What can you tell me about Anders Eklund? Was he any good? I have never seen a fight of his but his fight with Frank Bruno is on my list to watch soon.
What I recall most about him was he took a thunderous overhand right from Tim Witherspoon that literally rearranged his face
Foreman was looking for short, come forward guys at that point - Eklund at 6ft 7" and more a boxer than slugger didnt really fit the bill. That said Eklund would have been a better opponent than Frank Lux, Bobby Hitz and Ladislao Mijangos. Foreman would most likely have got to Eklund by the 5th round and having a former euro champ on his record would have looked a bit better than the likes of the guys mentioned above
I'll never forget that night on Tuesday night fights. I really though Witherspoon was going to come back and be somebody after that.
I feel like MRBILL would really like this thread and would come in talking about Timmy Spoon a lot and Larry Holmes, tangentially, and he would make a good comment here. I don't know if that's just an accurate feeling I get or if-no-it's accurate. I just realised it is, in fact, impossibly accurate.
Whatever happened to MRBILL anyway? He was a very prolific poster here back in the day, but I haven’t seen him around here in forever it seems….
On to my regular comment: Anders Eklund was born Josiah Peel, in 1835, Cleckheaton, Yorkshire. He suffered few fools and destroyed some. In 1912, he fought the war of 1812, and while in the service (with Bonaparte) he was found to be an exceptional hand-to-hand combatant, and was encouraged to take up the manly art of boxing pugilisticeum. Or, as some folks call it: bloodsport/kumite. While experiencing an event in Japan called kachapati at the Mauna Loa Luna Bar & Grille, an annual event, he joined a wet t-shirt contest. He came in third. Behind one mister Timmy J. Spoon. They were signed to fight the very next day. Eklund, by that point, had become engaged to Hester (Hattie Mae) Prynne, of Newport, and won the intercontinental Wisconsin belt. His whole world was on the verge of success far greater than that of a regional champion. And with no ceiling, his whole world...was about...to change. And change it did! For the worse...Spoon kayo'd Eklund with a BODACIOUS right hand that made the pope cry. That was when Eklund went back to the drawing board, hiring Clarence "Speed" Worley, former martial arts strength and conditioning consultant to the stars. Stars like Elvis Presley and Chip Wetarseovich, of Sky News Australia. He said he was working on his speed, and he guaranteed he'd be much faster on his next outing. Worley was quoted as saying "Speed? Let me tell you something about speed. His speed, it's fast. And quick." But blurbs like that in the local newspaper The Wisconsin Sentinel Cheddar Times Globe Sun were not enough to make him fast enough to take him away from there, the place that he lived, the place that Timmy Spoon took him too. Shortly thereafter he was decisioned by both Gatemouth Brown and Gatemouth Moore. Unanimously. Both men were clearly faster. Eklund became Irish Micky Ward's brother in an upcoming biopic and retired after jabbing Ray Leonard, verbally, in a contest on Dancing with the Stars. He said something derogatory about the champ. He said: He's great.
Oh, I don't know. I don't want to say in case it's nonsense but I remember someone implying he wasn't well. He filled out a Facebook profile I found once on one of their boxing groups and had abandoned it for years too, so that probably isn't a good sign. Seemed like a fun guy I would've enjoyed drinking extreme amounts of whiskey with. Amounts that bring people to weird realisations like that they have to remove walls in their home with a sledgehammer at three in the morning.
Then they get a divorce over it because their dumb wives think it's crazy to remove the wall between the kitchen and the bathroom and wake the baby up with all the thudding. But women be crazy. They don't understand architecture like male people do.