Boxing Blog – TSS Tidbits

Former world featherweight champion dies in Connecticut

Former featherweight champion of the world Willie Pep died Thursday at West Hill Convalescent Home in Rocky Hill, Connecticut, at the age of 84. Pep had been in failing health in recent years and was suffering from Alzheimer’s.

Pep was born Guglielmo Papaleo on Sept. 19, 1922, in Middletown, Conn., and grew up on the mean streets of Depression-era Hartford’s East Side. He honed his incredible defensive skills while working as a shoeblack hustling on street corners.

“I was an 11-year-old kid,” Pep recalled during an interview several years ago. “Back then, you had to get there early because it was a good spot. If you got there late, somebody would take your spot.

“I weighed about 89 pounds soaking wet. The big guys would pick on me and so I had to fight them. Once you fight them they will leave you alone.

“I was a scrappy kid that they tried to push around, but I wouldn’t let them. I didn’t know anything about boxing then. I was just a kid, but I knew enough not to get hit.”

Pep started training at the Charter Oak Gym. He won his first pro fight in Hartford on July 3, 1940. Pep won the Connecticut flyweight championship in 1938, the state bantamweight title in 1939, and the New England featherweight championship on July 21, 1942.

Willie Pep twice won the featherweight crown. At the age of 20 year he won a 15-round decision and the title from Chalky Wright at Madison Square Garden on Nov. 20, 1942. Pep made six successful defenses before losing to Sandy Saddler on Oct. 29, 1948. He regained the title with a 15-round decision over Saddler on Feb. 11, 1949, at the Garden.

Pep retired from boxing in 1959 following back-to-back losses to journeymen. He came out of retirement in 1965 at the age of 42 and had ten more fights, before retiring for good with a record of 229-11-1, 65 KOs on March 3, 1966.

Willie Pep was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1990.

Bert Sugar described Pep as “a moonbeam. You couldn’t catch him… Pep was music in the ring. People were rhapsodic over him. He was amazing. He did have 65 knockouts. Most of those people fell down in exhaustion from watching him.”

Wladimir Klitschko goes to Namibia and the movies

In today’s The Moscow Times, a reprint from Reuters hails the IBF heavyweight champion of the world Wladimir Klitschko and gives him all due respect, not only for his accomplishments in the ring, but for his accomplishments outside the ring. His work with UNESCO continues to grow, and Klitschko’s dualism, where he seems comfortable in “some of the most glamorous and also some of the most destitute spots on the planet,� insures that Klitschko the man and Klitschko the fighter is someone to watch.

“Thanks to sports I’ve gotten to know more about life, had the opportunity to meet famous people and learn from them, and to work with the United Nations organization UNESCO, which helps me understand the world more clearly,” Klitschko said.

Klitschko and his older brother Vitali have led what are called “storybook lives.� Sons of a Ukrainian air force general who is now military attaché to the embassy in Germany, they had a profound sense of excellence drilled into them at an early age. But their superiority, in size, athleticism, intelligence, looks, languages, you name it, was augmented by a heightened social conscience, an awareness that not everyone on the planet was as fortunate as the brothers Klitschko.

In that spirit, Wladimir Klitschko just raised “a quarter million dollars to help build schools in an impoverished Namibian village visited in August by the Klitschko brothers on a UNESCO mission� from the proceeds of his recent fight with Calvin Brock at Madison Square Garden. The heavyweight champion of the world doesn’t have to do that, he can just party, but as Klitschko said, “The people there are dying… When you go to the third-world countries you see children die right in front of your eyes. Without education, those children have no chance to survive. This is the chance to give them some future.�

On a lighter note, Wladimir Klitschko, who was born in Kazakhstan, moved to Prague and grew up in Ukraine, confessed to having a particular affinity for the faux Kazakh comedic documentary filmmaker superstar du jour “Borat� (nee Sasha Baron Cohen).

“I love ‘Borat,’� Klitschko said about hit movie “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,� a film that follows the antics of a British/Jewish comedian/prankster pretending to be a Kazakh TV reporter making a documentary about life in the USA.

“I think that is the funniest dude I have ever seen. He’s just something different than we have seen before. I think it might be great for Kazakhstan because people will go to the country and see it. You remember that crocodile hunter from Australia?â€? Klitschko asked. “Everybody thought that when he comes to New York in the movie all Australians are as crazy as Crocodile Dundee. People went to Australia to see that country and it was good for the economy.â€?

The Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who is in the UK and has seen “Borat,� told NDTV that the film was shot in R

Hollywood Madam will have to make do without Iron Mike

Heidi Fleiss, 39, aka the Hollywood Madam, who made a name for herself providing booty to some of Tinseltown’s richest and most powerful men, has done a lot of bouncing around since she got busted in the mid-1990s, her call girl service was shutdown, and she was incarcerated for 21 months in 1997 for pandering, money laundering and tax evasion.

But the indefatigable Heidi was able to parlay that infamy into worldwide celebrity and has used her notoriety to open a boutique called Hollywood Madam, create her own website, publish books (“The Player’s Handbook� and her memoir “Pandering�), develop a line of provocative lingerie, etc. But Fleiss’ latest venture, called Heidi’s Stud Farm, has raised a lot of eyebrows, not least because she claimed to have enlisted the talents of former heavyweight champion of the world and all-around bad boy Mike Tyson.

According to her website, Heidi’s Stud Farm is described as “The first luxury brothel where women can pick and choose the man of their dreams.� Newsweek writes that Heidi’s Stud Farm, located 80 miles northwest of Las Vegas, will be a “$1.5 million sexual fantasyland,� a “pleasure palace… shaped like a castle, with a marble-floored great room, a spa, a sex-toy shop and secluded bungalows where 20 Casanovas will spend quality time with the clientele (at $250 an hour).�

While some are welcoming Heidi’s proposal with open arms – she has a “six-figure deal with HBO to let a film crew document the brothel’s birth” – others are not so sure. “Heidi Fleiss scares the hell out of me,” said George Flint, lobbyist for the Nevada Brothel Association. “Our industry is not so firm, so to speak, that we need to flirt with some secondary activity that could bring down the whole house of cards… She may bring enough publicity to cause a problem for the industry,” to which Fleiss replied, “What’s good for the goose should be good for the gander.â€?

But gooses and ganders aside, Mike Tyson heard the rumors about his being a workhorse at Heidi’s Stud Farm, read some of what was printed and attributed to his name (“I don’t care what any man says, it’s every man’s dream to please every woman … and get paid for it�), and says it’s all a load of bunk.

“I am not working with Heidi Fleiss nor have anything to do with her new business,â€? said Tyson according to TysonTalk.com. “There is no truth to these rumors.â€? Tyson’s agent, Harlan J. Werner, warned that he will take legal action if they continue to use Mike’s name without his permission, which is not to say Heidi’s Stud Farm won’t be really big when it opens to the public, be it with or without the services of Mike Tyson.