Fighters With Tragic /Sad Ends?

Here's another one...

This content is protected

 

Duk Koo Kim.
After his death (aftermath of the Mancini fight), as if this wasn't tragic enough, Kim's mother committed suicide, as did the referee of the bout. Truly awful.

 

Sometimes it feels like it's rarer to hear about those boxers who were left well and having got something from the industry. Danny Williams springs to mind as an ongoing case.

 

Agree Dannys story is not likely to end well, but only ones who can stop him fighting are the boxing authorities.

It is a pity Danny could not retire having had a ok career, had fought for the world title, had been British and Commonwealth Champion, known for ko'ing Pottter even after dislocating his shoulder, and of course had KO win over Mike Tyson, them are some decent memories to have, but alas Danny is risking losing those and possibly more by fighting on in backwaters like Estonia and Albania.

 

There was a French heavyweight named Andre Lenglet whom I read about years ago in an old World Boxing magazine. I believe the author used a fair amount of literary license with the piece, but what he said was there was a chance meeting in a Parisian Cafe during WWII between Georges Carpentier and Lenglet. Carpentier started a conversation going on boxing and said he could get him started again in the U.S. because he still had all kinds of contacts there. According to the piece, Carpentier was persistent but Lenglet said it was impossible and then got up and hobbled off on a wooden leg. It ended the piece with the dramatic line, "Another casualty of WWII."

That much is tragic, but I delved deep when I saw in boxrec that Lenglet was charged as a collaborator during the war. What I found was he began the war serving in some French resistance and in 1940 he lost the toes on one foot (don't know how he lost them but there was no wooden leg). He tried to have another fight but it said his balance without the toes was gone. The next thing I found was Lenglet heading up some volunteer force of some kind that had collaborator written all over it, as well as serving as a bodyguard for an editor of some pro-nazi paper. He was arrested in 1944 and tried in early 1945 to 5 years hard labor. I can't find anything on his death but boxrec says he dies in late '45. It's up to the individual to determine if what befell him was tragic or deserving. But I did find the story interesting and I'm still curious what happened to him.

 

One of the best documentaries I’ve ever seen.