How many top class fighters were smokers?

[Amsterdam]

In watching Mayorga have stamina, despite sucking down 2 packs a day off season, is interesting. Not that he's a top class operator, but he was a top 10 operator and needed the stamina to go rounds.

Any ATG's?

[mr. magoo]

I think Carlos Monzon smoked cigarettes when he wasn't in training. Tony Galento smoked cigars and maybe cigarettes as well.

[Jack Dempsey]

Graziano smoked

[Manassa]

Nicolino Locche.

[Jimbo]

They probably smoked the equivalent of a pack or two during a 15 round fight judging by the amount of smoke coming from the crowd in photos of fights up until 20 or so years ago.

[fists of fury]

A friend of mine was a amateur boxer who went through a pack a day. Never seemed to battle for stamina though...odd that.

There was a good middleweight in SA in the 60's called Mike Holt who smoked about 8 a day throughout his career, and he was as fit as could be.

[My dinner with Conteh]

I think Carlos Monzon smoked cigarettes when he wasn't in training. Tony Galento smoked cigars and maybe cigarettes as well.



Monzon didn't stop when he was training for a fight, he just cut down- to 10 a day. :yep

[JohnThomas1]

Timmy Witherspoon, oops that's right, his positive weed reading was from being near some friends smoking a joint at a party lol

[mightyd40]

idk if he smoked but i have a picture of ray robinson holding a cigarette in my head??

idk how these guys do it...with me stamina has always been my main problem and i have never once even touched a cigarette.

[Duodenum]

Monzon didn't stop when he was training for a fight, he just cut down- to 10 a day. :yepMDWT, it's always been my understanding that Carlos cut down from 60 to 20 ciggies a day when in training, but hey, how much of a difference could ten of those things really make?:smoke

[Duodenum]

idk if he smoked but i have a picture of ray robinson holding a cigarette in my head??

idk how these guys do it...with me stamina has always been my main problem and i have never once even touched a cigarette.In his autobiography, Mickey Walker discussed his two pack a day smoking habit.

I do have a couple of ideas regarding the stamina issue and smoking.

My mother quit smoking over ten years ago, cold turkey, after having been a heavy smoker for a few decades. It was the right decision for her health, as she had the beginnings of emphysema. She had also developed a long standing and persistent smoker's cough, which completely disappeared almost instantly, and has never returned. That's the good news.

Now for the bad news. Since my mother quit smoking, she's also gained over a hundred pounds. As for me, I was never a smoker myself, but medical problems I suffered around the same time my mother quit smoking also led to me gaining over a hundred pounds during the same period.

Having been thin all my life prior to this huge weight increase, I can tell you that abdominal fat doesn't simply expand outward, but equally inward as well, squashing the lungs and other internal viscera. Now, just bending over to tie a shoelace is enough to squeeze the breath out of me. (I'm working on ways to return to my previous life-long size.)

Now, Monzon was always thin, his weight continually under control, thanks to his heavy smoking habit. He never had belly fat expanding inward to crowd out his lungs. The aerobic training process seems to blunt the ill effects of smoking somewhat. This doesn't necessarily mean that exercise makes smoking safe, but it probably makes it safer. Running and skipping rope probably help the lungs expell that crap out of the system.

Boxers should be able to exert themselves with their mouths shut, using only the nose to breath, for no other reason than the risk of sustaining a broken jaw if hit with the mouth open. (Dwight Qawi was able to get away with this bad habit through extraordinary defensive skills.) Keeping the mouth shut during exercise forces one to breathe more slowly, and with better control. Years ago, after taking up running following a sedentary period, I felt the gunk in my lungs dislodging, and after a few weeks, they had cleared out considerably, and were working like a slow bellows when I was running. (Always with the mouth closed. If I had to open my mouth to breathe, I knew I was working too hard, and had to slow down, staying within my breath. Biomechanical problems eventually forced me to quit exercising.)

You don't need to touch a cigarette to have pollution compromise your stamina. Another reason not to use the mouth to breathe has to do with the fact that the nose is the body's respiratory filtration system. This is especially true when exercising outdoors with the sun up. Breathe with the mouth open then, and you'll be polluting your body with an abundance of ozone particulates, and other toxic airborne garbage, even more so than if you were a couch potato. (This is how highly fit athletes can sometimes develop cancer.)

Frequently, a lack of stamina is the result of stress. We see this in Jerry Quarry's first match with Frazier, and his rematch with Ali. Muhammad was at his relaxed best for that occasion, while Jerry was all stressed out over having seen Bob Foster lay his kid brother out flat. To compound matters, Ali was already inside Quarry's head psychologically. (Remember how heavily Jerry was huffing and puffing at the end of the rest period after only six rounds? He was practically hyperventilating, and admitted in the post fight interview that he was psyched out. And Ali was a master at getting his opponents to work and worry more than he did.)

Nel Tarleton had one lung. Yet he won two Lonsdale belts, the second one in his final match, a 15 round decision win for the BBBofC FW Title. In 144 bouts, he had only 20 defeats, but not a single loss by KO. He won 33 matches by 15 round decision, and recorded one stoppage win in round 15 as well. In his 116 wins, he went the distance 75 times. Nella should have been in all the boxing halls of fame ages ago, as an inspiration and example of the possible. (Freddie Miller, who had been in the IBHOF for the last ten years was the world FW champion who Nel just couldn't overcome, dropping a pair of 15 round decisions in title challenges. The trouble was that Nella simply lacked the experience to dethrone one of boxing's first great southpaw champions. Tarleton had barely 100 fights under his belt, while Miller had nearly 180 matches worth of experience behind him, with most of those going the distance. Freddie went through the first 250 matches of his career without being knocked out. Finally, in match 251, he lost on a TKO in eight rounds, and decided to retire, at age 29. Gee, are there any 29 year olds out there now who have had over 250 fights?)

[Drew101]

Daniel Zaragoza...of course he limited himself to five smokes a day while training. :D

[Mike T]

James Toney is a cigar smoker. I'm not sure if he was earlier in his career though.

[Smokin'Joe100]

James Toney is a cigar smoker. I'm not sure if he was earlier in his career though.

Yes, Toney has smoked cigars for a long time now. He opened his own cigar lounge in 2003.

[Robbi]

Bernard Hopkins

[john garfield]

This is an interesting topic: I can't remember a fighter, trainer, manager or promotor who didn't smoke back in the '40s and '50s at Stillman's gym.

Many of the fighters smoked between rounds of sparring and floor excercises.

[mr. magoo]

Joe Frazier.

I've never heard of Joe Frazier smokin', ( outside of his name of course.) I'd be really surprised.

[RoccoMarciano]

This is an interesting topic: I can't remember a fighter, trainer, manager or promotor who didn't smoke back in the '40s and '50s at Stillman's gym.

Many of the fighters smoked between rounds of sparring and floor excercises.
Hey JG,

And most of those guys still likely had amazing stamina. Not that I'm trumpeting the health benefits of smoking :)

[BoppaZoo]

Lionel Rose

[fists of fury]

Duodenum - as always, an absorbing read...thanks.

[lenzo]

My grandmother is fighting for 98 years of age and is still kicking after 2 packs a day!
I think Mayorga lights up as a ploy but dobts he really smokes but I'm prolly wrong.
Generations ago it was most likely accepted.

[lenzo]

I'm sure many good/great fighters have smoked after a grand win or during the holidays or vacations, but I doubt they did while training in the gym or in prepping for a fight.
Many also smoked until they took the sport more seriously than the typical sparring partner or lesser journeyman.

[Duodenum]

Excellent info as always Duodenum. You are a genius. I know this question is lounge talk and it is rumored to be shutting down soon so I'll get this question in really quick. What is your IQ? I think you are too modest to tell but I am just curious. Your knowledge of boxing and many other subjects is astonishing. Also, you are such a gentleman above all. You are someone anybody would be lucky to know and be friends with.Years ago, my IQ was tested at 113, but such tests can be hideously flawed and misleading. Also, there's no correlation between intelligence and creativity. During my school days, I was a "special needs education" student, classified and placed with retarded children. This consensus opinion was reached by a collection of "educators" and "mental health professionals" primarily I think on the basis I was "different" (You can imagine how I regard people in these lines of work today.) I failed English four times in high school.

Having known people who truly were of genious caliber precludes my evolving any such delusions about myself.

A medium like ESB can allow us to cloak our true selves in anonymity, and present an alternative image to others in cyberspace. Socially, I may appear to do well enough in a setting such as this one, but this does allow us to fabricate alternative personnas, Walter Mitty style.

Regarding my mother, she could easily live past 100 with her genes, but would be miserable in her body at her current elevated weight (as am I). She swims, has a recumbent exercise bike in her room, and participates in a regular community fitness class, but she will need to change her dietary habits to return to a comfortable weight.

In the last couple of years, I've had extensive laboratory work and physical evaluations done on myself, and my scores have actually improved in some areas from what they were when I was thin. However, even so, finding and wearing properly fitting clothing is an issue, and this heavy weight has caused orthopaedic problems (like plantar fasciitis and back trouble). I'm literally not comfortable in my own skin, so I need to change that. (Altering eating habits can be a time saving approach which doesn't grind the body down, while exercising when unnaturally obese can land somebody under a surgeon's knife. I'm in the process of doing intensive "homework" before I undertake any dedicated weight loss effort. I want to be certain that the first time I ever make a concerted attempt to restore my former size is the last time I ever need to try.)

Self restraint and civility can certainly be as novel as unbridled primitive and boorish behaviour. Whichever predominates, get noticed by going in the opposite direction.

Yeah, I could fit in with the rest of the sewage, exchanging insults like, "Dempsey would have kicked Tyson's ass." "Oh yeah? Well yur a fucktard!" "I'm a fucktard? well that jest proevs yur a gay fagit!" "Tyson wud fuk Demseys ass ind mak hem humble!" It seems the people who like the posts I'm typing out are kind of sick of that sort of feculent and moronic lingo. Maybe some day, I'll create an alternative identity, purchase a pair of neoprene gloves, buy a gas mask, and enter the General Sewer (oops, I mean Forum), to swap juvenile insults for my own amusement. (Sort of like prodding a wasp's nest.)

[young griffo]

Peter Jackson surely.:smoke

[john garfield]

I'm sure many good/great fighters have smoked after a grand win or during the holidays or vacations, but I doubt they did while training in the gym or in prepping for a fight.
Many also smoked until they took the sport more seriously than the typical sparring partner or lesser journeyman.

You ought to read my previous post, lenzo.

[He Hate Me]

Mayorga.