Best card in boxing history

Revenge: The Rematches is up there when it comes to big money matches. Chavez vs. Randall II, McClellan vs. Jackson II, Norris vs. Brown II and finally Leija vs. Azuma Nelson II. Say what you want about Don King, but he knew what fans wanted to see.

 

I don't know if this counts because one of the fights was in a different location. ABC showed three live title fights in a day. Hagler-Antofurmo 1, SRL-Benitez & Victor Galinzez versus Marvin Johnson

 

Back in September 1937, there was a show in New York (Polo Grounds) with these top fights:

Lou Ambers beat Pedro Montanez pts 15 rounds (world LW title).
Barney Ross outpointed Ceferino Garcia over 15 rounds (world WW title).
Harry Jeffra took the BW title from Sixto Escobar with a 15 rounds points win.
Fred Apostoli won T-KO 10 against Marcel Thil.

Of these 8 men, only Garcia is today not in the IBHOF!

 

delete (double post)

 

The greatest promoter in boxing history

 

That was a pretty sick lineup for one night of TV. Those were the days

 

Here’s a post that started my thread on The Best Fight Card That Never Happened.

Alas.

The date was Feb. 23, 1981, a Monday. Madison Square Garden was booked.

The lineup:

Gerry Cooney vs. Ken Norton, heavyweights, 10 rounds

Matthew Saad Muhammad vs. Eddie Mustafa Muhammad, light heavyweight WBC/WBA unification, 15 rounds

Thomas Hearns (c) vs. Wilfred Benitez, WBA welterweight championship, 15 rounds

Wilfredo Gomez (c) vs. Mike Ayala, WBC super bantamweight championship, 15 rounds

Hilmer Kenty (c) vs. Alexis Arguello, WBA lightweight championship, 15 rounds

Aaron Pryor was originally slated to appear but backed out recovering from a (non-career-threatening) gunshot wound that set back his training, not sure of the opponent. I think some other names were also tossed around.

Purses went up to $1.5M for Hearns, Benitez and the Muhammads. Cooney and Norton were in the $1-1.25M range. All or almost all of the fighters collected big advances that they didn’t have to repay.

The promoter was one Harold Smith, aka Ross Fields, a con man who had found insiders at Wells Fargo Bank and managed to embezzle $21M with their help to fund his promotional enterprise.

Smith operated under the banner of Muhammad Ali Professional Sports, paying the ex-champ (embezzled) money for use of his name and some appearances to lend credibility to his operation. He had previously promoted Thomas Hearns-Pipino Cuevas, Saad Muhammad-Lotte Mwale, a lesser Mustafa Muhammad defense and several other fights involving the likes of Benitez (vs. Pete Ranzany), Andy “Hawk” Price and others. None, apart from Hearns-Cuevas, made money.

(He also had Muhammad Ali Amateur Sports, which had signed a number of 1980 Olympic hopefuls before the boycott, and which also promoted track meets attracting top U.S. and world talent. Again, always at a loss.)

But he spread money around like candy, handing out advances and ‘training expenses’ in the tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars, usually in cash, to gain favor of fighters and managers. He had done TV fights on several networks.

HBO was supposed to have been the televising agent of this extravaganza, but they had not yet come to terms when Wells Fargo stumbled across the theft operation, brought in the FBI and blew the whistle. A month or so before this card was to take place, the plug was pulled when Smith and his major bank benefactor went into hiding after the discovery.

Some of the fights would be remade: Cooney-Norton some three months later, Hearns-Benitez at junior middle a couple years later. Smith had already given advance money to Jim Watt, who would later lose his lightweight title to Arguello, and was planning Pryor-Arguello down the line.

His plan was to use the Wells Fargo money to take over boxing, supplanting Don King and Bob Arum as the sport’s major player, and, so he said, repay the bank off proceeds of this mega-card (which given the purses and no chance of a TV bonanza to fund it, was likely to actually be his biggest money-loser yet) before they realized the money was missing.

When Cooney-Norton did take place at the Garden. Miguel Montilla vs Domingo Ayala at 140 pounds was the chief undercard bout, with preliminary fighters Marvis Frazier, Jimmy Clark, Philipp Brown and Elijah Tillery filling out the card. The biggest card to take place on the Feb. 23 date was in Atlantic City, N.J., with Bobby Czyz and Freddie Roach in the top two bouts.

If only Wells Fargo had found out a little later, boxing would have seen perhaps the greatest card ever staged.