I was reading that it was the best fight in the history of Philly's Blue Horizon...Just curious. Sounds like some fight.
Well...that was back in 2008. Nowadays I kinda wonder what Kitten Hayward/Freddie Little looked like.....?
kitten got a bad cut over his eye and took no chances after that. he basically shut down trying to win and little won easily. kitten even admits this. i had the pleasure of speaking to him once and he is a really fascinating guy with a lot of great stories. his mentor was gil turner who he idolized.
Cool..Thanks for the info...Yeah! They had the same manager. I always appreciated Kitten's style. Just a side note, Stable got the decision in his fight with Hayward, but I think Kitten put alot of mileage on Jose in that fight. Did Hayward mention his fights with Briscoe or Griffith when you had a chance to speak with him?
Oh yeah we talked a lot about Griffith and Briscoe. He had a lot of respect for Griffith. Said he was the nicest guy in boxing and a great great fighter. He took nothing away from Griffith except to say that when they fought in New York he drove from Philly to New York in a Cadillac convertible with the top down all the way and caught a cold as a result and that affected his performance. He and Briscoe were friends and he told me some personal stuff about Briscoe that blew my mind and changed the way I look at the guy. I wont get into any of that here though. As for their fights he thought he beat Briscoe both times but admitted that the first fight Briscoe busted him up bad in the last couple of rounds even though he beat Briscoe. The second fight went to Briscoe and he thought he won it, I saw it but I didnt really score it closely. I dont remember it being controversial but it wasnt a one sided fight for Briscoe either. He was a total player, really flashy, and was pretty worldly too. When he was in Europe he had a girlfriend who attended the Sarbonne. But despite his outwardly flashy style he was a really soft spoken polite guy. Not a loud mouth or anything. I saw his fight with Monroe and he got dominated, sliced up real bad and stopped. He just could not deal with Monroe's height advantage. I asked him about this and he admitted he never wanted to fight Monroe but was kind of pressured into it. He just couldnt deal with Monroe's height and reach. The fight he wanted most in his entire career was a rematch with Eugene Hart. He got stopped in 1 by Hart and was determined to prove he could beat him but just couldnt get the match. Ive seen his fights with DiBennedeto and Bouttier also and he was robbed in those. He dropped Bouttier and they didnt even call it a knockdown. It was as clean a knockdown as you could score. Like I said, really interesting guy and a really interesting fighting style. Real colorful. I cant get enough of the 1970s Philly middleweights.
Thanks for the info!...Real good stuff. Being able to speak with a fighter like that, opens up a whole new insight(s)...Very cool.
