Kellerman takes the low road

News item: Max Kellerman’s debut on Fox Sports Net gets a national rating of 0.0.

Comment: “I, Max” ranked just behind the national anthem and just ahead of “Test Pattern.”

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Roy Jones Jr. might have lost his light heavyweight title, but he’s still, pound for pound, the greatest boxer in U.S. Basketball League history.

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Speaking of the fight game, I’m anxiously awaiting the release of “Cinderella Man,” Ron Howard’s movie about heavyweight champ Jim Braddock. Premiere magazine reports that Russell Crowe, who’ll play Braddock, was so into the part that he “quit drinking to train.” Greater love hath no Aussie …

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Braddock was no Maximus (Crowe’s Oscar-winning character in “Gladiator”), that’s for sure. Indeed, when he fought and beat Max Baer for the championship in 1935, he’d lost 20 of his previous 41 bouts. In one of them, he was TKO’d in the sixth round by a light heavy named Lou Scozza — who the year before had dropped a decision to Battling Bozo (real name: Curtis Hambright).

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I got that last piece of information from a Web site I just stumbled across: boxrec.com. What a find! You can look up just about anybody’s fight-by-fight record on it, even Battling Bozo’s.

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For instance, there was a heavyweight in the ‘20s named Dan Daly (aka “Dangerous” Dan Daly and “Mysterious” Dan Daly). He had one bout, according to boxrec.com, and it was against Chicago White Sox first baseman Art “the Great” Shires in December 1929. Shires knocked him out in 21 seconds, but “his opponent … soon after claimed he had taken ‘a dive,’” the Web site says.

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With a couple of clicks, you can also find out the entire boxing card in D.C. on Nov.24, 1979 — the day Dallas Cowboys defensive end Ed “Too Tall” Jones battled Fernando “Toro” Montes. (Too Tall put him down for the count in the first round.) Another of the bouts — there were four of them here that day — saw Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini, in just his third fight, knock out Ricky Patterson in two.

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Story Continues →