Goodbye to the "Buffalo Soldier" Livingstone Bramble

    George Foreman was a much more famous name of the two recent deaths from the boxing world but in his own way, in my small existence, former WBA lightweight champion Livingstone Bramble's passing at the age of sixty-four is just as large.

Livingstone Bramble was one of my favorite boxers. It's hard not to like a guy with a dog named Snake and a snake named Dog, after all..

I was such a fan of Bramble that I named a dog after him when I brought an abandoned puppy home from the mall.

Bramble's peak wasn't a long period, but for that time, Bramble was an excellent boxer who had a way of making himself interesting and one that rarely lacked a quote or a story for the media.

Coming from the Virgin Islands, not exactly known for its massive production of boxing champions, Bramble made his first step into the boxing spotlight in June 1981 when he outslugged early ESPN darling Kenny "Bang Bang" Bogner in seven rounds of an excellent action fight to mark Bramble as a lightweight to keep tabs on but only two months later, Bramble was outboxed by slick boxing Anthony Fletcher over eight rounds in dropping a majority decision.

Bramble recovered from the defeat to Fletcher with a series of victories highlighted by wins over hard-bitten journeyman Jerome Artis and over two former world title challengers in Canada's Gaetan Hart (who challenged Aaron Pryor) and Bubba Busceme (a loser to Alexis Arguello) before a January 1984 title eliminator against undefeated Panamanian Rafael Williams.

A victory over Williams would assure a title try against WBA lightweight champion Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini, after Bramble's unanimous decision win over Williams, Bramble would receive the chance to dethrone Mancini as a 4-1 underdog that most looked at as a showcase fight for Mancini's potential fights against either Aaron Pryor or more likely Hector "Macho" Camacho.

Bramble's chances against Mancini were considered so unlikely that the Buffalo-based card (that would include Gene Hatcher upsetting unbeaten WBA junior welterweight champion Johnny Bumphus) wasn't televised by any major network and was sold to syndicated networks around the country.

Bramble put together a mental game plan to infuriate Mancini before the bout with "voodoo spells" from his "witch doctor", who was later discovered to be Bramble's amateur basketball coach, and other statements crafted to anger the champion and change his pathway to victory.

Having grabbed the mental advantage over Mancini, Bramble then crafted the physical map for the evening to use the hard-charging aggressiveness of the champion against him, as Bramble anchored his elbows in front of his ribs in a high guard that would nullify any bodywork that Mancini could use to break Bramble down.

As Mancini attacked, Bramble's straighter punches drove through the roundhouse shots of Mancini, and Bramble used the uppercut to drive Mancini out of his stance.

When Bramble changed to fighting lefthanded midway through the fight, he began to back Mancini up and moved ahead on the scorecards, stopping him in the fourteenth round with a helpless Mancini taking blows along the ropes.

After a non-title fight against fringe contender Edwin Curet, Bramble would face Ray Mancini in an anticipated rematch from Reno, Nevada on HBO in February 1985.

The rematch was better than the first fight in action, competitiveness, and on the scorecards, with Bramble squeaking out a narrow but unanimous decision to retain his title over the battered but brave Mancini.

The Mancini victories are the biggest of Bramble's career, but his final title defense in his next fight could have been his best.

Tyrone "The Butterfly" Crawley was a staple of ESPN's Top Rank Boxing, and his pure boxing skills dazzled number one contender "Rockin'" Robin Blake in a decision win that cost Blake his mandatory contender position.

Some were picking Crawley to surprise Bramble due to his skills, and Bramble had been out of the ring for exactly one year since his win over Ray Mancini.

Instead, Bramble delivered arguably the best performance of his career as he cut the ring off on Crawley and chopped him down in the thirteenth round to keep his WBA title.

The boxing world was stirring with the potential of a unification fight with Bramble facing WBC boss Hector Camacho, and HBO attempted to build to that fight with a card from Miami entitled "The Preamble to Bramble with Camacho facing former junior lightweight champion Corneilus Boza-Edwards and Bramble against former two-time lightweight champion Edwin Rosario.

Rosario ruined those plans when he crushed Bramble in two rounds, taking his title, the Camacho fight, and Bramble never challenged for the title again.

After the Rosario defeat, Bramble fought many contenders, occasionally winning (a second-round KO of Harold Brazier) but usually losing competitive bouts to opponents such as welterweight contender Oba Carr, whom Bramble was robbed of the decision, future and former champions such as Kosyta Tszyu, Buddy McGirt, and Roger Mayweather, and contenders Freddie Pendleton, Charles Murray, Darryl Tyson, and Santtos Cardona.

Bramble's career declined as he began to lose to fighters who were far below the level of the fighters above, losing the final six fights of his career and nine of his last eleven, finishing with a career record of 40-26-3 to give the illusion that Bramble's career was mediocre.

The end may have been, but Livingstone Bramble had a run of brilliance that few fighters have at any point in their career, with memorable victories and a character that is just as memorable.

 

The Anniversary Present and Wheelhouse Art

    After leaving the toy store in Canal Fulton, I drove a little under two hours to actually pick up Cherie's present and to see an old friend.

I had come with an idea a year or so ago about something that I wanted to give Cherie, but I didn't have an idea on how to go about it.

I have often thought about artwork with a group picture style going back to my childhood in the 1970s when DC Comics would do wonderful special issues with their heroes around the Christmas tree enjoying the Christmas cheer.

Those covers always stuck with me and I always wanted to work on something that would comprise some of the people (real and fictional) together in one picture to represent my life and the people/characters that I always loved in one picture.

The cost of that means it might end as an unfinished work somewhere, but thinking of things like that caused a thought to jump into my mind- What if I was able to do a picture of all of the pets that had brought so much into Cherie's, the kids, and my own life?

That seemed possible, if not cheap but very possible.

I'm not skilled at art, a stick figure from me looks disjointed and I wondered who, where, and how to accomplish this task.

Then over the winter, it struck me who could do it and who I wanted to do it that the project could be done and that was an easy choice.

In my earliest coaching years (1993-96), I often had to umpire other team's games and for the first three seasons, I was struck by the competitiveness and attitude of a catcher on one of the league's consistent also-rans.

When you umpire home plate, you get to know the catchers better than any other players, and I knew Mike O'Brien with his competitive toughness didn't deserve to have to play on the perennial cellar-dweller managed by a fellow that would fit in well with today's why even keep score attitude and I tried many times to land him in a trade, but his manager despite his mismatch of styles didn't want to let him go.

Entering Mike's final season in the league, I was determined to land him for my team, defending the league championship, and after working it out to get him at the league meeting (they had a really dumb way of team allocating which was not a draft), I drove home to call my new players and his mom told me that he wasn't playing because he didn't make the upper league, but his younger brother was.

I started selling my team and what I'd do for Mike as a player and while I couldn't promise a championship, I could promise a chance at one, the most fun he will have with baseball, and for the only time in coaching- I guaranteed he would make the All-Star team.

Mike's mom agreed to pass it on to him and at my first practice, he came running onto the field, exchanging a high-five as he told me he was on board and yes, he did make the All-Star team, and we did win the league title complete with Mike hitting his only homer off his pitching nemesis in the final game.

So, Mike O'Brien ranks right at the top of my favorite players of ten years of coaching and fast forward from 1996 and Mike is now a professional artist.

And by professional, I mean he makes his living at it and has done commercial work for many companies that you have heard of in his career and his freelance work for his own Wheelhouse Art.

Of course, I wanted to have a work that Mike did for myself and I decided to start the process with the pets for the family.

I started with Posey, Big Ed, Chancellor, and of course the irrepressible Teddy. and as I rolled on I thought that I couldn't have such a project without Shiloh.

As Mike worked through various drafts of the picture involving me in the process of refining how the pets looked, about midway through I remembered that there was one missing animal.

Bramble was Cherie's and I's first pet and named after the former WBA lightweight champion Livingstone Bramble.

I told Bramble's story during the pandemic for Rachel's Day as part of the friends and family series.

I wanted to add Bramble, but I didn't have any pictures that I could remember until it hit me that there may be a small photo album from that time in my attic, which could have two pictures of Bramble in it.

Trooping up to the less than a seasonable attic, I dug the book out with the pictures in there, sent them to Mike, and added him to the picture.

I had several choices in what I wanted, ranging from 5x7 to 16x20, penciled, painted, color, black and white, and torn on what to choose.

Price did come into play to a certain degree but even though a color picture would have been really sharp, I would have had to have settled for a small picture in color compared to a sizable one in black and white and I thought a larger work would be far more detailed.

The project from start to finish was around three months in time and when it was ready for delivery, I didn't feel good about it.

The mail has slowed for everyone since the installation of Louis DeJoy as head of the USPS during the Trump administration and not only slowed but in many cases taking weeks and occasionally months to arrive after being sent.

So my concern with a one-of-a-kind item not only not getting there on time, but being potentially damaged made me think that I should go and pick it up myself.

I'm not sure I would have picked it up elsewhere, but it worked this time.

After arriving at Mike's home and seeing the picture in person for the first time, I really thought it was great and the above picture shows just how great Mike's work truly is.

I was able to spend a very enjoyable hour with Mike at his beautiful home and saw the studio that he does all of his work and talk sports and re-live plenty of old memories from days gone by.

I likely took up far too much of his time, but I had a great time visiting with him and perhaps I can do it again sometime down the road.

I quickly buzzed through the return trip, stopping in Triadelphia WV for a Quaker Steak wing stop and some gas before arriving home.

I'm really thrilled with the picture, I couldn't be happier with it, and everyone that has seen it has been extremely complimentary towards it.

It was an all-around great experience and I couldn't speak higher of Mike, his work, and should you be interested in a custom work of any type, Mike can be contacted at his website- Wheelhouse Art.

Tell him that his old coach sent you!

Sorry that my writing has slowed to a crawl, I'm still trying to get back what I need to roll things out as normal, but hang in there- I am working on it! 

Rachel's Day

Friends and Family Week continues with Rachel's Day.
Rachel wanted me to write about my pets as a child/growing up and I will always try to oblige her requests as I'm sure that she doesn't read many of the posts here, and I'm happy that she is participating!

The lovely picture to the right is yours truly around eleven (That's my guess; I could be wrong) years old as my dad was beginning to have goats around the premises.

The goats weren't really pets but weren't contributing animals, either.
Dad just wanted to have some around, and as a result, we did.

I don't remember either taking this picture or much about this particular goat either, but there was one goat that I liked a lot and was tame enough to come up to you for attention, and even when Dad's goat phase was gone, "Timmy" was still around.
He wasn't over-the-top tame, but not nasty either.
He'd lick your hand and come up to the people that he knew but was laid back towards others.

I think Timmy arrived as a baby from our first goat a year or so before this picture was taken, and he was around all through high school.
One day, I came home, and Dad said he had given him away to someone he worked with (I knew the lady, so it wasn't one of those "ran away" stories).
My dad was like that with things; he would get into something big for a few years and then lose interest.

I was bothered with not getting to say goodbye, but not enough to throw a fit as he was getting older and overweight and I thought it might be better to be at a place with more room to roam.
A few days later, Dad said Timmy had dropped over at the new place and died.
Dad talked about that in one of my last visits there and mentioned that he thought Timmy had died of a "broken heart" away from his family.

30 plus years later, I learned a lesson- don't separate older pets  (and people) from their family, no matter the reason.
Real Families (and not all families have this, so I'm not judging) stick together.

Cats were always around as a kid, but we didn't really have them inside.

There were always 'wild' cats around, but not really in the house as the neighbors fed the cats outside, so they were always around.

There were two that might have made the cut with luck.

The first was a small gold-colored cat that was around when I was in kindergarten.
I'm not sure if it had a name, but when I would come home from school for my post-school batting practice with Edna (really, I came home every day and hit Wiffle balls from her pitching) and this cat would chase the ball and try to stop it.
One day, the cat was gone and in a house across the street where it would live its life for years as I would see her in a window getting fat and hopefully happy.
I always wondered what she thought as she looked out the window.
Did she remember the little boy with the ball and bat that she used to chase, and did she know me from anyone else that she gazed at through her window?

My parents' house was a tough place for animals as the Sharpsburg Pike may not have had a large number of people, but the cars that flew through at fifty-plus MPH were deadly to any animal that dared to cross its path.
"The Pike" was the main reason that I understood why the cat without a name was adopted. It was not uncommon to see animals splayed across the asphalt.
It was never pleasant to see, and you never got used to it, but fortunately, I never had to see a personal pet hit by a car.

The second cat avoided that fate, but he came around often and was quite tame for an outdoor cat, After a while, he quit coming around until one day he was clearly ill before I went to school.
When I came home from school, Edna told me that he must have gotten into something poisonous as he was very sick and then passed away on the porch.

I had three dogs when I was a child. Mikki was an all-white Eskimo that we brought home when we lived in Ohio.
She lived with us inside when I lived there, but Dad moved her outside when we moved back here.
Mikki was an affectionate dog that didn't seem to mind being outside. She grew blind through the years but never got nasty.

After we had been in Maryland for a few years, Dad decided to get a second dog- this one was another white dog a German Shepard mix named Diabolo.
While I know the meaning of the name, I'm not really sure why Dad named him that.
Diabolo tried to be an inside dog, but he was always trying to get over the gate to separate rooms, and he broke his leg once in an attempt.
Dad allowed him to stay inside until his leg healed and then he became an outdoor dog as well.
Both dogs had large outdoor enclosures and weren't chained up, but I always felt bad for outdoor dogs, and if I couldn't keep one inside, I wouldn't have one.
When both were older, Dad decided to send both of them away.

I'm sure with Mikki's age and sight she was euthanized, but I've always had some hope that Diabolo was adopted by someone.
He wasn't young, so that may not have happened, but he was five or six years younger than Mikki, so it was possible.
I missed not saying goodbye, which sadly happened to me once again with a beloved pet.

When I was a senior in high school and dating Cherie, someone dumped two puppies out at the Valley Mall and left them there.
When we walked into the mall, Mall employees were trying to find them a home, and when we left the mall only one remained.
I couldn't stand seeing him sent to the pound, so I took him home, where my parents weren't exactly thrilled.

Named after Livingstone Bramble, who was the lightweight champion of the time, Bramble was likely a hound dog of some kind, and in our early apartments, we weren't allowed dogs.

I cleaned up a large old shed ( where the cows and goats lived in their day) and gave Bramble as good of an outdoor home as I could make for him.
Edna took care of Bramble most of his life after I married Cherie and moved out, but I loved that dog dearly and hated seeing him away from me.

My dad thought that Bramble didn't know me from anyone else, and one day he took him out when I saw him visiting, and when I called to him, Bramble ran to me with such joy that even Dad was surprised.
I would have been more than happy to take him in when dogs were finally approved, but after many years outdoors in a rural environment, I thought it would have been a difficult adjustment for him to move inside a town.

What hurts me most to this day is how I lost Bramble, who must have been nine or ten when he somehow got out of his area and found his way to my grandmother, six houses down the road.
A relative found him, but amazingly no one was smart enough to say that looks like Shawn's dog and call up to ask if he had gotten out.

Instead, they called the ASPCA, and by the time all of this reached my ears days later, Bramble was gone, either adopted or euthanized, as my checking for him in those times was fruitless.
I've always hoped he was adopted, but I'll never know what happened to him after he was sent there.

I have never really gotten past not being able to say goodbye to Bramble and I also admit that I have held it against those relatives through the years.
That's not the best way to handle it, but I've never been able to figure out why no one called to ask if he had gotten out or even mentioned it until well past the time that I could have done anything about it, and I'm not sure it'll ever stop bothering me.

There's a look at my childhood pets.
I hope you know a little more about me and my childhood with pets.
I'll be back next time with another version of Friends and Family.  

Cleaning out the inbox-Sports Version

Time for more cleaning out the inbox,this time from the sports world..

Goodbye to Buckeye legend John Hicks at the age of 65.
Hicks was a three time All-American for the Buckeyes and was the Outland and Lombardi trophy winner in 1973.
Hicks finished second in the 1973 Heisman voting and that is the highest Heisman finish for a lineman ever.
Hicks was the dominant Buckeye offensive lineman of his day and until the arrival of Orlando Pace was considered the gold standard of Buckeye blockers.
Hicks was the 3rd overall pick in the 1974 draft by the Giants and played four years for them,but injuries prevented him from a longer pro career.
Hicks passed from complications due to diabetes...

Another goodbye to former Washington Bullet Greg Ballard at the age of 61.
Ballard played eight seasons in Washington after being drafted in 1978 before finishing up with two season with the Warriors.
Ballard's first two years with the Washington were the highlights of franchise history with the team reaching back to back finals against the Seattle SuperSonics and winning their only NBA title in 1978.
Ballard was a solid player,but not a star averaging 12 points and 6 rebounds for his career.
Ballard spent his post-playing career as a scout and coach for various teams....
Ballard passed from prostate cancer...

Goodbye to early 1990's heavyweight contender Alex Stewart at the age of 52.
Stewart was never won a big fight,,but was best known for losing a controversial decision to George Foreman along with losses to heavyweight champions Evander Holyfield (twice),Mike Tyson and Michael Moorer.
Stewart passes of blood clots in his lungs.

Shannon Hogan is the host of the New York Islanders broadcast and I've wished we were able to have her (among many) on the Devils broadcasts.
Hogan recently penned this article on why she moved to sports broadcasting from the news division.
Her words on why sports can mean so much even when things are falling apart around us are very true and well written.
I guess her reasoning is part of why sports have meant so much to me over the years...

UniWatch looks at one of the best uniforms in the NFL-the long hoped for Powder Blue jerseys of the San Diego Chargers that the Chargers wear once or twice a year and then everyone comments on why the Chargers should wear all the time.
The Chargers had a few slightly different uniforms from those days as the article discusses.
As for me-I love em and even have a powder blue Lance Alworth jersey in my closet and I'm not even a Charger fan...

Kathy Duva is best known now as the promoter of Sergey Kovalev,but in the 1980's her Main Events promotion with the late Dan Duva promoted lightweight champion Livingstone Bramble.
Duva offers her memories with Ring Magazine of Bramble's successful upset of then WBA lightweight champion Ray Mancini from Buffalo in 1984.
I always was a fan of the eccentric Bramble and got a kick out of his various behaviors....

The Comeback looks at the conference looked at as the weakest of the conferences in Division I football in the Sun Belt and discusses a strong season for the conference.
With Troy and Appalachian State each having big years,I'd rate the Sun Belt above Conference USA this year and maybe even the MAC as well..