Random Classics - Wilfred Benitez vs. Harold Weston I

Even if you've been a fight fan most of your life, and even if you try to educate yourself when it comes to guys far before your time that you'd never know or care about unless you were a fight fan, you're bound to encounter a few great scraps that you didn't know existed or simply hadn't yet seen.



Footage of primordial bouts has been lost, packed away or forgotten about, and sadly we may never see those gems, and we live with that. 


Other classics simply escape our consciousness for one reason or another, though. Fights like Frankie Baltazar Jr. vs. Juan Escobar, or even "Caveman" Lee vs. John LoCicero lacked really familiar names, but their tales were recounted unto younger boxing followers by responsible, bloodthirsty folk who watched them 30 or 40 years ago. Jung-Koo Chang vs. Katsuo Tokashiki was perhaps the Somsak SIthchatchawal vs. Mahyar Monshipour of the early 1980's, in that both featured two non-American fighters on foreign soil in excellent lower-weight collisions, though the latter match-up was pushed heavily on the internet, while the former relied mostly on word of mouth. 


Whatever the reason, despite how the internet has accelerated the evolution of the boxing fan, we cannot be everywhere at once. Time is limited, and fights fly under the radar. 


This one, while not quite the slugfest the above mentioned were, flew under mine for too long. 

Ave Atque Vale, Joe Frazier

"Oh, Brother, ripped away from me so cruelly, now at least take these last offerings..."

     - Gaius Valerius Catullus

Joe Frazier was referred to as "the slaughterhouse smasher" by the AP ahead of his decision loss in the 1964 Olympic Trials to Buster Mathis Sr., who out-weighed him by 100 lbs. 


It was a short phrase, likely written quickly and without much analysis, simply referring to his destructive style, and his job at a slaughterhouse. But it's perhaps an unintentional metaphor for exactly what he did in the ring, and what he made it look like in there.