Anyone remember Lamar Clark, who once fought a young Cassius Clay?

He was the Peter McNeeley of the 60's a fighter that wasn't any good so his management lined up the worst fighters they could find.

 

I seem to remember that in a 1963 interview, young (then) Clay said that Clark "nearly caved my ribs in."

I see he lasted ten against Pete Rademacher.

His BoxRec bio says he left his chicken farm to seek fame and fortune as a boxer. But he took the low risk route of fighting many non-boxers and local tough guys, artificially building up his record, only to be beaten when he stepped up. He only fought four guys with winning records and he lost to three of them. Out of his 46 opponents, 27 had no previous fights. It's the kind of thing that likely impressed Joe Public but would be seen through by real boxing fans. Hope he made some money.

 

He knocked out 5 men in a single night.

Foreman tried that and failed.

Ergo greater than George.

 

Ha ha. I know that's a joke, but as a comparison all five of Foreman's opponents were legitimate pros, and three (Johnson, Daniels (barely), and Kirkman) had seen the top ten. Kirkman recently. I doubt Clark beats any of George's opponents from that night in Toronto.

 

You saw straight through me.

Clark was a sideshow, a glorified fairground fighter. But the Ring did a story about him and it was entertaining enough. His was an interesting life.

 

According to @choklab he was on par with Cleveland Williams.

 

Some of his opponents were professional wrestlers who ‘did the job’ — either taking or not taking a punch, doing a flop and taking the count, apparently.

Long-banned poster Senor Pepe’ did a thread with a lot of details (Pepe’ was an outstanding researcher and IIRC got banned for racist posts):

https://www.boxingforum24.com/threads/lamar-clark-i-hurt-cassius-clay.414864/

 

I don't know if it was for racist comments or for his general hatred/fabrication of anything related to Ali. I must admit I did love his research and extensive posts on a subject. He would put a spin on some things and sometimes get something completely wrong, but I loved his passion for digging into details. What I didn't like - and apparently neither did the mods - was his denigration of Ali. He would do it in a shaded kind of way with the hopes if he said it long enough people would believe him. How it was Jean Pierre Coopman who ruined Ali. How Ali ducked Bunny Johnson. How the Louisville people had to 'slicken' the canvas in his bout with Lamar Clark so Clark couldn't get any traction. You see where he was going? Taking the complete no-hopers (I don't mean to put down Bunny Johnson on this - he was talented - he was just too small) and just slyly saying anything demeaning about Ali in attempt to get people to draw their own conclusions that he had actually fed them. I didn't like that crap, but apart from that, I liked his efforts on other subjects.

 

LOL calling Senor Pepe an outstanding researcher. If by research you mean he made it up as he went along then yeah, he was outstanding.

 

The level of insecurity someone must have to be triggered anytime someone mentions the word ‘research’ or ‘researcher’ without kissing your ring, or anytime someone mentions a boxing author, is astounding.

 

Around the time he disappeared there were some threads (discussing Ali of course) where he veered into racist garbage.

If the mods banned him because he didn’t like Ali and/or took a shaded view of Ali stuff (some of which seemed clearly to me tongue in cheek like the Bunny Johnson thing), that’s abuse of power.

We should be allowed to like or dislike any boxer, however great, and point out things that aren’t popular with their fans. I always took a lot of his stuff with a grain of salt but he also provided more information about a lot of fights and situations that he looked into than anyone else.

 

I looked at his last dozen or so posts before being booted in 2012 (unbelievable that it is that long ago) and didn't really notice anything, but maybe I just wasn't looking hard enough. I thought it was more the fabrication of Ali 'events' by way of his hatred. I believe he came back on here under some fictitious names. Some posts I saw seemed oddly familiar, but who knows?

 

I wonder if there were some deleted posts or even a whole thread or more where he was off the rails. I remember seeing some of those posts and thinking it wouldn’t end well.

 

The opposition was similar.