![]() ![]() There will be a weigh-in at Regal Hall at 6 p.m. ![]() There will be three amateur fights and six professional fights in the middleweight, light heavyweight, cruiserweight and heavyweight classes. I wish every kid had one at home they could work with.”Įight fighters from Oliver Miller’s College Street gym, Miller’s Tae-Kwon-Do, will compete in the event. “You can hit it as much and as hard as you want to. “It helped me work on my temper a lot because you get to hitting on that bag in training, and it won’t go nowhere,” Nichols said. The sport can help relieve aggression, too, said Dispatch customer service agent Dustin Nichols, who will box in the March 4 event. ![]() The March 4 event will be along the same lines, as Sanderson said he hopes to promote boxing as an option for area children to get into organized sports. runs the nonprofit Henry Armstrong Foundation in Los Angeles with the same mission: to “empower and enhance the self-esteem of youths by providing entrepreneur/vocational training and sports programs,” per the foundation’s website. In 1952, he founded the Henry Armstrong Youth Center. As a youth advocate, Armstrong made visits to the Boys and Girls Club and the YMCA and helped mentor at-risk children. “He was a great individual.”Īrmstrong’s legacy went far beyond the ring.Ī few years after he retired, he became an ordained minister. “People have heard the name, but so many people really don’t know how great he really was,” Lautzenhiser said. His New York Times obituary called Armstrong a “relentless puncher” and said he is “considered by many ring analysts to be, pound for pound, the greatest fighter in boxing history.” Two years after his death in 1988, Armstrong was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Jumping from weight class to weight class, he once held the featherweight (126-pound), lightweight (135-pound) and welterweight (147-pound) titles all at the same time. He won 101 of his fights by knockout.Īrmstrong is the only boxer to hold three world championships simultaneously, accomplishing the feat in August 1938. In 181 career fights, Armstrong’s statistics speak for themselves: 151 wins, 21 losses and nine draws. “Down there at that time, if you didn’t knock the other guy out, you were not going to win a decision down there,” Lautzenhiser said. He fought primarily in California, Nevada and Mexico, and the matches south of the border skewed his record. In 1931, he began his boxing career, fighting under the name “Melody Jackson” early on. When he was 18, he hopped aboard a freight car and made his way to Los Angeles with no money and nowhere to stay.Īrmstrong found a temporary home at LA’s Midnight Mission and began training at the nearby Main Street Gym. “We’re just trying to do everything we can here to keep his memory alive and remind people of what this man accomplished and how significant he was.”īorn Henry Jackson in 1912 in Columbus, Armstrong moved with his family to St. “This was a tremendous fighter and a great human being,” Lautzenhiser said. Sanderson is putting on the event with assistance from Lautzenhiser and the Columbus-Lowndes Convention and Visitors Bureau. One of the most decorated boxers of the 20th century, he is the namesake of the Henry Armstrong Boxing Classic, which will be held March 4 at Trotter Convention Center. Less than five months after Third Street North from Main Street to Seventh Avenue was christened Henry Armstrong Way, the Columbus native’s name will be the talk of the town once again. Sanderson, along with local sports history buff Glenn Lautzenhiser, want to change that. ![]()
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