Tag: Bernie McCoy

Not According to the Script Bernie McCoy

(APR 9) It was all set for the perfect Hollywood ending: Maureen Shea, as famous as the sparring partner for Hillary Swank during the actress' preparation for her starring role in "Million Dollar Baby" as she was as an up-and-coming amateur fighter, was in the finals of the New York Golden Gloves, one bout away from a title. Not only that, Shea, in a wonderful "back story", was a Irish fighter in a featured fight at Madison Square Garden, or the Theater at the Garden, where the Golden Gloves have been held in recent years. An Irish fighter featured at the Garden is a tradition going back, at the very least, to the 1940s and Billy Graham, the Greenwich Village welterweight, not the preacher. Hillary Swank, this year's Academy Award recipient for Best Actress, had jetted in for the fight Read more [...]

“Yeah, I Was in the Gloves” By Bernie McCoy

Even after all these years, the thing that I remember most vividly about that night was the boxing robe. It wasn't the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, but it was in the top ten. It was an almost black-red color, the color that cherries have when they're displayed on a fruit stand. On the back of the robe, in white script, was the legend "Salem Crescent". Those two words were enough for anyone who knew anything about Golden Gloves boxing in New York I was in the corner of a boxing ring in the gym at St Thomas Aquinas School, almost at the end of Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. It was the first round of the Golden Gloves a long time ago. It was a time before headgear, it was a time before two minute rounds for first time boxers or as they were known in the Gloves, sub-novice fighters. If Read more [...]

Christy Martin, That was Then…. By Bernie McCoy

Its really not to difficult to imagine a scenario where several women, in various parts of the country, might have been sending long distance high fives to Laila Ali, last Saturday. They would have been watching, on TV, Christy Martin, on her hands and knees, gazing blearily into her corner as her husband/manager, Jim Martin, more than likely encouraging her to "stay down, stay down" Martin, of course did stay down, since, in fact, she was probably the last person in the Grand Casino in Biloxi, MS who wanted the one-sided boxing match with Laila Ali to continue. Those women? Lets give them names: Jovette Jackson, Del Pettis, Sue Chase, Angela Buchanan. They were all opponents that Christy Martin KO'd as part of a long string of carefully chosen bouts during her days as the "face" of Women's Read more [...]

The Right Way By Bernie McCoy

Frank Lahey, one of the great football coaches at Notre Dame once said, "Egotisim is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity". Yesterday's silliness at the Biloxi MS press conference for the August 23 Laila Ali/Christy Martin may not have been totally stupid, but it was close enough to make the evening news. Putting Ali and Martin in a room with one microphone is similar to putting Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie in a room with one trumpet. Both women have egos equaling or exceeding their skill in the ring; both women are used to being the center of attraction at press conferences;  both women are used to throwing "punch" lines at their future opponents in the ring and getting no response in return. Thus, when Ali and Martin turned the press conference into the type of "dialogue" Read more [...]

Crying Wolfe: Ali saga on Ann Wolfe

The out-of-the-blue announcement of the August 23,  Laila Ali and Christy Martin matchup brought the expected reaction from the "usual suspects" in Texas. RPM Boxing issued a broadside stating that Ali, by taking the Martin bout, was once again, "dodging the bullet", a matchup with RPM's estimable fighter, Ann Wolfe. Wolfe's name, indeed, has usually been a noticeably absent element any time opponents for Laila Ali are the subject. However, like almost everything to do with Ali and her career, it comes back to Johnny "Yahya" McClain, who is Laila's husband and, not surprisingly, the promoter of the August 23 card on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. McClain has done a masterful job of positioning Laila Ali as the new "face" of Women's Boxing, replacing the other woman in the ring on August Read more [...]

Mike Tyson and Fifteen Years By Bernie McCoy

Fifteen years is a long time. To adjudge just how long, think of one name in the boxing world, Mike Tyson. Fifteen years ago this week, Mike Tyson laid a very solid claim to the title, " the baddest man on the planet" by annihilating, and there's really no other word for it, Michael Spinks in just over a minute in a heavyweight championship bout in Atlantic City. Fifteen years later, Tyson continues to scuffle around the heavyweight ranks, but he is now known more for his bizarre conduct and statements to the press than for his ferocious boxing skill in the ring. Tyson was scheduled as a "program saver" for the original incarnation of the  Lennox Lewis championship fight on June 21. However, remaining true to his career-long erratic behavior, Tyson dropped out of the scheduled bout soon Read more [...]

Auturo Gatti-Mickey Ward, They Deserved Better By Bernie McCoy

The first fight was the best, probably the best of this generation. The return bout wasn't quite as great, it couldn't have been, there's never more than one Taj Mahal. The third fight was the least of the three, but will probably be better than 90% of the boxing matches we'll see in the next five years. When Arturo Gatti and Mickey Ward finished the last round of their ten round segment of thirty rounds of boxing on Saturday night in Atlantic City, they stopped punching for the first time in thirty minutes of ring savagery. They  then  stood in the middle of the ring, forehead to forehead and muttered words to each other that only they were privy to, words that, in a true sense,  only they should have been privy to. There was no prancing around the ring, no jumping on the ring ropes, Read more [...]

Spending Time in the Garden By Bernie McCoy May 23, 2003

To many boxing fans my age, and that means those who saw Floyd Patterson fight an eight-round main event in Brooklyn's Eastern Parkway Arena because he wasn't old enough to be licensed to fight ten rounds, "the Garden" can mean only one thing. Its the arena that was on 50th Street and 8th Avenue in New York City and it was the Mecca of boxing in the forties and fifties. This, of course, was decades before it was ever conceived that "big fights" would be held in casino parking lots or ballrooms and most people thought Zaire was a bakery in the Bronx that had bagels "to die for". Friday night was fight night at the Garden, not once a month or every other week, but every Friday, most weeks of the year. The main event started at ten o'clock, since it was televised as part of the "Gillette Cavalcade Read more [...]

The One and Only By Bernie McCoy

He began life eighty three years ago this month, May 3, as Walker Smith Jr in the small town of Ailey,Georgia. His birthplace was one, maybe the only, of the small town elements about the man who was known throughout his career as "Sugar Ray". He lived large outside the ring and inside the ropes he was the largest presence of his, or possibly, any other generation of fighters. There have been other boxers who have appropriated the sobriquet "Sugar Ray" throughout the years, some who have even carried the proud name into the ring with a modicum of distinction.  However, to most knowledgeable boxing fans, "Sugar Ray" goes with Robinson the way "Babe" goes with Ruth. He had nearly 200 bouts in his career and won 173 of them, 109 by knockout, but these are only the unrefined statistics of Sugar Read more [...]

Drama Without a Script… By Bernie McCoy

Its been written that sports is "drama without a script". Every so often, however, a sports event plays out exactly according to a script,  like the last act of a play. On October 26, 1951, that play was, in the eyes of many, a tragedy. The day before, October 25th, I had, chronologically, become a teenager. I could now truthfully proclaim that "I was in my teens" and look forward to all the wonders life had to offer a teenager in Brooklyn. It didn't take long. October 26th was a Friday and Friday was fight night at Madison Square Garden. I usually had to argue, cajole, persuade, and, usually, as a last resort, grovel, to get my dad to take me with him to McGuire's, the neighborhood gin mill, to watch the Friday Night Fights on TV. Once in a great while, he'd give in, particularly if Read more [...]