Fresh Duane Bobick Footage (Tom "The Bomb" Prater & Terry Mims Bouts)

Tom “Atom Bomb” Prater. Nice find.

 

IIRC, Holmes spoke highly of him in his autobiography ... I think up until the Holmes fight he was somewhat avoided as a high-risk/little-reward guy due to his power. Had really no promotional backing so he was thrown into the deep end after the loss to Larry.

Went on a bad run after that fight ... lost to quite a collection of white heavies (Bobick, Cooney, LeDoux, Coetzee) and became less and less punch resistant over time. But regarded as a good hand, always came to fight from what I understand.

 

I knew Tom when he was a coach back in 1979-80 here at the Indy PAL. He was a natural 185 lb guy who fought heavyweight out of necessity and got by on guile and smarts and was pretty strong and durable. As I remember, he worked on a sugar cane farm in Florida in between fights and was from a pretty hardscrabble background and bounced back and forth between fighting here in Indy and Orlando. As he got older, he put on weight and became a trialhorse of sorts. Had a good performance against Holmes in his biggest fight, but his next best fight was probably a loss in 12 to Bernardo Mercado where he won the majority of rounds before Mercado came from behind to stop him when Mercado was ascending in the ratings. His last hurrah was a local grudge match against Jeff Sims that had an ugly buildup where he lost in six rounds.

 

Yeah, I enjoyed both...I think I remember seeing one of these bouts on tv waaaay back in the dim, prehistoric past on my b/w Philco.

 

I doubt the Mercado fight was filmed since it was in Columbia. I remember the gigantic six foot on-site fight poster Tom brought back after the fight that they hung up underneath the speed bags at the gym. The Sims fight should have been, but might have been too local to film. Prater's trainer, Champ Chaney, once told me that Prater made more money losing on the road to rated guys even though he "could beat quite a few of them" since he couldn't get rematches or beat Cooney or Holmes and said pretty clearly that Tom did just that against Mercado. He looked good against Bobick, much better than he did against Cooney.

 

I grew up in Indy and saw a couple of Prater's fights coming up. None of us thought he would get as far as he did. No disrespect, but Duane was never contender material. Slow as molasses.

 

I watched Duane Bobick through the amateurs where he seemed to prime. He had wars with Nick Wells & beat & dropping Larry Holmes (they called it a DQ but Ali's comentary says it all) He also beat Teofilo Stevenson 1st fight but was badly KO'd in the rematch. Stevenson KO'd Big John Tate & many others in his amateur reign. Bobick turned pro but he had major defensive gaps and didnt really set down on his punches or seem to learn much as a pro. Duane was slow and not a fast starter and Norton and Kallie Knotzee and others exposed those flaws. I think Bobick like Willie Dewitt & Nick Wells could have been much better professionals with proper management and educated training

 

And he had no defense against a right to the head...this was painfully obvious vs Fred Houpe aka Young Sanford.