Ted Lewis (1893 - 1970)

Ted Lewis World Welterweight Champion in 1915 and 1916 and from 1917 to 1919, Ted “Kid” Lewis was nicknamed the “Aldgate Sphinx.” He fought in six different divisions, at weights from 116 to 166 pounds, during his 20-year career. Ted Lewis became England’s youngest boxing champion in October 1913, when he won the British Featherweight […]

Butterfly McQueen (1911 - 1995)

Born Thelma McQueen in Tampa, Florida on January 7, 1911, she planned to become a nurse until a high school teacher suggested that she try acting. McQueen initially studied with Janet Collins and went on to dance with the Venezuela Jones Negro Youth Group. Around this time she acquired the nickname “Butterfly” – a tribute […]

Linda Darnell (1923 - 1965)

Monetta Eloyse Darnall was born in Dallas, Texas, as one of four children (excluding her mother’s two children from an earlier marriage), to postal clerk Calvin Roy Darnall and the former Pearl Brown. She was the younger sister of Undeen (born March 1918) and the older sister of Monte Maloya (born 1929) and Calvin Roy, […]

Max Baer (1909 - 1959)

Max Baer The Heavyweight Champion of the World from 1934 to 1935, he was born in Omaha, Nebraska and dropped out of school in the eighth grade to work with his father on a cattle ranch and developed great strength. He turned pro in 1929 and progressed steadily through the ranks beating the likes of […]

Gloria Dickson (1917 - 1945)

Born in Pocatello, Idaho as Thais Alalia Dickerson, Dickson began acting during high school in amateur theatre productions. Encouraged by her acting coaches, she moonlighted doing dramatic readings at social clubs and on KFOX radio station in Long Beach, California. In April 1936, she was spotted by Warner Brothers talent scout Max Arnow who signed […]

Harry Wills (1889 - 1958)

Harry Wills Between 1915 and 1927, Harry Wills was one of the best fighters, if not the best, in the heavyweight division. Yet, he never got his chance to fight for the heavyweight championship. Like other black fighters in the early part of the past century, Harry Wills was nothing but a footnote in boxing […]

Jim Jeffries (1875 - 1953)

Jim Jeffries James J. Jeffries was the heavyweight champion of the world from 1899 to 1905 but he is best known to history for coming out of retirement to take on Jack Johnson, the first African American heavyweight champion in history, in what was called “The Fight of the Century”. That fight ensured Jeffries’ place […]

Tony Zale (1913 - 1997)

Tony Zale His three-fight series with Rocky Graziano between 1946 and 1948 are treated with reverence and awe by those who simply read about them as well as the relative few who witessed them in person. Only the third, in which Zale proved his superiority with a third-round knockout, was filmed. The grainy footage provides […]

Tony Canzoneri (1908 - 1959)

Tony Canzoneri American professional boxer who held world championships in the featherweight, lightweight, and junior-welterweight divisions. Canzoneri weighed only 95 pounds (43 kg) when he began his amateur boxing career. After turning pro in 1925, he won the National Boxing Association’s version of the bantamweight title. Canzoneri’s first world-title match was as a featherweight on […]

Jersey Joe Walcott (1914 - 1994)

Jersey Joe Walcott Jersey Joe Walcott, the son of poor immigrants from Barbados who was to slug his way out of poverty and into the record books as the oldest fighter to win the heavyweight championship of the world, died Friday at Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center in Camden, N.J., where he lived. He […]

Bob Fitzsimmons (1863 - 1917)

Bob Fitzsimmons Bob Fitzsimmons was born in England and as a youth he worked as a blacksmith and developed great strength. He then moved to New Zealand and then Australia and started boxing. He then moved to the United States and progressed through the Middleweight ranks defeating the likes of Dick Ellis, Dave Conway and […]

Carmen Basilio (1927 - 2012)

Carmen Basilio A crafty prize fighter with an impressive amount of skill and stamina, he was the former World Welterweight Champion (1955 to 1957) and World Middleweight Champion (1957 to 1958). The son of an Italian immigrant onion farmer, he began his professional boxing career in the Lightweight Division during 1948 following service with the […]

Sandy Saddler (1926 - 2001)

Sandy Saddler Boxing greats such as Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, Sugar Ray Leonard and Thomas Hearns, Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney remain inexorably linked by the memory of their epic encounters. Sandy Saddler, the former world featherweight champion who has died aged 75, will be remembered for his foul-filled series of fights with his […]

Billy Conn (1917 - 1993)

Billy Conn The Conn-Louis fight in 1941 became a part of boxing lore. Conn, who had a reputation for brashness, was leading Louis by a wide margin when he made the mistake that was to haunt him for the rest of his life. He tried to slug it out with the champion. Louis knocked him […]

Barney Ross (1909 - 1967)

Barney Ross Dov-Ber (or Beryl) Rosofsky was born in New York City to Isidore “Itchik” Rosofsky and Sarah Epstein Rosofsky. His father was a Talmudic scholar who had emigrated to America from his native Brest-Litovsk after barely surviving a pogrom. The family then moved from New York to Chicago. Isidore became a rabbi and owner […]

Joe Gans (1874 - 1910)

Joe Gans Gans started boxing professionally about 1891 in Baltimore. He shocked the boxing world with his “scientific” approach to fighting. Finding an opponents strengths and weaknesses, then competing with a game-plan was Gan’s specialty. Known as a true student of the sport. In 1900, Gans quit with an eye cut in the twelfth round […]

Jimmy Wilde (1892 - 1969)

Jimmy Wilde Born William James Wilde, Jimmy Wilde worked in the coal mines as a boy and started boxing at the age of sixteen in fairground booths where crowds were amazed by his toughness and ability to knock down much bigger opponents. Indeed throughout his career his opponents were usually larger and heavier than him. […]

Max Schmeling (1905 - 2005)

Max Schmeling Max Schmeling, the German heavyweight boxing champion who was miscast as a symbol of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime in his 1938 bout with Joe Louis, died in his native Germany. He was 99. Schmeling, who became the first fighter to beat Louis in their 1936 meeting, died on Wednesday in the German town […]

Benny Leonard (1896 - 1947)

Benny Leonard He was the Lightweight Boxing Champion of the World from 1917 to 1925. Considered one of the greatest lightweight boxers in the history of the sport, he was feted as possessing superb boxing skills as well as potent punching power. He fought over two hundred times and suffered only four knockouts; three early […]

Harry Greb (1894 - 1926)

Harry Greb Harry Greb had excellent stamina and constantly threw punches from all directions, which is how he got the nickname “The Human Windmill.” Greb was also considered a dirty fighter, using elbows, thumbs and his head as often as his fists.   Greb engaged in 299 bouts Greb outfought some the best fighters of […]

Ezzard Charles (1921 - 1975)

Ezzard Charles Boxer Ezzard Charles was born in Lawrenceville, Georgia. When he was a child, his family moved to Cincinnati, where he became interested in boxing. By the time he was sixteen, he had taught himself the rudiments of boxing so well that he won fortytwo amateur fights in a row—including two Golden Gloves and […]

Gene Tunney (1897 - 1978)

Gene Tunney Gene Tunney, byname of James Joseph Tunney, also called The Fighting Marine   (born May 25, 1898, New York, New York, U.S.—died November 7, 1978, Greenwich, Connecticut), American boxer who defeated Jack Dempsey in 1926 to become the world heavyweight boxing champion.Tunney began boxing while working as a clerk for the Ocean Steamship Company in New York City […]

Carlos Monzón (1942 - 1995)

Carlos Monzón Argentina’s Carlos Monzon was one, if not the, greatest middleweight boxing champions in fistic history. Born in poverty, he was discovered in the famed Luna Park Gym by trainer Amilicar Brussa, who molded the “skinniest” 6 feet 2 incher in the world into a lethal fighting machine. Monzon developed a plodding style of […]

Sonny Liston (1932 - 1970)

Sonny Liston Sonny Liston was born in 1932 to an immense family of 25 brothers and sisters. In his youth he was arrested for Armed Robbery and learned how to box in prison. He was paroled in 1952 and had a short amateur career winning the St. Louis, Midwest, National, and International Golden Gloves titles. […]

Alexis Argüello (1952 - 2009)

Alexis Argüello found dead July 1, 2009, Managua), Nicaraguan professional boxer who was world featherweight, junior lightweight, and lightweight champion between 1974 and 1982. Arguello, who became a professional fighter in 1968, fought only in his homeland until 1974, when he went to Panama to seek the World Boxing Association’s featherweight title. Arguello lost this match in […]

Henry Armstrong (1912 - 1988)

Henry Armstrong Born Henry Jackson, Jr., on December 12, 1912, in Columbus, Mississippi, Armstrong was the eleventh of the family’s 15 children. His father, Henry Jackson, Sr., was a sharecropper and a butcher. His mother, America Jackson was an Iroquois Indian. When Armstrong was four years old, his father moved the family to St. Louis, […]

Willie Pep (1922 - 2006)

Willie Pep American professional boxer, world featherweight (126 pounds) champion during the 1940s. Pep specialized in finesse rather than slugging prowess and competed successfully in the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s. His rivalry with American Sandy Saddler is considered one of the greatest of 20th-century American pugilism. Pep began his professional boxing career in 1940. He […]

Jack Dempsey (1895 - 1983)

Jack Dempsey Heavyweight Champion of the World from 1919 to 1926. The legendary Dempsey was born in Manassa, Colorado, one of 11 children. At 16 he left home and traveled on freight trains and fought to earn money. Then Dempsey met manager Jack ‘Doc’ Kearns and started knocking out legitimate contenders like Fireman Jim Flynn, […]

Jess Willard (1881 - 1968)

Jess Willard On April 5, 1915, in Havana, Cuba, a Kansas farmer named Jess Willard became heavyweight champion of the world by defeating Jack Johnson. Willard, born in Pottawatomie County, began his professional career in 1911 at Sapulpa, Oklahoma, where he lost on a foul. Six weeks later he won over the same fighter at […]

Don Drysdale (1936 - 1993)

Don Drysdale During Drysdale’s 14-year baseball career, the fierce 6-foot-6 right-hander, nicknamed “Big D,” compiled a 209-166 record with a career earned-run average of 2.95. He pitched in five World Series and eight Major League All-Star games. Drysdale’s broadcasting partners, Vin Scully and Ross Porter, were told of Drysdale’s death shortly before Saturday night’s game […]