A SLICE OF BOXING
giving the edge to his guy. “Most matchmakers are a little nuts,” Trampler acknowledges. “How can it be considered normal to call two people and arrange to have them punch each other in the head in front of an audience?” That brings us to Trampler as a fighter. In September 1967, he enrolled as an undergraduate at Ohio University with the intention of pursuing a career in journalism. Soon after, he interviewed a club fighter named Bill Douglas for the school newspaper. Twenty- three years later, Douglas’ son would dethrone Mike Tyson and claim the heavyweight throne. Meanwhile … “There was a school boxing club,” Trampler remembers. “Nothing fancy. A couple of coaches and 10 or 12 kids. We didn’t even have a ring. Just a gym mat and gloves. It was a bunch of kids fooling around.” Then, in February 1968, Douglas’ promoter (a man named Bill Cummings) suggested to Bruce that he sign up for the Golden Gloves at Cooper Arena in Columbus, about 70 miles from campus. “I wanted to do it,” Trampler says. “It had always been on my mind. So I took a bus to Columbus. I was in the novice division, or the sub-novice division if they had one. I was 18 years old. I’d literally never been in a boxing ring in my life before that fight. “On fight night, I wore black sneakers. They gave me a mouthpiece because I didn’t have one. And they gave me a gold robe with black lapels to wear for the night. I’d gotten friendly with Bill Douglas by then. He came to the fight, wrapped my hands and worked my corner. “They lined up all the fighters and we sat in chairs on opposite sides of the ring. We could look across the ring and see the guy we’d be fighting. When each new fight started, they moved us down a chair until, finally, someone said, ‘OK, you’re on deck.’ I warmed up. Then I was in the ring. “The guy I fought was named Sam Orso. I was six-one and weighed 156
As a matchmaker, Trampler was instrumental in the early career of Floyd Mayweather Jr.
pounds. He was tall and lanky, so we were about the same size. I was nervous but not scared. The bell rang, and then it was just me and him. Orso wasn’t an aggressive guy. I was trying to be one, but it wasn’t effective aggression. I never hurt him and he never hurt me. I outworked him and won a three-round decision. “I’d won, so I fought again the next night. On the day of the second fight, Bill Douglas took me to a sporting goods store and bought me a better mouthpiece. Unfortunately, the second fight ended very differently from the first. I got stopped. I can’t tell you how it happened. All I remember is the floor on my left side coming up toward my face. I’m told I got up, got massacred, and they stopped it. But I don’t remember any of that. The next thing I remember is I was sitting in the dressing room and Bill Douglas was buttoning my shirt and a doctor was asking if I was OK. My new mouthpiece had been knocked out when I went down and the referee didn’t put it back in. So while I was getting battered around the ring, my upper lip got split. We went to the hospital and I needed 64 stitches, microstitches, inside and outside.” But Trampler kept fighting. “Was I going to be a pro fighter?” he asks rhetorically. “No. But I enjoyed it.
I won two more fights by decision and was stopped again in a fight when I was knocked down twice. I never knocked anybody down. That wasn’t for lack of trying. It just never happened. Then I started getting headaches, so I gave it up. Looking back on it all, my first fight is the one that means the most to me. Your first car; your first girl. It’s special. You don’t forget something like that. “If I had it to do over again,” Trampler says in closing, “I’d hold my hands higher and keep my chin down. But I’m glad I did it. It was something I wanted to experience. And the fact that I did it has probably helped me over the years in relating to fighters. There’s a bond between us. We all got hit in the head.” Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His most recent book – The Most Honest Sport: Two More Years Inside Boxing – is available at Amazon.com. In 2019, Hauser was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
BRUCE TRAMPLER WAS A FIGHTER By Thomas Hauser
Trampler has spent a lifetime in boxing and not always as a matchmaker.
card is, “What do I want to accomplish with these fights?” He might be trying to develop one of the promoter’s fighters into a world-class boxer. That means finding an opponent who will be a good learning experience, last some rounds and test the fighter to determine where his skill level is. The way a fighter wins is also important in terms of developing him as an attraction. Sometimes, the promoter is simply trying to pad the record for a ticket- seller, whether he can fight or not. A good matchmaker knows more than the old axiom “styles make fights.” He can spot flaws that make one fighter vulnerable to another and match two boxers with equal ability and similar records against each other while still
O ne of the little-known facts about Top Rank’s Hall of Fame matchmaker Bruce Trampler is that he had five amateur fights. Let’s start with Trampler the matchmaker. Bruce learned the trade when he worked for the legendary Teddy Brenner at Madison Square Garden from 1977 through 1979. Then Brenner moved to Top Rank. In 1980, Trampler joined him. Matchmaking is an art, not a science.
“Either you want a good fight or you just want a ‘W’ on your guy’s record,” Hall of Fame promoter Russell Peltz once said. “If you want a good fight, you make a good fight. You have to give fans their money’s worth or they won’t come back.” But it’s more nuanced than that. The matchmaker works for the promoter, not the fans. He (or she) serves the promoter’s interests. The first question a matchmaker asks when filling out a
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