Fighting Bridegroom : Boxing Fans Can Have Their Cake and Eat It, Too

The bridesmaids will wear tuxedo jackets and shorts.

Not at the wedding! At the fight.

The five women will display the round cards when groom Chris Mills fights Wednesday night in Scranton in the featured bout of a promotion billed as “The Boxer & The Bride.”

Bride Sandy Yarbrough will cheer for the man she’ll marry two days later and cut a 7-by-7-foot wedding cake after Mills fights Wayne Holloway. Each fan will get a piece.

“I never used to be a fight fan, but I’ve grown to like it,” Yarbrough said. “I would never tell him not to fight. If he likes it, I’ll support him.”

Love is grand. For the 29-year-old Mills, so is boxing.

“It’s my whole life,” said Mills, a latecomer to the sport who has a 4-0 record as a light heavyweight.

He’s billed as “Scranton’s Coming World Champion.”

“The town is very, very excited,” said Mayor Jimmy Conners, who will serve as the ring announcer at the CYO and sing or song or two. “This is one of the best towns in the world.”

A crowd of 3,000 to 4,000 fight fans is expected to attend, and they might not have to wait long to sample the $3,000 cake, so big it will take two days to make.

Mills’ first four pro fights all ended with first-round victories and lasted a total of 4:19.

Holloway, the Ohio Golden Gloves champion, is 1-5, but as promoter Don Elbaum pointed out: “All of his wins as a pro are by knockout.”

Elbaum has put together this type of fight before. He once bought a cake and the wedding gown and had the ceremony performed in the ring after the groom had won.

“I have to tell you,” Elbaum said. “They’re divorced.”

On another occasion, he planned to have a man jump across Niagara Falls in a jet-powered snowmobile, but the U.S. Parks Service said the man would not be allowed to land.

“What are the going to do, blast him out of the sky?” wondered Elbaum, who called off the stunt.

In 1965, Elbaum was involved with a fight in Johnstown, Pa., featuring the great Sugar Ray Robinson, in the last year of his career. At a luncheon, Elbaum presented to Robinson the gloves he supposedly wore in his pro debut in Madison Square Garden in 1940.

“Ray was choked up and (his wife) Millie was crying,” Elbaum said.

But it turned out that both gloves were for the left hand.

Mills can enjoy the humor in Wednesday night’s show, but he does want to be a successful fighter. He travels four or five days a week to Philadelphia to work with top trainer Wesley Mouzon.

“I know I’ve got a lot to learn,” said Mills, who had a 14-1 amateur record.

As for his late start in boxing, Mills said, “In 1991 I got into a boxing match without gloves in the street in downtown Scranton in broad daylight.”

He was convicted of aggravated assault and sentenced to three to six-years. He appealed and the conviction was overturned.

“By then I had served 30 months in jail,” said Mills, who works at Whistles Pub and Eatery in Scranton.

Asked if he was a bouncer at the bar, Mills said, “Yeah.”

“We like to call it a night club,” Conners said.

And Elbaum is billing Mills-Holloway as a fight, even if it looks like a wedding reception.