Boxing history articles
Today a successful, if still young promoter, all time cruiserweight and heavyweight great Evander Holyfield celebrates his 55th birthday today. Now long retired, the only four-time heavyweight ruler is busy with his new venture, even though, as good a shape as he has kept himself since retiring, Evander still looks like he could fight.
But what on earth would there be left for this living legend to achieve!
Thirty long years ago today, a peak, or near-peak “Iron” Mike Tyson retained his heavyweight titles with a quite ruthless, nasty display of utter dominance. Tyson met a fighter he disliked in Tyrell Biggs and what was seen by some as a possible test for Tyson turned out to be something of a massacre.
Though Biggs, then unbeaten and having captured attention due to his winning of the 1984 Olympic gold medal up at super-heavyweight, had a decent opening round in which he used his height, his speed and his educated left jab to good effect, Biggs was doomed as soon as he signed the contract. Tyson disliked his 15-0 challenger – so jealous was he of him due to his own failure to make the team for Los Angeles in ’84 – and how it showed.
Exactly twenty years ago today in Sheffield, England, a great fight saw a great fighter crowned as world champion for the first time. It was on October 11 in 1997 when Welsh legend Joe Calzaghe met Chris Eubank in a battle to decide the vacant WBO super-middleweight title (Steve Collins, who had dethroned Eubank to take the belt had retired, thus vacating the strap).
Eubank, a love him or hate him figure of British boxing, was coming towards the end of his own superb career, while the unbeaten “Pride of Wales,” at age 25 the younger man by seven years, was approaching his prime. What’s more, Calzaghe was approaching an absolutely stupendous run as a truly dominant word champion – one who would never, ever taste a single defeat.
Upon entering the ring in the Coliseo Roberto Clemente stadium in Puerto Rico just over 40 years ago, former heavyweight king George Foreman had Muhammad Ali on his mind; in particular he had thoughts of a rematch with the man who had shocked, stunned and beaten him three years earlier playing on his mind.
Once a cauldron of activity, a building that housed a boxing gym that saw such special talent as Thomas Hearns, Hilmer Kenty, Milton McCrory and other future world champions hone their craft under the tutelage of the late Emanuel Steward, the old Detroit Kronk gym was sadly destroyed by fire over the weekend.
Police in Detroit strongly suspect arson and the building, which closed in 2006, is now mere debris. An investigation is now underway.
The ballot sheets are out for the 2018 Hall of Fame, with voters having to make the agonising decision of picking just five fighters from the list of 32 – with just three of these fighters going through.
This, as ESPN writer Dan Rafael explains, means two of the above new additions on the ballot – Hatton, Klitshko, Calderon, Morales, Wright – will be left out. Each of the above five fighters is absolutely deserving of being enshrined at Canastota, and as Rafael says in a tweet, it will be “brutal” making his decision this year.
Called by many the hardest heavyweight puncher in history, Earnie Shavers made his pro debut in November 1969, with a second round KO over one Silas Johnson. Johnson became the first of a number of fighters to be knocked flat or stopped, that number would eventually total 67.
Mike Tyson fans will instantly recognize the name Bobby Stewart. It was Stewart who offered a helping hand to an incarcerated, teenage Tyson – with Mike seeking him out when he found out Bobby was a former fighter.
As fight fans the word over know, boxing great Jake LaMotta passed away this week at the long-lived age of 95. Tributes have been pouring in from all over, deservedly so, and most celebratory pieces written in dedication to “The Bronx Bull” go into great detail about Jake’s great chin, his unimaginably tough and durable chin.
Truly a phenomenon, LaMotta, who retired from the ring with an astonishing 83-19-4(30) record in April of 1954, outlived his famous ring rivals by a considerable amount of time. The sublime Sugar Ray Robinson has been gone for well over thirty years, Frenchman Laurent Dauthuille, against whom Jake scored that flabbergasting, come-from-behind, last 13-seconds of the 15th-round KO, passed away back in 1971. Tony Janiro, the good looking kid Jake busted up (as immortalized in the classic movie starring Robert De Niro (“well, he ain’t good looking no more”) left us in 1985. And the list goes on.
The International Boxing Hall of Fame announced its flags will fly at half-staff in memory of middleweight … continue