I was there too,Burt. David was lucky not to get disqualified when he used that catapult thingy on Goliath. I reckon the fix was in on that night. Don King was to blame.
Tyson got me into it casually, Hamed got me into the smaller weights & from there I became more hardcore.
Grandpa's old ESPN classic tapes every day after school. I just remember it came on at home and it was ollllld footage of Johnson but I was like "hey jack johnson is fighting!" Mom was like WTF?
This content is protected After getting into with Fight Night my dad and grandfather also helped. My dad had been a fan since the mid 1960s and my grandfather used to go to the fights in Philly in the 1950s and 1960s. In January, 2006 my dad took me to Larry Holmes's gym in Easton and I was hooked.
I suppose what got me into boxing was a wide range of things: the love of sports in general, my utter distaste for Muhammad Ali (I made it my goal to disprove that, that son of a ***** was The Greatest ), the absolute adoration of any boxing match in black and white (it just seemed like a simpler time). Anyone remember the program Untold: The Greatest Sports Stories Never Told? I believe they had an episode on the Jeannete/McVea showdown in Paris. Just the vividness that the fight was retold in was amazing. That's when I realized (I was 12) that the research can be done on these men and their styles and stories aren't lost because of the lack of film. But fast forward 4 or 5 years (skipping my love affairs with baseball and basketball) to my discovering of boxrec and Sam Langford. My favorite hobby became, and still is, discovering forgotten or underrated boxers from the past. :good
My father forcing me to start taking boxing lessons just shy of my sixth birthday in 1975. The head trainer at the boxing club was the late Eric Seelig who fought the great Mickey Walker in his last bout. Also, Seelig fought other greats like Billy Conn and Freddie Steele. I was able to defend myself and also became interested in boxing history.
Frank Bruno piqued my interest in a casual sense. Hatton got me following the sport in general. Mayweather got me interested in the history of the sport.
Born in '58 first remember somehow picking Clay to beat Liston in '64 (probably my last winning pick) Dad was a friend of Jack Puggy (a phila. promoter) and brought me home a bunch of old magazines one time and I was hooked. Loved looking at the pictures. Of course the Fight of the Century in '71 put me over the top. Have been a fanatic ever since.