In Defense of The Sweet Science

Published

11 years ago

December 12, 2013

The subject of the abolition of boxing pops up periodically. No surprise, most of the time, the drums are beaten for the banishment of the sport after a fighter pays the ultimate price for their participation, their life.

On November 30, a sportswriter for the New York Daily News weighed in with a call to bury the manly art of self defense, putting forth that because we the people now know better, we should do better. His definition of “better” includes a world in which there is no structured setting for a person to test another person in hand-to-hand combat. My reaction to this effort by Filip Bondy? I offer that his thesis was flimsy, his reasoning largely thin and/or flawed, and while I will assume his intentions are good, that he is a fine fellow who means no harm, his editorial betrayed a considerable dosage of ignorance and patronization.

“Boxing has seen its time, and thank goodness that primitive era is done,” the writer put forth in a essay which ran in a Saturday edition of the News.Where to begin? Well, if this “primitive era” is over, I must have missed the memo. Last I checked, man’s inhumanity to man is still in evidence on an hourly basis, and if you permit me a diversion from the world of sport to the wider world, let’s talk about wars. The writer despises the presence of a sport he deems “repulsively gladitorial,” and it made me wonder what he thinks of, say, the war the United States has been partaking in the Middle East and thereabouts. The writers’ thesis and word choice left me pondering what he might think of his newspapers’ description, on Friday, Dec. 16, 2011 of our participation in the Iraq War. “Despite false starts, failed opportunities and fatefully bad decisions, history will deem the war in Iraq a success,” it was stated in a Daily News op-ed.

Now, I don’t mean to be flippant, but I dare say the families of the near 5,000 Americans killed might not see the war as being so cut and dry. And was there something forbidding the News from mentioning the statistic which pegs the number of Iraqi civilians dead as a result of the US invasion as 1.4 million plus?

Success, huh? Want to reconsider that confident assertion, Daily News? Care to widen the scope of your “boxing should be abolished” op-ed, Mr. Bondy? Care to talk some more about this so-called “enlightened age” we live in, sir?

Now, some might say, hey Mike, Bondy is a sportwriter, we can’t expect him to traffic outside that narrow band. OK, gotcha. Let’s stick to sports. Another thing Bondy didn’t touch in his call to abolish is the mental and emotional makeup, the fierce and at-times all consuming desire of some humans to push themselves to the enth degree. I wouldn’t expect Mr. Bondy to be able to channel that urge; I don’t possess that, and evidently neither does he, as someone who sits on the sidelines and weighs in on the activities of bolder souls. But I’ve spoken to enough fighters–and that’s what they are, fighters, that is their identity, that is their calling, that is their reason for being–to know that these men and women need to test themselves in the ring. They need to prove to themselves and/or the world at large, what they are capable of doing, of being. They need a task, a goal that is larger than what Mr. Bondy and I need to make the time pass. And so, if we ban boxing, we must know without a single shadow of a mitigating doubt that they will seek avenues where they can explore this all-encompassing desire to compete with another being and themselves to such an extreme level.

They will do it in warehouses, dank places surrounded not by physicians and an ambulance at the ready, but by shady entrepeneurs whose structural support platforms consist of nothing beyond a stack of hundred dollar bills to the victor, and an ability to submerge any hint of conscience and decency which our athletic commissions evince on a daily basis.

Now, I’ve read Mr. Bondy, and sometimes enjoyed his work in the past. Most if not all of that material has touched on the sport of tennis. A fine sport, no doubt, one I’ve participated in myself. I enjoy a few sets each summer, in fact, and derive enjoyment from the act. But, let’s be clear, if we are to compare and contrast the thrill, and the deep-set satisfaction one can derive from attaining victory in a “mere” tennis match, as opposed to the satisfaction attained by a prizefighter who has left teaspoons (sometimes tablespoons!) of their blood and sweat on the mat and climbed off the canvas to score a knockout victory and win the heavyweight championship of the world…well, apologies to all the Federers out there, but I think the fighter has a hand up on the racquet man.

It didn’t surprise me that a Bondy took the opportunity to write that simplistic column, so slanted and lacking nuance, as it was printed in the wake of the Magomed Abdusalamov tragedy, which saw the Russian heavyweight suffer brain damage during his Nov. 2 bout against Mike Perez at the Madison Square Garden Theater in NYC.

“Once again this month, we were witness to another boxing atrocity in the city,” Mr. Bondy wrote. The between the lines message could be construed as: once again, and this happens ALL the time, the savage sport left another poor soul rendered fallen, because of the haplessness of overseers. And anyone interpreting Bondy’s messaging in that fashion would be, at best, left with an incomplete conception of that event, and at worst, a fallacious takeaway. I take slight issue with the inclusion of the word “atrocity.” Here’s what I think Bondy did; cursorily examined the Magomed bout, and went to town. He didn’t study the film, see that Mago was still looking to land a KO in the waning seconds of the bout. He evidently didn’t know or wasn’t swayed by the fact that a renowned neurologist spent time with Mago post-bout, assesssing him. No, Bondy wanted to play the self-righteous preacher role, and bemoan the “atrocity,” and prove his bonafides by going all in, and calling for abolition, rather than an examination of practices and protocol that perhaps could be clarified or tweaked to better serve the health and well being of the fighters. You could, I suppose, forgive the man for engaging in unsubtle lobbying suited for the platform he works off of, the tabloid. I won’t, but you could.

And let’s be clear here: Magomed Abdusalamov entered this bout, and this sport, with his eyes wide open. He is and was a fighter to the core, one not prone to quitting, not built like most of us folks to wave a white flag when the going gets tough. He knew what that price could be for his participation, they all do. Do they ponder that potentiality excessively? No, it wouldn’t be prudent, it would in fact be crippling. But ample information, from a hundred years of data collection, is available to any and all pugilist who considers entering the ring and testing their will and skill. And Magomed, being a man operating with free will, engaged in the one life he knew to be available to him, choosing to practice a combat sport which satisfied, I presume, his soul, and offer him a path to improved economic status.

About that “improved economic status.”

I have no way of knowing Mr. Bondy’s net worth, his level of economic comfort, or lack thereof. But I’m hopeful, if not overly optimistic, given the limited scope of his piece, that he understands that in these times, many if not the majority of young adults are at the very least occasionally dubious of their prospects to reach a higher economic level than their parents did. Wage growth has been flat for the masses for 40 years, 50% of us who rent now pay a third or more of our income to the landlord, as opposed to 38% ten years ago, and the costs of higher education have soared more than 500% since 1985 (as opposed to “only” about 200% for gasoline).

For a Caucasian like me, who came from a home where attending college was a given, the path to reasonable prosperity is not so vague. I know I’m fortunate. Does Mr. Bondy comprehend that if he gets his way, and the sport is abolished, that one path to prosperity will be removed for people who don’t enjoy multiple options to a place of prosperity? Perhaps Mr. Bondy isn’t aware that a US citizens’ prospects to jump upward in social class is the third lowest among developed nations. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that in the coming decades, we might well see even more skilled boxers being produced in the US, if Mr. Bondy doesn’t get his way, as one in five American children now live in poverty. Most of us understand that from the most meager existences, some of the most majestic athletes are borne, as it is impossible to manufacture in an atmosphere of abundance the reservoir of determination that grows in some of the superlative souls who beat the grim odds and lift themselves out of dire straits. Now, when the world gets its head screwed on straight, and we better address issues of wealth disparity, and the Rand acolytes are removed from positions of power, then, Mr. Bondy, you and me can revisit the topic. But until then, I’d appreciate you not so blithely lobby for the removal of one road to prosperity for those of meager means.

I take issue with Mr. Bondy’s lobbying, ostensibly, I guess, on behalf of the fighters who he reduces to being “just poor, desperate minorities getting their heads ripped apart internally, synapse by synapse.” I have yet to meet the man who campaigned in the battleground of the sweet science, achieved a level of acclaim and monetary reward, and looks back with nothing but regret, wishing the Bondys of the world had succeeded in deciding for them their life path. Hey, maybe we can revisit Bondy’s concern for the “poor, desperate minorities” when more paths to prosperity are fashioned in a more equitable fashion. And perhaps I will have less scorn for the Bondy piece when he acknowledges the damage done by alcohol, which does a more complete job in ripping heads and lives apart, and skewing synpapses than boxing could ever hope to achieve if there were ten times the number of events held annually.

Mr. Bondy notes that people are more aware of the costs of ring battle, and that the concussion debate and examination is touching other sports. He says its “absurd” to sanction a sport in which the aim is to knock out the foe. There, I’ve found some common ground with Mr. Bondy; I have occasionally come to the same conclusion. It can look absurd. As can the sport of football, which features two men running at 20 MPH and then butting heads like rams. As can the sport of auto racing, which features a person hurtling themselves around a course at 180 MPH, wrapped in a vehicular grenade, and seeking to avoid hitting a wall which could disintegrate their body.

I can go on…and I would end up, forgive me, in the same place. That is a place of dismissiveness of Bondy’s call: if we’re speaking out against sanctioning dangerous practices, shouldn’t we all band together and exit the realm of sports, which offers endless hours of diversion and enjoyment in a world which always has been and will be in need of both, because of the brutish nature of existence for all us masses of men who lead lives of quiet desperation…and instead transition to the real world, and the unending thirst for warfare?

I could go on and on..and I will, actually, since there is something to take offense at in every paragraph of the Bondy piece. What about when the Daily Newser writes, “Whenever a boxer gives up, like Sonny Liston or Roberto Duran, he is mercilessly mocked for the rest of his career.” That is such a simplistic and buffoonish reduction and is so nakedly idiotic as to discourage examination, for the assertion is so facile. To say or imply that the life of Liston or Duran can be boiled down to nothing more than their being an object of ridicule is remarkably ignorant. Let’s backtrack, shall we, to their upbringing. Liston and Duran had in common that their youth was spent in circumstances that would have demolished the soul of most who had to firewalk through it.

Liston was the 24th of 25 kids, and a growling belly was too frequently the norm for him growing up in Arkansas and St. Louis. Shoes were a luxury. Duran fended for himself in a Panama slum and was selling newspapers at age seven. Dad bolted, mom was overwhelmed, so he’d often forage in garbage cans for meals. And both men persevered. And found a sport which would put up with their idiosyncracies of temperament, and instead of leaving behind a wake of carnage and lives–their own, maybe others–lost, and are enshrined in Halls of Fame which boast of their will and skill and accomplishments, which is more than will be said or Mr. Bondy and me, I dare say. Bondy, it seems, hasn’t paused to consider that without boxing, which he hopes will soon be banished, the malevolence of those Durans and Listons would have been directed at any number of innocents.

Every day, at least one kid walks off a street of a slum, in America, and the world over, and comes under the spell of the ring and, hopefully, one or two role models who see themselves in that little boy lost. And a boy adrift and headed for the shoals of sorrow is re-directed, and reborn, in a milieu by no means perfect, but one that affords him, even despite the blows that will rain down on him, a more respectable and fruitful arc of life than he would have been inflicted with otherwise.

Great God, Mr. Bondy, none of us maintain the sport is perfect, and all involved should always be examining ways to make it better, and keep the participants as safe as humanly possible; but sir, there are by no means infinite options for self-improvement for young people whose higher education comes not from classrooms inside Ivy-covered walls, but from negative role models who succumb to the false hope of easy money and self-destructive thrill-seeking…Do you really want to abolish this proven path to a better place, Mr. Bondy? What say you stick to the racquet game, and let the people who have a better grasp of all sides of this sweet and savage science do the analysis of the sports’ strengths and weaknesses.

Post Views: 0

Share The Sweet Science experience!

Michael Woods

Avila Perspective, Chap. 323: Benn vs Eubank Family Feud and More

Published

2 days ago

April 24, 2025

David A. Avila

Avila-Perspective,-Chap.-323:-Benn-vs-Eubank-Family-Feud-and-More.jpg

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).

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 0

Share The Sweet Science experience!

Floyd Mayweather has Another Phenom and his name is Curmel Moton

Published

4 days ago

April 22, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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.

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 0

Share The Sweet Science experience!

Arne’s Almanac: The First Boxing Writers Assoc. of America Dinner Was Quite the Shindig

Published

6 days ago

April 20, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Arne's-Almanac-The-First-Boxing-Writers-Assoc-of-America-Dinner-was-Quite-the-Shindig

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.

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 0

Share The Sweet Science experience!