35 Bout Screwball 100 MPH Career of Omaha Welterweight Vince Foster
By Robert Brizel, Head Real Combat Media Boxing Correspondent
He almost got a shot at Sugar Ray Robinson. Between July 1946 and July 1949, Omaha welterweight prospect Vince Foster, age 21, fought 35 pro bouts, came into the ring and went out in less than 36 months from the start of his career, duly departed from this world at 100 miles per hour, taking the life of the somebody else’s 18-year-old wife sitting in the passenger seat of the vehicle, as well as a second young woman, he was driving at the same time in Pipestone, Minnesota. He had intended to abandon boxing for bible studies. In the end, Foster’s strange yet fantastic career was too much, too soon, too fast, and a totally misunderstood too fast life in the fast lane for a legitimate USA welterweight contender.
A hard-punching Native American, Vincent Lee Foster rose up in Chicago and New York City. Ring Magazine, Boxing Illustrated and Life Magazine were among the major periodicals of the day in circulation that followed Foster’s brief life and career, as the general public tried to figure out and understand the bizarre postwar story of how Foster’s life and career went in the blink of an eye.
Foster’s brief career, 30-4-1 with 19 knockouts, was as strange as it was fantastic. Foster liked to win inside the ring. Outside the ring, Foster was a dangerous devil looking for and always finding trouble. Foster opened his career 16-1-1 in Omaha, Nebraska, knocking out nine opponents. Foster then went 14-2-1. Allegations involving women clouding his mind led to his being dropped three times in the first round against Charlie Fusari at Madison Square Garden on May 13, 1949, effectively ending his career and chance at Ray Robinson. Foster continued rolling in the gutter with booze and women as he always did at night.
Between 1948 and 1949, Foster figured into five bouts with major contenders which made it to the tenth round. Drunk, and driving a stolen car at over 100 miles per hour, with two women he seduced, Foster plowed his stolen car into the back of a Cadillac. The three individuals went through the windshield and suffered fatal injuries. Preaching a sermon by day, in jail accused of improper relations with women at night, out of jail on bail the next day, drunk and dead the next night, causing two fatalities besides his own. From Johnny Tapia to Arturo Gatti, from Paul Williams to Adrien Broner, boxers are misunderstood. Foster is not to be confused with late Deputy White House legal counsel Vince Foster Jr.
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