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Okay folks, the big day is over Finally! Now it’s time for the New Year, the one day we get a chance to start from a clean slate and hopefully have a better year then the last. Well, at least in theory anyway.
It is also a time to reflect on the past. Each New Years Eve we tend look back and remember the hard times and how we got through them. We think about the people who were endeared to us that have moved on to a better place, wishing they were with us to celebrate. We toast the good times, then wish each other more of them once the clock hits midnight. Yes, New Years has some sentiment too.
Last year, I made a list of resolutions to help my year get started in a more positive way. Like every year, those resolutions lasted a week. Hey, it’s the thought that counts, right? I also made a list of resolutions for some of our big name fighters, hoping that they might follow them and have a better year, career-wise.
Guess what? None of the guys on the list followed a single bit of my advice. All but one also had a bad year. So, this year, since my advice is not appreciated, I am going to share 10 of my most memorable moments of the sport, both good and bad, over the last 25 plus years. Hopefully, in the future we have more of the good and a little less of the bad.
10.) Floyd Patterson dies at 71: At times, he was an under appreciated and often when it came to mentioning the greats, his name was forgotten. Yet Floyd Patterson was a man who won a Gold Medal in the Olympics, was the youngest heavyweight champion to date prior to Mike Tyson, became the first man to ever regain the heavyweight title and amassed ring earnings exceeding $8,000,000, a fortune at the time.
Patterson then spent time as the sports commissioner till he was forced to resign due to Alzheimer’s disease.
He did all that you could possibly do in the sport of boxing and his contributions were beyond praise. He was a good man, in and out of the ring, who was known for his soft spoken demeanor and politeness. His name may not always be the first one we mention when we think of the sports pound for pound greatest, but make no mistake about it, on 11 May 2006, we lost one of our sport’s true heroes.
9.) Mike Tyson becomes the youngest heavyweight champion of all time: It was predicted, it was foreseen and it happened! On 22 November 1986, at just a little beyond 20 years and five months of age, Mike Tyson TKO’d Trevor Berbick for his first world title win. This feat made Tyson the youngest heavyweight champion of all time. For years he had the world in his hands until he eventually self destructed and destroyed his chances at being an all time great. But on that November night, Mike made history and set the sport on fire.
8.) Deuk Koo Kim dies from injuries sustained in the ring: Death in the ring has happened before and has happened since, but the difference in this case is that it was the first time it happened in a fight which I had seen. At the time, Ray Mancini was very popular so when he fought, the news traveled fast. The telecast I saw was a replay and it really stuck with me as Kim was to die four days later. Especially as I was only 9 years old and it drove me nuts wondering exactly at which moment they should have stopped the fight. I never looked at the sport the same again and Mancini never fought the same again, either.
7.) Michael Spinks beats Larry Holmes for the heavyweight title: Who would have guessed that another Spinks was going to make a huge upset for the heavyweight crown? Michael, who was the chosen opponent on the night that Larry Holmes was hoping to tie Rocky Marciano’s 49-0 record, became the spoiler instead of the enabler. Spinks outboxed the long time champion, winning the title by way of unanimous decision, and not only became the new champ but also the first light heavyweight champion to capture the title.
Spinks defended the belt a couple of times and then retired. He came back just once, to fight Mike Tyson, and was blown out in just 91 seconds of the first round, but the $13.5 million Spinks picked up in the process help comfort him during the disappointment.
6.) Mitch Halpern commits suicide: This was such a shock to me because he had just become one of the sport’s premier and most respected officials. He had recently been the ref for numerous high profile title fights such as Tyson vs. Holyfield, De la Hoya vs. Trinidad and De la Hoya vs. Quartey, to name a few. So when the news came that the 33 year old official shot himself, over what seemed to be a domestic problem, it caught everyone by surprise.
Just as Halpern reaches the top of his profession, he has such a turn towards the bottom of his personal life. The third man in the ring is often as important as the fighters themselves and on occasion, we have one who performs the job above and beyond, earning the respect of not only the fighters, but the fans as well. Halpern was one of those men.
5.) Richard Steele stops Julio Cesar Chavez vs. Meldrick Taylor 1 with just seconds left!: This will always be one of the sport’s most controversial moments. Chavez the Mexican legend had his WBC title on the on line while Taylor had his IBF title up for grabs. Both were undefeated and both top pound for pound fighters of their era, so t was time to find out who the best 140 lb fighter in the world was.
Until the tenth round, Taylor had the fight under control, out maneuvering Chavez with speed and footwork. Then, in the tenth, Chavez started to catch Taylor with hard shots that began to swell Meldrick’s face up. After a little back and forth action in the twelfth, Chavez traps Taylor in the corner and catches him with some blistering shots. Although Taylor was on the receiving end of an onslaught, he was certainly not out.
Suddenly, referee Richard Steele decides to stop the fight with just seconds left, giving Chavez the TKO win. Taylor was in utter disbelief by the decision. If Steele had not stopped the fight, Chavez would have suffered his first defeat and Taylor would have become the number one man in sport under 160 lbs. At the time of the stoppage, Chavez was behind on all three judge’s scorecards by two rounds or more.
After that fight, Taylor never had the same confidence he showed in the past, eventually becoming a has been and going at it in club fights for just a few hundred dollars. Chavez was later defeated by Frankie Randall, a fighter he underestimated and paid for it by doing so.
4.) Bernard Hopkins makes defense number 20 of the middleweight title: At 40 years old and over a decade as middleweight champion, Bernard Hopkins makes an astonishing twentieth defense of his belt by decisioning tough British challenger Howard Eastman. He had already passed the record previously held by the great Carlos Monzon, but for some reason, number 20 seemed so sweet when spoken. That night, Hopkins proved that when done right, you can only improve with age.
3). James “Buster” Douglas knocks out Mike Tyson in Tokyo: Little known James “Buster” Douglas was supposed to be nothing more than just another victim for Mike Tyson. Odds makers were so sure about the outcome of the fight that they made him a 99-1 underdog. After surviving longer than expected, everyone thought the inevitable had taken place when Douglas went down in round eight. Controversy soon followed as the count had gotten held up, giving Douglas extra time.
This was enough time for Douglas to pull it together and survive the rest of the round, giving him the chance to fully regroup during the break. In the tenth round, he commanded the fight and sent Tyson down to the canvas for the first time in his career, handing “Iron Mike” his first loss. Douglas then lost the belt to Evander Holyfield in his first defense but that did not matter because for one night, 10 February 1990, he was the baddest man on the planet.
2.) Roy Jones gets knocked out in two rounds by Antonio Tarver: For years Roy Jones seemed flawless. His only blemish was a DQ loss to Montell Griffin that was avenged with authority. He dazzled us at super middleweight, destroyed all comers who dared try to take his light heavyweight crown and then, out of boredom, he decides to bid for the heavyweight title and successfully takes the WBA version with ease.
But after his adventure into the big boy’s yard. Jones returns home to struggle against Antonio Tarver in a narrow points victory. Most people chalked up the bad performance to the sudden dramatic loss in weight and figured that in the rematch, Roy was going to dominate and shut Tarver’s mouth just like he did with Griffin. Or so we thought.
It wasn’t the fact that he lost that shocked us so much, but that he was laid out cold and by a fighter of half his class, skill-wise! In his next fight, Jones was KO’d again, this time by Glen Johnson, putting the final nail in the Roy Jones Jr. era. Every decade has a great fighter who eventually gets upset and loses sooner or later, such as Joe Louis, Ray Robinson, Ray Leonard and Alexis Arguello. In this decade, that fighter was Roy Jones.
1.) Muhammad Ali captures the heavyweight crown for the third time: After his shocking loss to Leon Spinks for the heavyweight title, the boxing world pretty much considered Ali’s career over. I mean, to be beaten by a guy in his eighth pro fight, Olympic medal winner or not, showed that Ali had nothing left and that the years of ring wars had finally caught up with him.
In the rematch, just seven months later, Ali proved once again why he was the greatest. It still gives me chills to hear Howard Cosell yelling into the microphone “ALI HAS DONE IT, HE IS ONCE AGAIN THE WORLDS HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION! ALI HAS DONE THE IMPOSSIBLE!” It was Ali’s last win and last great moment in the ring.
There are so many more great moments to come in the future, moments that will surely knock a few of these off my list. What those moments will be are anyone’s guess but like I said, one of the best parts about New Years is the chance that things will be better in the future than they were in the past. I for one can’t wait to see.
To all our fans at SaddoBoxing, I wish you a Happy New Year!
