Bernard Fernandez

Bernard Fernandez is a native of New Orleans who was bitten by the journalism bug when he won a citywide Catholic schools essay contest for eighth graders. His first newspaper job was as a copyboy for the Times-Picayune in New Orleans in the summer of 1964. He has also been a sports writer at the Houma Courier (La.), Miami Herald, Jackson Daily News (Miss.) and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Bernard has been at the Philadelphia Daily News for 23 years. His primary beats are boxing, which he has covered for nearly 20 years, and Penn State football. During his career, he has served as four-term president of the Boxing Writers Association of America; received the Nat Fleischer Award from the BWAA in April 1999 for lifetime achievement; been inducted into the Pennsylvania Boxing Hall of Fame (2005), and received 63 local, state, regional and national writing and public-service awards, including two firsts and a second in the APSE (Associated Press Sports Editors) writing contest.

Email Bernard at fernanb@phillynews.com

Bernard Fernandez: Sugar Ray Jr. gets set for celebrity boxing match

Posted 07/08/2009

IF THERE WERE a world sanctioning body rating the cutest kids to get television face time in the 1980s, you'd have to figure Ray Leonard Jr. would have been no worse than No. 3, a stern challenger to sitcom stars Emmanuel Lewis ("Webster") and Gary Coleman ("Diff'rent Strokes").

Eddie Chambers (right) in 2008 bout with Alexander Povetkin.

Bernard Fernandez: Chambers is America's heavyweight hope

Posted 06/23/2009

EDDIE CHAMBERS intends to celebrate the Fourth of July in the traditional way, which is to say with fireworks and some flag-waving. It's just that he'll be doing it in the ring, and far away from home.

Bernard Fernandez: Cruisers refreshing in an era of oafish heavyweights - 06/09/2009: WBA INTERIM heavyweight champion Nikolay Valuev is 7 feet tall and weighs 320 or so pounds, depending on what he had for dinner.
Bernard Fernandez: 'Silky Smooth' couldn't take heat in title bout - 05/26/2009: AT 46, HE is a few pounds over his peak fighting weight, but former IBF featherweight champion Calvin "Silky Smooth" Grove looked like he still could go a few rounds with much younger fighters when I saw him a week-and-a-half ago at Romano's Caterers in the Juniata section, where the Coatesville native was one of nine inductees into the Pennsylvania Boxing Hall of Fame.
Bernard Fernandez: New Jersey's new athletic boss flexes muscles - 05/12/2009: GIVE Aaron M. Davis, who replaced Larry Hazzard as head of the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board in October, credit for one thing: He performs his job with due diligence.
Bernard Fernandez: Stage set for Pacquiao-Mayweather clash - 05/04/2009: S O, WHO'S really No. 1? In Washington, a Texas congressman, Joe Barton, has introduced legislation that would prevent the NCAA from proclaiming a football game as being for the national championship unless it's the final of an eight-team playoff endorsed by Barton and many millions of other Americans, including President Barack Obama and Penn State coach Joe Paterno.
Bernard Fernandez: Pacquiao-Hatton: A matchup with global appeal - 04/28/2009: THERE LIKELY won't be anyone chanting "U-S-A! U-S-A!" in America's living rooms or in the MGM Grand Garden in Las Vegas during Saturday night's pay-per-view matchup of junior welterweights Manny Pacquiao and Ricky Hatton.
Bernard Fernandez: Germantown junior middleweight prospect 'Pooh' Ennis getting bad reputation - 04/14/2009: IT'S EASY to be affixed with a label in boxing - and the negative ones generally are stickier than the positives.
Bernard Fernandez | Peter principal victim of WBC decision - 01/30/2007: Daily News Staff

YOU THINK the world is screwed up now? Try to imagine boxing's alphabet organizations running things, and cringe in terror. The WBC would create a furor by stripping the United States of its superpower status for taking a discretionary bout against Iraq and failing to fulfill its mandatory against the WBC's No. 1-rated country, say, Lithuania.
Bernard Fernandez | Abell to make history - 01/23/2007: BOUT IN SWEDEN A TUNEUP FOR REMATCH WITH LYONS

HEAVYWEIGHT prospect Joey "Minnesota Ice" Abell makes history of sorts on Saturday, when he appears on the first professional boxing card to be staged in Sweden in 37 years.
Love | - 01/21/2007: By Jennifer Dorazio, Inquirer Staff Writer

Married Dec. 2 at Village Hall at Spread Eagle Village in Wayne. Rabbi Fred Kazan presided, with 100 guests in attendance.
Shore real estate transactions - 01/21/2007: These Atlantic County transactions, recorded May 2, represent sales of $50,000 or more. Atlantic Absecon 617 Pitney Rd.. Thomas Wodazak and Danielle Wodazak to Jeffrey Weitstein and Erin Weitstein, $249,000.