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The dirty business in boxing.




Con artists are attracted to boxers like flies to syrup. After my first fight with Pike Reed, a four-rounder in which I almost died from exhaustion, Leggatt signed for me to go ten rounds with the great Holly Mims. Managers or trainers will sometimes put fighters in the ring in a total mismatch.
They themselves might need the money at the time to support their own families and pay down their debts. They might also have minimal faith in their own boxer and figure that this one payday is about the best they can ever hope for. Leggatt was a poor man, so the immediate money tempted him to make a foolish and potentially dangerous decision. He never bothered to tell me whom I was fighting; had I fought Mims in 1961, he would no doubt have killed me. Nor did my trainer tell me that he had been given a three-hundred-dollar advance of which I saw not a single cent. When I learned about that money from a misdirected letter, I confronted Leggatt and cursed him out. But what was I to him, after all, other than an ex-con?


#rubinhurricanecarter #hollymims #boxingbusiness #1960s #middleweight