Recently a boxing media member and and an old timer in America, who was a boxing writer for many years, passed away.
Many promoters, managers and others have been paying their respect to Michael Katz recently.
Boxing analyst and trainer Teddy Atlas perhaps said it best of all with his, however, on his podcast, saying of Katz:
“Having said all that, I have a little bit of sad news that I have to give out, or I want to put out there, even though I hate putting sad news out, but I also believe in remembering my friends and commemorating people that have been important, not just in my life but have been important in this sport, the sport we talk about here, boxing. Mike Katz, the great boxing journalist for many years back in the day when every newspaper in the country had a boxing writer, a beat writer. We don’t have that anymore. You have internet guys, you have this, you have that, did you, yeah, you know, you got, but you don’t have a dedicated real boxing writer in the newspapers the way you used to when the sport was paid attention to in a bigger way, and Michael Katz was the best of the best. He wrote for the Times, he wrote for the Daily News, then later on, he went the direction of the sport where it went to the internet stuff, but this guy was one of the last of the Mohicans. He died Tuesday, the 28th of January, at 86 years old. He loved the sport; he was a guy that not everyone got along with. He had a tough edge to him, you know, the I always say the good thing about Michael Katz was he let you know how he stood and how he felt with you. The bad news was the same thing; he let you know very directly how he felt, how he stood with you, but he loved the sport, and he was dedicated to that love, and he believed that the sport, you should earn your way to be a boxing writer, that the sport deserved that, the fans deserved that, that not any Johnny-come-lately with a pencil in his ear should necessarily be given a right to just start writing about big fights and everything that entails, and definitely shouldn’t be given a right to sit at ringside. And that’s probably why, yeah, you might have heard the story, Michael Katz, uh, once or twice took a water bottle, uh, you know, it wasn’t completely full, and he threw it and hit somebody in the back sitting at ringside, that he didn’t think deserved the right to get that ringside seat. He got it because of privilege, he got it because he knew somebody, and so he, he just in his own way, it was quite a way, let them know you didn’t belong here, and you know, they, when they got over the stiff neck, uh, they had to think twice about whether or not they were going to accept that seat again at a big match where Michael Katz would be covering it. Uh, again, a lot of people are going to say that’s nasty, that’s terrible, that’s this, the point I’m making is that he loved the sport so much, he didn’t take it for granted, he felt that everybody should also show that kind of passion, and to do that, you had to put your time in. You didn’t get the right just to get a press row seat because you happen to know somebody, as far as he was concerned. And you know what, I think most people would understand that; they might not understand the throwing of the water bottle, all right, but I think they would understand his position that way and his feeling that way. He was a great writer, he was a great writer, and um, I just wanted to give him his, I wanted to give him a little bit of his due and say he’s going to be missed, he really is. He was spectacular the way that he could put things into print and just draw the picture that you needed drawn if you were not at that fight. So anyway, God bless Mike Katz, we lost a good one, and without further ado, buddy, let’s go.“
Rest in peace Mike Katz.
Condolences to his family and friends.
