andipantz

On December 11, I photographed the IBF Cruiserweight Boxing Championship at the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ.  The fight was between Steve “USS” Cunningham and Tomasz Adamek.  Steve Cunningham is from Philadelphia and you may have seen some of the photos that I had taken of him after he won the belt for the same Championship last year.

It was a night of firsts.  As a photographer for Team Cunningham, I was shooting ringside (in the corner of the opponent, Adamek).  I had never photographed a fight…let alone any sports for that matter.  All I’ve gotta say is that the men pretty much have the sports photography covered; I was the only female photographer out of about 15 others.  It was also my first time at a fight.  I felt like such a guy!  As the guys are flying into the ropes and there’s blood and sweat flying everywhere, I’m squealing with excitement to myself, “this is so frickin awesome!!”.  Yes, I did end up with blood and sweat on my lens….and surely on myself after seeing the photos of fluids flying through the air over my head.  But it was awesome and I would totally do it again.

Unfortunately, Steve Cunningham lost to Adamek, but it was a good fight.  It was aired on national TV on Versus.  Hopefully some of you watched!  Apparently I was on there, but my face was glued to the camera the entire time so you didn’t see much of me.  There’s a crappy quality YouTube video of part of the fight.

Steve is signed by Don King Productions and yes, Don King was there.  I got to meet him and even shook his hand as you might have read in a previous post.

Anyway, on to the photos!  I have to admit that I’m pretty pleased with what I captured and that rarely happens.