My Hour With Johnny Bos

Bos Battles Ill Health, Financial Problems,  Clients Who Never Pay But The Wizard Fights On

By ROBERT JONES - FightNightNews Staff Writer

 

Right after I sent my "Contender" recap to my bossman, Michael Marley, I dialed up the "Bos man" and settled down for what I was sure was going to be an interesting conversation.

Things did start off interestingly enough when I was forced to hang up and call back, not once, but twice, as I struggled with my technical equipment, a speakerphone on a cell phone and a $10 tape recorder from Wal-Mart. Honestly, I started to panic a little bit worrying that I was going to annoy the 53-year-old Johnny Bos, but he quickly eased those worries.

"Don't worry about it, you can call back at midnight or 1 a.m. or 2 a.m.," he said. "It doesn't matter." A few minutes after midnight I finally got everything figured out and we were ready to roll.

My first question to the man who has been involved in the sport of boxing in some capacity for coming up on 40 years was about how he got involved in boxing. "When I was a little kid I used to watch it with my father," he remembered. "I turned on the TV and we watched. You had the Friday night fights, Tuesday night fights. There were so many different fights on, I don't even remember, I was only 6 or 7 years old."

Remember those days, when all the boxing fights were on free TV? Yeah? Me neither.

When he was still a young boy, around 10 or 11 years old, he started hanging out at all the gyms that N.Y. had to offer at the time - Jimmy Glenn's, Gleason's and Harry Wiley's.

Perhaps I jumped the gun a little bit on my next question. While doing research for my conversation with Bos, I came across an interesting story about the former great boxing writer Malcolm "Flash" Gordon, who in 1986 mysteriously disappeared after attending the Mark Breland -Daryl Anthony fight in Totowa, N.J.

"I think he's still in the same place, living there (in New Jersey)," Bos said. "I think what happened with him is, he was putting out a yearbook and got people paying for it. I think he was funding it with the money that was coming in. As the money was coming in, he was putting it towards the book. The money didn't come in as quick as he planned, I guess, and he spent all his money printing whatever he could of the book. Obviously he didn't finish the book and he just walked away. I haven't spoken to him since then. I think he wanted to go through with making the record book and when he took people's money and spent it and didn't come out with the book, I don't think he wanted to face them." Wow. Just another story in the long history of boxing that will always continue to amaze me.
 
The conversation then turned to the great British matchmaker, Mickey Duff. I asked Bos how much Duff influenced him into getting more involved with boxing. "I was already in to boxing," Bos answered. "What Mickey did was, Mickey taught more than anybody else could ever teach anybody."
 
But did he get Bos involved or interested in matchmaking?

"Matchmaking is something you learn yourself," Bos noted. "You have to have a knack for it. It's something you're born with. You can't just become a matchmaker."


Around this time in our conversation - less than 15 minutes in - I sort of threw out my planned out questions and I just started talking to him. I knew he was going to answer any question I had anyway, so there was no longer any need for a script. I had read that Bos was a big guy, somewhere around 6'3" and more than 200 pounds, so I asked him why he never got involved in the sport as a fighter.

"I wasn't strong enough physically," Bos said. "I would box at 28th Street and 9th Avenue, but I was 6'3" 190 pounds when I was 13. I just wasn't physical enough for these guys. I did have one amateur fight when I was 19."

"How did that go for you," I quickly asked. Nonchalantly Bos replied, "Oh, I won a decision." So, he retired undefeated, we joked.

We then got back to the subject that has made him a legend, matchmaking. I wanted to know how many world champions he had helped along the way. After thinking for a moment, Bos replied, "I can't even count there have been so many." The mood then got more somber when he added, "They're taking my heart now. I can't do it anymore." It was a reference to how the many people he helped along the way that have turned their backs on him once when they made it to the big time. Even though the game has hurt him so much though, he still has four or five fighters that he dispenses his vast knowledge of boxing to.

I asked about his relationship with current welterweight Chris "The Mechanic" Smith because I had read on Boxrec.com that Bos was his manager. I quickly learned this was no longer true. "For what Chris was getting paid, and for what Chris was putting out, I didn't think it was fair." He then became almost like a father figure when talking about his former fighter. "I wish Chris had gone to school because he's a very, very intelligent kid. He's a good-looking kid. He's well dressed, well mannered, and he could make something of himself outside of boxing. But, he has a dream, and you can't take a dream away from somebody." Chris Smith is currently 20-3-1 with 13 KO's, but since he and Bos split their separate ways, he has lost three out of his last four. The conversation then turned to what is currently wrong with boxing, a subject that could be discussed for days. "Boxing is not boxing anymore," Bos claimed. "In the old days with the youngsters I guess you had guys taking dives, but is that any different than today when you have the officials filling out the scorecards before the fights?"

"Mr Bos, do you think boxing has a chance of becoming extinct?"

"Within five years," came the quite shocking reply. "Outside of HBO and Showtime it is basically an extinct sport."

"Do you think something like mixed martial arts will take over?"
"I certainly hope not," he said, and I quickly agreed. "Boxing is doing it to itself," he said. "With all the Congress, all this that came in, they were going to do everything for the fighter, meanwhile all they did was fuck around a bunch of four and six round fighters in the Midwest which would use different names once in a while on shows so small. It wasn't even really professional boxing." I awe where he was going with this, so, I asked him what he would change about the sport if he was the King of Boxing.

Without hesitation he answered, "Well, the first thing I would do is eliminate promotional deals. Once you had promotional deals you've eliminated all chances of good fights. The contenders can't make a living anymore." Bos focused on the fact that the money goes to the guys with the great promotional deals, while the other contenders are left fighting for what's left, which -more often than not - is not a lot.

I then told Mr. Bos a little about myself. I told him I was a young guy, only 23, but I was still shocked that up until a few weeks ago, when I joined the team at FightNightNews.com, I had never heard of him. I did also understand. though, it was difficilt for him because of the hard times he was having now to get "out there" much, partly due to his health problems, but mostly because of the way fighters have treated him in recent years. .

"Let me tell you something. When you give your heart and soul and you fight the promoters every fucking inch of the way to do what you can for the fighter," Bos continued, "and then when it comes to where you're going to get a chance to make something back, what your working for, they turn their back on you. You know, it hurts."

The conversation then took the most serious turn since we started talking. "The closest I've ever came to suicide in my life was probably three days before the Malignaggi - Cotto fight," Bos admitted. This is significant because Bos had worked for Malignaggi all the way up to this fight, giving Team Malignaggi matchmaking tips all along the way. This fight was easily Malignaggi's biggest pay day, but Bos would see none of it, because after this fight was signed Bos' phone stopped ringing, just another example of Bos's getting the short end of the stick right when the big money was about to set in.

"I went to the bank, which is right down the street from Madison Square Garden. Johnny added. "There's a big sign up there that said ‘Cotto-Malignaggi Saturday,' and it's doing over a million dollars live gate. I went to my bank account and I wanted to get money out to get a steak sandwich, or whatever, so I could get something to eat and I look at my bank account and I saw that the credit card companies had taken out everything, and I was minus $41. I didn't even have money to eat with and yet what I did just a few months earlier for a fight coming up in a couple of days that was going to do, like I said well over a million dollars, and I wasn't going to get a cent for it. Thank God I ran into Mike Joyce and a couple of his friends there, and they took me down to get something to eat, and gave me a couple of hundred dollars."

When he finished his thought I thanked him for telling me that story, which I'm sure was hard for him to recount. He told me though that there was more to it, and I quickly told him to continue talking, the floor was his.

Bos continuing, "When you take something, I guess it's sort of like… when you're a little kid, and you take the blocks and build them all up, then the big brother comes and knocks them all down. It's like, anything you do you don't get any credit for."

I once again asked him how he continues to have desire to work for the guys he's with and said, as in telling nobody not to worry "I'm going to work my ass off for the guys I'm with." Even though he didn't want to get really into whom he is working with now, he will still stand strong by his fighters no matter what.

The conversation continued with us talking about a wide array of things. I asked him how he scored the Samuel Peter-James Toney fight this past weekend. He told me he scored it for Peter because he was landing the more effective shots while everything Toney threw landed off Peter's elbows.

He also told me that how in communist Europe, his fighters were making more money in mid-level fights there then they were in the USA at the time. Bos is one of the few people who felt sorry to see communism go.

Bos, who never learned how to drive and has never even been on a plane, only makes special road trips to friends to see megafights. He said there are no fights on the current horizon that he feels up enough to drive across country to see, but he still continues to go to most of the fights in New York City, and will certainly be at the Wladamir Klitschko–Calvin Brock fight scheduled at the Garden Nov. 11.

As the conversation drew to a close I asked him about the Roast that will be held for him sometime in early November in New York City. I asked him, jokingly, "What could they possibly say bad about you?"

After taking a second to catch his breath after laughing, Bos replied, "I mean you can always say bad things today. Maybe they'll say I was a mean drunk." He told me about a personal achievement that he is most proud of that didn't have anything to do with boxing. "In November, believe it or not, one week from that roast will be 20 years without a drink. I was a heavy drinker." His voice lit up more telling me that story then anything else we talked about during our conversation.

As we wrapped up our conversation, we turned to the subject of his heart problems. "The doctor's told me that I only have five years to live, and that was five years ago." At that I told him "Well, you were never a boxer, but you are defiantly a fighter." Then I quickly remembered, "Oh, yeah, you retired undefeated." With that we both laughed, and shortly after hung up the phone.

With the clock showing 1a.m., I sat at my kitchen table thinking about the conversation I just had. I once again wondered why more people in the boxing world haven't heard of this guy. But, mostly I thought about how smart he is and I hope he gets his just due before it's too late.


 
 

Go Back

2 Comments