Atlantic City Gala Recalls Good Times Perhaps Lost Forever

Published

12 years ago

June 4, 2013

The mostly middle-aged crowd at 23 East, a bar in Ardmore, Pa., on Philadelphia’s Main Line, was clearly into the live rock ’n’ of a stage show headlined by Tommy Conwell, the front man for a popular local group from the 1980s, Tommy Conwell & the Young Rumblers.

“The ’80s are coming back!” Conwell yelled into the microphone, to the approval of his relatively small but enthusiastic audience. And maybe that really can be the case to some degree. There always are going to be music lovers who choose to remain rooted in the sounds of their youth because, well, thinking of the Young Rumblers as still being young is a convenient way of forgetting the graying or thinning of their own hair, or the formation of spare tires around their waists and those worrisome crow’s feet around their eyes.

One night later and 65 miles to the East, there was a similar celebration of what was. The second annual Atlantic City All Stars Boxing Gala at Resorts Casino Hotel, in a sense, was like a gathering of members of the Flat Earth Society. There had been good times for boxing in the ’80s along the boardwalk, and plenty of them, but good times and those who helped make them happen have a way of slipping away with the passage of time. Aging boxers are in their own way like Young Rumblers whose rumbling now is mostly confined to memory. When the hits stop coming, what alternative is there but to recycle past glories?

“There are mixed emotions,” admitted Jonathan Diego, the former Atlantic City prosecutor who conceived the black-tie-optional event and serves as its chairman and foremost cheerleader. “`Bittersweet’ is a good word to describe it. It’s sweet that you can get 50 former champions , referees and judges in the same room. The bitter part is that we don’t have as many big fights, world championship fights, in Atlantic City as we once had.”

Ken Condon, the Sports and Entertainment consultant for Caesars Entertainment, has waved the banner for Atlantic City boxing even longer than Diego (he was there, in the marketing department, when Resorts became the first A.C. casino to open its doors in 1978), and just as passionately. He sees a pinpoint of light at the end of what for years had been an ever-darkening tunnel.

“Boxing is cyclical,” said Condon, one of a group of award recipients Saturday night that included, among others, former world champions Virgil Hill (who’ll be inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame on June 9), Iran Barkley, William Joppy, Keith Holmes, Cory Spinks, DeMarcus Corley and contenders Chuck Wepner, Ivan Robinson, Jameel McCline and John Scully. “Atlantic City has always been receptive to good boxing. I think more (casino) properties are starting to add boxing to their marketing programs. Things are getting a little better in that respect. But we have a ways to go yet.”

If the rate of fight cards continues to hold through 2013, there is a strong likelihood double-digits will be reached, with the total number of shows topping out somewhere between 15 and 20. Even as honorees strode to the podium to accept their plaques from Diego and master of ceremonies Mike Mittman, less than a mile down the boardwalk there was a J Russell Peltz-promoted card headlined by junior welterweight Teon Kennedy’s 10-round unanimous decision over Carlos Vinan.

But while a 20-fight-card year might seem puny in comparison to the early- to mid-1980s, when Atlantic City averaged 130 shows from 1982 to 1985, when it was the site of a staggering 145 events, it is a damn sight better than the even punier five cards that were staged in the erstwhile capital of East Coast boxing in 2009, which marked the sport’s nadir down the shore.

So what happened? How could something so, well, great do an about-face and march backward toward near-irrelevance? Everyone has his own theory on the rise and fall of Atlantic City boxing.

“In the late 1970s, all through the ’80s and even into the ’90s, there was a level of success you almost couldn’t expect,” said Roy Foreman, George Foreman’s younger and shorter brother who for a quarter-century has split his time between his Texas and New Jersey residences. “We knew there would have to be a lull, eventually.

“I hope more people, influential people, begin to realize that boxing built Atlantic City. I don’t mean the actual buildings, but fight fans poured into this town for boxing matches. That’s why they came for, not just for the gambling. They came from New York, they came from Philadelphia, they came from Washington. And they didn’t just come to see superstars like Mike Tyson and George. A lot of fighters made their reputations here, and they developed their own followings.

“Now, the city is hurting. We have to find a way to do whatever it takes to bring it back to what it was, or somewhere near to what it was. The main problem is taxes. We need to get Gov. Christie and the legislature to give boxing some sort of tax break to make things more attractive to fighters and promoters. Guys would love to fight here more. Floyd Mayweather told me one of the best times he had was when he came here (to fight Arturo Gatti).”

Diego is mindful of the obstacles between the still-bleak current reality and a new dawn of progress. Not only is the economy gelatin-soft, but the cost of doing business is getting steeper, as is the competition from neighboring states that have legalized casino gambling to the detriment of Atlantic City’s 12 casinos, some of which are losing their battles with the bottom line. It’s hard to argue with such depressing facts as the 42 percent in lost casino revenues (from $5.2 billion to barely $3 billion) since 2006, at a time when casino revenue for the United States as a whole has increased 4.8 percent. Some 10,300 Atlantic City casino jobs have disappeared through layoffs and attrition, and the bad news could get worse when online gambling in Delaware goes into effect in the fall.

Joe Lupo, the senior vice-president of operations for one of Atlantic City’s glitziest casino properties, the Borgata, told the Philadelphia Inquirer that “the Jersey shore will never be quite the same due to the fact we are completely surrounded by gaming on all sides.”

So how boxing stage a comeback amid the overall chaos enveloping Atlantic City as a whole? Well, there are steps that might be taken, if only the powers that be choose to take them.

One is to identify a headliner, an Arturo Gatti type, who can become the city’s franchise fighter as was the late, great blood-and-guts brawler – who will be posthumously inducted into the IBHOF on June 9 – when he regularly packed Boardwalk Hall.

“In the ’80s boxing was at its height with Tyson and all those big stars that regularly appeared here,” Condon said. “I do think you’re going to see more and more boxing shows every year here. What I’ve tried to do is to find East Coast fighters who can develop a following and who want to make Atlantic City their boxing home. Obviously, we were able to do that very successfully with Arturo.

“Look, Mayweather-level fights are few and far between. They usually wind up in Vegas, anyway. We’re always hopeful we can find the next Arturo Gatti.”

To Diego, whose uncle is former middleweight contender Dave Tiberi, the solution could be as simple as giving up some money on the front end to make more on the back end.

“I don’t think some of these entertainment directors really understand the fight game and how boxing can benefit their properties,” he said. “Their predecessors did.

“A big part of the issue is cost. The reality is that staging boxing now costs a lot of money. Back in the day, you’d get a four-corner deal where a promoter would get the venue and hotel rooms for the fighters and their cornermen for free. The casinos just presumed they would get that money, and more, from fans (patronizing) their casinos and restaurants.

“Now those same properties are asking promoters to pay for everything. It’s cost-prohibitive for smaller- and medium-sized shows.”

The downside took some time to develop, just as the upside did. Casino gambling was approved by New Jersey voters in 1976, and Resorts – then known as Merv Griffin’s Resorts – opened with great fanfare on May 26, 1978. Two years later, French director Louis Malle’s 1980 film Atlantic City, starring Burt Lancaster and Susan Sarandon, depicted not only the extent of the resort town’s decades-long deterioration, but the steps taken to restore its former opulence with the erection of the gambling palaces that began to rise like so many steel skeletons. It was a transitional period from one era to the next, and with it the hope for a brighter tomorrow.

Make no mistakes, part of the vision was the realization of what boxing had meant to Las Vegas’ Caesars Palace, which opened in 1966, and to the neon-bathed desert outpost as a whole. Nudged by financier and casino owner Donald Trump, city fathers began to hype Atlantic City as the “boxing capital of the world.”

“It became very competitive between us and Vegas, maybe even a little contentious,” Larry Hazzard Sr., the chairman of the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board, from 1985 to 2007, said in 2009. “But we had the edge because we had Tyson.”

Mike Tyson, for those with short memories or are too young to remember, once was as big or bigger than basketball’s Michael Jordan or golf’s Tiger Woods. His status as an Atlantic City icon began modestly – with eight appearances mostly in ballroom settings when he was gaining notoriety as a young knockout artist – but it gained traction soon after Trump threw truckloads of money at him to become the marquee attraction in Boardwalk Hall, and the face of Trump’s ambitious boxing operation headquartered at Trump Plaza.

Tyson fought five times in Atlantic City after he became heavyweight champion for the first time, but the biggest night of all for him, and for boxing on the boardwalk, was June 27, 1988, when he squared off against fellow unbeaten Michael Spinks.

Let Spinks’ manager, the loquacious Butch Lewis (who was 65 when he died on July 23, 2011), explain just how wild a scene it was the night Atlantic City boxing reached its absolute apex.

“It was the biggest event in the world at that time – not just in this country or in boxing,” Lewis recalled in 2009. “I’m talking the whole bleepin’ world. If there was a Superdome in Atlantic City, we could have filled that sucker up twice over. The demand for tickets was just crazy. (The announced attendance was a sold-out 21,785.)

“I was getting calls from everybody you could think of – superstar athletes, big-time entertainers, politicians, right up to the White House. `Butch, you gotta get me in,’ they all said. But there wasn’t anything I could do. Ringside tickets had a face value of $1,500 – remember, this is 1988 dollars we’re talking about – and they were being scalped for more, a lot more, and that’s only if the people lucky enough to have ’em were willing to sell, which they weren’t.

“Anyway, Richard Pryor calls and tells me he’ll do anything to get in. Richard and me were close, so I had to try, right? I checked around, called in some favors and, somehow, I got him two tickets somewhere in the first three rows, right behind Magic Johnson.

“The fight happens. Slim (Spinks) gets knocked down in the first round. Even before he went down, Magic stood up. Boom, boom, the fight ends just like that (after an elapsed time of 91 seconds). Richard calls me later and says he never saw a punch, all he saw was Magic Johnson’s back.

“Richard is yelling, `Bleeper-bleeper, I could just as well have stayed home!’” Lewis, cracking himself up, said in replicating Pryor’s frantic, profane indignity. “But you know what? At least Richard was in the house. That was one night when you had to be there. And if you couldn’t actually be in the arena, you at least had to be in Atlantic City, taking in the wild scene. All the hotels had closed-circuit telecasts and those sold out, too.

“People who couldn’t get into Boardwalk Hall were milling around outside and offering hundreds of dollars for ticket stubs to the people who were coming out after the fight ended. They were willing to pay good money for stubs! I never saw or heard anything like that before. But, in a way, I understood. They wanted to be able to go back to wherever they came from and tell their friends and co-workers, `See, I was there.’”

But nothing lasts forever, not for Tommy Conwell or Mike Tyson, or for municipalities either. Not only did boxing begin to lose prominence in Atlantic City, but the Miss America Pageant relocated to Las Vegas in 2006. (Miss America 2014 will be crowned in Boardwalk Hall on Sept. 15, the first in a three-year return engagement in its ancestral home.) The famous diving horses at the Steel Pier stopped diving in 1978. Even finding a saltwater taffy shop along the boardwalk isn’t as easy as it once was.

So now those who would at least partially restore Atlantic City boxing peer into an uncertain future, aware of the impediments that still exist but steadfast in their shared belief that progress is being made, if incrementally. Diego insists the second annual Atlantic City All Star Boxing Legends Gala will not be the last.

“This really is a labor of love,” he said. “I’ve been a boxing fan since I was a preteen. In the ’70s and ’80s I watched guys like Ray Mancini, Livingstone Bramble, Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran, Marvin Hagler, Tommy Hearns. It was a classic era for boxing and fans got to see the best of the best.

“I was there when my uncle David fought James Toney for the middleweight title. He got robbed. All right, he was in trouble in the first and second rounds, but he dominated the rest of the way. He was the far busier and more effective fighter. That fight inspired me to become more involved in the sport.

“I remember when Uncle David used to hold his `Night of Champions’ in Wilmington, Delaware. He had guys like Smokin’ Joe Frazier come in. I went to a couple of those events and thought, `Why can’t we do something like that in Atlantic City, only bigger and better?’ And this is bigger and better. It’s going to keep getting bigger and better.”

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Bernard Fernandez

Avila Perspective, Chap. 323: Benn vs Eubank Family Feud and More

Published

1 day ago

April 24, 2025

David A. Avila

Avila-Perspective,-Chap.-323:-Benn-vs-Eubank-Family-Feud-and-More.jpg

Next generation rivals Conor Benn and Chris Eubank Jr. carry on the family legacy of feudal warring in the prize ring on Saturday.

This is huge in British boxing.

Eubank (34-3, 25 KOs) holds the fringe IBO middleweight title but won’t be defending it against the smaller welterweight Benn (23-0, 14 KOs) on Saturday, April 26, at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London. DAZN will stream the Matchroom Boxing card.

This is about family pride.

The parents of Eubank and Benn actually began the feud in the 1990s.

Papa Nigel Benn fought Papa Chris Eubank twice. Losing as a middleweight in November 1990 at Birmingham, England, then fighting to a draw as a super middleweight in October 1993 in Manchester. Both were world title fights.

Eubank was undefeated and won the WBO middleweight world title in 1990 against Nigel Benn by knockout. He defended it three times before moving up and winning the vacant WBO super middleweight title in September 1991. He defended the super middleweight title 14 times before suffering his first pro defeat in March 1995 against Steve Collins.

Benn won the WBO middleweight title in April 1990 against Doug DeWitt and defended it once before losing to Eubank in November 1990. He moved up in weight and took the WBC super middleweight title from Mauro Galvano in Italy by technical knockout in October 1992. He defended the title nine times until losing in March 1996. His last fight was in November 1996, a loss to Steve Collins.

Animosity between the two families continues this weekend in the boxing ring.

Conor Benn, the son of Nigel, has fought mostly as a welterweight but lately has participated in the super welterweight division. He is several inches shorter in height than Eubank but has power and speed. Kind of a British version of Gervonta “Tank” Davis.

“It’s always personal, every opponent I fight is personal. People want to say it’s strictly business, but it’s never business. If someone is trying to put their hands on me, trying to render me unconscious, it’s never business,” said Benn.

This fight was scheduled twice before and cut short twice due to failed PED tests by Benn. The weight limit agreed upon is 160 pounds.

Eubank, a natural middleweight, has exchanged taunts with Benn for years. He recently avenged a loss to Liam Smith with a knockout victory in September 2023.

“This fight isn’t about size or weight. It’s about skill. It’s about dedication. It’s about expertise and all those areas in which I excel in,” said Eubank. “I have many, many more years of experience over Conor Benn, and that will be the deciding factor of the night.”

Because this fight was postponed twice, the animosity between the two feuding fighters has increased the attention of their fans. Both fighters are anxious to flatten each other.

“He’s another opponent in my way trying to crush my dreams. trying to take food off my plate and trying to render me unconscious. That’s how I look at him,” said Benn.

Eubank smiles.

“Whether it’s boxing, whether it’s a gun fight. Defense, offense, foot movement, speed, power. I am the superior boxer in each of those departments and so many more – which is why I’m so confident,” he said.

Supporting Bout

Former world champion Liam Smith (33-4-1, 20 KOs) tangles with Ireland’s Aaron McKenna (19-0, 10 KOs) in a middleweight fight set for 12 rounds on the Benn-Eubank undercard in London.

“Beefy” Smith has long been known as one of the fighting Smith brothers and recently lost to Eubank a year and a half ago. It was only the second time in 38 bouts he had been stopped. Saul “Canelo” Alvarez did it several years ago.

McKenna is a familiar name in Southern California. The Irish fighter fought numerous times on Golden Boy Promotion cards between 2017 and 2019 before returning to the United Kingdom and his assault on continuing the middleweight division. This is a big step for the tall Irish fighter.

It’s youth versus experience.

“I’ve been calling for big fights like this for the last two or three years, and it’s a fight I’m really excited for. I plan to make the most of it and make a statement win on Saturday night,” said McKenna, one of two fighting brothers.

Monster in L.A.

Japan’s super star Naoya “Monster” Inoue arrived in Los Angeles for last day workouts before his Las Vegas showdown against Ramon Cardenas on Sunday May 4, at T-Mobile Arena. ESPN will televise and stream the Top Rank card.

It’s been four years since the super bantamweight world champion performed in the US and during that time Naoya (29-0, 26 KOs) gathered world titles in different weight divisions. The Japanese slugger has also gained fame as perhaps the best fighter on the planet. Cardenas is 26-1 with 14 KOs.

Pomona Fights

Super featherweights Mathias Radcliffe (9-0-1) and Ezequiel Flores (6-4) lead a boxing card called “DMG Night of Champions” on Saturday April 26, at the historic Fox Theater in downtown Pomona, Calif.

Michaela Bracamontes (11-2-1) and Jesus Torres Beltran (8-4-1) will be fighting for a regional WBC super featherweight title. More than eight bouts are scheduled.

Doors open at 6 p.m. For ticket information go to: www.tix.com/dmgnightofchampions

Fights to Watch

Sat. DAZN 9 a.m. Conor Benn (23-0) vs Chris Eubank Jr. (34-3); Liam Smith (33-4-1) vs Aaron McKenna (19-0).

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Floyd Mayweather has Another Phenom and his name is Curmel Moton

Published

3 days ago

April 22, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Floyd Mayweather has Another Phenom and his name is Curmel Moton

In any endeavor, the defining feature of a phenom is his youth. Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Bryce Harper was a phenom. He was on the radar screen of baseball’s most powerful player agents when he was 14 years old.

Curmel Moton, who turns 19 in June, is a phenom. Of all the young boxing stars out there, wrote James Slater in July of last year, “Curmel Moton is the one to get most excited about.”

Moton was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. His father Curtis Moton, a barber by trade, was a big boxing fan and specifically a big fan of Floyd Mayweather Jr. When Curmel was six, Curtis packed up his wife (Curmel’s stepmom) and his son and moved to Las Vegas. Curtis wanted his son to get involved in boxing and there was no better place to develop one’s latent talents than in Las Vegas where many of the sport’s top practitioners came to train.

Many father-son relationships have been ruined, or at least frayed, by a father’s unrealistic expectations for his son, but when it came to boxing, the boy was a natural and he felt right at home in the gym.

The gym the Motons patronized was the Mayweather Boxing Club. Curtis took his son there in hopes of catching the eye of the proprietor. “Floyd would occasionally drop by the gym and I was there so often that he came to recognize me,” says Curmel. What he fails to add is that the trainers there had Floyd’s ear. “This kid is special,” they told him.

It costs a great deal of money for a kid to travel around the country competing in a slew of amateur boxing tournaments. Only a few have the luxury of a sponsor. For the vast majority, fund raisers such as car washes keep the wheels greased.

Floyd Mayweather stepped in with the financial backing needed for the Motons to canvas the country in tournaments. As an amateur, Curmel was — take your pick — 156-7 or 144-6 or 61-3 (the latter figure from boxrec). Regardless, at virtually every tournament at which he appeared, Curmel Moton was the cock of the walk.

Before the pandemic, Floyd Mayweather Jr had a stable of boxers he promoted under the banner of “The Money Team.” In talking about his boxers, Floyd was understated with one glaring exception – Gervonta “Tank” Davis, now one of boxing’s top earners.

When Floyd took to praising Curmel Moton with the same effusive language, folks stood up and took notice.

Curmel made his pro debut on Sept. 30, 2023, at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on the undercard of the super middleweight title fight between Canelo Alvarez and Jermell Charlo. After stopping his opponent in the opening round, he addressed a flock of reporters in the media room with Floyd standing at his side. “I felt ready,” he said, “I knew I had Floyd behind me. He believes in me. I had the utmost confidence going into the fight. And I went in there and did what I do.”

Floyd ventured the opinion that Curmel was already a better fighter than Leigh Wood, the reigning WBA world featherweight champion who would successfully defend his belt the following week.

Moton’s boxing style has been described as a blend of Floyd Mayweather and Tank Davis. “I grew up watching Floyd, so it’s natural I have some similarities to him,” says Curmel who sparred with Tank in late November of 2021 as Davis was preparing for his match with Isaac “Pitbull” Cruz. Curmell says he did okay. He was then 15 years old and still in school; he dropped out as soon as he reached the age of 16.

Curmel is now 7-0 with six KOs, four coming in the opening round. He pitched an 8-round shutout the only time he was taken the distance. It’s not yet official, but he returns to the ring on May 31 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas where Caleb Plant and Jermall Charlo are co-featured in matches conceived as tune-ups for a fall showdown. The fight card will reportedly be free for Amazon Prime Video subscribers.

Curmel’s presumptive opponent is Renny Viamonte, a 28-year-old Las Vegas-based Cuban with a 4-1-1 (2) record. It will be Curmel’s first professional fight with Kofi Jantuah the chief voice in his corner. A two-time world title challenger who began his career in his native Ghana, the 50-year-old Jantuah has worked almost exclusively with amateurs, a recent exception being Mikaela Mayer.

It would seem that the phenom needs a tougher opponent than Viamonte at this stage of his career. However, the match is intriguing in one regard. Viamonte is lanky. Listed at 5-foot-11, he will have a seven-inch height advantage.

Keeping his weight down has already been problematic for Moton. He tipped the scales at 128 ½ for his most recent fight. His May 31 bout, he says, will be contested at 135 and down the road it’s reasonable to think he will blossom into a welterweight. And with each bump up in weight, his short stature will theoretically be more of a handicap.

For fun, we asked Moton to name the top fighter on his pound-for-pound list. “[Oleksandr] Usyk is number one right now,” he said without hesitation,” great footwork, but guys like Canelo, Crawford, Inoue, and Bivol are right there.”

It’s notable that there isn’t a young gun on that list. Usyk is 38, a year older than Crawford; Inoue is the pup at age 32.

Moton anticipates that his name will appear on pound-for-pound lists within the next two or three years. True, history is replete with examples of phenoms who flamed out early, but we wouldn’t bet against it.

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Arne’s Almanac: The First Boxing Writers Assoc. of America Dinner Was Quite the Shindig

Published

5 days ago

April 20, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Arne's-Almanac-The-First-Boxing-Writers-Assoc-of-America-Dinner-was-Quite-the-Shindig

The first annual dinner of the Boxing Writers Association of America was staged on April 25, 1926 in the grand ballroom of New York’s Hotel Astor, an edifice that rivaled the original Waldorf Astoria as the swankiest hotel in the city. Back then, the organization was known as the Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York.

The ballroom was configured to hold 1200 for the banquet which was reportedly oversubscribed. Among those listed as agreeing to attend were the governors of six states (New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Maryland) and the mayors of 10 of America’s largest cities.

In 1926, radio was in its infancy and the digital age was decades away (and inconceivable). So, every journalist who regularly covered boxing was a newspaper and/or magazine writer, editor, or cartoonist. And at this juncture in American history, there were plenty of outlets for someone who wanted to pursue a career as a sportswriter and had the requisite skills to get hired.

The following papers were represented at the inaugural boxing writers’ dinner:

New York Times

New York News

New York World

New York Sun

New York Journal

New York Post

New York Mirror

New York Telegram

New York Graphic

New York Herald Tribune

Brooklyn Eagle

Brooklyn Times

Brooklyn Standard Union

Brooklyn Citizen

Bronx Home News

This isn’t a complete list because a few of these papers, notably the New York World and the New York Journal, had strong afternoon editions that functioned as independent papers. Plus, scribes from both big national wire services (Associated Press and UPI) attended the banquet and there were undoubtedly a smattering of scribes from papers in New Jersey and Connecticut.

Back then, the event’s organizer Nat Fleischer, sports editor of the New York Telegram and the driving force behind The Ring magazine, had little choice but to limit the journalistic component of the gathering to writers in the New York metropolitan area. There wasn’t a ballroom big enough to accommodate a good-sized response if he had extended the welcome to every boxing writer in North America.

The keynote speaker at the inaugural dinner was New York’s charismatic Jazz Age mayor James J. “Jimmy” Walker, architect of the transformative Walker Law of 1920 which ushered in a new era of boxing in the Empire State with a template that would guide reformers in many other jurisdictions.

Prizefighting was then associated with hooligans. In his speech, Mayor Walker promised to rid the sport of their ilk. “Boxing, as you know, is closest to my heart,” said hizzoner. “So I tell you the police force is behind you against those who would besmirch or injure boxing. Rowdyism doesn’t belong in this town or in your game.” (In 1945, Walker would be the recipient of the Edward J. Neil Memorial Award given for meritorious service to the sport. The oldest of the BWAA awards, the previous recipients were all active or former boxers. The award, no longer issued under that title, was named for an Associated Press sportswriter and war correspondent who died from shrapnel wounds covering the Spanish Civil War.)

Another speaker was well-traveled sportswriter Wilbur Wood, then affiliated with the Brooklyn Citizen. He told the assembly that the aim of the organization was two-fold: to help defend the game against its detractors and to promote harmony among the various factions.

Of course, the 1926 dinner wouldn’t have been as well-attended without the entertainment. According to press dispatches, Broadway stars and performers from some of the city’s top nightclubs would be there to regale the attendees. Among the names bandied about were vaudeville superstars Sophie Tucker and Jimmy Durante, the latter of whom would appear with his trio, Durante, (Lou) Clayton, and (Eddie) Jackson.

There was a contraction of New York newspapers during the Great Depression. Although empirical evidence is lacking, the inaugural boxing writers dinner was likely the largest of its kind. Fifteen years later, in 1941, the event drew “more than 200” according to a news report. There was no mention of entertainment.

In 1950, for the first time, the annual dinner was opened to the public. For $25, a civilian could get a meal and mingle with some of his favorite fighters. Sugar Ray Robinson was the Edward J. Neil Award winner that year, honored for his ring exploits and for donating his purse from the Charlie Fusari fight to the Damon Runyon Cancer Fund.

There was no formal announcement when the Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York was re-christened the Boxing Writers Association of America, but by the late 1940s reporters were referencing the annual event as simply the boxing writers dinner. By then, it had become traditional to hold the annual affair in January, a practice discontinued after 1971.

The winnowing of New York’s newspaper herd plus competing banquets in other parts of the country forced Nat Fleischer’s baby to adapt. And more adaptations will be necessary in the immediate future as the future of the BWAA, as it currently exists, is threatened by new technologies. If the forthcoming BWAA dinner (April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in mid-Manhattan) were restricted to wordsmiths from the traditional print media, the gathering would be too small to cover the nut and the congregants would be drawn disproportionately from the geriatric class.

Some of those adaptations have already started. Last year, Las Vegas resident Sean Zittel, a recent UNLV graduate, had the distinction of becoming the first videographer welcomed into the BWAA. With more and more people getting their news from sound bites, rather than the written word, the videographer serves an important function.

The reporters who conducted interviews with pen and paper have gone the way of the dodo bird and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A taped interview for a “talkie” has more integrity than a story culled from a paper and pen interview because it is unfiltered. Many years ago, some reporters, after interviewing the great Joe Louis, put words in his mouth that made him seem like a dullard, words consistent with the Sambo stereotype. In other instances, the language of some athletes was reconstructed to the point where the reader would think the athlete had a second job as an English professor.

The content created by videographers is free from that bias. More of them will inevitably join the BWAA and similar organizations in the future.

Photo: Nat Fleischer is flanked by Sugar Ray Robinson and Tony Zale at the 1947 boxing writers dinner.

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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