Classic American West Coast Boxing

[Boxingnut]

Here is an interesting, if depressing, article about matchmaking from Boxing Monthly that I thought I would share with you guys as the Olympic and Don Chargin get a mention

THE DYING ART OF MATCHMAKING BY RON BORGES

Don Chargin remembers when he'd arrive at his office inside the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles on a Monday morning 25 or 30 years ago and there would be two lines of managers and trainers waiting outside his door. Every one of them was there in the hope that the top matchmaker would have a fight for his fighter. They weren't there to argue about the toughness of the opponent.
"I'd make fights for three or four weeks in advance," the Hall of Fame promoter and matchmaker recalled. "Nobody would say, 'He's too tough' or 'He's a southpaw.'

Fast forward in time and listen to a true tale from veteran Carl Moretti. "On average, you have to deal with four different people who are in the ear of a fighter these days," he says. "Every one of them can make or break a fight. I had a guy representing a world champion recently tell me his fighter wasn't going to accept an
opponent for a championship fight because of the colour of the other guy's gloves. He said the TV lights would reflect off the gloves and it could blind his fighter. What do you say to that?"
In Chargin's day at the Olympic, you would have said "Goodbye", but that was before the slow demise of prize fighting as a major sport in America and the consequent rise of celebrity matches in which a fighter gets a title shot more because the cable network televising the fight feels the public will know his name and his story than because of anything he's accomplished in the ring.
The products of The Contender series, the reality-TV show that is preparing for its fourth season on U.S. TV, have been the clearest recent example of this. Did Alfonso Gomez belong in the same area code, let alone the same ring, as Miguel Cotto? Did Peter Manfredo Jr earn the shot he was given against Joe Calzaghe by beating any Top 10 fighters? Will Sergio Mora, who won the first Contender by outpointing Manfredo, belong in the same ring with two-time world champion Vernon Forrest when they meet on 7 June.
The answer to those questions is an obvious and emphatic no. So why are these kind of fights being made? Because boxing has become a place where too many title fights are based on celebrity rather than ability and too many matches in the early stages of a fighter's career are made not to teach a fighter his trade but to protect his record because the risk of a loss is too great.
The day when a fighter like Freddie Pendleton wins a world title with a record of 32-17-4, as he did the night he outpointed Tracy Spann to win the 11317 lightweight championship in 1993, are over it seems because there is so much emphasis on being undefeated.
"The matchmaker has no control today," says New York-based matchmaker Mike Marchionte. "Guys like Don Chargin were real matchmakers. Half of the time today, matchmakers, including me, aren't making matches. We're making fights to protect one guy or the other. You don't feel as much like a matchmaker as you do a
fight organiser or a salesman. You put a guy in a tough fight today and you get reamed by his promoter."
In 1976, things were different. Marvin Hagler was a young prospect on the rise when he went to Philadelphia and lost decisions to Bobby "Boogaloo" Watts and Willie "The Worm" Monroe to drop his record to 26-2-1. Four years later, he began a Hall of Fame reign as middleweight champion that would last seven years. J. Russell Peltz promoted those Hagler losses at the Spectrum in Philadelphia and considers Hagler one of the greatest middleweights of all time. Yet he doubts he would have ever been heard from again if he lost twice in that fashion now.
"If that happened to a tough, black southpaw today," says Peltz, disgust lacing his voice, "he'd be fighting in Portland, Maine. He'd never get back on television. That's why you wouldn't make those kinds of fights today. You wouldn't want to take the risk and the
networks wouldn't ask you to. It's all about the story or the record today but, even with the story, they want the [undefeated] record.
"Once a fighter gets into the Top 10 now, that's the end of competitive boxing. The promoters know there are so many champions that, if you get your fighter ranked, he gets a title shot by attrition if you can just keep him in the Top 10. There's no having to fight the No. 6 guy and then the No. 4 guy to become the No. 1 guy. You just sit, collect wins and wait.
"It used to be a big deal to be a contender. You could walk down the street with your head high. If a guy got one title shot in his career it was a big deal. If you got one, you were fortunate because there was only one champion and so many more fighters around than today.
"You could develop a fighter like Buster Drayton or Freddie Pendleton then, too. Those guys lost some fights but they became good fighters and people knew they could fight so their record didn't matter. Eventually they became world champions. They'd never get a chance at a big fight [today] because some TV executive would see eight losses or 10 losses and say: 'This guy can't fight.' If you're 17-4 today, you're a bum. They have no idea.
"I tell young fighters today about Bennie Briscoe [a Philadelphia legend who never won a world title] and they ask what his record was. I tell them 66-24-5 [and] they say: 'He couldn't fight.'
"The way you make matches today retards the development of young fighters. Most of the time it feels like you are just delivering bodies. It hasn't been about ability for a while but they've all bought into the system. You put your guy in ill-prepared but he's probably facing a guy who came up the same way so it's an even fight.
"There's no resemblance today to the sport I fell in love with as a kid. The only thing that's the same is they still wear gloves."
One thing that isn't the same is the depth of talent or how it is developed, so you end up with Mora (20-0) challenging WBC light-middleweight champion Vernon Forrest this month on the back of wins over Archak TerMeliksetian, Elvin Ayala and Rito Ruvalcaba.
"I've been a matchmaker for 21 years and the last five or six years have definitely been more difficult," admits Moretti, who made matches for Main Events for years when their stable included Meldrick Taylor, Evander Holyfield, Pernell Whitaker and later Lennox Lewis before moving to become vice-president and match-maker for ex-HBO executive Lou DiBella's promotional company.
"You don't have the freedom today to build a fighter to the point where you know he can fight. You're pushed to get him a good record and then you're pushed to put him on HBO or SHOWTIME because that's the only place there's real money any more.
"No one is patient enough to let a guy really develop. It costs too much and there's too much risk because, if he loses three or four times along the way, he's done. Feltz was the best matchmaker in boxing but he can't do it today like he did it at the Blue Horizon.
"Today there aren't as many fighters out there so you recycle names like [Ricardo] Mayorga or you get celebrity matches like Roy Jones vs Felix Trinidad on pay-per-view. Even though boxing people know neither guy is what he was, the public doesn't know and a lot of times the people buying the fight don't, either.
"There used to be a middle class in boxing. Good fighters fighting good fighters in places where they could make a living. The middle class is gone. In the early 1980s, the Top 15 in most divisions was a hell of a division. There was depth of talent. Now we matchmake within the restraints of the day."
One of those restraints is an obsessive focus on perfect records.
"I think in days gone by a big part of matchmaking was helping a fighter improve and finding out what he was made of," says long¬time HBO analyst Larry Merchant. "Today's [matchmaking] seems more designed to build a resume. The matchmaker and the trainer say: 'The guy can learn to fight in the gym.' That's because the unbeaten record today is a marketing device. In the old days, if a guy was undefeated the question was, has he been protected? Today, fans are less sophisticated. They see an undefeated record and think: 'This is a guy I need to watch.' He may be. But he also may not be but we're in a statistics-oriented era.
"They're reluctant to take any chances with a young prospect because defeat is seen as a serious, serious obstacle in his career. That affects matchmaking."
"I've been matchmaking for over 60 years," says the 80-year-old Chargin. "It used to be about making the best match. Now it's about wins. It doesn't matter over whom. At the Olympic [where he was the matchmaker from 1964 to 1984], you had to be head and shoulders over everybody to be undefeated. We worked to put guys in tough fights. Now if a guy loses a couple fights, people write him off so you can't do it that way.
"Look at [Naseem] Hamed. He takes a licking from [Marco Antonio] Barrera and that's it. Now we'll have to see what happens with [Ricky] Hatton. He's fortunate he has that backing in England where he can lose one fight to someone like [Floyd] Mayweather and come back and be just as popular. If a U.S. fighter got flattened, you disappear. There's just too much emphasis today on wins.
"Look at those great, tough fighters like Tony Zale and Carmen Basilio. They all had a lot of loses because they were in so many competitive fights. They could lose and be headlining the next month. That's all changed. If you were making matches like that today, you'd be run out of business."
One of the game's best matchmakers is Top Rank's Bruce Trampler, bringing along fighters like De La Hoya, Mayweather, Cotto and many others, adjusting along the way to changes in the business side of boxing while trying to adhere to the trade he first learnt from Chris Dundee in Miami and Teddy Brenner in New York. Doing the latter hasn't been easy. You had more fighters in the 1960s, '70s and '80s and better fighters for the most part," Trampler says. "In the '40s, '50s and '60s, they rarely even put a guy's record on the fight poster. They put who he'd fought. That showed his level of competition. Records started getting built in the '80s and '90s.
"The armchair fan today turns on the TV and sees a guy with a number of losses and they think he's not capable. So the emphasis on what's meaningful has changed. Teddy Brenner used to say to me: 'Show me a guy who's undefeated and I'll show you a guy who can't fight.' He felt he had to have been protected because there were too many tough guys around. Today, there's less of that and more emphasis on the record rather than on whom you've fought.
"There also aren't many real managers today. The promoter, and in some cases the network, really serve as the manager. That dynamic inhibits a lot of the matchmaking. A guy is with another promoter so they're not looking for a tough fight. They're looking to get a title shot on HBO the same as we are, so you can't make a competitive match. Back when we were making that series of fights with Hagler, Leonard, Hearns and Duran, you could do it. Today, they'd each have their own promoter and it would be nearly impossible. Very few managers are independent today. They look for an alliance with a promoter because they feel, if the promoter has money invested in their kid, he'll take better care of him."
"These days, everything is tied to marketing," Merchant says. "You can't just have a fight — it has to be an event, even if it isn't an event. I remember the promoter Cedric Kushner once told me he could sell foreign TV rights for a fight to the Netherlands for $5,000 or $10,000 more if someone called it a championship fight. Even better if the challenger is undefeated.
"Sanctioning bodies today move guys up based on their record more than on whom they've fought. In the old days, guys had to prove themselves in smaller venues. Now, being undefeated has become part of the mantra."
And so they avoid it for as long as they can and the public pays the price until the night the ill-prepared opponent in an unwarranted title fight pays as well while frustrated matchmakers sit in the back of the hall dreaming of days gone by when two lines of managers would wait in front of an office door just for the chance to say yes to whatever tough opponent they were offered.
"Those were great days to be a matchmaker," Chargin says, "but they're gone."

[Boxingnut]

I know Mando had a lot of friends who post on here so i would just like to say to you all.
I was so sad to hear of his passing away the other day. Of course i did not know Mando personally but i felt i knew him a little if only in my heart because of guys like you who had told me so many wonderful story's about him and the exciting and colourful fighter he was.

I offer from the bottom of my hear my deepest condolences to his wife Sylvia and his family and friends. When ever i think of Mando now a song keeps creeping into my head, i think it sums the little champion up so well and could have been wrote just for him. GOD BLESS YOU CHAMP



And now, the end is here
And so I face the final curtain
My friend, I'll say it clear
I'll state my case, of which I'm certain
I've lived a life that's full
I travelled each and ev'ry highway
And more, much more than this, I did it my way

Regrets, I've had a few
But then again, too few to mention
I did what I had to do and saw it through without exemption
I planned each charted course, each careful step along the byway
And more, much more than this, I did it my way

Yes, there were times, I'm sure you knew
When I bit off more than I could chew
But through it all, when there was doubt
I ate it up and spit it out
I faced it all and I stood tall and did it my way

I've loved, I've laughed and cried
I've had my fill, my share of losing
And now, as tears subside, I find it all so amusing
To think I did all that
And may I say, not in a shy way,
"Oh, no, oh, no, not me, I did it my way"

For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught
To say the things he truly feels and not the words of one who kneels
The record shows I took the blows and did it my way!

Yes, it was my way

Very well put. Hello Danny, welcome aboard!! Always room for one more old fart here!!

Regards

Rob

[bennie]

Here is an interesting, if depressing, article about matchmaking from Boxing Monthly that I thought I would share with you guys as the Olympic and Don Chargin get a mention

THE DYING ART OF MATCHMAKING BY RON BORGES

Don Chargin remembers when he'd arrive at his office inside the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles on a Monday morning 25 or 30 years ago and there would be two lines of managers and trainers waiting outside his door. Every one of them was there in the hope that the top matchmaker would have a fight for his fighter. They weren't there to argue about the toughness of the opponent.
"I'd make fights for three or four weeks in advance," the Hall of Fame promoter and matchmaker recalled. "Nobody would say, 'He's too tough' or 'He's a southpaw.'

Fast forward in time and listen to a true tale from veteran Carl Moretti. "On average, you have to deal with four different people who are in the ear of a fighter these days," he says. "Every one of them can make or break a fight. I had a guy representing a world champion recently tell me his fighter wasn't going to accept an
opponent for a championship fight because of the colour of the other guy's gloves. He said the TV lights would reflect off the gloves and it could blind his fighter. What do you say to that?"
In Chargin's day at the Olympic, you would have said "Goodbye", but that was before the slow demise of prize fighting as a major sport in America and the consequent rise of celebrity matches in which a fighter gets a title shot more because the cable network televising the fight feels the public will know his name and his story than because of anything he's accomplished in the ring.
The products of The Contender series, the reality-TV show that is preparing for its fourth season on U.S. TV, have been the clearest recent example of this. Did Alfonso Gomez belong in the same area code, let alone the same ring, as Miguel Cotto? Did Peter Manfredo Jr earn the shot he was given against Joe Calzaghe by beating any Top 10 fighters? Will Sergio Mora, who won the first Contender by outpointing Manfredo, belong in the same ring with two-time world champion Vernon Forrest when they meet on 7 June.
The answer to those questions is an obvious and emphatic no. So why are these kind of fights being made? Because boxing has become a place where too many title fights are based on celebrity rather than ability and too many matches in the early stages of a fighter's career are made not to teach a fighter his trade but to protect his record because the risk of a loss is too great.
The day when a fighter like Freddie Pendleton wins a world title with a record of 32-17-4, as he did the night he outpointed Tracy Spann to win the 11317 lightweight championship in 1993, are over it seems because there is so much emphasis on being undefeated.
"The matchmaker has no control today," says New York-based matchmaker Mike Marchionte. "Guys like Don Chargin were real matchmakers. Half of the time today, matchmakers, including me, aren't making matches. We're making fights to protect one guy or the other. You don't feel as much like a matchmaker as you do a
fight organiser or a salesman. You put a guy in a tough fight today and you get reamed by his promoter."
In 1976, things were different. Marvin Hagler was a young prospect on the rise when he went to Philadelphia and lost decisions to Bobby "Boogaloo" Watts and Willie "The Worm" Monroe to drop his record to 26-2-1. Four years later, he began a Hall of Fame reign as middleweight champion that would last seven years. J. Russell Peltz promoted those Hagler losses at the Spectrum in Philadelphia and considers Hagler one of the greatest middleweights of all time. Yet he doubts he would have ever been heard from again if he lost twice in that fashion now.
"If that happened to a tough, black southpaw today," says Peltz, disgust lacing his voice, "he'd be fighting in Portland, Maine. He'd never get back on television. That's why you wouldn't make those kinds of fights today. You wouldn't want to take the risk and the
networks wouldn't ask you to. It's all about the story or the record today but, even with the story, they want the [undefeated] record.
"Once a fighter gets into the Top 10 now, that's the end of competitive boxing. The promoters know there are so many champions that, if you get your fighter ranked, he gets a title shot by attrition if you can just keep him in the Top 10. There's no having to fight the No. 6 guy and then the No. 4 guy to become the No. 1 guy. You just sit, collect wins and wait.
"It used to be a big deal to be a contender. You could walk down the street with your head high. If a guy got one title shot in his career it was a big deal. If you got one, you were fortunate because there was only one champion and so many more fighters around than today.
"You could develop a fighter like Buster Drayton or Freddie Pendleton then, too. Those guys lost some fights but they became good fighters and people knew they could fight so their record didn't matter. Eventually they became world champions. They'd never get a chance at a big fight [today] because some TV executive would see eight losses or 10 losses and say: 'This guy can't fight.' If you're 17-4 today, you're a bum. They have no idea.
"I tell young fighters today about Bennie Briscoe [a Philadelphia legend who never won a world title] and they ask what his record was. I tell them 66-24-5 [and] they say: 'He couldn't fight.'
"The way you make matches today retards the development of young fighters. Most of the time it feels like you are just delivering bodies. It hasn't been about ability for a while but they've all bought into the system. You put your guy in ill-prepared but he's probably facing a guy who came up the same way so it's an even fight.
"There's no resemblance today to the sport I fell in love with as a kid. The only thing that's the same is they still wear gloves."
One thing that isn't the same is the depth of talent or how it is developed, so you end up with Mora (20-0) challenging WBC light-middleweight champion Vernon Forrest this month on the back of wins over Archak TerMeliksetian, Elvin Ayala and Rito Ruvalcaba.
"I've been a matchmaker for 21 years and the last five or six years have definitely been more difficult," admits Moretti, who made matches for Main Events for years when their stable included Meldrick Taylor, Evander Holyfield, Pernell Whitaker and later Lennox Lewis before moving to become vice-president and match-maker for ex-HBO executive Lou DiBella's promotional company.
"You don't have the freedom today to build a fighter to the point where you know he can fight. You're pushed to get him a good record and then you're pushed to put him on HBO or SHOWTIME because that's the only place there's real money any more.
"No one is patient enough to let a guy really develop. It costs too much and there's too much risk because, if he loses three or four times along the way, he's done. Feltz was the best matchmaker in boxing but he can't do it today like he did it at the Blue Horizon.
"Today there aren't as many fighters out there so you recycle names like [Ricardo] Mayorga or you get celebrity matches like Roy Jones vs Felix Trinidad on pay-per-view. Even though boxing people know neither guy is what he was, the public doesn't know and a lot of times the people buying the fight don't, either.
"There used to be a middle class in boxing. Good fighters fighting good fighters in places where they could make a living. The middle class is gone. In the early 1980s, the Top 15 in most divisions was a hell of a division. There was depth of talent. Now we matchmake within the restraints of the day."
One of those restraints is an obsessive focus on perfect records.
"I think in days gone by a big part of matchmaking was helping a fighter improve and finding out what he was made of," says long¬time HBO analyst Larry Merchant. "Today's [matchmaking] seems more designed to build a resume. The matchmaker and the trainer say: 'The guy can learn to fight in the gym.' That's because the unbeaten record today is a marketing device. In the old days, if a guy was undefeated the question was, has he been protected? Today, fans are less sophisticated. They see an undefeated record and think: 'This is a guy I need to watch.' He may be. But he also may not be but we're in a statistics-oriented era.
"They're reluctant to take any chances with a young prospect because defeat is seen as a serious, serious obstacle in his career. That affects matchmaking."
"I've been matchmaking for over 60 years," says the 80-year-old Chargin. "It used to be about making the best match. Now it's about wins. It doesn't matter over whom. At the Olympic [where he was the matchmaker from 1964 to 1984], you had to be head and shoulders over everybody to be undefeated. We worked to put guys in tough fights. Now if a guy loses a couple fights, people write him off so you can't do it that way.
"Look at [Naseem] Hamed. He takes a licking from [Marco Antonio] Barrera and that's it. Now we'll have to see what happens with [Ricky] Hatton. He's fortunate he has that backing in England where he can lose one fight to someone like [Floyd] Mayweather and come back and be just as popular. If a U.S. fighter got flattened, you disappear. There's just too much emphasis today on wins.
"Look at those great, tough fighters like Tony Zale and Carmen Basilio. They all had a lot of loses because they were in so many competitive fights. They could lose and be headlining the next month. That's all changed. If you were making matches like that today, you'd be run out of business."
One of the game's best matchmakers is Top Rank's Bruce Trampler, bringing along fighters like De La Hoya, Mayweather, Cotto and many others, adjusting along the way to changes in the business side of boxing while trying to adhere to the trade he first learnt from Chris Dundee in Miami and Teddy Brenner in New York. Doing the latter hasn't been easy. You had more fighters in the 1960s, '70s and '80s and better fighters for the most part," Trampler says. "In the '40s, '50s and '60s, they rarely even put a guy's record on the fight poster. They put who he'd fought. That showed his level of competition. Records started getting built in the '80s and '90s.
"The armchair fan today turns on the TV and sees a guy with a number of losses and they think he's not capable. So the emphasis on what's meaningful has changed. Teddy Brenner used to say to me: 'Show me a guy who's undefeated and I'll show you a guy who can't fight.' He felt he had to have been protected because there were too many tough guys around. Today, there's less of that and more emphasis on the record rather than on whom you've fought.
"There also aren't many real managers today. The promoter, and in some cases the network, really serve as the manager. That dynamic inhibits a lot of the matchmaking. A guy is with another promoter so they're not looking for a tough fight. They're looking to get a title shot on HBO the same as we are, so you can't make a competitive match. Back when we were making that series of fights with Hagler, Leonard, Hearns and Duran, you could do it. Today, they'd each have their own promoter and it would be nearly impossible. Very few managers are independent today. They look for an alliance with a promoter because they feel, if the promoter has money invested in their kid, he'll take better care of him."
"These days, everything is tied to marketing," Merchant says. "You can't just have a fight — it has to be an event, even if it isn't an event. I remember the promoter Cedric Kushner once told me he could sell foreign TV rights for a fight to the Netherlands for $5,000 or $10,000 more if someone called it a championship fight. Even better if the challenger is undefeated.
"Sanctioning bodies today move guys up based on their record more than on whom they've fought. In the old days, guys had to prove themselves in smaller venues. Now, being undefeated has become part of the mantra."
And so they avoid it for as long as they can and the public pays the price until the night the ill-prepared opponent in an unwarranted title fight pays as well while frustrated matchmakers sit in the back of the hall dreaming of days gone by when two lines of managers would wait in front of an office door just for the chance to say yes to whatever tough opponent they were offered.
"Those were great days to be a matchmaker," Chargin says, "but they're gone."

Good article, Rob (if a bit depressing).

[Ezzard]

Here is an interesting, if depressing, article about matchmaking from Boxing Monthly that I thought I would share with you guys as the Olympic and Don Chargin get a mention

THE DYING ART OF MATCHMAKING BY RON BORGES

Don Chargin remembers when he'd arrive at his office inside the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles on a Monday morning 25 or 30 years ago and there would be two lines of managers and trainers waiting outside his door. Every one of them was there in the hope that the top matchmaker would have a fight for his fighter. They weren't there to argue about the toughness of the opponent.
"I'd make fights for three or four weeks in advance," the Hall of Fame promoter and matchmaker recalled. "Nobody would say, 'He's too tough' or 'He's a southpaw.'

Fast forward in time and listen to a true tale from veteran Carl Moretti. "On average, you have to deal with four different people who are in the ear of a fighter these days," he says. "Every one of them can make or break a fight. I had a guy representing a world champion recently tell me his fighter wasn't going to accept an
opponent for a championship fight because of the colour of the other guy's gloves. He said the TV lights would reflect off the gloves and it could blind his fighter. What do you say to that?"
In Chargin's day at the Olympic, you would have said "Goodbye", but that was before the slow demise of prize fighting as a major sport in America and the consequent rise of celebrity matches in which a fighter gets a title shot more because the cable network televising the fight feels the public will know his name and his story than because of anything he's accomplished in the ring.
The products of The Contender series, the reality-TV show that is preparing for its fourth season on U.S. TV, have been the clearest recent example of this. Did Alfonso Gomez belong in the same area code, let alone the same ring, as Miguel Cotto? Did Peter Manfredo Jr earn the shot he was given against Joe Calzaghe by beating any Top 10 fighters? Will Sergio Mora, who won the first Contender by outpointing Manfredo, belong in the same ring with two-time world champion Vernon Forrest when they meet on 7 June.
The answer to those questions is an obvious and emphatic no. So why are these kind of fights being made? Because boxing has become a place where too many title fights are based on celebrity rather than ability and too many matches in the early stages of a fighter's career are made not to teach a fighter his trade but to protect his record because the risk of a loss is too great.
The day when a fighter like Freddie Pendleton wins a world title with a record of 32-17-4, as he did the night he outpointed Tracy Spann to win the 11317 lightweight championship in 1993, are over it seems because there is so much emphasis on being undefeated.
"The matchmaker has no control today," says New York-based matchmaker Mike Marchionte. "Guys like Don Chargin were real matchmakers. Half of the time today, matchmakers, including me, aren't making matches. We're making fights to protect one guy or the other. You don't feel as much like a matchmaker as you do a
fight organiser or a salesman. You put a guy in a tough fight today and you get reamed by his promoter."
In 1976, things were different. Marvin Hagler was a young prospect on the rise when he went to Philadelphia and lost decisions to Bobby "Boogaloo" Watts and Willie "The Worm" Monroe to drop his record to 26-2-1. Four years later, he began a Hall of Fame reign as middleweight champion that would last seven years. J. Russell Peltz promoted those Hagler losses at the Spectrum in Philadelphia and considers Hagler one of the greatest middleweights of all time. Yet he doubts he would have ever been heard from again if he lost twice in that fashion now.
"If that happened to a tough, black southpaw today," says Peltz, disgust lacing his voice, "he'd be fighting in Portland, Maine. He'd never get back on television. That's why you wouldn't make those kinds of fights today. You wouldn't want to take the risk and the
networks wouldn't ask you to. It's all about the story or the record today but, even with the story, they want the [undefeated] record.
"Once a fighter gets into the Top 10 now, that's the end of competitive boxing. The promoters know there are so many champions that, if you get your fighter ranked, he gets a title shot by attrition if you can just keep him in the Top 10. There's no having to fight the No. 6 guy and then the No. 4 guy to become the No. 1 guy. You just sit, collect wins and wait.
"It used to be a big deal to be a contender. You could walk down the street with your head high. If a guy got one title shot in his career it was a big deal. If you got one, you were fortunate because there was only one champion and so many more fighters around than today.
"You could develop a fighter like Buster Drayton or Freddie Pendleton then, too. Those guys lost some fights but they became good fighters and people knew they could fight so their record didn't matter. Eventually they became world champions. They'd never get a chance at a big fight [today] because some TV executive would see eight losses or 10 losses and say: 'This guy can't fight.' If you're 17-4 today, you're a bum. They have no idea.
"I tell young fighters today about Bennie Briscoe [a Philadelphia legend who never won a world title] and they ask what his record was. I tell them 66-24-5 [and] they say: 'He couldn't fight.'
"The way you make matches today retards the development of young fighters. Most of the time it feels like you are just delivering bodies. It hasn't been about ability for a while but they've all bought into the system. You put your guy in ill-prepared but he's probably facing a guy who came up the same way so it's an even fight.
"There's no resemblance today to the sport I fell in love with as a kid. The only thing that's the same is they still wear gloves."
One thing that isn't the same is the depth of talent or how it is developed, so you end up with Mora (20-0) challenging WBC light-middleweight champion Vernon Forrest this month on the back of wins over Archak TerMeliksetian, Elvin Ayala and Rito Ruvalcaba.
"I've been a matchmaker for 21 years and the last five or six years have definitely been more difficult," admits Moretti, who made matches for Main Events for years when their stable included Meldrick Taylor, Evander Holyfield, Pernell Whitaker and later Lennox Lewis before moving to become vice-president and match-maker for ex-HBO executive Lou DiBella's promotional company.
"You don't have the freedom today to build a fighter to the point where you know he can fight. You're pushed to get him a good record and then you're pushed to put him on HBO or SHOWTIME because that's the only place there's real money any more.
"No one is patient enough to let a guy really develop. It costs too much and there's too much risk because, if he loses three or four times along the way, he's done. Feltz was the best matchmaker in boxing but he can't do it today like he did it at the Blue Horizon.
"Today there aren't as many fighters out there so you recycle names like [Ricardo] Mayorga or you get celebrity matches like Roy Jones vs Felix Trinidad on pay-per-view. Even though boxing people know neither guy is what he was, the public doesn't know and a lot of times the people buying the fight don't, either.
"There used to be a middle class in boxing. Good fighters fighting good fighters in places where they could make a living. The middle class is gone. In the early 1980s, the Top 15 in most divisions was a hell of a division. There was depth of talent. Now we matchmake within the restraints of the day."
One of those restraints is an obsessive focus on perfect records.
"I think in days gone by a big part of matchmaking was helping a fighter improve and finding out what he was made of," says long¬time HBO analyst Larry Merchant. "Today's [matchmaking] seems more designed to build a resume. The matchmaker and the trainer say: 'The guy can learn to fight in the gym.' That's because the unbeaten record today is a marketing device. In the old days, if a guy was undefeated the question was, has he been protected? Today, fans are less sophisticated. They see an undefeated record and think: 'This is a guy I need to watch.' He may be. But he also may not be but we're in a statistics-oriented era.
"They're reluctant to take any chances with a young prospect because defeat is seen as a serious, serious obstacle in his career. That affects matchmaking."
"I've been matchmaking for over 60 years," says the 80-year-old Chargin. "It used to be about making the best match. Now it's about wins. It doesn't matter over whom. At the Olympic [where he was the matchmaker from 1964 to 1984], you had to be head and shoulders over everybody to be undefeated. We worked to put guys in tough fights. Now if a guy loses a couple fights, people write him off so you can't do it that way.
"Look at [Naseem] Hamed. He takes a licking from [Marco Antonio] Barrera and that's it. Now we'll have to see what happens with [Ricky] Hatton. He's fortunate he has that backing in England where he can lose one fight to someone like [Floyd] Mayweather and come back and be just as popular. If a U.S. fighter got flattened, you disappear. There's just too much emphasis today on wins.
"Look at those great, tough fighters like Tony Zale and Carmen Basilio. They all had a lot of loses because they were in so many competitive fights. They could lose and be headlining the next month. That's all changed. If you were making matches like that today, you'd be run out of business."
One of the game's best matchmakers is Top Rank's Bruce Trampler, bringing along fighters like De La Hoya, Mayweather, Cotto and many others, adjusting along the way to changes in the business side of boxing while trying to adhere to the trade he first learnt from Chris Dundee in Miami and Teddy Brenner in New York. Doing the latter hasn't been easy. You had more fighters in the 1960s, '70s and '80s and better fighters for the most part," Trampler says. "In the '40s, '50s and '60s, they rarely even put a guy's record on the fight poster. They put who he'd fought. That showed his level of competition. Records started getting built in the '80s and '90s.
"The armchair fan today turns on the TV and sees a guy with a number of losses and they think he's not capable. So the emphasis on what's meaningful has changed. Teddy Brenner used to say to me: 'Show me a guy who's undefeated and I'll show you a guy who can't fight.' He felt he had to have been protected because there were too many tough guys around. Today, there's less of that and more emphasis on the record rather than on whom you've fought.
"There also aren't many real managers today. The promoter, and in some cases the network, really serve as the manager. That dynamic inhibits a lot of the matchmaking. A guy is with another promoter so they're not looking for a tough fight. They're looking to get a title shot on HBO the same as we are, so you can't make a competitive match. Back when we were making that series of fights with Hagler, Leonard, Hearns and Duran, you could do it. Today, they'd each have their own promoter and it would be nearly impossible. Very few managers are independent today. They look for an alliance with a promoter because they feel, if the promoter has money invested in their kid, he'll take better care of him."
"These days, everything is tied to marketing," Merchant says. "You can't just have a fight — it has to be an event, even if it isn't an event. I remember the promoter Cedric Kushner once told me he could sell foreign TV rights for a fight to the Netherlands for $5,000 or $10,000 more if someone called it a championship fight. Even better if the challenger is undefeated.
"Sanctioning bodies today move guys up based on their record more than on whom they've fought. In the old days, guys had to prove themselves in smaller venues. Now, being undefeated has become part of the mantra."
And so they avoid it for as long as they can and the public pays the price until the night the ill-prepared opponent in an unwarranted title fight pays as well while frustrated matchmakers sit in the back of the hall dreaming of days gone by when two lines of managers would wait in front of an office door just for the chance to say yes to whatever tough opponent they were offered.
"Those were great days to be a matchmaker," Chargin says, "but they're gone."

A great article. Thanks for posting...

[Robinson]

Can some one make this thread into a book .. or
archive ?

Thank you guys for all of the information, photos and
experiences you have put on here...

[kikibalt]

I know Mando had a lot of friends who post on here so i would just like to say to you all.
I was so sad to hear of his passing away the other day. Of course i did not know Mando personally but i felt i knew him a little if only in my heart because of guys like you who had told me so many wonderful story's about him and the exciting and colourful fighter he was.

I offer from the bottom of my hear my deepest condolences to his wife Sylvia and his family and friends. When ever i think of Mando now a song keeps creeping into my head, i think it sums the little champion up so well and could have been wrote just for him. GOD BLESS YOU CHAMP



And now, the end is here
And so I face the final curtain
My friend, I'll say it clear
I'll state my case, of which I'm certain
I've lived a life that's full
I travelled each and ev'ry highway
And more, much more than this, I did it my way

Regrets, I've had a few
But then again, too few to mention
I did what I had to do and saw it through without exemption
I planned each charted course, each careful step along the byway
And more, much more than this, I did it my way

Yes, there were times, I'm sure you knew
When I bit off more than I could chew
But through it all, when there was doubt
I ate it up and spit it out
I faced it all and I stood tall and did it my way

I've loved, I've laughed and cried
I've had my fill, my share of losing
And now, as tears subside, I find it all so amusing
To think I did all that
And may I say, not in a shy way,
"Oh, no, oh, no, not me, I did it my way"

For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught
To say the things he truly feels and not the words of one who kneels
The record shows I took the blows and did it my way!

Yes, it was my way

Very well put. Hello Danny, welcome aboard!! Always room for one more old fart here!!

Regards

Rob

Yes, welcome Danny, but Robby better smile when he says OLD FARTS......

[bennie]

Marquez has a lot on the line against Casamayor

By Robert Morales

Juan Manuel Marquez is one of the few today who can lose and still remain a consensus top 10 pound-for-pound fighter. He is that good.

If he had his druthers, he would be tuning up for his third fight with pound-for-pound king Manny Pacquiao in order to continue to prove that. But since that is not going to happen just yet, Marquez is doing the next best thing by moving up in weight and challenging Joel Casamayor for his interim lightweight world championship.

They will get it on Sept. 13 at MGM Grand in Las Vegas. It's not exactly what most would consider a pay-per-view main event. But HBO will indeed televise

this Golden Boy Promotions card on its pay-per-view arm for $44.95.

The parties got together Tuesday at a news conference in Los Angeles to formally announce what has the potential to be a thriller. Casamayor may have just turned 37 on Saturday, but he showed last March that he is as vicious as ever when he stopped Michael Katsidis in the 10th round.

Casamayor was down once, Katsidis three times in a brutal fight. It was the first loss for Katsidis, a heavy hitting 27-year-old with an all-out attacking style.

In other words, Mexico's Marquez may be the early betting favorite, but he could be in for one of the most punishing fights of his career by taking on Cuba's Casamayor. Not only has Casamayor been a full-blown lightweight for four years, he can be very dirty in a given fight.
Marquez was not even a big 130-pound junior lightweight when he lost a split decision to Pacquiao in their second fight last March. And he's two months away from stepping into the ring with a hard-nosed 135-pound lightweight who will not hesitate to rough him up.

But you don't think that's going to scare Marquez, do you? Not a chance.

"He wanted the third fight with Pacquiao real bad," said Golden Boy matchmaker Eric Gomez, who said a deal offered Pacquiao was rejected. "So Juan Manuel said, 'Get me the next best thing.' "

Gomez said Nate Campbell, another lightweight champion, turned down Marquez.

"So the next best thing was Casamayor," Gomez said.

Gomez, like everyone present Tuesday, agreed that Marquez more than has his hands full with Casamayor. Heck, he could have fought a tune-up fight and no one would have complained. Then he could have approached Pacquiao again for something early next year.
Chances are that Bob Arum, Pacquiao's promoter, wants to let a third fight between Pacquiao and Marquez build to a fever pitch before making it. By early next year fans would be hot for that. Marquez certainly deserves it. As his promoter, Oscar De La Hoya, attests.
"He had great fights against Manny Pacquiao," De La Hoya said, "which both could have gone either way."

In their first fight in May 2004, Marquez got off the canvas three times in the first round. He came back to earn a 12-round draw. There were more than a few reporters who had Marquez winning. This one had Marquez coming all the way back to win by one point.

But again, there is no Marquez-Pacquiao III, so Casamayor it is.

"Casamayor is a great fighter, a great boxer, a great champion," Marquez said. "This fight at 135 is going to be very difficult for me, but possible to win."

Marquez went on to say that he wants to win for his country, for his Mexican people because the event is coming around the Sept. 16 Mexican Independence Day.

Well, the only way Marquez is going to feel he has his independence is if he gets that third fight with Pacquiao and finally emerges victorious. The thing is he has put himself in a position where he has to move up in weight and take on a rugged guy like Casamayor - and win.

If Marquez gets bombed out because he just isn't big enough to keep the left-handed Casamayor (36-3-1, 22 KOs) off him, it is doubtful Arum and Pacquiao would still entertain a third fight.

Marquez apparently couldn't care less about the risk.

"Moving up to 135 isn't going to be an easy task," De La Hoya said. "But Marquez, like the champion he is, is going to continue fighting the best to prove he is the great fighter he is."
This isn't just promoter rhetoric. Let's face it, Marquez has never received his just recognition even though he has been one of the best fighters in the world for the better part of this decade. Even Casamayor was impressed about Marquez making this move to challenge him for his belt. He said other star fighters over the years have not stepped up to the plate in this fashion.

"Nobody has wanted to fight me," Casamayor said. "Not (Marco Antonio) Barrera, not Pacquiao, not (Erik) Morales. It just shows what kind of a fighter Marquez is."

Marquez, 34, is going to have to be all that and more if he is going to make this move up a success. With a record of 48-4-1 and 35 knockouts, Marquez has a more than respectable knockout ratio. But he's not a one-punch knockout artist, and it's somewhat difficult to fathom that he is going to be able to dissuade Casamayor from coming full steam ahead.
Katsidis could't discourage Casamayor with his legimate lightweight power punches.

"I never thought that kid (Katsidis) would be that tough," Casamayor marveled, looking up and rolling his eyes for effect. "He was a lot tougher than people thought. It was a great fight, not only for me and Katsidis, but for the fans."

The hope here is that Marquez-Casamayor provide fans another great fight. The $44.95 demands it.

Robert Morales can be reached at [email protected]

I like Casamayor (was it really 1992 when he picked up an Olympic gold?) and I like Marquez, but the pay-per-view price is obscene and smacks of the man in the middle.
How much!

[bennie]

Can you believe they chucked this guy in with Marciano a fight later?

Brave manager.

[dagosd2000]

My father and uncle Joe knew an ex fighter by the name of Mike Sopko in Chicago. Never really a main eventer,but fought on the undercards. Fought a lot at the old Marigold Gardens. If you're familiar with Chicago,you know that it has a big Polish section. I think it's the biggest in the United Staes. Well my uncle Joe owned a bar on the North Side called The Little Hawaii.It used to be a German Restaaurant and when you went inside you thought you were in Dussldorf by looking at all the fixtures and gothic outlay of the joint. My uncle threw some palm tree leaves around and hing some leis arond the ceiling to try to cover up the Old Hiedelburg, and as long as the locals could get served ,I don't think anyone cared.

Well Mike Sopko owned a bar on the Polish end of town and I can't remember if it had any trademarks or theme that stood out. Just as long as there was plenty of vodka and beer the customers were satisfied. To make things really prosperous,I remember there being a bowling alley upstairs. Between Mike's joint and the bowling alley the locals must have thought they died and were in Polish heaven. Strewn around were pictures of fighters and I especially recall a picture of all the fighting Zivic brothers in boxing togs standing together. Sometimes with the names of the customers I couldn't tell if the crowd was Polish or Serbian or what kind of Eastern European. But between the vodka and beer, sausages, and the bowling alley,I don't think anybody was checkin' passports.

My uncle Frank who was Polish, married my father's sister,my aunt Jeanette, would live all night in Mike Sopko's place after work. He was a watch repairer and after work he'd make sure he'd get fixed in Mike's establishment. To put it mildly my uncle Frank had a serious problem with John Barley Corn. He'd stay till Mike turned off all the lights and got him a cab to get him home.

Well one night my aunt Jeanette must of wanted him home so she calls the bar. Mike tells my aunt that he sees my uncle Frank at the end of the bar. Sleeping with his head on the bar. Mike goes over to wake him up. Nothin'. Gives him a couple of tugs ,and my uncle fall to the floor. He was dead. Just like that. Put his head down on the bar and it was over.

It wasn't funny then,but maybe my uncle was dreamin'. Didn't he realize he was already in Polish heaven?

[bennie]

Gorilla Jones vs Freddie Steele
1 January 1937

New Year's Day. Good way to start the year.

[bennie]

Johnny Saxton

I don't know much about Saxton. What was he like?

[raylawpc]

He apparently enjoyed admiring himself in the mirror . . .

"You had one eye in the mirror
As you watched yourself gavotte"

[Rick Farris]

Mando Ramos

This was taken last year at the WBHOF banquet, when Dan Hanley & I interviewed Mando.

Rick

[kikibalt]

Don Fraser is pretty sick, as I get more info, I'll post it.

[Rick Farris]

Can you believe they chucked this guy in with Marciano a fight later?

Brave manager.

I loved watching Walcott set up an opponent for his hook. He used to shift his shoulders, like he was going to throw the right, then come over with a hook. You'll never see Klitschko or the Russian giants make such moves, they can't. Their bodies are too big, and their hearts are too small. As the great boxers died, so did the trainers. The best teachers are gone, and so goes boxing. Walcott was a small heavyweight, and would have a field day in today's era, as would Rocky, Dempsey, Louis . . . Hell, why am I reaching for greats to compare with today's lot? Hell, La Starza, Doug Jones, etc. Small heavys would destroy what they call heavyweight champions today. I'm sorry, but people in this world actually believe that "bigger is better". If matched with a true boxer/fighter, the Russian brigade would be lost balls in high grass.

-Rick

[kikibalt]

Joe Frazier & Jack Dempsey
9 April 1972

[Rick Farris]

Don Fraser is pretty sick, as I get more info, I'll post it.

Let us know, Frank. I heard this saturday, hope he feels better. I'll call Gwen Adair, don't want to bother Don. Gwen will know.

-Rick Farris

[kikibalt]

Don Fraser is pretty sick, as I get more info, I'll post it.

Let us know, Frank. I heard this saturday, hope he feels better. I'll call Gwen Adair, don't want to bother Don. Gwen will know.

-Rick Farris

Its best that nobody calls Don Fraser, as he's mostly unable to talk.

[kikibalt]

[kikibalt]

[dagosd2000]

Don Fraser is pretty sick, as I get more info, I'll post it.

Let us know, Frank. I heard this saturday, hope he feels better. I'll call Gwen Adair, don't want to bother Don. Gwen will know.

-Rick Farris

Its best that nobody calls Don Fraser, as he's mostly unable to talk.

How you feelin'? I'll see you up in Long Beach tomorrow. Haven't been up there in years. I used to unload the tuna boats at the cannery in San Pedro. That's when the Portugese in San Diego had a lock on the industry. I went to school with a lot of guys who later fished on the tuna boats. Their dads fished with the long poles. Tough work. The kids I went to school with wound up on the purseiners(net fishing). Their dads ran the boats and the boys fished.

Those kids didn't give a shit about school. As soon as they turned 16 they were on a boat making 30 grand. Outstanding dough in the early 60's. But since those kids never pole fished,they weren't as tough as there dads. And those kids admitted it.

Funny,when the boats made port at Pedro,for instance,it was part of their jobs to unload the fish. No way. Those guys would be sportin' nice slacks and sweaters,patent leather shoes and watch us go into the well to unload fish. We made 80 bucks a day out of their pockets. It was worth it to them.

Another thing. Those Portugese hated fishing for sport. No way you'd catch them on a lake or on a sport boat on the ocean with a rod and reel.They didn't give a shit about catching a Marlin. Hemingway had his head up his ass. Catching a big fish and having it stuffed and then put it on a wall. What a wierdo. Dead fish only translated into money for those Tuna Chokers(the name we had for the Portugese) Come to think of it,I didn't know any of them that owned a fishing pole.

[kikibalt]

Kid Gavilan & Kid Chocolate
Cuba

[Wildhawke11]

Rob and Frank
Thanks for the welcome
Now in regard to Rob calling us both Old Farts Frank. I always say "Little Children should be Seen and not Heard"

[kikibalt]

Marcel Cerdan vs Cyril Delannoit
12 July 1948

[kikibalt]