CAROLINAS ROOTS
Boxing has rich history in region
As an amateur sport, it flourished from the 1940s and '50s
DAVID SCOTT
dscott@charlotteobserver.com
Professional Boxing World Champions from the Carolinas
Boxing's Carolinas roots from the 1940s and '50s are buried in the small mill towns throughout the region, where boxing clubs offered young men a place to go after school -- or when their shift ended at the local mill -- to blow off steam in a structured environment.
And while those clubs formed the fabric of the sport in the Carolinas a half-century ago, the region also boasts its share of native-born world champions: the late Floyd Patterson (Waco in Cleveland County), Joe Frazier (Beaufort, S.C.), Sugar Ray Leonard (Wilmington), James "Bonecrusher" Smith (Magnolia) and Charlotte's Kelvin Seabrooks.
There's another chance for a fighter to bring a world championship to the Carolinas later this week, when Charlotte's Calvin Brock fights the Ukraine's Wladimir Klitschko on Saturday for the International Boxing Federation and International Boxing Organization's heavyweight titles at New York's Madison Square Garden.
Yet it was as an amateur sport, in communities such as Belmont, Cramerton, Gastonia, Mount Holly, Casar, Valdese, Greenville, S.C., Gaffney, S.C., Lenoir and Hickory, where boxing used to flourish in the region.
They all had boxing clubs, with amateur fighters who competed against each other at weekend tournaments around the region.
Charlotte had its own boxing clubs, often sponsored by the YMCA or the Salvation Army's Red Shield Club. Trainer Lou Kemp, a high-steel worker by trade, was the face of the sport in the city for decades, training some of Charlotte's top boxers, including Seabrooks and Bernard Taylor.
But the rising popularity of team sports and society's increased prosperity diminished boxing's presence.
According to Boxingyms.com, only 17 boxing gyms remain in North Carolina and 17 in South Carolina.
"It's a rich tradition and heritage that you'll never see again," said H.A. "Humpy" Wheeler, a top amateur boxer from Belmont in the 1950s and now president of Lowe's Motor Speedway.
Backed against the wall
It was always difficult to back a boxer from Belmont into the ropes. He knew it was in his best interest to stay in the middle of the ring.The room that housed the ring at the Belmont gym in Gaston County was so small there was little, if any, room between the ropes and the concrete wall. If a fighter was hit while backed against the ropes, he could be hurt on both sides of his head.
"A bump right here," said Wheeler, pointing to his forehead.
Then, touching the back of his head, "And one here."
The Belmont boxing club was spartan. Located in the basement of the town's jail, what passed for a shower was a three-quarter-inch pipe sticking out of a wall. The gym's heavy bag was made of canvas, stuffed with cotton waste from the town's mills.
When they weren't boxing, the fighters often gathered to watch "Friday Night Fights" from Madison Square Garden on "Gillette's Cavalcade of Sports."
The highlight each year was the trip to Charlotte for the Carolinas Golden Gloves tournament. Held at the Charlotte Armory (now Grady Cole Center) before moving to the new Charlotte Coliseum (now Cricket Arena), the Golden Gloves offered small-town boxers a chance to see the big city.
Many fighters dined at uptown's Little Pep Delmonico restaurant, then spent a night at a nearby hotel, perhaps the Charlotte or Selwyn.
Golden memories, legacies
One year, Carl Holt, a fighter from nearby Cramerton, walked into the armory and noticed a poster on the wall advertising the Golden Gloves. The photograph on the poster was of him -- being flattened a few years earlier by a military fighter from Salt Lake City.
"It was me, with my neck getting stretched about a foot-and-a-half by that paratrooper hitting me," Holt said.
Holt recalled what happened next.
Barely able to stay upright and on one knee, he was asked by referee Duck Diehl if he could continue.
"Hell yeah, ref, I'm doing fine," Holt said. "But these people are just going 'round and 'round."
"Let's call it off," Diehl said.
The Golden Gloves is still held in Charlotte, but its significance has diminished. It's now held at the Sugaw Creek Recreation Center.
Charlotte's Jack Batson, who died this year, was a former Golden Gloves heavyweight champion. While living in Carolina Beach when he was younger, Batson trained by swimming a mile out in the ocean and back. He would fight -- and regularly beat -- Marines and sailors stationed nearby.
"He beat so many ... that it got kind of rough for him to stay there," former boxer Ben Gregory said. "So his dad shipped him to Charlotte."
The list of outstanding Carolina boxers from Batson and Holt's era is long. It would include:
• Charlotte's Waban "Tugboat" Thomas fought Buster Mathis in the Houston Astrodome in 1967 and was knocked out in the first round.
• Leo Johnson, one of the first notable African American fighters in the Charlotte area. A student at Johnson C. Smith, he quit school to turn pro so he could pay for his wife's tuition at Smith. He fought a series of exhibitions in 1950 in Georgia against Joe Louis.
• Crowe Peele, a heavyweight from Fayetteville, went on to become one of the country's top collegiate boxers at Louisiana State.
The Carolinas also have been home for significant boxing news. Jack Johnson, the first African American heavyweight champion, died near Raleigh in 1946 from injuries suffered in a car crash. Jack Dempsey trained in Hendersonville before losing his title to Gene Tunney. Rid**** Bowe went to prison for kidnapping his estranged wife in Cornelius.
More news is coming Saturday from Madison Square Garden.
Brock vs. Klitschko
THE FIGHT: Charlotte's Calvin Brock (29-0, 20 KOs) vs. Ukraine's Wladimir Klitschko (46-3, 41 KOs)
THE STAKES: The International Boxing Federation and International Boxing Organization's world heavyweight titles
WHEN: Saturday
WHERE: Madison Square Garden, New York
TV: HBO (coverage begins at 10 p.m.)
Staff writers Lew Powell and Gerry Hostetler contributed to this article.