Favourite Boxing Magazines in the old days

I used to walk miles when I was a kid in the early 70's to get the latest magazines. All of them were a treat at the time.

 

I had the KO pinups of Saad, Witherspoon, Page , Leonard, Hagler, etc. on my wall. My dad was like WTF?

KO was still excellent post 1982.

Farhood, Ryan, Countis and co.

The publishers of KO took over the Ring in 1990.

 

I rememember Tony Lopez mostly talked about going out in Sacramento and trying to get laid.

 

One cool feature of KO/World Boxing/Intl. Boxing/Big Book of Boxing is they would print old feature stories written by Jimmy Cannon. That dude could really paint a picture with words.

 

Great mags. I used to love the "Dream Fight" segment in the Big Book of Boxing magazine. Foreman - Liston was particularly well written and just fascinating.

 

Those dream matches were great, I had the magazines with Monzon vs Zale, and Monzon vs Hagler.

 

They were great for sure Rich!!

 

The first boxing mag I ever bought was August 1979 — I know because I remember the cover and found it via google.

Cover story was “The Fights You Want to See,” which were:

Larry Holmes vs. Muhammad Ali

Roberto Duran vs. Jose Cuevas

Victor Galindez vs. Matthew Franklin (later Saad Muhammad)

Hugo Corro vs. Marvin Hagler

Wilfred Benitez vs. Ray Leonard

Danny Lopez vs. Wilfredo Gomez

We got three of them, although Holmes-Ali wasn’t the one we wanted (although I think any version of Holmes starting with Shavers I handles Ali and I’m not sure he doesn’t beat him prime for prime) and Duran-Cuevas would come a bit later than would have been ideal.

 

Some fine fights there and some maybe not so fine. Hagler had paid his dues by then and Corro was champ. I think most just wanted to see him get a shot at long last.

Duran - Ceuvas would have been mouth watering at that point and how ridiculous would Lopez - Gomez have been - wow.

Ali - Holmes might be the worst of them as Ali was a shell at that stage and Holmes young and peak. Ali still had the aura if not the ability.

 

At this point Ali is less than a year removed from Spinks II and hasn’t fought since. I think they just wanted one heavyweight champ.

 

Yes Ali was a shell for sure. One champ is always good, or was. It's crazy how many quality champs there were in the days of two champs in the 70's and early 80's. Benitez/Cuevas champs at the same time then SRL/Ceuvas, Duran/Ceuvas, SRL/Hearns. Chandler/Pintor, Sanchez/Pedroza, Mustafa/Saad, Spinks/Saad, Spinks/Braxton, Hearns/Duran. Staggering and some reigned for quite a while opposite each other like Chandler/Pintor and Sanchez/Pedroza.

 

That wasn't the late-80's / 90's version of Boxing Illustrated, though, right? That was the 70's / early 80's version that was just terrible, production-wise.

I don't think I ever saw Hank Kaplan's mag. Sounds like I missed something. Bert Sugar had an mag also called International Boxing Digest, later just Boxing Digest (as noted in an earlier post) between the mid or late 90's into the 2000's.

It's amazing how much the head editor influences the magazine. You see different characteristics and feature types as editors move from one publication to another.

 

You must have not been happy when Breland crashed and burned shortly thereafter

I knew Starling was underrated and wanted to watch Breland-Starling 1 but my parents made me go o the beach with them. I was 18 and didnt really want to hang out with my parents. We camped out and didnt have a TV. I heard the result that night on a transistor radio.

Yes, Olajide was overhyped.