Boxing in Las Vegas: The Silver Slipper Years

Published

5 years ago

April 23, 2020

Boxing-in-Las-Vegas-The-Silver-Slipper-Years

The Silver Slipper gambling saloon opened in 1950. Unlike its neighbors on the dusty highway that came to be called the Las Vegas Strip, it was never a hotel. The allurements were 24/7 gambling, entertainment, and the Chuck Wagon buffet, the first of its kind in Las Vegas.

The Silver Slipper was a grind joint, a place that catered to small-fry gamblers. It was also a bump-and-grind joint. Some of the era’s best-known strippers performed in the long-running burlesque show. The early show started at 10 pm and the late show at 2:45 am. Las Vegas locals and visitors had a lot more stamina in those days.

The gambling saloon also became identified with boxing. The Silver Slipper became the primary home of the “Strip Fight of the Week.” The fight cards there, more than 700 according to one count, were held in an upstairs ballroom.

Bill Miller, the promoter, began his first Silver Slipper “Fight of the Week” run on Oct. 2, 1961. The main event was a 10-round flyweight contest between Ray Pacheco, a local man, a painter by trade, and Willie Kee, a Navajo Indian from Reno. It must have been a humdinger of a fight because the local paper reported that “ecstatic” patrons showered the ring with coins at the conclusion of the bout.

“All Miller looks for is good action in a fight; names are not important,” wrote local sportswriter Bill Guthrie in 1965. But this wasn’t always true. More often than not, Miller matched the fighters that he had under contract very carefully – and Guthrie’s assertion came with a caveat. Many of Miller’s last-minute subs, he wrote, “weren’t really boxers. They were just warm and reasonably alive.”

While the bouts weren’t always rousing, the price was right — general admission tickets were priced at $5; ringside went for $7.50 – and you couldn’t beat the atmosphere. The room was loud and dark and smoky and the fights attracted some colorful characters. “(Man-to-man) wagers and propositions were as much a part of the atmosphere as the fights themselves,” reminisced Scott Schettler, the former Director of the iconic Stardust race and sports book.

Bill Miller, who grew up in Elmira, New York, owned the Thorobred Lounge which was situated a stone’s throw from the Silver Slipper, but on the opposite side of the street where the Wynn now stands. He out-fitted the basement of his lounge into a boxing gym.

A balding man with an ample midsection, often seen with a cigar clenched between his teeth, Miller was a man with boundless energy. Boxing was his passion; some would say his addiction. A promoter, manager, trainer, and cut man, his first fighter of note was Eddie Andrews, a middleweight from Lowell, Massachusetts, who finished his boxing career in Nevada while working as a blackjack dealer.

Andrews had a few good wins in Las Vegas rings, but quit the sport in 1963. Miller had far deeper runs with Ferd Hernandez, Denny Moyer, and Freddie Little. Like Andrews, they were middleweights for most of their careers.

One of four fighting brothers from Nebraska – three of whom fought at the Silver Slipper – Ferdinand “Ferd” Hernandez had 38 of his 57 pro fights in Las Vegas during an eight-year career that began in 1961. At his peak he was ranked #2 in The Ring ratings.

In retirement, Hernandez became, however briefly, Nevada’s top boxing referee. He then had a steady job as a graveyard shift bartender at a place called the Plush Horse. When he went to referee a show at the Silver Slipper, he often brought a gaggle of his regular customers with him. He was the only referee with an entourage.

Hernandez couldn’t solve Denny Moyer who out-pointed him twice. A comet coming out of the amateur ranks, the stylish Moyer had split two fights with a faded Sugar Ray Robinson at Madison Square Garden prior to winning a world title in the newly created 154-pound weight class. In Las Vegas, where he had 27 fights, 21 at the Silver Slipper, he breathed new life into his flagging career.

Moyer ran into a speed bump early into the second phase of his career in the form of Freddie Little who knocked him out in the fourth round. No one saw this coming. Moyer, who by then had 65 pro fights under his belt, had been stopped only once previously, that coming in Miami Beach against the great Cuban fighter Luis Rodriguez, a stablemate of Muhammad Ali.

Denny Moyer’s conqueror Freddie Little turned pro in New Orleans while attending school at Dillard University. He quit boxing after accepting a job as a schoolteacher in Chicago, but the itch returned. After stopping Moyer, he settled in Las Vegas. Bill Miller became his manager, so in hindsight Miller stood to gain no matter who won the Moyer-Little match.

The under-appreciated Little finished his career with a record of 54-6 that included a 4-2-1 mark in world title fights, all but one of which took place overseas.

In addition to the aforementioned Ferd Hernandez, several good fighters cut their eye teeth on Bill Miller’s shows. Ernie “Indian Red” Lopez had 22 fights in Las Vegas (six at the Silver Slipper) before becoming a big draw in Los Angeles. Featherweight Ruben Castillo, like Indian Red a future two-time world title challenger, fought nine times at the Silver Slipper when he was just starting out.

Marvin Camel, who came off the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana, had 11 of his first 13 pro fights at the Slipper. Camel, who finished 45-13-4, wasn’t a great fighter but would acquire a unique distinction when he out-pointed Croatia’s Mate Parlov in 1980. It made him the very first cruiserweight champion. The cruiserweight lineage begins with him.

Earnie Shavers was still an unknown boxer when he appeared at the Silver Slipper on Jan. 6, 1971. Working his corner that night was his 29-year-old manager Dean Chance, the 1964 Cy Young Award winner, and Chance’s former roommate with the California Angels, the noted playboy Bo Belinsky.

Shavers, one of the hardest punchers in heavyweight history, made quick work of his opponents in his five Silver Slipper engagements. None of his fights lasted beyond the third round.

During the early 1970s, some good fighters emerged from the local amateur ranks. Junior bantamweight Willie “Birdlegs” Jensen and junior welterweight Leroy Haley made their pro debuts one month apart at the Silver Slipper in the spring of 1973.

Birdlegs Jensen came oh-so-close to winning the WBC 115-pound title in 1980 when he was held to a draw in a 15-round bout with Venezuela’s Rafael Orono in Caracas. Haley was born in Arkansas but was hailed as the first native Las Vegan to win a world title when he wrested the WBC 140-pound belt from Saoul Mamby in 1982.

For every fighter on the way up, however, Bill Miller roped in two on the way down. His standard purse for a main event fighter was $500 or one-half of 50 percent of the gate, whichever was higher. Some fighters commanded more, such as Harold Johnson, a top-shelf light heavyweight in his day, but when a man of Johnson’s caliber turned up at the Silver Slipper he was invariably in the sunset of his career.

Miller used some boxers over and over and over again. The busiest was Benito Juarez, a welterweight (as a rule) from San Antonio. Juarez packed 123 fights into an 11-year pro career, finishing 55-56-12. Forty-seven of those fights were at the Silver Slipper.

Juarez was fungible. It wasn’t unusual for him to fight in a 6-rounder, return the next week in a 10-rounder, win this fight and then turn up in a 5-rounder in his next outing. The running joke was that Miller didn’t pay Juarez per fight, but kept him on a retainer like an attorney. Bouts were constantly falling out at the 11^th hour and it was important to have a man like Benito Juarez in the bullpen.

Benito didn’t have much of a punch, but he was a high-octane fighter who always gave a good effort and the regulars never seemed to tire of him. Besides, for many the bill of fare was of no great import. The fights, which normally ran on Wednesdays, were like a gathering of fraternity brothers.

Eventually the Silver Slipper would be one of only two venues in the entire United States running a weekly fight card, sharing that distinction with LA’s Olympic Auditorium. The indefatigable Bill Miller found a way to keep the doors open in the face of constant challenges.

For a brief time, a rival promoter took to running weekly shows downtown at the Fremont Hotel using many of the same fighters that Miller had groomed. In mid-1964, Miller was forced to pull up stakes when the Nevada Gaming Control Board shuttered the Silver Slipper after undercover agents discovered craps dealers using shaved dice. After sitting dark for more than a year, the property reopened in October of 1965 under new ownership. During the interregnum, Miller shifted his Strip Fight of the Week to the Hacienda, a property at the south end of the Strip where Mandalay Bay now sits. Two other Strip properties, the Castaways and Circus Circus, also harbored his weekly shows during periods when he was at loggerheads with the Silver Slipper management, beefs that would eventually get patched-up.

One would think that being a boxing promoter, especially at the grass roots level, would be one of the world’s most stressful occupations; things constantly go wrong. In October of 1975, Miller suffered an external stress when an explosion of indeterminate origin destroyed his tavern and an adjacent Italian restaurant. It happened in the wee hours when neither place was occupied, but Miller wasn’t insured.

A hot-tempered workaholic, Bill Miller was a walking time bomb and it was no surprise that he died young, passing away in 1976 at age 49 during open-heart surgery. His wife Cheryl and son Tim took over but couldn’t make a go of it, nor could their successor, Elmer Boyce, a man from Missoula, Montana, who controlled the aforementioned Marvin Camel and a light heavyweight of note, Roger Rouse.

The fights ceased in 1982 and the Silver Slipper faded into memory six years later. All places like it along the Strip were fated to meet the wrecking ball as the city’s tourism industry matured and a new breed of corporate casino operators shunted aside the locals. In 1950, when the Slipper opened, Clark County, which encompasses Las Vegas, was home to 49,000. In the ensuing years before the property was demolished, the population increased almost ten-fold. (Today Clark County is home to 2.2 million and Las Vegas is a larger city than Baltimore, St. Louis, Cleveland or Pittsburgh.)

It’s hard to imagine anyone running a weekly fight card at a permanent location in the United States ever again. For one thing, the cost of accommodating the regulators has outpaced inflation. So, here’s a toast to the long-gone but not forgotten Silver Slipper and to the stouthearted Bill Miller, rest his soul.

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Arne K. Lang

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Sam Goodman and Eccentric Harry Garside Score Wins on a Wednesday Card in Sydney

Published

15 hours ago

May 14, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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Australian junior featherweight Sam Goodman, ranked #1 by the IBF and #2 by the WBO, returned to the ring today in Sydney, NSW, and advanced his record to 20-0 (8) with a unanimous 10-round decision over Mexican import Cesar Vaca (19-2). This was Goodman’s first fight since July of last year. In the interim, he twice lost out on lucrative dates with Japanese superstar Naoya Inoue. Both fell out because of cuts that Goodman suffered in sparring.

Goodman was cut again today and in two places – below his left eye in the eighth and above his right eye in the ninth, the latter the result of an accidental head butt – but by then he had the bout firmly in control, albeit the match wasn’t quite as one-sided as the scores (100-90, 99-91, 99-92) suggested. Vaca, from Guadalajara, was making his first start outside his native country.

Goodman, whose signature win was a split decision over the previously undefeated American fighter Ra’eese Aleem, is handled by the Rose brothers — George, Trent, and Matt — who also handle the Tszyu brothers, Tim and Nikita, and two-time Olympian (and 2021 bronze medalist) Harry Garside who appeared in the semi-wind-up.

Harry Garside

A junior welterweight from a suburb of Melbourne, Garside, 27, is an interesting character. A plumber by trade who has studied ballet, he occasionally shows up at formal gatherings wearing a dress.

Garside improved to 4-0 (3 KOs) as a pro when the referee stopped his contest with countryman Charlie Bell after five frames, deciding that Bell had taken enough punishment. It was a controversial call although Garside — who fought the last four rounds with a cut over his left eye from a clash of heads in the opening frame – was comfortably ahead on the cards.

Heavyweights

In a slobberknocker being hailed as a shoo-in for the Australian domestic Fight of the Year, 34-year-old bruisers Stevan Ivic and Toese Vousiutu took turns battering each other for 10 brutal rounds. It was a miracle that both were still standing at the final bell. A Brisbane firefighter recognized as the heavyweight champion of Australia, Ivic (7-0-1, 2 KOs) prevailed on scores of 96-94 and 96-93 twice. Melbourne’s Vousiuto falls to 8-2.

Tim Tsyzu.

The oddsmakers have installed Tim Tszyu a small favorite (minus-135ish) to avenge his loss to Sebastian Fundora when they tangle on Sunday, July 20, at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

Their first meeting took place in this same ring on March 30 of last year. Fundora, subbing for Keith Thurman, saddled Tszyu with his first defeat, taking away the Aussie’s WBO 154-pound world title while adding the vacant WBC belt to his dossier. The verdict was split but fair. Tszyu fought the last 11 rounds with a deep cut on his hairline that bled profusely, the result of an errant elbow.

Since that encounter, Tszyu was demolished in three rounds by Bakhram Murtazaliev in Orlando and rebounded with a fourth-round stoppage of Joey Spencer in Newcastle, NSW. Fundora has been to post one time, successfully defending his belts with a dominant fourth-round stoppage of Chordale Booker.

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Thomas Hauser’s Literary Notes: Johnny Greaves Tells a Sad Tale

Published

3 days ago

May 11, 2025

Thomas Hauser

Johnny Greaves was a professional loser. He had one hundred professional fights between 2007 and 2013, lost 96 of them, scored one knockout, and was stopped short of the distance twelve times. There was no subtlety in how his role was explained to him: “Look, Johnny; professional boxing works two ways. You’re either a ticket-seller and make money for the promoter, in which case you get to win fights. If you don’t sell tickets but can look after yourself a bit, you become an opponent and you fight to lose.”

By losing, he could make upwards of one thousand pounds for a night‘s work.

Greaves grew up with an alcoholic father who beat his children and wife. Johnny learned how to survive the beatings, which is what his career as a fighter would become. He was a scared, angry, often violent child who was expelled from school and found solace in alcohol and drugs.

The fighters Greaves lost to in the pros ran the gamut from inept local favorites to future champions Liam Walsh, Anthony Crolla, Lee Selby, Gavin Rees, and Jack Catterall. Alcohol and drugs remained constants in his life. He fought after drinking, smoking weed, and snorting cocaine on the night before – and sometimes on the day of – a fight. On multiple occasions, he came close to committing suicide. His goal in boxing ultimately became to have one hundred professional fights.

On rare occasions, two professional losers – “journeymen,” they’re called in The UK – are matched against each other. That was how Greaves got three of the four wins on his ledger. On September 29, 2013, he fought the one hundredth and final fight of his career against Dan Carr in London’s famed York Hall. Carr had a 2-42-2 ring record and would finish his career with three wins in ninety outings. Greaves-Carr was a fight that Johnny could win. He emerged triumphant on a four-round decision.

The Johnny Greaves Story, told by Greaves with the help of Adam Darke (Pitch Publishing) tells the whole sordid tale. Some of Greaves’s thoughts follow:

* “We all knew why we were there, and it wasn’t to win. The home fighters were the guys who had sold all the tickets and were deemed to have some talent. We were the scum. We knew our role. Give some young prospect a bit of a workout, keep out of the way of any big shots, lose on points but take home a wedge of cash, and fight again next week.”

* “If you fought too hard and won, then you wouldn’t get booked for any more shows. If you swung for the trees and got cut or knocked out, then you couldn’t fight for another 28 days. So what were you supposed to do? The answer was to LOOK like you were trying to win but be clever in the process. Slip and move, feint, throw little shots that were rangefinders, hold on, waste time. There was an art to this game, and I was quickly learning what a cynical business it was.”

* “The unknown for the journeyman was always how good your opponent might be. He could be a future world champion. Or he might be some hyped-up nightclub bouncer with a big following who was making lots of money for the promoter.”

* “No matter how well I fought, I wasn’t going to be getting any decisions. These fights weren’t scored fairly. The referees and judges understood who the paymasters were and they played the game. What was the point of having a go and being the best version of you if nobody was going to recognize or reward it?”

* “When I first stepped into the professional arena, I believed I was tough. believed that nobody could stop me. But fight by fight, those ideas were being challenged and broken down. Once you know that you can be hurt, dropped and knocked out, you’re never quite the same fighter.”

* “I had started off with a dream, an idea of what boxing was and what it would do for me. It was going to be a place where I could prove my toughness. A place that I could escape to and be someone else for a while. For a while, boxing was that place. But it wore me down to the point that I stopped caring. I’d grown sick and tired of it all. I wished that I could feel pride at what I’d achieved. But most of the time, I just felt like a loser.”

* “The fights were getting much more difficult, the damage to my body and my psyche taking longer and longer to repair after each defeat. I was putting myself in more and more danger with each passing fight. I was getting hurt more often and stopped more regularly. Even with the 28-day [suspensions], I didn’t have time to heal. I was staggering from one fight to the next and picking up more injuries along the way.”

* “I was losing my toughness and resilience. When that’s all you’ve ever had, it’s a hard thing to accept. Drink and drugs had always been present in my life. But now they became a regular part of my pre-fight preparation. It helped to shut out the fear and quieted the thoughts and worries that I shouldn’t be doing this anymore.”

* “My body was broken. My hands were constantly sore with blisters and cuts. I had early arthritis in my hip and my teeth were a mess. I looked an absolute state and inside I felt worse. But I couldn’t stop fighting yet. Not before the 100.”

* “I had abused myself time after time and stood in front of better men, taking a beating when I could have been sensible and covered up. At the start, I was rarely dropped or stopped. Now it was becoming a regular part of the game. Most of the guys I was facing were a lot better than me. This was mainly about survival.”

* “Was my brain f***ed from taking too many punches? I knew it was, to be honest. I could feel my speech changing and memory going. I was mentally unwell and shouldn’t have been fighting but the promoters didn’t care. Johnny Greaves was still a good booking. Maybe an even better one now that he might get knocked out.”

* “Nobody gave a f*** about me and whether I lived or died. I didn’t care about that much either. But the thought of being humiliated, knocked out in front of all those people; that was worse than the thought of dying. The idea of being exposed for what I was – a nobody.”

* “I was a miserable bastard in real life. A depressive downbeat mouthy little f***er. Everything I’ve done has been to mask the feeling that I’m worthless. That I have no value. The drinks and the drugs just helped me to forget that for a while. I still frighten myself a lot. My thoughts scare me. Do I really want to be here for the next thirty or forty years? I don’t know. If suicide wasn’t so impactful on people around you, I would have taken that leap. I don’t enjoy life and never have.”

So . . . Any questions?

****

Steve Albert was Showtime’s blow-by-blow commentator for two decades. But his reach extended far beyond boxing.

Albert’s sojourn through professional sports began in high school when he was a ball boy for the New York Knicks. Over the years, he was behind the microphone for more than a dozen teams in eleven leagues including four NBA franchises.

Putting the length of that trajectory in perspective . . . As a ballboy, Steve handed bottles of water and towels to a Knicks back-up forward named Phil Jackson. Later, they worked together as commentators for the New Jersey Nets. Then Steve provided the soundtrack for some of Jackson’s triumphs when he won eleven NBA championships as head coach of the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers.

It’s also a matter of record that Steve’s oldest brother, Marv, was arguably the greatest play-by-play announcer in NBA history. And brother Al enjoyed a successful career behind the microphone after playing professional hockey.

Now Steve has written a memoir titled A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Broadcast Booth. Those who know him know that Steve doesn’t like to say bad things about people. And he doesn’t here. Nor does he delve into the inner workings of sports media or the sports dream machine. The book is largely a collection of lighthearted personal recollections, although there are times when the gravity of boxing forces reflection.

“Fighters were unlike any other professional athletes I had ever encountered,” Albert writes. “Many were products of incomprehensible backgrounds, fiercely tough neighborhoods, ghettos and, in some cases, jungles. Some got into the sport because they were bullied as children. For others, boxing was a means of survival. In many cases, it was an escape from a way of life that most people couldn’t even fathom.”

At one point, Steve recounts a ringside ritual that he followed when he was behind the microphone for Showtime Boxing: “I would precisely line up my trio of beverages – coffee, water, soda – on the far edge of the table closest to the ring apron. Perhaps the best advice I ever received from Ferdie [broadcast partner Ferdie Pacheco] was early on in my blow-by-blow career – ‘Always cover your coffee at ringside with an index card unless you like your coffee with cream, sugar, and blood.’”

Writing about the prelude to the infamous Holyfield-Tyson “bite fight,” Albert recalls, “I remember thinking that Tyson was going to do something unusual that night. I had this sinking feeling in my gut that he was going to pull something exceedingly out of the ordinary. His grousing about Holyfield’s head butts in the first fight added to my concern. [But] nobody could have foreseen what actually happened. Had I opened that broadcast with, ‘Folks, tonight I predict that Mike Tyson will bite off a chunk of Evander Holyfield’s ear,’ some fellas in white coats might have approached me and said, ‘Uh, Steve, could you come with us.'”

And then there’s my favorite line in the book: “I once asked a fighter if he was happily married,” Albert recounts. “He said, ‘Yes, but my wife’s not.'”

“All I ever wanted was to be a sportscaster,” Albert says in closing. “I didn’t always get it right, but I tried to do my job with honesty and integrity. For forty-five years, calling games was my life. I think it all worked out.”

Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His next book – The Most Honest Sport: Two More Years Inside Boxing – will be published this month and is available for preorder at:

https://www.amazon.com/Most-Honest-Sport-Inside-Boxing/dp/1955836329

In 2019, Hauser was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

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Argentina’s Fernando Martinez Wins His Rematch with Kazuto Ioka

Published

4 days ago

May 11, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Argentina's-Fernando-Martinez-Wins-His-Rematch-with-Kazuto-Ioka

In an excellent fight climaxed by a furious 12^th round, Argentina’s Fernando Daniel Martinez came off the deck to win his rematch with Kazuto Ioka and retain his piece of the world 115-pound title. The match was staged at Ioka’s familiar stomping grounds, the Ota-City General Gymnasium in Tokyo.

In their first meeting on July 7 of last year in Tokyo, Martinez was returned the winner on scores of 117-111, 116-112, and a bizarre 120-108. The rematch was slated for late December, but Martinez took ill a few hours before the weigh-in and the bout was postponed.

The 33-year-old Martinez, who came in sporting a 17-0 (9) record, was a 7-2 favorite to win the sequel, but there were plenty of reasons to favor Ioka, 36, aside from his home field advantage. The first Japanese male fighter to win world titles in four weight classes, Ioka was 3-0 in rematches and his long-time trainer Ismael Salas was on a nice roll. Salas was 2-0 last weekend in Times Square, having handled upset-maker Rolly Romero and Reito Tsutsumi who was making his pro debut.

But the fourth time was not a charm for Ioka (31-4-1) who seemingly pulled the fight out of the fire in round 10 when he pitched the Argentine to the canvas with a pair of left hooks, but then wasn’t able to capitalize on the momentum swing.

Martinez set a fast pace and had Ioka fighting off his back foot for much of the fight. Beginning in round seven, Martinez looked fatigued, but the Argentine was conserving his energy for the championship rounds. In the end, he won the bout on all three cards: 114-113, 116-112, 117-110.

Up next for Fernando Martinez may be a date with fellow unbeaten Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez, the lineal champion at 115. San Antonio’s Rodriguez is a huge favorite to keep his title when he defends against South Africa’s obscure Phumelela Cafu on July 19 in Frisco, Texas.

As for Ioka, had he won today’s rematch, that may have gotten him over the hump in so far as making it into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. True, winning titles in four weight classes is no great shakes when the bookends are only 10 pounds apart, but Ioka is still a worthy candidate.

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