bert sugar

he overrates the ****ng hell out of the fighters from his 1830's era. :yep

 

2 beautiful books and along with "100Years of Boxing" a great trio. And I mean beautiful books. The way they are laid out and made just like his 79-84 years at The Ring. The 206 book greatest fighters has no pictures and the real order he wanted was in 1984.
He sold out for money but still made 3 great books for fans in The Great Fights. 100 Greatest Boxers of All Time and 100 Years of Boxing. Beautifully laid out and written books. Hard covers and 14 by 10 inches all.

 

The thing for me is that he helped promote interest and hype in boxing. The more throwing stories out there and remembering the past fighters and bouts the better. His lists are nothing special to say the least but that's neither here nor there really. If anything they promote debate and thought.

 

Like Nat Fleischer, he was a promoter of boxing. Without promoters, both literary and financial, there would be no boxing. In oh so many ways, the promoters are more important than the fighters.

 

His heart was in the right place. Not sure about his mind.

 

Two things about him:
#1. He is a walking encyclopedia
#2. He is pretty biased about who he likes/dislikes.

Similar to my granddad RIP. He knew everything about every horse, tracks they prefer to run on, the jock...then outta nowhere he picks some old stank azz mule of horse to win.
I learned to -learn about horses from my Gpa, but not which ones to bet on.
Same with Bert!

I've talked with him @ Rocky Gazi's pub like so many fans,listening while he puffed on his cigar telling..amazing tales.

But!! If someone asks him whose gonna win next week, that is when I made my way to Grazi to get another drink. See ya Bert! Aint trying to lose my $$$.

 

I used to get aggravated with Sugar, but then I stopped with that foolishness. All that stuff,..the chewed/unlit cigar, the fedora, the wisecracks, etc.,....were all just his schtick...part of his personae...and it all worked to make Sugar instantly recognizable in a show-bizzy sort of way...and he helped promote main stream recognition for boxing...by glossing on the folklore and legends of boxing past...giving the sport some badly needed publicity besides that of the thuggish variety. Sugar was a much needed, albeit eccentric, colorful fixture in the realm of Fistiana IMHO....

 

His list sucks and he made his name telling other peoples stories. Anytime he was on a talk show with fighters he would constantly interrupt them to hear himself rehash an old well known story. I give him no accolades

 

That was the real problem... the stories that he told and acted as tho they were revelations were just run-of-the-mill recitations that any casual historian knows backwards and forward.

 

Exactly

 

This

 

And I actually understand and agree with that aspect, too. Two things can be true at once. But he is not for me... or for anybody who follows the sport with any depth. He is the gatekeeper for the casuals.

 

Great for entertainment and had knowledge of the old timers but he overrated them to a ridiculous level many of those fighters he had never watched himself and whom no footage exists. Bert was the kind of guy who would rank a contender from the 1920's that never won a world title over Sugar Ray Leonard or a bareknuckle construction worker from the 1880's over Floyd Mayweather.