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Cam F. Awesomem A Super Heavy Talent and Weird in a Good Way

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The modern day journalist, under pressure to churn out copy while staving off anxiety which comes from being in a business which has seen laborers battle a downward trend in wage growth, has to be careful not to fall prey to taking available shortcuts.

Hello, Wikipedia.

It’s all there, or enough to get you started, and acquainted enough with the life and doings of a subject you are writing about.

Except when it’s not all there.

Or what is there is riddled with inaccuracies, or glaring omissions, known maybe only to the subject of the entry, giving only a minimal portion of the total picture of the man.

I took a look at the Wikipedia entry for the man formerly known as Lenroy Thompson after seeing his name cross the wires a couple weeks ago, highlighting his successful participation at the Pan American Olympic Festival in Mexico City. “Cam F. Awesome Wins Gold Medal,” I read. And did a triple take.

Wait…what’s the guys name? Real name can’t be Awesome, can it? And lord, I hope the F stands for what I think it does. I thought to myself, chuckling dementedly.

I reached out to Julie Goldsticker, who does PR work for the USA Boxing program, and told her I’d like to speak to Mr. Awesome.

She quickly replied. Sure thing Mike. I think you’ll enjoy talking to him.

Indeed I did, Julie.

Awesome, who was born on Long Island, New York with the name “Lenroy Thompson,” is a standout at super heavyweight for team USA, a program which is working towards reconfiguring their mission and their result in competition. The women involved in the program have no shame in their game, as was hinted out in Mexico City, where Queen Underwood, Marlen Esparza and ace Claressa Shields all took golds, along with Awesome. You’ll recall Shields excelled at the 2012 Olympics, where she won gold, and Esparza impressed with a bronze effort. Among the fellas, only Errol Spence managed to make it to the quarterfinals.

I do confess, I will now be keeping track of Awesome’s progress and will be rooting for him to keep on winning, and get into the 2016 Games, in Brazil, and thrive in golden fashion, because to me, the world is well served when such free thinkers as someone bold enough to change their last name to “Awesome” are out and about and making noise.

My regard for Awesome ticked up almost immediately, when during a phoner I asked about that Wikipedia entry and he filled me in. “I’m not sure who put it together, but I was going to get on there, and fix some things, but then I got lazy,” Awesome said.

Point given for admirable honesty…

Now, the lefty-stance super heavy was indeed born in Uniondale, he informed me. He took up boxing at age 17, right after he graduated from high school, and found he made quick strides in the squared circle realm. He advanced to the US Championships in 2007, losing in the semis to Michael Hunter, currently a pro, and took part in the Olympic Trials. In 2008, Awesome–who by the way was still known as “Lenroy Thompson,” he didn’t change his name until 2011–took part in the US Nationals. Wikipedia informed me that he took advantage of Hunters’ absence, which allowed him to advance further, where he met and lost to Tor Hamer.

Awesome looked to clear up that “advantage” storyline, and helped me comprehend that he is not a cookie-cutter type who does as he’s told, when he’s told. No, he said, he was the best in the country in that class at that time, he stated, and is proud of the fact that he beat Hamer, who made some noise as a pro a few years ago. I chuckled silently as Awesome digressed, and said, “Hamer is just so weird, he’s really cool, actually. His name sounds like a super hero, right?”

By now living in Florida, Awesome’s path got a bit smoother, and then rockier, which Wikipedia touches on, but with semi-infuriating thinness. He beat Bryant Jennings, who just won a WBC title shot eliminator on July 26, in the National Golden Gloves finals in 2009. He was on a road to the 2012 Olympics, thanks to wins like the one at the 2010 USA Boxing Championship in Colorado. Then the snafu, which Wiki “details” under the heading “Drug Suspension.” USADA, the entry reads, in February 2012 suspended Thompson for a year, for failing to meet requirements regarding his whereabouts, needed to be ascertained so he could be found for out of competition testing. Three times he couldn’t be found, the entry says, in an 18 month timespan.

Hmm, think there might be something implied there? Yep, don’t know whose fingerprints are on this Wiki page, but if it were my entry, I’d hope that the counterfactual argument, or at least explanation, would be asked of me.

Anyway, I asked Thompson what happened there. He told me.

One time he was “AWOL,” he said, came when he was in NY, attending a Nets game. He informed testing agency USADA the house he’d be staying at, and gave them his cell number. He wasn’t at the house when they came requesting a sample, and when they tried calling his cell, he didn’t pick up. Why? Because he had no cell service in the arena. If he’d gotten the call, he’d have been tasked with getting back to that house within 60 minutes. But since he didn’t get the call, it was counted as a “miss.” Another miss came when he filled out some required paperwork for USADA for the Trials, online, past the deadline date. (I confess, not being so great at such tasks, I feel for the guy on this one.) And then, for his third strike, he was competing, in Azerbejian, and forgot to inform the testing folks that he was not at home. Since he was competing for USA Boxing, in an international competition, it strikes me that it wouldn’t have been too hard for the testing people to figure out where he was, but anyway…

Three strikes, and he was out. The whole Lance Armstrong doping kerfuffle was not coincidentally playing out during that time, Awesome notes, so, he thinks, that didn’t help when it came time to ponder punishment. “I feel as though they made an example of me,” he admits.

I grilled him, though. Has he used any illegal PEDs, or banned party drugs, or anything?

“No, I haven’t. Anything that is illegal, I wouldn’t know where to start to find them,” said the guy whose Twitter handle is PlantBasedBoxer, because he’s been vegan for the last two years. “I don’t do any drugs. I am anti pain pills even. No marijuana, no PEDs…I mean, I don’t look like I do anything. I don’t have the build for anyone to say I’m on steroids.”

Ah, but that which doesn’t kill us…

Oh, it might not kill us, but it might make us a bit more skeptical about the ways of the world, the way the powers that be operate, shift standards and practices based on whim and the direction of the wind. Not saying that happened with Thompson, but on Feb. 16, 2013, he had a party for himself, to celebrate the fact that he changed his name. Legally, he changed his name to Cam F. Awesome. “The party celebrated my rebirth,” he told me of the bash in Kansas City, which was attended by about 60 people, some of whom were celebrating a mutual friends’ birthday. So Awesome got his crew together and told them of his switcheroo. “Awesome” was the word stitched on his trunks, and, as he put it, “Because if you chose a name what would you choose? Life is awesome, and everyone is their own life. My life is awesome, I’m grateful for everything I have.” And the Cameron, that’s actually his first-given middle name, and the name he mostly answered too, being that his dad was Lenroy the First, and he didn’t want to be a Junior, and didn’t care for the unisex status of “Cameron.” Oh, and the F…tell me it stands for what I think it stands for, please.

“It stands for anything you want it to,” he told me.

Perfect.

So, at age 25, Awesome has a new name, and a somewhat altered POV of the world. Most of us by 25, I dare say, have had our teeth kicked in once or twice, causing us to shift out of a more simplistic way of thinking about the planet and the people who take up space on it. Ah, but we all still have parents, or elders in our life with frown lines showing deep furrows when we screw up. Like, for instance, when we show up and tell them we changed our last name to “Awesome?”

His parents were a bit surprised, yes. “They know how I am little bit out there,” he admits of his ‘rents, of his mom who came from England and his dad who was born in Trinidad. “My mom was a little confused but no one really questioned me. I’m a child with adult-like resources. I do whatever an eight year old would do if they had the money and power to do it.”

Amen to that…if eight year olds ran the world, there damned well would be peace in the Middle East. OK, and ice cream for breakfast all the time, but you get my point…What we’d spend in dentist bills we’d make up for with the dissolution of the military-industrial complex….

The name change has been basically a pure positive, he said. His name always pops out when media scans a list of 50 or so fighters in a tourney, so it guarantees ink. Now, the downsides….”There are a lot of airport checks. I didn’t see that one coming.”

Awesome for now is loving the experience as he lives the dream which has him traveling to foreign countries, allowing him to compare and contrast persons and systems. It has made him that much more grateful for what he and we all have. He recalls that he went to the Dominican Republic for a tourney, and was told that the place they were staying was in the good part of town. “We have running water,” he was told, by a proud person. It wasn’t hot water, but it was running. And there was no AC. “Their idea of living good is different. We’re spoiled, and often don’t realize how good we have it,” he said.

“Most of us don’t leave the country,” he continued. He splurged on a fan for his room in the DR, which he bought for $20, not inconsiderable wages in that nation for a laborer. He left it with a cleaning lady upon departure, but the money laid out seems to be well spent. “That’s why I love America so much,” he says. “So many people don’t know how crappy it can be elsewhere. Our level of poverty is what, $12,000 a year? You can live as king in the Dominican Republic for that.”

Speaking of kings and such…Awesome and the ladies fought like bosses in Mexico. He says they are buds, hang out, support each other all the way. “Every punch I threw, I heard Marlen like she was sitting next to me,” Awesome said.

He expects the ladies to clean up at the next Games, and wants to snag a gold himself, ideally. And how about a transition to the pro ranks after that? Think about it…a vegan gold medalist with the last name “Awesome?” Al Haymon, get your checkbook ready…

“I would love to represent America till I’m 40,” he says. “If there’s no Olympics for me, I may turn pro, but the jury is still out.”

Awesome has gone 43-5 in the last year and a half, and has close to 300 fights under his belt. Would his style be a good fit for the pros? “What am I like technically? As Kenny Powers said, fundamentals are crutches for the untalented,” he says, chuckling. “I made up my own style. It looks like I don’t know what I’m doing at times, but I’m not doing anything by accident. I throw punches from weird places, and it’s effective. I’m not a power puncher, so I don’t go toe to toe. I’m about 215 pounds, fighting guys at around 270. But I won’t drop down, because I’m so much faster than them at super heavyweight. As long as I don’t get hit, I won’t get killed.”

“You’re sort of supposed to fight and be this macho, manly way, supposed to stand and fight. I want to break the stereo, that you can be educated and articulate and have diversity in life, and be happy in life.”

The perception of the “normal” fighter in the minds of too many is Mike Tyson, complex and fearsome, and Muhammad Ali, his faculties diminished by punches he absorbed, supposedly. “I’ve never watched a Rocky movie and will not, and Ali with Parkinsons, you cannot attribute to boxing. With Tyson, people think he’s crazy. I prefer to be seen as a funny vegan.”

I get the sense that, in a good way, Awesome isn’t an automaton of ambition, that he rightly doesn’t wrap up his persona and being in his won-loss record. “There’s so much more like I’d like to do, before I decide to turn pro, dedicate my whole life to boxing. I want to do comedy, acting, public speaking. I don’t want to be the dude who gets punched my whole life. I’d like to leave a legacy. I mean, yes, money is very important to me. They say it can’t buy happiness. But having it doesn’t necessarily make you unhappy…. but it can buy a helicopter.”

Awesomely said, sir.

Keep punching Cam F., and if I can muster some focus, I will see what I can do about logging on to your Wiki backstage, and filling in some of those blanks. But be forewarned; I might lapse into a lazy spell, in the downtime when I’m not working on building my brand to where I can buy a helicopter.

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

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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 until 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

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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

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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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