Which great fighters fought there way up from ABSOLUTE poverty?

Dempsey came up from HARD TIMES, barenuckle coal mine fights, riding the undercarriage of a train (avoiding the nightstick of the train conductors) soaking his face in brine and not eating for days...Jersey Joe Walcott, worked to raise a family and trained in between...only trained right after Louis..Duran..George Foreman

 

Not a great, but Miranda's story must be close to the worst I've heard.

 

Dempsey, Hopkins, Frazier, Duran, Mathew Saad Muhammad, Holmes, Foreman, Graziano, Torres (?)

 

didnt Sam Peter have to shoot a friend or something when he was younger?????

 

Tommy Farr had a prety rough time of it.

Worked down the pit from a verry young age, turned profesional at 14.

 

Obviously,an infinite number.My favorite classic story is Barney Ross.He was "supposed" to become a rabbi but when his father was murdered in a holdup,resulting in the breakup of his family,he abruptly changed course.He tried to work for Al Capone,who finally told him that "the rackets is no place for a 'rabbi's kid'.Boxing brought his family back together(his mother had a nervous breakdown-other brothers and sisters went to an orphanage).'Body and Soul' with John Garfield was supposed to be about him-but Garfield didn't want to portray a 'drug addict';Ross became addicted to morphine after enlisting in the Marines in his thirties and ending up on Guadalcanal where he maybe was robbed of the Congressional Medal of Honor-and was seriously wounded and picked up malaria;anyway,he sued Hollywood and won.

 

Jack Dempsey, Howard Eastman, and Edison Miranda were all bums. Literally.

Acelino Freitas grew up in extreme poverty.

Only Dempsey out of these is really considered a "great", but still.


Freitas burst on the scene in Brazil in 1995 with a tremendously aggressive, exciting style that saw him knock out every one of his first 29 opponents, seven in world championship fights. The bouts averaged a mere 2.6 rounds. His life story only added to his growing legend. Although he had reached the top, he had started at life's very bottom, a rare escapee from extreme poverty. In his native city of El Salvador, his entire family of eight lived in one room, with Freitas sleeping on the sandy floor. In fact, Freitas did not even sleep in a bed until he was 17. So poor was the Freitas family that his mother breast-fed him until he was five because there was not enough food to go around. His fight nickname, "Popo," is a Portuguese term describing the sucking sound an infant makes nursing. Like Brazilian soccer legend Pele, Freitas is known in his country only as Popo. In fact, if you asked a Brazilian who Acelino Freitas was, most would not know. Say Popo, and eyes light up.

http://www.hbo.com/boxing/events/2006/0428_freitas_raheem/columns/crossroads.html

 

Alexis Arguello grew up from what has been described as "desperate" poverty.

 

I love Floyd, I met him lots of times , i couldn't fault the mans manners, he was so polite.. I watched a group of young guys run straight into him in a casino by accident whilst drunk.. Floyd was quite old and almost knocked over, the first thing out of his mouth was sorry fellers.. He had nothing to be sorry for.. I think you come across nice people sometimes and don't realise how lovely they are until they are gone..

 

Yeah, there was never a classier boxer or man than Floyd Patterson. Ever.

Explain?

 

Oh, also...

The ATG chinned Ben Tackie fits here.

Worked for his father fishing with nets off a boat in Africa from a VERY young age.

He still has the rituak scars his mother etched onto his face during childhoode.

Guys a hard ****ing nut.

 

Born in Buenaventura, Colombia, Miranda's childhood was marked by hard circumstances and the necessity to fend for himself at a young age. "I grew up in an area far away from the city," explains Miranda. "I worked very hard in the fields helping the people that I was given to. I had no friends and basically worked all day up to nine years old."

Miranda was orphaned at a young age, forced to find his own shelter when his mother was unable to care for him. After a sojourn across Colombia as a young boy in an effort to reunite with his mother, he found himself once again rejected by a young mother who wasn't able to provide for her son. "It hurt me very much to be rejected yet a second time, especially knowing that I had no place to sleep from that point on. Now, I accept her decision because I believe that your mother is your mother and you must forgive her for her faults."

From the age of nine, the street smart Miranda had to learn to survive on his own. "I actually learned to read from a drug dealer on the streets," reflects the 26 year old middleweight. "He told me how important it was and we started with the Bible. It was the Bible that inspired me to learn to read. To this day, I read it each night."

"I ate whatever I could find, whether it be road kill or food from the trash. I slept in parks and at construction sites covering myself with a tarp. It was very rough."

On the tough streets of Colombia, Miranda developed a canny urban mentality that enabled him to survive in adverse circumstances.

"There were several times I had fights, but not as many as one might think. For the most part I was very street smart. I tried different things than most people in the streets. I tried to build relationships so that people could take care of me and even give me jobs in order to make money. By going this route, I stayed out of fighting for the most part."





Kassim Ouma's upbringing is still the worst out of any fighter I've heard or read about.

 

Thanks, Stealer.