Don Elbaum, a swashbuckling boxing figure who promoted Sugar Ray Robinson and Muhammad Ali, along with less notable pugilists who fought for their dreams in smoky Holiday Inn ballrooms and dingy American Legion halls, died on July 27 in Erie, Pa. He was 94.
His death, in a hospice facility, was confirmed by his son Kipp.
Compared during his eight-decade career to P.T. Barnum, Don Quixote and a Damon Runyon character, Mr. Elbaum juked and sometimes jabbed his way to prominence in a sport whose outside-the-ring personalities become mythical figures and occasionally prison inmates — for four months, in Mr. Elbaum’s case, on tax evasion charges.
“Don was a scoundrel, but he was a talented scoundrel and a colorful scoundrel — a well-intentioned scoundrel,” Lou DiBella, a boxing promoter and former head of programming for HBO Sports, said in an interview. “He told the most wonderful, incredible, remarkable stories, and a decent percentage of them were true.”
Mr. Elbaum once staged a bout to decide the “World’s Worst Boxer,” matching two combatants who had never won a fight. Squaring off at a packed Elks Club in Ohio, the fighters had agreed that the loser would retire. The contest ended in a draw, naturally.
In 1965, he hyped a Robinson fight in Johnstown, Pa., as “The Biggest Event Since the Johnstown Flood,” a catastrophe that killed 2, 209 people in 1889. Hoping to generate headlines at a news conference before the bout, Mr. Elbaum surprised Robinson with the gloves the fighter had worn in his first match.
Putting them on, Robinson discovered that both gloves were right-handed. Robinson, it turned out, did not have two right hands; the gloves were spares that Mr. Elbaum kept in his trunk. Robinson realized what was happening and told the reporters he couldn’t bring himself to put them on.
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The post Don Elbaum, Audacious Boxing Promoter and Heavyweight Raconteur, Dies at 94 appeared first on New York Times.
