Ohio State Fair Memory...

[ICEMAN JOHN SCULLY]

After I turned professional and started training at the "San Juan Center" in Hartford, Connecticut and began working with the amateur kids there, I knew that I would begin bringing the amateur boxers to the tournament. It was an event that the kids would not have to qualify for so it was possibly to bring as many of them as we could fit into the van and in 1993, six years after I won it, I brought my first twelve man team out to box at the Ohio State Fair. I had Sammy Vega win three consecutive fair titles while Greg Cuyler and Dwayne Hairston each won one. Danny Cruz won the San Juan Center's first Ohio Fair title on that first trip in 1993 in the 119 pound novice class. I worked the corner for Mike-Mike Oliver when he won his title (by decision over hometown favorite Broderick Harper) in 1998 and that same year I convinced a very talented featherweight I knew from Minnesota named Jason Litzau to come out to the Ohio Fair and he not only made it there but he won a title there with a decision in the finals over the equally talented -and future U.S. Olympian- Mickey Bey of Cleveland. In 2001 I worked with 178 pounder Brian Macy on his way to the open class that title that year with a finals night decision over #3 nationally rated Chris Tillman of the U.S. Marines.

Brian Clark and his "Ring One Boxing Team" from nearby New Haven, Connecticut always made the trip out with us and we would follow each other to Ohio in our respective vans. Staying at our usual headquarters, the "Cross Country Inn" on Olentangy River Road, it was a foregone conclusion that the week would be a twenty-four hour a day battle of water balloons and room raids between the Hartford and New Haven teams. Sometimes we would be having so much fun back at the motel that the fights would be just something to do until we got back to the hotel to have more fun. Sometimes it would be a thing where the kids from my gym would be allowed to bring one friend from back home with them to enjoy the fair and the Hotel for the week and, after hearing about how good the trip was, there was never any shortage of kids that wanted to make the twelve hour drive.

That half day trek (twelve hours each way) is always one of the best parts of the trip. We would always stop at certain places along the way and check things out. One year, for example, I stopped off at a park along the way and rented jet-skis. Another time we stopped off at a public pool somewhere on the spur of the moment somewhere in Pennsylvania to go swimming. We stop off and buy fireworks or we see something interesting looking off the highway and pull over to check it out. Sometimes we would even have our own boxing matches on the seats of the van on the way. Or the kids would see girls in passing cars and spend miles and miles waving at them, writing their numbers down on paper and putting them up to the window. We would always make sure the drive out there was as fun and exciting as the rest of the week would be.

That drive each year was like summer camp on wheels for them.

Since 1993, as a coach, I have gotten to see many young kids go through the fair on their way to greater days. Guys like future IBF 135 pound Champ Paul Spadafora and future U.S. Olympians Ricardo Williams, Dante Craig, Rock Allen, Andre Dirrel and Mickey Bey as well as other reputable and accomplished amateur guys like Anthony Hanshaw, Tiger Allen, Anthony Dirrell, Lorenzo Reynolds, DeMarcus "Chop-Chop" Corley and the previously mentioned Jason Litzau.

Litzau was a good amateur who I had met and befriended at the National Silver Gloves and Junior Olympics when I would be out there with the kids I trained. In 1998 I told him we were heading out to the fair and he should see if he could make it. He and his coach did make it and in the finals he scored a decision over future (2004) USA Olympian Mickey Bey.

You go to tournaments like this and there are so many kids from all across the country ranging in age from eight years old to thirty-two years old and weighing between 55 and well above 201 pounds that it is hard to keep track of all of them. You watch all these kids day after day and you just never know who you are watching in there at any given time. That's why I save the daily bout sheets from all these tournaments. What observer of the 1973 edition of the OSF could have had idea whatsoever that the little 95 pounder from Ohio they were watching advance to the finals of the Junior Olympic class would someday turn out to be undisputed world heavyweight champion James "Buster" Douglas?

Without the bout sheet I have from August 11, 1995 how else would I be able to tell you that fans that were there on that one single day watching the action saw three kids I train (Sammy Vega, Dwayne Hairston and Greg Cuyler) box on the same single card that also included such standout boxers as Karl "Dynamite" Dargan, Juan McPherson, Tiger Allen and his 2004 Olympian brother Rock, 2000 Olympian Ricardo Williams, 2004 Olympian Devin Vargas (back when he was only 125 pounds), 165 pound (now undefeated heavyweight) Malik Scott, 2004 Olympian Ron Siler, Rubin Williams as a novice class light middle (he lost to Jeff Lacy the on "Showtime" for the IBF 168 pound title), Anthony Hanshaw (he fought Roy Jones in 2008), heavyweight Carlton Johnson (he would go on to lose, with me in the opposite corner, to Lawrence Clay-Bey in 2004), 2000 Olympian Dante Craig, and, finally, a heavily tattooed kid out of Pennsylvania boxing at 132 pounds named Paul Spadafora.

That was just one show, just one afternoon of boxing!

One time in 1993 a kid from St. Louis came up to me and asked, "Are you John Scully?" I said "Yes," of course, and he said he liked me when he saw me fight on TV and wanted to know if he could get my autograph. I watched him fight that week and talked to him a little bit every time I ran into him over the course of the next few days. It was a little over seven years later when I tuned in to some fights one night and saw him flash across the T.V. screen as an unbeaten challenger on "Showtime Championship Boxing" going up against Cuba's Joel Casamayor for Joel's world junior lightweight title (His name was Radford Beasley).

So you just never know who you are going to run across when you are at tournaments with good young fighters or where they will be in ten years.

The thing I love about amateurs is the closeness of the teams that travel together. You go to tournaments like the National Golden Gloves or the Ohio State Fair and you are there with all the guys from your team. They are with you in the hotel and in the car on the way there, or the plane, and they are running with you if you need to drop a pound before the weigh-in. The Ohio Fair is like that. Each team is there in force, cheering each other on from ringside. The Ohio State Fair is a very informally run tournament. The type of place where even the announcer gets into it. When a kid from Cincinnati is fighting a kid from Columbus, for example, there will be all the members of each team in a large group on each side of the ring. The fight is going on and each team is ringside yelling their heads off in support of their guy. And the announcer gets in on the act, too, egging each team on. Makes it exciting and fun. Adds to the event. Even when they announce the Ohio based boxers they will say it like, "Boxing out of the blue corner, going for his fifth straight Ohio Fair title, all the way from Cincinnati, O-Hiiii-oooooOOOO...Ree-CAR-DOOOooo WILL-iamsssss."

You could never ever do that at a formally run USABoxing, Inc. national tournament. The Ohio Fair is a place where people can go and it has more of a feel of a gym war. My kind of place.

[DCAmateurBoxing]

Brian Clark and his "Ring One Boxing Team" from nearby New Haven, Connecticut always made the trip out with us and we would follow each other to Ohio in our respective vans. Staying at our usual headquarters, the "Cross Country Inn" on Olentangy River Road, it was a foregone conclusion that the week would be a twenty-four hour a day battle of water balloons and room raids between the Hartford and New Haven teams. Sometimes we would be having so much fun back at the motel that the fights would be just something to do until we got back to the hotel to have more fun. Sometimes it would be a thing where the kids from my gym would be allowed to bring one friend from back home with them to enjoy the fair and the Hotel for the week and, after hearing about how good the trip was, there was never any shortage of kids that wanted to make the twelve hour drive.

I met Brian a few years back at the Ringside Tournament. Good coach, good guy. He coaches my favorite amateur boxer, Tremaine "Midget" Williams, a four-time National Silver Gloves Champion. I can't wait to see him as an open boxer.

John, I have never been to the fair, but I heard it was THE tournament in years past. Why isn't that still the case? Has the Ringside and some of these other invitational just simply taken those boxers and teams that would normally travel to Ohio? In DC, there are a lot of coaches that mention having gone, but none of them go currently. Great post!

[ICEMAN JOHN SCULLY]

Yes, the OSF has diminished greatly and now seems to draw mostly Ohio and Pennsylvania boxers... I think there are many factors and the rise of the Ringside tourney is one of them. There was a time, though, when they would boast a 132 pound class in the same tournaments, for example, that had the likes of Milton McCrory, Ray Mancini, Anthony Fletcher, etc etc etc