There was sad news last week that veteran former heavyweight Eddie Gregg had passed away. The New Yorker’s pro record was 24-3-1 (18 KOs) and his career ran from 1979 to 1987. In June 2018, BoxingScene’s Tris Dixon interviewed Gregg in upstate New York, and this is that previously unpublished interview.
ANONYMOUS amongst a significant gathering on a warm day at the International Boxing Hall of Fame sat a large man.
He was playing with his smartphone, a device that looked the size of a box of Tic Tacs in his large mitts, his fingers covering the screen with each swipe.
He was unidentified and quietly watched the proceedings.
Then, through the crowds came another strapping fellow, a few years younger. He bowled over, his barrel chest causing his arms to widen either side and offered his hand.
The man on the chair peered up and they respectfully shook hands. There was no small talk. Just a nod.
To the untrained eye, it was two acquaintances greeting one another.
To those who know their history, the man sitting down was former heavyweight contender Eddie Gregg. The man who came over to say ‘hello’ was another heavyweight title challenger, Bert Cooper.
Bert went and talked to the few people who recognized him. Gregg seemed grateful to be pulled from behind his phone to be interviewed, that someone knew who he was.
Maybe he was no Hall of Famer but even though he could fight he remains prouder of his achievements in other sports than of his boxing accomplishments.
A decorated American footballer, Gregg actually had a shot of making it to the 1968 Olympics in canoeing but could not attend the trials as they coincided with high school pre-season training.
“My favorite sport was football,” he recalls. “I tried football a little bit and it didn’t quite work in my favor so I started training in boxing. I didn’t mean to be a boxer because I still loved football and I was going to try it again, but then the kids in my group home asked me [to box]. They called me Mr Eddie. They said, ‘Mr Eddie, why don’t you go into the Golden Gloves?’
“The Golden Gloves, what’s that?”
“And they told me what it was and I went into the Golden Gloves and knocked everybody out. The truth is that I was an all-round athlete and it didn’t take me long to catch onto things in boxing.”
Gregg’s 1971 football team was inducted into the Winston Salem State Hall of Fame in 2014. He was a defensive back who holds the WSSU career interception record and who also boasts the most interceptions in one game – five – and a season record of 13. As a two-sport star, he also managed a record-breaking 31 rebounds playing basketball for the Winston Salem State Rams. How does one know all this? Firstly, Gregg is quick to share the information. Secondly he backs his soft words up by withdrawing a folded piece of paper from his pocket with the details printed on.
Gregg recently turned 64.
He’s a big, imposing presence. He moves unhurriedly and deliberately and thinks before he speaks and when he does, he swallows and engages.
“I’ve slowed down but I’m still doing things,” he smiles. “My field is mental health. I help other people, people who suffer with drug addictions, bi-polar, schizophrenia… People who have real issues in their life, and my programme helps them.”
But Gregg, who also trains some amateurs in North Carolina, is not someone who used his name to get a position that can help him inspire others. The wheels of the career he has now were set in motion before he had any heavyweight aspirations.
He may have been a sporting hit, but Gregg had also got an education behind him – a degree in sociology – and he had done things the hard way.
His dad was never home. He was a merchant marine who developed a taste for heroin while his mother, having given birth to a third child, could not cope. She was institutionalised and Eddie went into care.
He won 30 of 32 amateur fights, including a couple of Golden Gloves wins. His first job using his qualifications was for $15,000 a year at a home in Brooklyn where he counselled troubled youths.
A failed attempt to play for the New York Jets in 1976 saw him finally switch his focus for good.
Boxing was, he admits, a last resort.
He moved out to Vegas and was trained by Eddie Futch in the early days but didn’t like it. He was a Bronx kid who had no interest in gambling.
Eddie went unbeaten in five years and 21 fights as pro until James Broad stopped him in 1985.
There was not a great deal of depth to Gregg’s record. With the exception of decent Marvin Stinson, he had beaten novices and journeymen. Broad wasn’t having any of it and stopped Eddie in eight.
Gregg rebounded with four solid victories, over 18-0 Carlos Hernandez, veteran Randall ‘Tex’ Cobb, Mike Perkins and Walter Santemore.
Cobb had fought them all, but no one had put him down until Eddie.
“I just knew his opinion of me was I wasn’t tough enough,” Gregg remembers of their 1985 collision. “But there were maybe three or four different fighters who, after the fight was over, told me they didn’t know I was that tough. That was my secret. I was slim but I was tough and strong.”
He releases a deep belly laugh, happy in his memories.
Cobb, by then, had seen better days. He was near the end of his spell at the top and in a run of fights that saw him lose four times.
“When you get one foot off the ground, anybody can get knocked down,” Cobb grumbled to the New York Times after being outpointed over 10 in Reno and going down in the ninth. “And anybody who doesn’t think I get off balance doesn’t have eyes.”
It was, Gregg says, his best win. Heavyweight champion Larry Holmes eked by Carl Williams in the main event. Eddie was a fight or two away from the big time and was ranked by both the WBA and the WBC and desperate for a money fight so he could fill his pension pot. He had wanted Muhammad Ali. Now he wanted Holmes.
Instead he got former Holmes victim Gerry Cooney and was shelled into a blistering defeat in just 86 seconds.
The New York Times reckoned Gregg got fifty grand, a career high having made $5,000 and $7,500 in his two previous bouts.
The Cooney sum was tidy, but it was not life-changing and there would only be one more fight, another first round loss to future WBO heavyweight champion Francesco Damiani in Italy.
“No, I didn’t get what I wanted from boxing,” he laments today, inconspicuous among the champions at the Hall of Fame. “I went into boxing and thought if I did well I would make a lot of money. Two of the greatest fighters in the world wouldn’t fight me; Larry Holmes and Muhammad Ali. If I fought them I would have been rich.
“[Me and] Holmes, it would have been a good fight. I’m not going to say if I would win or lose but it would have been a good fight. Ali? He was over the hill at the time. I would have beat him. Also, I would like to have fought [Joe] Frazier. It wasn’t about the glory of boxing for me; it was about financial security. Financial freedom. And those are the guys you need to fight to make that kind of money.”
So it was back to the day job for ‘Mr Eddie’ and he was happy enough. He’s always felt the rewards of helping others.
“Oh yes I do,” the North Carolina resident continues. “The reason why is because I had my own issues as a kid, at one time I was one of them.”
That part is a familiar refrain in this sport. Boxing opened doors that otherwise would have been shut. By then, Ali had kicked open plenty of doors, too, and Gregg – who was born in 1954 – had been inspired by ‘The Greatest’.
“It was his style, his talking. The charisma,” he explains.
“I’m kind of an activist myself. Not just black, I speak up against people who do wrong. If you do wrong then you’ve got to deal with me. As a kid, in the group home, I used to beat up the bullies. If a person can’t really hang with you, don’t fight them. Don’t take advantage of them.”
Yet neither Ali’s stance nor his greatness could be replicated.
“I was tired of boxing,” Gregg concludes, swallowing hard and mumbling softly. “I couldn’t get the fights, couldn’t make the money, and I just stopped. I thought about coming back maybe four or five years later but I didn’t.”
Eddie is asked whether he feels he sustained any long-term damage from the sport. After several years of American football and a boxing career that spanned from 1979 to 1987 and saw him retire with a 24-3-1 (18) record, neurologists will tell you that combination can lead to uncertainty down the line. It is the effects after boxing that are often overlooked.
“Yes, there needs to be education,” Gregg admits. “You’re young, you think you’re tough, you think you can overcome everything and that was my attitude to it. But the older brothers, you should listen to them a little more. Not just boxers, older brothers, older men who have lived through a certain amount of years and they’re still here. I’m experiencing pain in my legs. You know what I mean? It’s not drastic but it’s uncomfortable. It’s due to athletics and training in general, the running. I used to run a lot. I was the kind of athlete who prepared himself for his events. I would do as much training as I needed. I was never out of condition for an athletic event.”
Perhaps if it was athletics Gregg would have made the money he wanted. Instead, he was in the trenches with Broad, with Cooney and with Cobb, and it’s not his athletic ability that he remembers helping him.
“I may have not looked as tough as guys like that,” he whispers softly and deeply. “But in my heart I was as tough as them.”
Tris Dixon covered his first amateur boxing fight in 1996. The former editor of Boxing News, he has written for a number of international publications and newspapers, including GQ and Men’s Health, and is a board member for the Ringside Charitable Trust and the Ring of Brotherhood. He has been a broadcaster for TNT Sports and hosts the popular “Boxing Life Stories” podcast. Dixon is a British Boxing Hall of Famer, an International Boxing Hall of Fame elector, a BWAA award winner, and is the author of five boxing books, including “Damage: The Untold Story of Brain Trauma in Boxing” (shortlisted for the William Hill Sportsbook of the Year), “Warrior: A Champion’s Search for His Identity” (shortlisted for the Sunday Times International Sportsbook of the Year) and “The Road to Nowhere: A Journey Through Boxing’s Wastelands.” You can reach him @trisdixon on X and Instagram.