Boxing News and History

The great Rocky Marciano was born Rocco Francis Marchegiano 1923, in Brockton, Massachusetts.

Marciano was the first of six children born to Perrino and Pasqualena Marchegiano. Before dropping out of high school to make a few bucks – as a gardener, delivery boy, labourer for the gas company and leather tanner at the shoe factory where his father worked – he starred in football and baseball. In 1947, Marciano had a tryout with the Chicago Cubs as a catcher but was let go because he couldn't make the throw from home plate to second base with accuracy.

Rocky didn't take up boxing until after he was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1943. He took up the sport mainly as a way to avoid KP duty (assisting the cooks) and other less desirable activities, but he showed a natural ability and fought as an amateur following his discharge in 1946.

Marciano is the only world heavyweight champion to retire with an undefeated record.

Former top heavyweight contender Earnie Shavers was born in Garland, Alabama in 1944.

Shavers wasn't the fastest or the slickest boxer to ever lace up gloves, but he had the punch. Some consider him the biggest punching heavyweight of his generation.

Shavers ended with a 74-14-1 (68) – one of the highest KO ratios in boxing history – record. Most of his losses were respectable: a knockout in 11 rounds to Larry Holmes in 1979, a 12-round loss to Holmes in 1978, a disputed 15-round decision to Muhammad Ali in 1977.

He recorded 23 first-round knockouts and 50 knockouts within the first three rounds. And Seven fighters retired after being knocked out by Shavers: Ron Asher, Frank Smith, Bunky Akins, Bill McMurray, Harold Carter, Eddie Parotte, and Larry Sims.

"Earnie hit me so hard, it shook my kinfolk back in Africa," said Ali.

Holmes was quoted as saying: "Earnie hit me harder than any other fighter, including Mike Tyson. ... Being hit by Mike Tyson was like getting hit by a speeding Ferrari. Being hit by Earnie Shavers was like being hit by a Mack Truck."

"Hey man, that's the hardest I've ever been hit in my life," remembered Ron Lyle. "And George Foreman could punch, but none of them could hit like Earnie Shavers did. When he hit you, the lights went out. I can laugh about it now, but at the time, it wasn't funny."

"Nobody hits like Shavers," said tex Cobb. "If anybody hit harder than Shavers, I'd shoot him. ... Earnie could punch you in the neck with his right hand and break your ankle."

Born in Dallas, Texas, and raised in Chandler, Arizona, Zora Folley’s journey to the boxing ring began in the U.S. Army. It was during his military service that he first laced on a pair of gloves, setting in motion a career that would see him become one of the most respected heavyweights of his era.

After leaving the army in 1953, Folley turned professional and quickly proved himself a serious contender. Early defeats to Johnny Summerlin and Young Jack Johnson served as lessons rather than setbacks, sharpening his skills and ring intelligence. As the quality of opposition improved, so did Folley.

A contentious points loss to Henry Cooper in London left Folley frustrated, but it was a 1960 showdown with Sonny Liston that truly altered the course of his career. Entering the bout with a record of 50-3-2, Folley was seen as a legitimate threat. But after being dropped early in the second round, he made the bold decision to fight fire with fire – only to be floored again and stopped in the third. He was never quite the same fighter afterwards.

Despite that, Folley remained a fixture in the heavyweight rankings. He eventually earned a title shot in 1967 against Muhammad Ali, but by then, his best years were behind him. Ali knocked him out in the seventh round.

"Folley bothered me for a while," said Ali. "He was taking his time and stalking me, but he wasn't fast enough."

At his peak, Folley was a superb technician: a slick, intelligent boxer with underrated power. His résumé includes wins over the likes of Eddie Machen, George Chuvalo, Nino Valdes, Doug Jones, Bob Foster, Oscar Bonavena, Henry Cooper (in their rematch), Henry Clark, and Mike DeJohn.

Tragically, Folley died in 1972 at just 41 years old, after striking his head on the edge of a swimming pool at a motel in Tucson, Arizona in unexplained circumstances. Though his death sparked speculation and conspiracy theories, it was officially ruled an accident.

Harry Greb won the world middleweight title by outpointing Boston southpaw, Johnny Wilson, over 15 rounds in front of a relatively small crowd of 11,000 at the Polo Grounds, New York, in 1923.

They had made him wait until he was 29 years old, but finally he had the championship.

What nobody knew by then was that he was fighting under an incredible handicap. Greb had lost the sight in his right eye, following a foul-filled No Decision bout a seriously tough light-heavyweight, Kid Norfolk, in 1921. As the decade wore on, so the sight in his left eye began to deteriorate too to the point where he said with deep regret: “I can’t tell a dame from a priest until she’s close enough to smell her perfume.”

Greb, known for his busy schedule, had won the American light-heavyweight title famously against Gene Tunney, lost it controversially to Tunney and defeated Wilson for the world middleweight crown all in the space of 15 months.

At one point or another, Greb outfought them all.

The 'Pittsburgh Windmill’ had just past his twenty-ninth birthday and had been fighting professionally for nearly 10 years and had fought close to 200 fights.

When the decision was announced the crowd showed it’s approval boisterously while Greb's handlers, more excited than the crowd, boosted the new champion shoulder-high and the, with startling suddenness, dropped the smiling fighter to his feet.

Still beaming, Greb left the ring and headed for his dressing room jubilant at winning the elusive crown after 10 long years of ring service.

For 13 of the 15 rounds Greb fought like a perpetual motion machine and pummelled Wilson to the crowd’s delight.

When the final bell ended Wilson’s misery, the former champion was a sorry sight. The bridge of his nose was cut, his mouth was bleeding, his lips were swollen and raw, he had swelling under the right eye and his left eye was almost closed.

The plane crash that killed Rocky Marciano, the former heavyweight champion, was caused by the young private pilot’s inexperience with poor weather, according to a report issued by the National Transportation Safety Board in 1969.

The Government’s formal investigation indicated that neither physiological conditions, such as a heart attack, nor mechanical failure had contributed to the accident in Newton, Iowa. The crash “could have been prevented,” the board stated. The pilot, Glenn Eugene Belz, “followed the first cardinal rule of safe flight planning by obtaining a weather briefing, but he did not follow the second: carefully weighing the forecast conditions against his piloting skill and the capability of his aircraft, and then making a conservative decision.”

According to The New York Times, Belz had logged only 231 total flying hours, the board noted, and he was not rated for instrument flying – an essential qualification given the low cloud ceiling and visibility of less than two miles reported in Des Moines on the night of the accident.

Former undefeated world heavyweight champion Rocky Marciano was killed in a plane crash with two companions about 30 miles east of Des Moines, Iowa in 1969.

Marciano boarded the small single-engined Cessna 172 with the pilot and one other passenger for a flight from Chicago to a speaking engagement in Des Moines. The plane crashed at about 10pm in a field near Newton, Iowa, killing all three men on board.

Rocky was survived by his wife of 19 years, Barbara, and their two children, Mary Anne and Rocco Kevin.

Angelo Dundee, the renowned trainer who guided Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard to glory, was born Angelo Mirena in Philadelphia in 1921..

He became Angelo Dundee after his brother, Joe, fought professionally under the name Johnny Dundee, in tribute to a former featherweight champion; another brother, Chris, also adopted the Dundee name.

Dundee’s first champion was Carmen Basilio, the welterweight and middleweight titleholder of the 1950s from upstate New York.

Dundee also trained the light-heavyweight champion Willie Pastrano, the heavyweight titleholder Jimmy Ellis and the welterweight champion Luis Rodriguez. Dundee advised George Foreman when he regained the heavyweight title at age 45. He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1992.

Dundee once said: “I’m not star quality. The fighter is the star.”

But he took pride in his craft. As he put it: “You’ve got to combine certain qualities belonging to a doctor, an engineer, a psychologist and sometimes an actor, in addition to knowing your specific art well. There are more sides to being a trainer than those found on a Rubik’s Cube.”

Brilliant cornerman Ray Arcel was born in Terre Haute, Indiana in 1899, the son of Jewish immigrants from Russia and Romania. He moved to New York City before he was six years old and grew up in Harlem.

From 1917, when he first walked into Grupp's gym in New York City, until 1982 when he retired, Arcel was a master of a craft shrouded in mystery.

"The trainer," Arcel once said, "is the boss. The trainer is the pillar of hope for every fighter. It's like watching a child grow day to day. There's just something about it."

There are few who know and understand the craft of boxing and the art of teaching as well as Arcel did. Arcel saw the great Jack Dempsey box in 1916, trained 20 world champions over six decades and ended his days as a boxing sage who always had time for those who wanted to learn.

Arcel trained the boxing champions Ezzard Charles, Jim Braddock, Bob Olin, Tony Zale, Barney Ross, Billy Soose, Ceferino Garcia, Lou Brouillard, Teddy Yarosz, Freddie Steele, Jack 'Kid' Berg, Alfonso 'Peppermint' Frazer, Abe Goldstein, Frankie Genaro (his first champion in 1923), Sixto Escobar, Charley Phil Rosenberg, Roberto Duran, Larry Holmes and Benny Leonard (his personal favourite – "Ray liked brains over brawn").

He enlisted an old friend, Freddie Brown [pictured smoking cigar with Arcel], to help him mould the young Duran into a world champion. Duran's Panamanian trainers could not handle him, but Arcel and Brown moulded him gently into one of the finest – and most ferociously cunning – fighters in history.

He was 82 years old when he worked his last championship bout – in Larry Holmes's corner, assisting 71-year-old Eddie Futch, whom he had known for 40 years, in a successful title defence against Gerry Cooney.

He died in manhattan in 1994 at 93 years old.

Nobody thought more about boxing, or knew more about boxers, than Ray Arcel.

Former WBA and IBF super-featherweight champion Brian Mitchell was born in Kensington, Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1961.

After winning the WBA super-featherweight title in 1986, Mitchell was forced to defend it abroad because the WBA refused to sanction championship fights in apartheid-era South Africa. He became a true road warrior, making 12 consecutive defences in Puerto Rico, Panama, France, Italy, Spain, England and the United States without losing.

“Growing up, you don’t know anything different,” Mitchell told The Ring. “Once I became a professional boxer, I realized something was wrong.”

His 1987 defence against Francisco Fernandez in Panama was particularly perilous. Political unrest and a car bombing disrupted his preparations, forcing him to run up hotel stairs and spar inside his room. Mitchell stopped Fernandez in the 14th round before returning home with his title.

“It doesn’t get crazier than that,” he said.

Lloyd Honeyghan successfully defended his world welterweight titles in 1987 by blitzing Texan 'Mad Dog' Gene Hatcher in 40 seconds in a Marbella bullring.

"The first punch was one of the best I've ever thrown," the 27-year-old champion said. "That first punch could have knocked anyone out."

Honeyghan said he thought he could have seriously hurt the 28-year-old fighter from Fort Worth, who remained on the canvas for several minutes before getting up with the help of paramedics.

Before meeting Honeyghan, Hatcher had never been knocked out in his professional career.

The same show saw victories for Frank Bruno, Gary Mason and Errol McDonald over Reggie Gross, Eddie Richardson and Jose Maria Castillo respectively.