In the hardest game, a soft voice of seasoned humanity shines through: Eddie Futch is 83 and still punching his
BOXING: Kevin Mitchell
A LITTLE over a month after he accompanies Riddick Bowe to the ring for his world heavyweight title fight against Jorge Luis Gonzales in Las Vegas on June 17, Eddie Futch will celebrate, quietly, his 84th birthday.
Sixty-three birthdays have passed since Futch was first acquainted with the mysteries of boxing. He was a clever young amateur lightweight, sparring with Joe Louis in Detroit, even teaching him a thing or two about what Louis called Futch’s “flukey left hooks”.
A couple of hours in his company is time most fruitfully spent for anyone who holds even the slimmest affection for the business.
Few have rejected his counsel down the years; many have craved it. In a world of much nonsense his opinion is undiluted, straight and highly valued. On the puzzle of the day, for instance, Mike Tyson.
Futch does not share the scepticism about the former champion and believes he can rediscover the special gifts that once made him great.
“I think his chances are excellent, with the quality of the heavyweight division as it is now,” Futch says. “He’s still at the point where heavyweights mature, as a rule at 28, 29 years old. Of course he’s got a bit of work to do to catch up to what he was before he went away and he will have to be a little careful starting out. What he’ll have to sharpen up on is his reflex action, be able to hit the target and be able to make the other guy miss.”
And what of Lennox Lewis? “Lennox does have the makings of a good champion. He’s a tall man with a good left jab and a hard right hand. I haven’t seen too much of his left hook, although he used it against Frank Bruno to good effect. It came from nowhere and I think he threw it to keep from getting hit anymore.”
Lewis was similarly wild against Oliver McCall at Wembley last September, collided with what was a desperate right and lost his title. Futch thinks Lewis was poorly advised but regards the appointment of Emanuel Steward since as a smart move. “Manny seems to have cleaned up Lewis’ boxing a little. Before, Lewis was quite off balance a lot of the
Futch has seen four boxers die, has dealt with characters of varying pedigree and has watched his sport slide from the mountain to the swamp and back again.
Futch recalls the night Sam Baroudi fought Ezzard Charles. Baroudi took a battering and was dying in hospital when they found his manager leaving Chicago with the fighter’s money. But, whatever its failings, boxing, he maintains, is with us forever. Has it been worth it?
“Yes. I’m in boxing, but not of boxing. Boxing didn’t make me. I was who I am before I got into boxing. I just carried what I had into boxing to make things better for the people I was involved with, and I’m very proud of some of them. But I’m also proud of those I’ve pushed out of boxing. One became a dentist, one became a doctor, one became a lawyer and now he’s a judge. And Berry Gordy, who went on to create Motown Records.”
Rarely has a trainer’s instinctive humanity been more starkly exemplified than when Futch pulled Joe Frazier out after the 14th round of his monumental struggle against Muhammad Ali in Manila in 1975. Ali had wanted to quit after the 10th but rallied and closed Frazier’s left eye, rendering him a staggering target.
“I said to Joe when he came back to the corner, ‘That’s it Joe. It’s over.’ He jumped up. I said, ‘Sit down. No more.’ Joe’s a real nice guy, a good family man, loves his children, takes them everywhere he goes. I didn’t want him turned into a vegetable. I wanted him to enjoy his family.
“The only thing that boxing has going for it, the only thing it ever had going for it since they used to fight barefist on barges, is that it is a contest between two men. That’s been the case since the beginning of time and nothing is ever going to change that. One man’s struggle to be superior to another man. And, if you can’t express that desire yourself, you want to watch someone else do it. That’s why boxing will survive. Man, it’s as simple as