Flashback to this GREAT boxing decade...

[ICEMAN JOHN SCULLY]

"I love this chapter! I love the 80's. The Hagler thing is killing me!!" - Shannon Briggs

Remembering The Great Boxing Of The 1980's
Originally written in 2002 by "Iceman" John Scully. Since updated and revised.

I am in my late thirties now and have been involved with boxing, officially, since I started boxing at Mr. Barile's gym back in March of 1982. Several years before that though, around 1978, is when I became first interested in the sport (although I do have memories from back in late 1975 when I found myself in our laundry room trying to iron on a decal I got out of the newspaper that depicted a butterfly and a bee in advance of the now famous "Thrilla in Manila" between Ali and Frazier). I recall watching Sugar Ray Leonard in 1979 against both Andy Price and Wilfred Benitez and Ali against Spinks in 1978. When I hit the seventh grade in 1980, I really started watching the fights more and reading the magazines and getting into it more and more - from betting with other kids on the fights right down to eventually organizing our own little neighborhood boxing league (Some of my wins were over the likes of Ron Jensen, Tony Vierra -whom I outweighed by a good twenty-five pounds and when I pinned him against his washing machine... it was basically over at that point- Dave Coleman and Greg Szepanski (Greg outweighed ME by about thirty pounds but without his glasses his vision was impaired: I very strategically boxed like Ali from outside his range of sight and coasted to victory!)

I think I am lucky I came along at the time I did as the eighties were definitely some of the best and most memorable years for boxing (Leonard-Duran, Hearns, Hagler and LaLonde were all in the 80's. Hagler-Hearns, too. Hagler-Mugabi. Pryor-Arguello. Mancini-Pryor. Holmes-Spinks. Ali's final fight against Berbick. Tyson-Berbick. Duran-Barkley and Chacon-Boza-Edwards were all in the 1980's. The best fights of Arguello, Leonard, Hagler, Hearns, Holmes, Mancini, Bramble, Pryor and Camacho all came in that ten year span) and I was there watching from the very beginning to the very end. It was a time when you could watch the biggest fighters in the world on weekend TV for free as opposed to now where you have to get HBO, Showtime or PPV to see the elite.

It was a memorable time for other things too, right?

Michael Jackson's "Thriller" came out in 1984. From 1980 to 1989, all through every year of that decade, Michael Jackson was someone you listened to. Maybe not NOW, but admit it! Back then, especially in 1983 and 1984, there was NOBODY bigger than he was. You listened to Billie Jean, Human Nature and Say, Say, Say and you definitely found time to check out the Thriller video and some of you even wore the red zipper jacket he wore in the Beat It video.

To me, 1983 and 1984 was the most memorable time for pop music. You had Michael at the height of his power. Madonna came out the previous year. "We are the World" was big. Prince (and "Purple Rain") was BIG. Lionel Richie was, too. Cindy Lauper, The Police. Bruce Springsteen. Duran-Duran, Phil Collins , Phillip Bailey, Tina Turner (without Ike), and Billy Ocean!!

Pop Rocks (everybody thought "Mikey" died from drinking soda with them), "Dallas" and "Knots Landing" (who did shoot JR, anyway?). My man Lynn Swann retired in 1982, "The Super Bowl" Shuffle came out, RUN-DMC was big, and The Space Shuttle Challenger exploding saddened a whole nation. We watched shows like "Square Pegs," "Benson," "ChiPs," "Charles in Charge," and "Airwolf" as well as tuning in every SATURDAY NIGHT to see the young Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo, Live from NEW YORK!!


Rambo. Rocky 3. Lethal Weapon. Terminator

I was lucky, too, and although my fashion sense was not in the top percentile I can lay claim, proudly, to the fact that I came through the 1980's having never... EVER... ever, ever having worn a pair of parachute pants. I am one of the few lucky ones that got through that period untouched.

I am sure most of you have your own memories like I have mine.

So I started watching boxing in the late 70's and I started boxing in the early 80's and eventually I gave up on my two other loves, football and baseball, to concentrate on it full time. Almost all of my best memories from boxing came from the 80's, too, and almost every year and song and movie from that decade automatically brings back another memory related to boxing. I also chose this decade to review because not only was it a great ten year span for the sport but because in my mind it represents my last involvement with the purer side of the sport. What I mean is, now that I have been involved in the game on so many levels I don't exactly look at it the same way as I did back then when I was strictly a fan and then, for the last half of the decade, an active amateur who turned professional as the decade was speeding towards its end.

Those ten years, especially the first half of the decade, represent for me my peak years as a wide eyed fan who only knew about the game what he saw on TV and learned at the Windsor Locks Boxing Club. Not that I don't still love the game a great deal, because I do, it's just different now. It's kind of like Richard Dreyfuss' character (Gordie LaChance) wrote at the very end of the 1986 movie "Stand By Me."

At the time his character is narrating the movie he is in his 40's, reflecting back on a very specific period of his youth growing up in Castle Rock. The movie basically entails this whole coming of age type ordeal that Gordie and three of his friends go through and it ends, basically, recapping the fact that as they grew older they grew apart and ended up going in very different directions. As he contemplates his life since then and all that has transpired he tries in vain to end the book (and the movie) with something that sums up exactly what he feels about the memories in his mind that have just played themselves out for you. And then it hits him. It's the one line from the movie that I never forgot.

"I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?," he asks.


I remember in October of 1980 I got up for school one morning and read that Muhammad Ali was stopped by Larry Holmes. I couldn't believe that Ali didn't finish the fight. I remember being in a daze, feeling sad for my hero. I had a hard time accepting that he got stopped and it wasn't until years later that I realized there was and is a very big asterisk next to that result.

I remember that great 1984 U.S. Olympic team that spawned such future champs as Evander Holyfield, Sweet Pea Whitaker, Mark Breland and Meldrick Taylor. The best fight I saw of that whole tournament was 139 pound Jerry Page's Olympic victory over the guy from Thailand, Dhawee Umponmaha. What a display of non-stop punching!! Forget the computer scoring they use now in 2006. The fight with Page and Umponmaha epitomized what amateur boxing used to be all about. I first met and befriended Jerry three years later when I encountered him at the Ohio State Fair tournament in his hometown of Columbus, Ohio and the very first thing I asked him about was that fight.

I remember that there were some good heavyweights, underachievers more than anything, that were a lot better (certainly potential wise) than some fans want to realize or admit. At their best I think guys like Greg Page, Pinklon Thomas, Tony Tubbs, Tyrell Biggs, Tony Tucker, Tim Witherspoon, Carl "The Truth" Williams, Trevor Berbick and James "Bonecrusher" Smith were a solid bunch of heavyweights. Mike Tyson and his emergence may have gone a long way towards sapping some of these guy's outlook on their chances of ruling the division but at their best they were solid. Every one of them.

The funny thing to me is that, the way Tyson is NOW, people are always dogging him and you have certain fighters calling him out and talking big stuff about him. People have forgotten what a terror he was back from 1986-1989. That was an exciting time for boxing back then and you certainly didn't see guys calling Mike out like they do now. Some of the bigger name guys of the day called him out... but not too hard, you know? And the lower level fringe contenders never even dared mention Mike's name in public! Guys today that bash Mike Tyson and call him out with insults wouldn't even look that man in the eye back in 1987.

[ICEMAN JOHN SCULLY]

Part 2

In many ways I look at my boxing career as kind of like a dream. I mean, it was almost like they let me play boxer or something. When I was a kid I used to train and watch fights with my friend Chris "The Cobra" Lombardi. (We called him "Cobra" because he had very fast hands AND he was a big fan of Donald Curry) We were both very big boxing fans and the only two kids our age that knew both the professional and amateur games and the fighters involved in them on such a deep level. He was the only kid I could really talk boxing with. How many other 15 or 16 years old kids in the early 1980's knew who Robin Blake or Tony Baltazar were? Better yet, how many kids our age knew who Wilfred Scypion and Andrew Minsker were? Not many. They knew Muhammad Ali, Larry Holmes and Sugar Ray Leonard, because even non-boxing fans knew those guys, but they didn't know Tyrone The Butterfly Crawley, Frank The Animal Fletcher and Joltin' Jeff Chandler. But we did. We watched the Saturday afternoon fights and we watched the HBO fights. We would go to the gym and take white wife-beater T-Shirts and use magic marker to write names on the back to imitate the famous yellow and gold KRONK training tank tops that Hearns, McCrory and all the other KRONK guys wore in the gym. But we wouldn't put OUR names on the back. He had one that said (Rockin' Robin) "Blake" and I had one that said "LaRocca" (as in Nino LaRocca). I also spent many of my early days in the ring trying to imitate the moves I saw LaRocca put on in his brilliant showing against Bobby Joe Young back in 1983 on a Saturday afternoon NBC broadcast.

I even remember Chris calling information in certain cities around the country and getting home numbers for professional boxers. We were AMAZED that these guys had their home numbers in the book for just anybody to look up. He actually called Robin Blake at his house in Texas once and had a good talk with him.

Chris definitely has the gift for gab. At my 1991 fight with Randy Smith Chris walked up to heavyweight Seamous McDonaugh, a guy he never met even once in his life, and by the end of the night he not only convinced Seamous that they had met and hung out in Atlantic City in 1990 but that Chris was a top rated welterweight contender "just waiting to get his title shot." Seamous sympathized with his plight and bashed the boxing politics that were prevalent in our sport. He gave Chris his home phone number and told him to let him know when he finally gets his title fight. Chris was so convincing that, at the end of the night, Seamous said to him (in his thick accent) "You know, I gotta' be honest with you. When you first came up to me I didn't even remember you at first. But now I do!" Chris had actually convinced this man that they had, in fact, met before in A.C. and had hung out together!

[ICEMAN JOHN SCULLY]

HAGLER-HEARNS-LEONARD-DURAN, just those fights alone make the decade worth mentioning...