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Stan Hoffman and Mitchell Rose: Anecdotes from the Pen of a Veteran Boxing Writer 

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Anecdotes.

Everybody who has spent any appreciable amount of time in and around boxing has ’em, personal memories of notable and not-so-notable figures in the sport that are interesting, but not generally included in the obit/tributes of and to those individuals in the immediate aftermath of their taking the eternal 10-count that awaits us all.

Not so very long ago, I regretfully declined an offer by TSS editor Arne K. Lang to do such a story on Pennsylvania promoter Mike Acri, with whom I had some dealings, because I have authored so many farewell pieces for this site and had, quite frankly, tired of writing about death. But life inevitably goes on and then ends for everyone, and as we are now in the second year of the global pandemic that seemingly has accelerated the exit process, I have been asked again by Arne to provide a couple of personal anecdotes about manager Stan Hoffman, who was 89 when he passed away on Feb. 8, and former heavyweight Mitchell “The Cigarette Man” Rose, just 51 when he breathed his last on Feb. 12.

Hoffman, a native of Brooklyn – the New York borough that has birthed so many fight fixtures, and even more anecdotes – spent nearly 50 years as a manager and adviser, during which time he worked with 38 future, then-current or past world champions, James Toney, Iran Barkley, Hasim Rahman, Michael Bentt and Hasim Rahman among the most notable.

But the Stan story that has always stuck with me involves one of his fighters, former WBO middleweight champion Doug DeWitt, who was to defend that title against Canadian knockout artist Matthew Hilton on Jan. 15, 1990, the primary lead-in to a card topped by the ballyhooed “Geezers at Caesars” heavyweight matchup of George Foreman and Gerry Cooney in Atlantic City’s Convention Center (now Boardwalk Hall).

On Jan. 11, I was in town to do an advance on DeWitt-Hilton and was in the gym after DeWitt, a native of Youngstown, Ohio, who had relocated to Yonkers, N.Y., finished his workout. “The Cobra’s” most obvious physical characteristic was a nose so flattened into his face that I observed it was “crumpled in, like an aluminum can that someone had stepped on.”

Um, what about that misshapen proboscis?

“So many people say, `Oh, Doug, you used to be so good-looking,’” said DeWitt, then 27, who had traded punches with nearly every tough guy in the 160-pound weight class in a blue-collar career that had risen to a new level when he won the vacant WBO title on a 12-round split decision over Robbie Sims, Marvin Hagler’s half-brother, on April 18, 1989, also in Atlantic City. “That kind of talk (snide remarks about his nose) bothers me sometimes. I mean, I’m human. I care about how I look. Not that I’m ugly now, but my nose definitely hinders my appearance.

“Coming out of high school my nose was straight. I was handsome. I walk around with this nose now, and it bothers me. The day I retire, I’m getting it fixed.”

While DeWitt didn’t much care for the condition of his nose then, given his intention to have it eventually restored, at least one fighter considered it a badge of distinction and courage.

“You know, it’s funny,” Hoffman told me. “This junior welterweight, Ricky Meyers, and I were at one of Dougie’s workouts this week and (Meyers) said, `Stan, I’m a fighter and I really want to look and feel like a fighter. Do you think someone could remove the cartilage from my nose so I can look just like Doug?’

“I guess that just goes to show you that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.”

DeWitt, in his one and only successful title defense, was ahead on all three official scorecards when he registered what many believed to be at least a minor upset as Hilton, both his eyes nearly swollen shut, did not come out for the 12th round. The Cobra was dethroned in his next outing, on an eighth-round stoppage by England’s Nigel Benn, on April 29, 1990. He would fight three more times, going 1-1-1, his final bout a sixth-round stoppage loss to, ironically, James Toney, my other most memorable anecdotal link to Hoffman, on Dec. 5, 1992.

To this day, I still haven’t found out if Doug DeWitt followed up on his vow to himself to get his nose fixed, as was the case with Leon Spinks, the former heavyweight champion who was 67 when he died on Feb. 5. The older of boxing’s two champion Spinks brothers (the other being Michael) was best known for his title-annexing upset of Muhammad Ali and, just a bit less so, for his gap-toothed smile. “Neon Leon,” tired of all the jokes made about the yawning, empty space in his top row of teeth, did later undergo dental surgery that provided him with a full set of chompers.

Toney had had some ups and downs, in and out of the ring, when, sometime in the early 1990s, I went to Las Vegas to cover a fight involving, I think, Mike Tyson, although I can’t recall the specific bout. In any case, a select few writers, including me, were invited to a private workout by Toney, who was not on the card we had come to see, but during which “Lights Out” would presumably demonstrate how he was new and improved.

The gym was insufferably hot, so high was the heat turned up, but the volume of the gangsta rap to which Toney went through his drills was even higher, jet-aircraft-taking-off, eardrum-bursting high. The one thing I do remember is that the lyrics were frequently punctuated with screamed variations of the f-word, so much so that the constant barrage seemed excessive even to this Marine Corps veteran. I thought it interesting that James’ mother, who owned and operated a bakery in Ann Arbor, Mich., sat off to the side during her son’s training session, reading a book or something, seemingly oblivious to the profane clatter.

When the workout was over, Stan invited the writers to meet with Toney in the relative privacy of a side office – other fighters were continuing to train in the gym, to music, still very loud, of their preference. Some questions were asked by us and answered by Toney, who at one point made a reference to an “effing” something or other. He actually said “effing,” not the actual word.

When I inquired about that, Stan interjected, “James is trying to clean up his vocabulary,” to which I said, “Yeah, but what about the tape that was playing during his workout with his mom sitting there?”

Now, about Mitchell Rose, another Brooklyn native whose youthful success as a New York Golden Gloves boxer didn’t translate to his pro career, which was hindered by a disinclination to train with any appreciable degree of dedication or enthusiasm. Rose (pictured on the left) retired with a 2-11-1 record with two knockout wins and five losses inside the distance.

mitchell

Seldom, however, has any fighter with such a nondescript record milked more notoriety out of a single victory. Largely because he had demonstrated little or none of his Golden Gloves promise, Rose was penciled in to provide the low-risk opposition to Top Rank’s novelty act heavyweight Eric “Butterbean” Esch, the erstwhile “King of the Four-Rounders,” on Dec. 15, 1995, for a show headlined by WBO lightweight champ Oscar De La Hoya’s second-round stoppage of Jesse James Leija at Madison Square Garden. Butterbean came in at 15-0 with 10 KOs, Rose at 1-7-1 with one KO and four defeats in abbreviated fashion.

But in a low-rent version of how Buster Douglas ascended to a career peak by knocking out Mike Tyson, in no small part because he had dedicated that fight to the memory of his recently deceased mother, Lula Mae, Rose – with an uncommonly long five weeks (for him) to train – showed a flash or two of his old GG form in stopping Butterbean 48 seconds into the second round, which was definitely not the result Top Rank founder Bob Arum wanted. The fight almost certainly was legit, but no pairing needs to be fixed for an outcome to be semi-preordained. Major favorites matched soft can and do lose occasionally.

Interestingly, I saw a very forlorn Butterbean at Pennsylvania Station the next day as I prepared to take a train back to Philadelphia and The Bean to wherever it was that he was headed. Maybe because he had become so accustomed to winning easily and quickly, he felt he had let a lot of people down, even if he had entered the ring the night before, he said, a bit under the weather.

Butterbean, however, would rebound nicely and went on to continue his unlikely advance to stardom of sorts as a bald and blubbery blaster. In his only non-four-rounder, he lost on points to former heavyweight champion Larry Holmes, a matchup that legitimized his credentials as much or more than all the whackings of the steady stream of palookas he had become accustomed to. For historical perspective, it hardly seemed to matter that the “Easton Assassin” was 52 years old and, at 254 pounds, had love handles nearly as ample as Butterbean’s lapping over his waistband.

“Here I am, feeling sorry for myself, when this man comes over and asks if I would say hello to his kid, who was in a wheelchair,” Butter said of the early-morning New York hours after he had tasted his first pro defeat. “I go over and meet the kid, who is really in a bad way. But he seemed so happy to see me.

“Right then, I decided I had no problems. So what if I lost a fight? My feeling was that I’d just go out and win the next one.”

As for Rose, he wrote two self-published books, one of which was titled The Man That Beat Butterbean, which played fast and loose with the truth. It might be accurate that Rose describes his takedown of Eric Esch’s alter ego as “the highlight of my life, my version of the Thrilla in Manila.” Many of his other assertions, however, would appear to be pure flights of fantasy.

Rose would later claim he had refused a $5,000 bribe to go into the tank against Butterbean, and that he was subsequently blacklisted for the audacity of winning a fight he was supposed to lose. I’m not sure either statement comes close to passing any credible sniff test. He did say his purse for the Butterbean fight was $1,500, which might be accurate, but he also said the corpulent crusher received $750,000. For an undercard four-rounder! That figure is so patently false as to be laughable.

Stan Hoffman and Mitchell Rose – Leon Spinks, too – have crossed over onto the other side of the great divide that separates heaven and earth. Maybe only absolute truth matters over there, but maybe celestial anecdotes are just as much cause for fun and lively discussion as they are here, in the land of the living.

A New Orleans native, Bernard Fernandez retired in 2012 after a 43-year career as a newspaper sports writer, the last 28 years with the Philadelphia Daily News. A former five-term president of the Boxing Writers Association of America, Fernandez won the BWAA’s Nat Fleischer Award for Excellence in Boxing Journalism in 1998 and the Barney Nagler Award for Long and Meritorious Service in 2015. In December of 2019, Fernandez was accorded the highest honor for a boxing writer when he was named to the International Boxing Hall of Fame with the Class of 2020. Last year, Fernandez’s anthology, “Championship Rounds,” was released by RKMA Publishing.

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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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