Isra Girgrah: A Raging Saturday Night at the Fights — by Longjab

WASHINGTON D.C.- (Aug 9) – Here at the new beautiful state of the art D.C. Convention Center in it’s inaugural sporting event, a fairly large crowd saw the ‘Raging Beauty’ Isra Girgrah (129) win a tight, but controversial unanimous decision over Melissa ‘Honey Girl’ Del Valle (132) over eight rounds. The scorecards by the three judges were 78-74, 78-74, and 77-75. The crowd’s response was not in agreement with the decision. This observer had it 78-76, in favor of Del Valle.

In a non-title match up, Del Valle, coming in from Miami, started out quickly, wasting no time by going on a relentless attack from the opening bell. She peppered Girgrah with some heavy punches early and had the hometown favorite backing up during the first two rounds.

Girgrah, sensing the need to respond, returned the favor in the third and had Del Valle on her ‘bicycle’ throughout most of the round; however, there was an accidental clash of heads that definitely bothered Girgrah.

In the fourth, the two female combatants decided to mix it up more from the inside and equally traded punches in what looked like an even round.

Then, in the fifth, Del Valle went to more of a ‘cut and dance’ approach and outslicked the flatfooted Girgrah, by moving away when Girgrah attempted to counter Del Valle’s quicker punches. There were a few holds here and there, but for the most part a clean round that went to the slick and flashy Del Valle.

The sixth round was another close encounters round where Girgrah attempted to slow Del Valle down by holding a little and punching more before the referee ordered them to break. The round was even.

In the seventh, Girgrah went on the offensive and stalked a dancing Del Valle, who worked off the ropes and tried to frustrate Girgrah, sensing that she needed the round. Girgrah landed the more effective punches and took the round.

Then, in the eighth and final round, both ladies went toe to toe but Del Valle seemed to have more bounce and dance in her feet and fought off the ropes more toward the end in order to preserve what was perceived as a narrow lead and took the round in my opinion, but the decision went the other way in the final outcome, with Girgrah, the hometown favorite, getting the decision while the fans were vocally not in favor of the decision.

Some members of the audience thought that Del Valle was the better of the two fighters and should have won the decision. With the win, Girgrah improves her record to 26-3-2 with 10 coming by way of KO. Del Valle goes to 27-2-1 with 11 by knockout.

There was one consolation for Del Valle; I had the opportunity to speak to her briefly afterwards, as well as surprise her with a lovely belated birthday card, in which she responded by giving me a really nice hug. I asked her about the possibility that women box three-minute rounds. She replied, “No way, we ladies work much harder than the men and it would just kill us”.

The rest of this ‘raging’ good show had a very fine ‘support cast’ as well. As a matter of fact, the entire card was full of DC talent as well as renown figures. The rest of the results were as follows:

Leading the show off was a four round heavyweight match in which Adele “Super Bad” Olakanyeah, (236) originally from Nigeria but know residing and training in nearby Laurel Maryland, stopped a winded Scott Meehan (239) from Lancaster, Pennsylvania when referee Kenny Chevalier stopped the contest at 2:48 of the third round. Meehan, who was making his pro debut, kept loosing or spitting his mouthpiece out. At one point in the second round, Meehan took a knee down and Chevalier checked him over and allowed the action to continue. Then, in the third, Meehan kneeled again, at which time Chevalier, seeing that Meehan had had enough, put a stop to the contest. With his first win under his belt, ‘Super Bad’ moves to 1-0-1 with one KO to his credit, while Meehan drops the first one and is 0-1-0.

The second fight of the night was a four round welterweight match in which Eric ‘Mighty Mouse’ Aiken, (124) also a local favorite and from nearby Forestville, Maryland, made short work of Travis Gregory, (128) coming from Sanford, North Carolina, when Aiken quickly disposed of him with a wicked right hand, which rendered Gregory in the ‘horizontal’ position at 1:05 of the first round. Aiken moves his record to 8-1-0 and ‘notches’ his seventh win by KO on his right ‘gun handle’. Gregory, who was assisted to a stool in the middle of the ring, drops to 5-9 with 4 via KO to his credit.

The third match of the night was billed as a ‘grudge’ rematch as two locals in the super middleweight division rumbled for six rounds with ‘King’ James McCallister, (165) also from Forestville, prevailing over ‘Mighty’ Moe Adams, (166) from District Heights, Maryland. There was definitely no love lost between these two; there was a little ‘after round 2’ overtime that required both corners to step in and terminate the action. Perhaps, the intensity of these two overrode their hearing of the bell, ending the round. A similar action occurred after round three as well, but only resulted in a cold ‘stare down’ between the two. McCallister dropped Adams once in the fourth, but Adams managed to get to his feet and resume the ‘rumble’. The judges’ scorecards had McCallister the winner by unanimous decision. Two had it 59-54, while the other saw it 58-55. This observer had it 59-53 for ‘King James’. McCallister improves to 9-3-1 with three wins via KO. Adams drops to 15-7-1 with 9 by way of KO.

The fourth match was a scheduled eight round match in the middleweight division. Former NABF Welterweight Champion Derrell ‘Too Sweet’ Coley, (159) of Capitol Heights, Maryland, dominated the action over journeyman Benji ‘Bad News’ Singleton, (156) from Charlotte, North Carolina. Coley delivered a lot of nasty punches upon Singleton’s person, but Singleton kept taunting Coley, raising his hands in defiance, as if none of the punches were effective, but by the fourth round, Coley made a believer out of Singleton when he landed a vicious shot that drove Singleton to and under the top rope, in which he protected himself while referee Kenny Chevalier put a stop to the action at 1:54 of the round. Coley moves his record to an impressive 38-2-2 with 27 coming by way of KO. (One of Coley’s unfortunate losses came at the hands of Oscar De La Hoya) Meanwhile, the journeyman drops to an unbelievable 25-91-4 with 17 knockouts to his credit. I do not know, but if I were Singleton, I might have hung up my gloves about 60 losses ago. Maybe ‘Bad News’ is a well-paid fall guy.

The sixth and final match of the night showcased as well as tuned up former WBC Middleweight Champion Keith ‘The Hitman’ Holmes. (1621/2) The native Washingtonian showed no signs of rust since his last fight of over 2 years ago, when he unfortunately lost his title to then IBF Middleweight Champion Bernard Hopkins in Don King’s middleweight elimination tournament. Holmes totally dominated Anthony ‘Ice’ Ivory, (1621/2) who came all the way from the windy city of Chicago, Illinois. Holmes won by UD in a ten round tune up. The judge’s scorecards were all in agreement, scoring it 100-90 for Holmes. With the win, Holmes record goes to 37-3 with 24 victories coming by the KO route. Ivory drops to another unbelievable record of 28-64-4 with 11 knockouts.

Some of the faces in the crowd, which among others, were former and future champion Mark ‘Too Sharp’ Johnson as well as local Light Heavyweight and wrecking ball, Darnell ‘Ding-A-Ling Man’ Wilson.

I would be lacking not to mention some of those that were responsible for this ragingly exciting show. Local announcer and celebrity Henry ‘Discombobulating’ Jones usually asks an emphatic question to those that support these local shows, as he did this time, which is, “DC, are you ready to do this?” Without those that got this show together, DC would not have been able to do this. First of all, without a boxing ring, there is no show, but thanks to Mr. Terry Nye, who had provided his ring from his boxing gym in Lancaster, Pennsylvania for this show, DC was definitely ready to do this on this evening. Mr. Nye had indeed done this once before, two years ago, almost to the day, when he provided his boxing ring for a show that was televised on ESPN2 from the Du Burns Arena in nearby Baltimore. Many thanks to Club Elite and Raging Promotions Marty Wynn, for without them, this raging night of boxing would not have even been a thought.