ONWARD TO VALHALLA
Qawi entered a rehabilitation program in 1990 to deal with his alcohol addiction, and it was in the milieu of counseling that he found purpose in his post-boxing life. Working with troubled youth was his specialty. By the mid-1990s, he was part of a Pleasantville, New Jersey, youth services group. Determined to help kids, Qawi held meetings in storefronts, brought them bowling or, in many cases, just provided a friendly voice and an open ear. As Qawi put it, he was their mirror. Qawi died on July 25, 2025, in a Baltimore nursing home. He was 72 and according to his family had been diagnosed with dementia in 2020. He is survived by two sons and two grandsons. His death was not just a loss for boxing, but a loss for the many wayward teens who came to him for guidance. “Somehow,” Qawi once said, “they’ve got to be made to believe they’re worth loving.” Don Elbaum, who died at age 94 on July 27, did much of his work in the same Atlantic City-Philadelphia circuit as
feat, considering he had no television contract and no superstars fighting for him. The shows, which spanned a bit less than five years, usually consisted of aging fighters and newcomers, all of whom were aiming to prove their worth, and were good enough to keep the customers coming back. Elbaum was probably the last promoter to try a weekly show at a single venue. No one would dare now. If Elbaum’s five-year run at the Tropicana was his heyday, the rest of his career was a mix of modest successes and comical disasters. One of his memorable moments came in 1969 when he promoted a nationally televised Las Vegas bout between former champion Sonny Liston and Leotis Martin. Elbaum had a piece of Martin’s contract and was on very good terms with Liston, so for Elbaum it was a win-win situation. He all but promised that the winner would be matched with new heavyweight titlist Joe Frazier. When Martin knocked Liston cold in the ninth round, it certainly looked as if Elbaum had himself an exciting young contender. But in a Runyonesque moment of bad fate, Martin suffered an eye injury during the bout and doctors advised him to never fight again. Martin was done, and Liston, who had been decisively knocked out, was about as marketable as a dead fish. Maybe someone should’ve coined the term “Elbaumesque,” because such things could only happen to Don Elbaum. Born at the height of the Great Depression in 1931, Elbaum’s early years in Erie, Pennsylvania, were highlighted by watching an uncle perform in dusty amateur rings, whetting a young boy’s appetite for pugilism. After his own stint as an amateur, Elbaum embarked on a deliciously misspent youth working Wild West shows and carnivals. We can almost see Elbaum hustling through the fairgrounds, a young man learning the art of the grift and the quick dodge – skills that would serve him well in his later pursuits. And it was a rare interview where Elbaum didn’t vaguely allude to gigs involving brothels and prostitutes. What went on was never
clear, but it seemed Elbaum spent a lot of time in and around these shadow- draped establishments. There was also an army stint and a marriage that came and went, but boxing was Elbaum’s first and only love. “Boxing is in my blood,” he once said. “It’s a beautiful sickness.” As a PFC stationed in Korea, Elbaum reportedly oversaw the best floating craps game in Seoul, by which he raised enough money to begin promoting fights when he returned to Erie. Back then, Elbaum was high on a local heavyweight named Bob Walters. When he booked Walters for an exhibition at an Erie veteran’s home, the sparring partner’s failure to show up led to Elbaum donning 16-ounce gloves and a helmet. According to Elbaum, he accidentally tapped Erie’s new boxing hope on the chin and knocked him out. An Elbaumesque moment, indeed. Unfazed, Elbaum promoted his first boxing show at Erie’s Gannon Auditorium in December of 1954. Knowing that famous fighters wouldn’t come to Erie, Elbaum used the formula that served him throughout his career: matching lesser-known fighters who provided lots of action. Paid attendance for that first Don Elbaum show: 867. From there, despite some stretches where he was stranded in dank motels without two nickels to his name, it was an enviable life. Like Qawi, Tommy Brooks was a New Jersey guy. Like Elbaum, his presence was felt across boxing as he worked the corners of several important fighters of the 1990s and 2000s. His recent passing at age 71 from cancer meant that boxing had lost one of its nice guys. Brooks was a quiet force, a thoughtful trainer who had served valuable apprenticeships under great trainers of a previous era, including Eddie Futch and Lou Duva. They instilled in him the patience it takes to train a fighter and the confidence required to man the corner between rounds. Those lessons appeared to culminate in Las Vegas on November 9, 1996. That was the night Brooks coached Evander Holyfield to a stunning 11th-round TKO of Mike Tyson for the
WBA heavyweight title. But even Brooks, as humble and levelheaded a man as can be found in boxing, was vulnerable to the occasional pipe dream. Somewhat shockingly, he would eventually sever a longstanding relationship with Holyfield to join Tyson’s camp. With optimism that would’ve impressed Don Elbaum, Brooks believed he could somehow resurrect the shopworn ex-champion and guide him back to the top. Brooks kept Tyson undefeated for six fights during that stormy 1999- 2001 period – two of the bouts were recorded as “no contests” – a significant achievement, considering Tyson’s increasingly bizarre behavior and a meddling entourage Brooks described as “idiots.” The reward for his troubles, as Tyson’s fight with Lennox Lewis loomed, was that Tyson’s team fired him as part of a cost-cutting measure. Brooks later admitted to ESPN that he should’ve stayed with Holyfield. Though there were no happy endings with Tyson and company, Brooks had a litany of great experiences with fighters ranging from Rocky Lockridge and Pernell Whitaker to the Klitschko brothers. He often said that a trainer was only as good as the fighter who hired him, and judging by the names on his resume, Brooks was a very good trainer indeed. As Holyfield said upon hearing of Brooks’ death, “They don’t make them like him anymore.” Tyson recalled Brooks as a “great boxing man and even better person.” It is weirdly fitting that Qawi, Elbaum and Brooks died within days of each other. They belong together, in a way, and not only because they were all members of the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame. In this trio, we see the key boxing archetypes: the troubled young man who redeems himself through boxing, the schemer always looking for the big score and the good-hearted trainer who maintains a cool head. They represent three distinct types who have always existed in boxing. Each was a dreamer, and dreams are the fuel that makes boxing run.
Brooks puts Holyfield through his paces in 1996.
Qawi, so it is rather surprising that, in such a small world as boxing, they never worked together. The closest they came was in the early 1990s when Elbaum tried to match Qawi with Ricky Parkey. The fight came off in Washington, D.C., anyway, just without Elbaum’s special touch. No matter. He had an amazing career of promoting and matchmaking, even without Qawi on his resume. In a business where too many are referred to as “Runyonesque,” Elbaum indeed seemed like a character from the colorful world of Damon Runyon. One of the great Elbaum stories, and there are dozens of them, had to do with a ringside physician not showing up on fight night. Without blinking, Elbaum had a tongue depressor handy and was soon examining the fighters. Elbaum was
a scrapper, a dealmaker, a guy who could make something out of nothing, could take a fighter on his last legs and squeeze a few more fights out of him, whether it was Bennie Briscoe or Eric “Butterbean” Esch. He wasn’t above a bit of trickery but was too likable to be called a crook. Hence, we call him a charmer, a rogue, a scamp. He never quite made the big time, but he was forever on the perimeter. As writer Jack Hirsch said of him in a Boxing News article from 2023, “Elbaum has always dreamed big but has often come up small.” Yet a thousand small victories earned Elbaum his International Boxing Hall of Fame induction in 2019. How could you deny a man who once arranged a photo op with Sugar Ray Robinson and handed him two left-handed gloves?
This, no less, after claiming the gloves had been worn by Robinson in his first pro fight. Ring announcer Michael Buffer owes his career to Elbaum, who first hired the golden-throated one to introduce a parking lot show in Pleasantville. And though he often apologized for it, Elbaum helped Don King enter the business, a development that shaped the next several decades of professional boxing. Perhaps Elbaum’s greatest accomplishment was during the 1980s, when he ran 196 shows at the Tropicana in Atlantic City. It was an astounding
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