The author of this massive tome (738 pages) is a man who turned his passion into a profession. Lee Groves has won three Boxing Writers Association of America awards, and wrote for The Ring and KO magazines during the late 1980s and early 1990s. In full disclosure, he saw and became part of boxing’s new future on the internet as a member of MaxBoxing’s team from 2005 to 2010. Groves’ influence goes beyond the written word, an elector for the International Boxing Hall of Fame and the World Boxing Hall of Fame. He continues to help shape boxing as a member of the ratings panels for Yahoo Sports and The Ring Magazine. Just as importantly, for this book especially, Mr. Groves has one of the largest private boxing video collections on Earth. He continues to work as a boxing writer, researcher, and punch-counter for CompuBox Inc., which is probably providing content for Groves’ follow-up anthology.
I caught up with Groves, who is preparing for trips to Canastota for the International Boxing Hall of Fame and Tampa for the Florida Boxing Hall of Fame festivities, to ask questions I hope will provide background on this invaluable new addition to my library.
Marty Mulcahey: Tell our readers how many bouts are covered in this expansive work.
Lee Groves: 100 fights. Ten chapters and ten fights per chapter. This was intentional because I, like most people, like round numbers.
MM: You separate the fights in your book into ten different categories; which contest do you believe could have fit comfortably in the most categories?
LG: The one fight that could fit the most categories was Juan "Kid" Meza vs. Jaime Garza, which ended up being in the “Shootouts” chapter, but could also have been in Chapter one (“Brawls”), Chapter Six (“Vengeance is Mine: Great Grudge Fights” because there was a pre-fight confrontation at breakfast the day of the weigh-in that stoked Garza’s fire), Chapter Seven ("Little Big Men" since they were junior featherweights), Chapter Eight ("Sudden and Violent Endings" because of the scorching hook that ended the fight) and Chapter Nine ("Upsets and Unpredictability - A Walk on the Wild Side" because this was a most shocking result).
MM: What is the oldest and most recent bout the book provides insight on?
LG: The oldest fight featured was Ezzard Charles vs. Bob Satterfield (January 13, 1954, Chapter Two, “Shootouts”), while the most recent was Chris McInerney vs. Anterio Vines (July 5, 2005, Chapter Five, “Undercard Treasures”).
MM: There are fighters that fans will be surprised to see are not in your book, while others had careers that tend to fit the format of the book.
LG: Probably the biggest names like Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield, Arturo Gatti, Roberto Duran, Joe Frazier, Marvin Hagler and the like, because most of their great fights were so well publicized. Julian Letterlough is well represented in this book as he has three fights (Julio Gonzalez, Richard Hall and Demetrius Jenkins) as well as Tommy Morrison (Carl Williams, Razor Ruddock), Mike McCallum (Julian Jackson and Milton McCrory), Danny Lopez (Juan Malvarez, Ruben Olivares) and Bobby Czyz (Tim Broady, Willie Edwards). One person that people might be surprised to see is Freddie Roach, who many people know as a Hall of Fame-level trainer, but in a previous life, he was a warrior in the ring. His bout with Tommy Cordova is profiled here.
MM: Most authors lean toward featuring heavyweights, since they have a larger appeal, though they do not often produce great fights. Do you have this particular affinity, or does the book lean in any one direction at all?
LG: The sheer variety of fights in this book is perhaps its biggest strength, and that’s one of the things that separates this volume from the pack. All weight classes and strata of fighters are represented here. I have a chapter devoted to the big guys ("Big Man Drama," which is reserved for cruiserweights and heavyweights), but we also have a chapter devoted to 115 pounds and below ("Little Big Men"), as well as obscure fighters who enjoyed one thunderbolt moment of glory ("Undercard Treasures"). I have virtually all weight classes covered, but we also have more than our share of Hall of Famers - Alexis Arguello, Aaron Pryor, Ezzard Charles, Ruben Olivares, Wilfredo Gomez, Mike McCallum, Ricardo Lopez, Jung Koo Chang, Danny Lopez, Thomas Hearns, Daniel Zaragoza - even Pernell Whitaker is in here. A future Hall-of-Famer in Julio Cesar Chavez is in here too.
MM: Is any particular weight class represented most?
LG: 32 of the fights involve fighters who campaigned at featherweight or below, which shouldn’t be surprising because fighters in the lower weight classes provide the most action. Sometimes they are involved in short explosive fights or wars of attrition. It was most difficult to find fights for the “Big Man Drama” and the “Undercard Treasure” chapters, because the big boys often take part in hug-fests while the undercard guys require a pretty sharp memory. I went through fights in my collection that had an "asterisk" written beside the fight on my label. That made the search much, much easier.
MM: I know you are an avid boxing video collector; did you go back and re-watch every bout in this book or use mostly written coverage of the fights?
LG: Every fight profiled in this book is in my private video collection. Not only did I review the footage in researching these fights, I also did 78 of the punch counts that are included following each fight. I am qualified to do these punch counts because I’ve worked full-time for CompuBox since 2007, and if you count my apprenticeship, I’ve used the program for several years before that. So I am very much experienced, in terms of punch counting and the numbers you will see in the book are extremely representative of what transpired in the ring.
MM: That is an incomparable aspect to this book; you are the only person who took the time to go back and incorporate punch stats to these great fights. Something that either the thinking or technology of the time did not take into consideration.
LG: I can’t think of another boxing book that has this, and some of the numbers in this book are absolutely insane. The punch numbers of Rafael Ruelas against Jorge Paez and the combined numbers of [Frankie] Duarte-[Alberto] Davila are off the charts, while the accuracy of Bobby Czyz against Tim Broady and Michael Moorer’s jab against Alex Stewart are phenomenal. The charts also give the reader an idea of how effective they were, statistically, and one can compare their numbers to the ones they’ve seen from fighters tracked by CompuBox over the past 25 years. By the way, this year marks the silver anniversary of CompuBox - 25 years and counting, as we say.
MM: The two most recent decades have had a particular upsurge in quality European boxers and fights. Will our English-reading cousins across the Atlantic enjoy this book as well, and see some of their heroes featured?
LG: Absolutely! The first war between Chris Eubank and Nigel Benn is profiled, as well as Benn’s explosive fight with Anthony Logan. The grudge fight between Mark Kaylor and Errol Christie, the unbelievable plot twists in the bout between Danny Williams and Mark Potter are recounted, and the lightweight title bout between Scotland’s Jim Watt and Northern Ireland’s Charlie Nash is in there. Herol Graham’s heartbreaking knockout loss to the rock-fisted Julian Jackson is written here, as well. There are Asians, Europeans, South Americans, Central Americans, Caribbean fighters, and so on. The book is a reflection of the melting pot that boxing always has been. Dave "Boy" McAuley, a flyweight that was all heart and guts, is also in here for his classic first fight with Fidel Bassa, a gallant but heartbreaking challenge.
MM: We all have biases; what was your favorite boxing era?
LG: My favorite era is, of course, the 1970s and 1980s because they represent my formative years. The boxing bug bit me hard at age nine, and I’ve been happily infected since then. There were so many stars and I saw many of them either on free network TV or, later, on satellite. It was the perfect time to become a boxing fan because pay-per-view was not yet in vogue, and the boxing magazines were a far more impactful source of fresh boxing news, as well as historical pieces. But in perusing so many books and magazines, I thought that there were fights that had not received a full historical rendering, and it is the mission of this book to bring these fights to light in a more comprehensive way. In a way, it is the kind of book that I wish were available when I was growing up.
MM: Going back, did any of the fights you remember as being great not hold up on second sight, and vice versa, where some fights you thought of as historically significant bores improve with age?
LG: Virtually all of the fights that I profiled in this book were just as great as I remember the first time I saw [them], but there were some candidates for the book that I tossed out during the weeding out process. I don’t recall what those were, but I was satisfied with the lineup I chose.
MM: Did anything standout on closer inspection, as far as the different boxing eras, and their merit or the progression of boxers, as sport science improved?
LG: The further one goes back, the more patient referees were, in terms of stopping fights. I think the 29-day period between Alexis Arguello - Aaron Pryor I and Larry Holmes - Tex Cobb was a watershed period, in terms of ring safety. The beatings Arguello, Cobb, and Duk Koo Kim suffered forced those in power to exert a hard focus on ring safety and from that point forward, referees and officials have been quicker to end things. While I am all for ring safety, one of the unintended consequences is that long fights with multiple swings of momentum have become more rare. Matthew Saad Muhammad would never have been able to build his ring legend in this era because the beatings he took were that graphic.
MM: If you could pick one fight from the book to watch live, which one would it have been?
LG: It depends on what you’re looking for. If you want to see a fight where a lower-level fighter catches lightning in a bottle and breathes deeply "in the zone" against a bona fide legend, then the first fight between Vilomar Fernandez and Alexis Arguello is your fight. If you want to work yourself up into a righteously indignant froth, then read about the first fight between Juan Coggi and Eder Gonzalez, which featured home cooking so blatant, that the referee was banned for life. If you’re seeking an action-packed, back-and-forth bloodbath, then the second fight between Frankie Duarte and Albert Davila is your fight. If you’re looking for multiple, violent swings of momentum, there are several fights like Sung Kil Moon - Nana Konadu I, Leland Hardy - Ike Padilla, Kiyoshi Hatanaka - Pedro Decima and Fidel Bassa - Dave McAuley I. This book has fights for everyone’s taste, and one of the many benefits of this book is that, despite its large size, it’s a very fast read because each fight is between 1,500 and 4,500 words. You can take it in small bites or big chunks.
MM: At $29.95, readers get 100 fantastic fights, which is less than a PPV that nowadays features one great matchup and three filler bouts, where the results are obvious before the opening punch is thrown.
LG: It is far less than most boxing pay-per-views these days, and since it’s 738 pages long, they will get plenty of bang for the buck. In tough times like these, it only makes sense to make the price reasonable. Since the results of many of these fights aren’t well known, there will probably be a sense of suspense if one doesn’t choose to look up the result on BoxRec first. I’m just hoping that the boxing fans will express their support for my pricing stance by purchasing it and perhaps this "value for money" concept can spread elsewhere in the sport. God knows we need that kind of thinking when it comes to putting together pay-per-view cards.
The easiest way to purchase this book is via Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/Tales-Vault-Lee-Groves/dp/1449965601
or
http://www.createspace.com/3418039
I highly recommend boxing fans pick up “Tales from the Vault” for their summer reading and, in turn, encourage regular sport fans to do so, since this book is as much about sporting drama as boxing.
You can contact Marty at mmulcahey@elpasotel.net or visit him at www.facebook.com/fivedogs
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