Oldest former boxers still alive today

Luiz Ortiz

 

Chuck Wepner is 79, Larry Holmes is 75, Danny Little Red Lopez is 72.

 

Seriously, I wonder if anyone knows of a former pro boxer still alive today who is older than the 92 year Wayne Bethea.

 

Roberto Durán age 73
Carlos Zárate age 73
Larry Holmes age 75
Carlos Palomino age 75
Ruben Olivares age 78
Fighting Harada age 81
Ismael Laguna age 81

 

Wayne Bethea is 92? I wonder how much he remembers about his career. It was a pretty sad one. Here's a Sports Illustrated story about his last, tragic fight.

https://vault.si.com/vault/1963/10/28/this-death-might-kill-boxing

 

Joey Archer--Former middleweight title challenger and the last man to fight and beat Sugar Ray Robinson is still alive at 87 years young. Archer was one hell of a boxer and guy that would have been a world champion in a lot of other era's. The man best Robinson, Dick Tiger, Holy Mims, Ruben Carter and arguably beat Emile Griffith.

 

Not many 80 years old... amazing that Joey Archer and Bethea are still alive, I had no idea..

 

Fun fact:He was also taught by Freddie Brown btw,which is why you can see some of Brown's smothering and infighting tricks in him.

 

Richard Dunn is 80 years old and apparently Roy Williams is still alive and will turn 80 this coming April.

I didn’t realise Wayne Bethea was still alive until @NoNeck mentioned it recently in another thread. Amazing.

 

Thanks for pointing to that article. That’s incredibly tragic.

Outside of the Liston fight, I believe Bethea was knocked down a few times in other bouts but he was never KO’d or stopped otherwise.

A short fight but a very svelte 204 lb Liston looked lethal in his destruction of Bethea - and he sure didn’t look slow in that fight and he was very accurate with the punches he threw - imo.

 

I didn't realize that Roy was that old. I assumed that he was in the group of younger 70s heavyweights, considering his best remembered fights were against Holmes, Shavers, and such- But he was fighting back in 1966. Guess he just didn't get serious till late.

 

One very interesting person in that story is Benny Trotta. A reputed mobster he was Baltimore's boxing promoter during and after the Frank Carbo/Jim Norris era. He was known to be close to Mayor Thomas D'Alessandro (Nancy Pelosi's father) and was the owner of Club Troc, a strip club (brothel) in the notorious red light district known as The Block. I spent a lively afternoon there in 1972 when I was 24. It was the kind of bad place you never forget.

 

Nino Benvenuti 86
Chuck Wepner 86
Takeshi Fuji 84
Billy Backus 82
Jose Legra 81
Koichi Wajima 81
Ismael Laguna 81
Hiroshi Kobayashi 80
Richard Dunn 80
Rafael Herrera 80
Jorge Ahumada 79
Rodolfo Gonzalez 79
Shozo Saijo 78
Angel Espada 77
Kuniaki Shibata 77
Miguel Canto 77
Jim Watt 76
Guts Ishimatsu 75

 

Interesting details. Thanks for that. Glad you made it out of Club Troc unscathed.