee Baxter, who was the promoter for Jackson's debut in 2019. Jackson, a 31 year old from Richmond in British Columbia, comes in with a record of 3-1-1 with one KO and one no contest. He acknowledges that Mahindas, who is 6-0-1 with 2 KOs, will be the hometown favorite in the fight. Mahindas, a 28 year old from Scarborough, located on the outskirts of Toronto, will make his fifth appearance in a Toronto-area r ..read more

Soldier Bartfield's opponents could fill up a pretty great all-time top ten list. "Rarely were so many battles of blood and thunder against so many notable fighters credited to one man," wrote Lester Bromberg. Bartfield fought so many great champions because he didn't actually care who he'd fight. "Never mind whom I gonna fight, what's the poyse?" he once exclaimed, saying the word "purse" with a Yiddish accent. Bartfield was a Polish Jew born in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. He listed his town of birth as Lancyzn and the date as February 15, 1892. Or maybe it was March 15? Eh, it was so lo ..read more

After Cletus Seldin secured his seventh consecutive win on March 15, the WBA ranked him number 8 in their welterweight ratings. Seldin is 28-1 with 23 KOs. His last two fights have been at 142.5 pounds. Seldin has made the most of his opportunities and he should be viewed as a contender, but the alphabet organizations' ratings should be taken with a grain of salt. The WBA actually has two welterweight world champions. The IBF doesn't have a number one or number two contender, but it does rank 3-15. Within the four "major" organizations' top 15, 44 different welterweights are listed. No single ..read more

Following in the tradition of the defunct New York Golden Gloves, the Ring Masters amateur championships brings together the New York area's best boxers in the unpaid ranks. Two Jewish fighters have made it deep into this year's tournament. Rebecca Goldberg will fight in the finals of the 146 elite division at Madison Square Garden next month. David Malul hopes to join Goldberg at MSG. He fights in the semifinals of the 147 novice class tomorrow (Saturday, March 23) at 4pm on his home turf at John's Boxing Gym in the Bronx. Goldberg, a 34 year old physician assistant in orthopedic surgery at ..read more

"I'm really confident in my punching power right now, which is something that I think is overlooked out of my abilities," Lev Jackson told me in an extensive interview that began in a backroom of Beyond Boxing, a gym located on Hastings Street in Burnaby, a neighboring suburb of Vancouver, and continued at Quesada Burritos & Tacos amid a smattering of curious customers and employees. Lev is just the latest Jewish fighter from Vancouver, a legacy that dates back to the first Semitic settler. Leapin' Louis Gold, born in Warsaw, set up a grocery store in Gastown, now a neighborhood inside of ..read more

Cletus Seldin and Jose Angulo weighed in ahead of their clash tomorrow at the MSG Theater in New York. Both weighed in a few pounds south of the welterweight division. Seldin, a 37 year old New Yorker, weighed in at 142.4 pounds. That was the same weight he was for his last fight in October against Patrick Okine. It is well within the Hebrew Hammer’s normal range. With a record of 27-1, Cletus will be hunting his 24th knockout tomorrow. Angulo, a 27 year old from Ecuador, tipped the scales at 143.6 pounds. He was a lightweight for his second pro fight back in 2016. Since then, Angulo (16-7 ..read more

Larry Merchant once described boxing as "the theater of the unexpected." Sometimes it's more like the theater of the absurd. Mor Oknin was scheduled to fight Sunday night at the Ciudad Deportiva Carmen Serdán in Mexico City, Mexico. He had flown all the way from Israel a couple of days ago to fight an opponent who was never announced. The fight was apparently canceled. The event promoted by TT Promotions was streamed on Vamos Deportes Boxeo's YouTube channel. Almost two hours into the show, a strange thing occurred. Oknin got into the ring wearing a white robe with a blue Star of David and h ..read more