It?s that time of the year when people troop to cemeteries to pay respect to their departed ones. It?s also that spooky time of the year when kids (and even some adults) wear scary outfits to play trick or treat.
Believe it or not, the world of the macabre also permeates in pro boxing. Back in the 1980s, a middleweight (160 pounds) boxer from Ohio named Wilbert Johnson raked in a lot of attention for sporting a one-of-a-kind nickname: ?Vampire.? Johnson loved his nickname so much that he made it habit to enter the ring in a coffin, wearing a black cape and flashing his ?Vampire Smile? at the fans.
Johnson, who fought from 1980 until 1989, became the first fighter to beat Canadian and future World Boxing Council light heavyweight champ Donny Lalonde in 1981. He never went that far in boxing, though, losing his last three fights before retiring with a record of 29-8 with 19 knockouts. Johnson became a bus driver after he archived the gloves.
Johnson is not the only fighter in the punch-for-pay business to sport a freaky nickname.
Englishman Jimmy Wilde, a knockout artist who held the world flyweight (112 pounds) title from 1916 until 1923 (he lost the belt to Filipino Pancho Villa), was known as the ?Ghost with Hammer in his Hand? during his heyday. The diminutive Wilde earned the nickname for his ability to demolish bigger adversaries. As he grew old, however, Wilde became a mere ghost of his old self. In 1965, he suffered a serious mugging at a train station in Cardiff, Wales and never recovered. He died two years later.
Today, there are at least two fighters who go by the nickname ?Ghost?: former middleweight champion (160 pounds) Kelly ?The Ghost? Pavlik and former super featherweight (130 pounds) king Robert ?The Ghost? Guerrero. There is nothing macabre about the similarity in the nickname. Pavlik was called ?The Ghost? during his amateur days because he was so fast on his feet opponents could not nail him.
One former champion who believes he was victimized by ?dark forces? is George Foreman. The hammer-fisted mastodon from Texas was unbeaten in 40 fights when he was stopped by Muhammad Ali in October 1974 in Kinshasa, Zaire. Foreman claimed that while he was training for the fight, a voodoo priest cast a spell on him. Foreman sustained a cut thereafter and the fight was moved from September to October. For a fighter with a very fragile psyche, Foreman freaked out and accused Ali?s camp of orchestrating the entire thing. After he lost to Ali, Foreman?s career went downhill. He retired in 1977, became a preacher, and then returned to the sport in 1987. Foreman finally exorcised the demon of Zaire in November 1994, when he knocked out Michael Moorer to regain the world heavyweight championship.
South Korean Duk Koo Kim did not sport any macabre nickname, but the fatal defeat he suffered in the hands of American Ray ?Boom Boom? Mancini in November 1982 continues to send chills down a boxing fan?s spine. Kim, who took up boxing as a ticket out of poverty, struggled to meet the 135-pound limit for his showdown with then World Boxing Association lightweight king Mancini. Kim was determined to win the title, though, and told reporters: ?Either he [Mancini] dies or I die.? Days before the bout, Kim also scribbled ?Live or Die? in Korean on the lamp shape of the Las Vegas hotel he was occupying.
Kim ended up getting brutally knocked out by Mancini in the 14th round. Minutes after the fight, Kim collapsed into a coma and was taken out of the arena on a stretcher. He died four days after the fight. The tragedy did not end there. Mancini, a fearsome brawler, was never the same fighter after the fight. Kim?s mother, who flew from South Korea to Las Vegas to be with her son before the life support equipment was turned off, later committed suicide by drinking a bottle of pesticide. The referee of the fight, Richard Greene, also committed suicide eight months after the fight.
In boxing, there are also some events that cannot be explained.
