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Taken from some News Website-
Orthodox Jewish boxer Dmitriy Salita will be the first to challenge Amir Khan for the WBA light-welterweight crown, as the unbeaten New Yorker takes on the defending champion December 5 in Newcastle, England.
Promoter Frank Warren confirmed Tuesday that Khan, 22, who won the title in July from Andreas Kotelnik, will meet Salita at the city’s Metro Radio Arena. Salita, 27, is the WBA mandatory challenger and a highly-credible first defense of his title for the 2004 Olympic silver medalist.
Salita has already registered 30 wins – 16 inside the distance – and a draw, but thus far only one of his fights, in Puerto Rico in 2003, has been held outside the mainland United States.
“For Amir’s first defense this is a very tough fight for him, and he’s taking on a fighter that the American media are really building up at the moment,” said the promoter.
“Salita’s got a great record, he’s unbeaten and carries a big punch and of course he will pose a threat to Amir, but Amir’s a world-class fighter and has to deal with these challengers,” he said.
Khan was born in Bolton, Greater Manchester, to Pakistani parents. He has said on several occasions that he views himself as representing not only Great Britain but Pakistan as well, and all Muslims worldwide.
Some media outlets in Britain and beyond have already played up the battle between the title-holding Muslim and his unbeaten Jewish contender as having wider political and religious implications.
But Warren insisted the match is about boxing and boxing alone: “The public there are big sports fans and love the big events and it’s great to bring them a fight like Khan vs. Salita.”
“I’ve promoted a lot of shows in Newcastle with all the big names like Naz [Naseem Hamed], Joe Calzaghe, Ricky Hatton and Nigel Benn and I’m delighted to bring Amir to the city for the first time,” he said.
Salita was born Dmitriy Lechtman (Salita is his mother’s maiden name) in Odessa, Ukraine. He moved with his family to Flatbush, Brooklyn when he was 9, he said, because of violence against Jews in his native country.
“I remember that my father bought a gun just in case something was to happen. It was very difficult to get top jobs or to go to top schools and still remain proud of your Judaism,” he said in an interview earlier this year.
Salita said he started boxing to ward off bullies at school, who saw the foreign student with the poor English and funny clothes as easy prey: “I had to learn how to defend myself. I got involved in karate, and as time went on my brother brought me to a boxing club. That is how it all started.”
The aspiring fighter joined Starrett City boxing club in Brooklyn, where among others, he trained with future welterweight champion Zabdiel Judah.
Judah, incidentally, is an avowed Black Hebrew Israelite, a member of a religious community of African-Americans claiming descent from the ancient Israelites.
In 2001, at age 19, Salita turned professional. Just four years later, he took the light-welterweight title by defeating Shawn Gallegos with a ninth-round knockout.
In his teens, he became exposed to Orthodox Judaism, and continues to be heavily involved with the Chabad movement. The fighter travels with a Chabad emissary who prepares food for him and ensures he keeps Shabbat and other religious obligations.
Still unbeaten since turning pro, Salita’s record is 30 wins – 16 by KO – and a single draw. It’s a streak he hopes he can continue against Khan, no pushover himself with 21 wins and just a single loss (a 2008 knockout by Colombia’s Breidis Prescott which lasted under a minute).
Salita shrinks before no contender, but there is one line he said he simply won’t cross – fighting on Shabbat.
“Anyone who wants a good whuppin’ from me is just going to have to wait until sundown,” he said.
Very cool. Boxing was once a jewish sport, but not in the last 40 or 50 years. We had a pretty good Jewish boxer in the Boston area about 10 years ago named Dana Rosenblatt, 37 wins (23 by KO), 1 loss, 2 draw. Not bad.
Every championship boxer should have a good nickname, maybe we can supply it.
Back in the heyday of Jewish boxing, there were some great nicknames, “The Yid Kid”, “The Zion Lion”, Bruce “the Mouse” Strauss, “The Hebrew Hammer,” “The Matchmaker” (he probably belongs in the shidduch thread), Artie “Ring” O’Leary (nee Lieberman), to name a few.
dont forget to keep us posted about who won!
What am I missing here?!?!
What’s cool about a Jewish boxer? I enjoy sports but any sport where an integral part is to hurt someone else (boxing, and maybe football; there’s a lot of buzz about degenerative neural conditions and football these days) is horrible, not to mention halachically problematic.
Tzippi, I think boxing is too brutal for modern times, and should be forgotten, but I can not deny that there is beauty, art, great athleticism and skill involved in the movements and tactics in the “Sweet Science.”
to ronrsr: absolutely. I saw an African dance troup and it was on one hand animalistic, on the other amazing artistry and control. The latter isn’t machsir it and one can take that really far.
BS”D
You have to remember where this Jewish boxer is coming from, namely the FSU where sport is culturally very important – and where Judaism was kept under wraps until very recently. For someone of Salita’s background to be where he is today is a great kiddush Hashem, even if boxing isn’t culturally for us. He did not have the fortune to go to yeshiva or day school upon his arrival in the US either, making his situation an even greater kiddush Hashem.
Also, because he is not a heavyweight, his earnings potential is not all that great and I am sure that long before he suffers any damage, he will retire and either go into kiruv or into business.
BS”D
LOL at 600 KG I would be disqualified! Not that anyone would mind feeding the lamentable former heavyweight champ Mike Tyson to a 1300 pound bear…oops, that is animal abuse and PETA would be all over whoever did that!
I’m sorry he got hurt but remind me again, why should we be bent out of shape that we Jews aren’t the best at inflicting physical violence on others?
???? ???? ???? ?? ???
Tzippi, because when there is a contest, it is natural to root for your own team.
hakoil koil yaakov vhyadaim yedy esav!
If we were rooting our own team, we would daven that this guy get out of the business. If you have no issues with it, daven every day that he emerge unscathed, without any lasting or dormant neurological or other issues.
boxing is essentially the same as the wrestling, and athletic competitions as the greeks staged back in the day…AND JUST AS ASSUR TODAY!
I’m not advocating wrestling, but there’s a difference between a sport wherein you can win by pinning down your opponent, and one where you inflict bodily harm.
Before you say I don’t know what I’m talking about, I know of public schools that had wrestling teams, but none with boxing teams.
you get my point…and by the way…wrestling DOES involve bodily harm. you have to tire out your opponent, and that often involves throwing them around like a sack of flour…
so yeshivish
To me, boxing has always been the same thing as the Roman Gladiators. People are paying good money to watch two guys beat each others’ brains out. Wrestling is only marginally better, but both are bad for us to watch, as it desensitizes us to violence.
bombmaniac, it wasn’t assur back then. The historical record is very clear. Jews were known for enjoying wrestling and for being quite good at it. Plenty of sources, Jewish and Gentile, report this. Wrestling wasn’t a Greek/pagan thing any more than wearing clothes, bathing, fishing or cooking.
You wish to believe our customs have never changed. This in no way changes the fact that they have, radically in many cases.
If anyone is interested in the evolution of boxing, or a lot of other sports, in the Jewish-American scene, I would recommend Jewish Encounter with American Sports by Jeffrey Gurock, history prof at YU, written about 5 years ago. The writing tends to be a little scholarly and sometimes difficult to read but he touches on the content of Jewish athletics dating to the Greek gymnasiums, a relatively dormant period until the 19th century in Germany, then a more constistent role in America with institutional sponsorship and cult heroes.
KHAN was on home turf in Britarabia
bombmaniac, it wasn’t assur back then. The historical record is very clear. Jews were known for enjoying wrestling and for being quite good at it. Plenty of sources, Jewish and Gentile, report this. Wrestling wasn’t a Greek/pagan thing any more than wearing clothes, bathing, fishing or cooking.
BS”D
“Jews” did and do a lot of things that are ossur. We are not what is left of “all” the Jews who lived during the last days of Jewish rule over EY. We are the remnant of those who stayed true to Torah – and not of the ones who watched or participated in the wrestling matches. Sadly, there were many Jews of the second “ilu hu haya sham, lo haya nig’al variety in every generation, and in those days when there was a beis hamikdash, these were reshoim, not tinokois shenishbeu. We are not their descendants no matter how far we have strayed, and we don’t copy or justify what they did.
After all, historians of the modern Jewish era will write about all the intermarriage, total disregard for mitzvah observance and the lack of knowledge (and of course about the “movements”) – and sadly for 80% of Jews they will be right.
However, in this lowest of generations that precedes the Geula, a boxer who comes from a time and place where for a Jewish man to be the father of an halachic Jew as Salita’s father indeed is, and is coming back to Yiddishkeit as he maintains his sports career, is a kiddush Hashem.
BS”D
I should mention that Resh Lakish was said to have been a gladiator before he did tshuva. This is proof that yes, Jews did get involved in that kind of thing – but they were for the most part “oisvorfen”.
In the previous generation, before Dovid Salita, there was (now Harav) Refoel Halperin, who was similar to a gladiator of Roman times in that he exhibited his strength among lions and the like for show. He, too, always kept true to halachic observance even when traveling to perform.
Today, he is known as a talmid chochom, askan, and was a very successful businessman though he has passed his well known optical chain on to the next generation.
What kind of shidduch can a boxer expect? What about if a girl has a brother who boxes?
What kind of shidduch can a boxer expect? What about if a girl has a brother who boxes?
BS”D
If a girl has a brother who boxes, shadchonim better watch out how much they charge her and what they say about her.
“What kind of shidduch can a boxer expect?”
Well, he wouldn’t want to be boxed in to only one kind of shidduch…
there is a difference between combat training and glorification of the human body…
People in those days had a very different attitude towards the human body and how it was to be used. They were a lot more active at work and in their recreation. We would have been considered pathologically sedentary. Sitting around all day and night staring at books? Never getting your heart rate up or sweating on a regular basis? Nobody lived like that. They didn’t have machines to do everything; they lived in their bodies to a much greater extent than you or I. So their attitude towards the human body was quite a bit different.
Things like wrestling, hunting, riding, archery and so on weren’t “glorification of the human body”. They were normal activities for men outside of the slave classes, and even within them to a great extent. Warriorship is only part of it.
BS”D
Yes, these pastimes were common among oisvorfen going back to Esav. There were always oisvorfen and there always will be oisvorfen. At different periods of time, the neviim and the rabbonim spoke out about these types. We don’t follow in the ways of oisvorfen.
Wrestling is called Graeco-Roman wrestling. That was the culture that glorified the body. In those days, honest men worked in the fields, or as smiths, and having worked a bit with my hands (stonemasonry, not to be confused with Jackie Masonry which is what I do on YWN sometimes :)))) as a student, I know that after a hard day’s work you cannot find time or energy to do sports because you already had your workout. The only ones who could wrestle were indeed lazy bums and the only ones who had time to watch it (and bet on it) were even bigger oisvorfen.
In this generation, a Dovid Salita or Yuri Foreman is making a kiddush Hashem because they both come from another culture which glorifies the body, yet they also uplift their neshomos. On the other hand, any yeshiva bochur who goes to watch them or chas vesholom bets on them is going down many, many madreigois.
Working out for fun has nothing to do with professional sports.
PS: HUNTING as a pastime for Jews?????? I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry. VeEsov ish tzayid….
600kilo, in some way, I get how these frum boxers make a kiddush Hashem. But it’s still terrible to make a parnassa in a job where you know you’ve succeeded if and only if you’ve done some physical harm to another person.
BS”D
Maybe because I live in the part of the world where Salita and Foreman are from, I see it as (not for us but still) sport that comes from their early upbringing in what was then an Olympic sports obsessed culture, and not as violence. Then again that might also be because I lived in NY during the Dinkins years, and more recently in hardly placid Crown Heights before returning here, and I know all too well what real violence is about :).
Regardless, it is not for us to watch and they should not be our personal heroes, but they can serve as examples to those who for whatever reason must continue in a “borderline” or “non-traditional” secular career.
My point is that things change. Sometimes it’s for the better. Sometimes it’s for the worse. Sometimes it’s neither. What Jews did, what our ancestors considered proper and normal is a far cry from what we do today. An examination of how and why this occured is always useful.
In general phrases like “everyone knows” or “it’s unthinkable” or “that’s the way it’s always been” are warning signs. They often hide enormous assumptions and intellectual blind spots which can lead you far, far astray. A classic example is the “Grass Shack Fallacy”. During WWII troops were taught that a good way to clear a room was to open the door, toss in a couple grenades, close the door and enter after they exploded. That worked fine in France or Germany where people had brick or timber frame houses. Flash forward to Vietnam. The first time a soldier followed his training while clearing a bamboo hut with grass walls was often his last…
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