Infamous Sparring Stories in Boxing
What happens in the gym, stays in the gym. Well, not really.
Every boxing fan enjoys gym tales and sparring stories. Some have become infamous throughout boxing history due to the iconic fighters involved.
From all-time greats reportedly being dropped to world champions being beaten up, there have been plenty of rumours and speculation surrounding famous gym rounds.
Here, following the anticipated launch of our new Sparring Club Collection, look back at some of boxing history’s most notorious sparring stories. Enjoy.
Boxing's Most Notorious Sparring Stories
Sugar Ray Robinson and Cocoa Kid
Boxing’s ‘Black Murderers Row’ were a group of eight fighters from the 1930s to 1950s who were feared and heavily avoided by the reigning world champions in their era.
This included Herbert Lewis Hardwick Arroyo, who is more prominently known in boxing history as Cocoa Kid, with the Puerto Rican being denied a deserved crack at the title throughout his career.
Most notably, Sugar Ray Robinson, the consensus greatest fighter in history, was the welterweight champion and he twice broke off an agreement to face Cocoa Kid.
Interestingly, Hardwick was known to have dropped a prime Robinson in their sparring sessions while the latter was preparing for a title defence against Steve Belloise.
A newspaper report gave details on the incident in an article titled ‘Ray Robinson Floored By Sparring Partner’, in which it stated:
“Welterweight Boxing Champion Ray Robinson was knocked to the canvas today by a sparring partner at his Pompton Lakes training camp,” stated ‘The Reading Eagle’ on August 21st, 1949.
“Robinson went down after a right to the jaw by a spar mate, the Cocoa Kid. The champion quickly got to his feet and continued boxing.”
Just days after this report surfaced, Robinson successfully stopped Belloise in seven rounds at Yankee Stadium, while Hardwick never fought again and officially retired in 1950.
Jack Dempsey and Harry Greb
Speaking in 1922, legendary heavyweight champion and cultural icon, Jack Dempsey, was full of praise for sparring partner and long-mooted rival, Harry Greb.
“He was the fastest thing I ever saw in action. Hitting him is one of life’s most difficult jobs, because he’s never ‘set’ for a second,” stated ‘The Manassa Mauler’.
Greb, widely regarded by historians as the greatest prize-fighter of all-time despite no known existing fight footage, is believed to have amazingly got the better of Dempsey on two occasions they shared rounds.
Newspaper cuttings from 1920 reported that: "Greb was all over him and kept forcing him around the ring throughout the session. Greb seemed to be able to hit Dempsey almost at will."
The pair were tipped to meet for years in a super-fight that would’ve been a monumental one in boxing history, but frustratingly it never materialised in the ‘Roaring Twenties’ and remains one of the biggest what-ifs in the sport.
Mike Tyson and Greg Page
Back in 1990, Mike Tyson’s invincible aura came to a stunning and unexpected halt when he suffered a knockout loss to James ‘Buster’ Douglas.
In what is still to this day the greatest upset in boxing (and perhaps in overall sport) history, Tyson had entered the fight in Tokyo as the reigning undisputed heavyweight champion after rallying to a destructive 37-0 career record.
But ‘Iron Mike’ tasted defeat for the first time in Japan, with Douglas producing a career-best performance to become an unlikely champion after being motivated by the tragic death of his mother just 23 days before the clash.
Reports eventually surfaced that Tyson had been slacking off in training and there were evident signs in the build-up, as he was famously floored in sparring by long-time training partner, Greg Page.
The writing was seemingly on the wall before the seismic Tokyo Dome upset, with Japanese TV having shown Tyson being decked by Page in front of media members in attendance.
It was also reported by The New York Times that Tyson had sparred Page again the following day but "quit after three rounds" and opted to take the day off from preparations.
Floyd Mayweather Jr and Paul Spadafora
A 1999 sparring session between Floyd Mayweather Jr and Paul Spadafora is now widely known among boxing fans and the footage has gathered millions of views online.
It shows ‘Pretty Boy’ being outboxed and outworked before collapsing to the canvas with exhaustion after six tough rounds in Las Vegas.
Mayweather was three years into his eventual Hall of Fame career, while Spadafora was busy preparing for a maiden title defence against Renato Cornett.
The Pittsburgh-born southpaw’s trainer, Jesse Reiss, claimed that the self-proclaimed ‘TBE’ tried to call for an early exit during the testing rounds but he refused and insisted on continuing.
“[Mayweather’s] nose is bleeding, and that eye looks like it’s swelling up, and he keeps crackin ’em,” recalled Reiss.
“Finally, in the fourth round, Mayweather comes to me and asks me if he can get out of the ring because he says he’s tired.”
Spadafora himself has since played down the now infamous sparring session as irrelevant by saying it was “just a fucking sparring match”, though the pair were notably once linked with a potential fight due to their past rounds.
Sadly, his own personal life was marred with troubles despite success in the ring, while Mayweather went on to retire at 50-0 as an all-time great.
Muhammad Ali and Larry Holmes
Years before a dangerously over-the-hill Muhammad Ali faced then heavyweight champion Larry Holmes in 1980, the two legends had already shared the ring in training camps.
Holmes had been Ali’s sparring partner for a long time during his rise to prominence and he even lived with his idol in camp.
It’s believed they worked together for hundreds of rounds beginning from 1972, when ‘The Greatest’ hired ‘The Easton Assassin’ as a sparring partner.
Past claims were always made that Holmes had “dominated” his hero during their spars but surfaced videos show sharp competitive work in camp; a clear contrast to how their eventual showdown played out.
That controversial meeting in Las Vegas saw a 30-year-old Holmes beat up a helpless 38-year-old Ali for 10 rounds before Angelo Dundee pulled his man out in the corner.
Billed as ‘The Last Hurrah!’, the heavyweight title bout drew a huge backlash and bleak post-fight details of Ali’s deteriorating health condition have since raised eyebrows over how it was allowed to take place.
Incredibly, Ali would fight one more time the following year in an unsuccessful swansong against Trevor Berbick.
Sugar Ray Leonard and Quincy Taylor
“I was really dominating all of my sparring partners. But [that punch] woke me up. Thank God for Quincy Taylor,” Sugar Ray Leonard stated, as he recalled his now high-profile sparring drama.
Just days before dethroning Marvelous Marvin Hagler with one of the most hugely debated decisions in boxing history in 1987, Leonard was dropped and badly rocked by his southpaw sparring partner.
“He hit me so hard, I was out cold. I played it off so no one would know. But I was out.”
Taylor was brought into Leonard’s camp to help prepare him for the ferocious middleweight champion, Hagler.
Leading up to the legendary match-up billed as ‘The Super-Fight', Leonard was a former welterweight champion returning from retirement and entered as a mammoth underdog with just one fight in the previous five years.
The signs all pointed towards Hagler destroying Leonard, especially considering the sparring news that later surfaced, but the latter Hall of Famer pulled off one of the biggest upsets ever.
It’s a feat he achieved with a lot of help from Taylor, he admitted, having changed his initial gameplan of going to go toe-to-toe with Hagler before his tough rounds in the gym.
“The thing about it was I was going to slug with Hagler. I knew my hands were faster and he had a lot of scar tissue.
“After sparring with Quincy, I changed my strategy for my fight with Hagler. Thanks, Quincy. Love you, buddy.”
Canelo Alvarez and Gennadiy Golovkin
Many years before producing one of the fiercest rivalries and most compelling trilogies in boxing history, a young Canelo Alvarez and lesser known Gennadiy Golovkin met for sparring in the gym.
Both men would ultimately collide three times in their illustrious careers, with the first and second fights becoming two of the most memorable middleweight battles in the modern era.
But in 2011, a 20-year-old Alvarez arrived at a 28-year-old GGG’s Big Bear training camp for rounds, before he had even been given the now prominent moniker of ‘Canelo’.
The Mexican was noted by Ring Magazine insiders to have “held his own” during the sparring session with Golovkin, who was coming into the peak of his powers.
Though the Kazakh middleweight legend was seen as the dominant champion during these early rounds shared, when both men were already world title holders at this stage of their respective careers (albeit in different divisions).
"We had very good sparring sessions back then. Those were exciting spars to watch,” stated GGG modestly as he recalled the early experiences with his sparring partner turned long-term nemesis.
Conor McGregor and Paulie Malignaggi
In the lead up to the second-highest grossing pay-per-view fight in history between Hall of Fame inductee, Floyd Mayweather Jr, and UFC champion Conor McGregor, there was an infamous sparring leak which caused a stir.
Mayweather would eventually break down and stop the Irishman as he switched from MMA to the boxing ring in a financially prosperous move, but ‘The Notorious’ riled up another former world champion during camp.
Before becoming ‘Money’ Mayweather’s 50th career victim, McGregor had recruited two-weight titlist Paulie Malignaggi as a sparring partner and later his team released self-flattering footage of the rounds.
Infuriated by the edited clips which went viral and showed him hitting the canvas, Malignaggi became involved in a bitter feud with the Dubliner and there were even reports of a potential boxing match between the pair.
That fight never materialized but there remains bad blood between the two men to this day.
Jersey Joe Walcott and Joe Louis
Two all-time greats and former heavyweight world champions, Jersey Joe Walcott and Joe Louis met in the ring for two legendary battles for the greatest honour in boxing.
In 1947, Walcott contested ‘The Brown Bomber’ for his heavyweight crown at Madison Square Garden, dropping the champion twice on his way to losing a highly controversial 15-round split decision.
The following year, Walcott was viciously knocked out in their rematch at Yankee Stadium, further prolonging his relentless but eventually successful charge for the heavyweight championship (he became world champion in his fifth attempt in 1951).
But in the build-up to the two meetings with Louis, there were sparring stories that had circulated and added to the aura of their rivalry.
Jersey Joe had boldly claimed to have decked Louis when he was hired as a sparring partner but this was abruptly denied, as ‘The Brown Bomber’ fired back saying he hit Walcott that hard it forced him to quit camp and never come back.
Sam Langford and James J. Jeffries
In a proper throwback to the vintage days of prize-fighting, there were even high-profile sparring tales during the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Sam Langford is regarded as one of the top five greatest fighters in boxing history, with his record and achievements from lightweight all the way to heavyweight reading like a fictional novel.
James J. Jeffries is most notably remembered in history as ‘The Great White Hope’ who was ushered back into the ring for a savage beating at the hands of Jack Johnson in their 1910 ‘Fight of the Century’, following a previous six-year retirement.
Although, ‘The Boilermaker’ had previously been a dominant force in his era with wins over Tom Sharkey, Bob Fitzsimmons and James J. Corbett during his reign as heavyweight ruler.
Despite the massive size difference between both men and the fact Langford once publicly said, “the only man I won't fight is Jim Jeffries”, there were widely reported rumours of a serious sparring incident involving them.
Newspaper clippings claimed that Langford had knocked Jeffries out cold in sparring just days before his infamous defeat to Johnson.
It’s a believable sparring story considering how great Langford was and the amount of larger opponents he overcame in his historic career.
SPARRING CLUB COLLECTION
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