Fighters who were scum

Most of his documented life? Put it this way, would you look at his rap sheet so kindly were he a nobody? I mean we’re all guilty of this to some extent, but let’s not go crazy - Liston was not a desirable person in a civilised society.

Many Boxers aren’t, mind.

 

Granted, Liston had a much more excusable reason to be a career-criminal than someone like myself would. & I do factor that in. I’d give myself a harsher prison sentence than I would Liston for the same crimes. But there is a level at which point personal obstacles meet personal responsibility. Any child knows right from wrong, so an adult, however hard their life, must be held to account on these principles.

 

Larry arguably had the best jab ever and unquestionably the best two-footed jump kick off a car

 

So let's go to the opposite extreme of easily naming scum for the far simpler challenge. Who were the very best people of HOF Champions?

Max Schmeling has to be the patron saint of all competitive pugilistic greats of course. I don't know that he can ever be approached. (Yet it might be noted that Max mentored the Klitschkos, and Vitali's currently the wartime mayor of Kyiv, ready to die for the cause.)

Second on the list might be Barney Ross.

Okay everybody, go!

 

Maybe we should draw a distinction between scumbags and the clinically insane. Tyson hilariously lampooned how crazy Green is during a Ted Talk. That dude's completely nuts!

 

He’s hilarious

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He refused Hitler's entreaties to divorce Anny Ondra, instead remaining married to her until her 1987 death. Instead, Eva Braun actually noted jealously in her private diary that her boyfriend Adolf "buys flowers for Ondra."

Max NEVER spoke a word about saving anybody from the Nazis. Later in life, they actually came forward to reveal that he risked his own life to protect them, so that's what he was recognized for when he himself died at 99. Indeed, we'll never know about other good deeds he always forever kept secret.

Even during the buildup to his rematch with Louis, he remained very public friends with former conquest Mickey Walker.

Came back from the Louis rematch a year later to one punch the rugged Adolf Heuser before 70,000 Germans in a televised match, showing that he had a great deal left. Take away the Nazis and WW II, a rubber match between Schmeling and Louis would've been plausible. (Max wouldn't have been blasted away within a round again, and the Bomber would've had to prove he could deal with Schmeling's counter right.) He had a style which aged well, and the time line fits for Burley to have begun boxing by lifting his stance and conservative counter punching from Max.

While never a Nazi, he nonetheless remained a patriotic German who was grievously wounded as a paratrooper during the Pyrrhic victory at Crete. Despite these wounds, he somehow generated a successful enough three fight postwar comeback to purchase the German rights to Coca Cola, and parlayed that into wild business success. Among the few prominent German WW II veterans Germans could feel good about and proud of.

In 1981, he actually financed the funeral of Louis. This was a truly great man, in reality what Ali was only in mythology.

 

Well over a decade ago, Holmes had a standing invitation on YouTube for everybody to just hang out with him at his office in Easton. My chiropractor has a photograph in his adjustment room of Larry shaking his hand on the streets of Easton when Holmes was Champion. Bitter to the press, he's personable and friendly with regular people who meet him.

Tyson himself is also well liked in person.

The nasty people seem to be Foreman and Holyfield. Reportedly, Evander acts as if he's got perpetual 'roid rage (or is on the rag). George as a person is reported to be a total contrast to his modern public persona as a friendly pitchman. Apparently, the spectators who never cheered for him during the 1970's got it right.

MMH was always a great guy to us countless New Englanders who met and knew him from the 1970's onward. (Marciano, by contrast, had an edge and temper. Once, he whacked a guy with his left when that dude didn't repay a small debt in time, fracturing his jaw, as recounted in Biography of a First Son. Marv was very gentle, and remarkably outgoing. Yes, he was a black champion in a white city, but New Jersey had been hell for he and his family. He was sometimes the only World Champion this sports obsessed region had.)