TalkingBoxing Articles
Reflections on the International Boxing Hall of Fame Induction Weekend ’06: Celebrating Little Big Men, Saluting the U.S. Olympic Class of ‘76
WED May 2, ERIC B. THOMPSON - “A sportswriter is entombed in a prolonged boyhood” (Jimmy Cannon, sportswriter, 2002 Hall of Fame Inductee)
“I wanna thank the Hall of Fame and all those people who’ve endured and put up with all my crap, not the least of whom is my beautiful bride, Suzy—forty-four years my bride and I’ve given her the best ten minutes of my life” (Bert Randolph Sugar, sportswriter, colorful fight game personality and 2005 Hall of Fame Inductee)
Established in 1990, Induction Weekend in Canastota, N.Y. is an opportunity for the fan to meet his favorite fighter or fight game personality, to get an autograph, to have a picture taken, to ask a burning question. Induction Weekend leaves one with a warm glow of close-knit fraternity—fans, fighters, trainers, managers, cornermen, promoters and journalists all intermingling freely, devoid of pomp and pretense, an unforgettable bonding fest every hardcore fight fan must experience for himself.
I honestly didn’t give much thought toward making this an annual feature after posting my initial Induction Weekend review two years ago. Though I would continue to carry a portable tape recorder around with me to some of the ringside lectures and formal events of ’05 and ’06, I steadfastly resisted any inclination to commit further reminiscences to paper. Hey, after sharing at length all those starry-eyed musings of a first-time observer what more could there be to say about the Induction Weekend experience, how could one possibly top that?
But after receiving many little notes of appreciation, many little prods of encouragement from fans and celebrities alike to reprise my effort on an annual basis I ultimately concluded hey, why not, even if I am just re-treading a lot of the same emotional territory in the process? The would-be attendee out there needs a perennial reminder as to what he’s missing out on, I’m providing a keepsake of some of the more memorable moments of the formal events and admittedly, no less significantly, yours truly the sometime fight scribe has a vehicle, an outlet for sharing a passion for the sweet science—not to mention an excuse for exercising, stimulating an already over-stimulated creative muse—for as long as you, dear reader, are willing to begrudge me an audience.
Day One
I arrived early this year, well before the 1:30 p.m. opening bell, a first. As I entered the pavilion I immediately heard my name, turned about and was greeted with a warm embrace by Ginny Alfano, a former IBHOF employee who had shown up for the express purpose of greeting old friends. Though Ginny, like most women, abhors the idea of two men boxing one another, she nonetheless shares the fondness of a true fight fan for the fighters and their families and having been touched by the spirit of the June proceedings these five years and counting would surely have felt the loss had she not taken the time to drop by, catch up.
Next I ran into South African referee Stanley Christodoulou, a 2004 inductee who has been back every year since. He’d taken the time to read my initial installment in this series and had provided me with a recent email update on his latest activities.
“Hey, got something for you”.
He dipped into his knapsack and produced a South African edition issue of Boxing World with a feature on Induction Weekend ’04. I thanked him profusely and made sure he knew just how much I looked forward to this annual gathering of ours.
“Oh, God willing I’ll be back every year!” he exclaimed, taking a step back and replanting himself for emphasis.
The crowd was sparse but slowly gathering as Richard Fabian, a regular attendee from Tampa, FL, and I shared our favorite personal moments from the previous year:
Former featherweight champion and 2005 Inductee Barry McGuigan relating over a pint of Guinness how “effin’ stupid” it was for an Irishman to agree to defend his title against a Mexican-American, Stevie Cruz, in the blazing desert heat of a Las Vegas afternoon. McGuigan wilted in the latter rounds and lost his title via close unanimous decision in what would be adjudged 1986’s fight of the year…
The “schoolboy” Bobby Chacon, so named for his uncommonly youthful appearance and giddy, perpetual grin, bleeding at the mouth, his sutures from oral surgery loosening as he signed away for his legion of fans. As in the seventies and eighties as a back-to-back fight of the year performer, Bobby, periodically replenishing the crimson-soaked packing tucked inside his jaw, refused to disappoint and excuse himself. He’d been down on his luck for sometime—there’d even been reputed sightings of him collecting bottles and cans on the streets and in trash dumps—and probably had the surgery courtesy of an Induction Weekend benefactor; why else would one have such a procedure done on the occasion of one’s very own induction? Though Bobby has endured more than his share of life’s tragedies—the suicide of his first wife, Valorie, the murder of his seventeen year old son, Bobby Jr., in a gang confrontation—I was glad to see that through it all the “schoolboy” hadn’t begun to lose a trace of that infectious grin of his…
Bidden or not, finding myself seated with Bert Sugar and his wife at Graziano’s, the popular after hours Induction Weekend restaurant and bar hangout across the street from the museum grounds. As at least one longtime IBHOF employee had been previously unaware of the existence of a Bert Sugar missus, I think it’s safe to assume that the once described “long suffering” Suzy doesn’t share even an iota of her husband’s passion for the manly art and that her appearance at her husband’s induction probably marked a first such visit for her to Canastota. When I requested a photo with Bert and invited Suzy to join in, she begged off in disgust as if it were the most distasteful proposition imaginable—indeed, what could be more so than mugging, cavorting in public with a couple of slightly sodden and certifiably crazed sports lunatics?…
A moment later I greeted a couple of my Welsh mates and gave them a good-natured ribbing regarding one Joe Calzaghe, their undefeated compatriot and his mesmerizing virtual shutout of hard-hitting super middleweight Jeff Lacy back in March which must surely rank as the performance of the year. This time last year when I’d queried them as to Joe’s prospects of cracking the pound-for-pound top ten, making a true career-defining statement, cementing a legacy at so late a stage in his impressive yet ultimately unsatisfying career for one who clearly held so much unfulfilled promise, they’d regarded me with kindly compassion for a long, silent moment before finally, reluctantly shaking their heads “no”.
Okay, yes, when it comes to Joe we’re confessing to a serious man crush here so allow me a brief aside…
With blinding hand speed, a relentless work rate, stamina to burn, and some of the most effective combination punching this man has ever seen—not to mention a well-spoken public grace coupled with exceptionally handsome features best described as a composite of actors Pierce Brosnan and Timothy Dalton (he indeed could pass for the next James Bond), Joe, like the Sugar Rays Robinson and Leonard, the Oscar De La Hoyas before him has the makings of a superstar, one who’s charisma transcends the prize ring which is always great for the image of the sport. I just hope that now he’s an HBO house fighter he won’t squander at thirty-four what’s left of his career and take the easy way out, the big money fights against name opponents either yet unproven or clearly on the downside, past their prime and still in the game just for a payday which in either case might not do much for his legacy. One or more quality wins against true A-list competition and Joe’s a Hall of Famer in my book.
Soon after everyone took their seats and settled in for current-year inductee Hank Kaplan’s 5th Street Gym Talk during which he recounted the history of the storied Miami gym and how Muhammad Ali and a host of outstanding Cuban boxers had cut their teeth there under the tutelage of legendary trainer Angelo Dundee. Hank experienced the first stirrings of his passion for boxing during his days in a Brooklyn orphanage and has managed over the decades to amass the largest private archive of boxing printed matter—newspaper and magazine clippings, fighter records—right there in his Miami home. With the ensuing question and answer session, the talk inevitably slid into the fans soliciting Hank’s take on some of the more intriguing mythical match ups in boxing history, who were the very greatest middleweights to ever step into the ring and such.
“Where yah from?”, a big, burly black man about six-four and in his mid to late sixties addressed me cheerily as we dried our hands in the men’s room.
Though straight guys aren’t generally comfortable chatting up strangers at length in the restroom, there is no homophobia in Canastota.
“North Carolina. And you?”
“Bronx.”
“You ever a fighter?”, I asked, his imposing size and still obvious great strength and muscle tone prompting my inquiry.
“Nah, just a lifelong fan. You?”
Never trying my hand at boxing had been one of the great disappointments of childhood, ranking right up there with never getting to use my cherished hockey skates again after my family relocated to the South from the Midwest when I was eleven. I’d broached the subject of taking up the gloves at my local Boy’s Club a few years earlier and had gotten the most emphatic “No!” ever from my mother and, as my father wasn’t about to suggest otherwise, that was that.
Somehow we ended up on a discussion of heavyweight legend Joe Louis and I just had to share my favorite personal “Brown Bomber” anecdote before we left off. At the invitation of a co-worker several years back I attended one of those dinner investment seminars; you know the deal—you sit through a tedious sales pitch in order to enjoy a complimentary dinner out with friends. Unbeknownst to my sixty something co-worker who’d set this up, the seminar was strictly for retirees, most of whom appeared to be in their seventies and even eighties, so I and another attendee in our party, both under forty, got more than our share of funny stares from the sales reps.
“We’ll tell ‘em we’re just here to give these guys their medicine”, my youthful cohort chuckled aside with me.
During the introduction our speaker began with boxing as a metaphor for life, shared a pivotal, crossroads moment from a former champion’s career and then asked if there were anyone in the audience who could identify the unnamed boxer in question.
“Joe Louis!”, a shrill, emphatic female voice cried out from the back of the room.
Truly, she’d delivered those words just as reverently as if she’d spoken the name of God himself.
Our speaker, thirty-something and probably knowing little or nothing as to how revered the image, the example of the “Brown Bomber” was for the generation of folk seated before him and how that image, that example had galvanized a racially-divided United States during the war effort, stared blankly, momentarily at a loss for words before continuing.
“Uh, the boxer I was thinking of was actually Mike Tyson.”
“Gancho izquierda!”.
I called out to Ruben Olivares, 1991 Inductee and all-time great Mexican puncher and bantamweight, featherweight who responded accordingly with a still formidably frightening left hook which barely missed my ribcage. I’d begun learning Spanish recently both to better communicate with my Latino fight brethren and to better beguile my daily work commute. I would continue to press my luck with Ruben in my newly-adopted tongue.
“Uno des mis boxeadores preferidos (you are one of my favorite boxers).”
He paused, contemplated my rudimentary diction for a moment and then thanked me. I kept on for a bit before he finally, politely held up an index finger, flashed me a gold-toothed grin and continued to avidly thumb through my copy of The Ring’s 100 Greatest Punchers of All-Time, evincing particular enthusiasm for his own entry, his own lofty standing among the most devastating sluggers ever as we awaited the arrival of his translator.
Though I’ve seen Ruben in a host of great slugfests including those with the likes of Chucho Castillo, Bobby Chacon, Alexis Arguello and Eusebio Pedroza, my favorite memory of “Rockabye” is—sorry, Ruben—his 1971 comic affair with Japan’s Kazuyoshi Kanazawa for the bantamweight titles. Like in the proverbial cartoon caricature, both combatants were so thoroughly gassed, so thoroughly exhausted by the latter rounds that either was liable to go down for the count from just the mere whiff! of a missed punch or the mere breathy exhalation of the other. In the fourteenth round Kanazawa, suffering from fatigue-induced miscalculation, would attempt one-too-many a series of errant desperation swings and find himself staggering about from pillar to post, collapsing three times before the referee called it a contest.
4:30 already. Time to grab a shower back at the hotel and prepare for the evening’s festivities.
“Hey, wassup man!”
Former light heavyweight champ Reggie “Sweet” Johnson and seemingly one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet in or out of the ring greeted me in the parking lot at Graziano’s. I told him that I’d just seen his 1990 fight with James Toney and that I had him winning that one over the future Hall of Famer with the knockdown (Johnson lost that one via split decision on the judges’ scorecards).
“Where’d yah see it?”, he asked, probably wondering if it had recently run on ESPN Classic.
“That was then, this is now!”, he exclaimed, referring to his recently-mounted comeback the year before at thirty-eight.
Though I’m generally loathe to hear of fighters continuing their careers into their late thirties and beyond, Reggie’s a good defensive fighter, has absorbed minimal punishment and has never been knocked out, so he’s likely in the lower risk category when it comes to those aging warriors hanging on for a late career statement and a few potential big paydays.
I recall being momentarily startled by the rising intensity in his voice, the severity of his expression as he recreated the closing moments of his fight with William Guthrie which culminated in a devastating fifth-round, one-punch knockout.
“Yeah, man, they had to carry his butt out of the ring when I got through with him!”, he punctuated, still glaring intently, still caught up in the drama of reenactment as he signed away on a photo.
I made my way in through the backdoor at Graziano’s and immediately ran into a crush of bodies. The first celebrity I spotted was former lightweight gold medallist Howard Davis, Jr., recipient of the Val Barker Award for the most outstanding boxer of the Montreal 1976 Olympics. His mother had died suddenly from a heart attack just two days before the competition began but he’d refused to let his grief get the better of him; instead, he forged it into motivation, dedicating his campaign for the ultimate prize in amateur sports to her loving memory. I remember commenting to my grandfather how cool, how confident Howard appeared dancing about the ring, sticking and moving with his hands down as we watched him rack up a victory in his bid for the gold.
“Yeah, but that Jap’s doing a good job of keeping his hands up!”, grandpop countered, craning forward in his wing chair, cigar rolling around in his mouth, hands clasping and unclasping in unabated enthusiasm.
Howard was moving with a purpose, too fast for me to catch up with him and had suddenly been encircled by a seemingly impenetrable phalanx of autograph seekers.
As I turned to my left there was Charles Mooney, silver medallist at Montreal in the bantamweight division, practically rubbing shoulders with me. He’d been a great role model as a sportsman to this fan and countless other twelve year olds from around the world who’d had their first introduction to boxing through the Olympic Class of ’76. Though that U.S. Team boasted an unprecedented wealth of talented and charismatic performers, Charles was easily my favorite solely by virtue of his humbleness, his graciousness, the way he bowed to his audience at the conclusion of each of his bouts, never taking his eyes off of them as he did so.
“Hey, you caught onto that. That was my thing!”, he exclaimed, a grin spreading from ear-to-ear.
While we’re on the subject of the Class of ’76, there was Sugar Ray Leonard over at the bar, handsome and seemingly fit as ever, about to embark on his second season with The Contender and easily the most popular fighter in attendance this year. Though he was mobbed, the fans respectfully allowed him some breathing space, a pocket from which he could comfortably conduct verbal exchanges, sign autographs and receive the occasional Alexis Arguello or Micky Ward granted exclusive inner access. With a bit of a stretch I was able to attract Ray’s attention and get him to sign my Ring 80th Anniversary Collector’s Special: The 80 Best Fighters of the Last 80 Years.
Whew. Now that I’d secured the most prized and eagerly-sought John Hancock of the weekend, I could relax, take a load off and focus on strictly socializing a bit. My friends, the Brits, had thankfully secured a table early on and bade me a hearty welcome to join them.
Fact and trivia maven that I am, I can’t help but being something of a pollster so I queried them on a number of subjects. First off was which, if any, of the super middleweights from the British Isles deserve consideration for enshrinement in Canastota. For some Joe Calzaghe was already there, for others he had a long way to go. For some it was slugger Nigel “The Dark Destroyer” Benn, for others Brighton’s strutting, affected peacock Chris Eubank. Not surprisingly Celtic warrior Steve Collins, the only man to post a pair of victories over both Benn and Eubank, got no votes as there wasn’t an Irishman in the house.
Having been something of an anglophile since discovering Beowulf and the historical romances of Walter Scott as a boy (okay, Scott was a Scot but Ivanhoe was set in England, mind you), I wanted to know from the English among us who was their greatest hero throughout a rich history of notably heroic figures. For some it was Sir Winston Churchill. For one it was Field Marshal Bernard “Monty” Montgomery, the WWll military leader who outfoxed Germany’s “Desert Fox”, Erwin Rommel, in the battle for North Africa and, incidentally, was known for his lavish in-theater lunch spreads (the expression “go the ‘Full Monty’ ”actually derives from this extravagant practice of Montgomery and literally means “to go all out”). For me it will always be Captain James Cook. He and his crewmen withstood the ravages of disease, the elements, hostile tribes and insurrections within the ranks to circumnavigate the globe three times and unite the world, even making forays into Antarctic waters on a wooden ship.
Seemed every time I’d look away for a moment—to acknowledge a new arrival on the scene, to summon a waitress to take a group photo—I’d find a freshly-uncapped beer before me, the previous one still ice cold and less than half-drained.
“It’s a full house and the wait staff are a busy lot”, a stout, well-muscled chap winked and nodded at me, his massive, tattooed forearms folded across his chest. “Better this way. Better not to go wanting, don’t yah think?”.
I noticed that all the Brits were drinking beer. I asked one of my Welsh mates what was the liquor of preference in Wales? Was it gin as with the English? He responded that he and most of his cohorts at the table—English and Welsh alike—had sworn off gin, declaring it nasty stuff, “Mother’s Ruin”, for among other deleterious health effects it reputedly causes a woman’s fanny to lose condition, shrivel up (and, mind you, by “fanny” I’m not referring to the American slang for the “caboose” but rather the English slang for a feminine-specific part of the anatomy).
I mimed scrawling on an imaginary surface in my hand and Leon Spinks, ’76 Olympic light heavyweight gold medal winner and co-participant in the ’78 fight of the year (Ali being the other), grinned, winked and mouthed the words “one sec” as he took off his jacket and got situated. A moment later we had a great chat about his son, Cory, and the game plan he’d need to stick to in order to defeat junior middleweight champion Roman Karmazin in their upcoming title bout next month.
One of the special pleasures of Induction Weekend is getting to meet those fellow fight guys whose sphere of influence, whose life’s calling extends far beyond the limits of sport itself and truly stirs, moves the collective conscience of our society at large. Cuban émigré Enrique Encinosa, boxing writer, manager, former fighter, matchmaker and authority on Cuban fighters also happens to be one of the foremost voices of an anguished, displaced people. Having authored the books Cuba: The Unfinished Revolution and Unvanquished: Cuba’s Resistance to Fidel Castro among a host of other subversive, anti-Castro efforts, “Rick”, as he is known to friends, is regarded as no less than a terrorist by the standing regime of his beloved homeland.
His son, Erik, filmmaker and cinematographer for the recently released The SuperFight: Marciano vs. Ali documentary, and I, an aspiring sometime commercial music composer, were talking a bit of technicalia (the intricacies of synching music to video or something of the sort) when I broke off on a bit of soliloquy about the unparalleled joys of writing over other art forms.
Writing is truly the purest form of creative expression. No technique to develop save the evolution of one’s style. A completely intellectual process, all you need is paper and pencil, no technology to bog you down, drive you crazy!
“Yeah, and it saves on therapy, too”, Rick offered, casting a sobering glance our way.
Day Two
The first celebrity I met up with this morning was former jr. welterweight champ Aaron Pryor whom I fell in step with as he made his way to the signing, merchandise tables under the pavilion. I’d bought a couple of fight DVDs from Aaron last night at Graziano’s and had a couple of questions for him bright and early.
“Have yah had a chance to watch ‘em yet?”, he asked, his voice just as giddy as if the fights had taken place yesterday.
If you could only own a handful of DVD career sets, you have to have Pryor. Watching him go through his mesmerizing pre-fight ritual is worth the price of admission alone—glaring over at the opposing corner, drawing a bead on his adversary with an outstretched glove, circling, prowling around the ring, barely able to contain his excitement, on the verge of boiling over before the opening bell. Though his relentless, overwhelming punch volume is undoubtedly the main attraction, Aaron’s counterpunch-vulnerable “offense is my defense” approach and tendency not to keep a foot back, maintain his balance—i.e., tendency towards a “neutral stance”, neither truly orthodox nor southpaw owing to his nearly equal punching prowess with either hand—always had the potential for keeping things interesting should an adversary manage to sneak a clean shot through those hyper-kinetic, two-fisted fusillades and drop him for a flash knockdown.
I was saddened to hear that Emile Griffith, former welterweight and middleweight champ who boxed more championship rounds, 339, than any other fighter in boxing history, has been slipping mentally here recently. The Virgin Island’s great gift to the sport of boxing, Griffith had once been described as having the warm, sunny disposition of a bus driver or a grade school crossing guard. Emile has severe short-term memory loss in the wake of a beating he suffered in 1992 outside a gay New York City nightclub he frequented; though no suspects were ever found, the suspicion has always been that he was the victim of a hate crime.
Emile had just finished signing a copy of a fan’s DVD of Ring of Fire, the poignant, unforgettable documentary of the 1962 Griffith / Paret ring tragedy, when I placed a hand on his shoulder and expressed to him what a moving experience the film, the DVD was for me.
He looked up at me with a vacant stare for a long moment before turning slowly to Luis Rodrigo, his adopted son whom he’d first befriended when Luis was a troubled youth and inmate in Secaucus many years back.
“What DVD?!!!”, he cried, throwing his hands up in frustration. “Do we have this DVD?!!!”.
Heavyweight titleholder Sergei Lyakhovich, fresh off his fight of the year candidate performance against Lamon Brewster in April, conducted a ringside workout for the fans while a member of Team Lyakhovich passed out courtesy photos of their man for the subsequent autograph session.
Great thinking, guys. How many fighters over the years have shown up unannounced, at the last minute like Sergei only to find their fans wanting for an appropriate photo, an appropriate piece of memorabilia to sign?
I informed always affable Showtime analyst and former Ring editor Steve Farhood that we didn’t miss Dean of Boxing Journalists Mike Katz at maxboxing, [currently residing at boxingtalk.com] now that Steve himself is onboard. We leafed through my copy of the 75 Years of the Ring special issue which he and his staff had compiled in the late ‘90s as he reminisced a bit about his tenure at the helm of “The Bible of Boxing”.
Okay, I had to bounce at least one mythical match up off of him while I had the opportunity. Middleweight legend Carlos Monzon made much of his mark by defeating naturally smaller men, welterweights—albeit some all-time great ones—who had moved up in weight class to challenge him. Monzon didn’t fight well on the inside but was a master of distance; how would he have done against a naturally larger threat such as a Tommy Hearns who had reach, punching power and great boxing ability to boot?
He looked away, pensively.
“I’m trying to picture the two of them going at it”, he murmured, gazing off into the distance.
“You know Monzon only fought once in the U.S. and is vastly underrated here.”
Pause.
“Nobody ever outboxed Tommy Hearns.”
Pause again.
“It could actually be a very boring fight, neither man giving ground”, he concluded finally with a shrug.
While we’d experienced a near record high in heat and humidity the previous year, contrastingly, the mercury would drop down and linger in the 50s for much of this weekend.
Then Bert Sugar, he of more allusions than Shakespeare, Milton and Aeschylus combined, arrived on the scene huddled under a windbreaker and was muttering contemptuously something or other about global warming as he made his way toward the warmth of the indoor pavilion. Induction Weekend just wouldn’t be the same without boxing’s premier showman holding forth on some aspect of fighters or the fight game; if boxing didn’t have a Bert Sugar we’d have to invent one.
Bert and Howard Davis, Jr., later joined by former heavyweight contender George Chuvalo, led a discussion on the decline of boxing as a mainstream sport and the factors contributing thereto. The rise of competition from professional basketball and football in the late 1950s, early 1960s. The proliferation over the decades of additional weight classes and multiple alphabet soup titles therewith to the degree that the general public—nay, boxing cognoscenti themselves—have no idea who the real “champions” are; indeed, to the extent that alphabet titleholders tend to avoid one another today, sadly, we no longer have real champions. The current plight of the heavyweight division—boxing’s flagship division—the popularity of which, at least in this country, has always served as the most reliable bellwether of the prosperity of the sport as a whole. The disappearance of boxing from network television and daytime “omnibuses” such as ABC’s Wide World of Sports and CBS’s Sports Spectacular and its relegation to essentially late night, after hours diversion on the cable networks with more and more of the broadcasts featured as costly pay-per-view affairs. Boxing has no central spokesperson, no commissioner, no central marketing agency.
“You know what the greatest marketing job in boxing is today?”, Bert demanded of those in attendance. “You’re in it—The Boxing Hall of Fame!”
Everyone broke into raucous applause, duly reveling in Bert’s observation.
“The Dancing Brophys (Executive Director, Ed, and Media Relations Specialist, Jeff) put on a hell of a better marketing job than anybody else”, Bert continued.
Disappointingly, there was to be no Friday night boxing card, no ESPN Friday Night Fights broadcast from Turning Stone Casino this year. The official word was that it’s owing to unresolved wrangling between the Oneida Indian Nation and the state of New York while some hold to the assertion that the area just doesn’t have the fan base, the drawing power to attract the name fighters necessary to fill a large ballroom, to make it a profitable enough venture. In lieu, we’d enjoy Night of the Olympians, a salute to the U.S. Olympic Boxing Class of ’76 fittingly held on the 30th anniversary of their remarkable summer triumph and purportedly the first such official reunion for that illustrious group.
As I approached the bar at the Rusty Rail Party House, venue for Night of the Olympians, I observed future inductee Pernell “Sweet Pea” Whitaker as he set his beer down long enough to give a fan an impromptu lesson in the fine art of slipping a punch solely with slight, sinuous upper body movement without giving ground in the pocket.
After filling my plate at the appetizer buffet line I joined Don Scott, publisher of Boxing Collector News and one of the lecturers featured earlier in the day, at his table and thanked him for taking the time to authenticate the original signature on a Marciano item of mine some months ago on a gratis, no charge basis. A couple of mouthfuls later the doors to the event seating area opened and there was a mad rush as everyone hastened to secure the closest possible table to the dais, the honorees.
Showtime commentators Steve Farhood and Nick Charles gave the keynote address, impressing upon the audience just how integral the ’76 Olympic Class was to the resurgence of interest in boxing in the U.S. There had been only one U.S. gold medal winner in the ’72 Olympics, Sugar Ray Seales. With the opening bell from Maurice Richard Arena in Montreal in July 1976 there was only one U.S.-born professional world champion, Muhammad Ali. But the U.S. Class of ’76, arguably the most talented, most successful in the nation’s history, would defy the odds, upstage their Soviet and Cuban favorites, go on to win seven medals and that performance, coupled with the release of the wildly-popular, Oscar-winning motion picture, Rocky, later in the fall would mark a far-reaching renaissance for the sport.
Nick shared how an ebullient 18 yr.-old gold medal winner named Sugar Ray Leonard would return to the Washington, D.C. area right after the Olympics and appear on his show, declaring:
“You know, it can’t get any better than this. I’m retiring!”
It’s incalculable what the loss would have been to boxing in the ‘80s had Leonard declined to enter the pro ranks, if he’d never engaged in his classic contests with Benitez, Duran, Hearns, Hagler among others which have assured him a place among the all-time greats.
One-by-one, beginning with the non-medallists and working his way up to the gold medallists, our emcee introduced the fighters, directed our attention to the monitors for highlights of each individual’s performances and then invited the honorees to the podium to say a few words.
Diminutive light flyweight Louis Curtis, appearing all of an ounce over his 106 lb. fighting trim, celebrates that he no longer has to suffer making weight.
Though certainly cheerful, former flyweight Leo Randolph, the least known of the five gold medal winners, seemed a bit self-conscious, almost anxious to vacate the podium during his brief, hurried address.
“I’m really honored to be here. They say I talk more than I did back in the days. I’m trying to be a lawyer that’s why I’m talkin’ so much. Alright, thank you. It’s good to be here and I feel honored to be here. Yargh! Thank you very much!”, said Leo.
Though Leo’s by all accounts very modest and soft-spoken, his carriage, his demeanor that evening might to some degree also serve as indication that most of these men probably aren’t accustomed to being formally honored, feted for their accomplishments.
The evening didn’t pass without a couple of sad notes. Without elaborating, Howard Davis, Jr. mentioned that welterweight challenger Clinton Jackson was currently serving time in jail. Bronze medal-winning heavyweight champ “Big John” Tate, a longtime sufferer from cocaine addiction, died in a 1998 automobile accident.
“Well, I won’t talk long because it’s been said that I’ve put more people to sleep with my speeches than I ever did with my right hand”, light middleweight challenger Chuck Walker joked, eliciting laughter during one of the more entertaining addresses of the evening.
Walker was on the wrong end of a bad decision in the second round of competition, losing to eventual gold medallist Jerzy Rybicki of Poland. The fans at ringside howled and threw things. The loss bothers him to this day and he admittedly still has recurring dreams about his pre-fight preparations for that bout—dreams which promise that the outcome this time will assuredly be in his favor.
“You might notice that I look a little different than these guys—I’m taller!”, Chuck continued, eliciting more laughter.
For those not in the know, Walker was the only white fighter on the ’76 U.S. Olympic boxing team.
“The greatest compliment I used to get when we were all together was…some of you guys, (coach) Sergeant Johnson especially…would say ‘man, the way you fight you gotta have a little soul in yah, man!’. Well, I’m coming out of the closet here because after my dad put me to looking up some background on my family one night, turns out, guys…turns out my great grandmother was half black. There’s where it came from. That’s the truth!”
“I was a brother”, Chuck emphasized. “It’s a great honor to be a part of a team like this wonderful bunch of guys. We love each other.”
Commenting later in the evening on what it was that made the Class of ’76 so special, Leon Spinks offered the following on Chuck:
“Best dancer, the only white guy (Walker would later become a professional tap dancer). Ain’t that somethin’?”
Day Three
Having turned in at the relatively early hour of midnight the previous evening, I arrived at the Boxing Autograph and Card Show just before the doors opened at 10:00 a.m. Content with immediately securing Ring’s 1996 “100 Greatest Title Fights of All Time” issue and a rare VHS copy of the 1957 Barney Ross biopic, Monkey On My Back (Max Baer’s The Lady and the Prize Fighter eluding me for yet another year), I headed on over to the Museum grounds, not wanting to miss out on future Mexican Hall of Famer Erik Morales’s ringside lecture.
When I’d mentioned yesterday to a Mexican-American fan, a first-time Induction Weekend visitor, that it was rumored that the Tijuana native would be making an appearance, his eyes bugged out as he exclaimed:
“Erik Morales! If Erik Morales shows up I know I’m just gonna die! I just know it!”
Like the great Julio Cesar Chavez before him, Erik Morales epitomizes for my Mexican acquaintance the Latino warrior fight ethic— a commitment to always seek out the best available competition, a predilection to brawl, to trade punches, to test the mettle of your opponent rather than safely outbox him, a willingness to go down with one’s ship, to go out on one’s shield in the middle of the ring rather than suffer the ignominy of throwing in the towel, quitting on one’s stool. Though Morales would breach that code of conduct later in the year in his explosive rubber match with Filipino sensation Manny Pacquiao (taking a knee for the full count in the third round), I’d have to agree with HBO commentator Larry Merchant that El Terrible, with a lot of hard mileage on his ring odometer and more memorable topflight wars than any fighter in recent memory, had clearly earned the right to honorably do so and call it an outstanding career, his legacy untarnished, fully intact.
When someone asked—all hype, all trash talk aside—if he and chief Mexican rival Marco Antonio Barrera were actually contemptuous of one another as it’s been widely reported, Morales paused, looked over at his translator as if for counsel and then replied with a grin:
“I don’t really know him.”
I watched as my Mexican-American acquaintance approached El Terrible afterwards for an autograph; too tongue-tied to get the words of a greeting out, he faltered repeatedly, abruptly abandoning any further attempt at verbal communication as he sheepishly thrust out his magazine and Sharpie.
Hands down Latino boxing fans are the greatest of them all. I was in line for the concession stand at a recent local fight card in Greensboro, N.C. when I turned to a migrant farm worker beside me and began chatting him up about the Mexican legends—the Salvador Sanchezes, the Cesar Chavezes and the Ricardo Lopezes. The knees of his jeans still sodden with dirt, with mud from a day of work in the field, an infant in his arms and three hungry toddlers in tow, he was apparently so delighted that I could share something with him about his ring heroes that he didn’t already know that he insisted on footing the bill for my hamburger, fries and rum and Coke.
As an aside did you know in Catholic, Latino culture there are patron saints for vocations as diverse as bartending, fishing, swineherding and even prostitution yet, curiously enough, there is no such hallowed a devotee for boxing…
I was so glad to hear back in January that Humberto “Chiquita” Gonzalez and Michael Carbajal were getting their much-deserved due, their induction this year and together fittingly so as they’d been co-participants in 1993’s fight of the year, a contest which would later be proclaimed Greatest Junior Flyweight Fight of the Last Eighty Years (2002) by Ring magazine. The little big men (we’re talking flyweights, strawweights) have traditionally gotten the short shrift (at least in this country) in terms of both fan popularity and acknowledgement from fight analysts and historians, so it was widely celebrated in many quarters that these two would be joining the likes of previous flyweight enshrinees Jimmy Wilde, Pancho Villa, Pascual Perez and Miguel Canto.
One-by-one the fighters were announced at the Banquet of Champions later that evening to the accompaniment of gladiatorial, fanfaric music and the applause of a full house. As someone had assured me would be the case earlier in the day, I didn’t recognize Puerto Rico’s junior featherweight great Wilfredo “Bazooka” Gomez. His days of starving himself to make weight long since over, he was bulging, bursting at the seams of his pinstripe jacket, all moon-faced and jovial as he paused for me, camera poised, during his procession.
As Emile Griffith shuffled, stutter-stepped his way up the aisle, a woman, probably a stranger judging by her tentativeness, her hesitancy, stopped him in his tracks long enough to steal an embrace and a kiss on the lips.
When Canastota’s own seventy-nine year-old welterweight great Carmen Basilio approached, I threw a jab out, drawing him into fistic engagement as he temporarily broke off from his female escort. He’d gotten me good last year, smacking me so hard on the cheek that I envisioned the burning, glowing imprint of his open hand would appear all-too visible in our subsequent arm-in-arm photo.
This year I vowed it would be different.
“Nine of ‘em may have been wrong, Carmen, but these ten got it right!”, I shouted, both fists clenched, referencing his famous quote issued to Howard Cosell before the second Sugar Ray Robinson fight.
I managed to block the first one but as the old adage goes, barroom, ballroom fights are won and lost at the beer tap and I, already deep in the cups before the evening had begun, was decidedly at a disadvantage. To the roar of all in attendance Carmen scored flush on his second attempt and unruffled, untouched was on his way again.
Class of ’90 light heavyweight Bob Foster delivered the most memorable address of the evening, sharing how he and Muhammad Ali had a bet going the night of June 27, 1972 on who would knock out his respective Quarry brother in the fewest rounds (Bob fought Mike on the undercard while Ali had a main event return engagement with older brother, Jerry). Bob won the bet, besting Mike in four while Ali took seven rounds to retire Jerry. A clip was shown of Bob catching Mike with that thunderbolt of a left hook, lifting him clean off his feet, momentarily airborne before he fell flat on his back, not stirring until well after the count had been completed, one of the most devastating KOs ever witnessed.
After the Banquet I informed Carmen that it had become an annual tradition for me to load up my cooler with a year’s supply of his Italian sausage (sold at the local supermarket) before packing up the car and returning home.
He looked up from the photo he was signing, grinned over his spectacles and resumed scrawling.
“I take back everything I ever said about you”, he replied.
“Hey, how about taking back that wicked left hook you dealt me earlier, Carmen?”, I winked, rubbing my jaw.
***
Okay, after three consecutive years as an attendee I have yet to make it to day four, the actual day of enshrinement. I could plead emotional exhaustion, that I’m just too worn out after three days, all-too ready to return home and savor my treasure trove of memories. But, in all truth, it’s been owing to compromised vacation time. This year I’ll be staying for the duration and won’t neglect to pack enough audiotape to fully cover all of the formal events—not just a couple of opening-day lectures—and will, schedules permitting, work in some actual interviews (something I’ve yet to do).
Look forward to seeing you all in “Boxing’s Hometown” this June!
For more information on the IBHOF and Induction Weekend ’07 events,, checkout the International Boxing Hall of Fame website (www.ibhof.com)
Eric B. Thompson is a sometime freelance writer and an all the time, 24-hr. armchair boxing historian. He can be reached at etmusc@aol.com
The author would like to thank boxing writer and historian Lee Groves for graciously allowing me to excerpt and paraphrase passages from his article, “Chuck Walker: The Forgotten Olympian” which was originally published October 17, 2006 by Maxboxing.com.
Copyright 2007, Eric B. Thompson. All Rights Reserved.
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