Colorful Hall of Fame Boxing Writer Michael Katz Dies at 85
By Robert Brizel, Head Real Combat Media Boxing Correspondent
New York, NY (February 6th, 2025)– New York Times and New York Daily News International Boxing Hall of Fame boxing writer Michael Katz, whose wild huge black beard, loud, colorful and humorful boxing style gave boxing grace, class and pizazz, whose neck brace and walking stick made him the indelible face of boxing from 1979 through the 2000s, died in Brooklyn on January 27, 2025, at the age of 85.
A Red Smith era successor, Katz eventually wrote exclusively in the boxing genre, painting Van Gogh and Michelangelo master class stories spun sometimes of expression, sometimes of classic seeming scorecard robberies. Katz was a ringside fixture of respect, friendship and penultimate controversy. Promoter Bob Arum once sued Katz for libel, because of a piece Katz wrote in the New York Daily News, criticizing Arum for promoting a fight on a major religious holiday. Yet the two were friends. Katz expressed his opinion, even if the rest of the boxing establishment did not necessarily agree with it.
Katz became the first notable boxing journalist to largely abandon the mode of print media, shifting to the new global media known as the internet by joining the online boxing website House of Boxing, later writing online for Max Boxing, Showtime and Madison Square Garden Network. Katz was awarded the Nat Fleischer Award for Excellence in boxing journalism in 1981. Katz was a boxing writer game changer, and the move to the internet changed the face of boxing, MMA, baseball, football, basketball, soccer, tennis, and the wide world of amateur and professional sports forever. The very nature of the print newspaper and the print magazine became second fiddle to the worldwide web. The source and resources of sports journalism were forever altered, and Katz led the way.
Katz was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2012. Katz covered his first heavyweight title bout, on July 14, 1968, when Jimmy Ellis defended his version of the World Boxing Association World Heavyweight title at Rosenda Football Stadium in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1968, with a 15 round unanimous decision over former world heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson, scored nine rounds to six for Ellis by referee Harold Valan.
Katz covered sports including boxing freelance in Europe and was published in Sports Illustrated, Time and Newsweek. In 1972, Katz got assigned to the New York Times sports desk and in 1979 switched to covering boxing exclusively full-time. He moved to the New York Daily News in 1985, covering boxing during its marquee names television glory years of Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, ‘Smokin’ Joe Frazier, Ken Norton, Jerry Quarry, Robert ‘Hands of Stone’ Duran, Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Sugar Ray Leonard, Thomas ‘Hitman’ Hearns, Alexis Arguello, Ray ‘Boom Boom’ Mancini, Aaron ‘The Hawk’ Pryor, Carlos Monzon, Larry ‘The Easton Assassin’ Holmes, Iron Mike Tyson, Gerry Cooney, Evander ‘Real Deal’ Holyfield, Riddick Bowe, Bernard Hopkins, Joe Calzaghe, Gerald ‘G-Man’ McClellan, Iran Barkley, Roy Jones Jr. and many more.
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