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by Kevin Iole
Michael Katz, whose cantankerous and irascible personality often overshadowed his brilliance as a boxing writer, died Monday afternoon at a nursing home in New York. A 2012 inductee into the International Boxing Hall of Fame, Katz spent the bulk of his career covering boxing for The New York Times and the New York Daily News.
He was 85.
He was predeceased by his wife, Marilyn, and daughter, Moorea. Moorea Katz was a New York attorney who died of cancer on Aug. 1, 2021. He is survived by one granddaughter.
Katz left the Daily News in 2000 to join the House of Boxing.com, which later became MaxBoxing.com.
Katz was an extraordinary writer whose style helped his readers know the boxers better. He was erudite and witty, but he understood fighters at a base level and earned their trust. He humanized them in his work and often spotlighted their skill and their courage.
He was also highly opinionated and took strong positions, and wasn't afraid to take on the most powerful people in the sport. He made more than his share of enemies, but his readers were ultimately the winners as he provided insights that few others could.
Katz was described by his long-time friend Gerald Eskenazi, a New York Times sports writer, as a "Runyonesque character."
Katz covered the April 12, 1997, WBC welterweight title bout between Pernell Whitaker and Oscar De La Hoya at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. De La Hoya won a unanimous decision by scores of 116-110 twice and 115-111. Katz vehemently disagreed with the decision and thought Whitaker deserved the victory.
He campaigned in public for it and when De La Hoya refused to grant Whitaker an immediate rematch, Katz dubbed him "Chicken" De La Hoya.
Katz feuded with legendary promoter Bob Arum, who sued Katz for libel after a Katz story in the Daily News lambasted him for scheduling a fight on the night of Yom Kippur. Katz and Arum were both Jewish, and Katz was outraged that Arum promoted a fight on the holiest day of the Jewish year. Arum countered by saying television controlled the date.
Katz's feuds weren't just with the fighters and the promoters. Katz got into it with a colleague at a show in Las Vegas Arum was promoting. Arum was at a table holding court with boxing writers, as he often did. Katz got into a disagreement with Ron Borges, then the boxing writer for the Boston Globe. Katz swatted at Borges with his omnipresent cane, and the ensuing ruckus sent Arum head over heels backward in his chair.
The first significant boxing match held in the U.S. after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York was a Fernando Vargas bout against Jose Flores at Mandalay Bay on Sept. 22, 2001. Katz was seated to my left and Huel Washington, a boxing writer in San Francisco, was two seats to my right.
Katz said Washington called him a profane name and swung his cane at Washington. I reached up and caught it, preventing it from hitting Washington. The metal cane left a large welt on my right hand. Worse, as I was trying to keep the two separate, a Mandalay Bay security officer approached from behind.
He put a chokehold on me, apparently believing I was involved in the scuffle. It was a bit difficult to speak for a while after that.
Katz left the Daily News in 2000 to join the newly created House of Boxing. Although he wasn't the most tech-savvy person, he was willing to abandon a major outlet to ply his trade online. Not many journalists were willing to do that in 2000.
He loved the fights and the fighters and even though he was semi-retired, he looked for opportunities to write boxing. In 2005, I helped him obtain a freelance gig for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper. The paper was looking for a writer to do a story on a Vernon Forrest fight against Sergio Rios that was on the undercard of a bout between Bernard Hopkins and Jermain Taylor for the undisputed middleweight title in Las Vegas.
Katz wrote his story and tried to send itto the paper. Several times he called to check if they received it and each time he was told they had not. He was seated three rows behind me, so he passed his laptop to me and asked if I'd send it for him.
I tried sending to the email address he'd given me and the story didn't go through. I called the editor, a woman with the last name of Olson, or Olsen. I told her I was trying to help Mike send his story. She told me she didn't receive it, but then asked what email address I'd used. I told her. Katz had spelled Olson with an 'o,' and it was actually spelled with an 'e.' So when I corrected the spelling of her last name, the story went successfully.
I passed his laptop back to him and that should have been the end of it. After the Hopkins-Taylor fight, we were in the deadline media room finishing our stories. Katz asked me what went wrong. I told him and he opened the laptop grabbed it by the monitor and flung it against the wall. It turns out it was his daughter's and she was using it for law school.
Moorea Katz was the light of his life, and Katz and I headed to the Apple Store the next day to make things right for her.
Born Dec. 2, 1939, in The Bronx, Katz started at The New York Times as a stringer. He became a Times copy boy in 1961. He moved to Paris in 1966 and eventually became sports editor of The Times' international edition. The first title fight he covered was Jimmy Ellis's 15-round unanimous decision over Floyd Patterson in Stockholm, Sweden, on Sept. 14, 1968.
He became the Times' lead boxing writer in 1979, but moved to the Daily News in 1985 because it was covering more boxing at the time than The Times.
He won the Nat Fleischer Award from the Boxing Writers Association of America for career excellence in boxing journalism in 1981. It was voted on only by past winners.
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