Boxers that played other sports

Curtis Woodhouse and Leon McKenzie were both professional Footballers, (Soccer). Woodhouse was Captain of Birmingham City and Sheffield United before winning the British Light Welterweight Title. McKenzie played in the Premier League for Crystal Palace and Norwich and went on to win an English Title.
Yorkshire Light Heavyweight Paul Bonson was a professional Rugby League player.

 

James Toney was a football quarterback when he was in high school ...I heard he got into an altercation with Deion Sanders

 

https://www.boxingforum24.com/threa...s-hs-college-athletes-in-other-sports.568548/

 

Michael Grant was pretty good at several different sports ....unfortunately boxing was not one of them

 

A lot of Asian fighters used to be kickboxers

 

Andre Berto has a background in wrestling...the last I heard he was considering making a move to UFC

 

Deontay Wilder played basketball...and he said that if he hadn’t gotten into boxing he would have probably played football for the Alabama Crimson Tide

 

Michael Moorer played football in high school

 

Evander Holyfield played football in high school

 

Lennox Lewis went to high school in Canada ( if I’m not mistaken) ...and I believe he played football

 

Sergio Martinez was a cyclist before he got into boxing at like 20 years old

 

You're responding to Kasmir's post - so I assume, you mean he's right?

 

Yeah. After that I saw your post. Berlenbach has always been written about as an Olympic Champion. Was he not ? Why the confusion ?

 

He was not!

The Olympic gold medal was the brainchild of Nat Fleischer, who first made this claim in "The Pictorial History of Boxing" from 1959 - and later repeated in an updated version from 1975. This fallacy also made it into the Ring Record Book.

Later both BoxRec and IBHOF simply picked up this information, without checking its validity - so for years, they both mentioned the gold medal as part of his profile.

In 2011 they finally realized, that it was a made up story, and removed it from his profiles. BoxRec has still not completely cleaned up the mess, though - as you can still see Berlenbach being described as an Olympic gold medallist, if you take a look at Mike McTigue's profile.

Hope this clears up the confusion.

 

Samart Payakaroon