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Remembering **World Heavyweight Champion** Lee Savold
On June 7, 1950, Lee Savold defeated Bruce Woodcock before 50,000 at London’s White City Stadium. Savold had all the best of it before Woodcock’s corner pulled him out after four rounds with a badly cut eye.
For Savold, this was the culmination of a long and checkered career. Born on a farm in northwestern Minnesota – Sioux Indian territory – the tenacious leather-pusher of Norwegian stock had paid his dues. With the victory, Savold became the world heavyweight champion in the eyes of a certain segment of the boxing universe.
A little background: On March of the previous year, Joe Louis announced his retirement. Louis had reigned as the world heavyweight champion for nearly 12 years during which he had made 25 successful title defenses. His leave-taking unleashed a battle over control of the abdicated throne and the huge profits that would accrue to the promotional group that won the scrum.
The newly-formed International Boxing Club, of which Joe Louis was ostensibly a partner, had the blessing of the National Boxing Association when it decreed that Jersey Joe Walcott and Ezzard Charles would fight for the vacant title. This wasn’t an attractive pairing. Jersey Joe had lost 15 of his 58 pro fights and was considered past his prime. Ezzard Charles was a solid technician but he was colorless and he wasn’t a full-fledged heavyweight. He had never entered the ring carrying more than 180 pounds.
This edict didn’t go over well in Great Britain where boxing was enjoying a post-war boom. The poohbahs at the British Boxing Board of Control felt snubbed. Undoubtedly at the urging of London promoter Jack Solomons, Mr. Big in British boxing, they decided to recognize the winner of the forthcoming match between Bruce Woodcock and Savold as the world heavyweight champion. The European Boxing Union sided with them.
Lee Savold’s Herky-Jerky Climb Up the Ladder
Lee Savold was 18 years old when he made his pro debut at a county fair in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. For the next-two-half years he plied the Upper Midwest circuit. His most notable match during this period was a bout in Minneapolis with Jack Gibbons. The son of Mike Gibbons and nephew of Tommy Gibbons – both of whom would be elected to the International Boxing Hall of Fame – Jack Gibbons was too slick for Savold and won the decision.
This was a rare 10-rounder for Savold. The loss knocked him back to the preliminary ranks.
In February of 1936, with his career going nowhere, Savold went west. He had his next 16 fights in California where he supplemented his ring earnings as a stevedore. Things went well at first, but then turned sour. He was 9-7 in California rings bringing his overall record to 34-23-2.
Savold returned to his home state and took a job as a bartender in Minneapolis. He was out of the ring for 14 months during which his weight reportedly ballooned to 260 pounds.
Savold was lured back to the ring by Pinkie George, the leading boxing and wrestling promoter in Iowa. Savold had appeared on three cards in Iowa when he was just starting out and flashed enough potential that Pinkie remembered him. He induced Savold to re-settle in Des Moines, put him on a strict regimen that shed pounds and built muscle, and dressed him with a nickname: The Battling Bartender.
Savold, who stood six-foot-one, was a svelte 184 pounds when he returned to the ring on July 7, 1938 at Riverview Park in Sioux City, Iowa. Under Pinkie George’s management, Savold won 14 of 18 matches preceding his Dec. 4, 1939 engagement in Des Moines with Maurice Strickland.
A New Zealander, Strickland was well-touted and folks inside the boxing community took note when Savold knocked him out in the third round.
Strickland’s U.S. representative was “Honest” Bill Daly whose home base was in Englewood, New Jersey.
In boxing, “honest” is a pejorative. As the late, great LA Times wag Jim Murray noted, Daly was honest in the sense that he never stole an elephant or a battleship. But with an assist from Savold’s Iowa trainer Hymie Wiseman, who was given a piece of the action, Honest Bill stole Lee Savold from Pinkie George. Savold went with the flow and moved his tack to the Garden State, taking up residence in Paterson.
With the well-connected Daly calling the shots, Savold procured bouts of international importance. The first of this description was 12-round, non-title fight with reigning light heavyweight champion Billy Conn on Nov. 24, 1940, at Madison Square Garden. The Pittsburgh Kid was too clever for the Battling Bartender and won a wide decision, but Savold broke Conn’s nose during the fight with a punch that Conn would remember as one of the hardest that he ever received.
The Conn fight was a good learning experience for Savold who won 18 of his next 20 fights. Both losses were inflicted by Harry Bobo, a good black boxer from Pittsburgh who never got his proper due.
Savold’s signature win during this run was an eighth-round stoppage of Lou Nova. This was Nova’s first fight since his failed effort at wresting the title from Joe Louis. Nova was no match for the Brown Bomber who stopped him in the sixth frame but he had some good wins on his ledger including two wins inside the distance over Max Baer and Savold would be the underdog when he met up with Nova on a Monday night at Griffith Stadium in Washington DC.
Savold cut Nova to pieces and the referee stopped the fight after seven frames when the gash over Nova’s left eye worsened. The match aired on the Mutual Radio Network which had more than 200 affiliates. The following year, Savold defeated Nova in a more dramatic fashion, knocking him out in the second round at Chicago’s Wrigley Field.
Between these two fights, Savold was his usual erratic self. He split two fights with Tony Musto and came out on the short end of 10-round bouts with Tami Mauriello and Jimmy Bivins. After defeating Nova for the second time, he became even more inconsistent. Mauriello beat him again, he lost two out of three to rugged Joe Baksi, was twice out-pointed by journeyman Phil Muscato, and was knocked out in the second round by fearsome Elmer “Violent” Ray.
Savold’s career was going nowhere again when he accepted a match with Gino Buonvino. Savold took the assignment on 48 hours notice, subbing for Baksi, a late scratch with an ankle injury.
Recognized as the heavyweight champion of Italy, Buonvino was unbeaten in his last 11 starts. In a shocker, Savold knocked him out in 54 seconds, the fastest knockout on record for a main event at Madison Square Garden.
The knockout of Buonvino coupled with two more wins over lesser foes boosted Savold to #3 behind Ezzard Charles and Jersey Joe Walcott in The Ring magazine ratings. That said more about Honest Bill Daly’s negotiation skills than about Savold’s true ability. He maintained that placement after he went to London and lost by disqualification to Bruce Woodcock in what would be the first of their two meetings.
Bruce Woodcock
The son of a former British Army lightweight champion, Bruce Woodcock, born and raised in Doncaster, was nothing special but you couldn’t tell that to the Brits who fervently embraced him after he won the British and British Empire heavyweight titles with a sixth-round knockout of Jack London in 1945. In his most recent bout, he had scored a fourth-round stoppage over American veteran Lee Oma who was felled by a punch that didn’t look especially hard. Spectators tossed pennies into the ring as they did whenever a fight ended suspiciously.
Savold-Woodcock I, contested on Dec. 6, 1948 before a capacity crowd of 10,700 at London’s Haringay Arena, also ended suspiciously. Savold was disqualified in the fourth round for hitting Woodcock below the belt. The crowd booed as Woodcock lay on the canvas, writhing in agony. It struck many that he was play-acting. “Savold lost the fight but showed himself to be the better man,” said the correspondent for the Associated Press.
Woodcock, who had lost only twice in 35 starts, regained his lost prestige with a third-round stoppage of South African heavyweight champion Johnny Ralph in Johannesburg and a beat-down of popular Freddie Mills, conqueror of light heavyweight champion Gus Lesnevich, in London. Mills was on the deck five times before he was counted out in the 14th round.
When the folks at the BBBofC decided that they would not kowtow to American interests in naming a successor to Joe Louis, which ruled out Ezzard Charles and Jersey Joe Walcott, Woodcock and the highly-rated Savold were the logical picks to fight for the vacant title. It helped that promoter Solomons had doctored the film of the first fight. It showed the Englishman out-punching Savold over the first three rounds when the opposite was true.
The blue-collar amusement of greyhound racing was then flourishing in London and Savold-Woodcock II was planted at White City, London’s premier dog racing facility. The stadium was configured to hold 50,000 for the fight, the maximum allowed by the authorities for reasons of traffic control. It would be written that all 50,000 tickets were sold before the ink was dry on them.
Originally set for Sept. 6, 1949, the fight was pushed back 10 months when Woodcock suffered a shoulder injury in an automobile accident; he wrapped his lorry around a tree.
When the fight finally came to fruition, the action in the ring was somewhat similar to the first meeting, only a lot bloodier. When Woodcock’s corner pulled him out after four frames, he was bleeding from his nose and his mouth and had a two-inch gash over his left eye that “spurted blood like a fountain.”
Woodcock caught Savold flush with a number of right hooks but they had no effect; Savold kept moving forward. The American invader, said the ringside reporter for the Nottingham Evening Post, was a “cold, cruel and calculating fighting machine.”
Savold had only two more fights before calling it quits. On June 15, 1951, he met Joe Louis at Madison Square Garden in a fight that was forced out of the Polo Grounds by bad weather. Beset by tax problems, the Brown Bomber had returned to the ring after a 27-month hiatus.
On this night, Savold’s opponent was the cold, cruel, and calculating fighting machine. Louis carved him up before ending matters in round six with a series of punches climaxed by a short, left hook to the jaw that knocked Savold off his pins. He struggled to get upright but wasn’t able to beat the count.
Across the pond, this made Joe Louis the world heavyweight champion once again. It mattered not that Louis had been widely out-pointed by Ezzard Charles in his first comeback fight.
Eight months later, Savold met Rocky Marciano in a 10-rounder at Philadelphia’s Convention Hall. This was a terrible fight. Marciano’s punches were mostly wild but Savold offered little in return and his torso was smeared with blood when his corner pulled him out after six rounds. In an odd comparison, the great sportswriter Red Smith likened Savold’s poor showing to that of a man with a bellyache carrying an armful of packages across Times Square during rush hour.
And so, this is how it ended for Lee Savold, a shell of his former self and his former self was never that great to begin with. His final record, per boxrec, was 98 wins, 41 losses and three draws. He scored 72 knockouts and was stopped 12 times. But for 13 months he reigned as the heavyweight champion of the world in merry old England, the cradle of pugilism, heady stuff for a farm boy from Minnesota who was once a hog-fat bartender.
Having answered the bell for 814 rounds, Savold was a prime candidate for pugilistic dementia but he beat the transmutation to the punch as it were. In April of 1972, he suffered a stroke and died a month later at a rehab hospital in Neptune, New Jersey. He was 58 years old.
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Postscript: The BBBofC never did recognize Ezzard Charles or Jersey Joe Walcott who took turns beating each other in 1951. The title became vacant yet again that year in the eyes of British interests when Louis was knocked out by up-and-comer Rocky Marciano and it remained vacant until Rocky made things whole again. With no viable alternative, the Brits acknowledged the Rock as the true champion after he toppled Walcott on Sept. 23, 1952, felling Jersey Joe, who was ahead on the cards, with a pulverizing punch that would have felled a horse.
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Arne K. Lang’s latest book, titled “George Dixon, Terry McGovern and the Culture of Boxing in America, 1890-1910,” will shortly roll off the press. The book, published by McFarland, can be pre-ordered directly from the publisher (https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/clashof-the-little-giants) or via Amazon.
Avila Perspective, Chap. 300: Eastern Horizons — Bivol, Beterbiev and Japan
All eyes are pointed east, if you are a boxing fan.
First, light heavyweights Artur Beterbiev and Dmitry Bivol meet in Saudi Arabia to determine who is the baddest at 175 pounds. Then a few days later bantamweights and flyweights tangle in Japan.
Before the 21st century, who would have thought we could watch fights from the Middle East and Asia live.
Who would have thought Americans would care.
Streaming has changed the boxing landscape.
Beterbiev (20-0, 20 KOs), the IBF, WBC, WBO light heavyweight titlist meets WBA titlist Bivol (23-0, 12 KOs) for the undisputed world championship on Saturday Oct. 12, at the Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
The entire card will air on DAZN pay-per-view. In the United States, the main event, expected to start at 3:15 pm PT, will also be available on ESPN+.
A few decades ago, only Europeans and Asians would care about this fight card. And only the most avid American fight fan would even notice. Times have changed dramatically for the worldwide boxing scene.
In the 1970s and 80s, ABC’s Wide World of Sports would occasionally televise boxing from other countries. Muhammad Ali was featured on that show many times. Also, Danny “Lil Red” Lopez, Salvador Sanchez and Larry Holmes.
Howard Cosell was usually the host of that show and then denounced the sport as too brutal after 15 rounds of a one-sided match between Holmes and Randall Cobb at the Astrodome in Houston, Texas in 1982.
That same Cobb would later go into acting and appear in films with Chuck Norris and others.
Streaming apps have brought international boxing to the forefront.
Until this century heavyweights and light heavyweight champions were dominated by American prizefighters. Not anymore.
Beterbiev, a Russian-born fighter now living in Canada, is 39 years old and has yet to hear the final bell ring in any of his pro fights. He sends all his opponents away hearing little birdies. He is a bruiser.
“I want a good fight. I’m preparing for a good fight. We’ll see,” said Beterbiev.
Bivol, 33, is originally from Kyrgyzstan and now lives in the desert town of Indio, Calif. He has never tasted defeat but unlike his foe, he vanquishes his opponents with a more technical approach. He does have some pop.
“Artur (Beterbiev) is a great champion. He has what I want. He has the belts. And it’s not only about belts. When I look at his skills, I want to check my skills also against this amazing fighter,” said Bivol.
The Riyadh fight card also features several other world titlists including Jai Opetaia, Chris Eubank Jr and female star Skye Nicolson.
Japan
Two days later, bantamweight slugger Junto Nakatani leads a fight card that includes flyweight and super flyweight world titlists.
Nakatani (28-0, 21 KOs), a three-division world titlist, defends the WBC bantamweight title against Thailand’s Tasana Salapat (76-1, 53 KOs) on Monday Oct. 14, at Ariake Arena in Tokyo. ESPN+ will stream the Teiken Promotions card.
The left-handed assassin Nakatani has a misleading appearance that might lead one to think he’s more suited for a tailor than a scrambler of brain cells.
A few years back I ran into Nakatani at the Maywood Boxing club in the Los Angeles area. I thought he was a journalist, not the feared pugilist who knocked out Angel Acosta and Andrew Moloney on American shores.
Nakatani is worth watching at 1 a.m. on ESPN+.
Others on the card include WBO super flyweight titlist Kosei Tanaka (20-1, 11 KOs) defending against Phumelele Cafu (10-0-3); and WBO fly titlist Anthony Olascuaga (7-1, 5 KOs) defending against Jonathan “Bomba” Gonzalez (28-3-1, 14 KOs) the WBO light fly titlist who is moving up in weight.
It’s a loaded fight card.
RIP Max Garcia
The boxing world lost Max Garcia one of Northern California’s best trainers and a longtime friend of mine. He passed away this week.
Garcia and his son Sam Garcia often traveled down to Southern California with their fighters ready to show off their advanced boxing skills time after time.
It was either the late 90s or early 2000s that I met Max in Big Bear Lake at one of the many boxing gyms there at that time. We would run into each other at fight cards in California or Nevada. He was always one of the classiest guys in the boxing business.
If Max had a fighter on a boxing card you knew it was trouble for the other guy. All of his fighters were prepared and had that extra something. He was one of the trainers in NorCal who started churning out elite fighters out of Salinas, Gilroy and other nearby places.
Recently, I spotted Max and his son on a televised card with another one of his fighters. I mentioned to my wife to watch the Northern California fighter because he was with the Garcias. Sure enough, he battered the other fighter and won handily.
Max, you will be missed by all.
Fights to Watch
(all times Pacific Time)
Sat. DAZN pay-per-view, 9 a.m. Beterbiev-Bivol full card. Beterbiev (20-0) vs Dmitry Bivol (23-0) main event only also available on ESPN+ (3:15 pm approx.)
Mon. ESPN+ 1 a.m. Junto Nakatani (28-0) vs Tasana Salapat (76-1).
Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank
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Junto Nakatani’s Road to a Mega-fight plus Notes on the Best Boxers from Thailand
WBC bantamweight champion Junto Nakatani, whose name now appears on several of the Top 10 pound-for-pound lists, returns to the ring on Monday. His title defense against Thailand’s Petch CP Freshmart is the grand finale of a two-day boxing festival at Tokyo’s Ariake Arena.
One of several Thai boxers sponsored by Fresh Mart, a national grocery chain, Petch, 30, was born Tasana Salapat or Thasana Saraphath, depending on the source, and is sometimes identified as Petch Sor Chitpattana (confusing, huh?). A pro since 2011, he brings a record of 76-1 with 53 TKOs.
In boxing, records are often misleading and that is especially true when referencing boxers from Thailand. And so, although Petch has record that jumps off the page, we really don’t know how good he is. Is he world class, or is he run-of-the-mill?
A closer look at his record reveals that only 20 of his wins came against opponents with winning records. Fifteen of his victims were making their pro debut. It is revealing that his lone defeat came in his lone fight outside Thailand. In December of 2018, he fought Takuma Inoue in Tokyo and lost a unanimous decision. Inoue, who was appearing in his thirteenth pro fight, won the 12-rounder by scores of 117-111 across the board.
A boxer doesn’t win 76 fights in a career in which he answers the bell for 407 rounds without being able to fight more than a little, but there’s a reason why the house fighter Nakatani (28-0, 21 KOs) is favored by odds as high as 50/1 in the bookmaking universe. Petch may force Junto to go the distance, but even that is a longshot.
Boxers from Thailand
Four fighters from Thailand, all of whom were active in the 1990s, are listed on the 42-name Hall of Fame ballot that arrived in the mail this week. They are Sot Chitalada, Ratanopol Sor Varapin, Veeraphol Sahaprom, and Pongsaklek Wonjongham. On a year when the great Manny Pacquiao is on the ballot, leaving one less slot for the remainder, the likelihood that any of the four will turn up on the dais in Canastota at the 2025 induction ceremony is slim.
By our reckoning, two active Thai fighters have a strong chance of making it someday. The first is Srisaket Sor Rungvisai who knocked Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez from his perch at the top of the pound-for-pound rankings in one of the biggest upsets in recent memory and then destroyed him in the rematch. The noted boxing historian Matt McGrain named Sor Rungvisai (aka Wisaksil Wangek) the top super flyweight of the decade 2010-2019.
The other is Knockout CP Freshmart (aka Thammanoon Niyomstrom). True, he’s getting a bit long in the tooth for a fighter in boxing’s smallest weight class (he’s 34), but the long-reigning strawweight champion, who has never fought a match scheduled for fewer than 10 rounds, has won all 25 of his pro fights and shows no signs of slowing down. He will be back in action next month opposing Puerto Rico-born Oscar Collazo in Riyadh.
The next Thai fighter to go into the IBHOF (and it may not happen in my lifetime) will bring the number to three. Khaosai Galaxy entered the Hall with the class of 1999 and Pone Kingpetch was inducted posthumously in 2023 in the Old Timer’s category.
Nakatani (pictured)
Hailing from the southeastern Japanese city of Inabe, Junto Nakatani is the real deal. In 2023, the five-foot-eight southpaw forged the TSS Knockout of the Year at the expense of Andrew Moloney. Late in the 12th round, he landed a short left hook to the chin and the poor Aussie was unconscious before he hit the mat. In his last outing, on July 20, he went downstairs to dismiss his opponent, taking out Vincent Astrolabio with a short left to the pit of the stomach. Astrolabio went down, writhing in pain, and was unable to continue. It was all over at the 2:37 mark of the opening round.
It’s easy to see where Nakatani is headed after he takes care of business on Monday.
Currently, Japanese boxers own all four meaningful pieces of the 118-pound puzzle. Of the four, the most recognizable name other than Nakatani is that of Takuma Inoue who will be making the third defense of his WBA strap on Sunday, roughly 24 hours before Nakatani touches gloves with Petch in the very same ring. Inoue is a consensus 7/2 favorite over countryman Seiga Tsatsumi.
A unification fight between Nakatani and Takuma Inoue (20-1, 5 KOs) would be a natural. But this match, should it transpire, would be in the nature of an appetizer. A division above sits Takuma’s older brother Naoya Inoue who owns all four belts in the 122-pound weight class but, of greater relevance, is widely regarded the top pound-for-pound fighter in the world.
A match between Junto Nakatani and the baby-faced “Monster” would be a delicious pairing and the powers-that-be want it to happen.
In boxing, the best-laid plans often go awry, but there’s a good possibility that we will see Nakatani vs. Naoya Inoue in 2025. If so, that would be the grandest domestic showdown in Japanese boxing history.
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Bygone Days: Muhammad Ali at the Piano in the Lounge at the Tropicana
Among other things, Las Vegas in “olden days” was noted for its lounge shows. Circa 1970, for the price of two drinks, one could have caught the Ike and Tina Turner Review at the International. They performed three shows nightly, the last at 3:15 am, and they blew the doors off the joint.
The weirdest “lounge show” in Las Vegas wasn’t a late-night offering, but an impromptu duet performed in the mid-afternoon for a select standing-room audience in the lounge at the Tropicana. Sharing the piano in the Blue Room in a concert that could not have lasted much more than a minute were Muhammad Ali and world light heavyweight champion Bob Foster. The date was June 25, 1972, a Sunday.
What brought about this odd collaboration was a weigh-in, not the official weigh-in, which would happen the next day, but a dress rehearsal conducted for the benefit of news reporters and photographers and a few invited guests such as the actor Jack Palance who would serve as the color commentator alongside the legendary Mel Allen on the closed-circuit telecast. On June 27, Ali and Foster would appear in separate bouts at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Ali was pit against Jerry Quarry in a rematch of their 1970 tilt in Atlanta; Foster would be defending his title against Jerry’s younger brother, Mike Quarry.
In those days, whenever Las Vegas hosted a prizefight that was a major news story, it was customary for the contestants to arrive in town about three weeks before their fight. They held public workouts, perhaps for a nominal fee, at the hotel-casino where they were lodged.
Muhammad Ali and Bob Foster were sequestered and trained at Caesars Palace. The Quarry brothers were domiciled a few blocks away at the Tropicana.
The Trop, as the locals called it, was the last major hotel-casino on the south end of the Strip, a stretch of road, officially Highway 91, the ran for 2.2 miles. When the resort opened in 1957, it had three hundred rooms. Like similar properties along the famous Strip, it would eventually go vertical, maturing into a high-rise.
In 1959, entertainment director Lou Walters (father of Barbara) imported a lavish musical revue from Paris, the Folies Bergere. The extravaganza with its topless showgirls became embedded in the Las Vegas mystique. The show, which gave the Tropicana its identity, ran for almost 50 full years, becoming the longest-running show in Las Vegas history.
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Although the Quarry brothers were on the premises, Ali and Foster arrived at the Blue Room first. After Dr. Donald Romeo performed his perfunctory examinations, there was nothing to do but stand around and wait for the brothers to show up. It was then that Foster spied a grand piano in the corner of the room.
Taking a seat at the bench, he tinkled the keys, producing something soft and bluesy. “Move over man,” said Ali, not the sort of person to be upstaged at anything. Taking a seat alongside Foster at the piano, he banged out something that struck the untrained ear of veteran New York scribe Dick Young as boogie-woogie.
When the Quarry brothers arrived, Ali went through his usual antics, shouting epithets at Jerry Quarry as Jerry was having his blood pressure taken. “These make the best fights, when you get some white hopes and some spooks,…er, I mean some colored folks,” Young quoted Ali as saying.
This comment was greeted with a big laugh, but Jerry Quarry, renowned for his fearsome left hook, delivered a better line after Ali had stormed out. Surveying the room, he noticed several attractive young ladies, dressed provocatively. “I can see I ain’t the only hooker in here,” he said.
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The doubleheader needed good advance pub because both bouts were considered mismatches. In the first Ali-Quarry fight, Quarry suffered a terrible gash above his left eye before his corner pulled him out after three rounds. Ali was a 5/1 favorite in the rematch. Bob Foster, who would be making his tenth title defense, was an 8/1 favorite over Mike Quarry who was undefeated (35-0) but had been brought along very carefully and was still only 21 years old. (In his syndicated newspaper column, oddsmaker Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder said the odds were 200/1 against both fights going the distance, but there wasn’t a bookie in the country that would take that bet.)
The Fights
There were no surprises. It was a sad night for the Quarry clan at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
Muhammad Ali, clowning in the early rounds, took charge in the fifth and Jerry Quarry was in bad shape when the referee waived it off 19 seconds into the seventh round. In the semi-wind-up, Bob Foster retained his title in a more brutal fashion. He knocked the younger Quarry brother into dreamland with a thunderous left hook just as the fourth round was about to end. Mike Quarry lay on the canvas for a good three minutes before his handlers were able to revive him.
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In the ensuing years, the Tropicana was far less invested in boxing than many of its rivals on the Strip, but there was a wisp of activity in the mid-1980s. A noteworthy card, on June 30, 1985, saw Jimmy Paul successfully defend his world lightweight title with a 14th-round stoppage of Robin Blake. Freddie Roach, a featherweight with a big local following and former U.S. Olympic gold medalist Henry Tillman appeared on the undercard. The lead promoter of this show, which aired on a Sunday afternoon on CBS (with Southern Nevada blacked out) was the indefatigable Bob Arum who seemingly has no intention of leaving this mortal coil until he has out-lived every Las Vegas casino-resort born in the twentieth century.
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I may drive past the Tropicana in the next few hours and give it a last look, mindful that Muhammad Ali once frolicked here, however briefly. But I won’t be there for the implosion.
On Wednesday morning, Oct. 9, shortly after 2 a.m., the Tropicana, shuttered since April, will be reduced to rubble. On its grounds will rise a stadium for the soon-to-be-former Oakland A’s baseball team.
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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Mikaelian vs Rozicki POSTPONED Amidst Rumors that Promoter Don King is Ailing
I Still Think That Anthony Joshua Should Retire From Boxing
Canelo Proves Too Canny and Tough for Edgar Berlanga in Las Vegas
Notes on the Atlantic City Boxing Hall of Fame, the Return of ‘Boots’ and More
Avila Perspective, Chap. 296: Canelo vs Berlanga and More
Daniel Dubois Demolishes Anthony Joshua
Mike Tyson and his Conqueror Danny Williams: Then and Now, a Study in Contrasts
Canelo – Berlanga Postscript
WBA Feather Champ Nick Ball Chops Down Rugged Ronny Rios in Liverpool
The Hauser Report: James Earl Jones and More
Reflections on Yoenli Hernandez and the New Wave of Outstanding Cuban Boxers
Boxing Odds and Ends: ‘Paint-Gate,’ the Haney-Garcia lawsuit and More
Bygone Days: Muhammad Ali at the Piano in the Lounge at the Tropicana
Alycia Baumgardner is Legit, but her Title Defense vs Persoon was a Weird Artifice
Rocky Hernandez Improves to 36-2 with a Controversial TD in Hermosillo
Jaime Munguia Stops Erik Bazinyan on a Show with a Shocking Upset on the Undercard
Results and Recaps from Dublin where Callum Walsh had a Sensational Homecoming
Stephen Fulton Nips Carlos Castro in a Prelude to Canelo vs Berlanga
Mikaela Mayer Wins WBO World Title in Firefight with Sandy Ryan
Avila Perspective, Chap. 297: Callum Walsh in Dublin, Anthony Joshua and More
Avila Perspective, Chap. 300: Eastern Horizons — Bivol, Beterbiev and Japan
Junto Nakatani’s Road to a Mega-fight plus Notes on the Best Boxers from Thailand
Bygone Days: Muhammad Ali at the Piano in the Lounge at the Tropicana
WBA Feather Champ Nick Ball Chops Down Rugged Ronny Rios in Liverpool
Alimkhanuly TKOs Mikhailovich and Motu TKOs O’Connell in Sydney
Avila Perspective, Chap. 299: Golden Boy in Saudi Arabia and More
Boxing Odds and Ends: ‘Paint-Gate,’ the Haney-Garcia lawsuit and More
Alycia Baumgardner is Legit, but her Title Defense vs Persoon was a Weird Artifice
The Hauser Report: James Earl Jones and More
Terri Harper Wins Third Division World Title
Mikaela Mayer Wins WBO World Title in Firefight with Sandy Ryan
Notes on the Atlantic City Boxing Hall of Fame, the Return of ‘Boots’ and More
Avila Perspective, Chap. 298: Female World Title Fights and More
I Still Think That Anthony Joshua Should Retire From Boxing
Esteemed Boxing Writer Nigel Collins Keeps on Punching (the keys on his keyboard)
Mike Tyson and his Conqueror Danny Williams: Then and Now, a Study in Contrasts
Daniel Dubois Demolishes Anthony Joshua
Undercard Results from London where Hamzah Sheeraz Made Short Work of Tyler Denny
Jaime Munguia Stops Erik Bazinyan on a Show with a Shocking Upset on the Undercard
Results and Recaps from Dublin where Callum Walsh had a Sensational Homecoming
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