Boxers and their Boxing Heroes

You think? I don't think he says anything bad about him at all, commenting on how good he was for his time and how he toyed with Burns and mentioned his defense.

Although yeah, he does say that he's a bit boring to watch towards the end.

He used to watch a lot of Johnson when he was in training from what I remember reading.

 

Kid Chocolate was one of the first boxers to study films of other fighters to learn from. Many observers likened his jab to Joe Gans who he studied often.

In Britian we have Boxing News magazine and in it you normally read a fighters favrouite fighter is Ali, Tyson or Ray Leonard. His favrouite fight is Gatti vs Ward I, II & III or Ali vs Foreman.

Well this weeks edition contained a surprise, Scott Quig's favrouite is Wilfrddo Gomez and I hear dhim on a boxing show on Channel M and he said his hero was Thomas Hearns. Not that this is very relevant, as Quigg is a fairly good prospect in Britain at the moment.

Alexis Arguello really admired Ruben Olivares and the two sparred when Arguello was 16, Arguello apparently took a bit of a battering but stuck in, although coming a distant second. This sparring session convinced him he had what it took to get to the top.

 

Billy conn from sliberty was overboard for harry greb. Has his momma burried nearby grebs grave.

 

"Sliberty?" You a Pittsburgher? I lived on Broad Street when I was a kid.

 

Studied alotta films. Says LaMotta, Robinson, Basillio, Robinson were all vicious, but no one more vicious than Dempsey. Said what he learned from Ali, forget the poetry and the butterfly, was meanness.

 

Did Charley Zivic have any heroes? Perhaps the obvious one?

I'm pretty sure AlFrancis told me Alan Rudkin was an admirer of Barney Ross.

 

He also studied how to clinch from watching Jeffries-Johnson... and learned how to block and use his right from benny leonard

 

Hey buddy, Charley Zivic? He thought Robinson was the best, a unique view, right? I remember him telling me that he would watch other fighters and take what he could from them and try to make it his own. I doubt he watched films, how many were there is his day? He'd just watch the guys he trained with at the gyms.

 

No but a fan of Pitt fighters as well as the equally talented coterie of boxing scribes who immortalized them Harry Keck, Regis Welsch, Al Abrams are but a few.

 

Where'd you pick up that slang for East Liberty? I have quite a few articles written by Al Abrams especially, he was a great sports writer.

 

Muhammad Ali was Larry Holmes' idol.

 

Slibertty? Probably The Boxer And The Blond by Frank Deford.
Abrams was great but his predecessors were in a class by themselves. Pittsburgh fight bugs usta line up to read Regis Welsh. Literary line up at the newsstands!

 

The Boxer and the Blond, that's about Billy Conn and his wife, right? Can't think of her first name but she was the daughter of Greenfield Jimmy Smith, an ex-Pittsburgh Pirate. This stuff's 'a little' before my time, but I actually met Billy Conn once, and Al Abrams too. I was told that it those days boxing was front page news, and not front sports page new either. Bigger than even baseball, at least in Pittsburgh.

 

That's right, Robinson and Pep too.
Wilfredo Gomez apparently was a big fan of Fighting Harada.