Boxing made Jerry Izenberg better writer as he enters Hall of Fame

In life, timing can sometimes be everything. For Jerry Izenberg, the timing couldn’t be worse.

The 85-year-old Henderson resident who still serves as columnist emeritus for the Newark Star-Ledger and NJ.com will be inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame on Sunday. But he’ll go in with a heavy heart after the death of his good friend Muhammad Ali last week.

Not that Ali was showing up in Canastota, New York, to see Izenberg enter the Hall as an “observer” of the sport. But the fact Izenberg will have to speak of Ali in the past tense during his induction speech saddens him.

“I was one of the few who defended Ali,” Izenberg said, referring to Ali’s conversion to Islam and subsequent refusal to be inducted into the U.S. Army. “And I defended him because I felt he was right to do what he did.”

Izenberg said the backlash was harsh. Advertisers threatened to cancel their accounts if the paper didn’t fire Izenberg. His car’s windshield was bashed in. He received death threats.

Like Ali, Izenberg stuck to his principles.

“What’s the worst they could have done, fire me?” he said of his bosses.

For a man who covered every Super Bowl, who attended 50 Kentucky Derbies, who has been to numerous Olympics and gained induction to 15 halls of fame, Izenberg said covering boxing is a personal as well as a professional love. Through boxing, Izenberg was able to be around so many men of character and characters.

At the top was Ali, who had tons of character and was a character himself.

“We got along beautifully most of the time,” Izenberg said. “In those days, you would go to the training camp a few weeks before and you’d spend time with the fighter and his camp. You got to know everyone and they knew you. That doesn’t happen anymore. You don’t get that kind of access.”

Izenberg’s talent flourished through boxing. He could stretch his journalistic legs and expand his prose when around the sport. The sights. The smells. The sounds. He never failed to capture the scene and the moment.

Izenberg said boxing taught him one of the most valuable lessons a writer can learn.

“Boxing taught me how to be a good interviewer,” he said. “Sonny Liston was always conscious of what he said. He never wanted to be misquoted. In 1963, he was getting ready to fight Floyd Patterson in the rematch and 2,500 people were going to the old Hialeah racetrack in Miami to watch Patterson open his training camp.

“Sonny? He was at the Casablanca Hotel and he’s training poolside and there were maybe seven people tops to watch him. So I tell Sonny about Floyd Patterson and 2,500 people coming out to watch him train, and what did he think about that? And he’s looking at me and he’s thinking and he pauses. Finally, he says, ‘If this be the olden days when the chief’s tribe followed the chief into battle, then I’d be scared.’

“What it taught me was to shut up and listen and give the other person a chance to speak.”

Izenberg will be inducted Sunday along with fellow Southern Nevada residents Marc Ratner and Colonel Bob Sheridan. Of Ratner, former executive director of the Nevada Athletic Commission, Izenberg said, “In a world of inept and feeble administrators, Marc Ratner stands out like the Hope Diamond in a field of broken Coke bottles.”

Boxing allowed Izenberg to see the world and meet presidents and kings. But the fighters were his favorite thing. An author of 13 books, Izenberg will have a boxing book out in February, “Once There Were Giants: The Golden Age of Heavyweight Boxing.”

“Boxers will give you the best quotes or they’ll give you the best excuses in the world,” Izenberg said. “But here’s why I love boxing: There’s no second team, no junior varsity in boxing. It’s just you and the other guy. It makes for great writing, if you know what you’re seeing.”

Contact Steve Carp at scarp@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2913. Follow on Twitter: @stevecarprj