Somebody’s ‘OH’ Must Go? Floyd Has More To Lose Than Canelo

Published

11 years ago

September 10, 2013

It is a declarative statement that is uttered, and often, whenever two boxers with undefeated records square off.

“Somebody’s `oh’ must go” is the familiar refrain. And that is true in most cases, although it does not account for the possibility of a draw which would leave somebody’s “oh” at least somewhat smudged. In the case of Saturday night’s Showtime Pay-Per-View extravaganza at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, pitting pound-for-pound king Floyd Mayweather Jr. (44-0, 26 KOs) vs. emerging superstar Canelo Alvarez 42-0-1, 30 KOs), the 23-year-old Mexican sensation already has one standoff on his professional resume (a four-round split draw with Jorge Juarez on June 17, 2006, when Alvarez was only 15) removing the veneer of total perfection.

Maybe the fight – at a mutually agreed-upon catch weight of 152 pounds, five more than the welterweight limit WBC champion Mayweather is most accustomed to and two below the junior middleweight limit at which Alvarez, the WBC/WBA titlist, usually works – will live up to the astounding hype. Alvarez’s 154-pound belts, despite the catch weight, will be on the line.

Many predict that this fight will surpass the record 2.5 million PPV buys for Mayweather’s 2007 showdown with Oscar De La Hoya, which he won on a split decision, and because of higher subscription prices – $64.95 for standard television, an even heftier $74.95 for high-definition – and the fact the bout will be shown in 500 movie theaters around the country, it almost certainly will be the highest-grossing boxing event of all time. But no matter the outcome, Mayweather is assured of a record $41.5 million payday (shattering the previous high of $33 million that Evander Holyfield received for his “Bite Fight” rematch with Mike Tyson), which could rise to $50 million if the more optimistic PPV projections are accurate. Alvarez is supposedly guaranteed a minimum $12.5 million, with that figure apt to jump significantly if the PPV buy rate meets expectations.

To hear the headliners tell it, each man has as much to win, or lose, as the other.

“I think it’s a lot of pressure (on Alvarez),” a supremely confident Mayweather said during a teleconference with the media last week. “Sometimes when there’s pressure, a guy fights better. We have to see how this fight plays out.

“This is a whole different ballgame. (Alvarez) may be predicting a knockout, but all you have to do is look at the opponents he’s faced. And we’re not just talking about `A-plus’ fighters but `D-minus’ and `C-minus’ fighters … guys that he should have knocked out in the fourth round, they were able to go into the eighth and ninth rounds even though they were caught with numerous shots.

“I don’t think Ricky Hatton’s brother (Matthew Hatton, whom Alvarez dominated over 12 rounds in winning a unanimous decision on March 5, 2011) is on the level of a Floyd Mayweather. This is chess, not checkers. These are moves you have to think about. At this level, you’ve got to get 10 steps ahead of your opponent.”

For his part, Alvarez is just as convinced that it is Mayweather who has to be feeling the most heat as he attempts to extend, at the old-for-boxing age of 36, the unblemished record which he frequently cites as proof that he really must be the greatest fighter of all time.

“If I win – when I win – it will change history,” said the red-haired, freckled, pale-skinned Alvarez, who at various times has been described as resembling Howdy Doody, Richie Cunningham and Chucky, said when the question was raised as to which fighter is under the most pressure.

“I think that the way he’s talking, he’s underestimating me. But at the same time, I think he’s worried. I think that he’s very, very worried. He’s always been like that. He’s always been a (trash) talker because that’s the way he is. But I don’t care what he’s saying and I don’t care what he’s thinking. What I care about is what I’m saying and what I’m thinking.”

Opinions will vary, of course, and the prevailing sentiment among those not swayed by emotion or personal preference (like Las Vegas oddsmakers, who have installed Mayweather as a slightly more than 2-to-1 favorite) is that enough of “Money’s” prime remains that he will school the kid as he has done so many previous befuddled opponents. This is the second fight in the 30-month, six-bout deal Mayweather signed with Showtime PPV/CBS in February. His first ring appearance on that contract – which could bring him $250 million-plus if all six fights are staged within the specified time frame — resulted in a standard 12-round decision over an outclassed Robert Guerrero on May 4. Mayweather earned $32 million for that one, although few fireworks were set off. While many analysts applaud Mayweather’s technical artistry, especially his seemingly impenetrable defense, they also are honest in their assessment that he has never been considered a crowd-pleasing “action” fighter who engages in the sort of risk-taking that quickens the pulses of spectators.

So why is Mayweather, if he is indeed too good for his own good, as some have opined, such a box-office smash? Some say it is because of a carefully orchestrated attempt to market himself as a controversial lighting rod that everyone loves or hates, depending on their particular proclivities.

Not since Mike Tyson was offending polite society with his profligate spending and frequently outrageous behavior has any boxer been as much of a proponent of the “If you’ve got it, flaunt it” lifestyle as has Mayweather. In the most recent issue of ESPN The Magazine, he graces the cover and, in the story authored by Tim Keown, it is duly noted that on one shopping trip for even more bling-bling, Mayweather was adorned by $3 million in diamond-and-gold jewelry, including a $1.6 million necklace. He wears his boxer shorts and pricey sneakers just once before tossing them out, and his unwieldy entourage (more than 20 fulltime employees, including four husky bodyguards) are at his constant beck-and-call, even when he fights only once in a given year. And even though he shaves his head, among his team members is a personal barber.

Also reminiscent of Tyson, who owned a fleet of luxury cars despite the fact he ran up hundreds of thousands of dollars in limousine rentals fees, is Mayweather’s fondness for high-end rides. He keeps identical sets of color-coded, ultra-expensive cars at his mansions in Las Vegas (they’re white) and Miami (black), as if to remind himself of where he is at any given moment.

If this is the way Mayweather chooses to roll simply because he can afford it and it suits him, that is one thing. It is quite another if it is the cultivation of an image he has crafted for the purpose of setting himself apart from other elite fighters, as if his abundance of ring skills didn’t already do that. In the spring of 2004, during a brief and ill-advised association with women’s hair-care products magnates Lewis Hendler and Neal Menaged, an attempt was made to make Mayweather more palatable to those Americans who found it difficult to relate to him.

“Our plan is not to tap into the thug image as a way to build Floyd up,” Hendler said prior to Mayweather’s bout with DeMarcus Corley. “We’d like to see him make the transition to mainstream, rather than to pin himself to a particular culture which is fairly limited in terms of marketing potential.”

That plan failed, or wasn’t allowed to succeed, depending upon your point of view. Mayweather quickly broke away from the hair-care guys, and prior to his 2005 fight with Arturo Gatti in Atlantic City, he said that “I am always the villain. That’s all right. I know how boxing works. You have to have a good guy and a bad guy. I don’t mind being the bad guy.”

Leonard Ellerbe, CEO of Mayweather Promotions, seemingly seconded that notion in 2012 when he said, “Floyd is one of the most despised athletes in the world, but he’s also the most talented athlete in the world. What other athlete do you know who has dominated his sport for 16 years?”

Which raises a question. Is Mayweather – despite having zero endorsement deals – the highest-grossing athlete in the world (Forbes magazine had him No. 1 for 2012 with an income of $85 million, a figure he might reach or surpass this year) because of his anti-hero status, or despite it? And is his bleep-you public persona a put-on or for real? There is ample evidence to suggest that what you see, like courtroom appearances and visits to the hoosegow, is really what you get. Mayweather’s running afoul of the law includes the mandatory impulse-control counseling after he was convicted of misdemeanor battery after a confrontation with two women at a Las Vegas nightclub and, most notably, his serving of two months of a six-month sentence after pleading guilty to domestic violence against Josie Harris, the mother of three of his children, in 2011. Had it not been to a plea deal he accepted which resulted in the dropping of additional felony and misdemeanor charges, Mayweather conceivably could have been sent to prison for up to 34 years.

“He just continually gets himself into trouble and he is able to get himself out of it as well,” prosecutor Lisa Luzaich said of the legal trouble Mayweather was embroiled in as a result of the incident with Harris, who accused him of pulling her hair, punching her in the head and twisting her arm. “Essentially it is because he is who he is and is able to get away with everything.”

So here comes Alvarez, with his national-hero status in Mexico and matinee-idol good looks everywhere, an upset victory over the long-standing king of the mountain from becoming the dominant economic force in boxing. He is 23 with a career that comprises much more future than past, unlike Mayweather, who admits to looking no further ahead than the fulfillment of his current contract, and maybe one more bout beyond that if it means making it to the nice, round number of 50-0.

Good vs. evil, as well as young vs. old, are always bankable premises for selling big-time bouts and Mayweather-Alvarez fits comfortably within those parameters. But the paradigm shifts on fight night, when the paying customers expect to be as entertained by what transpires inside the ropes as they were by the compelling story lines going in.

There is the nagging belief in some quarters that the main undercard bout – in which WBA/WBC junior welterweight champion Danny Garcia (26-0, 16 KOs) defends those titles against power-punching Lucas Matthysse (34-2, 32 KOs) of Argentina – could steal the show from the main-event guys. Garcia-Matthysse, because of the attacking styles of the fighters involved, almost assuredly will be exciting for however long it lasts, which might not be the case if Mayweather spends 12 more rounds as a pugilistic Bobby Fischer, grandmaster of chess, toying with a relative newcomer on the brightly lit stage trying to play checkers.

Somebody’s “oh” must go? Yeah, that is important when each participant has as much to win, or lose, as the other. An example of just such a matchup might be the Sept. 16, 1981, welterweight unification megafight between WBA champion Sugar Ray Leonard, then 25, and 22-year-old WBC ruler Thomas Hearns. Those future Hall of Famers were young, undefeated, charismatic and exciting, and Leonard’s thrilling, 14^th-round stoppage of the Detroit “Hitman,” while trailing on the official scorecards, gave all that fans could have expected, and more. But while Leonard’s career got a boost from that signature victory, Hearns’ reputation was not necessarily damaged. He had established himself even more as someone the public wanted to see, as is always the case with fighters who unfailingly provide bang for the consumer’s buck.

Is Mayweather-Alvarez apt to be another Leonard-Hearns I, or is it going to be another Mayweather-De La Hoya, which did such booming business yet did not go into boxing annals among the most riveting bouts ever?

Also undetermined is the effect a Mayweather loss would have on both he and his sport. Is there an “out” clause on the part of Showtime/CBS if Mayweather is defeated and thus loses his shield of invincibility? And even if there isn’t such a clause, would he voluntarily choose to step aside if his record were to be defaced by an “L”? Hey, the ESPN the Mag story revealed that he has $123 million in his bank account, which should keep his small army of sycophants on the payroll for quite a while, should “Money” continue to live the ostentatious lifestyle of the rich and famous.

But Alvarez doesn’t need to emerge victorious to remain a viable force. Unless he is emphatically knocked out or embarrassed by Mayweather from the opening bell, he, like Hearns, can be counted on to remain among boxing’s must-see attractions. Defeat is not especially a hindrance to popularity, provided a fighter rates high on the thrill-a-meter. Hearns showed us that, as did the late Arturo Gatti.

Inquiring minds want to see how it all will turn out on Saturday night, when somebody’s “oh” has to go.

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Bernard Fernandez

Avila Perspective, Chap. 304: Mike Tyson Returns; Latino Night in Riyadh

Published

13 hours ago

November 14, 2024

David A. Avila

Avila-Perspective-Chap-301-Mike-Tyson-Returns-Latino-Night-in-Riyadh

Iron Mike Tyson is back.

“I’m just ready to fight,” Tyson said.

Tyson (50-6, 44 KOs) faces social media star-turned-fighter Jake Paul (10-1, 7 KOs) on Friday, Nov. 15, at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. Netflix will stream the Most Valuable Promotions card that includes female super stars Katie Taylor versus Amanda Serrano.

It’s a solid fight card.

The last time Tyson stepped in the prize ring was 19 years ago. Though he’s now 58 years old there’s a boxing adage that fits perfectly for this match: “it only takes one punch.”

Few heavyweights mastered the one-punch knockout like Tyson did during his reign of terror. If you look on social media you can find highlights of Tyson’s greatest knockouts. It’s the primary reason many people in the world today think he still fights regularly.

Real boxing pundits know otherwise.

But Tyson is not Evander Holyfield or Lennox Lewis, he’s facing 20-something-year-old Paul who has been boxing professionally for only five years.

“I’m not going to lose,” said Tyson.

Paul, 27, began performing in the prize ring as a lark. He demolished former basketball player Nate Robinson and gained traction by defeating MMA stars in boxing matches. His victories began to gain attention especially when he beat UFC stars Anderson Silva and Nate Diaz.

He’s become a phenom.

Every time Paul fights, he seems to improve. But can he beat Tyson?

“He says he’s going to kill me. I’m ready. I want that killer. I want the hardest match possible Friday night, and I want there to be no excuses from everyone at home when I knock him out,” said Paul who lured Tyson from retirement.

Was it a mistake?

The Tyson versus Paul match is part of a co-main event pitting the two best known female fighters Katie Taylor (23-1) and Amanda Serrano (47-2-1) back in the ring again. Their first encounter two years ago was Fight of the Year. Can they match or surpass that incredible fight?

“I’m going to do what I do best and come to fight,” said Serrano.

Taylor expects total war.

“I think what me and Amanda have done over these last few years, inspiring that generation of young fighters, is the best thing we could leave behind in this sport,” said Taylor.

Also, WBC welterweight titlist Mario Barrios (29-2, 18 KOs) defends against Arizona’s Abel Ramos (28-6-2, 22 KOs) and featherweight hotshot Bruce “Shu Shu” Carrington (13-0, 8 KOs) meets Dana Coolwell (13-2, 8 KOs). Several other bouts are planned.

Riyadh Season

WBA cruiserweight titlist Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez headlines a Golden Boy Promotions card called Riyadh Season’s Latino Night. It’s the first time the Los Angeles-based company has ventured to Saudi Arabia for a boxing card.

“Passion. That’s what this fight card is all about,” said Oscar De La Hoya, CEO of Golden Boy.

Mexico’s Ramirez (46-1, 30 KOs) meets England’s Chris Billam-Smith (20-1, 13 KOs) who holds the WBO title on Saturday Nov. 16, at The Venue in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. DAZN will stream the Golden Boy card.

Ramirez surprised many when he defeated Arsen Goulamirian for the WBA title this past March in Inglewood, California. The tall southpaw from Mazatlan had also held the WBO super middleweight title for years and grew out of the division.

“I’m very excited for this Saturday. I’m ready for whatever he brings to the table,” said Ramirez. “I need to throw a lot of punches and win every round.”

Billam-Smith is slightly taller than Ramirez and has been fighting in the cruiserweight division his entire pro career. He’s not a world champion through luck and could provide a very spectacular show. The two titlists seem perfect for each other.

“It’s amazing to be headlining this night,” said Billam-Smith. “He will be eating humble pie on Saturday night.”

Other Interesting Bouts

A unification match between minimumweight champions WBO Oscar Collazo (10-0) and WBA titlist Thammanoon Niyomtrong could be a show stealer. Both are eager to prove that their 105-pound weight class should not be ignored.

“I wanted big fights and huge fights, what’s better than a unification match,” said Collazo at the press conference.

Niyomtrong, the WBA titlist from Thailand, has held the title since June 2016 and feels confident he will conquer.

“I want to prove who’s the best world champion at 105. Collazo is the WBO champion but we are more experienced,” said Niyomtrong.

A lightweight bout between a top contender from Mexico and former world champion from the USA is also earmarked for many boxing fans

Undefeated William “El Camaron” Zepeda meets Tevin Farmer whose style can provide problems for any fighter.

“There is so much talent on this card. It’s a complicated fight for me against an experienced foe,” said Zepeda.

Tevin Farmer, who formerly held the IBF super featherweight title now performs as a lightweight. He feels confident in his abilities.

“You can’t be a top dog unless you beat a top dog. Once I beat Zepeda what are they going to do?” said Farmer about Golden Boy.

In a non-world title fight, former world champion Jose Ramirez accepted the challenge from Arnold Barboza who had been chasing him for years.

“I’m ready for Saturday to prove I’m the best at this weight,” said Ramirez.

Arnold Barboza is rubbing his hands in anticipation.

“This fight has been important to me for a long time. Shout out to Jose Ramirez for taking this fight,” said Barboza.

Special note

The fight card begins at 8:57 a.m. Saturday on DAZN which can be seen for free by non-subscribers.

Fights to Watch (all times Pacific Time)

Fri. Netflix 5 p.m. Mike Tyson (50-6) vs Jake Paul (10-1); Katie Taylor (23-1) vs Amanda Serrano (47-2-1); Mario Barrios (29-2) vs Abel Ramos (28-6-2).

Sat. DAZN, 8:57 a.m. Gilberto Ramirez (46-1) vs Chris Billiam-Smith (20-1); Oscar Collazo (10-0) vs Thammanoon Niyomtrong (25-0); William Zepeda (31-0) vs Tevin Farmer (33-6-1); Jose Ramirez (29-1) vs Arnold Barboza (30-0).

Mike Tyson photo credit: Esther Lin

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Say It Ain’t So: Oliver McCall Returns to the Ring Next Week

Published

19 hours ago

November 14, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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Mike Tyson isn’t the only geezer in action this month. As if one grotesquerie wasn’t enough, Oliver McCall is slated to return to the ring on Tuesday, Nov. 19. McCall is matched against Stacy “Bigfoot” Frazier in a 4-rounder. The venue is a dance hall in Nashville where the usual bill of fare is an Elvis impersonator. The fight, airing on TrillerTVplus, will be historic, says a promotional blurb, as McCall will break Mike Tyson’s record as the oldest former heavyweight champion to compete in a licensed professional fight.

McCall was one of Tyson’s most frequent sparring partners during Iron Mike’s days with Don King. Nicknamed “Atomic Bull,” McCall is 59 years old, sports a 59-14 record, and as a pro has answered the bell for 436 rounds. By comparison, Tyson, 58, has 215 rounds under his belt heading in to his date with Jake Paul.

Stacy Frazier, according to some reports, is 54 years old. Per boxrec, he has a 16-22 record and has been stopped 17 times. In common with McCall, this is his first ring exposure in five-and-a-half years.

The Nov. 19 fight card is being promoted by Jimmy Adams, a former Don King surrogate who has had a long relationship with Oliver McCall. Adams promoted five fights for McCall in Nashville in a four-month span in 1997/98. These were comeback fights for the troubled McCall, coming on the heels of his famous meltdown in his rematch with Lennox Lewis.

Back then, Adams promoted most of his Nashville shows at a bar called the Mix Factory. The promoter and the venue factored large in a New York Times story that began on page 1 of the June 1, 1998 issue and spilled over into the sports section. It bore the title “Boxing in the Shadows.”

The gist of the story was that boxing commissions in different regions of the country “had different levels of tolerance for risk” and that Nashville, which had suddenly become a very busy locale for low-budget fights, was an accident waiting to happen. The Tennessee boxing commission, a division of the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance, was a one-man operation with a budget that penciled out to less than $1,000 per show.

In an article that appeared in the (Nashville) Tennessean shortly after the New York Times expose, promoter Adams scoffed at the insinuation that many of the fighters he used were not true professionals – “I’ve worked to make Nashville the boxing capital of the world,” he said – but Tommy Patrick, the head of the Tennessee Boxing Board, allowed that there was a chance that Adams may have recruited some of his fighters from a homeless shelter.

McCall won the WBC version of the world heavyweight title on Sept. 24, 1994, at Wembley Stadium in London. In one of the biggest upsets of the decade, he knocked out previously undefeated Lennox Lewis in the second round. He made one successful defense, out-pointing long-in-the-tooth Larry Holmes, before returning to Wembley and losing the title to Frank Bruno.

The rematch with Lennox Lewis, on Feb. 7, 1997 in Las Vegas, was one of the most bizarre fights in boxing history. McCall was acting odd before the fifth round when he started sobbing and simply quit trying. Referee Mills Lane disqualified him, but it went into the books as a win by TKO for Lewis. That remains the only time that Oliver McCall, renowned for his granite chin, failed to make it to the final bell.

In the months leading up to that fight, McCall had drug, alcohol, and legal problems.

In some of his most recent outings, McCall shared the bill with his son Elijah McCall. They last appeared together in May of 2013 when they appeared on a card in Legionowo, Poland. A heavyweight, now 36 years old, Elijah McCall returned to the ring in June of this year after a 10-year absence and was stopped in the second round by Brandon Moore in Orlando.

Jimmy Adams, the promoter, was also involved in the careers of heavyweight title-holders Tony Tucker and Greg Page. Both fought at the Mix Factory as their careers were winding down. But he wasn’t able to lock in dates for Riddick Bowe.

In 2005, in a rare burst of rectitude, the Tennessee authorities refused to license Bowe who had returned to the ring the previous year after an 8-year absence at an Indian reservation in Oklahoma.

They based their denial on the transcript of a 2000 court hearing related to a 1998 incident where Bowe kidnapped his wife and five children and forced them to go with him as he drove from Virginia to North Carolina. Riddick’s legal team, led by Johnnie Cochran, argued that Riddick’s erratic behavior was the result of brain damage suffered over the course of his 43-fight professional boxing career.

The “brain damage defense” was just a ploy to keep Bowe out of prison, argued Jimmy Adams, who had arranged two fights for Bowe in Memphis, but the authorities were unyielding and Bowe never fought in Tennessee.

Adams has also been involved in the career of Christy Martin who is listed as the matchmaker for the Nov. 19 show. But the cynics would tell you that Ms. Martin is the matchmaker in name only in the same fashion that Jimmy Adams was a strawman for Don King.

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Boxing was a Fertile Arena for Award-Winning Sportswriter Gary Smith

Published

2 days ago

November 13, 2024

Rick Assad

Boxing-Was-a-Fertile-Arena-for-Award-Winning-Sportswriter-Gary-Smith

Gary Smith is this generation’s most decorated and distinctive magazine writer after winning an unprecedented four National Magazine Awards for non-fiction and being a finalist for the award a record ten times during his more than three decades at Sports Illustrated.

A longtime resident of Charleston, South Carolina, Smith began his career at the Wilmington [Delaware] News Journal followed by stops at the Philadelphia Daily News, the New York Daily News and the stylish monthly Inside Sports before landing at Sports Illustrated in 1982. His job at “S.I.” was to write four longform features a year. Mike Tyson and James “Buster” Douglas were among the athletes that he profiled and he also penned features on Muhammad Ali and George Foreman.

Smith said it’s one thing to see an athlete perform but it’s another to know what’s inside.

“I just felt like to really render the human soul in its most honest way, that getting to understand what human beings had been through and what had landed them with whatever coping mechanism they used would be vital so people could understand a person,” said the La Salle University graduate who stepped away from the magazine in 2014. “Some of these people were doing some extreme things and if you didn’t really lay out the soil they sprung from and what brought them to that place, they would seem like aliens or freaks, but you could very much humanize them which was the only fair thing to do. We all want someone to understand why we are who we are, rather than leaving us dangling on the vine.”

Smith’s wife, Sally, is a psychiatrist, and summed up what her husband tried to lay bare in his features.

“He is not satisfied with putting facts together. He wants to understand what is the core conflict that has driven that person,” she offered many years ago. “He hopes to tell a secret that a person might not be aware of.”

It was rumored Smith would interview no less than fifty people for one feature. Smith said that wasn’t always the case, but he wanted to be thorough, which was merely one key in trying to know and understand his subject.

“You needed patience, asking and re-asking questions because you often wouldn’t get the truest or deepest answer the first go-around. Hopefully being comfortable enough in your own skin would engender trust over time,” he explained. “There would be a lot of follow-up questions, even if I had spent a week with somebody poring over the notes and going back and calling them again and again and really taking it further and further, what their interior monologue with themselves or dialogues in some cases. What was going on and felt in each of these pivotal moments in their lives, so you’d really get a feel of what was going on in the interior.”

“That’s why I did a lot of boxing stories,” said Smith. “There was so much kindling, so much psychological tension which makes for great storytelling. No one carried around tension and opposites like boxers did. It’s fertile terrain for any writer.”

A boxer, said Smith, was figuratively naked in the ring. “These are human beings who are participating in one of the most extreme things that any human being can do,” he acknowledged of the manly sport. “There’s a reason why you end up in such an extreme circumstance. You’re involved in a public mauling. You’re risking being killed or killing. To land there is virtually always a real story. You don’t land there by accident.”

Rick Telander, who worked at Sports Illustrated for 23 years, explained what made Smith’s work stand out. “Gary Smith was a unique writer,” he said. “He immersed himself in his topic, in his subject, like no one else I’ve ever read. He used his words to paint a picture that was one thousand times better than an actual photograph. You could feel the mind and the pain and the joy and the resolve and the defeat and the victory of the person he was writing about.”

Telander, who is the lead sports columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times, said Smith was a one-of-a-kind talent.

“He used his skill with words to make you feel exactly what he felt, what you should feel, to understand the story of some other person on a journey to some place we all would recognize, foreign though it may be,” he stated. “No matter how long a Gary Smith magazine piece was, you had to finish it. You had to know. You had to read and feel the resolution. It was a kind of magic. And Gary was the magician. He was the best there was.”

Alexander Wolff, who spent 36 years at Sports Illustrated, shared a similar sentiment. “Gary had the ability to inhabit the head of his subject,” he noted. “He did that by relentlessly asking questions, often leading subjects to address matters and themes they’d never before thought about.”

Smith visited Tyson early in his career and said the one-time heavyweight king had multiple personalities.

“He was a bundle of opposites. At one moment, he’s kind of seething about the world and people and the next moment he’s just a puppy dog with his arm around your neck,” he said. “One moment walking away from my introductory handshake and leaving it hanging in the air when we first met and by the end of it, arm literally around my neck….The friction of opposites was always at play.”

Smith wrote his feature on James “Buster” Douglas after Douglas claimed the heavyweight crown from Tyson in February 1990.

“He was a gentle soul for the most part. Less extreme actually than most boxers. Therefore, it took a more extreme situation being in a ring with Mike Tyson to bring out the natural talents. He was God-gifted and a father-gifted fighter,” he remembered. “He wasn’t the kind who had easy access to all that desperation that’s needed to excel in boxing but after his mother’s death and the proximity to Tyson’s right hand, they brought out that desperation to use these natural gifts as a fighter.”

Like so many who were around Muhammad Ali, Smith was often amused by the three-time heavyweight champ.

“Ali was always a lot of fun to be with. He was mischievous and said things that could be striking,” he said. “Most of them were very interesting in a variety of ways. Ali was the prankster, and you might be the butt of his pranks.”

Among the many honors accorded Smith was the Dan Jenkins Medal For Lifetime Achievement in Sportswriting, awarded in 2019. Some of his finest work can be found in his two anthologies: “Beyond The Game: The Collected Sportswriting Of Gary Smith’’ (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000) and “Going Deep: 20 Classic Sports Stories by Gary Smith” (Sports Illustrated Books, 2008).

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