Last Saturday in Detroit, the super lightweight bout between Shokhahon Ergashev and Julian Smith was at first glance an unlikely match. Ergashev, a former member of Uzbekistan's powerhouse national team, was competing in his adopted home town. As a professional, he had a 24-1 record with 21 knockouts, his lone loss coming in a world title fight. His opponent, 33-year-old Julian Smith, had an 8-2 record and only 46 rounds in his professional career.
Someone forgot to mention that Smith (pictured) was supposed to lose. In the second round, Smith made it clear he wasn't in it for the money when he knocked the Uzbek to the canvas with a big right punch that landed a second before the bell rang, but was incorrectly ruled a slip.
Three rounds later, Smith again sent Ergashev to the canvas, dropping him with a counter left hook. This victory was too far for Smith to take, and when the scores were tallied, this was the deciding factor. Smith continued to dominate Ergashev in the next round of the 10-round bout, winning by split decision in what most people thought would be a unanimous decision.
Smith's achievement of overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds is made all the more impressive by the fact that he is hearing impaired; he became deaf after contracting viral meningitis at the age of six months. He can read lips, but in some interviews he needs the help of an intermediary who translates the questions into sign language. His speech is sluggish, typical of the deaf, and he needs to fully capture the attention of strangers.
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If Julian Smith was looking for inspiration, he could find it in the true story of Eugene Hairston. A Bronx fighter who fought from 1947 to 1953, Hairston fought for 27 months in the ring'He made his debut in October 1950 and rose to number two in magazine ratings as a top ten middleweight. Like Smith, Hairston's hearing loss was attributed to meningitis he suffered as a toddler.
Hairston's big break came in August 1950 when he beat Lee Salla at a baseball stadium in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania native went 61-1, with his lone loss coming at the hands of future Hall of Famer and top prospect Tony DeMarco. The game was broadcast on national radio.
Hairston had a scary moment in the fourth round when a counter left hook knocked him completely out of the ring, but otherwise dominated the bout to win by scores of 8-2, 7-1-2, 7-3.
“Eugene (Dummy) Hairston has pulled off a spectacular upset,” began a post-fight story written by an Associated Press ringside correspondent. (The word “dummy” was commonly used to describe a deaf-mute person; America's first notable deaf athlete, turn-of-the-century baseball outfielder William Ellsworth Hoy, was known as “Dummy Hoy.” But as Hairston became more well-known, reporters dropped the insensitive “dummy” in favor of his preferred nickname, “Silent.”)
After beating Sala, Hairston scored two more upsets, a split decision win over future world welterweight champion Kid Gavilan and a multi-point final over Joe Louis associate Lester Felton. The following year, in 1951, he scored what is, in retrospect, his signature win: a swift and thorough beating of Paul Pender at Pender's house in Boston. Hairston knocked Pender down four times before Pender's corner stopped the disaster with five seconds left in the third round. (Paul Pender would hold the world middleweight title until his retirement in 1962, when he reclaimed the belt in a rematch against Britain's Terry Downes.)
In 1952, Hairston fought Jake LaMotta in consecutive bouts, the first of which ended in a draw, and Hairston came up short in the second. The Bronx natives fought in Detroit, where the rugged LaMotta had a large fan base. Later that year, in Hairston's penultimate bout at Madison Square Garden, he was stopped by Bobo Olson in a billed eliminator bout for Sugar Ray Robinson's world middleweight title. (The bout was controversial, as Robinson would not return to the ring until two years later, having retired after a loss to Joey Maxim.)
The Hairston-Olson fight was stopped after six rounds by the ringside doctor due to a severe cut above Eugene's right eye.
Eugene “Silent” Hairston was just 23 when he retired from boxing after a brief professional career of 63 bouts. He never fully recovered from an eye injury sustained in the Olson fight and was unable to return. He finished with a record of 45 wins, 13 losses, and 5 draws.
Besides the two stops by cuts, Hairston has only been stopped once, early in his career against journeyman Teddy Pritchard, when he didn't hear the referee in the commotion and forgot to count. They met again six days later, and Hairston dominated Pritchard in the second round.
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Hairston's biggest fan was his father, a painter who attended most of his fights. “He was home alone and felt out of place,” his proud father recalled. “Ever since he started boxing, he's taken pride in it. He knows he's just as good as anyone else. I'll never regret letting him fight.”
Hairston's sentiments were reiterated by Julian Smith's mother, Natalie Bibbs, in a 2021 conversation with Joe Santoliquito. ring Noting that his son was bullied as a boy by neighborhood kids simply for being different (Julian had no friends outside of his classmates at the special needs school he attended, and those friends were scattered around the city), Bibbs acknowledged that boxing played a role in Julian's emotional development, releasing pent-up anger and giving him confidence he might not have had otherwise.
Now married and the father of a young son, every time Smith steps into the ring he thinks of his older brother, Brandon, who bought him his first pair of boxing gloves and was seven years older than Julian, who died in 2012, a victim of gun violence in Chicago's gang-ridden Southwest Robbins neighborhood.
Incidentally, the match between Julian Smith and Shoyahon Ergashev, which was broadcast live worldwide on DAZN, was a cheer match for the match between Claressa Shields and Vanessa Lepage-Joanis. Meanwhile, inspirational Eugene “Silent” Hairston retired, worked for UPS, and volunteered as a coach at a boxing gym on Long Island. He passed away in 2014 at the age of 85.
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