RIP Howard Davis Jr
“He told me a few years ago that he enjoyed training fighters, promoting MMA and playing music – he played guitar – more than he enjoyed fighting.”
The greatest boxing team the USA ever fielded was in 1976. It could be the greatest boxing team in Olympic history.
Sugar Ray Leonard won a gold medal. So did Leon Spinks and Michael Spinks, and Lee Randolph, and Howard Davis Jr. Charles Mooney won a silver, and John Tate won bronze.
The Val Barker Trophy for outstanding boxer at the 1976 Olympic games went to Davis. Simply to make the team, Davis beat Aaron Pryor, having beaten Thomas Hearns at the AAUs. But what his friends and family recall above all is what a golden human being he was.
“He was a loyal friend and devoted husband, father and brother,” said Randy Gordon, former chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission, to Kevin Iole for Yahoo Sports. ” … He had the fastest pair of hands I ever saw. He was a very hard worker in the gym. On the road, he ran like no fighter I ever saw. In 1979, I clocked him in the mile at 4:20. I am sure if he put his mind to it, he could have approached the world record. He told me a few years ago that he enjoyed training fighters, promoting MMA and playing music – he played guitar – more than he enjoyed fighting. I believe he was Florida’s busiest MMA promoter. To know Howard Davis was to love him. Heaven is gaining one very special angel.”
Howard was a supremely intelligent boxer, unconvinced of the wisdom in taking a punch to give one.
“I’m no brawler,” he told SI’s Pat Putnam. “The Europeans take a lot of punches. They get cut up, and looking ugly is just part of the day’s work. But I don’t want to be ugly. I’m not crazy.”
He’s right of course, but the style did not play as well in the pros. He did however challenge three times for the world championship, in amassing a 36-6-1 record.
Upon his retirement, Davis began training boxers, and then MMA fighters, eventually becoming the head striking coach of American Top Team. He moved into MMA as well, as becoming one of the most prolific promoters in Florida.
Although Davis never smoked nor drank, he was diagnosed with a particularly aggressive form of lung cancer early in 2015, and was given less than a year to live. Davis eventually opted to forgo chemo in favor of less invasive non conventional therapies, and fought hard.
“I never ask why I got [cancer],” he said. “I just started fighting. If you are a champion, champions don’t qui?t.”
Davis never quit, but the One Great Scorer came, and, as he does for each of us …
He writes – not that you won or lost –
But how you played the Game
Howard Davis Jr. played beautifully.
Rest in Peace Howard Davis, Jr. (February 14, 1956 – December 30, 2015)
