Everyone is reminiscing, which is all well and good, but Kushner, who I interviewed at length, inevitably said it best?
Boxing promoter Cedric Kushner died yesterday after suffering a massive heart attack. He was 66 years old.
Born and raised in Capetown, South Africa, he was cordial, dry, and very polite. Everyone is reminiscing, which is all well and good, but Kushner, who I interviewed at length, inevitably said it best.
?Capetown is very beautiful,? he told me, ?but it was a little isolated and I always wanted to come to the States. I was somewhat impressed by the movies. I remember the film that made the greatest impression on me was The Graduate. Not that I was looking for older women, but I remember Dustin Hoffman riding around in a sports car and I started thinking about the quality of life.?
Kushner left South Africa at 21. He bummed around Europe, before bumming around America, and finally touched down in New York. It was 1974.
With thoughts of Dustin Hoffman in mind, with thoughts of Anne Bancroft in body, Kushner borrowed $5000 and created Cedric Kushner Promotions. He wasn?t, however, promoting boxing at first. His first promotion featured Steppenwolf, and he subsequently worked with the Grateful Dead, Queen, Bob Seger, Neil Young, Rush, and The Rolling Stones.
?It was a fun time, both in front of the stage and backstage,? he said while arching an eyebrow, ?if you know where I?m going.?
Kushner began promoting fights in 1984. His first fighter was Irish Teddy Mann.
?He was a middleweight from New Jersey, fought on ESPN as a regular, and was quite a good fighter. I managed Teddy for seven to eight months. And then through my travels and experiences with him, I met some promoters and some of the prominent people in the business and started to get a real feel for the business and decided to get into the promotion side more seriously and phase myself out of the music business.?
To trade one cutthroat business for another might not seem wise in retrospect, but there?s nothing like boxing, just as there?s nothing like rock ?n? roll.
Kushner had a promotional agreement with South African heavyweight contender Gerrie Coetzee. He also had a partnership agreement with Bob Arum that didn?t pan out. ?So I ended up going to Don King. Coetzee knocked out Michael Dokes to win the WBA world heavyweight championship. Unfortunately that didn?t work out either. Mr. King separated me from my fighter, if I can be so diplomatic.?
In 1983 Kushner started the series called ?Heavyweight Explosion!? which was a mainstay of CKP for many years. ?I developed a lot of fighters that have gone on to heavyweight championships?Chris Byrd, Hasim Rahman?unfortunately not all the time for me. But that?s another story.?
Small-time promoters are forgotten as quickly as small-time fighters. They?re ancient history when they?re alive but remembered when they?re gone. Kushner may have suffered this fate, but never lost his love for boxing.
?There?s nothing more exciting than attending a major event. Particularly from our vantage point, being blessed as we are to sit ringside, and see the guys going at each other, and seeing them embrace after a titanic struggle.
?There?s nothing more pure than a fight.?
