Elder Statesman Saoul Mamby (1947 – 2019) Was Even More Perseverant Than B-Hop

I think I interviewed the late Saoul Mamby just once. There might have been a time or two more, but I can’t say for sure, given the thousands of fights I have covered in my four-decades-plus on the boxing beat, not all of which made a deep enough impression on my memory that I can instantly dial up time, place and details.  In any case, it is that first occasion I was at ringside for a Saoul bout I recall now, for reasons that only peripherally touch upon his participation in the main event that night at Resorts International Casino Hotel in Atlantic City, N.J.

It was Oct. 11, 1988. I was there to report for the Philadelphia Daily News on what I seem to recall was a seven-bout card, headlined by the 10-round junior welterweight matchup pitting up-and-coming John Wesley Meekins, 23, and 41-year-old warhorse Mamby, a former WBC super lightweight champion on the way down. Eighteen years younger, stronger and faster, Meekins negated Mamby’s edge in experience to win a majority decision.

The Bronx-born, Brooklyn-based Mamby’s status as a former world titlist in and of itself seemingly should be enough to commemorate his passing, at age 72, after a lingering illness. But the reason that date still registers with me so much later is this: a 23-year-old ex-convict from Philadelphia, Bernard Hopkins, made an inauspicious pro debut on the Meekins-Mamby undercard with a four-round majority decision loss to Clinton Mitchell.

Hopkins, you’ve heard about. Inactive for 20 months after the loss to Mitchell, he would come up the hard way, eventually becoming a middleweight champion (setting a record with 20 title defenses, since tied by Gennadiy Golovkin) and light heavyweight champion. He also holds the record for being the oldest widely recognized world titlist, making the last successful defense of his IBF 175-pound belt with a split decision over Beibut Shumenov, from whom he also annexed the WBA strap, on April 19, 2014, when B-Hop was 49.

By then a legend for his longevity as well as his many signature victories, Hopkins was just 29 days shy of his 53^rd birthday for his final fight, on Dec. 17, 2016, when he was tagged with the only loss inside the distance in his exemplary, 28-year career, going out in eight rounds against 27-year-old construction worker Joe Smith Jr. in Inglewood, Calif. Only then did Hopkins concede that he was as susceptible to the one opponent, Father Time, that no fighter can stave off indefinitely.

I have covered dozens of Bernard Hopkins fights, many of which were for the PDN, tying us so closely in some people’s minds that we have almost come to be viewed as joined at the hip. Roy Jones Jr. even has referred to me as “Bernard Hopkins Fernandez.” And don’t think that more than a few people see some significance in the fact that we both will be formally inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame on June 14, 2020, B-Hop in the Modern category and I in the Observer category.

But, as remarkable as Hopkins has been for achieving what he did in a sport that is harsh and unforgiving to those who try to hang on too long, consider this: Saoul Mamby, incredibly, was 60 when he appeared in his last sanctioned fight, losing a 10-round unanimous decision to 32-year-old ham-and-egger Anthony Osbourne on March 8, 2008, in Georgetown, Guyana. Osbourne, a Jamaican, entered the ring then with a 6-27-1 record.

Given the spate of aging fighters who either have launched or were contemplating ill-advised comebacks, most notably former middleweight and super middleweight champion Nigel Benn at 55 (he ultimately decided against it), Mamby’s name had been bandied about quite a bit recently as a prime example – maybe the prime example — of someone who, as in the words of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, “raged, raged against the dying of the light” of a ring career he hoped to prolong for as long as possible.

Unlike Hopkins, so celebrated now for surviving as long and as successfully as he did at the highest levels of boxing, Saoul Mamby is not likely to ever be posthumously inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame, despite the WBC super lightweight title he claimed with a 14^th-round TKO of Sang Hyum Kim on Feb. 23, 1980, and retained through five defenses.  He was a good but not especially remarkable, 33-12-5, with 12 KOs when he finally yielded his championship to Leroy Haley on a unanimous decision on Feb. 13, 1983, coming up short again in his bid to reclaim the same title, again by UD, to then-champ Billy Costello on Nov. 3, 1984. His final record after the loss to Osbourne shall forever stand at 45-34-6, with 18 wins by KO or TKO.

But consider this: even as he regressed from champion to trial horse, enduring an eight-fight losing streak along the way, Mamby lost only one time inside the distance, a first-round stoppage against 23-year-old contender Derrell Coley on Aug. 13, 1993. Saoul was 46 then and Coley came in at 20-0-1 with 14 KOs.

Records, however, are merely statistics, from which conclusions can be twisted to fit someone’s preferred narrative. It should be noted that Mamby, a Vietnam veteran, gave the great Roberto Duran, the reigning lightweight champ, all he could handle in losing a 10-round, non-title unanimous decision on May 4, 1976. But the “Hands of Stone” was just one of the top-tier fighters with whom Mamby swapped punches, a list that also includes Costello, Coley, Edwin Viruet, Antonio Cervantes, Esteban De Jesus, Buddy McGirt, Maurice Blocker and Javier Castillejo.

Mamby was unquestionably a lesser version of himself when he squared off against Meekins, a New York City resident who never did quite fulfill the championship promise he flashed for a time as a hot prospect. Still, I made Saoul the focus of my story for the PDN, which I thought to be of possibly greater interest to readers.

“It’s a tribute to him that he’s still able to do what he does,” Meekins said of Mamby. “He obviously takes care of himself. I personally can’t even imagine what it would be like to be fighting when I’m his age.”

A prophetic look into the future. Meekins was 29 when he quit the ring in 1994, with a 24-5-2 record with 17 wins by KO.

Mamby, by this time apparently accustomed to the reality that he no longer was the “A” side of most of the bouts in which he participated, shrugged off another loss that, once upon a time when he was still a champion, he likely would have won.

“It wasn’t too bad a performance on my part, considering that I only had a week to get ready,” he told me “I have no complaints. I did my best. The judges said it wasn’t good enough.:

And now for the part that I find most surprising, given what would transpire later. The story I wrote for my newspaper ran a few inches longer than the hole into which it was assigned, so most of the copy that made it into print dealt with the main event. Some of the undercard bouts – including the one involving the debuting Hopkins – didn’t make the cut.

Many years later, I asked Hopkins if he remembered who the main-event fighters were on the night he turned pro. He said he wasn’t sure.

“It was John Wesley Meekins and Saoul Mamby,” I said.

“Oh, yeah, John Meekins,” Hopkins replied. “Good young fighter. From New York, I think.”

The passage of time has made it easier to forget some of what Saoul Mamby did as the most elder of boxing’s once-active elder statesmen. Now that he’s gone, I don’t ever want to make that mistake again.

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