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Paulie Malignaggi: It’s Over

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It began in Brooklyn and it ended in Brooklyn.

Fourteen years ago, on a perfect summer night, a young man named Paulie Malignaggi made his professional boxing debut at Coney Island’s KeySpan Park with a first-round knockout of Thadeus Parker. Like all young fighters, Malignaggi harbored dreams of glory. Some of those dreams came true; others didn’t. On August 1 at Barclays Center (an arena that didn’t exist when Paulie turned pro), those dreams came to an end.

Malignaggi fought the odds throughout his career and had championship runs at 140 and 147 pounds. Unlike most “name” fighters today, he really would fight anyone. His final ring record – at least, one hopes it’s final – shows 33 wins and 7 losses. His biggest fights (against Miguel Cotto, Ricky Hatton, Amir Khan, Adrien Broner, Shawn Porter, and Danny Garcia) ended in defeat. But pivotal victories over Zab Judah, Vyacheslav Senchenko, Juan Diaz, and Lovemore N’dou brightened the mix.

Through it all, Paulie spoke his mind and did it his way. “I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t dip his toe into the pool,” he says. “I’ll jump in to see if it’s cold.”

Part of his appeal was that he wore his emotions on his sleeve. In and out of the ring, he appeared vulnerable.

“When you win in front of millions of people,” Paulie noted, “it’s an incredible high. And when you lose in front of millions of people, it hurts. But in the end, it’s not about the number of people watching. It’s about youself. I cried after every loss I had as an amateur. And I cried after I lost to Miguel Cotto and Ricky Hatton. Then I stopped crying after losses, but they still hurt.”

As Paulie aged, the term “elder statesman” didn’t quite fit. Rafe Bartholomew put his finger on one of the reasons why when he wrote, “Malignaggi’s hairstyles have run a gamut unlike any other in a sport where hideous coiffures are common. We’ve seen Malignaggi go from Pauly D blowout to spiked frosted tips to a peach-fuzz baldie decorated with constellations of shaved-in swirls. The undisputed high point of Malignaggi’s follicular odyssey came when he fought Lovemore Ndou with a head full of braided extensions that made him look like the Italian-American love child of Milli Vanilli and Medusa. When he entered the ring with simple cornrows or a red-tinged faux-hawk, it was interpreted as a sign of mature veteran stature.”

But Paulie kept on being Paulie.

“The media doesn’t know crap about boxing,” he told veteran writer Ron Borges. “There are a few exceptions. But they watch every week and don’t know what they’re doing. If I spent that much time watching something and wrote and said what they do I’d feel very ignorant. I’d feel stupid.”

By that time, Paulie had joined the media as a commentator for Showtime Boxing and was carving out a niche for himself as one of the best in the business.

On April 19, 2014, Malignaggi suffered what many people, including himself, thought was a career-ending fourth-round knockout loss at the hands of Shawn Porter.

“I was hurt pretty bad,” Paulie acknowledges. “Porter went off like a grenade. I went from the ropes to the canvas to the hospital. I’d never been hurt like that before.”

Thereafter, David Greisman wrote, “Paulie woke up every morning with nausea. It seemed as if he needed to shake cobwebs out of his head before his day could begin. Even then, there would be bad headaches that came unexpectedly. He would sit ringside during broadcasts, see a heated exchange between fighters, and think, ‘I’m glad I’m not there.’”

“I never said officially that I was retiring,” Paulie noted earlier this year. “But I told the people I was close to that I thought I was done.”

Then, to the dismay of family and friends, Malignaggi announced that he was fighting again; a tune-up fight against untested Danny O’Connor. In a series of interviews, Paulie explained his thinking:

* “At first, I didn’t want to fight again. I would see these fights from close range [as a commentator], see the violence, some crazy exchanges. ‘Man, better these guys than me. I’m done.’ Then little by little, as I started feeling better, I would focus on the crowd reaction, the adrenaline these fighters are feeling. I was starting to slowly change my thinking. It was starting to slowly become more like, ‘I got to feel this again; I got to feel that rush again. It’s something missing in my life. If you’re not living a certain way, you’re basically dead anyway.”

* “I’d love to win another world title. One more world title would be nice. Sometimes, I think about it and I say ‘one more year.’ And then I think about, if at the end of the year I’m on the verge of getting a big fight, I’m not going to stop. You don’t know when for sure.”

And the ultimate excuse:

* “Before the Porter fight, I hadn’t looked bad. I had one bad night.”

Malignaggi-O’Connor was cancelled when Paulie suffered a cut in training. Then Paulie was offered and accepted an August 1 fight against a far more formidable opponent: Danny Garcia.

“Everybody has asked me, ‘Why would you do this?’ Malignaggi told Tom Gerbasi. “’It’s not like you need money. It’s not like you’re starving.’ But in life, there are other things that make you feel fulfilled besides money. Money’s good; trust me. But you can’t buy happiness and you can’t buy that sense of fulfillment. You fight to be on this grand stage. You do all the hard work through the years. You fight in these little club shows early in your career. You’re fighting in gymnasiums as an amateur. And you do it all so you can be on these huge stages one day. That’s what you dream of. And the bigger the stage, the bigger the rush.”

“That elite level,” Paulie told The Players Tribune. “When you get declared the winner at the end, it’s God-like. It’s hard to describe. It hooks you. It’s addicting, knowing that only a small percentage of people in this world will ever get to feel that kind of adrenaline, and you’re one of them. You crave it. It’s like a drug.”

“A boxer knows it’s time to hang ‘em up when he fears getting hurt in the ring more than he fears losing,” Paulie continued. “If you’re afraid of getting hurt, you have no place in between those ropes. If you’re afraid to fail and you’re afraid to lose and you’ll lay your body on the line and do everything humanly possible to beat the man in front of you, you still got it.”

But that’s nonsense. Judged by that standard, Muhammad Ali didn’t fight too long. Ali always had the will to win. Brain damage shows up over time.

In the days leading up to Garcia-Malignaggi, Danny was a 6-to-1 betting favorite. Fighting mostly at 140 pounds, he’d fashioned a 30-and-0 (17 KOs) record highlighted by a fourth-round knockout of Amir Khan and decisions over Lucas Matthysse and Lamont Peterson.

Paulie hadn’t fought in almost sixteen months and had won one fight since a disputed split-decision triumph over Pablo Cesar Cano in 2012. His reflexes had slowed. His legs were no longer what they once were. The fresh young face and optimism of youth were gone.

“I know people are saying this is my last fight, that I’m just taking a payday,” Paulie noted during a media conference call. “But you know what? You can’t take people’s opinions in the ring with you. I keep reading, ‘This is Paulie’s swan song. It’s his last fight.’ We’ll see.”

“I don’t know how many more great performances I have left in me,” Paulie added at the final pre-fight press conference. “I know I’ll have one on Saturday night. I’ve put my body and mind through so much for this fight. I’ve been so focussed. I’m so sharp. People say I don’t hit hard, but I hit hard enough to break Danny’s nose. And if I break Danny’s nose, he has a problem. On Saturday night, you’ll see the best Paulie Malignaggi that I can be.”

And there was a special motivating factor for Malignaggi.

“So much hinges on Saturday night,” Paulie confessed. “A win could put me in the conversation for the Hall of Fame. I made a list of goals that I wanted to achieve when I started boxing, and I’ve been checking things off ever since. National amateur champion. Yes. Olympian. No. World champion. Yes. Financial security. Yes. Hall of Fame. That was my biggest longterm goal. If I win on Saturday night, that hope stays alive.”

Boxing at the world-class level is a game of centiseconds and fractions of an inch. On fight night, those numbers favored Garcia.

Danny was the aggressor throughout. One arguably could have given rounds two, five, and seven to Malignaggi. There were times when he was able to frustrate Garcia and neutralize Danny’s attack with movement, jabs, and a handful of body shots. But for the most part, Garcia was in charge. And when Paulie made him miss, he didn’t make him pay.

Malignaggi was cut above the right eye in round three and beneath it in round six, a round in which he tired noticeably. By round eight, Garcia was landing right hands to the body and hooks up top with abandon. The assault continued in round nine with Paulie fighting simply to survive. Two minutes and 22 seconds into the stanza, referee Arthur Mercante appropriately stopped the bout.

After the fight, Paulie sat on a chair in his dressing room with his head bowed. There was a large discolored lump on the right side of his forehead. Blood seeped from an ugly gash beneath his right eye and there was a second cut above it. The left side of his body looked like raw beef.

Dr. Avery Browne of the New York State Athletic Commission came into the room for a post-fight physical.

“How do you feel?”

“I’ve been better,” Paulie said. “But I’m all right.”

“Do you have a headache?”

“Yeah. But it’s not as bad as after the last fight.”

Dr. Browne administered the normal post-fight tests with a few extra questions for good measure.

“Who’s the president?”

“Come on,” Paulie answered. “Obama. Do you want me to say Batman?”

“You’ll need stitches,” Dr. Browne told him.

“I’m getting used to it.”

“I’m giving you a forty-five-day suspension.”

“How about forty-five years?” Paulie suggested.

The doctor left.

A period of silence followed. It wasn’t just that Paulie had lost the fight. By any rational standard, his career as a fighter was over.

Tom Hoover (the newly-installed chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission) entered to check on Paulie’s condition.

“It was a good stoppage,” Paulie told him. “The doctors were great. Thank you.”

Dr. Tony Perkins (a plastic surgeon in private practice) was the next arrival.

Paulie lay down on a vanity table that ran the length of the dressing room beneath a mirrored wall.

Dr. Perkins began to work. While the stitching was in progress, Al Haymon came in and walked over to Paulie.

“I don’t have it any more,” Paulie said.

Haymon leaned over and whispered words of assurance in Paulie’s ear.

“You’re okay. You’re in the family.”

An hour earlier, Haymon had visited Sergio Mora’s dressing room and spoken the same words to Mora, who’d been unable to continue after breaking his ankle in the second round of a fight against Danny Jacobs.

Haymon left.

Dr. Perkins finished his work. Five stitches above Paulie’s right eye and ten stitches beneath it.

Paulie looked at the people gathered around him. His brother, Umberto; longtime friend and business advisor, Anthony Catanzaro; Pete Sferazza, another friend; Bobby Ermankhah, CEO of Azad, which markets a Magic-Man watch.

“My jab wasn’t working the way I wanted it to,” Paulie said. “There were moments when it seemed like I was taking control, and then Danny took it back . . . I’m not as fast as I used to be. And my legs aren’t as good. I adjusted my style the last few years to compensate, but it wasn’t enough tonight . . . I can still beat a lot of guys, but I want to be more than the pesky crafty guy who comes up short in big fights . . . I’m not an elite fighter anymore.”

“Do you want to do the blood now?” a USADA collection agent asked.

“Yeah. Let’s get it out of the way.”

A year ago, there was a moment that spoke volumes about Paulie Malignaggi’s psyche. On May 31, 2014, Carl Froch scored a dramatic one-punch knockout of George Groves in front of 80,000 roaring fans at Wembly Stadium in London.

“Right now,” Paulie told a television audience that was listening to his commentary, “I wish I was Carl Froch.”

Paulie never had his Carl Froch moment. But he has been to the mountaintop.

Several months ago, reflecting back on his championship victories and also his fights against Miguel Cotto, Ricky Hatton, and others, Paulie told David Greisman, “When my career is over, years from now, whether I’ve won or lost these big fights, at least I’ll be able to say I was in the ring with those guys. When people talk about great fighters, I got to share a night with those guys in front of a big crowd, and it was really cool. Whether I won the fight or lost the fight, I had some cool experiences.”

Paulie is a smart guy. Fighting again would be stupid.

Thomas Hauser can be reached by email at thauser@rcn.com. His most recent book – Thomas Hauser on Boxing – was published by the University of Arkansas Press.

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Thomas Hauser is the author of 52 books. In 2005, he was honored by the Boxing Writers Association of America, which bestowed the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism upon him. He was the first Internet writer ever to receive that award. In 2019, Hauser was chosen for boxing's highest honor: induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Lennox Lewis has observed, “A hundred years from now, if people want to learn about boxing in this era, they’ll read Thomas Hauser.”

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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 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

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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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Avila Perspective, Chap. 319: Rematches in Las Vegas, Cancun and More

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