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The Beast of Stillman’s Gym, Part 1

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The Beast of Stillman’s Gym

PART 1: CROSSROADS

In the years after World War I, a ghostly lodge of southern terrorists reemerged as a movement with real clout. By 1924 it was at the peak of its power and Texas was the most infested state in America with 170,000 Ku Klux Klansmen armed and organized, every one of them a member of the Democratic Party. Republicans, the Grand Old Party of Lincoln (and then-President Calvin Coolidge) often failed to even muster a candidate for state and local elections.

Like a cactus before the setting sun, fascism cast its lengthening shadow. Dissent wasn’t stifled so much as stomped to protect the interests, real and imagined, of white Protestant Texans. Those guilty of morals violations were taken from their homes and flogged, beaten, shot, or left blind-folded with placards leaning against their broken forms. “Undesirables” were ordered out of town. At Sour Lake, a justice of the peace was tarred and feathered as was a U.S. Marshal in Brenham who later resigned. The governor spoke out publically against the Klan on Independence Day in 1921 and the Klan responded with warnings posted right there on the grounds of the State Capitol.

To black Texans scattered throughout the arid landscape in the early 1920s, it was a reign of terror. Lynch Law was ever-present and selectively applied: Between 1900 and 1924 nine whites were lynched compared with 171 African Americans, and the latter were almost invariably mutilated before and after death by mobs. Simply being friendly toward white women could mean permanent disfigurement if your skin was dark. Neither respectability nor age made any difference. A dentist was mutilated for “associating” with white women. Two bellboys were snatched within two weeks in the same city, beaten, and held down while the letters “KKK” were burned into their foreheads with acid.

These atrocities were committed with impunity because the machinery of government –-the legislature, city halls, the courts, law enforcement–- was infested. When a thousand members marched in full regalia through Dallas carrying torches and waving banners like a conquering army, city authorities added to the spectacle by extinguishing the lights. In 1923, the KKK even managed to deliver one of their own into the United States Senate.

President Coolidge was no friend of the Klan. In 1924 alone he granted Native Americans full citizenship, gave a speech at the Catholic Holy Name Society in Washington, and stood, however stiffly, at a podium in Howard University where he declared the “progress of the colored people on this continent” as one of the “marvels of modern history.” He unsuccessfully urged a Democrat-dominated Congress to pass anti-lynching laws and appointed black men to federal positions. Emmett J. Scott, Secretary-Treasurer at Howard University thanked him for the “great encouragement” he was bringing to the twelve million African Americans who suffered “persecution by a hooded order which seeks to exclude them from the privileges of American citizenship.” “They know Calvin Coolidge,” Scott wrote. “They know his traditional friendship and they know of his distinguished services in behalf of their race.”

In Victoria, Texas on January 24th 1924, a black auto mechanic welcomed his second son into the world. The infant was given the name Calvin Coolidge Lytle.

The city of Victoria is thirty miles north of the Gulf of Mexico at the intersection of three highways. That fact and its equidistant location from four major cities earned it a nickname: “The Crossroads of South Texas.” For George W. Lytle and his wife Virginia, it was good place to raise a family.

Calvin’s playpen was his father’s auto shop. He was tinkering early and probably scolded regularly for coming into the house with greasy hands. After school and on Sundays, he was a barefoot newsy hawking the Victoria Advocate. He didn’t have to worry about his turf because his big brother, whose name was Loyal, held rivals in check. There was one fight Calvin had when he was eleven: “The kid was a lefty. I was a righty. He gave me such a licking I decided if I ever got into another fight I’d fight like him. So I turned around. I bat left-handed. In football I pass with my left-hand. I’m left-handed all the way now.”

South Texas was far from idyllic for African Americans, but the diminished influence of the KKK, which can be traced to the year of Calvin’s birth, cut the tension in half. Not unlike any other American family, the Lytles huddled up as the Great Depression fell on the country and business slowed to a crawl at the shop. The family of four went on relief and soon became a family of three. On October 22nd 1936, Virginia Lytle died after a common accident became something worse. Calvin was all of twelve years old.

Records show that Loyal Lytle enlisted in the U.S. Army in June 1941. When Calvin turned 17 in January, he became eligible to join the Civilian Conservation Corps. The CCC, one of the most popular of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, operated between 1933 and 1942 and was intended for unmarried, unemployed young men from families on relief. Between April and September, Calvin was a member of Co. 2873(C) with the “C” standing for “colored.” He lived in a segregated barracks at Ascarate County Park in El Paso and worked 40 hours a week doing heavy, unskilled and semiskilled labor outdoors for $30 a month, with $25 of that being sent home. After September, he returned home to live with his father.

On December 1st 1941, his father died.

Calvin turns up in San Antonio as the ward of a county judge named C.W. Anderson (whose name is now attached to a loop on the San Antonio freeway). He got a job, or Anderson pulled strings and got him a job as a soda jerker. It was a plum of a position, particularly for a black teenager in Texas. Those weeks or months that Calvin wore that black bow tie must have been a high point, flipping scoops of ice cream into malts for tips, and girls.

On March 8th 1942, he found himself standing in a Navy recruiting station in Houston. Pearl Harbor had been attacked and American men hoisted up the flag, beat their plowshares into swords, and went to war. Calvin didn’t have much of a choice. His enlistment papers reveal that Judge Anderson signed him up to become a messman in the naval reserves. They reveal more than that. Calvin wrote “serve my country” as his reason for enlisting. It’s a boiler plate answer that required no thought and that was probably transcribed. He scrawled the names of four men as character references, all of them black and from Victoria, two of them mechanics like his father, and none of them known by him for more than a year. There was no one else he could find in his life.

Reading his application for enlistment seventy years after he completed it is enough to make one feel oddly anxious for him. Confused, alone, and about to be sent headlong into something he was completely unprepared for, he was anxious for himself. His handwriting tells it all. The careful script, clumsy with mistakes that he took pains to correct, reveals a nervous hand. It looks like the work of an undereducated man writing his will.

Calvin was shipped off to the messman training center in Norfolk, Virginia. Eight weeks of boot camp included immunizations, gas mask instruction, swimming lessons, and training to properly polish shoes and silverware and set white officers’ tables. Calvin wore a bow-tie again, though it was a step down from the soda fountain. In the United States Navy, African Americans could expect to be nothing but mess attendants and mess attendants were nothing but servants on the lowest rung of the ship’s pecking order.

He was stationed at the U.S. Naval Air Station in the Panama Canal Zone from the end of May until the beginning of August 1942. He’d get a lousy two day pass, and would do what many sailors did –-swagger into a kit kat club and stagger out with rum on his breath and a good time girl on his arm. Calvin’s sexual experiences may or may not have earned him accolades from other messmen; they definitely earned him the “burn.” Contracting venereal diseases was common enough to become proverbial. Enlisting in the Navy, the saying went, was “to be sent out a sacrifice and come home a burnt offering.”

When he wasn’t on what might loosely be called active duty, he played baseball. One rainy day, he found his way into a boxing gym. A 6-foot white man was waiting around for a sparring partner when a coach spotted Calvin and invited him over to see if the gloves fit. They fit just fine. “I just tore into the guy. He was in no condition. I could see that,” he recalled in an interview a few years later at Stillman’s Gym. “I knocked him down with a left to the solar plexus and a right to the jaw.” The white man got up and proceeded to give Calvin, who had never boxed before, his first lesson in leather-pushing. “He started to get me,” he would later admit, “and hurt me a little.”

As he climbed out of the ring, the surprised coach walked up to him.

“You know who you were in with?” he said, “That was Billy Soose!”

Billy Soose was the former middleweight champion of the world. Calvin was signed up for the Navy boxing team on the spot. He remembered that it was a Thursday; on Sunday he had his first three-round, two-minute bout and scored a knockout.

Boxing was the only credit on his ledger. His tour of duty was fixing to be about as pleasant as the clap. While researching his book The Messman Chronicles: African Americans in the U.S. Navy 1932-1943, Richard E. Miller was warned that many veterans would deny that they served as “lowly messboys.” Deprived of the chance to prove themselves in battle, the vast majority of black sailors had to contend with daily humiliations instead. American prejudice could be rabid in the forties, but in the confined society of a ship it was magnified, particularly when southern officers and soldiers were involved. Messmen generally coped by keeping a low profile and preserving their dignity as best they could, though a few played the role of the smiling ‘Sambo’ servant in hopes of having an easier time.

Calvin rebelled.

Nine days after being transported for duty to the naval air station in British Guiana in September 1942, he was in the brig. He spent five days in solitary confinement for disorderly conduct. In December he was “absent from duty” for six days and ended up back in the brig. In March he stole a Navy truck. The commanding officer took away his liberty for two months as well as $32 of the $42 he earned during that time. In April he earned five more days solitary confinement on nothing except bread and water for “Neglect of duty”; in May he earned another month’s restriction for “Falsehood.”

In June he was transferred. During his new assignment on board the U.S.S. Surprise, he was disciplined for shirking watch duty, profane language, insubordination, leaving ship without proper authority, theft, and possession of another man’s liberty card and “a lewd picture.” All told, he was at captain’s mast for disciplinary issues no less than eight times. By November 1943 he was locked up at a U.S. Naval receiving station in New York and awaiting a summary court martial. The problems didn’t end. Calvin was in a U.S. Naval Hospital for twenty days for a medical issue that was “the result of his own misconduct.”

When his enlistment expired in March 1944 no one complained; least of all him. The court martial’s sentence stipulated that he be given a “bad conduct discharge” and further stipulated that he “IS NOT recommended for reenlistment. IS NOT recommended for Good Conduct Medal. IS NOT entitled to mustering out allowance.” Understandably, Calvin didn’t want to go back to Texas and face Judge Anderson. There was nothing left for him there, nothing and no one, and so he formally requested permission to disembark in New York. Permission was granted. With his head in a sling, Calvin was furnished with civilian clothes, handed his discharge certificate, and sent on his way.

“The navy mess attendant,” said one veteran, “had to be a fighter. He had to fight the Germans and the Japanese at sea, red necks in every port, and ignorant Negroes who wanted to insult him for being what he was when he got home.” Calvin managed to make a bad thing worse. After two years in the service, he managed to forfeit almost all of the privileges granted a navy man. He would receive no pension to help him along while he lived and no cemetery plot to help him along when he died.

He drifted over to Brooklyn and got a job at a garage near King’s Highway. As the son of a mechanic, he would have been comfortable in greasy coveralls with a rag sticking out of the pocket. Boraxo soap and gasoline fumes would have reminded him of home, of those all-too-brief better days when the Lytles were together, when he wasn’t alone. He hadn’t been working there long when the familiar bell announcing the arrival of a patron became a fortuitous one. During the conversation that followed, Calvin mentioned that he boxed a little and wanted to get back into it. The patron told him that he had a friend who managed fighters and took down his name. Calvin must have been pleasantly surprised when he received a phone call and then a visit from Bernie Bernstein, who operated out of Sammy Aaronson’s office over on Broadway.

Bernstein took Calvin over to the fabled Stillman’s Gym and threw him in the ring with a professional middleweight –-“just to see if he could really fight.”

____________________________

The most remarkable breed of boxers is called “natural fighters.” One of them will surface at the center of the boxing universe in PART 2 OF “THE BEAST OF STILLMAN’S GYM.”

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­

Graphic: Messmen serve a meal to junior officers on board a cruiser during World War II. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, U.S. National Archives.

Henry Peck Fry’s The Modern Ku Klux Klan pp. 185-189. “Lynching in Texas,” by David L. Chapman, thesis, 1973. Emmet Scott’s letter quoted in an essay by Alvin S. Felzenberg entitled “Calvin Coolidge and Race: His Record in Dealing with the Racial Tensions of the 1920s” (1988). U.S. Census report, 1920, 1930; Telephone interview with Ellen Choyce, October 2011; Texas Death Index, 1936,1941; James Wright Heeley’s Parks for Texas: Enduring Landscapes of the New Deal offers details about where CCC Co. 2873 was assigned before WW II. “Needed Some Exercise –Mauls Ex-Champ” and “Bert Lytell, The Black Streak of Lightning in Gloves” from The Ring, circa 1940s, courtesy of Douglas Cavanaugh. An invaluable resource for this essay was “The Negro in the Navy: First Draft Narrative” prepared by the Historical Section of Naval Personnel, and Black Submariners in the United States Navy, 1940-1975 by Glenn A. Knoblock. Michael E. Ruane’s interview of Lanier W. Phillips in the Washington Post, 9/20/10 accurately depicts the Navy’s treatment of African American messmen during World War II; statements regarding the navy mess attendant as a “fighter” quoted in Richard E. Miller’s The Messman Chronicles: African Americans in the U.S. Navy 1932-1943 pp. 280-281. The military service record of Calvin Coolidge Lytle was obtained from the National Personnel Records Center, Military Personnel Records, in St. Louis, MO through the Freedom of Information Act. The Ring spotlighted Bert Lytell in the December 1944 issue and this was kindly provided by Alister Ottesen for use as a resource.

Springs Toledo can be contacted at scalinatella@hotmail.com“>scalinatella@hotmail.com.

Check out more boxing news on video at The Boxing Channel.

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Bygone Days: The Largest Crowd Ever at Madison Square Garden Sees Zivic TKO Armstrong

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Bygone Days: The Largest Crowd Ever at Madison Square Garden Sees Zivic TKO Armstrong

There’s not much happening on the boxing front this month. That’s consistent with the historical pattern.

Fight promoters of yesteryear tended to pull back after the Christmas and New Year holidays on the assumption that fight fans had less discretionary income at their disposal. Weather was a contributing factor. In olden days, more boxing cards were staged outdoors and the most attractive match-ups tended to be summertime events.

There were exceptions, of course. On Jan. 17, 1941, an SRO crowd of 23,180 filled Madison Square Garden to the rafters to witness the welterweight title fight between Fritzie Zivic and Henry Armstrong. (This was the third Madison Square Garden, situated at 50th Street and Eighth Avenue, roughly 17 blocks north of the current Garden which sits atop Pennsylvania Station. The first two arenas to take this name were situated farther south adjacent to Madison Square Park).

This was a rematch. They had fought here in October of the previous year. In a shocker, Zivic won a 15-round decision. The fight was close on the scorecards. Referee Arthur Donovan and one of the judges had it even after 14 rounds, but Zivic had won his rounds more decisively and he punctuated his well-earned triumph by knocking Armstrong face-first to the canvas as the final bell sounded.

This was a huge upset.

Armstrong had a rocky beginning to his pro career, but he came on like gangbusters after trainer/manager Eddie Mead acquired his contract with backing from Broadway and Hollywood star Al Jolson. Heading into his first match with Zivic – the nineteenth defense of the title he won from Barney Ross – Hammerin’ Henry had suffered only one defeat in his previous 60 fights, that coming in his second meeting with Lou Ambers, a controversial decision.

Shirley Povich, the nationally-known sports columnist for the Washington Post, conducted an informal survey of boxing insiders and found only person who gave Zivic a chance. The dissident was Chris Dundee (then far more well-known than his younger brother Angelo). “Zivic knows all the tricks,” said Dundee. “He’ll butt Armstrong with his head, gouge him with his thumbs and hit him just as low as Armstrong [who had five points deducted for low blows in his bout with Ambers].”

Indeed, Pittsburgh’s Ferdinand “Fritzie” Zivic, the youngest and best of five fighting sons of a Croatian immigrant steelworker (Fritzie’s two oldest brothers represented the U.S. at the 1920 Antwerp Olympics) would attract a cult following because of his facility for bending the rules. It would be said that no one was more adept at using his thumbs to blind an opponent or using the laces of his gloves as an anti-coagulant, undoing the work of a fighter’s cut man.

Although it was generally understood that at age 28 his best days were behind him, Henry Armstrong was chalked the favorite in the rematch (albeit a very short favorite) a tribute to his body of work. Although he had mastered Armstrong in their first encounter, most boxing insiders considered Fritzie little more than a high-class journeyman and he hadn’t looked sharp in his most recent fight, a 10-round non-title affair with lightweight champion Lew Jenkins who had the best of it in the eyes of most observers although the match was declared a draw.

The Jan. 17 rematch was a one-sided affair. Veteran New York Times scribe James P. Dawson gave Armstrong only two rounds before referee Donovan pulled the plug at the 52-second mark of the twelfth round. Armstrong, boxing’s great perpetual motion machine, a world title-holder in three weight classes, repaired to his dressing room bleeding from his nose and his mouth and with both eyes swollen nearly shut. But his effort could not have been more courageous.

At the conclusion of the 10th frame, Donovan went to Armstrong’s corner and said something to the effect, “you will have to show me something, Henry, or I will have to stop it.” What followed was Armstrong’s best round.

“[Armstrong] pulled the crowd to its feet in as glorious a rally as this observer has seen in twenty-five years of attendance at these ring battles,” wrote Dawson. But Armstrong, who had been stopped only once previously, that coming in his pro debut, had punched himself out and had nothing left.

Armstrong retired after this fight, siting his worsening eyesight, but he returned in the summer of the following year, soldiering on for 46 more fights, winning 37 to finish 149-21-10. During this run, he was reacquainted with Fritzie Zivic. Their third encounter was fought in San Francisco before a near-capacity crowd of 8,000 at the Civic Auditorium and Armstrong got his revenge, setting the pace and working the body effectively to win a 10-round decision. By then the welterweight title had passed into the hands of Freddie Cochran.

Hammerin’ Henry (aka Homicide Hank) Armstrong was named to the International Boxing Hall of Fame with the inaugural class of 1990. Fritzie Zivic followed him into the Hall three years later.

Active from 1931 to 1949, Zivic lost 65 of his 231 fights – the most of anyone in the Hall of Fame, a dubious distinction – but there was yet little controversy when he was named to the Canastota shrine because one would be hard-pressed to find anyone who had fought a tougher schedule. Aside from Armstrong and Jenkins, he had four fights with Jake LaMotta, four with Kid Azteca, three with Charley Burley, two with Sugar Ray Robinson, two with Beau Jack, and singles with the likes of Billy Conn, Lou Ambers, and Bob Montgomery. Of the aforementioned, only Azteca, in their final meeting in Mexico City, and Sugar Ray, in their second encounter, were able to win inside the distance.

By the way, it has been written that no event of any kind at any of the four Madison Square Gardens ever drew a larger crowd than the crowd that turned out on Jan. 17, 1941, to see the rematch between Fritzie Zivic and Henry Armstrong. Needless to say, prizefighting was big in those days.

A recognized authority on the history of prizefighting and the history of American sports gambling, TSS editor-in-chief Arne K. Lang is the author of five books including “Prizefighting: An American History,” released by McFarland in 2008 and re-released in a paperback edition in 2020.

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Jai Opetaia Brutally KOs David Nyika, Cementing his Status as the World’s Top Cruiserweight

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In his fifth title defense, lineal cruiserweight champion Jai Opetaia (27-0, 21 KOs) successfully defended his belt with a brutal fourth-round stoppage of former sparring partner David Nyika. The bout was contested in Broadbeach, Queensland, Australia where Opetaia won the IBF title in 2022 with a hard-earned decision over Maris Briedis with Nyika on the undercard. Both fighters reside in the general area although Nyika, a former Olympic bronze medalist, hails from New Zealand.

The six-foot-six Nyika, who was undefeated in 10 pro fights with nine KOs, wasn’t afraid to mix it up with Opetaia although had never fought beyond five rounds and took the fight on three weeks’ notice when obscure German campaigner Huseyin Cinkara suffered an ankle injury in training and had to pull out. He wobbled Opetaia in the second round in a fight that was an entertaining slugfest for as long as it lasted.

In round four, the champion but Nyika on the canvas with his patented right uppercut and then finished matters moments later with a combination climaxed with an explosive left hand. Nyika was unconscious before he hit the mat.

Opetaia’s promoter Eddie Hearn wants Opetaia to unify the title and then pursue a match with Oleksandr Usyk. Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez, a Golden Boy Promotions fighter, holds the WBA and WBO versions of the title and is expected to be Opetaia’s next opponent. The WBC diadem is in the hands of grizzled Badou Jack.

Other Fights of Note

Brisbane heavyweight Justis Huni (12-0, 7 KOs) wacked out overmatched South African import Shaun Potgieter (10-2), ending the contest at the 33-second mark of the second round. The 25-year-old, six-foot-four Huni turned pro in 2020 after losing a 3-round decision to two-time Olympic gold medalist Bakhodir Jalolov. There’s talk of matching him with England’s 20-year-old sensation Moses Itauma which would be a delicious pairing.

Eddie Hearn’s newest signee Teremoana Junior won his match even quicker, needing less than a minute to dismiss Osasu Otobo, a German heavyweight of Nigerian descent.

The six-foot-six Teremoana, who akin to Huni hails from Brisbane and turned pro after losing to the formidable Jalolov, has won all six of his pro fights by knockout while answering the bell for only eight rounds. He has an interesting lineage; his father is from the Cook Islands.

Rising 20-year-old Max “Money” McIntyre, a six-foot-three super middleweight, scored three knockdowns en route to a sixth-round stoppage of Abdulselam Saman, advancing his record to 7-0 (6 KOs). As one can surmise, McIntyre is a big fan of Floyd Mayweather.

The Opetaia-Nyika fight card aired on DAZN pay-per-view (39.99) in the Antipodes and just plain DAZN elsewhere.

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R.I.P. Paul Bamba (1989-2024): The Story Behind the Story

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Paul Bamba, a cruiserweight, passed away at age 35 on Dec. 27 six days after defeating Rogelio Medina before a few hundred fans on a boxing card at a performing arts center in Carteret, New Jersey. No cause of death has been forthcoming, leading to rampant speculation. Was it suicide, or perhaps a brain injury, and if the latter was it triggered by a pre-existing condition?

Fuel for the latter comes in the form of a letter that surfaced after his death. Dated July 25, 2023, it was written by Dr. Alina Sharinn, a board-certified neurologist licensed in New York and Florida.

“Mr. Bamba has suffered a concussion and an episode of traumatic diplopia within the past year and now presents with increasing headaches. His MRI of the brain revealed white matter changes in both frontal lobes,” wrote Bamba’s doctor.

Her recommendation was that he stop boxing temporarily while also avoiding any other activity at which he was at risk of head trauma.

Dr. Sherinn’s letter was written three months after Bamba was defeated by Chris Avila in a 4-round contest in New Orleans. He lost all four rounds on all three scorecards, reducing his record to 5-3.

Bamba took a break from boxing after fighting Avila. Eight months would elapse before he returned to the ring. His next four fights were in Santa Marta, Colombia, against opponents who were collectively 4-23 at the time that he fought them. The most experienced of the quartet, Victor Coronado, was 38 years old.

He won all four inside the distance and ten more knockouts would follow, the last against Medina in a bout sanctioned by the World Boxing Association for the WBA Gold title. As widely reported, the stoppage, his 14th, broke Mike Tyson’s record for the most consecutive knockouts within a calendar year. That would have been a nice feather in his cap if only it were true.

Born in Puerto Rico, Paul Bamba was a former U.S. Marine who spent time in Iraq as an infantry machine gunner. In interviews on social media platforms, he is well-spoken and introspective without a trace of the boastfulness that many prizefighters exhibit when talking to an outsider. Interviewed in a corridor of the arena after stopping Medina, he was almost apologetic, acknowledging that he still had a lot to learn.

His life story is inspirational.

His early years were spent in foster homes. He was homeless for a time after returning to civilian life. Speaking with Boxing Scene’s Lucas Ketelle, Bamba said, “I didn’t have any direction after leaving the Marine corps. I hit rock bottom, couldn’t afford a place to stay…I was renting a mattress that was shoved behind someone’s sofa.”

He turned his life around when he ventured into the Morris Park Boxing Gym in the Bronx where he learned the rudiments of boxing under the tutelage of former WBA welterweight champion Aaron “Superman” Davis. “I love boxing,” he would say. “The confidence it gives you permeates into other aspects of your life.”

Bamba’s newfound confidence allowed him to carve out a successful career as a personal trainer. His most famous client was the Grammy Award winning R&B singer-songwriter Ne-Yo who signed Bamba to his new sports management company late in the boxer’s Knockout skein. Bamba was with Ne-Yo in Atlanta when he passed away. Ne-Yo broke the news on his Instagram platform.

Paul Bamba had been pursuing a fight with Jake Paul. Winning the WBA Gold belt opened up other potentially lucrative options. In theory, the holder of the belt is one step removed from a world title fight. Next comes an eliminator and, if he wins that one, a true title fight attached to a hefty purse will follow…in theory.

Rogelio “Porky” Medina, who brought a 42-10 record, had competed against some top-shelf guys, e.g., Zurdo Ramirez, Badou Jack, James DeGale, David Benavidez, Caleb Plant; going the distance with DeGale and Plant. However, only two of his 42 wins had come in fights outside Mexico, at age 36 he was over the hill, and his best work had come as a super middleweight.

Thirteen months ago, Medina carried 168 ½ pounds for a match in New Zealand in which he was knocked out in the first round. He came in more than 30 pounds heavier, specifically 202 ¼, for his match with Paul Bamba. In between, he knocked out a 54-year-old man in Guadalajara to infuse his ledger with a little brighter sheen.

Why did the WBA see fit to sanction the Bamba-Medina match as a title fight? That’s a rhetorical question. And for the record, the record for the most consecutive knockouts within a calendar year wasn’t previously held by Mike Tyson. LaMar Clark, a heavyweight from Cedar City, Utah, scored 29 consecutive knockouts in 1958 after opening the year by winning a 6-round decision. (If you are inclined to believe that all or most of those knockouts were legitimate, then perhaps I can interest you in buying the Brooklyn Bridge.)

Clark was being primped for a fight with a good purse which came when he was dispatched to Louisville to fight a fellow who was fairly new to the professional boxing scene, a former U.S. Olympian then known as Cassius Clay who knocked him out in the second round in what proved to be Clark’s final fight.

Paul Bamba was a much better fighter than LaMar Clark, of that I am quite certain. However, if Paul Bamba had gone on to meet one of the world’s elite cruiserweights, a similar outcome would have undoubtedly ensued.

One can summon up the Bamba-Medina fight on the internet although the video isn’t great – it was obviously filmed on a smart phone – and pieces of it are missing. Bamba was winning with his higher workrate when Medina took his unexpected leave, but one doesn’t have to be a boxing savant to see that Paul’s hand and foot speed were slow and that there were big holes in his defense.

This isn’t meant to be a knock on the decedent. Being able to box even four rounds at a fast clip and still be fresh is one of the most underrated achievements in all of human endurance sports. Bamba’s life story is indeed inspirational. When he talked about the importance of “giving back,” he was sincere. In an early interview, he mentioned having helped out at a Harlem food pantry.

Paul Bamba had to die to become well-known within the fight fraternity, let alone in the larger society. One hopes that his death will inspire the sport’s regulators to be more vigilant in assaying a boxer’s medical history and, if somehow his untimely death leads to the dissolution of the fetid World Boxing Association, his legacy would be even greater.

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