Saoul Mamby's Final Bout: Farewell to the Ring

On March eighth, two thousand and eight, Saoul Mamby had his last boxing fight ever. But what made this fight stand out that Saoul was sixty years old, becoming the oldest boxer to ever fight in a professional fight. Here's the story behind this iconic event. Beyond daily sports History. Welcome to Daily Sports History. Armeathan reees your guide to a rapid deep dive is a sports history every day. And Saoul is from New York in the South Bronx. And he had a Spanish mother and a Jamaican father and converted to Judaism at the age of four and even attended Hebrew School and became interested in boxing on a vacation to visit family back in Jamaica and began his career boxing in nineteen sixty three. Is who heard that? Nineteen sixty three? And he finished boxing in two thousand and eight. And he did really well to start with, including fighting in the Golden Gloves and compiling an amateur record of twenty five and five before turning pro in nineteen sixty nine after serving in the US Army during the Vietnam War. Now, Saoul wasn't a big guy. He was featured in the light welterweight division or is the super light division as is known today, and in nineteen eighty he would go on to become the champion in that weight class for over two years, including being on the bill for the fight with Muhammad Ali and Larry Holmes, and Saoul would regularly box until the age of fifty two when he lost to Kent Hardy, which he effectively retired at that point, but he never gave up the itch to want to keep boxing, so he met up back with his trainer and manager, Steve Tannebaum, to try to find a fight when he was sixty years old. Now the challenge was to get a fight sanctioned, as you have to go through rigorous tests to be sanctioned wherever you're gonna fight, and someone has to mark that you are safe to fight and safe to get hit multiple times and you won't pass away. And this became an issue in the early years of boxing that a fight could go on and if a fighter wasn't well equipped, he could pass away and they didn't want that to happen. But in the Grand Caymans he got sanctioned to fight at the age of sixty years old. In nine months breaking former heavyweight champion Jack Johnson's record of sixty years in five months. Zoo Zoul is the first fighter to fight in five different decades and when asked why is he doing this? Does he need the money, he said he doesn't live pitch at to pudget. He doesn't need the money, but this is what he loves to do. He's not married, even though having six kids and eleven grandkids. His love was boxing, so he took to the gym to train, weighing in at one hundred and forty nine and a half pounds, and he would go on to fight Anthony Osborne, who at the time got a record of six and twenty seven coming into the fight. Zoul was forty five and thirty three coming into the fight. It was a ten round fight and Seoul did not get knocked out. He made it the entire ten rounds and as Seoul was known to take a punch even in his sixties, and he lost by decision, effectively ending his boxing career and eleven years later he would go on to pass away at the age of seventy one, but will be remembered for the great boxer he was, even if he lost his last fight. Showed great grit to last ten rounds in a professional fight at the age of sixty. Thank you for listening to today's Daily Sports History. If you like this, go tell a friend, hey, let's go learn some sports history. And come back tomorrow for more Daily sports History