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Detroits own Joe Louis.
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Unfortunately, there are far too many of these stories to tell. But here's an excerpt (taken from an article by William Dettloff on ESPN.com) about the great Kid Gavilan:
Like they do for most fighters, things went badly for Gavilan in retirement. He returned to Cuba and lived there, unhappily, for the most part of 10 years before resettling in the United States in Florida in 1968. By the 1980s, he was selling sausages in Miami.
Gavilan was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1990 and died of heart failure in February 1993 at 77, after having spent the final eight years of his life in an assisted-living facility in Hialeah, Fla. He was buried in a pauper's grave in Our Lady of Mercy Cemetery in Miami.
The story doesn't end there.
In 2005, The Ring 8 Veterans Association and a group that included Ray Mancini, Mike Tyson, Roberto Duran, Leon Spinks, Buddy McGirt, Emile Griffith and Angelo Dundee paid to have Gavilan's body exhumed and moved to another section of the cemetery and to have a memorial headstone erected to honor his contributions to the fight game.
"No one there realizes that this was one of the greatest fighters of all time," Mancini said at the time. "The Kid and other fighters of his era did not make the big money, but they paved the way for guys like me to do just that."
If you're interested in reading the full story, here's the link:
http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/box...ory?id=3388969Last edited by CubanGuyNYC; 03-05-2010, 12:40 AM.Comment
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Not necessarily a "great", but a 3 division champ nonetheless.
From The Times
November 6, 2008
Desperate Iran Barkley planning a comeback
The former middleweight champion, who twice got the better of Thomas Hearns and was a match for Roberto Duran, has blown $5 million
Before Joe Calzaghe and Roy Jones Jr share their millions this weekend in Manhattan, here is a timely and painful reminder of how fast they could lose them. It comes from over the Harlem River in the South Bronx, where, in the Patterson Projects, a public housing programme, we find Iran “The Blade” Barkley, who won three world titles and twice beat Thomas Hearns.
It is not the loveliest part of town, the kind of place you would go only with a famous prizefighter for support. Outside his block of flats lie flowers and candles, a shrine to a 20-year-old shot and killed by his best friend in a dispute last Friday. This block is less than 100 yards from the one in which Barkley grew up. Between one and the other, he managed to spill $5 million (about £3.14 million).
Actually, he thinks it is $5 million but he has no precise figure. He has no exact sense of accountability for where it went, either. He certainly has not a dime more than when he started. And he started with nothing.
So it may not come as a surprise to hear that, at the age of 48, nine years retired and palpably unfit, he plans a comeback. He needs it financially. He also needs to have the scar tissue that hangs heavily over his left eye removed and was consulting his doctor on that very subject on Tuesday. Only then will he stand the slimmest of chances of exhibiting sufficient fitness to get his licence back.
Here is what life is like without the licence: in 2006, he took a bout, unsanctioned, in Aruba against a twentysomething amateur whose name he cannot recall. He took home a purse of $7,000, most of which went on child support debts, although the real price of the bout may be that he used it as an indicator: if I do well, I know I am good enough to return to the sport. And he won.
Thus, last year, he accepted another unlicensed fight in a Native American reservation in Idaho. For this contest, he swears, he still has not been paid. He also claims that he was “kind of kidnapped” because he tried to walk out on the promotion but, as he had no money for a cab, was forced to stay.
The haplessness of Barkley's downward spiral would appear to have no end. For blame we could look to the sport's infamous inability to look after its own, to his lack of education, to his belligerent refusal to sign up to employment outside the game or to the breathtaking illusion that he genuinely has a future in it, any of which have been the downfall of the battalion of boxers washed up before him. But this is truly one case where you wish someone could step in and catch him before he falls any farther.
Are you training hard for the comeback, we asked. “Yes,” he replied enthusiastically until put on the spot by his sister, with whom he shares the flat, when he changed his tune. “I've not got time to train. I don't run, I don't do nothing.”
And to the question, “How good do you really think you could be?” he smiles and delivers the stock response: “Better than ever.” Outside his block is a mural, painted by a friend after the first Hearns bout, but so faded now that it is curiously symbolic. The neighbourhood still knows him, still hails him as “Champ”, and some still recall his triumphant return from Las Vegas post-Hearns, in 1988, when a banner was strung up for him and he paid for donkey rides for the local kids. “This neighbourhood is like a trap,” he said. But that Hearns bout in 1988 should have been his exit. His income until then had been largely what he reaped as leader of a Bronx gang called the Black Spades. What did they do? “Pretty much everything that was wrong,” he said, with no specifics bar “sticking guys up and running banks”.
But that Hearns contest was the start of a lucrative run. It delivered a pay day against Roberto Duran in the bout of the year, one in which defeat only enhanced his reputation, yet after further losses to Michael Nunn and Nigel Benn, he was still considered sufficient box-office quality to go in against Hearns a second time and finally reap the pay-day of his dreams, $1 million for the last big contest of his career, against James Toney.
So where did the $5 million go? Some of it he hid in his apartment; he did not trust banks. Sugar Ray Leonard and Marvin Hagler, he said, had good financial advisers but he learnt about money “from the guys in the street and some of them were drug dealers”. “When you're young, you don't know how to manage your money. You spend it, you start buying cars, hanging with friends, partying, thinking that you've got enough,” he said. “I also helped people. Their husbands went to jail and I'd pay the rent. That was my blessing. I was the angel for everybody else. I had everything: a Lexus, a Mercedes. I had an apartment in New Jersey.”
Indeed, he also bought a tenement building in the Bronx and a car wash in Yonkers, but could not afford any of them outright and the struggle to make the payments was not helped by an appetite for ******** in Vegas and two divorces, plus the child support required.
“For the second Tommy fight, I think I only got half a million dollars,” he said. “Then you pay your trainer, pay your manager, then Uncle Sam [the taxman] comes in at the end. I had nothing to give him. That's when I started trying to catch up.”
He never did catch up. And he is too proud and delusional to divert his gaze from the ring. “Two or three months' notice and one tune-up fight is all I'd want,” he said. “Give me anybody after that.”
Where does the safety net lie? To a limited extent, in the hands of Gerry Cooney, the former heavyweight who has set up the Fighters' Initiative for Support and Training, which aims to pick up struggling souls such as Barkley, retrain them and refocus them on life after the ring.
Cooney, however, says that he has tried with Barkley and failed. Barkley, he said, does not want a standard job. And Barkley does not disagree. He worked in a Bronx school last summer, training local boys to box. “But I wasn't earning enough,” he said. So he walked away.
His problem, though, is that he no longer has a destination. When he makes his comeback, he says, he will have his mural in the Bronx touched up along with a list of his titles and achievements in the ring. The sadness is that he cannot see how far they have faded.
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Thomas Hearns is having money problems.
Boxing legend Thomas Hearns risks losing home
Robert Snell / The Detroit News
Boxing legend Thomas "Hitman" Hearns, a seven-time world champion who made more than $40 million during his career, is facing foreclosure on his Southfield home later this month and owes more than $961,156 in delinquent taxes and mortgage payments, records show.
Hearns, 51, and his wife have defaulted on their mortgage and owe almost $513,000 on the home. And their bank has scheduled a foreclosure sale March 23, according to a legal notice published in the Legal News.
The pending foreclosure is the latest in a prolonged period of financial problems for the most successful boxer to emerge from Detroit's storied Kronk Gym. He fought in one of the sport's epic matches 29 years ago, battling Sugar Ray Leonard for 14 rounds before the fight was stopped with Motown's spindly legged star sagging against the ropes.
What's owed:
• They owe $512,965 on the defaulted mortgage, according to public records.
• On March 18, the state filed a $5,148 lien against Hearns and his wife for unpaid income taxes, according to public records.
• On March 17, the IRS filed a $145,478 lien against the boxer for unpaid income taxes. According to the lien, he owes the money from 2006.
• On Aug. 19, 2008, the IRS filed a $90,825 lien against Hearns for unpaid income taxes. According to the lien, Hearns owes the money from 2007.
• On March 25, 2008, the IRS filed a $206,740 lien against Hearns and his wife for unpaid income taxes from 2006, according to public records
Their side:
It was unclear what led to the mortgage default and the tax debt, but Hearns is working to keep the house and pay the debts, said lawyer Michael J. Smith of Sterling Heights.
"Tommy's going to resolve the house issue," Smith said. "Tommy's doing fine. It's just an unfortunate issue that we're dealing with, and we're working to get it resolved right away."
If the home is sold March 23, Hearns could have six months to reclaim the property.
As for the tax debt, Hearns is making payments, Smith added.
"We're trying to get a bottom line figure of what Tommy believes he owes," Smith said. "That's why it's taken a little bit long."
From The Detroit News: http://www.detnews.com/article/20100...#ixzz0hHx0r1tuComment
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Mayweather may be in this category in 10-15 years if he is not careful.....Comment
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Doesnt take a degree in finance to upkeep a big amount of money.
If you have $10M at 5% per annum that's at least $41,000 per month. and some of these superstars had accumulated more that $10M
$41,000 per month can afford you decent living IMO plus your money is still there for emergencies.Comment
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These boxers need to take some classes in finance.
And boxers don't need to be full time students, they just need to absorb whatever is in the class room.Comment
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