Who Was Your 'must see' Fighter Growing Up?

Yes !!!!

 

Rudi Lubbers

 

Easily, Oscar De La Hoya. His star power was in a league all its own.

 

I started watching and reading about pro sports in 1957, and my must-see guys were: Duke Snider, baseball; George Yardley, NBA basketball, Jim Brown, NFL football and Floyd Patterson.
I lived and died with Floyd.

 

Luis Ortiz in 1914 would pay a nickel for a ringside seat to see him in action

 

John L Sullivan, ah the memories

 

My childhood and teens - Muhammad Ali
My twenties - Ali and Marvin Hagler

 

Fury.

 

Juan Manuel Marquez

 

I'm sure we all had our heroes from our youth. I was fortunate to be able to watch weekly shows from California on the old 'Boxing from the Olympic' and the 'Boxing from the Forum' telecasts, so oddly, I embraced west coast fighters as this is who I was watching week in and wek out. When I started picking up magazines I could then relate far more. But I was enamored watching Bobby Chacon, Danny Lopez, Rodolfo Gonzalez, Windmill White, Art Hafey, Mike Nixon and my favorite, Armando Muniz. Guys, I would get positively giddy before a Muniz fight. I mean I would be nervously pacing with the fight going through my mind. I would like to feel that again, but the way fighters fight today - once a year - its hard to get enamored over anything.

 

I should also add that years ago I had a friend/co-worker who was also into the sport, so we had a daily ongoing conversation on boxing going. It was fantastic. Anyways, he was quite a bit older growing up in the 50s and his favorite was Carmen Basilio. He would have been in his early teens when Basilio was fighting Robinson and he used to laugh how he was so into Basilio that the day of his fights he would be asking his Dad, "Dad, what do you think Basilio is doing right now?" Ahh, man, youthful exuberance on your favorite fighter. Nothing like it.

 

As a kid (teen etc) Roy and James Toney.

Hagler is what started me really watching boxing but he was retired by the time I really began my journey of loving boxing. Roy and James Toney were the two guys who my eyes stayed on. Then probably Sweet Pea after them.