Did you like Bert Sugar

Carnera was in a Pickle for sure.

 

I met him and liked him but he was like the George Burns of boxing. He had the cigar which he probably never smoked. He went with the general opinions and agreed with the odds and people liked it. Although then you have Teddy Atlas who goes with underdogs and is way off. So what am I saying. Atlas to me is a joke. Sugar was smart he made good money with his schtick.

 

Bert was okay, had a certain swag that made others jealous.

 

Yeah, I liked him...he wasn't an all knowing boxing wizard, but I liked his "schtick" alot, with the cigar, the hat, the one liners, etc.,... he's carried on with the tradition of the old time Jewish comedians that I enjoyed so much.

 

Thank you for using that word..lol...it appears in my post too.

 

I've said it before (and at least one poster, whom I highly respect, disagrees), but I thought Bert put together some fine boxing magazines. From Boxing Illustrated in the early 1970's (where pictures can be seen of Bert without his hat), to Ring in the early 1980's, to Boxing Illustrated again in the 1990's, these were magazines with a great (and pretty deep compared to other contemporary mags) mix of contemporary and historical content. Sugar brought in some excellent writers, wrote some thought-provoking opinion pieces, and assembled a good-sized committee to decide on rankings each month.

He might not be the best historian (or a historian at all) and much of his public personality may have been about self-promotion, but I think he was good for boxing and did far more good than harm.

 

Did it really? I probably unconsciously saw the schtick in your post and put it in mine. He had that cigar and way about him and he had a great personality. I never thought he was a boxing guy who studied say if Hagler's left was looping or straight for the southpaw stance or things like that. He seemed to talk fighting on the outside and he appealed to the general public.

 

Bert was good for boxing. Best at story telling and major points around the history of the game. Shaky on the fine details.

You could say he looked and acted the part as well as anyone. Partly a comedian. More of a personality than a true historian.

I liked him, but never really took him that seriously.

 

I met Bert once out in California at a WBHF event. It was hosted at the Bonaventure Hotel, which had a very cool rectangular bar in the center of the lobby where everyone congregated. I met Bert at the bar and struck up a conversation. I happened to mention something I saw on the internet and he said, "Oh, I don't own a computer." Now this was about '99 and pretty much everyone in any business had at least access to a computer. By playing dumb on the subject I lost a bit of respect for him. The schtick - a hard-drinking, cigar-chomping, fedora wearing hack at his typewriter like it was the 1930s. Please. don't insult my intelligence! Before I left - Bert was mingling with others - I yelled out to him, "Hey, Bert, I'll give you $5.00 if I can try on your hat." Oh, man, you should have seen the scowl he threw at me. I walked away very content with myself that I made it clear I wasn't buying into this and that I pissed him off. My warped sense of humor. But he brought a bit of pizzazz to the business. Or as Nat Fleischer would have said, some ballyhoo.

 

Your whole opinion about the man changed once he told you he didn’t own a computer?

 

I think he spent more time working his gimmick than anything else.

 

Nah, you beat me to it...perfect description for Sugar's repertoire. You're absolutely right about him taking a safe, generalist stance on things....he was a part of boxing's "fabric" so to speak...the colorful, "grand old" spokesman.

 

Yeah, he was colorful, and way more good than bad. Boxing needs characters like him.

 

I can believe this 100 percent. Bert did have some good segments, but he really did over do his gimmick.

 

No, of course he owned a computer. I lost a bit of respect for him for trying to play dumb and BS someone while propagating this image.