Don King and the Boxing Writers Association

In previous columns, I've attacked everything from unscrupulous boxing promoters (Don King - Bob Arum), incompetent and biased boxing judges (choose your option), to top boxing bosses (HBO's Seth Abraham). But now I'm going to give boxing fans a glimpse of the inner workings of the Boxing Writers Association, an organization that is almost seventy years old, which for years has done nothing for boxing other than hand out questionable awards, sometimes to its own members. .

The Boxing Writers Association (once again properly called the New York Boxing Writers Association) was formed in the mid-1920s, and some of its first illustrious presidents were Nat Fleishcher of Ring magazine "Bible of Boxing." , and ข่าวมวย Ed Sullivan, who later changed his hat and gave black-and-white viewers a "really big show" every Sunday night at eight.

In the late 1970s, I was a wide-eyed neophyte boxing writer doing a full page of boxing every Monday for News World in New York City. In fact, I was the only full-time boxing writer employed for a newspaper in New York City. So, I mustered up the courage and applied for admission to the holy Boxing Writers Association.

Unfortunately, I was not greeted with open arms.

Old fans of the Boxing Writers Association probably thought that if your name is Joe Bruno and you were born and raised in mob turf in Little Italy, it had to be somehow connected to "The Boys." They had already gotten rid of the boxing of Frankie Carbo and Blinkie Palermo (two countrymen who led boxing with iron fists and steel bullets for many years, and went to prison for their problems), so they accept another member with termination of vocals wasn't at the top of his list of important things to do. However, after careful consideration (and perhaps fear of having their knees broken), I was reluctantly issued my Boxing Writers Association membership card.

My heart raced as I didn't sit down and break bread with my first sportswriting heroes: Red Smith and Dick Young. But I was soon surprised and dismayed to find that most of the members of the Boxing Writers Association were not boxing writers, but public relations people, most working for various boxing promoters across the country.

Sure, there were crack boxing scribes like Mike Katz, then of the New York Times, and Eddie Schuyler of the Associated Press, but the men who carried most of the weight and made all the decisions were Murray Goodman (Don King's PR), Irving Rudd (Bob Arum), Boxing Writers recording secretary Tommy Kenville (Madison Square Garden) John Condon (Madison Square Garden), Trish McCormick (Madison Square Garden) and paid freelance public relations Rich Rose, Irvin Rosey, Eddie Pitcher, Harold Conrad, Howie Dolgen, and Patti Dryfus. There were more boxing press officers who were also voting members of the Boxing Writers Association, but their names and faces escape me now.

The secretary-treasurer of the Boxing Writers for as many years as anyone can remember was Marvin Kohn, who he disliked intensely, and his fame was that he was Sophie Tucker's press agent sometime in the roaring twenties. Kohn was also a long-time influential commissioner on the New York State Athletic Commission, and he used his power there as a leading weight to beat anyone who dared challenge his influence on the Boxing Writers Association. (As treasurer, Kohn amassed the Boxing Writers money accumulated over the years, and at every meeting Dick Young demanded an accounting of the funds, and was never given one.