The Real “Fight of the Century” Remains Corrales-Castillo I

Published

10 years ago

May 7, 2015

Forget the hype. Forget what you were told. Forget even what you know, or think you know. Not to disparage Mayweather-Pacquiao, which is the undisputed revenue-producing champion of all time, but the real “Fight of the Century” remains the classic first pairing of lightweight champions Diego “Chico” Corrales and Jose Luis Castillo. Their epic unification clash on May 7, 2005, at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas was so riveting that many consider it to be the greatest boxing match of all time.

Such an assertion might or might not be considered true, as there are always disparities in individual perception. There is no algorithm to pinpoint which treasured fight in ring history indisputably deserves to be at the very top of that figurative mountain. But while the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight was relayed to the International Space Station to be viewed by U.S. astronauts at their leisure, Corrales-Castillo I, won by Corrales on a 10th-round stoppage only moments after it appeared he was on the verge of being taken out himself, is what we would want communicated throughout the galaxy to show other intelligent life forms, if indeed there are any, that inhabitants of Earth are incredibly tough, courageous and not to be messed with.

“You can vote now,” Gary Shaw, Corrales’ promoter, said at the postfight press conference a decade ago. “This is Fight of the Year, Fight of Next Year, Fight of the Decade. I don’t believe you’ll ever see anything like this again.”

There have, of course, been some excellent bouts since Corrales and Castillo took each other to hell and back. But in the 10 years that have passed, Shaw and others who were fortunate enough to have been eyewitnesses that amazing night haven’t had cause to rate any fight higher for drama and gut-wrenching excitement.

“Oh, it was a great fight. A spectacular fight,” Shaw told me a few days ago. “But that was Corrales. He always said that they would have to carry him out of the ring before he’d ever stop fighting. He was the ultimate never-give-up guy.

“I actually thought the fight was going to be over in that 10th round. Diego had gone down a second time and was on his hands and knees. I was thinking as a promoter would, `What am I going to say at the press conference? How am I going to bring Diego back?’ The next thing I knew, I had almost an out-of-body experience. When I looked up, Castillo was sagging against the ropes and the referee (Tony Weeks) was waving the fight off. Incredible.”

Said referee Tony Weeks, who drew the assignment as third man in the ring: “That fight definitely is the highlight of my career. It will go down in history. It is history. And those guy guys, Corrales and Castillo, made me a part of that history. I’m forever indebted to them. They epitomized what true champions are.”

As amazing rallies go, Corrales’ comeback from the brink was like a baseball team that was six runs down with two outs and the bases empty in the bottom of the ninth inning in Game 7 of the World Series somehow pulling out the victory. If such a stark momentum shift in a boxing match can be equated to a miracle, well, this was it.

“In the 10th round, Castillo nailed Corrales with a left hook and he went down,” Weeks recalled. “There was the mouthpiece issue, of course. (More on that a bit later.) Corrales got up and he seemed to be OK, so I let things go on and, boom, he goes down again. At this point I’m thinking it’s a brutal fight, I might have to stop it if he goes down another time. But, somehow, Corrales was able to turn the tables. If you look at the film, you can see my focus shift from Corrales to Castillo.

“It was unbelievable, and it all happened so fast. One minute I’m counting over Corrales and the next minute I’m stopping the fight with Castillo out on his feet.”

As is often the case with any story that has a rich vein of silver linings, there are dark clouds of controversy and even tragedy that stick to Corrales-Castillo I like lint on a Velcro brush. Jay Larkin, the Showtime boxing boss who was instrumental I making the fight, was ousted from the position he had held for 21 years later in 2005. He was 59 when he died, after a lengthy battle with brain cancer, on Aug. 9, 2010. Corrales was never the same after that first go-round with Castillo; he lost his final three bouts, including the rematch, retired and, inebriated and reportedly despondent , he died in a motorcycle crash in Las Vegas on May 7,2007 – two years to the day after the signature victory of a praiseworthy career in which he went 40-5, with 33 wins inside the distance.

“When I received the news (of Corrales’ death), I was devastated,” Weeks said. “I couldn’t believe it. For it to happen on that particular date … that was devastating. I got to know Corrales through boxing, in the ring and out of the ring. He was a real nice guy, a real likable guy. He would always cater to the public as far as giving autographs and taking pictures with fans. You would never think he was such a fierce warrior if you met him outside of the ring.”

More so than most, I have a deep connection to Corrales-Castillo I because, in some small way, I feel like I helped make it happen. I was the president of the Boxing Writers Association of America in 2005, and it was my decision, at the suggestion of Las Vegas-based writer Kevin Iole, to bring the 80th annual BWAA Awards Dinner to the Strip for the first time after many years of it being staged exclusively on the East Coast, most often in New York.

As part of the process of transforming that plan into a reality, I contacted officials at both Showtime and HBO and said the event could only be staged in Las Vegas if it was in conjunction with a major fight the following night. I gave a list of preferred dates to both premium cable networks and told them, basically, that we’d partner up with whichever stepped up first.

Larkin clearly was on board. “We very much want to be involved,” he told me, “and I’m prepared to go a half-million dollars over our normal budget for a Showtime Championship Boxing telecast to make it happen.”

What he delivered was a showdown between Corrales, the WBO lightweight champion, and Castillo, who held the WBC title. It was an attractive fight, given the reputations of both fighters, but it wasn’t a megafight. In fact, the announced attendance that night in the Mandalay Bay Events Center was 5,100, well short of capacity, although the correct figure is probably somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000.

To my way of thinking, anything good that took place on May 7 was gravy. The BWAA Awards Dinner, thanks in large part to Mandalay Bay public relations director Gordon Absher, who was instrumental in the event selling out with a celebrity guest list that included, among others, Sugar Ray Leonard, Oscar De La Hoya, Floyd Mayweather Jr., Bernard Hopkins, Vitali Klitschko, Winky Wright, James Toney, Shane Mosley, Chris Byrd, Hasim Rahman, Lamon Brewster, Erik Morales, Glen Johnson, Wayne McCullough, Jeff Lacy, Zab Judah, Kevin Kelly and Richie Sandoval.

But the BWAA Awards Dinner, star-studded as it was, merely served as an appetizer to the real main event the following night. Corrales and Castillo hurled themselves at one another with uncommon fury from the opening bell. The exchanges were frequent and torrid, clinches rare, and the ebb and flow suggested something lifted from a WWE script. It was obvious seconds into Round 1 that those spectators who were fortunate enough to be in the arena, and the Showtime viewing audience, were witnessing an instant classic.

The toll of the punishment being dished out both ways soon became apparent, most noticeably on Corrales’ face, which was a gargoyle mask with angry, purplish lumps under each eye. He later described them as “marbles, big, hard marbles.” And as those marbles enlarged, a curtain was slowly being drawn across the slits his battered eyes had become.

Asked afterward if he was concerned about his diminishing field of vision, Corrales, well, lied. Distorting reality is something desperate fighters do to buy extra time from a referee or a ring physician upon whose judgment their further participation in a bout hinges.

“It’s not my job to worry about swelling,” he said of the mouses that had become rat-sized, offering still another magnificent prevarication. “It’s not my job to worry about knockdowns. It’s not my job to worry about anything that might hinder me. It’s the corner’s job to worry about those things. It’s my job to fight.”

Make no mistake, Corrales’ trainer, Joe Goossen, was fretting enough for the entire corner team. And what he told his fighter, or what Corrales decided on his own, might have proved the difference between a spectacular, back-from-the-brink victory and near-certain defeat.

In his most notable fight prior to his trench war with Castillo, Corrales had wrested the WBO 135-pound title from Brazil’s Acelino Freitas on a 10th-round TKO on Aug. 7, 2004, in Mashantucket, Conn. It did not escape Corrales’ attention that, whenever Freitas appeared to be in real trouble, he would “accidentally” lose his mouthpiece, obliging referee Mike Ortega to call time to have it rinsed off. A slick ploy, but one that ultimately did not prevent Freitas’ championship from changing hands.

Twenty-five seconds into Round 10, Castillo landed flush with a left hook that sent Corrales crashing to the canvas. His mouthpiece was dislodged by the shot, which probably was done legitimately, but Corrales – who had demonstrated remarkable recuperative powers throughout his career, in which he previously had been decked eight times – got precious additional seconds of recovery time.

The second knockdown, also from a left hook, had “Chico’s” chances of winning hanging by a slender thread. Even before Weeks reached a count of nine, a clearly buzzed Corrales removed his mouthpiece, apparently intentionally.

“The first time it came out, it came out by itself,” Corrales said. “The second time, I took it out to breathe. But I didn’t drop it on purpose.”

Weeks deducted a point from Corrales for intentionally spitting out the mouthpiece and directed him to his corner, where Goossen took his sweet time in rinsing it off and re-inserting it. When Corrales turned to face Castillo again, 28 seconds had elapsed.

Would Corrales have been stopped without the break in the action? Possibly. But Corrales, still in desperate straits, got there first with an overhand right, which he followed up with a barrage of blows, driving the Mexican back against the ropes, his head vibrating like it was on a swivel. Weeks believed he had no choice but to step in and wave things off at the 2:06 mark.

At the time of the stoppage, Corrales led, 87-84 and 86-85, on the scorecards of judge Lou Moret and Daniel Van de Wiele, with Castilo up, 87-84, on Paul Smith’s card.

“Castillo was naked,” Weeks said of the stoppage. “He was being hit with bombs. He went limp. He was unable to defend himself. He was out on his feet. His eyes rolled back, his arms were at his sides. I had to stop it.”

Not surprisingly, Top Rank CEO Bob Arum, who promoted Castillo, went ballistic.

“Forget the Long Count (in Dempsey-Tunney II),” Arum fumed. “Twenty-eight seconds. Nearly half a minute. If Jose Luis had spit out his mouthpiece, maybe he would have gotten 28 seconds (to recuperate).”

Shaw, of course, saw things differently.

“There’s nothing worse than taking away from a night like this,” he said. “This fight cannot be sullied by controversy.”

For his part, Weeks stands by his decision to allow Corrales enough time to have his mouthpiece rinsed and re-inserted, a ruling which was in accordance with Nevada State Athletic Commission rules, according to Marc Ratner, then the NSAC executive director.

“I would not do anything differently,” insisted Weeks, one of boxing’s best referees. “The first time (the mouthpiece came out), I didn’t see Corrales spit it out. Even the second time, I didn’t see it. But it was out, so the second time I thought, `We got a situation here.’ The appropriate thing was to deduct a point, which I did.”

Maybe Shaw is correct; the mouthpiece controversy doesn’t seem quite as big a deal now, maybe because the action was so indelibly printed on the minds of all that were privileged to have seen one of the great prizefights of all time. Fifteen years into the 21st century, there still hasn’t been anything to quite match it, not even the Gatti-Ward troika and, money considerations aside, not Mayweather-Pacquiao.

“The thing that bothers me the most (about the May-Pac fight) is they made it about money, instead of what a great fight really should be about,” he said. “I have a lot of mixed emotions about Saturday night in relation to Corrales-Castillo because those guys didn’t get anywhere near the money that Mayweather and Pacquiao got. But they were the ones who fought their hearts out and put everything on the line. Mayweather and Pacquiao didn’t, in my estimation.”

The measure of what Corrales-Castillo I was is the fact that it remains a measuring stick against which other fights are judged. Prior to junior welterweight Lucas Matthysse’s 12-round, majority decision over Ruslan Provodnikov on April 18 in Verona, N.Y., Provodnikov’s promoter, Art Pelullo, raised the possibility of a reasonable facsimile of May7, 2005, again taking place.

“I believe it’s going to be Corrales-Castillo I,” Pelullo opined. It wasn’t, but it is indicative of just how special a fight that was that boxing people still bring it up with a reverence that Mayweather-Pacquiao dwarfed in revenues generated but not where it counts, inside the ropes.

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Bernard Fernandez

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

Published

2 days ago

April 24, 2025

David A. Avila

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

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

This is huge in British boxing.

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

This is about family pride.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eubank smiles.

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

Supporting Bout

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

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

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

It’s youth versus experience.

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

Monster in L.A.

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

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

Pomona Fights

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

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

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

Fights to Watch

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

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Floyd Mayweather has Another Phenom and his name is Curmel Moton

Published

4 days ago

April 22, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Floyd Mayweather has Another Phenom and his name is Curmel Moton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Published

6 days ago

April 20, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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

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

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

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

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

New York Times

New York News

New York World

New York Sun

New York Journal

New York Post

New York Mirror

New York Telegram

New York Graphic

New York Herald Tribune

Brooklyn Eagle

Brooklyn Times

Brooklyn Standard Union

Brooklyn Citizen

Bronx Home News

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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