Boxers you met in real life

Baby Arizmendi?
Tiger Flowers?
What year lol?

 

Saw Frank Bruno walking around Manchester as a kid, I'd never seen anyone with a more massive barrel chest, was too shy to say anything to him.

Met Sugar Ray Leonard at a meet and greet, as I walked up to him to have him shake my hand and have a picture taken, he said "hey man how're you doing"?

I had been watching him my whole life, and babbled some daft bollocks, absolutely tongue tied !!!!

 

I seen LLewis at MGM. He was pissed as people swarmed him. He just wanted to walk in peace. He was covering himself like he was shooing flies.

 

Tyson, Zab, Broner...............a number of the boxers from Cleveland.

 

How old are you?

 

Heard good things about Zab outside of boxing, how was he when ya met him.
And think we'd all love to hear about Broner haha

 

I've come across Larry Holmes and Greg Page (and probably a couple others that don't come immediately to mind) in airports, Otto Wallin is a member of my NYC gym and I'm sure I've "met" (shook hands or at least nodded) with one or two others who also don't immediately come to mind .... but one who does come to mind is Renaldo "Mr." Snipes because of the memorable line he gave me.

Snipes showed up for a meet & greet at a kids' charity event I helped organize in the Bronx in the late-'80s. He'd gone 11 rounds with Holmes a few years earlier (fighting for Holmes' belts of course) and gone the distance with Page more recently. Super likeable guy... but of course he'd taken his share of knocks to the head by that point. I told him someone mentioned to me that a shot at (Mike) Tyson might be on his horizon and he replied -- no doubt meaning "on the QT" -- "Yeah, but I've got to keep that on the GQ for now..."

I've gotten plenty of mileage out of that line. And speaking of Tyson, I've mentioned elsewhere here on the Forum that Tyson, after getting knocked around by Lennox Lewis, congratulated Lewis afterward by saying "I take my hand off to you..."

Hey, it happens. I'd hate to hear what I'd sound like after getting pasted in the head for 45 minutes....

 

I've met a great deal of American fighters. Most times as an amateur before they made a name for themselves. Like Jaron Ennis, Keyshawn Davis, Terence Crawford, Shakur Stevenson, Clarissa Shields, Gary Russell Jr. , Keith Thurman, Shawn Porter, etc.....

Fighters I met for the first time as they were already pros, Gamboa, Beltran, Amir Khan, Errol Spence Jr, Andre Ward, Steve Nelson, Sugar Shane, James Toney, Tommy Hearns, etc.....

Met a couple MMA fighters as well. Keith Jardine, Houston Alexander, Rampage Jackson, Thiago Silva, Brock Lesnar (though it was at a WWE event)....

 

Thomas Hearns
Miguel Cotto
Grzegorz Proksa
Mariusz Wach
Milton McCrory
Kelly Pavlik
Anthony Dirrell
Allan Green

Nicest guy was Hearns. Complete gentleman. Cotto was a *****.

 

What did Cotto say or do?

 

Zab was cool for the short time I saw him, he just dapped us all up and kept it moving. It was funny, I noticed how large his cranium was but yeah seemed cool, wasn't stand offish or anything. Broner was honestly chill as well. It wasn't really a place for him to have a reason to show out. Tyson, we just kinda let him go past and nodded

 

Met Emilie Griffith when he came to my gym as trainer for Juan Laporte vs Kostya Tszyu fight.

 

Been hearing lots of bad things about Cotto