Karpency family becoming hit at The Meadows
MEADOW LANDS – Outside of the bartenders and other serving staff at the new event center at The Meadows Racetrack & Casino, nobody here had a more busy night than Tom Karpency Sr.
Karpency had not one, not two but all three of his sons on the World Fighting Championships card Saturday night at The Meadows, including eldest son, Tommy, Jr., and middle son, Jeremiah, both competing for WBA title belts.
“It’s a busy night, a very busy night,” said the elder Karpency, who trains all three of his sons. “I usually have them scattered.”
The Karpency family hails from Adah, a small coal mining town that sits opposite Carmichaels on the Monongahela River in Fayette County.
On this night, it seems all 150 or so of Adah’s residents and everyone else from surrounding German Township were on hand to watch their favorite sons.
Chants of “Adah,” broke out on several occasions when the Karpency brothers were in the ring. The Meadows’ new event center seats 1,450 and it seemed nearly all were there to root for the Karpency brothers.
Tommy Karpency won the WBA-NABA light heavyweight championship with a first round knockout of Paul Gonsalves in the main event, putting the overmatched Gonslaves down with his first punch and sending him to the mat four more times after that before the fight was stopped at 1:39 of the first round.
The win improved Tommy Karpency’s record to 26-5-1.
“I’m glad to get the win after a world title loss,” said Tommy Karpency.
“Ultimately, the world title is our goal. Hopefully, our next fight is a world title fight and we can bring it right back here near home.”
Jeremiah Karpency’s fight against veteran Mike Sheppard for the vacant WBA-NABA heavyweight championship was ruled a draw, with Karpency winning 78-74 on one judge’s card and the bout being scored a 76-76 draw on the other two.
It was the first blemish on Jeremiah Karpency’s record. He is 12-0-1 while Sheppard is 24-19-2.
Danny Karpency, the youngest of the brothers, was dealt his first professional loss – against five wins – when Roque Zapata, a late replacement, handed him a unanimous decision defeat in their welterweight fight.
Accepting wins or losses – or even a draw – is all part of the business.
“I’m very proud of them. My wife is very proud of them. It’s a tough road,” Tom Karpency said. “It’s a grind. The closer you get to the fight, the more tense things get. Things get heated up in training when you’re together for a long time. Sometimes things boil over. We keep the goal in mind.”
Even when things don’t necessarily go the way they wanted.
The Karpencys train there at a former church the family purchased, converting the basement into a gym space.
“I can’t say I envisioned it. They were all wrestlers in high school,” Karpency said of his sons building boxing careers.
“Jeremiah and Danny, they were wrestlers since elementary school. Tommy was an outstanding athlete and football player, but he wasn’t going to sit behind anybody, so for his final two years, I talked him into trying wrestling. He had a decent career.
But when Tommy, now 30, graduated from Albert Gallatin High School, he still wanted to compete. His father suggested a toughman contest in West Virginia.
He won that tournament, then entered another and won that one as well.
“The promotor, Jerry Thomas, called me the next day and said I couldn’t bring him up any more for safety reasons,” the elder Karpency said. “It was $1,000 to win. I said you can’t do that. And he said he didn’t want him to come in and hurt somebody. So I said, what can I do? He said he had a boxing card coming up and he would put Tommy on that. He went from toughman to professional. The other two boys just followed his lead. They were his sparring partners and then they turned pro. That’s where we’re at now.”
Tommy Karpency has had the most success. His last fight prior to Saturday’s bout came in a WBC world light heavyweight title loss to Adonis Stevenson.
He entered Saturday ranked 19th in the world and has served as a sparring partner for a number of top-flight fighters, including Roy Jones, Jr.
A fourth fighter raised in Adah, heavyweight Jason Bergman, who now lives in Washington, was scheduled to appear on the card but the bout was canceled last week.
Saturday’s event marked just the second time in their careers that all three Karpency brothers had competed on the same card. The first time was 2014 on a card at the Waterfront Place Hotel in Morgantown, W.Va. All three won that night.
The trio has fought 50 professional fights, with eight coming in the past two years at The Meadows, which has hosted three boxing events, with two more scheduled for this year – June 18 and Aug. 27.
In other fights Saturday night, Anthony Taylor (3-0) defeated Antonio Conigliaro via a four-round unanimous decision, and Boubacar Sylla (2-0) topped Bobby Watson (0-3), also by unanimous decision.