Tales Of Uncle Bill
BILL CAPLAN’S PASSING WAS FAR MORE THAN JUST THE LOSS OF A FAMILIAR COLLEAGUE; TO MANY IN THE BOXING BUSINESS,
BOB ARUM Founder and CEO of Top Rank
Bill was one of the last of the Mohicans. Remember, he came up in an era where every city, every town had a newspaper, and virtually every newspaper had a boxing writer. And Bill would love to travel to meet these guys, take them out for a meal and fill them up with, you know, what was essentially baloney relating to some upcoming fight or a particular fighter. He was very, very effective because he could say the most outrageous things, but he said it in a disarming manner. And the press people then felt he was one of theirs, and they would pick it up. George Foreman loved him, and when George wasn’t such a good guy, Bill painted him as a good person. And when George had the religious conversion and in effect became a very good guy, it was easy for Bill to continue painting George as this saintly kind of guy, which in effect he had become. In other words, Bill’s bullshit about Foreman became true because Foreman became a different person. BILL DWYRE Former Los Angeles Times sports editor It was back in the days of the new sports extravaganza called The National. It was to be the ultimate sports journalism publication – all-encompassing national and international coverage. A big tabloid. Big salaries. Big stars. Nationally, every star columnist on every newspaper awaited an offer. One came quickly to Allan Malamud of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. Malamud said yes quickly and awaited the inaugural edition from a National office in Southern California. But as Malamud awaited his chance to write his first column for The National, he got an offer to leave The National and work as a columnist for his longtime competitor,
THE BELOVED PUBLICIST JUST MADE LIFE MORE FUN By Michael Rosenthal
I always thought boxing publicist Bill Caplan’s greatest skill was his ability to lead busy, sometimes reluctant boxing writers to press gatherings. He was like the Pied Piper. Of course, the meetings with promoters, fighters and others in the business – anyone who could help sell a fight – often came with free food, a powerful incentive for the average scribe. That wasn’t the main reason we came almost every time he beckoned, though. Bill’s real magic flute? We didn’t have the heart to say no. We loved the guy. Caplan, 90, died on April 23, leaving behind a remarkable legacy that led him to the International Boxing Hall of Fame. His career bridged the careers of Sugar Ray Robinson and active fighters, a span of seven decades. He’s best known for being the personal publicist of George Foreman, but he worked for most of the top promoters along the way, playing an important role in getting the word out on hundreds (thousands?) of boxers and their biggest fights. It wasn’t so much what he did that made him truly special, however. It was how he did it, with passion, with warmth, with humor, with an endless catalog of epic stories told in his booming voice and with genuine affection for the writers, many of whom became his close friends. In other words, Bill Caplan made covering the often-nasty business of boxing a hell of a lot more fun than it would’ve been otherwise. That’s one reason his passing hit many of us so hard. He left an enormous void. Here is how some of those close to Bill remember him:
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