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'Four Kings' By Steve Kim PhilBoxing.com Wed, 22 Oct 2008 On the afternoon of October 18th, before Bernard Hopkins and Kelly Pavlik battled inside Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey, a panel discussion featuring promoter Bob Arum, HBO's Larry Merchant, noted trainer/manager Emanuel Steward, and veteran boxing scribe George Kimball was held at the Club Athena at the Caesars Atlantic to discuss Kimball's new book, 'Four Kings - Leonard, Hagler, Hearns, Duran and the Last Great Era of Boxing,' a 339 page look back at the nine fight round-robin staged by the legendary quartet in the 1980's. In this well-researched and insightful piece of work, Kimball goes behind the scenes and examines the backroom dealings and machinations that led up to those memorable bouts, and the seminal moments during the fights that made them so historic. The book seems to have a certain intimacy to it. And in large part it's because Kimball, who for a quarter century was a highly acclaimed columnist for the Boston Herald, covered boxing in an era when every major paper covered boxing extensively and the regular beat writers enjoyed a certain kind of access that is foreign today. In essence, it was more fun to cover boxing back then. ?Yeah, I think it was more fun to cover it," agreed Kimball, who won the Fleischer Award for Excellence in Boxing Journalism from the BWAA in 1985. "Because we covered it differently back then. A lot of newspapers sent writers to the fights and we came in several days before it. So we were out not only hanging out with each other - and that was a great bunch of guys, Pat Putnan, Ed Schuyler and Michael Katz - but you'd also spend more time with the fighters, the managers, with the trainers and you could sit on a bar stool at Caesars and they'd eventually all come over there. There would be a lot of great stories and things you can't pry loose in a conference call - the things a guy is not going to give up in a conference call that he might over a few drinks at a swimming pool." Having covered all nine chapters ringside, it was only natural that Kimball write this book. "I eventually got around to realizing it was sort of a self-contained era and it fit into a decade. There were nine fights between them all and there was a beginning, a middle and an end and this really was an era in a lot of respects that was preceded by the Vietnam War. We invaded Panama two weeks after it happened and bombed Iraq a year after it was over," says Kimball. "So there was relative tranquility on the domestic front. In the 80's there were innumerable NFL and Major League Baseball work stoppages and with all this, boxing was really able to dominate the stage." Back then, boxing was still prominent on the front pages of newspapers, it routinely had crowds that swelled over 20,000 in makeshift outdoor stadiums, and it wasn't unusual for shows like 'Good Morning America' and 'Today' to have live remotes from the fights in the days leading up to it. Today, we have '24/7' pushing the game?s biggest events. Back then it was covered 24/7 in some respects. But what really made this time so cherished were the fighters themselves. "It was a special era; I don't know if it was the last special era of boxing, but look, we had one of the great lightweights of all-time, Duran, one of the great welterweights of all-time, Leonard, one of the great middleweights, Hagler, and Tommy Hearns, who was a co-star in two of the most memorable fights of recent times," Merchant points out. "So that alone made it special, along with the fact that each of them came sort of from a different place and they had their own big following, and that Leonard was like a national figure from the '76 Olympics. He was the guy who really replaced Ali as the next popular boxer and he led that parade because he was in six of the nine fights among them. So it was special." Merchant believes there have been other great eras. He points out that Sugar Ray Robinson, "was his own tournament," having participated in multiple fight sets against the likes of Jake LaMotta, Gene Fullmer, Bobo Olsen and Carmen Basilio. He also remembers the heavyweights of the 90's (Evander Holyfield, Mike Tyson, Lennox Lewis and Riddick Bowe). But nothing could really compare with Leonard, Hagler, Hearns and Duran. There was a certain mystique that still exists to this day surrounding those men. It was boxing's version of Camelot. And to those involved, it represented their favorite time in the business. "There's no question about it," said Arum, who had a hand in promoting seven of these events. "The attention of the fans was riveted on these guys and they had a charisma about them. They were all so different, and when they fought each other - which they did nine times - it was a big event and the attention of the sporting world was on boxing." Steward, who handled the career of the fabled 'Hit Man' says, "It's one of the greatest eras in the history, to me, of any sport. To have so many super talented fighters and all of them at the same time in the same weight divisions and most of them near the primes of their careers when they fought each other, it was just very unusual." To a man, the panelists believe that the two fights that stand out among the nine are Leonard-Hearns I and Hagler-Hearns. "Hagler-Hearns was the greatest short fight," opined Kimball. "To me, the first Leonard-Hearns fight was an absolute masterpiece." Even though the participants procured multi-million dollar paydays that would be eye-opening even by today?s standards, what made these individuals so special was that they were boxers before businessmen. "They were real fighters that had come up from the ranks, they had fought on network television, they had fought big fights where they didn't make crazy money. And now, they were taking fights where so much of their purse came on the upside," Arum points out. "They were real fighters, they were people who understood the business. The people around them understood the business. So as long as they believed they were getting a fair shake, it was more important for them to do the fight than to count the money." According to him, the fights were relatively easy to make. "The fights were not difficult; the parties decided they wanted to fight each other, the negotiations never lasted for more than a day." In fact, the first bout between Leonard and Hearns was consummated in a clandestine meeting at a diner between Steward and Leonard's attorney, Mike Trainer, that took no more than 15 minutes. Today, such a thing would be unheard of. Put simply, it's a different business, with fighters having a sharply contrasting mindset. "We didn't have to check back with no promoters, we didn't have to check with our networks, there were no egos. We were very realistic and the guys wanted to fight. But now, everybody is worrying about how much money there is or they won?t fight this guy or that guy. But that was an era when guys fought the best, and it's a businessman era today," Steward laments. So can lightning strike twice? The boxing industry certainly needs it to. "You never say never," Arum says. "I mean, it's hard to imagine in my mind, that you could get four such intriguing personalities, four such great fighters in the same weight category that would be able to fight each other in nine separate bouts. But hopefully it'll come again. It was just for me one of the most exciting times of my life and it was probably the high point of my career as a boxing promoter," Arum says. The promoter says that Kimball's accounting and recall of events is incredibly accurate. "George not only captured the atmosphere, but he is factually correct in what he wrote, and he brings back a lot of memories for me. But it's so well-written and so entertaining that it's certainly a book that I would recommend to anybody that either remembers those times or doesn't, but loves boxing." Kimball is the very last of a generation, the boxing scribe who was around when people gave a damn, the newspaper business was strong and editors believed boxing was a major sport that needed to be covered full-time. He's lucky to have experienced this first-hand on press row. It's why guys like him get into the business (because it's certainly not the pay.) You could say this book is also about Kimball and his professional life. "Oh, absolutely, it is a history," he agreed. "That's what I did. It might not be what I am, but it's what I did." BOOK INFO 'Four Kings', which is published by McBrooks Press, (www.mcbooks.com) retails for $22.95. FEARSOME LIL FOURSOME I don't think there will be anything quite like the era chronicled by Kimball. The level of general interest across the board simply isn't there, and in addition to the fighters getting plenty of network television exposure on the way up, the replays of those big bouts just weren't on HBO or Showtime, but oftentimes on CBS or ABC. And nowadays you simply have too many network entanglements and too much promotional acrimony existing today. But I guess my version of the 'Four Kings' would have to be the series of fights between Manny Pacquiao, Marco Antonio Barrera, Erik Morales and Juan Manuel Marquez, who engaged in a series of extraordinary contests in recent years that took place between 122 and 130-pounds. I'm proud to say that outside of Pacquiao-Barrera I in San Antonio, Texas, I was ringside for the rest of these fights. ELITEXC KO'D I guess the guy who told me that he believed that there was a market for the UFC but not MMA hit the nail right on the head. If EliteXC couldn't make it with their built-in connections with CBS and Showtime, then I'm not so sure who can. The bottom line is that the UFC is Microsoft, Nike, and Disney, combined all into one, when it comes to this realm. FINAL FLURRIES Did anyone notice how intently HBO prez Ross Greenburg was watching that stinker between Steven Luevano and Billy Dib. Take that Thomas Hauser!!!....I hear that HBO has approved Kelly Pavlik-Marco Antonio Rubio and it will take place sometime in either January or February....Daniel Ponce De Leon will make his return to the ring on November 1st in Chihuahua, MX on the version of HBO that nobody gets out here in the States. Getting a copy of Pitalua-Santa Cruz is harder to find than actual footage of Ray Robinson as a welterweight....Art of Boxing's next show will take place at the Hollywood Park Casino on December 20th....One reason that Bernard Hopkins may have been so much active than he was for previous bouts against Winky Wright and Joe Calzaghe is that he may have gotten a thyroid condition that nagged him cleared up....Perhaps if he had more order in his life, Wilfred Benitez could've made it 'Five Kings'..... Click here to view a list of other articles written by Steve Kim. |
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