AIR DATE:
EPISODE: Episode 37
Watch The Scoop from Monday to Friday featuring Canadian heavyweight champ Bola Ray, who lends his vast experience in the sport and provides his comments and analysis on boxing, on YouTube and TalkinFight.com/live. #boxinghistory #pernellwhitaker @sweetpea
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Transcribed:
Hello there once again talk and fight fans around the world.
Welcome to another episode of the scoop featuring the champ molar ray, and i for one, don’t have a clue what you have lined up tonight.
So, like everyone else, remember a pleasant surprise.
What what do you have lined up? What do you have lined up? Well, let’s see.
Well, this decade has seen some of the greatest heavyweights, arguably ever to step into the squared circle, and finally, there are actually starting to dance against each other for supremacy.
But what about decades past in the night and the 2000s, the klitschko’s reigned supreme and personally i felt that they were just an example of belt gluttony um.
They hogged the belts and the victories between them.
Didn’T their parents ever teach them to share like honestly.
But what about the 90s a decade that saw dominant heavyweight champions like mike tyson and evander, holyfield or absolute anomalies, like george foreman right over to division, defining champions like lex lewis, and it was amazing time for heavyweight boxing um there genuinely could be a new champion At any time, but what about the next tier down? These are the men that made that were responsible for making this one of the most competitive errors in heavyweight boxing history, the unsung hero, if you will, my name – is bulla raymond wally.
This is the scoop today.
I’M going to take to i’m going to talk about one of my favorites from the 90s, and that is one merciless rey.
Mercer talk about an unsung hero born april 4th 1961.
He grew up as a military, brat um in fort benning’s, georgia and then honey west.
Germany, due to his father, ray mercer senior enlistment now in his own accounting of history, he was a handful as a child, always in trouble.
His father suggested him partaking in some team sports, but it really didn’t resonate with him as high school ended.
He really had no desire for furthering his education traditionally, so he took a year to let’s say, find himself and then he enlisted in the army following the footstep of his dad.
Three years later, he was introduced to boxing via an opportunity presented itself to get out of doing field exercises in sub-zero, fahrenheit weather by being the post’s heavyweight champion’s spawning partner.
Now something you have to understand: ray had never laced up a pair of gloves prior to this and outside of the occasional street fight.
He had never been technically trained, taught how to fight i’d say that laziness was a powerful motivator, but to the point of getting your ass bust.
Now, that’s a that’s a totally different level.
A few months started out as expected with ray leaking oil with lips.
That look like floatation devices, but he was no quitter and he stuck with it months later.
His game started to improve and pretty much the rest was history.
He went on to win not just fights but tournaments and titles, the united states, amateur boxing federation title and in 1985 and 86 the u.
s army inter-service heavyweight championship and well in 1988 he won the u.
s amateur boxing heavyweight champion.
Just to mention a few ray went on to represent the us in international competitions prior to the olympics and in the us versus cuba fight our tournament, so he stepped into the ring and stared across from none other than future boxing great felix savant.
In this fight.
Felix was rocked twice where, if it weren’t for questionable officiating by the cuban ref, then felix may not have seen the final bell.
No, the there was a guy by the name of kelvin big dog richardson.
Most most will remember him i’ll do a show on him.
Later but he remembers fondly how absolutely devastating ray mercer was leading up to the olympics, stating that ray would like knock sparring partners out out of the ring with 16 ounce gloves on.
One would think if he could do that with 16 ounce gloves.
What’S going to happen when he has 10 ounce gloves on he’s liable to kill somebody, calvin actually went on to reminisce about uh the sparring sessions and how riddick beau, who was the super heavyweight representative from the united states as rey? Was the heavyweight representative ray bo? Did not want anything to do with him did not want to spar with him or i don’t at all, but they were forced to and when they did, it was electric like this is huge, because if anybody can remember riddick bull in the olympics, he was just A big mouth like thought that he was greater than all um, just a big mouth kid, and to see that a smaller fighter actually gave him not just work but hell wow, um and put the fear of god in them.
It explains a lot.
He talked about even his training regiment.
His his overall fitness level was unheard of, um they’d go for their five-mile runs and ray would come in like second or third of the collective.
You never see the big boys that that close to the finish, all the little crickets they’re, the ones who beat who who win the race and ray’s coming in second or third as a heavyweight 200 pounder, come on what a talent now ray went on to do 88 seoul summer olympic games, where he had four fights four wins with four knockouts wow, oh, like on his way to his golden element: uh winning the gold medal.
Like no one heard, the final bell, 89 ray was given an honorable discharge from the us army.
So as he could sue his professional boxing career now after he won a string or had a string of knockouts august of 1990 race comes into the squared circle against none other than smoking, bert cooper for cooper’s, napf, heavyweight, strap.
This was a defining fight and this was a defining contest because ray didn’t just knock down bert cooper, but one of unanimo’s decision for that strap.
This was young, bert cooper when he was still taking his career seriously and was nothing shy of a demon and rey beat that bird cooper a few likes a few fights later uh ray has a dance with an undefeated francesco miani from italy for the wbo heavyweight Title and one now, nine months after that october 18 1991 ray steps into the ring against undefeated super puncher tommy, the duke morrison wow wow, one absolute display of utter destruction of one’s fellow human being uh.
The fight starts out with everything going tommy’s way.
Uh.
He won the first three rounds, easy um.
He was feeding rabies, combinations and ray didn’t have an answer to it like there was one combination that really stuck out where he would he’d throw a jab at ray where he would turtle he’d, then throw a right hook that would land just behind ray’s left um Elbow and what that does is because it landed ray’s left elbow, would then slide back to protect that shot that area so as it doesn’t catch again and that little opening tom would then turn into a right uppercut, which would catch ray flush on the chin, followed By a left hook, he did this several and then, when i say several, it may have been double digits um in the first four rounds and ray took this flush and that has to be the greatest testament to his granite chin.
I still can’t, i still can’t believe that he didn’t even get rocked, he didn’t lose his balance or stumble or anything.
He just took it and then continued on first three rounds were clearly tommy’s rounds and then the fourth round came out – and this is the first time that rey had exposed a kink in or anything called a kink in in tommy’s, defense, um or tommy’s game.
For that matter, ray fought better than he had in previous rounds and caught tommy with some impressive shots, um right hands which jarred tommy, like literally just like the jarrings, that i would expect that tommy would have caused ray to have when those combinations, but so be It something else happened in the fourth round, and that was the fact that tommy started to look tired now, prior to the fight in the pre-flight uh commentary and stuff, like that, he looked.
Tommy looked stereotypically sensational, like chiseled, but big, strong and seeing how the fight was going all his way.
You figured that he was.
He was pacing himself rather well, but he started breathing heavy by the fourth round like breathing out his mouth.
The whole nine yards um.
Now then, the fifth round came and saw an exchange that i will not soon forget.
Wow ray was at his back against the ropes tommy came in and was caught with a right hand that jarred tommy ray uses opportunity to spin tommy around, and then he unleashed 17 unanswered punches in a row somewhere between nine and or nine more punch to go And six more punches to go, tommy was unconscious and ray continued smashing him with right hands like he stole something around the four when he had four more punches to deliver the ref finally stopped the fight and yet ray continued with three more punches to go.
The ref actually is now grabbing ray trying to hold him back and ray continued right.
He beat this man to the ground.
It was the first time that tommy had ever touched canvas and yeah.
He was there for a little bit.
I’Ve never seen such savagery ever in that sport, like he wow.
Let’S, let’s leave it at that.
After this impressive win, ray was on the short track for a big fight against the then two belt heavyweight champion vendor holyfield, the wbo belt was a minor world title belt, so ray had a mandatory challenger in michael moore, but opted to relinquish and vacate that belt And fight the 42 year old, larry holmes, which a win against him would solidify this fight with evander holyfield.
Now, what a disaster, because ray didn’t just lose a fight against arguably the greatest jab ever in the sport, but he also lost the opportunity to fight for the world title and there and larry took it after this ray goes through, let’s say a little dip where He fights against one jesse ferguson twice and there was allegations that how he tried to bribe jesse to take a dive in the first fight, which i just don’t understand, um.
But then he and he lost that fight.
And then he came back and beat jesse the following fight, and then he had a fight against marion wilson um, which resulted in a draw, but which is unfortunate because because it resulted in a draw, he lost only the opportunity to fight frank bruno in hong kong.
For frank, bruno’s, wba strap, but patience is a virtue and gray finally got the opportunity to fight evander holyfield, which he ended up, losing the fight on points in a unanimous decision.
My gym.
He then went on to dance with lennox lewis, which is one of the most controversial fights controversial losses in boxing for a while.
I’M going to do a segment on that in my robberies, greatest robberies.
In boxing he went from there to fighting tim witherspoon, a former world champion tim witherspoon and well this time it was again another controversial fight, but it was at least it was in his favor and he won that fight um again i’ll.
Do another episode in the future on that fight, ray’s career, pretty much fizzled out from there and he tried for big fights, but nothing really panned out ray then tried his hand at mixed, martial arts and kickboxing, which was nothing to write home about um.
The long and short of it all is that the boxing community owes a great deal of gratitude towards mr ray mercer for providing us, or at least partaking in some of the most epic fights that boxing fans have ever seen.
Um he went.
He was in the big fights with the name notable stars of the 90s.
So once again, thank you, sir.
Now, if you like this episode, please hit the like button and subscribe and do not forget to smash a notification, letting you know when i come on.
Next.
That’S right: it’s your boy, balla and that’s the scoop so uh.
Where did he get the nickname merciless? He was angry all the time he destroyed guys in the amateurs um and that’s where actually, where it came from, he was such a devastating puncher um.
They just no, they had never seen a puncher like this, like you have to understand.
When um calvin richardson was talking big dog, he was a head um a super heavyweight at the time and he’s watching this guy.
He like he was accusing camp as a spawning partner for the super heavyweights, and this guy’s decimating super heavily.
It’S knocking him out of the ring with pillows on his on his uh hands like he was.
He was a different level.
I i genuinely wanted more for him.
I i felt i remember watching the fight with him.
The first time when i saw the fight with him versus uh lennox, which was just shameful um linux lennox, got out jabbed by a guy who was four inches shorter than him lennox, who relies on his jab to set up everything, got out jabbed by ray mercer Um it was it was, it was hard to swallow and ray you could you could? It was palatable his disappointment and he was just like he just wants to fight.
This is early 90s and like mike tyson was king.
He was just wanting to fight mike tyson.
Get that huge payday in and call it a day it didn’t happen, yeah.
Looking timing, absolutely absolutely so! Well, thanks, very much appreciate that that’s a great piece on a fella i’ve kind of forgotten about, but he’s one of those unsung heroes that uh that’s exactly here.
Yeah you bring back that name and you bring back whole bunches, a string of fights that that he was involved in and, to be blunt, they were such great fights.
I can’t even remember, like you were saying, which ones he won, which ones he lost because they were, they were just great fights, good, stuff yeah.
I i really enjoyed him uh.
I really enjoyed watching him.
He was just he was absolutely fearless, but i wish him well.
We all do thanks very much very appreciate it and uh to all you fans out there thanks very much for joining us and we’ll see you tomorrow, night
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