Classic American West Coast Boxing

[bennie]

From fightfranchise.com:

It has emerged that former middleweight champ Kelly Pavlik has been in rehabilitation since Nov. 4 for alcoholism treatment. Although Pavlik’s father has said he doesn’t know if Pavlik is an alcoholic, he has admitted the Youngstown fighter is dependant on it and is unsure whether his son will ever fight again.

According to Mike Pavlik this is the second time this year Pavlik has been admitted, and the first time, earlier this year, was just prior to his loss to Sergio Martinez, where Pavlik was said to have been released just ten days before the fight after a two-week stay.

Although Pavlik withdrew from his fight with Brian Vera on the Pacquiao-Margarito undercard, his father insists it was the reported rib injury that was the reason, and it was only since then that Kelly has gone off the rails again.

Pavlik has always been associated with a partying lifestyle, but like other fighters before him found nothing but misery. According to father Mike the fame was too much for Kelly, who descended into the state he is now in.

“It’s been ongoing since shortly after he won the title,” said Mike Pavlik.

“I guess what happened is that he was not prepared for what came with the title. Winning the title was one of the greatest moments in his life, but at the same time, it could have been the worst moment in his life. I’m not complaining about him winning the title, but it was instant stardom after that and the demands on his life became so hard and so intense that he couldn’t deal with it.

“The kind of kid Kelly is, he doesn’t want to say no to anyone. It was kind of like the Mickey Mantle syndrome here. Everywhere he went, everyone wanted to buy the champ a beer. He didn’t want to disappoint anyone or say no and it wound up causing him a pretty serious problem.”

It’s a difficult time for Pavlik, who is a husband and a father, but with his warrior spirit he can beat this and at least get his life back even if his fighting career seems in some doubt. Asked if he thought his son would return to the ring, father Mike simply replied “I don’t know if he’ll ever fight again.”

[kikibalt]

G' morning ya' all

[Panzerfaust]

Morning Frank Coffee ready yet?

[kikibalt]

Morning Frank Coffee ready yet?

Yes, had my two cups already..might have some more in a bit...

[CNorkusJr]

Charlie you asked me the other day who my favorite team was, I really don't have one but I really enjoyed the 1985 Chicago bears team, in my opinion the most dominate team I ever saw in football.

What a team and year. Who can forget Jim McMahon and Ditka as head coach.
Buddy Ryan was their Def. Co-ordinator. Do you think they took any crapola ?
I think the Bears played the Rams in the NFC championship game that year.
The Bears had that " destiny and fate" banner hanging over their heads all year long.
I think they prevented alot of people in Chicago from commiting suicide after the Cub season that year too.


The other day you asked about frying a turkey. I never did it but I can tell you it is a very dangerous thing to attempt if not done properly.
The foremost thing about the process is that it should be done outdoors and it should be done away from the house (about 15 feet should do it). Never attempt indoors or next to house. A friend of mine has done it successfully many years and he swears it always comes out delicious and moist. He too is a fireman.
At first he went out and rented a propane fueled high flame heating
burner that will boil the oil in a large enough heavy aluminum or steel pot.
It worked well, so he bought the burner on his own and does it a few times a year.
I never witnessed the proceedings, but I did tell him to call me as I have some old firehose out back that I can directly hook-up to the fire hydrant near his house just in case. Somethings you just cant get out of your system. LOL

[Rick Farris]

My father with Coley Wallace receiving their Downtown Athletic Club "Boxing Great Award" in Nov. 1977 The painting is done by the same artist who paints the Heisman Trophy winners.

Rocky Marciano Awards recipients up to 1985:
76- Carmen Basilio 1981 Billy Conn
77 Jersey Joe Walcott 1982 Alexis Arguello
78- Floyd Patterson 1983 Gene Fullmer
1979- Tony Zale 1984 Muhammed Ali
1980 Willie Pep 1985 Jose Torres
Lost track after 1986- see if I can find out.

After my father got his award in 1977 he was given an honorary membership to the club that allowed him to attend all events there henceforth. We never missed a year and many of the photos that are posted onhis thread I made are from the various years.

This is great history, Charlie. Your words take us to the event. Sad about the Athletic Club being damaged in 9/11. I think it's great to have events of such and includuing a boxing card. In L.A. we have the L.A. Athletic Club on 7th & Olive. It's also a classic Art Deco design with a gym on the top floor. I attended a WBHOF event there with Rodolfo Gonzalez a few years ago. I just assumed and expected as I became more involved with the WBHOF that they would continue to occasionally hold events at the LAAC, but it never happened. I guess things of that nature are a thing of the past. What a shame!

By the way, when I see Coley Wallace, I can't help but remmber him portraying the great Joe Louis in the movie featuring the Black Bomber's life.

[Randyman]

My father with Coley Wallace receiving their Downtown Athletic Club "Boxing Great Award" in Nov. 1977 The painting is done by the same artist who paints the Heisman Trophy winners.

Rocky Marciano Awards recipients up to 1985:
76- Carmen Basilio 1981 Billy Conn
77 Jersey Joe Walcott 1982 Alexis Arguello
78- Floyd Patterson 1983 Gene Fullmer
1979- Tony Zale 1984 Muhammed Ali
1980 Willie Pep 1985 Jose Torres
Lost track after 1986- see if I can find out.

After my father got his award in 1977 he was given an honorary membership to the club that allowed him to attend all events there henceforth. We never missed a year and many of the photos that are posted onhis thread I made are from the various years.

This is great history, Charlie. Your words take us to the event. Sad about the Athletic Club being damaged in 9/11. I think it's great to have events of such and includuing a boxing card. In L.A. we have the L.A. Athletic Club on 7th & Olive. It's also a classic Art Deco design with a gym on the top floor. I attended a WBHOF event there with Rodolfo Gonzalez a few years ago. I just assumed and expected as I became more involved with the WBHOF that they would continue to occasionally hold events at the LAAC, but it never happened. I guess things of that nature are a thing of the past. What a shame!

By the way, when I see Coley Wallace, I can't help but remmber him portraying the great Joe Louis in the movie featuring the Black Bomber's life.

What a great photo Charlie, your dad looks like he's getting a big kick out of the whole thing. A bygone era, that's for sure. Thank God, there is someone like you that still sees the importance of preserving the past. Both the east and west coasts and everywhere in between suffer from the same problem, the fast food generation, that eats it up, spits it out and forgets about it. Great fights and boxers are like a fine meal, to be digested slowly, savored and remembered.

Your memories, stories and photos are always appreciated here.

Randy

[Randyman]

Do you guys eat Turkey at Thanksgiving and at Christmas?

Bennie, I love Turkey and the whole Thanksgiving dinner but I can only do that once a year. We usually have a large bone in ham too. Lots of homemade pies too.

This was my daughter Meranda's first Thanksgiving turkey and she did a great job. My son Andrew made the ham. Jeri and I took it easy. Jeri did make a couple of pumpkin pies though.

It's a great meal and my favorite holiday. The next day, and this is a tradition, the left over turkey, ham, potatoes and stuffing are fried (we use large cast iron pans) and given a bit of a brown crust and served with the gravy, if any is left over. If there are any tamales left, we'll add that to the mix too. Fried eggs top off the breakfast.

We never make a turkey for Christmas. Christmas has always been very informal at our house and tamales are the main food for us. Lots of tamales. Red pork tamales, green pork and green chile with cheese. Sometimes we'll have a roast but nothing replaces the tamales. I eat them until I am sick of them. Then I don't want any for a while.

New Years means Menudo (con Patas) though at times we have made Pozole instead.

When the holidays are over I start my annual New Years resolution to eat less and lose weight, that's good for about a week.

[Randyman]

Morning Frank Coffee ready yet?

Yes, had my two cups already..might have some more in a bit...

I just had a couple of cups myself.

[Randyman]

Savannah, Andrew and Meranda. Lori and DeeDee couldn't make it this year.


Jeri, my sister-in-lawTeri and Meranda in the kitchen.


Doing some serious chowing down.


Me with my younger brother Dennis and my son Andrew.
Dennis used to work security for the movie studios when they where on location, He also did personal on site security for actors James Wood and Sylvester Stallone, some years ago. He's still in great shape.

[kikibalt]

Abraham-Froch Result is in
Spoiler Alert: As a courtesy to Fightnews.com readers who plan to watch SHOWTIME’s same day telecast of the Super Six showdown between Arthur Abraham and Carl Froch and don’t want to know the outcome, we have posted the result .

By Karl Freitag

In a highly anticipated showdown, Carl “The Cobra” Froch (27-1, 20 KOs) scored a surprisingly one-sided twelve round unanimous decision over “King” Arthur Abraham (31-2, 25 KOs) in the final Group Stage 3 bout in the Super Six World Boxing Classic and for the vacant WBC super middleweight title on Saturday night at the Hartwall Areena in Helsinki, Finland.

Froch had good results with his jab early on. Things heated up in round two with Froch still busier. More of a brawl in round three as the notoriously slow-starting Abraham began to heat up. Froch boxed from the outside in the fourth. Good two-way action in round five with both fighters landing good shots. More good rounds for Froch in the sixth and seventh as Abraham was unable to force the more mobile Froch to engage in many exchanges. Abraham tried to up the pressure in the eighth but it was still Froch’s round. Froch’s domination continued in the ninth and tenth. One-sided in the eleventh in Froch’s favor. Abraham came out strong in the twelfth round and landed his best punches of the fight, but it was too little to late.

Scores were 119-109, 120-108, 120-108.

The scoring in the Super Six Tournament after the completion of the third round is as follows:

Andre Ward – 6 points
Carl Froch – 4 points
Glen Johnson – 3 points
Arthur Abraham – 3 points

[kikibalt]

Great family/Thanksgiving pictures, Randy....

[kikibalt]

Just seen a lousy fight on HBO, two guys that are suppose to be world class fighters...NOT!!...

[Panzerfaust]

Marquez-Katsidis is entertaining though

[kikibalt]

Marquez-Katsidis is entertaining though

Marquez is an all time great......

[Panzerfaust]

Great fight! im amazed at Marquez being able to keep that pace at 37

[Rick Farris]

Marquez-Katsidis is entertaining though

Marquez is an all time great......

I haven't seen the fight yet. Will catch the replay manana.

[bennie]

A career-best win for Carl Froch, who proved too big, strong and clever for Abraham, a blown-up middleweight.

[THEHAMMER321]

A career-best win for Carl Froch, who proved too big, strong and clever for Abraham, a blown-up middleweight.

Bennie your prediction was right on in this fight, I honestly didn't agree, thought Abraham was gonna give him a going over, but Froch put on a good performance and won easily.

[kikibalt]

Love Marquez's old time boxing style, classic boxer-puncher, you don't see many well school fighters like that now days, most of the good boxing teachers, the ones who could really teach a kids how to fight have seen their names in the obits and are no longer with us.

[kikibalt]

Death has cast a long shadow over Hollywood

Publicist Ronni Chasen's slaying in Beverly Hills is the latest in a string of deaths that date to at least 1922, when director William Desmond Taylor was found fatally shot in his bachelor pad near 4th and Alvarado streets.
A mysterious Hollywood death

By Steve Harvey

November 28, 2010

Several days after Hollywood publicist Ronni Chasen was found shot to death in her Mercedes-Benz, a friend voiced the hope to KNBC-TV news that the case wouldn't turn into "another Black Dahlia."

The friend was referring to the 1947 slaying of aspiring actress Elizabeth Short, which has never been solved.

Of course, mysterious deaths with links to Hollywood date to at least 1922, when debonair director William Desmond Taylor was found slain in his fashionable bachelor pad near the corner of 4th and Alvarado streets.

Taylor's valet cried out the news that morning and an actress neighbor quickly notified the director's acquaintances, including those in the habit of writing love letters.

By the time officers arrived, author Sidney Kirkpatrick wrote in The Times, there "appeared to be a party at Taylor's bungalow: Paramount actors, actresses and executives rummaging through bedroom drawers and closets, a butler washing dishes and an unnamed extra walking out the front door with a case of bootleg gin.

"Everyone in the bungalow seemed to be looking for something, except the host, who was neatly laid out on the living room floor with a bullet hole in the middle of his back."

"Persons of interest" abounded: an actress with a crush on Taylor; an actress' mother with a crush on Taylor; an actress' drug dealer; a thieving valet (who may have secretly been Taylor's brother); a wife whom Taylor had deserted in the East; and a soldier from his wartime regiment whom Taylor had court-martialed for theft.

Police were pretty sure the butler didn't do it, but they were certain of little else. No one was ever arrested.

Mystery has also surrounded cases in which the authorities concluded no homicide took place.

In "Deadly Illusions," for instance, authors Samuel Marx and Joyce Vanderveen argue that director Paul Bern did not shoot himself in 1932, as the coroner had ruled. They contend that an ex-lover did in Bern, the husband of bombshell actress Jean Harlow.

In another case, the body of beautiful actress Thelma Todd was discovered in December 1935 in her Lincoln Phaeton convertible in a garage near her cafe in Pacific Palisades.

The coroner ruled she died of carbon monoxide poisoning after turning on the ignition and striking her head on the steering wheel.

But others theorized she may have been killed by a film director or an abusive ex-husband or even minions of Lucky Luciano, whom she had angered by refusing to allow casino gambling on the property.

Todd's death followed a series of show-business scandals, and "the studio bosses were worried that many of the Americans who paid to see movies wouldn't tolerate yet another," wrote authors Marvin Wolf and Katherine Mader in "Fallen Angels."

"An official finding of death by her own hand, accidental, or otherwise, put an end to speculation about murder.... A neat and tidy solution."

Then there was the case of George Reeves, TV's " Superman," who died in 1959 not by jumping out a window — as one urban myth has it — but by gunshot.

It was ruled a suicide and connected to Reeves' inability to land serious roles after his "Superman" days.

But in "Hollywood Kryptonite," authors Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger assert that he may have been killed on orders of a studio executive whose wife was having an affair with Reeves.

No one, of course, thought the 1978 bludgeoning death of Bob Crane — the star of TV's "Hogan's Heroes" — in a Scottsdale, Ariz., apartment was anything but murder.

In 1994, John Henry Carpenter, a friend of Crane's and a longtime suspect, was tried for the slaying but acquitted.

Prosecutors alleged that Carpenter, who was with Crane the night before the killing, had had a falling out with the actor.

Their case hinged in part on a photograph of a speck found on the door of Carpenter's rental car, which prosecutors said was fatty matter from Crane's skull.

Unfortunately, the speck was lost before the trial started. "What was the speck?" asked the jury foreman later.

Officially, the case remains unsolved.

The Times' Larry Harnisch attributes fascination with the Black Dahlia case to the fact that the killing was a "gruesome, unsolved murder of an attractive victim with a haunting nickname."

She picked up the nickname because of her black outfits and black hair and because a movie of that era was titled "The Blue Dahlia."

Short's mutilated body was found Jan. 15, 1947, in a vacant lot on Norton Avenue in the Leimert Park area.

More than 50 delusional characters confessed. No one was ever arrested.

Over the years, the villain has variously been identified as a pipe salesman, a doctor, a cop, a mobster, a cafe owner and an actor.

Meanwhile, it is too soon to predict the outcome of the investigation into the Nov. 16 slaying of Ronni Chasen. But, as the above cases illustrate (all too brutally), not every Hollywood story has a happy ending. And some have no ending at all.

[email protected]

[bennie]

Lots of snow here, and freezing temperatures. My car wouldn't start today and, to cut a long story short, the weather had 'done' the old battery.

[CNorkusJr]

Thanks guys, I like passing on those little tidbits from the past, Your posts or mentions of a certain name will trigger a memory that I can relate to my fathers career and its gives me great cause to go search through a un-organized set of boxes filled with his boxing lore. (magazines,videos,scrapbooks, programs etc etc).
To be honest with you, as I look through the items, some new piece of information would be discovered that I never knew or heard of before. This is of course very thrilling to me since I thought I had it all down in my cranium before.

Only recently did I start to attend the Ring 8 meetings that have existed since the 1950's. It is there I met some of the greatest boxers from a bygone era. Many of the guys were 6,8,10 Round fighters who once filled the old club boxing scene here in the NYC area. Sunnyside Garden Arena, Ridgewood Grove Arena, Eastern Parkway Arena, old Gleason's Gym,Stillman's Gym, St. Nicks Arena, and of course the Madison Sq Garden (of 1950's fame on 50 St in NYC). Their recollections of the times past
are as valuable to me as a Tiffany Diamond.

It is of sincere nature that I pass along some of these items as time goes, not just to keep my dads memory alive, but also to share in a true love of a sport that we hold dear to us. Sometimes it can trigger a fond memory of a place that you been too( like Rick's LA Athletic Club above) or a person who was a great fighter of the past. By posting it here-we all learn something new to enjoy.

[CNorkusJr]

Frank, Just read your great post by Steve Harvey on the "Holleywood Murders". I enjoyed it very much. I do feel that Mr Harvey left one out that is certainly worth a Hollywood script. When that titanic ape "King Kong" was shot down from the Empire State Bldg. only one man knew that it was " Beauty is what killed The Ape".

How true, how true.

[Rick Farris]

Well Rick, if she doesn't hear than you can't get in trouble for saying something.... [/quote]
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I just saw this post for the first time. Frank, it's that kind of thinking that has made you a "kept man".
Simple advice that makes sense. Thast's why your my mentor!
As long as I don't get stuck with house work I'm a happy man.