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By Thomas Gerbasi - It’s a big fight week, but around mid-July, big fights don’t mean much to me. That stopped five years ago, when the boxing world lost Arturo Gatti, Alexis Arguello, and Vernon Forrest, all in one tragic month, all before their time.
Five years.
It doesn’t seem that long ago, but it is, and though I covered Gatti’s career extensively and was a huge fan of Arguello - so huge I have the $130 phone bill from our 1998 interview to show for it (and it was worth every penny) – it was Forrest’s murder that hit home the most for me.
In July of 2009, Forrest was in a good place in his life. He may have been stripped of the WBC junior middleweight title he won back from Sergio Mora in September of 2008, but he was preparing to return, and the win over Mora showed that at 38, he still had a few good fights left in him. More importantly, outside the ring he had stopped fighting unwinnable battles with the media and the boxing world, and he was enjoying being Vernon Forrest.
On July 25 though, that all ended in his hometown of Atlanta, as he was shot and killed after an attempted robbery. He wasn’t blindsided by bullets or made an example of by the thugs who took his life. He was shot after going after them, after deciding that he wasn’t a mark for pieces of human filth who tried to take what he worked for with his blood, sweat, and tears. In some bizarre way, especially in this testosterone-fueled sport, you admire that to his last breath, Vernon was a fighter. [Click Here To Read More]
Five years.
It doesn’t seem that long ago, but it is, and though I covered Gatti’s career extensively and was a huge fan of Arguello - so huge I have the $130 phone bill from our 1998 interview to show for it (and it was worth every penny) – it was Forrest’s murder that hit home the most for me.
In July of 2009, Forrest was in a good place in his life. He may have been stripped of the WBC junior middleweight title he won back from Sergio Mora in September of 2008, but he was preparing to return, and the win over Mora showed that at 38, he still had a few good fights left in him. More importantly, outside the ring he had stopped fighting unwinnable battles with the media and the boxing world, and he was enjoying being Vernon Forrest.
On July 25 though, that all ended in his hometown of Atlanta, as he was shot and killed after an attempted robbery. He wasn’t blindsided by bullets or made an example of by the thugs who took his life. He was shot after going after them, after deciding that he wasn’t a mark for pieces of human filth who tried to take what he worked for with his blood, sweat, and tears. In some bizarre way, especially in this testosterone-fueled sport, you admire that to his last breath, Vernon was a fighter. [Click Here To Read More]
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