The first title fight Jerry Izenberg covered wasn’t memorable for the man who boxed at the long-gone St. Nicholas Arena in Manhattan, but it was for how the fans honored him as he stepped into the ring.
The boxer, a welterweight champion from somewhere in Pennsylvania, was also a pigeon fancier. So when the man was introduced, fans released hundreds of the dirty birds into the sky.
Except, of course, there was no sky.
“Well, Nicholas had a roof,” Izenberg said. “So soon it was SPLAT! on my forehead, and SPLAT! all over the ring, and SPLAT! on the fighters, and SPLAT! right on the copy in my typewriter.”
The man from Western Union who would send the sportswriters’ dispatches ? yes, this was just a wee bit before the Internet ? wouldn’t touch it. So Izenberg hopped into a cab, raced back to the offices of the old Herald-Tribune where he worked, and dropped the dropping-covered story on his editor’s desk.
“That was my moment of triumph,” he said with a laugh, even if the story never made it into print.
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Izenberg, of course, has covered hundreds of fights since then, traveling to eight countries to so. Along the way, he met a queen in Malaysia, visited Imelda Marcos’ infamous shoe closet in the Philippines, ended up in a jail in Zaire, and befriended a brash young Olympic champion who would become one of the most famous athletes in U.S. history.
The longtime Star-Ledger columnist will be inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame this June in Canastota, N.Y., the association announced on Wednesday afternoon. It won’t be the first time Izenberg has been honored like this ? he is enshrined in 13 or 14 Halls of Fame, he said ? but the distinction matters a great deal to him.
Yes, he will cover his 50th Super Bowl (that’s all of them if you lost count) and 50th Kentucky Derby next year. But boxing has led him to some of the most memorable stories he has written, and more importantly, to some of his strongest friendships and fondest memories.
“Somebody said to me, ‘You seem to relish writing about boxing more than anything else,'” Izenberg said. “And I said, ‘How could you not? There are three people in the ring, and one of them isn’t wearing gloves. It’s easy to see what’s doing what to who!'”
Mark DiIonno, a news columnist at The Star-Ledger who covered boxing with Izenberg for years when he worked at the New York Post, said Izenberg has an uncanny ability to see what is going to happen in a fight before it does.
“As a boxing writer, nobody ? and I mean nobody ? saw a fight like Jerry,” DiIonno said. “He would tell you, ‘This is going to happen,’ and a few minutes later, it happened.”
But for Izenberg, the best part about covering this sport had less to do with the fights themselves and more about the people in and out of the ring. And he’s encountered plenty of characters over the years.
“I went to the Mob Museum out here the other day,” said Izenberg, who now lives just outside of Las Vegas, “and I was stunned by how many people hanging on the walls that I knew. And I knew them through boxing.”
They weren’t all shady characters. Some were the best in the sports history. He first met a young Cassius Clay at the Rome Olympics in 1960. Clay, a few years before he became the heavyweight champion of the world and changed his name to Muhammad Ali, was sitting in the Olympic Village with his gold medal around his neck.
“And he’s yelling, ‘Look at me! I have the gold medal! I’m going to be the champion of the world!” Izenberg said. “We became friends for life. We had so much fun going around the world.”
WATCH: Izenberg remembers the first Ali-Liston fight
It was one of those trips with Ali, to the Philippines in 1975, when Izenberg saw what he considers the best fight he covered in his career. The “Thrilla in Manilla” was the third fight between Ali and Joe Frazier, and Izenberg remembers it for its brutality.
“Ali leaned in the press row and said, ‘That’s the closest thing you will see to death,'” Izenberg said. “And I have seen death in the ring, but it was not nearly as brutal as this one.”
He was there when Ali fought George Foreman in Africa, where he was briefly detained after arguing with a censor for calling the roads in Zaire “dusty.” He was there were Mike Tyson chomped at the ear of Evander Holyfield, and he remembers that “it took two bites before I realized what he had done!”
He was there for good fights and bad ones, and in case you’re wondering, the most overrated fight he’s seen just took place between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao. And, even now at 85, he’ll be there the next time an event rises to the level of a big fight, because he still believes in the sport.
“People say that boxing is finished because of the mixed martial arts, but to me, it’s never finished,” Izenberg said. “Because what other sport can you bring in a martian, sit him ringside, and he’ll say, ‘I know what those two guys are trying to do to each other.’
“It’s a very simple concept. And it’s a sport of the people.”
The International Boxing Hall of Fame’s induction weekend will take place June 9-12 in Canastota, N.Y. For more information on the ceremony and other events, visit the hall’s website at ibhof.com.
