Philadelphia Fight Club Is Still Answering Bell

There are no flashing lights racing around the sign, no towering marquees and no tuxedo-clad celebrities at the Blue Horizon boxing arena.

But amidst the fist-marred locker room walls and dusty mirrors there are some fighters just a bout or two away from the glamour of a championship fight.

Since 1961, street fighters have come to the Blue Horizon in hopes of graduating to the big time. Some become contenders, some keep fighting with little chance of getting ahead and many become former boxers.

“People confuse club fighters and club fights by looking at the building,” said J. Russell Peltz, who promotes many of the matches at the north Philadelphia club. “You can have world class fighters fighting in the Blue Horizon,” he said.

Across the country, competition from television has closed most of the fight clubs, but the 1,200-seat hall still draws a loyal and knowlegeable crowd that boos loudly when they think a fight is stopped too early and taunts boxers to climb up from the dusty blue canvass.

The Felt Forum in New York still hosts fights where spectators can see beginners work their way up, but as Joseph D’O’Brian writes in the February issue of The Ring, “The Felt is no longer a fight club, or even a sports arena. It’s a TV studio.”

USA Cable broadcasts an occassional fight from the Blue Horizon, but for the most part it has stayed away from the interruptions of television.

The club is both a venue for budding champions and a place to see a kid from west Philly take on a north Philly rival before neighborhoods that have temporarily moved to ringside folding chairs.

“Around the country you’ll find these little hole-in-the-wall clubs do exist,” Nigel Collins, editor-in-chief of The Ring, said in a telephone interview from New York.

They are the reminants of the glory days of fight clubs when the neighborhoods in every major city had small arenas where the local kids would slug it out.

If a fan wants to risk it, he could jump from the front row of the balcony into the ring. At ringside, about a half-dozen rows of chairs are set up within range of flying sweat and blood.

“The boxing crowd is totally different from the casinos,” said “K.O.” Becky O’Neill, who managed bantamweight Jeff Chandler, champion from 1982 to 1984.

While many casino fight fans may want to be seen at the big championship fight or were given complimentary tickets by the management, the Blue Horizon fans are there because they want to see good boxing.

“This is it. The Blue Horizon is it,” she said standing beside the ring apron.

Because of its size, promoters at the Blue Horizon rarely make much money on the fights. The boxers don’t make much either, with a four-round preliminary fight putting about $250 in each fighter’s fist. Purses can get as high as $3,000 when cable television broadcasts the fight.

But while the small money and drab surroundings suggest little hope of making it to the big time, some fighters are one or two fights away from contention.

“Prince” Charles Williams defeated Joe Dolphin July 14, 1987 at the Blue Horizon. In his next fight, three months later, he knocked out Bobby Czyz in Las Vegas for the International Boxing Federation light-heavyweight championship.

Robert “Bam Bam” Hines won at the Blue Horizon Aug 18, 1987. Three fights later, on Nov. 4, 1988, he came back from second- and third-round knockdowns to defeat Mathew Hilton in Las Vegas for the IBF junior middleweight crown.

Jorge Maysonet, who scored his 19th knockout in defeating Khalif Shabazz at his latest Blue Horizon fight, is due to fight IBF welterweight champion Simon Brown next in Budapest, Hungary in February.

Like the fighters, Peltz has to wait for the championship bid before making money in the game.

“We make money down the road with Maysonet if he wins the world title,” said Peltz, who would be a partner in promoting the title defense.

“They make it down the line; we all make it down the line.”

Too many managers are eager to make the quick buck and take a young fighter to Atlantic City, N.J. or Las Vegas, Nev., to face another young prospect, Peltz said.

“A lot of good prospects get burned out early because that’s the mentality of the matchmaking in Atlantic City,” he said. “It’s every fight has to be a life-and-death fight.

“A lot of these promoters are interested in, maybe this fighter will give them an extra hundred bucks instead of developing their fighter,” said the 42-year-old Peltz who has been promoting fights at the club since 1969.

“When I get the championship, I want to have the skills to defend it,” cruiserweight Ed Mack, 19, said shortly before scoring a technical knockout in the fourth round of his second professional fight. “This is the perfect place to learn how to fight.”

Many a lesson has been taught inside the red, blue and duct-tape mended ropes at the Blue Horizon, in a neighborhood where there are few legal ways to make $250 in one night.

“It gives them a place to fight, takes them off the streets,” Mack, a sophomore at Temple University, said.

“The best thing for a young kid is to keep busy.”