could somebody fill me in on him ?....how good was he ?....i'm finding it hard to get any footage of him. he had a string of quick ko's over unknowns in canada (unknown to me anyway...apart from a SD over scott le doux and a quick win over rudi lubbers who ali played with years earlier) ...before losing to world class boxers......but in the losses, going 10 with jimmy young...11 with trevor berbick and 10 with tony tubbs....before he retired (but he made a comeback many years later) i'm curious about him and would like to know more.
his record on Boxrec is quite interesting, if it is entirely accurate - his first 12 opponents were debutants and not only that, they never had another fight after they faught Gord which makes me believe that these were perhaps regional "toughman" contests or something similar. I seem to remember reading that in an old Boxing News. Racette had 11 fights in 1980, all against poor opposition. It looks like Harvey Steichen, 12-9 and Roy Wallace, 23-31-2, were the best he fought. At least those guys were semi recognisable names. As for the Young fight, i cannot recall what sorta shape Jimmy was in - he had a tendency to be outta shape by this stage but i should imagine he knew far too much for the somewhat raw Canadian Lubbers was a "name" but really just a cruiserweight and never did much good outside of the Netherlands. Stopped by Berbick. A split dec. over Le Doux in Canada, pts win over Ken Arlt and a stoppage over Tom Prater are reasonable results but nothing to get too excited about......After Tubbs outpointed him Gord vanished for 6yrs and when he returned was KO'd in a round by August Tanuvasa - I should imagine it was a case of an old, inactive fighter gettin caught cold. A couple of wins in '91 led to a Canadian title fight against the very ordinary Conroy Nelson and a 2nd round stoppage defeat. One more fight - a 7th round KO loss to Adilson Rodriguez in Brazil and that was it. It seems as if Racette could fight a little but i should guess his lack of technique and no amatuer experience prevented him from going further than he did. A tough, reasonably powerful brawler who came to fight. This was fine against debutants and cans but was never gonna be against the like of Young , Berbick etc
I suggest you PM Mcvey. He provided me with a very interesting article that answers a lot of questions, back when I posted a similar thread a few years ago.
I only know his name from his fight against Jimmy Young, who, IIRC, was on a bit of a run of wins that led to the Cooney fight. I think Jimmy kind of fought his way into shape (or some semblance of it) with guys like Racette.
