37 years ago yesterday: Murray "Shepherd David" Sutherland vs. Chong-Pal "Legendary Stone Fist" Park

Was going to make this last night, but passed out. In my defense, I was running on little sleep all week and had watched a ton of boxing in the previous 24 hours (between the Puello vs. Rubio and Gassiev vs. Wallisch live cards) - bits of it good, but most of it mediocre to horrible.

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This is the first time anybody defeated another person for a super middleweight title in boxing. Officially the lineage begins with Sutherland himself, finding his comfort zone after failed campaigns at light heavy (challenging unsuccessfully twice for gold, knocked out by Matthew Saad Muhammad and Michael Spinks for the WBA & WBA respectively) and then middleweight. His bar to claim the inaugurally vacant belt was fairly low, however, only having to best tough but limited (and by this point washed up) South Philly veteran Ernie "Grog" Singletary - who came in with four losses in his previous six bouts.

Park, on the other hand, would hang onto the prize once he claimed it - making eight successful defenses over three years, including twice against Vincent Joseph Curto, before dropping it to go for the WBA (then managing to defend that once as well). For all that, most boxing fans around the globe are today as unlikely to know the Seoul man as his rival from Edinburgh. Both exist with their names forever linked as trivia footnotes, pioneers in a division that has ensconced itself fully in the masses' regard in the nearly four decades since (with a couple of tournaments at 168lbs in recent years proving the biggest headlines in the sport for a time).

Interestingly, when interviewed by Ring Magazine for their "Best I Faced" series, the Scotsman did not give Park a nomination in a single category. Granted, having faced a pair of All Time Greats in Tommy Hearns and Michael Spinks puts a thumb on the scales but he also threw a shout to New Jersey based Puerto Rican journeyman Marvin Walker (who fought under the ring name "Mario Maldonado", and already had double digit losses when he lost a SD to pre-championship Sutherland in Atlantic City in '82) - so there is the possibility of some sour grapes toward the man who clipped his historic reign so short. Or maybe he gave genuine unbiased opinions and Maldonado really is the most overall skilled fighter he faced, above the Hitman and the Jinx, who knows. (calls to mind the controversy around Floyd Mayweather Jr. calling Emanuel Augustus his toughest match, in what many considered a disrespectful nonrecognition of José Luis Castillo).