Just wondering why there were no awards given to a fighter by Ring Magazine in the years 1933 and 1966. Cheers :thumbsup
Could be well wrong here but in 66 could of been Ali but his stance against Vietnam could of been the problem. Don't know about 33
Primo Carnera won in 1933 and Muhammad Ali won in 1966. Ring editor Nat Fleischer felt it was not in the best interests of the sport to give them the award, Carnera because of the controversy after the Schaaf fight, Ali because of his problems with the draft board.
From the April/May issue of ring, 1966: "...there is the matter of The Ring Magazine's passing up Clay and refusing to name a Fighter of the Year for 1966, despite Ali's five successful defenses of the heavyweight title...The Ring has been flooded with mail from readers, who supported its stand by a margin of 6 to 1. Some of those who wrote in accused The Ring of persecuting Clay. This charge is too silly to call for discussion. The Ring accorded to Clay every bit of credit which belonged to him, and wasn't as harsh as it might have been in citing reasons for refusal to make him fighter of the year. Nor could The Ring award the honour to Dick Tiger or Emile Griffith, even though both men fought their way to world championships in heavier categories than their former locations. ..point #4 in the regulations governing the choice [of fighter of the year]. This sentence makes it emphatic that the Fighter of the Year must be a shining example to the Growing American Boy. A boxer who defies the governement...emphacially is not that shining example. Thus the record of the Ring's Figher of the Year competition presents a second hiatus, the first having come in 1933. Based on his calims as ta boxer and a heavyweight champion Primo Carnera might have qualified for the 1933 award. But The Ring did not likesome of thet men who were involved in the Carnera operation, some of who were involved duped the Italian giant and got off with most of his earnings. Primo had to pay the price for associating with certain characters who were not in the social register."
Carnera's ,winning the Heavyweight title would ordinarily have won the award automatically ,but he did NOT win it . Carnera's No award was because of the controversy over MANY of his fights. Not just the Schaaf one ,where Schaaf collapsed from an innocuous looking punch and Hype Igoe, a boxing writer, aware of Carnera's track record, said "the only way I' ll beleive this is if the son of a ***** dies" ,which, a couple of days later ,poor Schaaf did.
That's right. The Ring admitted that Muhammad deserved the award in 1966,but the hypocritical politics stopped them from giving it to him. I do n't know about 1933 either.
Leon am not sure but wasnt Eubank vs Watson 2 in 1991, maybe thats the reason infatc im not sure it was in 91
Also, why did they scrap the progress of the year award? In 1965 sandwiched between 1964 Vicente Saldivar and 1966 Joe Frazier was a certain little Liverpool bantam weight.
yeh Al i noticed that before that your Dad won that award then it got scrapped, was a good award abit like fighter of the year though