Ringside Feats

In 1967, 19-year-old Bernard Roberts was knocked down in a New York street fight. The rest is, well, history. “I was very embarrassed,” he says. “I wouldn’t come out of my house.” Roberts decided to train at Gil Clancy’s fabled Manhattan gym, where he developed a good jab, along with a deep appreciation for the sport’s storied heritage.

The good jab took Roberts to an amateur boxing career while attending the College of Santa Fe. He won the New Mexico state heavyweight championship in 1969 and advanced to the Golden Gloves nationals, where he lost to Earnie Shavers, who later fought Muhammad Ali (unsuccessfully) for the world heavyweight crown. As for history, Roberts’ love of boxing lore has grown into a world-class collection of rare boxing memorabilia that resides today in three La Verne storage units.

In one corner: a pair of wood pin weights (progenitors of the dumbbell) inscribed “1879 Presented to Billy Reily by Arthur Chambers Lightweight Champion of America.” In another corner: a box holding a paper-doll boxer from the late 1800s and a ticket to a fight at San Francisco’s California Athletic Club from March 1889.

Ali-related items form a significant portion of the collection, which Roberts estimates is “worth hundreds of thousands.” “A guy in England was boasting, ‘I’ve got this and I’ve got this,’ ” Roberts says. “I said, ‘I’ve got the Pan American Games program from 1959.’ He wants it. Big time.” The program is a souvenir of one of Ali’s few losses. Of course, Ali later conquered the ring while also entering the endorsement market, lending his name to such items as the 1963 Columbia record album “I Am the Greatest!,” an Ali liquor decanter, a d-CON roach trap bearing Ali’s photo, a bag of Muhammad Ali potato chips and a DC Comics issue in which Ali saves Superman. Roberts still has seller’s remorse over a Log Cabin syrup bottle with Ali on it, but he has pieces from several Ali fights, including a program signed by Joe Louis, world heavyweight champ from 1937 to 1949, and a pennant from the first Ali-Joe Frazier fight in Madison Square Garden. Roberts also owns a program from the 1939 Joe Louis-Jack Roper world heavyweight match and treasures an edition of “Roots” that author Alex Haley had inscribed to Louis and his wife.

In 1993 Roberts heard about a man with a rare scrapbook at a thrift store in Watts. “He showed me the item and I almost fainted. I was trying to play cool.” Now a highlight of the collection, the scrapbook was full of mementos from the trainer of Jack Johnson, who became the first black world heavyweight champion in 1908. It includes telegrams from Johnson in 1911, an original photo of former President Teddy Roosevelt in a boxing ring and a handwritten letter from Johnson himself.

“I love the hunger for collecting, and I see it as an investment also,” says Roberts, 56. “Anything to do with boxing, I will collect. It reminds me of my younger days.”

During the 1980s, Roberts was a counselor and taught boxing at the California Youth Authority’s Heman G. Stark Youth Correctional Facility in Chino. He retired from corrections work and now handles security for CEOs and celebrity events. During his law enforcement years, Roberts returned to the ring long enough to take a gold medal in the heavyweight division at the California Police Olympics, but these days he’s finished with boxing but for the collection. “I grew up with Ali and [Ken] Norton,” he says. “The caliber today is not on the same level, especially in the heavyweight division.”