Tyson’s Bludgeoning of Biggs Another Example of Boxing’s Crueler Side

Published

9 years ago

October 6, 2015

Compassion? Oh, sure, there is lots of it in boxing, if you know where to look. There is the memory of a concerned Floyd Patterson kneeling over the knocked-out Ingemar Johansson, Ingo’s left quivering uncontrollably, after the Swede had been felled by Floyd’s leaping left hook in the second of their three classic confrontations. There is WBC heavyweight champion Larry Holmes, in the process of stopping outclassed challenger Marvis Frazier in the very first round, signaling with his right hand to referee Mills Lane to step in and save Larry’s young friend from taking additional punishment.

“I met (Marvis) when he was a little-bitty kid,” Holmes, at the post fight press conference following the Nov. 25, 1983, bout in Las Vegas, said of the son of Joe Frazier, whom Holmes had long held in the highest esteem. “I was working with Joe as his sparring partner. That was one of the happiest moments of my life. I was like a kid in a candy store. It gave me a great thrill, even when Joe broke my ribs. We remained friends until the day they put him in the ground.”

But while the crucible of the ring has forged much mutual respect and more than a few lasting friendships, it also must be noted that animosity also can be the unforgiving residue of the hardest sport. Some fighters enjoy inflicting pain if they dislike their opponent or believe he has somehow done them wrong. Sometimes there doesn’t even have to be a reason for intentionally prolonging a beatdown; some great champions simply have a sadistic streak that served them well, in a professional sense.

Case in point: the Oct. 16, 1987, meeting of undisputed heavyweight champion Mike Tyson and 1984 Olympic super heavyweight gold medalist Tyrell Biggs in Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall. Tyson was seething even before the opening bell, and determined to do as much damage as was humanly possible to Biggs until the referee or ring doctor intervened.

“I was going to make him pay with his health for everything he said,” Tyson said of the revenge motive that prompted him to ease off whenever it appeared the battered Biggs was ready to go. “I could have knocked him out in the third round, but I wanted to do it very slowly. I wanted him to remember this for a long time.”

Biggs remembered, all right. Decked twice, he suffered two cuts that required 22 stitches to close – 19 above his left eye, three in his chin.

“I didn’t say anything that should have angered him,” Biggs said, incredulous that Tyson had made his destruction such a personal matter. “All I said was that I was confident I could beat him.

“There’s good guys and bad guys in wrestling, like Hulk Hogan and Ivan the Terrible. Well, I think Mike Tyson is the Ivan the Terrible of boxing.”

Truth be told, Tyson’s resentment of Biggs far predated anything that went on in the weeks preceding their actual meeting in the ring. They both were at the Olympic Trials in 1984, when Tyson was a callow teenager still in the process of refining his skills. Henry Tillman, who would not make it out of the first round against Tyson as a pro, instead was the United States’ heavyweight representative in Los Angeles.

In Tyson’s book, “Undisputed Truth,” he claims that Biggs belittled him at the Olympic Trials. When a woman approached Biggs to wish him and his newly certified teammates luck in the Olympics, and Biggs, nodding at Tyson, allegedly said, “He certainly ain’t getting on that plane.”

Any resentment Tyson may have harbored toward Biggs bubbled up after the fight was announced, with Biggs and chatty cornerman Lou Duva expressing their belief that Tyson was overrated and beatable.

“He’s never fought anyone like me,” Biggs said at the final prefight press conference. “I don’t know this Tyson, the way you guys (media) talk about him. I know Tyson from way back when. He’s strong, but his strength will not hurt me.”

It might have been typical bluster on the part of Biggs and Duva to hype the event, but Tyson was building up a rage inside himself that would be unleashed like a volcano on fight night.

“I want to hurt him bad,” he said of his plan for Biggs. And so he did.

“When I was hitting him with body punches, I heard him actually crying in there, making woman gestures,” a smirking Tyson said. “I knew that he was breaking down. I was very calm and I was thinking about Roberto Duran, how he used to cut down the runners and just wear them down. I had that frame of mind when I was in the ring. I wasn’t even thinking about (targeting Biggs’) cut. I was thinking about hitting him to the body – softening him up.”

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that Tyson would reference Duran, whose mercilessness as he went about his work had made him Tyson’s hero and role model. What Tyson had tried to do to Biggs, and largely succeeded in achieving, was what Duran, the “Hands of Stone,” had done to a pretty good lightweight named Ray Lampkin when he sought to dethrone Duran, the WBA 135-pound titlist, on March 2, 1975, in Panama City, Panama.

As was the case with Biggs a dozen years later, Lampkin had made some seemingly innocuous remarks about how he thought Duran might be ready to be taken. And, as Tyson did against Biggs, the imperious Duran, who once said, “I’m not God, but something similar,” had used that as fuel for his fury.

“They were trying to make Duran out to be this Superman character,” Lampkin had said in the lead-up to the fight. “He’s human, and when you cut him he bleeds, just like I do. They’re acting like he can’t be beat, but I saw Esteban (DeJesus) do it.”

Unfortunately for Lampkin, he wasn’t Esteban DeJesus on a night that he needed to be more than he was. Duran, who also was a master of backing off when an opponent was on the verge of toppling, finally closed the deal in the 14th round. So damaged was Lampkin that he was unconscious for over an hour, and remained hospitalized for five days.

“I was not in my best condition,” Duran said in assessing his brutally effective performance. “Today I sent him to the hospital. Next time I’ll put him in the morgue.” It was a quote that forever defined Duran as a remorseless assailant. And while Lampkin recovered enough to resume his career, he was never the same.

“That was the fight that sent me downhill into retirement,” he said. “I never recuperated. I wanted to make myself believe that I did, but I kept getting hurt.”

Before he did what he did to Biggs, Tyson worked faster but just as devastatingly against Marvis Frazier on July 26, 1986, in Glen Falls, N.Y., four months prior to the 20-year-old Tyson winning his first heavyweight championship. The fight lasted just a half-minute, with Tyson going after Frazier like a ravenous wolf going after a slab of raw meat. But that was just the way he always fought, right? Well, maybe so, but there are those who believed then, and still do, that Tyson had more motivation than usual to make a statement against the son of the great Smokin’ Joe.

An unfailingly polite sort who is now a minister, Marvis didn’t really say anything that might have served to inflame Tyson. But Joe did, although his comments on how Marvis would handle Tyson was interpreted by some as how the elder Frazier thought he would do if only he could go back in time and be the one swapping haymakers with the young Iron Mike.

“I don’t see who (Tyson) really has beaten,” Joe said is dismissing Tyson as a false creation of the Cus D’Amato/Jimmy Jacobs hype machine. “You need to sit him down and teach him things instead of having him fight all the time against somebody who ain’t nobody. Putting him in the ring and having him knock out somebody who needs to be in the house cooking, it don’t make any sense. I don’t know how that’s going to make him champion.

“Marvis will be moving all the time. When he jumps in to fight, he’ll fight. He won’t be standing there holding hands and playing around.”

Beau Williford, who had trained Tyson victims James “Quick” Tillis and Lorenzo Boyd, understood how Tyson would react to Joe’s taunting. There would be hell to pay, and Marvis was the one who would do the paying.

“Tyson will eat him alive, spit him out and step on him,” Williford said of what Marvis could expect. “And if the old man keeps running his mouth, Mike will knock him out, too.”

A prime-on-prime matchup of Joe Frazier and Tyson, so similar in style and physical attributes, would be on any fight fan’s list of dream fights, if only wishing could make it so. But Smokin’ Joe did get it on three times with Muhammad Ali, who also gets a couple of nods as someone who could find the darker recesses within himself as the occasion warranted.

One such instance was Ali’s 12th-round stoppage of Floyd Patterson in Nov. 22, 1965, in Las Vegas, Ali’s second defense of his heavyweight championship and the first after he had scored that controversial first-round knockout of Sonny Liston in their rematch in Lewiston, Maine.

Ali, of course, had changed his name from Cassius Clay at that point, although Patterson was unwilling to identify him as such.

“I have been told Clay has every right to follow any religion he chooses, and I agree,” Patterson said. “But by the same token, I have the right to call the Black Muslims a menace to the United States and a menace to the Negro race … I do not believe God put us here to hate one another. Cassius Clay must be beaten and the Black Muslims’ scourge removed from boxing.”

Ali set out to not only defeat Patterson, but to humiliate him and to make him suffer for his temerity. Time and again Ali seemingly had Patterson teetering on the abyss, and time and again Ali backed off to allow the former champ time to recover and thus be pounded on some more.

By the 12th round, even Ali’s trainer, Angelo Dundee, had tired of the cat-and-mouse game. “Knock him out, for chrissake,” Dundee implored his fighter, who decided to do as requested. That 12th-round stoppage could have and probably would have come much earlier had Ali not been toying with Patterson, or had Floyd not been so obstinate in the face of certain defeat.

“It was hurting me to watch,” said referee Harry Krause, who wanted to step in numerous times but was hesitant to do so because Patterson was doing all he could to try to fight back. “Patterson was hopelessly outclassed. He lobbed his punches like a feeble old woman.”

Another Ali opponent, Ernie Terrell, would discover, as Patterson had, that there were consequences to referring to Ali as “Clay,” even if it was mostly unintentional.

Prior to their Feb. 6, 1967, bout in Houston’s Astrodome, Terrell, the WBA heavyweight champion, said the name that could set Ali off as nothing else could.

“I wasn’t trying to insult him,” Terrell is quoted as saying in “Muhammad Ali” His Life and Times,” by author Thomas Hauser. “He’d been Cassius Clay to me all the time before when I knew him. Then he told me, `My name’s Muhammad Ali.’ And I said fine, but by then he was going, `Why can’t you call me Muhammad Ali? You’re just an Uncle Tom.’

“Well, like I said, I didn’t mean no harm. But when I saw that calling him `Clay’ bugged him, I kept it going. To me it was just part of building up the promotion.”

But what’s good for the goose isn’t necessarily good for the gander. Although Ali would say his calling Joe Frazier a “gorilla” and “ignorant” was simply a means of building up the promotion of their fights, Frazier didn’t think that should have been the case. And neither did Ali when Terrell made the mistake of calling him Clay. From the eighth round on, Ali taunted Terrell, shouting time and again, “What’s my name?,” followed by bursts of blows to Terrell’s badly swollen eyes.

Tex Maule, writing in “Sports Illustrated,” concluded that Ali had engaged in “a wonderful demonstration of boxing skill and a barbarous display of cruelty.”

It is both elements – the compassion and sportsmanship, to be sure, but also the undeniable element of meanness – that go into the bubbling brew that makes boxing so compelling a reflection of the human condition. As Puerto Rican poet Martin Espada once noted, “Violence is terribly seductive; all of us, especially males, are trained to gaze upon violence until it becomes beautiful.”

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Bernard Fernandez

Dante Kirkman: Merging the Sweet Science with Education

Published

13 hours ago

January 3, 2025

The Sweet Science

By TSS Special Correspondent RAYMOND MARKARIAN — It’s difficult to understand the mind of a fighter. At its core, a life filled with danger in the boxing ring is stranger than the normalcy of everyday work. Throw a punch or send an email, and you live with the consequences. Most boxers begin their journey at a young age, driven by self-promotion and personal ambition. But Dante Kirkman is not like most aspiring fighters.

A Stanford senior majoring in Art Practice, Dante is a highly educated young man with a passion for boxing — not for fame or financial gain, but for a deeper purpose. While most boxers are self-centered, focused on building their personal brand, Dante has a different vision. He wants to merge the worlds of education and boxing, using the sport as a platform to give back to the community.

“I want to go all in with my boxing,” Dante says. “But outside of that, my family and I are creating a non-profit to help kids with their education. My family has always been big on education.”

Dante’s commitment to education stems from his upbringing. His brother ran a non-profit focused on helping underserved communities prepare for college and SATs, a mission Dante is determined to continue. His goal is to combine his love for boxing with his passion for mentoring and uplifting others.

“I believe in using my life to help others,” he explains. “My family raised me with a deep sense of faith and selflessness. We grew up Catholic-Christian, always trying to do good for others. I believe God has a purpose for everyone, and this is what my life looks like.”

It’s a rare perspective in a sport where most 23-year-old professional boxers are focused primarily on their own careers. But for Dante, boxing isn’t just about personal glory. It’s about creating opportunities for others to grow, both inside and outside the ring.

“While I box, I want to continue to build my non-profit,” he says. “I want to combine these two worlds — education and boxing.”

Dante’s family has supported his boxing journey since he first stepped into the ring at 10 years old. They’ve always encouraged him to focus on his education first. “The same way basketball or football players go to the NBA or NFL after college, I’m just continuing with boxing,” he says.

Now 3-0 as a professional, Dante, a middleweight, plans to fight several times this year. He trains at B Street Gym in Downtown San Mateo, California, under the guidance of former bantamweight and featherweight campaigner and three-time world title challenger Eddie Croft.

Dante’s love for boxing is shaped by the fighters he admires. He’s a fan of Andre Ward and Floyd Mayweather, two athletes who, in his eyes, embody the artistry of the sport. “Being in Silicon Valley, I’ve been around people who don’t really understand what boxing is,” he says. “Most people think of the Rocky movies, but boxing is so much more masterful and artful than people give it credit for. I realized that because I’m a huge fan of Floyd Mayweather and Andre Ward. Those two lived and breathed the art of the sport.”

Dante is not just inspired by their success, but by their intelligence in the ring. “The top 1% of fighters are smarter than people give them credit for,” he says. “Boxing is a mental game as much as it’s a physical one.”

As a modern athlete, Dante is no stranger to the influence of social media. His TikTok and Instagram accounts document his journey in the boxing world, providing a behind-the-scenes look at his training, personal growth, and the highs and lows of his professional debut. These platforms allow him to share his story with a broader audience, blending his passion for the sport with his commitment to education.

Despite the risks of boxing and the bright future he could have in other fields, Dante is committed to his dual pursuit of the sweet science and education. It’s an unconventional path, but for Dante Kirkman, it’s the one that feels right.

—

You can connect with author Raymond Markarian at TikTok @huntsports and on Instagram @raymarkarian

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For Whom the Bell Tolled: 2024 Boxing Obituaries PART TWO: (July-Dec.)

Published

4 days ago

December 31, 2024

The Sweet Science

Here is the concluding segment of our annual, two-part, end of year necrology where we pay homage to boxing notables who left us last year.

July

July 21 – RICHIE SANDOVAL – A member of the 1980 U.S. Olympic team that was marooned by the boycott, Sandoval was 29-1 as a pro. He wrested the lineal bantamweight title from Jeff Chandler in one of the biggest upsets of the 1980s, rucking the Philadelphian into retirement, and then nearly lost his life in his third title defense vs. Gabby Canizales. Quick work by paramedics saved his life and he spent his post-boxing career working in various capacities for Top Rank. At age 63 of an apparent heart attack at the home of his son in Riverside County, California.

August

Aug. 1 – JOE HAND SR. — A former Philadelphia policeman, Hand was one of the original investors in the Cloverlay Corporation which sponsored Joe Frazier. He later opened a boxing gym that produced 14 national amateur champions and as a businessman was on the cutting edge of the pay-per-view industry, distributing boxing and UFC events to bars and casinos around the country. At age 87 from complications of covid-19 in Feasterville, PA.

September

Sept. 12 – FRED BERNS – During a 44-year career that began in 1968, Berns, an ex-Marine and former Chicago policeman, promoted or co-promoted more than 500 shows. He and his matchmaker Pete Susens plied the Midwest circuit but ventured as far from their Indianapolis base as Anchorage. At age 84 in Indianapolis.

Sept. 21 (approx.) – JOHNNY CARTER – Nicknamed “Dancing Machine,” Carter came to the fore in Las Vegas where he had his first 10-rounder in his fifth pro fight and compiled a 13-1 record en route to a 1992 date with his former Philadelphia high school classmate Jeff Chandler, the defending WBA world bantamweight champion. He lost that fight (TKO by 6) and finished 33-8. At age 66 of an undisclosed cause in Philadelphia.

Sept. 29 – MYLIK BIRDSONG – A welterweight with a 15-1-1 ledger, “King Mylik” was shot dead in a drive-by shooting on a Sunday afternoon while standing on the sidewalk with his girlfriend outside his South Central Los Angeles home. He was 21 years old.

October

Oct. 10 – MAX GARCIA – A former preschool teacher, Garcia was the linchpin of boxing in Salinas, California (60 miles south of San Jose) where he coached amateur and pro boxers for 27 years. His son Sam Garcia carries on his legacy at the gym co-owned by their protégé, featherweight contender Ruben Villa. At age 74 after a long illness in Salinas.

Oct. 24 – ADILSON RODRIGUES – The Brazilian answered the bell for 452 rounds in an 18-year career that began in 1983. He finished 77-7-1 with 61 KOs but was exposed by Evander Holyfield and George Foreman, both of whom stopped him in the second round. In 2013, he was diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy. At age 66 in Sao Paulo.

Oct. 28 – ALONZO BUTLER – His 34-3 record was forged against a motley lot of opponents, but “Big Zo” was no impostor; he would have assuredly accomplished more with a stronger team behind him. Longtime sparring partner Deontay Wilder called Butler the hardest puncher with whom he had shared a ring. In Knoxville at age 44 where the Tennessee native was reportedly exhibiting signs of early-onset dementia.

Oct. 28 – JOHNNY BOUDREAUX – The Texas journeyman scored his signature win in Don King’s scandal-scarred Heavyweight Unification Tournament, winning a hotly-debated decision over Scott LeDoux. He left the sport with a 21-5-1 record after losing a split decision to future titlist Big John Tate and entered the ministry. At age 72 of an undisclosed cause in Houston.

Oct. 31 – DOMINGO BARRERA – A 1964 Olympian for Spain who finished 40-10 as a pro, Barrera had two cracks at the 140-pound world title in 1971, losing a 15-round split decision to Argentine legend Nicolino Loche in Buenos Aires and then getting stopped in 10 frames by Bruno Arcari in Genoa in a messy fight in which Barrera allegedly suffered a knee injury from a coin tossed into the ring by a disgruntled fan. At age 81 in his native Tenerife in the Canary Islands.

December

Dec. 2 – ISRAEL VAZQUEZ – A three-time world champion at 122 pounds, “El Magnifico,” the son of a Mexico City undertaker, will be forever linked with his four-time rival Rafael Marquez. Their second and third encounters, in 2007 and 2008, were named Fight of the Year by The Ring magazine. In Huntington Park, California, a cancer victim at age 46.

Dec. 11 – NEIL MALPASS – Active from 1977 to 1990, after which he became a youth boxing coach, Malpass seemed destined for big things when he upset Danny McAlinden in his 10^th pro fight, but his career sputtered and he finished 28-19-1. In 1989, as his career was winding down, he won a regional heavyweight title with a 10-round decision over Gypsy John Fury (Tyson’s dad), the bout for which he would be best remembered. In Doncaster, Yorkshire, of an apparent heart attack at age 69.

Dec. 20 – THIERRY JACOB – One of three fighting brothers, Jacob was a five-time world title challenger. The third time was a charm. He unseated WBC 122-pound belt-holder Daniel Zaragosa, but lost the title in his first defense, stopped in two rounds by Tracy Patterson. Active from 1984 to 1994, he finished 39-6. In his native Calais, France, at age 59 from lung cancer.

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For Whom the Bell Tolled: 2024 Boxing Obituaries PART ONE (Jan.-June)

Published

6 days ago

December 29, 2024

The Sweet Science

Here in our annual end-of-year report, we pay homage to the boxing notables who left us in the past year in a two-part story. May they rest in peace.

January

Jan. 22 – CAMERON DUNKIN – Named the BWAA Manager of the Year in 2007, Dunkin was involved with more than 30 world title-holders including Diego Corrales, Kelly Pavlik, and Tim Bradley. It was said of him that no one was better at spotting a diamond-in-the-rough at an amateur boxing tourney. At age 67 in Las Vegas after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.

Jan. 31 – NORMAN “BUMPY” PARRA – Active from 1962 to 1968, Parra, a U.S. Army veteran, was 17-4-5 in documented fights and was briefly recognized as the California bantamweight champion. In retirement he trained several fighters and established several boxing clubs for disadvantaged youth in the San Diego area. At age 84 in San Diego.

February

Feb. 2 – KAZUKI ANAGUCHI – He lost consciousness in his dressing room after losing a close 10-round decision to Seiyo Tsatsumi in Tokyo on Dec, 23, 2003, and spent more than a month in a deep coma before succumbing to his head injury. The see-saw contest, the semi-final to a Naoya Inoue title fight, was named the Japan Domestic Fight of the Year. An Osaka-born bantamweight, Anaguchi was 23.

Feb. 4 – CARL WEATHERS – He appeared in dozens of movies and TV shows but would be best remembered for portraying the Muhammad Ali-inspired character Apollo Creed opposite Sylvester Stallone in the first four installments of the “Rocky” franchise. At his home in Los Angeles where he passed away in his sleep of an undisclosed illness at age 76.

Feb. 13 – IGNACIO ESPINAL – a 1968 Olympian, he never won a world title but had the misfortune of competing in the era of Miguel Canto, arguably the greatest flyweight ever. He was 0-2-1 vs Canto across 35 closely-contested rounds and finished 35-14-4. In Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic, his birthplace, at age 75.

March

March 4 – JIMMY HEAIR – Raised in Mississippi and Colorado, the son of a Pentecostal minister, he came to the fore in Los Angeles in the mid-1970s, the glory days of the Olympic Auditorium. Heair won his first 33 fights, rising to #3 in The Ring rankings at lightweight and finished 94-34-1 (65 KOs) during a 19-year career in which he answered the bell for 862 rounds. At age 71 at a nursing home in Okolona, Mississippi, after a long battle with pugilistic dementia.

March 22 – ALESIA GRAF – A Belarus-born German, Graf was active as recently as 2019 when she fought Dina Thorslund for the WBO world super bantamweight title. She finished 29-8 with five of her losses coming in legitimate world title fights. At age 43 in Stuttgart of undisclosed causes.

March 22 – BOB LEE SR. – A former police detective, he was the Acting Commissioner of the New Jersey Athletic Commission when he left to found the International Boxing Federation (IBF) in 1983. As president, he instituted several important safety features but his reputation was sullied when he was convicted of taking bribes for higher ratings for which he served 22 months in a federal prison. At age 90 in Edison, New Jersey.

March 26 – LAVELL FINGER – A National Golden Gloves champion at 138 pounds, Lavell and his twin brother Terrell (who passed away in 2019) turned pro on the same card in their hometown of St. Louis in 1989. Lavell was 25-1 when he retired in 2009, returning six years later for three more fights. At age 55 in Katy, Texas.

March 31 – JAN KIES – The South African southpaw answered the bell for 230 rounds during a nine-year career that began in 1969, finishing 31-11. His best win came early in his career when he knocked out former world title-holder Jean Josselin in 63 seconds, sending the Frenchman off into retirement. At age 76 in Krugersdorp, SA.

April

April 7 – RICKEY PARKEY – Active from 1981 to 1994, Parkey lost his last 12 fights to finish 22-20, but in his prime was one of the world’s top cruiserweights. He briefly held he IBF version of the world 190-pound title, a diadem he lost to Evander Holyfield who stopped him in three rounds. At age 67 at a nursing home in his hometown of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, a victim of lung cancer.

April 11 – GARY SHAW – He began his career in boxing as an inspector with the New Jersey Athletic Commission and went on to promote or co-promote some of the highest-grossing fights of the early 20^th century before crossing over to MMA. On his 79^th birthday at his home in South Florida where he had been bedridden following a January heart attack.

April 15 – WILLIE LIMOND – The Scotsman won a slew of regional titles after turning pro as a lightweight in 1999, finishing with a record of 42-6. In his most recent bout, in September of last year, he was stopped in eight rounds in a heavily-hyped domestic showdown with former three-division title-holder Ricky Burns. At age 45 at a hospital in the Glasgow suburb of Airdie nine days after suffering an apparent seizure while driving.

April 27 – ARDI NDEMBO – A Congolese heavyweight with an undefeated record (8-0, 7 KOs), Ndembo was knocked unconscious on April 5 in Miami while representing the Las Vegas team in the fledgling World Combat League. A 27-year-old father of two, he left the ring on a stretcher, was placed in a medical coma, and died 22 days later without regaining consciousness.

May

May 20 – IRISH PAT MURPHY – A welterweight from West New York, New Jersey, Murphy opened his career with 25 straight wins, earning him a date with Canadian champion Donato Paduano who saddled him with his first defeat. Their match at Madison Square Garden was the main event on a card with George Foreman and Chuck Wepner in supporting bouts. He finished 34-14-2 in a 13-year career that began in 1967. At age 74 at his home in Secaucus, NJ.

May 21 – ART JIMMERSON – A cruiserweight during most of his career, Jimmerson fought the likes of Orlin Norris, Vassiliy Jirov, and Arthur Williams. He lost his last nine fights before transitioning to MMA, finishing his boxing career with a record of 33-18. At age 60 of an apparent aneurism while driving to work at a UFC gym in Los Angeles.

June

June 15 – ENRIQUE PINDER – He became the fifth fighter from Panama to win a world title when he took the WBA/WBC bantamweight belts from Rafael Herrera in 1972, winning a 15-round unanimous decision. His title reign lasted only six months and he left the sport with a 35-7-2 record. In Panama City at age 62 where he had been dealing with heart problems.

June 26 – STEFFEN TANGSTAD – A two-time European heavyweight champion, the Norwegian retired in 1986 with a 24-2-2 record after being stopped in the fourth round by defending IBF world heavyweight champion Mihael Spinks. In retirement he remained in the public eye in Scandinavia as a TV boxing commentator. In Tonsberg, Norway at age 65 after a long battle with a neurological disorder that left him partially paralyzed.

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