Boxing News magazine 3.11.2011 Download pdf

Boxing News Magazine 2011 Memorabilia

THE passing of Tom McNeeley last week
at the age of 74 brought back memories
of when he fought Floyd Patterson for the
heavyweight title - and also when his son,
Peter, gave Mike Tyson the charge in an
equally unlikely match in 1995.
Tom's hour of fame was in Toronto's
Maple Leaf Gardens in December 1961
when Patterson's manager Cus D'Amato,
not for the first time, ignored Sonny
Liston and instead took the easiest
possible fight he could get away with.
McNeeley, 24, was ranked No. 10 by
Ring magazine, so he qualified. On paper
anyway. In reality he had won 23 in a row
over nobody very much.

THE man who can't stop flattening
opponents meets the man who never gets
knocked out when big-hitting Romanian
southpaw Lucian Bute defends his IBF
super-middleweight title against Jamaican
hardcase Glen Johnson on Saturday
(November 5).
All right, the above is not strictly true.
Bute has been taken the distance five
times (in 29 paid outings) while Johnson
has been halted, in the 11th of an IBF
middleweight title bid against Bernard
Hopkins in 1997.
But Bute generally lives up to his
nickname of "Le Tombeur", which means
"the one who drops people" in French,
the language of Quebec, where has based
himself as a professional and where this
fight happens at the Pepsi Coliseum in
Quebec City.

ON the afternoon of Moruti Mthalane's
world title defence on enemy territory
against Andrea Sarritzu, his trainer Nick
Durandt told Boxing News: "We haven't
come to Italy to fish. We didn't come here
because we thought we could lose. We
came here because we're comfortable
being here. I really don't believe we'll
need the judges."

IT would seem only Hernan Marquez
took heed of the lessons offered in an April
humdinger with Luis Concepcion. Back
then, the southpaw took away Concepcion's
WBA flyweight belt after 10 barnstorming
sessions but this time, inside the Centra de
Usos Multiples, Hernan repeated his victory
in just 108 seconds.

ROB NORTON-Leon Williams for the British cruiserweight
title would never go down as one of the all-time classics, but
the only thing it should be remembered for is the scoring.
I've watched it over several times and, doing Williams a big
favour, could make it only 115-113 in favour of Rob Norton! I
watched the fight with my son, an ex-pro boxer, and it wasn't
just a kick in the teeth for Norton but for boxing in general.