He did a photo-op with former president Bush – twice. He made the cover of New York magazine. He was the subject of the well-received documentary “Orthodox Stance.” He boasts an unblemished record of 29-0 and is currently the number-one ranked World Boxing Association contender for the junior welterweight championship of the world.
And yet, as a sad consequence of some inexplicable decision-making on the part of HBO and Showtime, Orthodox Jewish boxer Dmitriy Salita still gets no respect, at least not from the major cable television outlets.
The baal teshuvah from Brooklyn by way of Odessa in the Ukraine has played by all the rules – from his intense training at the Starrett City Gym to his apprenticeship main events at the Hammerstein Ballroom and as co-feature at Madison Square Garden several months ago.
The recognition due Salita continues to evade him, and as someone who’s covered Dmitriy’s fights for several years (and who’s been a boxing devotee since the age of five), I can no longer attempt any weak rationalizations to explain the situation away.
In the sport’s most contentious division – welterweight – Salita’s toughest opponent seems to be an ethnic barrier that has served to deprive him of unfettered license to go for the gold.
Dmitriy Salita is the first strictly Orthodox boxer in the history of the sport. He is a source of inspiration and validation to anyone struggling to maintain a balance between the spiritual and the mundane – between the obligations of one’s religion and the demands of his profession. As my guest one Shabbat, Dmitriy was asked to name his toughest opponent. Without skipping a beat he replied, “It’s definitely my yetzer hora.”
For those who wonder how a religious individual can be involved in so brutal a profession as boxing, Salita responds rather candidly that he began boxing long before he ever entered a synagogue.
His epiphanic moment – family-related – ultimately brought him to a place where, as he puts it, “Boxing and religion intertwined in my life, and through the sport I found Godliness and spirituality as it related to me, a coexistence with which I am in total harmony.”
Salita’s fans are by no means confined to the Jewish community. His ability to galvanize an audience is nothing short of remarkable, considering he is the quintessential outsider – Russian, white, Jewish and religiously committed.
In an article (“Double Standard for Dmitriy?”) on the boxing website No Mas, author Ron Ross suggests that Salita’s ethnicity is what’s keeping him – if I may use venue as metaphor – ensconced in the Bowery only to see Park Place from afar:
Dmitriy was told by a pay TV executive that he doesn’t have the fan base of a Latin fighter. Does this smack of some sort of unfair, somewhat biased criteria in weighing a fighter’s qualifications for a title match? Should a TV/Promotional giant such as HBO have the power to bypass a #1 ranked challenger for someone lower on the list to satisfy its personal and/or perceived financial motivations? By being ranked #1 a fighter has earned his right to climb through the ropes as the rightful challenger. To be deprived of this, no matter the reason, [threatens a fighter’s] livelihood, displacing him from a position he has earned with blood and sweat, not by sitting behind a mahogany desk dreaming up some out-of-left-field rationale of why number 7 should come before number 1.
Ross’s characterization of the unfair treatment accorded Salita by the czars of HBO and Showtime is an accurate portrait of the boxer’s predicament. And it’s not just Dmitriy. Yuri Foremen, a crafty and brilliantly defensive unbeaten junior middleweight currently studying for the rabbinate, has not enjoyed the level recognition bestowed on many of his peers who don’t measure up to him in terms of talent.
The only two undefeated world-ranked prospects from New York City, both of whom happen to be Jewish, reduced to the level of shadow boxers. Coincidence? I think not. It’s especially depressing when the top junior welterweight contenders are showcased on HBO or Showtime fight telecasts while number one-ranked Dmitriy is not.
The irony, of course, is that it wasn’t too long ago that boxing was dominated by Jewish pugilists – Barney Ross, Max Baer, Maxie Rosenbloom, Al “Bummy” Davis, Ruby Goldstein, Mike Rossman, Benny Leonard – just as black and Hispanic fighters dominate the sport today.