Pearl Jam came from Seattle. Nirvana started in Aberdeen. It is a horrible, depressing town with the highest heroin addiction rate in the US. Al Holstak used to come into a dive bar I frequented as a very young man. I met him once, not knowing who he was until days later. The old timers who knew him had a very high opinion of the guy.
..................atsch Guh! Yes, you're right. That's embarrassing, I can't believe I wrote that. Yeah, there isn't much going on in Aberdeen. It's really just a thru-point for people driving to Ocean Shores for the weekend. Used to be a cool little town dependent on the timber industry, but when they started curtailing that, it became like something out of a Springsteen song.
There used to be a tavern in Georgetown (Southern Seattle) that Al Holstak visited. All the oldtimers loved the guy, said he was a real quality guy. The Tavern got turned into a parking lot and the whole neighborhood was "gentrified". Lost times, lost memories. That was my one real encounter with a true old time fighter.
I'd say that his defeat of Dundee may have been the best. Vince was KOd once in 154 fights and it was a devestating one. Steele reported that he hurt the pop in his jaw and it sickened him. His defeat of Garcia was impressive and I'd love to see the finishing combination in the first one -it seemed to have been Hearnsesque. He was the first to stop Lesnevich who was a LHW. I think that his power was comparable to those Philly sluggers like Hart or at least Briscoe.
Nice to see Steele get a mention here, he is one guy who sadly is seldom heard or talked about today. He was the goods, in shape, powerful and always looking to take your head off with that thunderous left hook. I`d bet good money that he would clean house today at 160, and would likely have fared well at 168 as well. Why this man isn`t in the HOF is beyond me, although he is sadly not the only one to be overlooked for enshrinement from that era. I would have loved to see a fight between Eduardo Lausse and Freddie Steele, that fight has WAR written all over it and I can only imagine what a bruising affair it would have been.
..........Hey RB! Welcome back, and thanks again for the fights! I did a writeup here a week ago or so about Galaxy.