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Boyd Melson: An Atypical Fighter

People tend to stereotype fighters. Boyd Melson is not your average fighter. Then again, he’s not your average West Point graduate or your average Jewish kid from Westchester or your average anything.
Melson’s maternal grandparents were born in Poland and were Holocaust survivors. His grandfather escaped from a train that was en route to an extermination camp and joined the Russian Army in the war against Nazi Germany. His father, who spent 26 years in the United States military, is Louisiana Creole with African-American, French, Spanish, and Cherokee roots. Boyd’s sister is an officer in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate Group. His brother is in a public health doctoral program at New York Medical College.
Melson is thoughtful, affable, and a talker. “I was raised as a black male, and I’m Jewish,” he says. “But I’m open to different religions.” Then he elaborates, saying, “Religions are the same in a lot of ways. They’re just written differently. I believe that the highest power in the world is love. I believe that God exists in every one of us, but it’s not Him or Her or It that’s making things happen. It helps us to think that someone else is responsible for what goes on because it takes the burden off of us. But we’re all responsible for what we do and who we are. Bad things can happen for no good reason or because someone planned them to happen. You can ask, ‘Why do people get cancer?’ But you can also ask, ‘Why do people do bad things to each other?’ Good things are the same way. Some good things happen by accident and some good things happen by design. Loving human beings is my identity. I take that very seriously. Everything else in my life complements that.”
Those thoughts might sound incongruous coming from a professonal fighter, particularly one who graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point. After all, the sweet science and the United States Army aren’t the first things that come to mind when the average person thinks of “love.” But they’re part of the mosaic that’s Melson’s life.
West Point was a transformative experience for him.
“I’d heard stories about plebe year at West Point and thought getting yelled at would be funny,” Melson recalls. “That lasted about ten minutes. Then shock set in. I can’t really explain what the experience was like. But in the end, West Point teaches you to believe in yourself. You learn to sift through the crap to get to your objective. You learn that, no matter how bad something is, it will pass. You develop confidence that, no matter bad things are, you’ll find a way to get to where you want to be. You learn how to handle stress with everything – I mean everything – on the line.”
As part of the West Point curriculum, all plebes (first-year cadets) are required to take a boxing class that consists of twenty 45-minute lessons. The last four classes are graded bouts. Each plebe engages in four bouts with two one-minute rounds in each contest.
The purpose of the class isn’t to teach boxing skills as much as it’s to instill mental toughness; to teach young men to face their fears and prepare them for that moment down the road in military combat when they have only themselves to rely on.
“When you’re in combat,” Melson explains, “it’s not about American freedom at that particular moment in time. It’s about you and your buddies surviving. In boxing, you’re trying to hurt someone to win, and that person is trying to hurt you. You learn to think and make decisions under stress. You train your mind to not give up before your body does. Military combat is far more serious than boxing, but some of the demands are the same.”
Melson won all four of his plebe bouts and went from there into intramural boxing. Then he joined the intercollegiate boxing team.
“Eventually,” he recalls, “word began filtering through the ranks that this crazy plebe was knocking people out.”
Melson graduated from West Point in 2003. His first assignment after matriculation was to teach plebe boxing at West Point. Then, after four-and-a-half months of artillery school, he was assigned to the U.S. Army World Class Athlete Program, which trains Army personnel to compete at the national and international level with the ultimate goal of making the United States Olympic Team. He won numerous amateur honors and was a four-time United States Army champion.
Melson stopped boxing in November 2007 after failing to qualify for the United States Olympic Team. On May 31, 2008, he completed his five-year military commitment and took a job in corporate America, selling spinal implants for Medtronic (a leader in the development and manufacture of medical devices).
The new career fit nicely with a passion that Boyd had developed over time. On June 22, 2002, toward the end of his junior year at West Point, he’d met a woman named Christan Zaccagnino at a dance club. Christan had been wheelchair-bound since age ten after breaking her neck in a diving accident.
A relationship followed. And while Boyd and Christan haven’t been romantically involved since 2009, he still describes her as his “soulmate.”
Melson’s relationship with Christan led him to become a forceful advocate for stem-cell research.
“I’ve spent the past twelve years of my life trying to help Christan walk again,” Boyd says. “And that effort has turned into a quest to get all people who’ve suffered spinal cord injuries out of their chairs. I’ve spent a lot of time educating myself on paralysis and neurology and neuroscience and stem cells so I can understand the issues.”
“The hypocrisy and ignorance that surrounds the political debate over stem-cell research is incredibly frustrating to me,” Melson continues. “People are so ignorant on the issue. To give you one example; stem cells don’t just come from abortions. Stem cells can come from umbilical cords after a baby is born. One reason I wanted to make the U.S. Olympic Team was I’d heard that, if you won a gold medal, you’d get to shake hands with the President of the United States. I had a vision of winning a gold medal, meeting George Bush at the White House, and shaking hands with him so hard that it crushed the nerves in his hand and he needed stem-cell treatment to get the function back in his hand. Would I really have done it? Probably not. But I would have wanted to. And I have a very strong grip.”
Melson left Medtronic after two years and took a job as a medical device sales representative for Johnson & Johnson. “But over time,” he says, “a sadness came over me. I couldn’t figure it out. And then I realized it was because I was no longer trying to do something amazing and different from anyone else. I wanted to do something special. That meant I wanted to box again.”
Boyd resumed training in summer 2010 and turned pro with a four-round triumph over Andrew Jones on November 20 of that year. His professional record to date is 14 wins against 1 loss and a draw with 4 knockouts. The loss came by decision in an eight-round war against Delen Parsley. Melson was on the canvas once and Parsley twice.
Melson’s primary income now comes from teaching boxing and physical conditioning classes at Equinox (a national health club) and training a handful of private clients. He donates his fight purses to justadollarplease.org, a non-profit organization that raises funds for research at The Spinal Cord Injury Project at the W. M. Keck Center for Collaborative Neuroscience (affiliated with Rutgers University). In addition, Boyd and Christan have co-founded Team Fight to Walk, a 501(c)(3) corporation that raises money for Just A Dollar Please and will continue to support other research ventures after the clinical trials at Rutgers are complete.
“When Christopher Reeve died, we lost our celebrity,” Melson says. “I’m fighting to get attention, but not for myself. It’s for the cause.”
What sort of a future does Melson have in boxing?
He’s a 32-year-old southpaw without much power who gets hit too much.
“I don’t see him cracking the top ten in any legitimate rankings,” Showtime boxing analyst Steve Farhood says. “But he’s a great guy. And for his own sense of competitiveness, I hope he gets the chance to test himself at least once in the bigtime.”
Ron Katz, one of the savviest matchmakers in the business, is in accord and adds, “Very few people are blessed with the physical gifts you need to be a great fighter. Boyd doesn’t have those gifts. But he enjoys boxing. He does the best he can with what he has and gives it his all. There are far more talented fighters out there who don’t bring honor to the sport the way Boyd does.”
“I’m boxing because there’s so much that I love about it,” Melson says. “I love the the physical and the intellectual competition, the me versus you. It’s competition in its most basic form. You have to be willing to suffer in training to get to where you want to be. You have to be a masochist to do what you have to do. You have to be cruel to yourself to be a fighter. If you’re not pushing yourself to misery, you’re not preparing yourself properly.”
“For me, there’s always that moment in the dressing room before a fight when they bring the gloves in. I say to myself, ‘I must be crazy; I’m never doing this again.’ But at the same time, I want to get in the ring so I can make happen what I want to happen. Then I get in the ring. My adrenalin is flowing. I know I’m going to get hurt; it’s just a question of how much. I get hit in the face. And unless it’s on the nose or in the eye, it feels like pressure, that’s all. Getting hit on the back of the head hurts. Getting hit in the throat, sometimes I can’t breathe. All body shots hurt.”
And what goes through Melson’s mind when he hits someone?
“I hope I hurt him. In the military, very often, you’re trying to kill people. In boxing – let’s be honest about this – you’re trying to hurt people. Before the world was civilized, we were here to survive and procreate. Boxing brings you back to that. To survive, you conquer. But in both disciplines – military combat and boxing – you rely on brotherhood and you’re surrounded by love. You can only tap in to a certain level with anger, and then it runs dry. You can tap in deeper with love.”
Would Melson be boxing if he’d been deployed in the military and seen combat?
“I don’t know,” he answers. “I might have come back angry and had an even greater need to fight. Or I might have come back and said ‘that’s enough.’”
Melson is now slated to fight Glen Tapia on the undercard of Gennady Golovkin vs. Daniel Geale at Madison Square Garden on July 26. A lot of people who care about Boyd don’t like the fight.
Tapia is 24 years old with a 21-and 1 record and 13 knockouts. His one loss was a brutal beatdown at the hands of James Kirkland in Atlantic City last December. But before being stopped, Tapia had Kirkland in trouble.
Boyd is on the card because he sells tickets. For the first time in his pro career, he’ll be a heavy underdog.
“I know I’m the opponent going in,” Melson says. “But it’s a dream of mine to fight at Madison Square Garden. I’ve fought at Barclays Center twice and Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City twice. Those are great places but they’re not the Garden. I don’t know how far I’ll go in boxing, but this is an opportunity for me to get to the next level. I want to be on the card and I’m willing to be the B-side fighter. It’s an opportunity for me to test myself and build on what I accomplished in my last fight.”
That fight took place on February 12 at Roseland Ballroom in New York against a club fighter named Donald Ward. It was supposed to be an easy victory for Melson. But in round three, he injured his brachial plexus (a network of nerve fibers running from the spine through his neck into his right arm).
“The pain was excruciating,” Boyd recalls. “I couldn’t control my arm. I couldn’t feel my fingers in my glove. I thought I was having a stroke. My first thought was, ‘I don’t know what’s happening to my body. I’m scared. I have to quit.’ I started to turn to take a knee. Then I thought about my training at West Point. To survive in combat and in the ring, you slow time down around you when, in reality, real time is taking place. You gut it out and do whatever you have to do to survive. That’s what I try to do for every second of every fight. That’s what I did that night.”
From that point on, Melson was a wounded soldier. “I was barely able to move my right arm,” he recalls. “I landed only one good right hand all night after that – a right hook – and it almost threw me into shock.”
But he survived and won a majority decision.
“Of all my fights, that’s the one that’s the most meaningful to me,” Boyd says. “It confirmed what I’ve always believed about myself; that I can overcome the worst kind of adversity and do what I have to do to prevail. The idea of quitting kept trying to creep into my head. But I was able to block out worrying about my injury and stay in the moment when I couldn’t move my arm and didn’t know what had happened to me and suppress the fear and do what I had to do to win. It’s not just about how far I can go in boxing. It’s about testing myself and enjoying the journey.”
“I love boxing,” Melson says, summing up. “It’s the ultimate experience for testing physical ability and intelligence under threat of the greatest adverse consequences possible short of death. And I love being called upon to comport myself with dignity when I’m in the spotlght, competing in a sport that some people think is barbaric but I think is wonderful.”
Thomas Hauser can be reached by email at thauser@rcn.com. His most recent book (Reflections: Conversations, Essays, and Other Writings) was published by the University of Arkansas Press.
People tend to stereotype fighters. Boyd Melson is not your average fighter. Then again, he’s not your average West Point graduate or your average Jewish kid from Westchester or your average anything.
Melson’s maternal grandparents were born in Poland and were Holocaust survivors. His grandfather escaped from a train that was en route to an extermination camp and joined the Russian Army in the war against Nazi Germany. His father, who spent 26 years in the United States military, is Louisiana Creole with African-American, French, Spanish, and Cherokee roots. Boyd’s sister is an officer in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate Group. His brother is in a public health doctoral program at New York Medical College.
Melson is thoughtful, affable, and a talker. “I was raised as a black male, and I’m Jewish,” he says. “But I’m open to different religions.” Then he elaborates, saying, “Religions are the same in a lot of ways. They’re just written differently. I believe that the highest power in the world is love. I believe that God exists in every one of us, but it’s not Him or Her or It that’s making things happen. It helps us to think that someone else is responsible for what goes on because it takes the burden off of us. But we’re all responsible for what we do and who we are. Bad things can happen for no good reason or because someone planned them to happen. You can ask, ‘Why do people get cancer?’ But you can also ask, ‘Why do people do bad things to each other?’ Good things are the same way. Some good things happen by accident and some good things happen by design. Loving human beings is my identity. I take that very seriously. Everything else in my life complements that.”
Those thoughts might sound incongruous coming from a professonal fighter, particularly one who graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point. After all, the sweet science and the United States Army aren’t the first things that come to mind when the average person thinks of “love.” But they’re part of the mosaic that’s Melson’s life.
West Point was a transformative experience for him.
“I’d heard stories about plebe year at West Point and thought getting yelled at would be funny.” Melson recalls. “That lasted about ten minutes. Then shock set in. I can’t really explain what the experience was like. But in the end, West Point teaches you to believe in yourself. You learn to sift through the crap to get to your objective. You learn that, no matter how bad something is, it will pass. You develop confidence that, no matter bad things are, you’ll find a way to get to where you want to be. You learn how to handle stress with everything – I mean everything – on the line.”
As part of the West Point curriculum, all plebes (first-year cadets) are required to take a boxing class that consists of twenty 45-minute lessons. The last four classes are graded bouts. Each plebe engages in four bouts with two one-minute rounds in each contest.
The purpose of the class isn’t to teach boxing skills as much as it’s to instill mental toughness; to teach young men to face their fears and prepare them for that moment down the road in military combat when they have only themselves to rely on.
“When you’re in combat,” Melson explains, “it’s not about American freedom at that particular moment in time. It’s about you and your buddies surviving. In boxing, you’re trying to hurt someone to win, and that person is trying to hurt you. You learn to think and make decisions under stress. You train your mind to not give up before your body does. Military combat is far more serious than boxing, but some of the demands are the same.”
Melson won all four of his plebe bouts and went from there into intramural boxing. Then he joined the intercollegiate boxing team.
“Eventually,” he recalls, “word began filtering through the ranks that this crazy plebe was knocking people out.”
Melson graduated from West Point in 2003. His first assignment after matriculation was to teach plebe boxing at West Point. Then, after four-and-a-half months of artillery school, he was assigned to the U.S. Army World Class Athlete Program, which trains Army personnel to compete at the national and international level with the ultimate goal of making the United States Olympic Team. He won numerous amateur honors and was a four-time United States Army champion.
Melson stopped boxing in November 2007 after failing to qualify for the United States Olympic Team. On May 31, 2008, he completed his five-year military commitment and took a job in corporate America, selling spinal implants for Medtronic (a leader in the development and manufacture of medical devices).
The new career fit nicely with a passion that Boyd had developed over time. On June 22, 2002, toward the end of his junior year at West Point, he’d met a woman named Christan Zaccagnino at a dance club. Christan had been wheelchair-bound since age ten after breaking her neck in a diving accident.
A relationship followed. And while Boyd and Christan haven’t been romantically involved since 2009, he still describes her as his “soulmate.”
Melson’s relationship with Christan led him to become a forceful advocate for stem-cell research.
“I’ve spent the past twelve years of my life trying to help Christan walk again,” Boyd says. “And that effort has turned into a quest to get all people who’ve suffered spinal cord injuries out of their chairs. I’ve spent a lot of time educating myself on paralysis and neurology and neuroscience and stem cells so I can understand the issues.”
“The hypocrisy and ignorance that surrounds the political debate over stem-cell research is incredibly frustrating to me,” Melson continues. “People are so ignorant on the issue. To give you one example; stem cells don’t just come from abortions. Stem cells can come from umbilical cords after a baby is born. One reason I wanted to make the U.S. Olympic Team was I’d heard that, if you won a gold medal, you’d get to shake hands with the President of the United States. I had a vision of winning a gold medal, meeting George Bush at the White House, and shaking hands with him so hard that it crushed the nerves in his hand and he needed stem-cell treatment to get the function back in his hand. Would I really have done it? Probably not. But I would have wanted to. And I have a very strong grip.”
Melson left Medtronic after two years and took a job as a medical device sales representative for Johnson & Johnson. “But over time,” he says, “a sadness came over me. I couldn’t figure it out. And then I realized it was because I was no longer trying to do something amazing and different from anyone else. I wanted to do something special. That meant I wanted to box again.”
Boyd resumed training in summer 2010 and turned pro with a four-round triumph over Andrew Jones on November 20 of that year. His professional record to date is 14 wins against 1 loss and a draw with 4 knockouts. The loss came by decision in an eight-round war against Delen Parsley. Melson was on the canvas once and Parsley twice.
Melson’s primary income now comes from teaching boxing and physical conditioning classes at Equinox (a national health club) and training a handful of private clients. He donates his fight purses to justadollarplease.org, a non-profit organization that raises funds for research at The Spinal Cord Injury Project at the W. M. Keck Center for Collaborative Neuroscience (affiliated with Rutgers University). In addition, Boyd and Christan have co-founded Team Fight to Walk, a 501(c)(3) corporation that raises money for Just A Dollar Please and will continue to support other research ventures after the clinical trials at Rutgers are complete.
“When Christopher Reeve died, we lost our celebrity,” Melson says. “I’m fighting to get attention, but not for myself. It’s for the cause.”
What sort of a future does Melson have in boxing?
He’s a 32-year-old southpaw without much power who gets hit too much.
“I don’t see him cracking the top ten in any legitimate rankings,” Showtime boxing analyst Steve Farhood says. “But he’s a great guy. And for his own sense of competitiveness, I hope he gets the chance to test himself at least once in the bigtime.”
Ron Katz (one of the savviest matchmakers in the business) is in accord and adds, “Very few people are blessed with the physical gifts you need to be a great fighter. Boyd doesn’t have those gifts. But he enjoys boxing. He does the best he can with what he has and gives it his all. There are far more talented fighters out there who don’t bring honor to the sport the way Boyd does.”
“I’m boxing because there’s so much that I love about it,” Melson says. “I love the the physical and the intellectual competition, the me versus you. It’s competition in its most basic form. You have to be willing to suffer in training to get to where you want to be. You have to be a masochist to do what you have to do. You have to be cruel to yourself to be a fighter. If you’re not pushing yourself to misery, you’re not preparing yourself properly.”
“For me, there’s always that moment in the dressing room before a fight when they bring the gloves in. I say to myself, ‘I must be crazy; I’m never doing this again.’ But at the same time, I want to get in the ring so I can make happen what I want to happen. Then I get in the ring. My adrenalin is flowing. I know I’m going to get hurt; it’s just a question of how much. I get hit in the face. And unless it’s on the nose or in the eye, it feels like pressure, that’s all. Getting hit on the back of the head hurts. Getting hit in the throat, sometimes I can’t breathe. All body shots hurt.”
And what goes through Melson’s mind when he hits someone?
“I hope I hurt him. In the military, very often, you’re trying to kill people. In boxing – let’s be honest about this – you’re trying to hurt people. Before the world was civilized, we were here to survive and procreate. Boxing brings you back to that. To survive, you conquer. But in both disciplines – military combat and boxing – you rely on brotherhood and you’re surrounded by love. You can only tap in to a certain level with anger, and then it runs dry. You can tap in deeper with love.”
Would Melson be boxing if he’d been deployed in the military and seen combat?
“I don’t know,” he answers. “I might have come back angry and had an even greater need to fight. Or I might have come back and said ‘that’s enough.’”
Melson is now slated to fight Glen Tapia on the undercard of Gennady Golovkin vs. Daniel Geale at Madison Square Garden on July 26. A lot of people who care about Boyd don’t like the fight.
Tapia is 24 years old with a 21-and 1 record and 13 knockouts. His one loss was a brutal beatdown at the hands of James Kirkland in Atlantic City last December. But before being stopped, Tapia had Kirkland in trouble.
Boyd is on the card because he sells tickets. For the first time in his pro career, he’ll be a heavy underdog.
“I know I’m the opponent going in,” Melson says. “But it’s a dream of mine to fight at Madison Square Garden. I’ve fought at Barclays Center twice and Boardway Hall in Atlantic City twice. Those are great places but they’re not the Garden. I don’t know how far I’ll go in boxing, but this is an opportunity for me to get to the next level. I want to be on the card and I’m willing to be the B-side fighter. It’s an opportunity for me to test myself and build on what I accomplished in my last fight.”
That fight took place on February 12 at Roseland Ballroom in New York against a club fighter named Donald Ward. It was supposed to be an easy victory for Melson. But in round three, he injured his brachial plexus (a network of nerve fibers running from the spine through his neck into his right arm).
“The pain was excruciating,” Boyd recalls. “I couldn’t control my arm. I couldn’t feel my fingers in my glove. I thought I was having a stroke. My first thought was, ‘I don’t know what’s happening to my body. I’m scared. I have to quit.’ I started to turn to take a knee. Then I thought about my training at West Point. To survive in combat and in the ring, you slow time down around you when, in reality, real time is taking place. You gut it out and do whatever you have to do to survive. That’s what I try to do for every second of every fight. That’s what I did that night.”
From that point on, Melson was a wounded soldier. “I was barely able to move my right arm,” he recalls. “I landed only one good right hand all night after that – a right hook – and it almost threw me into shock.”
But he survived and won a majority decision.
“Of all my fights, that’s the one that’s the most meaningful to me,” Boyd says. “It confirmed what I’ve always believed about myself; that I can overcome the worst kind of adversity and do what I have to do to prevail. The idea of quitting kept trying to creep into my head. But I was able to block out worrying about my injury and stay in the moment when I couldn’t move my arm and didn’t know what had happened to me and suppress the fear and do what I had to do to win. It’s not just about how far I can go in boxing. It’s about testing myself and enjoying the journey.”
“I love boxing,” Melson says, summing up. “It’s the ultimate experience for testing physical ability and intelligence under threat of the greatest adverse consequences possible short of death. And I love being called upon to comport myself with dignity when I’m in the spotlght, competing in a sport that some people think is barbaric but I think is wonderful.”
Thomas Hauser can be reached by email at thauser@rcn.com. His most recent book (Reflections: Conversations, Essays, and Other Writings) was published by the University of Arkansas Press.
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A Paean to the Great Sportswriter Jimmy Cannon Who Passed Away 50 Years Ago This Week

“Of all his assignments,” said the renowned sportswriter Dave Anderson, “[Jimmy] Cannon appeared to enjoy boxing the most.”
Cannon would have sheepishly concurred. He dated his infatuation with boxing to 1919 when he stood outside a saloon listening to a man with a megaphone relay bulletins from the Dempsey-Willard fight in faraway Toledo. His father followed boxing as did all the Irishmen in his neighborhood. For him, an interest in the sport of boxing, he once wrote, was like a family heirloom. But it became a love-hate relationship. It was Jimmy Cannon, after all, who coined the phrase “boxing is the red light district of sports.”
This week marks the 50th anniversary of Jimmy Cannon’s death. He passed away at age 63 on Dec. 5, 1973, in his room at the residential hotel in mid-Manhattan where he made his home. In the realm of American sportswriters, there has never been a voice quite like him. He was “the hardest-boiled of the hard-drinking, hard-boiled school of sports writing,” wrote Darrell Simmons of the Atlanta Journal. One finds a glint of this in his summary of Sonny Liston’s first-round demolition of Albert Westphal in 1961: “Sonny Liston hit Albert Westphal like he was a cop.”
In his best columns, Jimmy Cannon was less a sportswriter than an urban poet. Here’s what he wrote about Archie Moore in 1955 after Moore trounced Bobo Olson to set up a match with Rocky Marciano: “Someone should write a song about Archie Moore who in the Polo Grounds knocked out Bobo Olson in three rounds…It should be a song that comes out of the backrooms of sloughed saloons on night-drowned streets in morning-worried parts of bad towns. The guy who writes this one must be a piano player who can be dignified when he picks a quarter out of the marsh of a sawdust floor.”
Prior to fighting in Madison Square Garden the previous year – his first appearance in that iconic boxing arena – Moore had roamed the globe in search of fights in a career that began in the Great Depression. Cannon was partial to boxers like Archie Moore, great ring artisans who toiled in obscurity, fighting for small purses –“moving-around money” in Cannon’s words — until the establishment could no longer ignore them.
Jimmy Cannon was born in Lower Manhattan. He left high school after one year to become a copy boy for the New York Daily News. In 1936, at age 26, the News sent him to cover the biggest news story of the day, the Lindbergh Baby kidnapping trial. While there he met Damon Runyon who would become a lifelong friend. At Runyon’s suggestion, he applied for a job as a sportswriter at the New York American, a Hearst paper, and was hired.
During World War II, he was a war correspondent in Europe embedded in Gen. George S. Patton’s Third Army. When he returned from the war, he joined the New York Post and then, in 1959, the Journal-American which made him America’s highest-paid sportswriter at a purported salary of $1000 a week. His articles were syndicated and appeared in dozens of papers.
Cannon was very close to Joe Louis. He was the only reporter that Louis allowed in his hotel room on the morning of the Brown Bomber’s rematch with Max Schmeling. Louis, he wrote, “was a credit to his race, the human race.” It was his most-frequently-quoted line.
In an early story, Cannon named Sam Langford the best pound-for-pound fighter of all time. Later he joined with his colleagues on Press Row in naming Sugar Ray Robinson the greatest of the greats. As for the fellow who anointed himself “The Greatest,” Muhammad Ali, Cannon profoundly disliked him. He persisted in calling him Cassius Clay long after Ali had adopted his Muslim name.
It troubled Cannon that Ali was afforded an opportunity to fight for the title after only 19 pro fights. Ali’s poetry, he thought, was infantile. He abhorred Ali’s political views. And, truth be told, he didn’t like Ali because certain segments of society adored him. Cannon didn’t like non-conformists – hippies and anti-war protesters and such. When queried about his boyhood in Greenwich Village, he was quick to note that he lived there “when it was a decent neighborhood, before it became freaky.”
Cannon’s animus toward Ali spilled over into his opinion of Ali’s foil, the bombastic sportscaster Howard Cosell. “If Howard Cosell were a sport,” he wrote,” it would be roller derby.”
Cannon frequently filled his column with a series of one-liners published under the heading “Nobody Asked Me, But…” His wonderfully acerbic put-down of Cosell appeared in one of these columns. But one can’t read these columns today without cringing at some of his ruminations. He once wrote, “Any man is in trouble if he falls in love with a woman he can’t knock down with one punch.” If a newspaperman wrote those words today, he would be out of a job so fast it would make his head spin.
Similarly, his famous line about Joe Louis being a credit to the human race no longer resonates in the way that it once did. There is in its benevolence an air of racial prejudice.
Jimmy Cannon was a lifelong bachelor but in his younger days before he quit drinking cold turkey in 1948, he was quite the ladies man, often seen promenading showgirls around town. Like his pal Damon Runyon, he was a night owl. As the years passed, however, he became somewhat reclusive. The world passed him by when rock n’ roll came in, pushing aside the Tin Pan Alley crooners and torch singers that had kept him company at his favorite late-night haunts.
Cannon’s end days were tough. He suffered a stroke in 1971 as he was packing to go to the Kentucky Derby and spent most of his waking hours in his last two-plus years in a wheelchair. Fortunately, he could afford to hire a full-time attendant. In 2002, he was posthumously elected to the International Boxing Hall of Fame in the Observer category.
Jimmy Cannon once said that he resented it when someone told him that his stuff was too good to be in a newspaper. It was demeaning to newspapers and he never wanted to be anything but a newspaperman. He didn’t always bring his “A” game and some of his stuff wouldn’t hold up well, but the man could write like blazes and the sportswriting profession lost a giant when he drew his last breath.
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Arne K. Lang is a recognized authority on the history of prizefighting and the history of American sports gambling. His latest book, titled Clash of the Little Giants: George Dixon, Terry McGovern, and the Culture of Boxing in America, 1890-1910, was released by McFarland in September, 2022.
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Ryan “KingRy” Garcia Returns With a Bang; KOs Oscar Duarte

It was a different Ryan “KingRy” Garcia the world saw in defeating Mexico’s rugged Oscar Duarte, but it was that same deadly left hook counter that got the job done by knockout on Saturday.
Only the quick survive.
Garcia (24-1, 20 KOs) used a variety of stances before luring knockout artist Duarte (26-1-1, 21 KOs) into his favorite punch before a sold-out crowd at Toyota Arena in Houston, Texas. That punch should be patented in gold.
It was somewhat advertised as knockout artist versus matinee idol, but those who know the sport knew that Garcia was a real puncher. But could he rebound from his loss earlier this year?
The answer was yes.
Garcia used a variety of styles beginning with a jab at a prescribed distance via his new trainer Derrick James. It allowed both Garcia and Duarte to gain footing and knock the cobwebs out of their reflexes. Garcia’s jab scored most of the early points during the first three rounds. He also snapped off some left hooks and rights.
“He was a strong fighter, took a strong punch,” said Garcia. “I hit him with some hard punches and he kept coming.”
Duarte, an ultra-pale Mexican from Durango, was cautious, knowing full well how many Garcia foes had underestimated the power behind his blows.
Slowly the muscular Mexican fighter began closing in with body shots and soon both fighters were locked in an inside battle. Garcia used a tucked-in shoulder style while Duarte pounded the body, back of the head and in the back causing the referee to warn for the illegal punches twice.
Still, Duarte had finally managed to punch Garcia with multiple shots for several rounds.
Around the sixth round Garcia was advised by his new trainer to begin jabbing and moving. It forced Duarte out of his rhythm as he was unable to punch without planting his feet. Suddenly, the momentum had reversed again and Duarte looked less dangerous.
“I had to slow his momentum down. That softened him up,” said Garcia about using that change in style to change Duarte’s pressure attack. “Shout out to Derrick James.”
Boos began cascading from the crowd but Garcia was on a roll and had definitely regained the advantage. A quick five-punch combination rocked Duarte though not all landed. The danger made the Mexican pause.
In the eighth round Duarte knew he had to take back the momentum and charged even harder. In one lickety-split second a near invisible counter left hook connected on Duarte’s temple and he stumbled like a drunken soldier on liberty in Honolulu. Garcia quickly followed up with rights and uppercuts as Duarte had a look of terror as his legs failed to maintain stability. Down he went for the count.
Duarte was counted out by referee James Green at 2:51 of the eighth round as Garcia watched from the other side of the ring.
“I started opening up my legs a little bit to open up the shot,” explained Garcia. “When I hurt somebody that hard, I just keep cracking them. I hurt him with a counter left hook.”
The weapon of champions.
Garcia’s victory returns him back to the forefront as one of boxing’s biggest gate attractions. A list of potential foes is his to dissect and choose.
“I’m just ready to continue to my ascent to be a champion at 140,” Garcia said.
It was a tranquil end after such a tumultuous last three days.
Other Bouts
Floyd Schofield (16-0, 12 KOs) blitzed Mexico’s Ricardo “Not Finito” Lopez (17-8-3) with a four knockdown blowout that left fans mesmerized and pleased with the fighter from Austin, Texas.
Schofield immediately shot out quick jabs and then a lightning four-punch combination that delivered Lopez to the canvas wondering what had happened. He got up. Then Scholfield moved in with a jab and crisp left hook and down went Lopez like a dunked basketball bouncing.
At this point it seemed the fight might stop. But it proceeded and Schofield unleashed another quick combo that sent Lopez down though he did try to punch back. It was getting monotonous. Lopez got up and then was met with another rapid fire five- or six-punch combination. Lopez was down for the fourth time and the referee stopped the devastation.
“I appreciate him risking his life,” said Schofield of his victim.
In a middleweight clash Shane Mosley Jr. (21-4, 12 KOs) out-worked Joshua Conley (17-6-1, 11 KOs) for five rounds before stopping the San Bernardino fighter at 1:51 of the sixth round. It was Mosley’s second consecutive knockout and fourth straight win.
Mosley continues to improve in every fight and again moves up the middleweight rankings.
Super middleweight prospect Darius Fulghum (9-0, 9 KOs) of Houston remained undefeated and kept his knockout string intact with a second round pounding and stoppage over Pachino Hill (8-5-1) in 56 seconds of that round.
Photo credit: Golden Boy Promotions
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Jordan Gill TKOs Michael Conlan Who May Have Reached the End of the Road

Fighting on his home turf, two-time Olympian Michael Conlan was an 8/1 favorite over Jordan Gill tonight in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Had he won, Matchroom promoter Eddie Hearn was eyeing a rematch for Conlan with Leigh Wood. Their March 2022 rumble in Nottingham was a popular pick for the Fight of the Year. But the 29-year-old Gill, a Cambridgeshire man, rendered that discussion moot with a seventh-round stoppage. It was Conlan’s third loss inside the distance in the last 18 months and he would be wise to call it a day. His punch resistance is plainly not what it once was.
It was with considerable fanfare that Conlan cast his lot with Top Rank coming out of the amateur ranks. Tonight was his first assignment for Matchroom and his first fight at 130 pounds after coming up short in two world featherweight title fights. And he almost didn’t make it past the second round. Gill had him on the canvas in the opening minute of round two compliments of a left hook and stunned him late in the round with a right hand that left him on unsteady legs.
He survived the round and for a fleeting moment in the sixth frame it appeared that he had reversed Gill’s momentum. But Gill took charge again in the next stanza, trapping Conlan in the corner and unloading a fusillade of punches that forced referee Howard Foster to waive it off, much to the great dismay of the crowd. The official time was 1:09 of round seven.
Released by Top Rank, Conlan trained for this fight in Miami, Florida, under Pedro Diaz, best known for rejuvenating the career of Miguel Cotto. But the switch in trainer and in promoter made no difference as Conlan, who won his first amateur title at age 11, was damaged goods before he entered the ring. It was a career-defining victory for Jordan Gill (28-2-1, 9 KOs) who was not known as a big puncher and was returning to the ring after being stopped by Kiko Martinez 13 months ago in his previous start.
Semi-wind-up
In the “Battle of Belfast,” undefeated welterweight Lewis Crocker seized control in the opening round and went on to win a lopsided decision over intra-city rival Tyrone McKenna (23-4-1). Two of the judges gave Crocker every round and the other had it 98-92, but yet this was entertaining fight in spurts. McKenna had more fans in the building, but Crocker, seven years younger at age 26, went to post a 7/2 favorite and youth was served.
Other Bouts of Note
Belfast super welterweight Caoimhin Agyarko, who overcame a near-fatal mugging at age 20, advanced to 14-0 (7) with a 10-round split decision over Troy Williamson (20-2-1). The judges had it 98-92 and 97-93 for Agyarko with a dissenter submitting a curious 96-94 score for the 31-year-old Williamson who wasn’t able to exploit his advantages in height and reach.
Sean McComb, a 31-year-old Belfast southpaw, scored what was arguably the best win of his career with a 10-round beat-down of longtime sparring partner Sam Maxwell. Two of the judges gave McComb every round and the other had it 99-88. McComb, who has an interesting nickname, “The Public Nuisance, successfully defended his WBO European super welterweight strap while elevating his record to 18-1 (6). The fading, 35-year-old Maxwell, a former BBBofC British title-holder, lost for third time in his last four starts after winning his first 16 pro fights.
Photo credit: Mark Robinson / Matchroom
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