Death on The South Side of Chicago: Farewell to Middleweight Michael Walker, The Midnight Stalker
By Robert Brizel, Head RCM Boxing Correspondent
There’s s famous song by the late folk singer Jim Croce called Bad Bad Leroy Brown. The song begins ‘Well the South Side of Chicago, is the baddest part of town, and if you go down there, you better just beware, of a man named Leroy Brown’.
For ‘The Midnight Stalker’, veteran middleweight boxer Michael Walker, the name of his killer was not Leroy Brown, but it could have been similar. Walker was shot to death in a gangway in Chicago’s Chatham neighborhood. Notice how Chatham rhymes with Gangnam. As in the murder of professional boxers, like anybody else, Walker’s death made no sense. Walker became just another statistic, not just in Chicago’s gangland violence and city violence, but in the sad state of the world of Chicago boxing today. Recently the media covered the sad story of Muhammad Ali Jr., the only son of ‘The Greatest’, living destitute with his wife and two children in utter poverty in the ghettos of Chicago, while his famous father and fourth wife Lonnie are enjoying countless $$$ millions.
Walker turned pro in 2004, going undefeated in his first 20 professional bouts, fighting in Illinois, Indiana and Louisiana. Walker then lost 19 of his next 21 bouts, with one win and one draw to opponents with a combined record of 84-3-1. Losses to fighters such as Ricardo Mayorga, Andy Lee, Daniel Jacobs, Derrick Findley, Matt Korobov, Caleb Truax, Andy Kolle, Mike Jimenez, Alfonzo Lopez, Michael Moore, David Lopez, and Billy Lyell took their toll on Walker. Fighting far from home in such places as Nevada, California, Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Tennessee, Walker’s bouts went to the cards 22 times, and he won one of them fighting in the opponent’s home territory. How many of those bouts he actually deserved to win, it’s hard to say after the fact. Only Walker knows for sure, and now he is not there to tell his story.
Michael Walker Boxing Highlight Video Clip on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-t3tWjkjfPY
Michael Walker Career Slide Pictures Tribute on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWDyw7_w-94
Three months after getting stopped by Willie Monroe Jr. in the first round in Memphis, Middleweight and super middleweight fighter Michael Walker, ‘The Midnight Stalker’ was found shot to death in the 8200 block of South Drexel Boulevard on November 14, 2013. A Golden Gloves champion in Chicago in 2000 and 2002, Walker had just signed for another fight in January 2014 to help support his nine year old daughter. Of 63 judge’s scorecards in a four year stretch, Walker had won on only one scorecard.
The song ‘Bad Bad Leroy Brown’ continues with ‘Well the two men took to fightin’, and when they pulled him from the floor, Leroy looked like a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of pieces gone’. Such was the way the police found ‘The Midnight Stalker’, actual time of death unknown. Nobody in the Chicago boxing community cared to even note his passing. Michael came and went the hard way in the cruel sport of boxing, and on the mean streets of the South side of Chicago. The baddest man in the whole damn town. Badder than old King Kong. Meaner than a junkyard dog. Final pro record 19 wins, 19 losses, and three draws, with 12 knockouts.
So long to the ‘Midnight Stalker’. Chicago’s real life version of Tony Montana in the movie Scarface moved in rough circles, and like Montana, died hard. Walker was 35 years old when he died. It isn’t a new story. Yesterday, featherweight boxing contender Oscar Gonzalez, age 33, died after getting knocked out in the tenth round of his televised main event on Televisa in Mexico City. Boxers come and go, as a reporter I am also taken to task to write their obituaries present and past, and insure they are never forgotten.
Michael Walker, Rest in Peace, brother. Amen.
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