Esteemed Las Vegas Boxing Writer Royce Feour Dead at Age 79

Word has come down that retired Las Vegas sportswriter Royce Feour has died. A lifelong resident of Las Vegas, save for his four years as a journalism major at the state university in Reno, Feour spent 42 years as a Las Vegas sportswriter, the last 37 with the Las Vegas Review-Journal. For 25 of those years, Feour had the boxing beat. In 1996, the Boxing Writers Association of America honored him with the Nat Fleischer Award for “excellence in boxing journalism.”

Feour retired in 2004. His final column, on May 17, ran on the front page. In it, he recalled growing up as a boy in Las Vegas when the city had barely 50,000 people. In those days, noted Feour, the biggest sporting event in the city was the annual high school football game between Las Vegas High and Rancho.

Former LVRJ colleague Stephen Nover recalled that Feour was a consummate pro who never balked at doing some of the grunt work in the newsroom and never missed a deadline. The last event he covered for the paper was a high school track meet. A big supporter of youth sports, he likely volunteered for it.

During the mid-to-late 1990s, this reporter worked as a publicist for a promoter who ran low budget shows in the basement ballroom of a shabby North Las Vegas casino. Feour was at every fight, which couldn’t be said for the boxing writer of the rival paper. Royce Feour was an A-list boxing writer, one of the select few who get to interview important fighters in intimate settings away from the bustle of a big pre-fight press luncheon, but he yet felt a journalistic obligation to cover the little fights too.

Feour, who never married, was very close to his mother, a 73-year resident of Las Vegas when she died in 2005 at age 98. Among old-time Las Vegans, Nellie Feour was renowned for her volunteer work, in particular her work at Valley Hospital. Royce inherited his mother’s altruistic gene. In retirement, he devoted his twitter page to finding a home for homeless dogs.

Feour had two harrowing experiences. A diehard San Francisco Giants baseball fan, he was in the upper deck at Candlestick Park for game three of the 1989 World Series when the earthquake hit. Although he was on vacation, he hammered out a first-person story for his paper.

In August of 2002, Feour was on a small airplane that overshot the runway at a Big Bear Lake, California, airfield and then burst into flames as it burst through a chain link fence. The two co-pilots and five passengers, including Bob Arum and Kevin Iole, made it out safely but just barely.

Iole, who currently covers combat sports for Yahoo, presented Feour when Feour was inducted into the inaugural class of the Southern Nevada Sports Hall of Fame. “He was that rare commodity in boxing,” said Iole, “an honest and kind soul who was respected and liked by the fighters, the promoters, the officials, and his peers.”

“Sadly,” continued Iole, “he died alone in his tiny one bedroom apartment in the shadow of the opulent Wynn Las Vegas. He was, apparently, dead for a while before Las Vegas police entered his apartment and found his body.”

It isn’t known if there will be a memorial service. A donation to your local animal shelter would be a fitting tribute.

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