Greg Page vs. Marty Monroe
Greg Page 224 lbs beat Marty Monroe 205 lbs by RTD at 3:00 in round 5 of 12
- Date: 1981-04-11
- Location: Concord Hotel, Kiamesha Lake, New York, USA
- Referee: Joe Cortez
- Judge: Bernie Friedkin
- Judge: Eva Shain
From The Associated Press:
While Greg Page says he took a no-nonsense approach to Saturday's heavyweight fight against Marty Monroe, he admits his eyes now are on bigger game.
"I'm going to try to get a shot at Gerry Cooney," he said after Monroe could not answer the bell for the sixth round of their scheduled 10-round nationally televised fight. The fight goes into the record books as a sixth-round knockout.
Cooney was at ringside at the Concord Hotel, where he is in training for his May 19 bout against Ken Norton in Madison Square Garden.
"I'm starting to make my move now," Page said. "When I first started, everybody was ducking. But now I'm in the position that the only way they can get out of it is if they quit."
Page, from Louisville, Ky., now has a record of 16-0, with 15 knockouts.
Monroe survived the fifth round despite absorbing a late flurry of punches which started with a powerful right hand to the chin. Page then swarmed in with a series of punches which left Monroe wobbly legged against the ropes. But the bell ended the round.
The fight ended when Monroe, from Los Angeles, was not allowed to answer the bell for round six by Dr. Frank Folk and referee Joe Cortez.
Page, 22, was 31 pounds heavier at 226 and five years younger than Monroe, whose record fell to 22-2-1. Monroe's only other defeat came against Scott LeDoux.
Each fighter earned about $125,000 for the fight at the Concord Hotel in this Catskill Mountain resort.
Page was in control of the fight throughout, consistently landing jabs and right hands to Monroe's face and lefts to his body.
A right uppercut during the second round staggered Monroe into the ropes but he survived that punch and took another damaging flurry of punches at the end of the fourth round. Monroe was not knocked down during the bout. It was the first time Monroe had been stopped in his career.
Folk and Cortez said Monroe complained between the fifth and sixth rounds that he had reinjured his back. Monroe also had a swollen area under his right eye. Page was unmarked. [1]
Note:
Page's father, Albert, who was very involved with his son's career, was at the bout. It was the last time he would see his son fight. Albert Page died of lung cancer on May 17, 1981.
"And then all the doggone leeches ran down," Greg Page would say later in a deposition about his relationship with fight promoters.
The weight upon Page to choose between promoters Butch Lewis and Don King was immense.
But Albert Page had told his son that Butch Lewis had shortchanged him in the Monroe fight, paying him $50,000 rather than the $125,000 Albert thought he was owed, Greg Page said in a deposition.
Lewis said he never short-changed the Pages. "That I owed them money and didn't pay, that was never the case," he said.
Ultimately, Page would sign documents with both promoters—and would end up mired in litigation from early 1982 through late 1983.
Lewis sued King and Page Enterprises in New York, alleging contractual interference, and King and Page responded by suing Lewis in Louisville, alleging business interference.
The two sides settled at the conclusion of a lengthy, expensive trial with King getting the right to promote Page for three fights and Lewis getting $200,000 and a third of King's gross earnings from those fights.
In large part to finance the litigation, Page borrowed $1.2 million from King against his future earnings. King withheld about $400,000 of the $680,000 Page earned in 1985, a reporter wrote in The Courier-Journal in 1989. [2]