EVERY TRAINER

By Roger Esty

Lots of talk latlely on the thread about trainers. Fight trainers. Not many of them left. Put it this way,not many good ones anyway. When the guys mention McCoy and Steindler. Burke Emery,Charley Goldman,Eddie Futch. Go ahead ,add your names to the list fellas. We stop and think of who's left to school a kid properly when it comes to being a prize fighter.

But why were there so many good trainers back then? When Howie Albert asked Gil Clancy to train Emile Griffith,Clancy's job was a physical ed. teacher. So what did Gil know about boxing? Plenty. Plenty because part of being a P.E. teacher was teaching boxing. Most people back in the day lived in big cities back East.For the kids, there was no Little League and Pop Warner Football. Baseball was stick ball played in the street. Basketball was nothin'. So for juvenile recreational fun,it was down to the park rec center,neighborhood boy's club,the Y,or the local gym to lace on a pair of gloves and step into the boxing ring. All our dads did it. It was even a part of the phys. ed. programs in school.

After the war,things started to change. Suburbia,Little League,Pop Warner,basketball gymnasiums. Boxing was no longer a fit. The Sporting News(the sports fan's bible)dropped the reporting of boxing from its pages. It used to be baseball,horse racing,and boxing. Can't see that now. NFL,NBA has taken over.

But our dads knew boxing. If it came to push and shove,they could even teach it because they all did it in one degree or another. But our dads are gone. And most of the good trainers too. Hell anyone over 70 doesn't have the wind anymore to try to get across the techniques of throwing a jab properly to some kid who has a Wii.