VIDEOS: Forgotten MW contender Gene "Ace" Armstrong - vs. Dick Tiger & Henry Hank

Here's a little career retrospective I've put together of Gene Armstrong, thanks partly to the help of Raging B(_)LL.

Armstrong was a ranking MW and hot prospect of the late '50s and early '60s. He was an obviously talented and classy boxer, with the guts and grit to mix it up as well. There were always high hopes for him, but his career was held back by two key factors. One was his lack of hunger for the sport: he apparently had a relatively high paying job in a gin mill, and found taking time out to box merely cost him the kind of money he was capable of making elsewhere without getting his face punched in. The other factor was Dick Tiger, his arch rival and the only fighter to beat him in his prime. The tagline about Armstrong for much of his career was that he might've been champ already if not for Tiger.

Armstrong got off to a strong start in his career, winning his first 17 fights, including impressive, lopsided decisions over difficult journeyman Randy Sandy and respected contender Rory Calhoun. Then he was matched against Tiger, who had only just come over from England earlier that year and was seeking his first big win in the US. He got it against Armstrong, who he upset in a close fight. Here are the last few rounds of that fight, provided by Raging B(_)LL: (sorry the audio is so far out of sync with the action; nothing I could do about that)
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Note that at this time, Tiger was still a work-in-progress and lacked the polish, power, and precision he would show in forthcoming years.

The two fighters were matched again a year later, and again Tiger won a close, competitive fight. Together they were the stereotypical "promoter's dream": the quick, slick boxer against the aggressive, hard-hitting pressure fighter.

As Armstrong's activity declined around this time, he began to get written off as a serious prospect. But it was then that he scored his biggest and best career win, an upset of the hard-hitting, top 5 rated Henry Hank. That fight is in its entirety here:
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With this win, Armstrong instantly re-established himself as a force in the MW division. He then made a fateful decision, however: he chose to take on Tiger a third time - and with that, his career hopes were dashed just as quickly as they had been revived. Despite having lost to Tiger twice before, Armstrong was actually rated a slight favorite to beat him this time, with the popular perception being that Gene was a "new" and rededicated fighter. However, as it turns out, Tiger was just beginning to come into his own at this time, which he demonstrated by battering Armstrong into the first stoppage loss of his career. Armstrong was hospitalized after the fight with broken ribs.
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This loss basically spelled the end of Armstrong's career. After being inactive for more than a year, he tried to make a comeback against Luis Rodriguez, but was clearly a spent shell of himself and was battered into another stoppage defeat. Here is a clip of that fight, already posted on YT:
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Armstrong never fought again afterward. His final record was 19-4-1, with all but one of his losses coming against Tiger.

I think it's interesting that Armstrong's era of MWs was so deep, that as talented a fighter as himself is often overlooked as a "second rate" contender compared with what were the top tier fighters of that division.