George with Alexis Argüello in Canastota, in 2005

27.09.2009 - Boxing is thought by many people to be a simple sport, but to others it is more a summary of life’s triumphs and tragedies.  Fighters liter­ally place their lives at stake every time they step into a ring, willingly sacrificing their bodies on the altar of their art.  Throughout boxing his­tory we have had many true legends in the game who faced physical and mental ruin, illness and sometimes tragic death.  It appears that in many cases they cannot escape their roots no matter how much cash they earn. 

When I was a youngster after the second World War, I was mad on boxing and a big fan of two of the most popular fighters of the time, Freddie Mills and Randolph Turpin.  In all sports, yester­day’s heroes always seem to become bigger and better in the mind, especially in box­ing, but these two English battlers will always be re­called with pride when box­ing fans reminisce about the fight game.

Freddie Mills was born in Bournemouth on 26th June 1919, and during his box­ing career he gave the fans thrills galore.  Not a classic boxer, he was a fighter who went about his work in the only way he knew, by striv­ing to lay the opposition on the canvas, fighting un­til he himself was stopped by  his opponent, or the fi­nal bell.  British fight fans loved Mills for his courage and ‘never-say-die’ attitude in the ring, and he finally reached his goal by taking the world light heavyweight title from the American Gus Lesnevitch in 1948.  He then took on some of the world’s top heavyweights and giv­ing stones away in weight he took some savage beat­ings before losing his world light heavyweight crown to the American Joey ‘Machine Gun’ Maxim.   Freddie in­vested his ring earnings into restaurants and a night­club.  Troubled by personal and financial problems, it all ended suddenly and tragi­cally when he was found dead, shot in the heat in his parked car outside his club in London in 1965. His sad de­mise still remains something of a mystery to this day. 

Britain’s other post World War II hero, Randolph Turpin, would sadly suffer a similar fate as Mills a year later, when, unable to take the burden of financial and domestic pressures, he went upstairs in the café he was running with his wife at the time in Leamington Spa, and shot himself.  He was only 37 years of age. Turpin was born in Leamington on 7th June 1928 and never knew his father, a British Guiana merchant seaman who died when Randolph was only a few months old, leaving his white wife with five children to support on a pension of only £1.7 shillings a week.  Randolph and his two broth­ers Dick and Jackie would all become top-notch British boxers with Randolph reach­ing the pinnacle of his cho­sen profession in 1951 when he beat the great Sugar Ray Robinson for the latter’s undisputed world middle­weight crown, and taking into consideration that at the time Robinson was the biggest name in world box­ing and had only one defeat on his record in 91 fights, it must surely be classed as the greatest win ever by a British boxer, Sadly it was downhill for the Leamington Licker in later years and in 1958 he retired from the boxing game.  He dabbled in wres­tling for a while at £25 a bout, and at the age of 30 he was driving a scrap met­al lorry through the streets of Leamington.   He was a tragically depressed man.  In 1962 he was unable to pay the £17,126 the Inland Revenue claimed on his box­ing earnings and he was de­clared bankrupt. He took his own life a beaten man.

Throughout boxing history there have been many tragic endings for the fighters in­volved but I can’t recall any­thing quite like the tragedies which occurred during July of this year.  Within a few short weeks three world champi­ons died.  The first shocking news came at the beginning of the month upon learning that the former three-weight world champion Alexis Argüello had shot himself through the heart at his home.  He  was 57 years old.  The Nicaraguan was forced to endure poverty and politi­cal strife in his younger days and sought to make ends meet with his family what­ever way he could.  He took up professional boxing at 16 and within a few years he became a huge favourite in the States.  He retired from the ring in 1994 after being diagnosed as having a heart problem.

The boxing legend had many problems during his life.  He lost millions of dol­lars of assets when the left-wing Sandinista govern­ment came to power in his native Nicaragua and con­fiscated his assets and had problems with cocaine and alcohol abuse.  When I met the former champ in 2005 at the International Hall of Fame in Canastota, he told me that the year before he had become deputy may­or of Nicaragua’s capital, Managua, having joined the Sandinistas, and was involved in building health clinics for the needy. In 2008 he was elected mayor, and appeared to have found some new meaning to his life.  However apparently there was still a lot of empti­ness! 

Only a few days later news arrived that Arturo Gatti had been found dead in a hotel room in Brazil, having hung himself according to police.  A world champion at junior lightweight and light wel­terweight, Canadian-raised Gatti became a real crowd-puller in America and was involved in a couple of the greatest fights that I’ve ever seen and I’m sure that he will be remembered as the ulti­mate blood-and-guts war­rior of the past 10 years.  He certainly packed a hell of a lot of living into his 37 years on this earth.  Sadly it wasn’t long enough.

At the end of July boxing lost another former cham­pion in a tragic way when Vernon Forrest, who twice beat the current WBA wel­terweight champion Sugar Shane Mosley a few years ago for the title, was shot in the back at a petrol sta­tion after chasing a couple of hoodlums who had stolen his wallet while he sat in his car.  A man has subsequent­ly been arrested.

It’s hard to believe that all three former world champi­ons would go in the same month and in such circum­stances. Surely they deserved much better than that.
By George Reed



This article appears in the print edition 600 of Island Connections

Gallery: Death where is thy sting!

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