RIP Ferdie Pacheco

He was a bona-fide MD with a degree from the University of Miami, where he had a practice set up - and where he met Angelo Dundee. As they say, the rest is history ...

 

He was a doctor. As a matter of fact I understand he ran a free clinic for years in a rundown Miami neighborhood until it was broken into and vandalized by the very element he was trying to help. That and walking away from the Ali camp over fears of Ali's health was the good part of Ferdie Pacheco (I read in an obit that he said he took no money from Ali, which I find hard to believe but maybe someone can shed more light on that). As for the bad, when they started calling him 'the Fight Doctor' he became noted for quickly saying a fight should be stopped or so and so should retire. For a finish he became known cynically as the 'Fright Doctor' and I understand people would shout even before a fight he was commentating on, 'Stop the fight!' It was around this time the acerbic writer Flash Gordon wrote something to the effect of, "Ferdie Pacheco is now spouting stop the fight and saying this is a mismatch, but I recall when he was helping Chris Dundee drag in every bum he could find in Havana for Dundee's Miami cards."

Personally, I thought he brought color but I didn't like his calling the near-tragic Nigel Benn - Gerald McClellan fight. When McClellan took a knee in the 10th blinking continuously, I believe Pacheco said ssomething like, "McClellan's quitting" or "he's a quitter". And before anyone knew how bad it was he tried to blow off Nigel Benn in the post fight interview. He said something like, "OK, quick, we're out of time.." when Benn grabbed the microphone and said, "Hey, this is my time."

All in all, RIP Ferdie

 

Couldn't stand him. Obviously didn't follow the sport and it seemed like he turned up to commentate purely for the cheque. Along the lines of Merchant and Jim Gray, all people who saw fighters as nothing more than cattle to be treated with contempt. The memory of him smugly slandering Joe Frazier still makes me sick.

Whatever credit he earned from leaving the Ali camp, as opposed to the spineless Angelo Dundee, was used up by year upon year of awful, BS ''work'' as a commentator.

 

A little bit harsh about someone who just passed and by accounts donated time and medical expertise to people in need on the other I have to admit that I agree with much of it. He thought he had license to speak I'll of Joe Frazier's intelligence was an irritating amalgam of arrrogance and ignorance as a commentator.

 

He also had that one line about how Simon Brown "fought like a savage."

 

Being a doctor, he knew the damage being done to certain fighters. He called for The Chacon / Boza fight to be stopped as Chacon was bleeding all over the place and taking massive flush shots. Chacon't head was stapping way back. The Doctor (Flip Hamansky) could have stopped that fight in the middle rounds but kept giving Chacon chances after saying more than once that Chacon had one more round. Pacheco said something to the effect of "We're talking about the long term health of Bobby Chacon." Amazingly, Chacon did come back to win the fight, but then suffered severe pugilista dementia later on. It wasn't like Pacheco called for every fight to be stopped. He simply could tell when a certain fighter was headed for trouble.

 

One of the adults in the Ali entourage - and in '80s and '90s boxing broadcasting - his medical training and artistic penchant made for interesting commentating.

For some reason I thought he'd passed some time ago, so I'm sadly surprised by this news. Every life is valuable. He had a long one! Condolences to his family.

Over the decades, I knew him to be knowledgeable and compassionate: his words in Hauser's book on Ali gave me insight into boxing's toll on the body, the shenanigans of Ali's Nation of Islam bogus doctor on the eve of the Holmes affair, and how Ali - with that amazing physique he was blessed with - could have lived to 100 and not 74, but for Parkinson's syndrome.

As a kid, the night Spinks shocked Ali, I remember hearing a compassionate voice crying out on the telecast, "My heart bleeds for Ali". It was Pacheco, no longer part of the team, but ringside suffering along with the Champ as he fruitlessly tried to hold off the brimming, youthful tiger that would minutes later take his title. It was Pacheco - with Dundee - who saw what was unfolding in Jamaica in '73 as Foreman was beating Frazier to death and nobody - not Joe's blind and deaf corner, not the theatrical but overrated Mercante - and frantically screamed and waved from ringside for the fight to be stopped. It was Pacheco who tearfully - like in a classic Catholic ecstasy painting - hugged a victorious Ali as Futch called it a loss for Frazier in Manila, showing much more humanity then and always than leeches like Bundini and so many others.

In his commentating, I sometimes felt he perhaps overemphasized corners, but time has made me realize he was right. A different corner might have bailed out Tyson in Tokyo, or given Taylor his victory over Chavez.

He had a cool moniker in "the Fight Doctor". Yet another leaf falls from the Ali tree as time marches on. But Ali was the real deal. He put together a real team, and Pacheco was a leading light in its midst.

 

Forgot the Benn-McClellan moment. It's true Pacheco called G-Man a quitter, but then such a medical event in the ring does not happen every day. I trust trainers and old boxing hands of integrity much more than your typical ringside doctor to know what is happening in the ring as regards a boxer's condition.

 

Pacheco was an *******.

 

nat fleischer said the same things about johnson and siki.

 

Didnt like him at all. Rude ..condescending ect. But still RIP