I started my "career" as a boxing fan in 1963 - and being from a country (Denmark) where no boxing was ever shown on TV, my only window to the boxing world was boxing magazines. So for the first 20 years or so, I was obsessed with subscribing to EVERY magazine, I knew of - some of which are: The Ring Boxing Illustrated Boxing News Fistic Flashes Fight Beat Boxing Life Boxing Today Inside Boxing International Boxing KO Big Book of Boxing World Boxing Fight Game Boxe Ring (Italy) South African Boxing World Boxing Beat (S.A) Fighter (Australia) Small Gloves News (Australia) Boxing Scene The World Boxing Scene (N.Z) Boxing Guide BoxSport (Germany) Tonight's Boxing Programs & Newsletter (Flash Gordon) I even subscribed to an East German magazine, that only dealt with amateur boxing! This was during the Cold War, and I had to go to the DDR consulate in Copenhagen, to get permission to have it sent to Denmark. Today I can't believe, I went to that much trouble! But that was back then - and now I'm less obsessed and haven't subscribed to a single mag for more than 10 years. Today news of every fight around the world is only a few clicks away within 24 hours - not to mention all the fights (new as well as old) available on YouTube. It's a wonderful time... and light-years away from anything a fight-starved youth could possibly have imagined half a century ago!
The profusion of great boxing mags at the time...ABC Wide World of Sports, to a lesser extent CBS,...and the occasional accidental blurb on the last page of the sports section of the newspapers.
On the West Coast scheduling must've been a little different. We'd see CBS Sports Spectacular at 3:30 pm, followed by ABC's Wide World of Sports at 5 pm. No overlap. Though we didn't have NBC where I lived. Thing is, being on the West Coast some of those fights were tape delayed for the time zone, so you had to be careful which radio station you listened to (the one source for 24-hour news in those days) or else you'd get a result of a fight you were going to watch later in the afternoon. Yep, cable was 12 channels for us, too, for seven bucks a month (which my dad didn't want to (or probably wasn't able to, things were tight for a while) splurge for). Actually, 11 channels, because HBO was one of those and you had to pay an additional seven dollars for it. Your maximum cable bill was $14 a month. ESPN either didn't exist yet or later wasn't part of the cable package until 81 or 82. But my neighbors had cable and HBO and many evenings were spent there watching the big HBO fights. I grew up in a town of about 1,300 people, but our little mom and pop convenience store had a pretty incredible magazine section. 3 to 5 boxing magazines came in a month. But sometimes they wouldn't get an issue. I remember my dad driving me to the next town, not that far really, to pick up the September 1977 World Boxing so I could read about the Norton-Bobick fight. Funny, I did watch that fight on NBC, as well as Night With the Heavyweights later in the year, because the local ABC or CBS station would show NBC special events and popular shows. In fact, one of favorite shows was NBC's Sanford and Son on Friday nights. It was shown on the ABC station. And my earliest boxing memory was that the ABC station didn't show Sanford and Son that night because they were showing the Ali - Lyle fight. Seven year old me was very angry about one of my favorite shows not being aired because of "stupid boxing." Little did I know... I'm really enjoying reading about people's memories in this thread and seeing how they correspond with my own.
Well back in my day they had KO,Boxing magazine,World Boxing Magazine and the Ring. Espn had weekly bouts as did USA Network. HBO and Showtime for the big fights and the mega bouts were on Pay Per View. It was neat because Espn and Usa would build up prospects so you could see them developer before your eyes.
I loved reading the results in the magazines and, especially, the ringside reports in Ring. They had accounts of fights from all over the country. If I remember correctly Jack Obermayer covered the East Coast fights, often with JR Jowett, and he would make a point of mentioning the diners where they ate. If you have never kept current with boxing in this manner, you may not believe it but you can get pretty good at developing pretty solid impressions of how good a guy is and how he fights. You see which fighters he has fought, you see the results, you find a paragraph or two about the fight in the ringside reports. Over time you build a picture.
boxing magazines and sports shows on tv (3 channels). From my memory, World of Sport tended to show the big fights from the states. Grandstand and Sportsnight tended to be more domestic fights. I still get chills hearing the Sportsnight theme tune. VHS tapes sent from the USA were a godsend and if ya were lucky you could get a copy. I didnt know anyone with 2 VHS recorders and at the time there really wasnt too many with 1. A lot of the tapes sent over would be loaned to bars to put on for the patrons. The first time i heard american commentators, think it was from a show called Top Rank fights of the 70s (ferdie pacheco and it might have been al bernstein in the studio presenting) it was like a different world. If you wanted to know anything, you had to go to a library and even then it was pretty difficult to get information. We really are spoiled now, thankfully
The mention of Flash Gordon sure brings back fond memories! His program was very informative, and if anything shady was going on in the boxing world, he was on it with no punches pulled. He must have rubbed quite a few influential people the wrong way - and sometimes I wondered, if he would one day be found at the bottom of The Hudson, wearing cement shoes! He was a very mysterious and privat guy, who never let anyone into his New York appartment. Except, I believe, for Jack Obermeyer - who, on a rare occasion, contributed to the program with his "K.O. - J.O. SAYS". But, as you say, it was mostly a one-man job, with great previews of upcoming fights - and also mentions of results from around the world. I always got a kick out of the section at the back of the program, where he had a long list of future fights - serious as well as not so serious, mixed together. The latter with some hilarious names - such as Desenterrar Cadaver, Yucatan Flats, Cemetario Diggs, Al Kaseltzer, Ben Dover, etc.
I wish I had a list of all the fake opponents names he used. It was the most insider publication ever. He was a recluse and just stopped with boxing stuff altogether at some point in the 1980s. This article details how he was also one of the most revered artists in the niche world of railroad art (like drawings/paintings of trains and such): http://www.boxing.com/the_shocking_truth_about_malcolm_flash_gordon.html Here is a thread on this forum from when he apparently died a few years ago: https://www.boxingforum24.com/threads/r-i-p-malcolm-flash-gordon.576361/
Some fascinating comments in this thread. A good friend of mine has written a biography of a little known Brazilian soccer player from the 1940s, which he is struggling to publish for various reasons. He constantly complains that knowledge of such players died with his father's generation. If people don't keep these memories alive, the stories will slowly die. Same with some of our favourite fighters of days past.
Hi guys, Special thanks to @Reinhardt , @McGrain , @robert ungurean , @he grant , @Richard M Murrieta , @Mendoza , @Rumsfeld , @Clinton , @sweetsci , @Woller , @mcvey , @mattdonnellon ,@greynotsoold , @salsanchezfan , @Saintpat , @lufcrazy , @Jason Thomas , @Seamus , @RockyJim , @Mike Cannon , @C.J. ,@LoadedGlove , @JWSoats , @scartissue , @vast , @mattdonnellon , @Flash24 , @Dubblechin , @Bukkake , @red cobra , @Cobra33 , @johnmaff36 and @Gudetama , and anyone else who I missed It is fascinating for me to learn how you got into and followed the sport. I am nostalgic for that time period, even if I didn't live through it. Fascinating stuff. Cheers. I appreciate it.
Anyone here read Gilbert Odd's encyclopedia? My mom bought it for me when I was 12, in 2004. This was like a year before I discovered youtube. Even though I watched Friday Night Fights to see the then current boxers, it was Odd's encyclopedia that helped me learn about older boxers. After youtube arrived, I finally had a chance to see all the old time greats.
Remember it all. Ads to buy old super 8 fights In the boxing magazines like Ring. I’d wait anxiously to get in mail. No Fedex or Amazon back then. It took weeks. Then playing it on an old projector on a closet door for a screen. It was magic. Funny how many were the same films now for free on YouTube. First boxing book was an old copy of John Durant’s The Heavyweight Champions and I must have read it a hundred times. Stanley Weston's book on the Heavyweight Champions as well. These were my bibles. The thirst for information was burning and when it came it was so sweet. Like discovering treasure. I remember a family friend, knowing my love of the sport, bought me a copy of the then brand new Dempsey book by his daughter in the 70's and I read it nonstop , straight through and then again and again .. https://www.amazon.com/Heavyweight-...+champion&qid=1596800278&s=books&sr=1-1-fkmr0 https://www.amazon.com/Heavyweight-...weight+champion&qid=1596800371&s=books&sr=1-1
