What great rivalries between natives of the same city or state can you think of? And what are your favourites? I’ve excluded NYC, Philly and LA just to streamline things a bit.
I wouldn’t say it was necessarily a great rivalry so much as a great matchup, but JM Márquez vs. MA Barrera are both from Mexico City (very different upbringings). Barrera’s main rival was Erik Morales (Tijuana). Michael Watson, Nigel Benn, and Chris Eubank are from the London area I think. I can’t really think of too many outside of those major US cities named above. It’s not very often world class boxers come from the same city at the same time and compete in the same division.
Sacramento had a vibrant scene in the 1970s/80s, centered in large part around Pete Ranzany. He fought Sal Lopez, who was born in Sacramento and was a sometimes headliner there but resided in LA. In fact, there was a pretty good pipeline of LA fighters who came upstate to fight Pete. Ranzany also fought Babilah McCarthy, from Stockton, a couple of times. As for guys from the same area fighting each other Simon Brown lived in the Washington DC area and fought local guy Maurice Blocker. They worked out at the same gym, iirc, at least at some point in their careers, and were very familiar.
I’ll take anyone on this forum mistaking me for @scartissue as quite the compliment, haha. Here’s a Washington Post column detailing Brown and Blocker’s background and friendship. https://www.washingtonpost.com/arch...a-fight/c098d876-3de4-48fe-8f3f-4f760612b172/
****, sorry @Saintpat! I posted that early this morning and was clearly still half asleep. But I didn’t make a mistake about the knowledge.
