Favourite Boxing Magazines in the old days

I think this thread supplements the other one. I think The Ring, when Bert Sugar had it, was the best boxing magazine ever (not that I've read them all). He took over for the October 1979 issue and had it until, I think, mid-1984. It had great writers, deep articles, reports from around the world including all undercard bouts, an international ratings committee, ratings past the top 10, a free classifieds section for readers, great layout and design, an editor (Bert) who hated the sanctioning bodies and called them on their b.s., a free book if you subscribed (I got a Ring Record Book one year)... Bert did a fantastic job, BUT I've heard that he spent money like it was going out of style; Like if he went to Vegas for a big fight, he'd live very large while he was there. Eventually Ring got a new editor, maybe Randy Gordon or Nigel Collins, and it was still good, but not AS good and just not the same.

When Nat Loubet had it between 1972, I think, and 1979 it was terrible. It was very useful for fight reports from around the world, that complete undercard coverage, and articles on fairly unknown fighters. But the writing was riddled with errors or just nonsensical, the design was bad... it was just low-budget. And I looked through a 1974 issue this morning and they were still referring to Muhammad Ali as Cassius Clay.

Boxing Illustrated was another one from the mid-70's to the early-80's that had the same problem as seventies Ring. Useful but Low Budget.

I think the other great magazine was KO in its first years, from 1980 to 1982 or so. Deep writing from great writers (though with a different slant than Burt Sugar's Ring), great interviews, the full-color poster with a boxer's complete and up-to-date record, TV reports, good fight reports, though not with the undercard coverage of Ring, great design... It was a beautiful magazine. But it felt like somewhere in there they dropped it down a few reading levels. Just not as packed with deep stuff.

Sports Illustrated did previews of the super big fights and reports of all of the major and semi-major fights. The writing was great, usually by Pat Putnam, and the full color photography was the best boxing photography around. They'd also do the occasional big article. One issue featured a "where are they now?" article on Ali's early opponents. Years later they did the same thing with George Foreman.

Do magazines still have a place? I don't know. I don't subscribe to any, nor even buy any from wherever you get magazines from these days. Obviously, news on the internet is faster than any printed boxing magazine could be. But I've been kind of tempted to subscribe to The Ring again. Why? Magazines are great documents of a specific period of time. I don't know if I can go on the internet and look up everything that happened in, say, July 2012. But magazines cement the history - who was hot, who was cold, what was coming up. What was happening in late December 1973 and January 1974? Track down the April 1974 Ring. Also I think more recent magazines will go up in value more than the old issues because they're not selling nearly as many copies. Try to find cheap copies of The Ring from the 2010's on eBay. Not easy to find. But cheap copies of sixties and seventies Rings? Plentiful.

So there's my two cents on boxing magazines, from a 53 year old guy who's been following boxing for 44 of those years (though much less so in the last decade or so).

 

Flash was thee best by far

 

KO magazine...they always had the cool fighter posters

 

I liked KO
Besides the poster each issue had an interview with a top fighter

 

I started with Ring Magazine when I was 10 but also purchased and enjoyed the "Victory Sport Series" Magazines, i.e., World Boxing, International Boxing, etc.

 

The posters were a big selling point. I can’t count how many I’ve seen on the walls of gyms over the years, up to this day.

 

Ring Magazine, Boxing Illustrated, and KO magazine.

 

Absolutely

 

That late 1980's / 1990's version of Boxing Illustrated was another Bert Sugar vehicle, and it was pretty good. It had many of the same qualities as his early eighties version of The Ring had.

 

It was really short on polish — if a story was too short to fill the page it would just repeat certain paragraphs over and over. Looked and felt cheap.

I really liked Hank Kaplan’s International Boxing Digest in the early 1980s because it had fight accounts ... like tons and tons of them from around the world. Seemed like every fight got a newspaper-type story.