What if you could have dinner with any five figures from boxing history?

Jack Johnson
Mysterious Billy Smith
Fritzie Zivic
Roberto Duran
Ricardo Mayorga

 

There are just way too many candidates to choose from.

I'd go with this motley (or maybe not so motley) crew, to begin with:

Harry Greb
Amílcar Brusa
Marvin Hagler
Manny Steward
Al Bernstein

 

Marciano
Moore
Max Baer
Foreman
Sullivan

 

Only way I’m inviting Harry Greb is if he brings a boatload of film from his fights with him.

 

Cus
Blackburn
Dempsey
Louis
Ali

 

Now, this is a difficult one, because its not just 5 you want to talk to, but 5 that might have the perfect mix of respect for each other and confidence to challenge each other. And any fantasy boxing chat has to have Ali, doesn't it...? If I could meet ONE boxer from history it would be Ali. But. He's not coming to my diner party. I suspect you would get Ali the performer not Ali the man with a crowd of more than one. Same goes for Eubank Sr and, I suspect, Jack Johnson. So. Where do we go.

I'd want a historian, a character, someone I could listen to, and for me, just because I've heard him talk and haven't heard Fleischer and other old school guys, Bert Sugar would be my garrulous historian.

Tex Cobb has to make the list, old school manners combined with the glint in the eye that suggests a dangerous, charismatic individual, someone who will fight his own corner physically and mentally and won't be overawed.

From the golden era, I'm gonna ask Kenny Norton. Norton is gonna have tales to tell and he can tell a tale. He epitomises that 70s post King and Malcom dangerous vibrancy when a nation was finally finding its voice. Witty, immaculate and a tough SOB.

To represent the older times, I'm going to ask Gene Tunney. Well read, mixed with marines and millionaires, friends with the cultural literary figures of his time, will add not just boxing tales but stories of George Bernard Shaw with whom he shared a symbiotic friendship, each opening doors of thought for each other. Oh, and Gene could have a ****in' fight....

My last guest is another heavyweight, and not just in terms of weight but in terms of his lived life experience. Max Schmelling fought and beat Joe Louis, had more than the hopes of a nation unfairly imposed on his broad shoulders by Hitler and the nazis to carry the torch for the Aryan 'race' whilst all the while being a decent human being. Despite intense pressure from the Nazi regime, he never joined the party. He also refused to fire his Jewish manager, and hid the children of Jewish friends during Kristallnacht, placing his own life in danger. A friend and supporter of Louis both spiritually and sometimes financially after their fights and an incredible successful business man after the war, where I think he served as a paratrooper? A life well lived and one of the most decent men to have laced them up.

So, we got there folks.

Bert Sugar, Tex Cobb, Kenny Norton, Gene Tunney and Max Schmelling.


On my substitutes bench is Vitali Kiltschko for reasons you can perhaps figure yourself...

Have a wonderful weekend all, peace and love always, Px

 

For me it would be the five who I really admire.
James J Jeffries
Harry Greb
Joe Frazier
Jerry Quarry
Jack Johnson

Jack Dempsey alwould be on standby if I get a no show.

 

Johnson and Jeffries at the same table is bold

 

Harry Haft

Honestly can't think of anyone else besides that. I feel like most boxers aren't particularly insightful or interesting.

 

Dempsey
Greb
Zivic
Moore
Chuck Wiggins

 

Jack Johnson
Jack Dempsey
Jersey Joe Walcott
Harry Greb
Cus Damato

 

Amir Khan
Adrian Broner
Floyd Mayweather
Conor Benn
Ben Whitaker

Or

Duran
Ali
Archie Moore
Ray Arcel
Gil Clancy

 

Jack Hurley, Benny Leonard, Whitey Bimstein, Archie Moore, Charly Goldman.

 

#1: Cus
#2: Frazier
#3: Holmes
#4: Tex Cobb
#5: Pete Hamill

 

Enough with the guest list … what’s on the menu???!!!

(Great atmosphere but the service in this place is awful … nobody has even taken our drink orders, much less brought over a basket of bread.)