Legendary Hall of Fame boxing writer Michael Katz dies at 85
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Michael Katz, the Hall of Fame boxing journalist, who was must-read for decades and whose columns often set the narrative for the sport and sent fear into its power brokers when he was on the attack, died on Monday at a nursing home in New York. He was 85.
Katz, who was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2012 and one of the most well-informed insiders in the sport, covered boxing full time from 1979 through the early 2000s, mostly for the New York Times and then the New York Daily News.
Born Dec. 2, 1939 in Bronx, New York, Katz got into the newspaper business as copy boy at the New York Times in 1961 and worked his way up to news assistant and eventually the sports desk.
In 1966 he moved to Europe, where he served as the sports editor of the Times international edition. It was there that he covered his first heavyweight title bout, Floyd Patterson-Jimmy Ellis in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1968. He also freelanced from Europe and had pieces in Newsweek, Time and Sports Illustrated.
He returned to the United States in 1972 to the Times sports desk and, in 1979, moved to boxing full time before leaving for the Daily News in 1985. During his time he covered all of the stars of the day: Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran, Marvin Hagler, Thomas Hearns, Larry Holmes, Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield, George Foreman, Roy Jones Jr., Oscar De La Hoya and many others.
Then, in 2000, Katz, one of the “boss scribes,” as promoter Don King referred to the top writers, became the first notable boxing journalist to leave print media and move to the internet by joining the trailblazing website House of Boxing.
It was shortly after Katz moved to the internet that I started covering boxing for USA Today in 2000 and first met him after years of reading his work.
Katz was a brilliant writer. He knew the sport. He humanized the fighters in his work. How well respected was Katz by fighters? I hadn’t seen Tyson in a few years, so when we saw each other at a Canelo Alvarez weigh-in at the MGM Grand a couple of years ago we spent a few minutes catching up. One of the first things Tyson asked me was if I was I was still in touch with “Mr. Katz,” who wrote extensively about Tyson throughout his career.
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Katz pissed off promoters and television executives. Often.
He had more than his share of scrapes with promoters King and Bob Arum. In fact, Arum once sued him for libel because of how Katz wrote about him in a Daily News piece when Arum, who like Katz was Jewish but scheduled a fight on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year for Jews.
Katz didn’t limit his battles to promoters. He had no issue mixing it up with his fellow writers. He famously got into with then-Boston Globe writer Ron Borges, another of the boss scribes of the day, in the MGM Grand media center at the De La Hoya-Felix Sturm fight in 2004. They were friends but got into a heated argument that turned physical and ended with Arum, who was promoting the fight and had been talking to them and other writers, landing on the floor.
Katz was extremely opinionated, which is what made his columns must read. He was also cantankerous, ornery, profane and generous. He was the ultimate curmudgeon.
I saw each of those sides of him many times during the first few years of my boxing writing career, when I traveled the county to cover fights and spent a tremendous amount of time with the two others who also traveled often — Katz and Tim Smith, who had taken Katz’s place at the New York Times when he left and again at the Daily News when Katz left for the internet. As Katz often would joke — Smith was his linear successor at both papers, a nod to lineal champions in boxing.
Everybody who knew Katz has a Katz story. They likely have several. I sure have some.
I first met Katz in April 2000 in New York, where I covered my first fight for USA Today as the national boxing writer, the Lennox Lewis-Michael Grant heavyweight title fight. Katz would become my greatest mentor in this business.
It was a month after Lewis-Grant, in Atlantic City, New Jersey, where I first really got to know Katz. We were at Bally’s covering an HBO heavyweight doubleheader — Hasim Rahman-Corrie Sanders and Oleg Maskaev-Derrick Jefferson.
I had been on the beat for about two months when Katz more or less adopted me at that show. On the day of the card, Katz approached me in the hotel and said, “Come on kid, I’m taking you to lunch. I am going to teach you how to do this job.”
We went to a deli at the casino that faced the famed boardwalk and Katz went through all sorts of scenarios I would eventually encounter dealing with fighters, promoters, managers, TV executives, media relations folks, sanctioning bodies, you name it. He couldn’t have been kinder. He told stories and offered advice and I’d like to think he did it because he saw a young writer he thought could someday do the job on his level.
I always appreciated it even though every now and then he would take a swipe at me in one of his House of Boxing columns. I always viewed it as his way of tough love; his effort to make me better.
Then there was the Katz who could cause a scene, yell and scream and go off the handle — but five minutes later laugh and joke with you. Here’s just one example: I was covering a show at The Theater at Madison Square Garden in New York (no idea which one) and I was seated next to Katz on press row, as I often was.
In front of the media at the ring apron were photographers, whose mandate was that they had to shoot from under the bottom rope so as not to impede our view. The photographer in front of us simply would not comply. Katz spent a good portion of the night yelling at him to duck down.
Finally, he had enough. Katz, who was instantly recognizable to so many because of the beret he wore on his head, his use of a neck brace for a longtime condition, and his use of a cane, picked up his cane, reached across the media table and literally began swinging it wildly at the photographer a few feet in front of us to finally get him to duck down. The photographer did not rise above the bottom rope for the rest of the show.
Katz, who won the Boxing Writers Association of America’s Nat Fleischer Award for Career Excellence In Boxing Journalism in 1981, as voted on by past winners, was predeceased by his wife, Marilyn, who died of cancer, and their daughter, Moorea, who died of cancer in 2021. He is survived by his granddaughter.
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Photo: International Boxing Hall of Fame
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The few articles that I read of his. Were on the old Maxboxing website. And they were very memorable for their intelligent saltiness. My spirit animal lol. Rest in Peace Mister Katz.
I started reading Katz in the 90s I thought then and I still do that he was the best boxing writer I have read