These times, there is treasured tiny boxing that requires place about the vacations, help you save for the customary late-12 months shows in Russia and Japan. For promoters, it’s a monetarily perilous decision to phase a show at this time of yr, with opportunity ticket customers and broadcast viewers’ time and cash already allocated in many locations. For fighters, currently laborers in a activity that necessitates a diploma of separation from beloved ones, having to do so around the holiday seasons is anything they’d prefer to stay clear of. Not to point out, holiday getaway indulgence and building fat don’t exactly go alongside one another like mashed potatoes and gravy.
But 71 a long time in the past, the world’s best fighter at the time, and the just one who would go on to be accepted as the best to at any time live, was in motion on Xmas Day. On December 25, 1950, Sugar Ray Robinson took on Hans Stretz in Frankfurt, Germany.
Without the need of any context Robinson’s fifth round knockout acquire in excess of Stretz reads like a nondescript remain active outing on BoxRec. Nevertheless, the tale of how Robinson acquired there, what took place when he was there and what subsequently happened in the wake of it would make his gain about Stretz and the preceding European tour a interesting very little slice of boxing record.
In November of 1950, Robinson agreed to choose section in a collection of bouts throughout Europe for promoter Charlie Michaelis. Robinson was a notoriously fierce negotiator and distrustful of promoters, significantly as his star commenced to brighten, but he reliable Michaelis, and even fought a single of the bouts on the journey without a formal agreement, discovering it unneeded for the reason that he realized Michaelis would be straight with him. Michaelis initially ordered four spherical excursion tickets for Robinson, but he determined that wouldn’t be adequate. Robinson required to travel with the exact same crew he would for a battle in the United States, together with his wife Edna Mae, his barber and valet, his religious advisor, and