The Death of Olli Maki Unleashed a Flood of Bittersweet Memories

Published

5 years ago

April 16, 2019

Olli Maki, a former European junior welterweight champion, died earlier this month at a nursing home in a Helsinki suburb at age 82. News of his passing on April 6 unleashed a flood of bittersweet memories.

Maki wasn’t a great fighter. He finished his career with a record of 28-14-8. But he participated in an historic fight and he and his opponent Davey Moore became parcels of popular culture, transcending boxing, in Moore’s case posthumously.

Maki, a Finn, a baker by trade, was the house fighter in the first world title fight ever staged in Scandinavia. The date was August 17, 1962, and the venue was Helsinki’s Olympic Stadium.

Although Maki had a strong amateur background, he had only 11 pro fights under his belt. Moore, the reigning world featherweight champion, hailing from Springfield, Ohio, was 56-6-1 and making his fifth title defense.

Making matters even more daunting for Maki, he wasn’t a natural featherweight. He had to boil off considerable weight to make 126 pounds and the endeavor eroded much of his strength. This was of little concern to the promoter, however. A local man, his priority was in creating a grand event, a spectacle. He picked Davey Moore not only because Moore held the title but because his name resonated with many of the locals. Davey had participated in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, advancing to the third round.

As a spectacle, Maki vs. Moore turned out pretty well. The event attracted more than 25,000 (23,643 paid). As a fair competition, however, the contest failed miserably; Olli Maki had no business being in the same ring with Davey Moore. The Finn was blasted out in the second round, a left-right combination knocking him on the seat of his pants and a second one-two putting him down again and leaving him too woozy to continue.

If you’re thinking of moving to Finland, the country has many plusses. There’s very little crime, health care costs are low, life expectancy is high and Finland, home to Nokia, is one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world. But be advised that it gets cold there. The average high temperature in Helsinki in August is 66 degrees and this is the second warmest month of the year.

Although Maki vs. Moore was held in mid-August, there was a chill in the air. In fact, referee Barney Ross was shivering as he stood at the back of the ground level seats waiting for the ring to be cleared following the last preliminary bout. Yes, this was that Barney Ross, the former lightweight, welterweight, and junior welterweight world champion.

To ward off the chill, Ross started shadow boxing. This elicited a great roar from the crowd. “I didn’t know what they were cheering about and then I figured out it was me,” said Ross, reminiscing. “I still can’t get over it. It’s like giving an ovation to a baseball umpire.”

The Finns were in a festive mood but had nothing to cheer about from that point on.

– – – –

When the Moore-Maki fight was announced, boxing aficionados groaned. They were hoping that Moore would proceed straightaway to a match with a young Cuban fighter turning heads, Ultiminio “Sugar” Ramos. The clamor for a Moore-Ramos fight was most intense in Ramos’s adopted home of Mexico City where a powerful new organization was emerging to challenge the hegemony of the WBA, the World Boxing Council (the IBF and WBO hadn’t yet been born).

Moore vs. Ramos came to fruition on Thursday, May 21, 1963 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. The bout was witnessed by an announced crowd of 28,800 and a national television audience. Both the WBA and WBC belts were at stake. While other entities such as the New York and Pennsylvania commissions had flouted the WBA and ordained their own “world champions,” this was the first true unification fight in the featherweight division.

Sugar Ramos, 21, was 38-1-3 with 29 knockouts. His only loss came by disqualification. But Moore, 29, was riding a 20-fight winning streak and was chalked the favorite.

The fight was a humdinger. Moore had Ramos down and almost out in the second and seventh stanzas, but the young Cuban emigrant had more fuel in his tank and came back to stop Moore in the 10^th. The final punch knocked Moore into the ropes, causing the ropes to vibrate. As he fell, the nape of his neck struck the bottom strand of ropes. He was saved by the bell but his manager Willie Ketchum decided that Moore had had enough and called the fight off.

Forty minutes after the fight, after conversing with reporters, Moore collapsed and was rushed to White Memorial Hospital where doctors determined that the comatose fighter, the son of a minister, had swelling on his brain stem consistent with a whiplash injury. His wife of 11 years, Geraldine, the mother of his five children, was with him in Los Angeles but hadn’t attended the fight. She could never bear to watch her husband fight. At the hospital, she maintained a bedside vigil.

Sugar Ramos was distraught. Dan Smith, a stringer for the LA Times, shadowed Ramos as the fighter entered the hospital through a rear entrance to avoid TV crews and captured this poignant scene as Ramos grieved with Geraldine:

I am very sorry the young man whispered in a choked voice. Then Ramos bowed his head, unable to go on. He began to sob softly.

I want you to understand I’m not blaming you for anything, replied Mrs. Moore. It was God’s act.

I’m praying every night, said Ramos, and I’ll continue to pray every night. I want to help in any possible way for Davey to recover. With that, the saddened fighter began to weep again.

Davey Moore never regained consciousness. He died at 2:20 am on Sunday morning, March 25. (An unrelated Davey Moore won the WBA super welterweight title in 1982.)

– – –

Moore’s death inspired two protest songs, most notably “Who Killed Davey Moore?” by the folk singer Bob Dylan. The song, an indictment of boxing where no one accepts culpability for a ring death, is one of Dylan’s more obscure renderings but that did not keep Sports Illustrated senior editor Greg Kelly from putting “Who Killed Davey Moore?” at the top of his list of the best sports songs of all time in a story that ran in the July 4, 2011 issue of that publication. (#2 on Kelly’s list was “Surfin’ USA” by the Beach Boys, a weird juxtaposition.)

Ultiminio “Sugar” Ramos and Moore’s widow Geraldine would hook up once again and here the bitter saga of Davey Moore is leavened with sweetness. In 2013, 50 years after Moore’s fatal injury, Ramos, then 71 years old (he died in 2017), was inspired to go to Moore’s grave and pay his respects. It was on his bucket list.

He contacted Geraldine Moore who still resided in Springfield and learned that a statue of Moore would be unveiled in September. Ramos promised to be there at the unveiling.

It was a long and arduous trip from Mexico City, what with airplane transfers and the drive in from Indianapolis, 130 miles away. Along the way, Ramos picked up a friend, Luigi Meglioli, a man with a better command of English. Meglioli owned a ceramic tile company in Tijuana. When they arrived in Springfield at the meeting place, Ramos was holding a bouquet for Geraldine and Meglioli a pot of lilies to be laid at Davey Moore’s cemetery plot.

The great Dayton Daily News columnist Tom Archdeacon, the dean of sportswriters in southwestern Ohio, led the fund-raising campaign to have the statue sculpted and then have it bronzed. This took a while. Clark County, home to Springfield, sits in America’s Rust Belt and has seen better days.

Archdeacon was there to record the moment when Sugar Ramos and Geraldine Moore were reunited after all those many years and this too was a poignant moment. Ramos was apprehensive. Davey Moore’s children were all grown now. How would they react to the man whose fists had killed their father? But when the little man in the straw fedora emerged from his vehicle, his countenance betraying his qualms, Geraldine recognized him and rushed to greet him, to assure him that he come to a place where he was welcome. When the tarp was removed from the statue, they stood side-by-side, their arms linked, their faces streaked with blissful tears.

– – –

Olli Maki persevered after being shellacked by Davey Moore. Eighteen months later, fighting at his more natural weight, he won the European 140-pound title with a 15-round decision over Germany’s Conny Rudhof. He lost the title in a rematch with Rudhof and failed to regain it when he lost a 15-round decision to the artful Spanish campaigner Pedro Carrasco who was in the midst of a 91-fight unbeaten streak. In retirement, Maki kept his hand in the sport as a coach and boxing official.

In the days leading up to his fight with Moore, Olli Maki was a national hero, as celebrated as the famous long distance runner Paavo Nurmi. His story touched a nerve with Juho Kuosmanen, a young Finnish filmmaker. Kuosmanen directed and co-wrote “The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki” which won a major award at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival.

I have not seen the movie, but I gather that the title was meant to be ironic. As the fight draws near, Maki, played by Jarkko Lahti (pictured), feels more and more put-upon as he is hustled from one meet-and-greet to another by the venal promoter as he puts the finishing touches on the advertising campaign. The frenetic schedule imposed upon him leaves him virtually no time to spend with Raija, the girl with whom he has fallen in love. At its heart, “The Happiest Day….” isn’t a boxing movie but a love story. “Raging Bull” it is not. The real Olli Maki and his wife Raija make a cameo appearance at the end of the movie.

Back in 1962 when they crossed paths in Helsinki, no one would have guessed that someday songs would be written about Davey Moore and that a statue, 8-feet-tall, would be erected to honor him. Nor would anyone have suspected that many years later Olli Maki would be immortalized in a critically acclaimed movie that had his name in the title.

Boxing is funny that way. With the passage of time, some seemingly ordinary events become larger, perhaps even monumental. And when they do, they invariably awaken bittersweet memories.

Check out more boxing news on video at The Boxing Channel

To comment on this story in The Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 2,035

Arne K. Lang

Up Next

Michael Hunter Emerges as Anthony Joshua’s Most Likely Opponent

Don't Miss

38 Knockdowns! Jeannette-McVey III in 1909 Was One For The Ages

Avila Perspective, Chap. 262: Ryan Garcia Reloads and More Fight News

Published

8 hours ago

December 1, 2023

David A. Avila

Avila-Perspective-Chap-262-Ryan-Garcia-Reloads-and-More-Fight-News

Nobody is perfect.

That’s a mantra that everyone including boxers, promoters and managers should realize. No person is perfect. Everyone makes mistakes.

Ryan “King Ry” Garcia (23-1, 19 KOs) returns to the prize ring to face thunderous punching Oscar Duarte (26-1-1, 21 KOs) on Saturday, Dec. 2, at the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas. DAZN will stream the stacked Golden Boy Promotions card.

A press conference started slowly like a long-lit fuse slowly burning to the stick of dynamite. And when the fire reached the stick, it exploded with everyone in the vicinity burned.

Garcia unleashed pent-up frustration with verbal attacks on his promoters and burned the perimeter with fire. Poor Duarte sat there knowing something happened, but probably needed translation from his people to discover Garcia burned the room.

No survivors.

If that’s just a sample of what’s coming on Saturday night, well buckle-up and don’t miss a second of Garcia and Duarte’s confrontation.

Duarte has 11 consecutive knockouts and an 80 percent knockout rate. Garcia recently lost to Gervonta “Tank” Davis by stoppage and is looking to raze the earth. He has an 82 percent knockout rate.

Somebody is going to sleep in front of millions of fans.

“Oscar is a tough opponent. I know he’s going to come to fight. But I’m right here to make an example for the 140-division,” said Garcia with a death knell stare during the face-off. “This is how I’m coming. This is the Ryan Garcia you are going to get.”

Duarte knows he’s in the limelight. There’s no better place to be. Or is there?

“This is a dream for me. I come very prepared. This Saturday you will see my best version,” said Duarte. “I’m going to win.”

Maybe he picked the wrong time.

Garcia looked as if he were General Sherman on his way to scorch the earth on his way to Atlanta. No survivors.

It doesn’t look good for anyone.

“I’m laser focused” said Garcia with a stare that looked like Superman shooting lasers from his eyes.

The loss to Davis last spring was only on his ledger. In his pocketbook the lean, snap-quick fighter from Victorville, California gained $30+ million. That’s what happens when you fight the best and the world wants to see it. Both he and Tank Davis broke the bank and the counting machine for pay-per-views.

But winning still remains important and few know better than promoter Oscar De La Hoya.

“You never know where the mindset is in a fighter after he loses. You have to give it up to Ryan. When you pick a guy who is dangerous and speedy and who has a shot, kudos to Ryan,” said De La Hoya on social media in a statement that probably lit the Garcia’s fuse that roasted the room.

“When fighters lose they have their emotional rollercoasters. But once you win and you get 30 million bucks everything is friggin good,” De La Hoya added.

Others on the card are Shane Mosley Jr., Floyd Schofield, Darius Fulghum and Ryan’s younger brother Sean Garcia.

It’s loaded. Beware of fire.

SoCal

Amado Vargas, son of the great Fernando Vargas, makes his return.

Vargas (9-0, 4 KOs), a lightweight, meets Ezequiel Flores (4-1) in the main event on Saturday Dec. 2, at C. Robert Lee Center in Hawaiian Gardens, Calif. on the MarvNation Boxing Promotions card

All three of the Vargas brothers have been burning up to boxing ring and all are signed by promoters. Amado and Fernando Vargas Jr. signed with MarvNation and have attracted many fans.

This is the last boxing card of the year for MarvNation. Doors open at 5 p.m. For more information call (562) 713-9026 or (562) 639-3980.

Florida

Don King Productions has its last card of the year and ends it with five title fights including undefeated Antonio Perez (8-0, 5 KOs) versus Haskell Rhodes (29-5-1, 14 KOs) in a welterweight clash at Casino Miami Jai Ali in Miami, Florida.

Perez, 21, is only 5-6 in height and Rhodes is even shorter, but has experience against top competition such as Floyd Schofield and Sergey Lipinets.

Also on the card are Ian Green, Vaughn Alexander, Tre’Sean Wiggins, Chris Howard, Alex Castro, Harry Cruz and more.

The Don King Production card will be streamed at this link: https://itube247.com/

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 237

Australia’s Liam Paro Aims to Steal the Show on the Haney-Prograis Card

Published

2 days ago

November 29, 2023

Arne K. Lang

Australia's-Liam-Paro-Aims-to-Steal-the-Shoe-on-the-Haney-Prograis-Card

These are heady days for the sport of professional boxing in Australia. Cruiserweight Jai Opetaia is the best fighter in his weight class. Tim Tszyu is a major star in the Land Down Under and his younger brother Nikita is lapping at his heels. Then there’s undefeated super lightweight Liam Paro, 27, whose profile will grow immensely if he can get past Cleveland’s Montana Love when they meet on Dec. 9 in San Francisco at the home of the Golden State Warriors. It’s a 12-rounder that will serve as the chief supporting bout to the showdown between Devin Haney and Regis Prograis.

Forget the fact that Matchroom honcho Eddie Hearn has seen fit to dress up this fight with some frivolous title; this is a good match-up. An undefeated southpaw, Liam Paro (23-0, 14 KOs) is coming off the best win of his career. Montana Love (18-1-1, 9 KOs) would likely be undefeated too if not for a bizarre disqualification in his most recent bout. He too is a southpaw.

Paro turned heads in is his last outing when he scored a brutal, one-punch, opening-round knockout of countryman Brock Jarvis. Paro was favored, bur Jarvis, a disciple of Jeff Fenech, Australia’ most famous living boxer, was accorded the better chance of ending the bout with one punch.

Paro vs. Jarvis, staged in October of last year in South Brisbane, marked Matchroom’s first foray into Australia. Paro has had two fights fall out in the interim. The British Boxing Board of Control pulled Paro out of a March 11, 2003 match in Liverpool, England with Robbie Davies Jr. when a routine but mandatory scan showed evidence of a facial fracture. Three months later, Paro was forced to withdraw from a title fight with WBA 140-pound belt-holder Regis Prograis because both of his Achilles tendons were inflamed, compromising his mobility.

The facial fracture, insists Paro, was a false positive; the test was defective. As for the Achilles issue, that’s cleared up. “It’s in my rear-view mirror,” he says.

Paro was raised in the city of Mackay which is near the Coral Sea coast of Queensland. His ancestors migrated here from Italy to work in the sugarcane fields. Unlike so many other dads, his father Errol, a welder in the steel industry, has no boxing background and isn’t directly involved in preparing his son for a fight. Errol is with his son in Las Vegas at the moment (Errol’s first visit to Sin City) and will be there with several other family members to cheer on Liam when he resumes his career in San Francisco on Dec. 9.

When healthy, Liam Paro can usually be found training at the Top Rank Gym in Las Vegas. The boxing infrastructure of the Southern Nevada city draws prizefighters from around the world. He has sparred extensively with Jamel Herring and has boxed with the likes of Shakur Stevenson and Devin Haney. Practicing his craft with fighters of that caliber may give him an edge when he touches gloves with Montana Love.

Montana Love

Montana Love came to the fore in August of 2021 when he stepped up in class and upset Russian tough guy Ivan Baranchyk on a Jake Paul promotion in Cleveland. Baranchyk’s handlers stopped the one-sided affair after seven rounds. Five weeks later, Love signed with Matchroom.

Montana Love

What followed was a third-round blast-out of 29-1 Carlos Diaz followed by a hard-earned 12-round decision over Gabriel Gollaz Valenzuela and then a match with Australia’s Steve Spark which marked Love’s debut as a top-of-the-marquee attraction in his hometown.

The fight between Love and Spark was even on two scorecards after five rounds. In the sixth, shortly after a clash of heads left Love with a bad cut over his left eye, Love pushed Spark out of the ring and was immediately disqualified by referee David Fields. It was a controversial call; a “terrible call” in the words of Eddie Hearn. For the record, after flipping over the top strand of rope, Spark landed on his feet and was fit to continue.

A 28-year-old father of three, Love has always had the vibe of a hungry fighter, a residue of the adversity he has had to overcome. His father died when he was three years old and his mother was only 38 when she passed away from colon cancer. In 2015, as his career was just getting started, he was remanded to prison on theft- and drug-related charges and served 16 months.

It’s rather ironic that Love will be facing an Australian opponent on American soil in back-to-back fights. Needless to say, he hopes that the second installment will go better than the first.

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 504

The Murder of Samuel Teah Calls to Mind Other Boxers Who Were Homicide Victims

Published

4 days ago

November 27, 2023

Arne K. Lang

The-Murder-of-Samuel-Teah-Calls-to-Mind-Other-Boxers-Who-Were-Homicide-Victims

There will be a boxing show this Friday at Philadelphia’s 2300 Arena, a low-budget card featuring the return of former IBF 130-pound world title-holder Tevin Farmer. During the event, there will assuredly be a somber moment when those in attendance stand and silently pay homage to Samuel Teah as the timekeeper tolls the traditional 10-bell farewell. Teah passed away last week on Black Friday, Nov. 24, another victim of America’s epidemic of gun violence. He was 36 years old.

Teah was shot in the mid-afternoon during an altercation that spilled onto the sidewalk of a street in Wilmington, Delaware, and died at a Wilmington hospital. As of this writing, there’s been no arrest, but the shooting was apparently not random. A bus driver for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority, Teah was purportedly in Wilmington (roughly 35 miles from his home in Philadelphia) to visit the mother of his child.

Samuel Teah fought as recently as this past May when he suffered a shocking defeat at the hands of journeyman Andrew Rodgers at a show in Pennsylvania’s Newton Township, reducing his record to 19-5-1. Two months earlier he had spoiled the undefeated record of Enriko Gogokhia, an Egis Klimas fighter (think Oleksandr Usyk and Vasily Lomachenko) on a card in Ontario, California. This embellished his reputation as a spoiler. Earlier in his career, he had spoiled the undefeated record of O’Shaquie Foster, winning an 8-round unanimous decision over the man that currently reigns as the WBC world super featherweight champion.

What made Teah’s death more tragic, if that were possible, were all the tragedies that he had overcome. He was born in Liberia when that country was embroiled in a civil war. The family escaped to a refugee camp in Ghana and eventually reached the United States, settling first in New York and then Philadelphia. On the day after Christmas in 2008, when Teah was 21 and working at a Home Depot, he lost six members of his family in a fire that swept his mother’s West Philadelphia duplex after a kerosene heater exploded.

For some, Teah’s violent death may call to mind the murder of another Philadelphia boxer, Tyrone Everett.

That’s an awkward comparison.

Tyrone Everett was a world-class fighter. Six months before he was shot dead by his girlfriend in May of 1977, Everett, then 34-0, lost a 15-round split decision to Puerto Rico’s Alfredo Escalera in a failed bid to win Escalera’s WBC junior lightweight title, a decision so rancid that it stands among the worst decisions of all time. Moreover, the circumstances of Everett’s murder were sordid. His girlfriend, no stranger to the police, fatally shot him after finding him with a transvestite and there was heroin in the apartment they shared. (Editor’s note: For more on this incident, check out the new book by TSS contributor Sean Nam: “Murder on Federal Street: Tyrone Everett, the Black Mafia, Fixed Fights, and the Last Golden Age of Philadelphia Boxing” available on Amazon).

Samuel Teah was no Tyrone Everett. A man of deep faith, Sam’s positive attitude, despite all his tribulations, was infectious. “Everyone liked Teah,” said prominent Philadelphia sports journalist Joe Santoliquito who, upon hearing of Teah’s death, tweeted, “he will always have a special place in my heart.”

While the circumstances are different in every case, Teah joins a long list of boxers who met a violent death. If we limit the list to fighters who were still active at the time of their passing, here are four that jump immediately to mind.

Stanley Ketchel

The fabled Michigan Assassin, Ketchel met his maker on Oct. 15, 1910, at a ranch in Conway, Missouri. In the immortal words of John Lardner, “Stanley Ketchel was twenty-four years old when he was fatally shot in the back by the common-law husband of the lady who was cooking his breakfast.”

Battling Siki

Famed for knocking out Georges Carpentier when the “Orchid Man” held the world light heavyweight title, Siki was only 28 years old when he was gunned down in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan on Dec. 15, 1925, but by then the Senegal-born Frenchman had already degenerated into a trial horse. Siki’s body was found in the middle of the street with two bullets in his back fired at close range by an assailant, never identified, who was thought to be avenging a beating he suffered at one of the speakeasies that Siki was known to frequent.

Oscar Bonavena

At age 33, Oscar Bonavena was still an active boxer when he was gunned down on May 22, 1976, on the outskirts of Reno, Nevada, at the front gate of the infamous Mustang Ranch, a legal brothel. Bonavena had come up short in his biggest fights, losing a 15-round decision to Joe Frazier and losing by TKO in the 15^th round to Muhammad Ali, but the rugged Argentine was still a major player in the heavyweight division.

The shooter was a bodyguard for the brothel’s owner Joe Conforte, and rumor has that Conforte was the de facto triggerman, having Bonavena assassinated because the boxer was having an affair with Conforte’s 59-year-old wife Sally who was also Bonavena’s manager of record at this point in the boxer’s career. The story about it spawned “Love Shack,” a 2010 movie that despite a seemingly can’t-miss storyline and a formidable cast (Joe Pesci played Joe and Helen Mirren played Sally) proved to be a box-office dud.

Vernon Forrest

While all homicides are tragic, some are more distressing than others and the death of Vernon Forrest on July 25, 2009, was particularly gut-wrenching. Forrest was shot twice in the back by would-be robbers with whom he exchanged gunfire on July 25, 2009 at a gas station in Atlanta.

Forget the fact that Forrest was a two-division title-holder who had regained the WBC world super welterweight title in his most recent fight with a lopsided decision over Sergio Mora. Few in the sport were as widely admired. His philanthropic work included establishing group homes in Atlanta for the mentally disabled. His death came just two weeks after the death of Arturo Gatti who left the sport following a loss by TKO to Alfonso Gomez in July of 2007 and died under suspicious circumstances at age 37 at a hotel in Brazil.

We here at The Sweet Science send our condolences to Samuel Teah’s family and loved ones. May he rest in peace.

Post Views: 1,757