Boxing on This Day

Nick Parkinson

Description

Boxing On This Day revisits the sport's most magical moments, from title tear-ups, shocks and famous knockouts to bizarre dramas. Here are hundreds of ring highlights, all mixed in with a maelstrom of quirky anecdotes and legendary characters to produce an irresistibly dippable boxing diary - with an entry for every day of the year. It's not just the stunning punches and smart one-liners that makes the history of the fight game so absorbing. Boxing is never far from controversy or hyperbole, surviving fixes and numerous scandals while producing some of sport's most famous names from Dempsey to Louis, from Ali to Tyson, from Lennox Lewis to Floyd Mayweather Jr. As well as recalling heroic, controversial, funny, tragic and surreal events, Boxing On This Day benefits from brilliant research, gathering together many original stories in a concise history of boxing from the 19th century to 2015.

Sujets

• History of sport
• Boxing
• Xian de Boxing

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 30 juillet 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785310898
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2015
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN 13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Nick Parkinson, 2015
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or here in after invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 9781785310522
eBook ISBN: 9781785310898
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DEDICATION
For Caroline, George, Oliver and Teddy
Contents
JANUARY
FEBRUARY
MARCH
APRIL
MAY
JUNE
JULY
AUGUST
SEPTEMBER
OCTOBER
NOVEMBER
DECEMBER
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks firstly to Pitch Publishing for giving me the opportunity to write my first book, which I have thoroughly enjoyed working on. Thanks also to my wife Caroline and our three boys - George, Oliver and Teddy - for putting up with me when I start talking excitedly about boxing. Thanks also to my dad, Alan, for his proof-reading.
For research, I ve used a lot of books, newspaper cuttings and video footage of fights (most of which can now be found online). There are too many names to include here but thanks to all my fellow journalists who have reported on boxing down the years, boxing historians and others involved in the media or boxing industries. Without their reports, statistics and accounts, this project would not have been possible. Thanks, in particular, to those at www.boxrec.com , an excellent source for boxing statistics and information.
Lastly, thanks to the boxers themselves who are featured in these pages.
INTRODUCTION
It is hard to think of a sport where history matters more than in boxing. The fight game is regularly looking back over its shoulder to mark anniversaries of big fights, remember glorious eras and to measure heroes of the fluorescent present against those of the sepia-toned past.
Boxing may have become a marginalised sport in recent years, but its epic encounters are known all over the world. Those that don t know the difference between a left hook and a fishing hook could still name boxing s big fights and its brightest stars.
People have forever been saying boxing was better in the past, but the sport is still capable of producing special moments and fighters to rank among the best in history. When Floyd Mayweather Jr and Manny Pacquiao finally met in May 2015, it was the biggest fight since at least the 1980s and the richest ever in pugilistic history. The long-anticipated world welterweight title fight captured a mainstream audience around the world, an occurrence that has been increasingly rare in recent decades.
In the UK, as in most countries, boxing has suffered from a diminished audience as it has been squeezed off regular showings on free-to-air television. Fight fans now have to seek out their sport as if on a treasure hunt, tracking down latest news on websites, social media and watching fights mostly on cable television channels. Although boxing can no longer be found regularly on UK terrestial television, it is still capable of capturing the public s imagination: Carl Froch s world super-middleweight title rematch with George Groves in May 2014 was British boxing s biggest fight since the Second World War.
In this book, I ve tried to include a mixture of events from the recent era going back over a hundred years, featuring fights and incidents that were significant or memorable across the world. Apologies if some of your favourites are not included here as there were difficult choices for some days and I wanted to ensure there was some variety. I ve attempted to include a broad spectrum of boxers and nationalities, from the heroic to the villainous and from the amusing to the sad.
I hope this book provides an entertaining journey back through boxing history enabling the reader to reminisce or perhaps learn something new about the sport, which still has plenty of fight left in it.
Nick Parkinson, June 2015
1st JANUARY 1923
Harry Greb was as wild in the ring as he lived out of it and in the year he won the world middleweight title, he met his match for fighting dirty. This was the second of three fights in four months with Bob Roper, who was knocked out of the ring in the fifth round. When Greb leant between the ropes offering a hand to his stricken opponent, Roper could not resist the opportunity to land two punches on his unsuspecting opponent. Roper - 20 pounds heavier - smacked Greb after the bell in the ninth and tenth rounds during a foul-filled scrap in which even the referee was hit twice before Greb was given the ten-round decision. Prize fighting ain t the noblest of arts and I ain t its noblest artist, said Greb, AKA The Human Windmill.
2nd JANUARY 1957
Sugar Ray Robinson is widely regarded as the best ever boxer but at 35 he was past his prime when he met Gene Fullmer in a second defence of his world middleweight title at Madison Square Garden. Robinson had speed, silky skills, timing, bravery and power but by now he was slower and the reflexes were waning. He had even retired in 1952, only to make a comeback in 1955 and had soon regained the title. Fullmer, a 25-year-old Mormon from Utah, was fresher and the 15-round points decision was unanimous in his favour after he had floored Robinson in the seventh round. But Robinson was not finished. In a rematch the following May, Robinson won back the title for a fourth time after knocking out Fullmer with a single left hook.
3rd JANUARY 2007
Edwin Valero did not hang about in the ring. The Venezuelan blasted away his first 18 opponents inside the first round before being extended to two and then ten rounds. In the first defence of his WBA world super-featherweight title against Mexican Michael Lozada, he took just 72 seconds to register a 19th first round stoppage win. Valero seemed destined to become one of the biggest stars of his era after this fight but he never fulfilled his full potential as three years later, aged 28, he committed suicide in a police cell after stabbing his wife to death.
4th JANUARY 1940
World welterweight champion Henry Armstrong looked like he might finish Joe Ghnouly early after knocking him down three times in the opening round, but his fellow St Louis boxer got on his bike to avoid further punishment in the next few rounds. Armstrong caught up with Ghnouly early in the fifth round and finished him with three successive left hooks. Astonishingly, Armstrong defended his world title with a ninth round win over Pedro Montanez just 20 days later. Known as Homicide Hank, Armstrong held the featherweight, lightweight and welterweight world titles at the same time briefly in 1938.
5th JANUARY 1971
Sonny Liston s bloated dead body was the horrifying sight that greeted his wife Geraldine when she returned from holiday to their Las Vegas home. Her husband had been dead six days. Police attributed cause of death to a heroin overdose and a post mortem s verdict was lung congestion. Another theory is that Liston, who had a life-long fear of needles, was killed by an enforced heroin overdose administered by a Mob hitman. Liston won the world heavyweight title in 1962 but two years later was shown up by Cassius Clay s speed of mouth, hands and feet. Liston lasted 60 seconds in a rematch with Clay/Muhammad Ali after being stopped by a phantom punch . There were suspicions both Clay/Ali fights were fixed by the Mob via Liston and the FBI investigated the first fight.
6th JANUARY 1928
Tommy Loughran looked doomed after he was given the second nine count in the first round of his world light-heavyweight title defence against Leo Lomski at Madison Square Garden. But Loughran, from Philadelphia, recovered to box his way to a 15 round decision for a second defence. Boxing on the undercard was Jim Braddock, who would lose to both Loughran and Lomski over the next two years before later re-emerging as a heavyweight known as Cinderella Man. Loughran stepped up to heavyweight after beating Braddock in 1929.
7th JANUARY 1995
Kevin Kelley suffered his first defeat and lost the WBC featherweight title after both eyes swelled over and his corner pulled him out of his third defence against Alejandro Gonzalez at the end of the tenth round. Kelley was put down in the sixth round but then floored Gonzalez in the eighth before both eyes closed over. Gonzalez, a 21-year-old from Guadalajara in Mexico, had pulled off a shock in Texas in only his second appearance on American soil. Gonzalez then made two successful defences.
8th JANUARY 1995
Carlos Monzon, a former world middleweight champion of seven years who was never knocked out, was killed when the car a friend was driving crashed. Monzon was 52 and was on his way back to prison after parole in his native Argentina. He spent the last five years of his life incarcerated after being sentenced to 11 years for the murder of his lover, Alicia Muniz, in 1988. Monzon, who retired in 1977, was convicted of killing Muniz, who fell from a second floor balcony at a party early on Valentine s Day 1988. Monzon s first wife had shot him and he had a record of assault and drunkenness, as well as possessing a gun, in what was never a quiet retirement.
9th JANUARY 1900
The first big fight of the 20th century saw American Terrible Terry McGovern knock out Canadian George Dixon in eight rounds at New York s Broadway Club. McGovern, at 19, was ten years younger than the defending world featherweight champion and caught Dixon at the right time. But Dixon - known at the time as Li