Malcolm "Flash" Gordon

[saintpat]

What can anyone tell me about the guy behind "Tonight's Boxing Program and Weekly Newsletter"?

I subscribed for a year or more. It was chock-ful of stuff and had great content exposing the dirty side of the sport. And lots of great nicknames for opponents who were "TBA" on upcoming fights like "Dusty Trunks" and such.

Who, exactly, was this guy? Whatever happened to him? Is he still alive?

[Ben Bolt]

I’ve noticed on wiki that “one of Flash Gordon’s most important stories was helping to uncover the Ring Magazine scandal” in 1977.

This really changed the boxing world as WBC/WBA, lightly regarded before that, gained power at the expense of The Ring, which had been the dominant voice until then.

We wouldn’t have had today’s mess with all these alphabet organizations if it wasn’t for this. But the scandal had to be exposed.

[Anthony342]

What scandal would that be, in a nutshell?

[Ben Bolt]

What scandal would that be, in a nutshell?

http://theboxingtribune.com/2011/03/revisiting-the-ring-magazine-scandal/

[Anthony342]

Thanks, that was great.

[Ben Bolt]

As I recall it;

John Ort remained at The Ring for a couple of years until Bert Randolph Sugar replaced Nat Loubet as chief editor. The first step taken by new editor Sugar was to fire Ort.

In my opinion, The Ring reached its peak as a magazine during Sugar’s reign, 1979-83 (he created “one of the greatest transformations in the history of magazine publishing”).
But it did cost a lot of money, and apparently Sugar wasn’t interested in such trivial things as keeping budgets. So, when The Ring approached bankruptcy, Sugar himself got expelled.