
Originally Posted by
Jim Borzell
Hi,
He was abit of an oddball, a young Bronx boxer who spoke like an English gentleman! Always dressed immacculately with his designer clothes from England. He could be spotted at amateur boxing shows around NY literally all the time, usually not competing but observing. I spoke with him quite regularly circa 1988 at a gym so I suppose I did know him personally at that time. Back in the amateurs I remembered him as a limited slugger but a real handful for anybody. I hadn't seen him fight for about three years though when I saw him sparring at Morris Park Boxing Club, at that time he was taking bouts in England and flying back and forth from New York to Brighton U.K.
He was fiercely improving skills and had clearly improved. I was told he was sparring every day, at different gyms. I was told he continued this relentless sparring for the rest of the year before disappearing for good. So he had a lot of ring experience by the time he was starting to make noise in England. A friend of mine Pat Vercase said he had never seen anybody so dedicated to improving their skills. He'd also been working with a martial arts guy called Walter for a couple of years and developed this very weird style that none of the guys at Morris Park could work out, he was getting faster and more flexible and robotic by the day. He said to me "Don't worry, I'll be fighting for the world title one day", ofcourse we laughed. A few years passed when I turned on the boxing one night and there he was in his championship win over Nigel Benn, could'nt believe it.
Jim
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