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The Pioneer Valley isn’t recognized for its boxing heritage, but Rocky Marciano and featherweight champ Willie Pep both fought at the Valley Arena in Holyoke, and Mike Tyson and welterweight champ Marlon Starling both boxed in the Golden Gloves at the Holyoke Boys and Girls Club.
The Springfield Civic Center hosted its share of fights, including on Dec. 9, 1978, when up-and-coming Olympic champ Sugar Ray Leonard fought Armando Muniz. It was a big day in Springfield with the undefeated Leonard in town and Howard Cosell covering for ABC-TV. Leonard won by TKO when Muniz, who retired from boxing after the fight, didn’t answer the bell for the seventh round.
The last fight on the undercard was a super lightweight bout between Brockton’s Jimmy Corkum and a Bronx tomato can named Al Hughes. According to BoxRec.com, Corkum won the 10-rounder by unanimous decision and upped his record to 36-2.
Corkum was born in Brockton on New Year’s Day, 1958. His father worked for the telephone company and his mother waitressed at the lunch counter of a local pharmacy. Corkum was enrolled at Cardinal Spellman in Brockton the first time he stepped into a ring. He knocked out Roland Sigman at Boston Garden and a month later KO’d Sigman again. Two years later he was 27-0 and getting press in the Boston Herald.
Corkum’s first loss wasn’t until Tony Petronelli beat him in a 10-round decision at the Garden. The Petronellis were well known around town. Pat and Goody owned the Brockton gym and managed Marvin Hagler.
Corkum was managed by Vinnie Vecchione, who pushed punks after Sam Silverman was killed in a car accident 1977 on Rte. 2 in Cambridge. As a tribute to the legendary promoter, Corkum had a Star of David etched on one side of his boxing shorts to go with the shamrock that was sewn on the other side.
Vecchione’s biggest score was the half-million dollar payday he got for his fighter Peter McNeeley to step into the ring against Mike Tyson in 1995. It was Iron Mike’s first fight since leaving prison and he dispatched the Boston palooka in 89 seconds.
Corkum was the 10th-ranked welterweight in the world when he was TKO’d by Sean Mannion at the Hotel Bradford in Boston. A Dorchester resident by way of County Galway, Mannion later fought for the super welterweight title.
It was only his third loss in 43 fights, but the 21-year-old Corkum decided to hang up his gloves. “I haven’t talked about this for years,” he said Wednesday in a telephone interview from his office in Baltimore. “It’s a crazy story.”
Corkum was at a crossroads. He was studying at Stonehill College and had saved most of his fight money and applied to Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. “The fight game was a wonderful experience: the good, the bad, the organized crime… you see that stuff, you’ve grown up a little bit,” he said. “The only way you survive is if you think you’re going to be a world champ. The fight against Mannion was a setback, and I was coming to a point where I had to make a decision.”
Corkum said that boxing gave him leverage against other applicants at a school where the acceptance rate is less than 15 percent. “Most were affluent Ivy League graduates, and the anomaly of being a prize fighter became an avenue to get there. The fight game teaches you to control your own destiny. I had to out-work them. I had to out-hustle them. I worked every angle I could. I spent day and night prepping for exams and keeping my GPA at Stonehill close to 4.0.”
Corkum was accepted and the admissions department provided him with scholarship money, loans and grant money. “It was a wonderful opportunity to go to a great place,” he said. “The biggest appeal was I got to tag along with some of the brightest people in the world.”
After medical school, Corkum remained in Baltimore to do his internship and residency in internal medicine. “Then I decided to do a fellowship and was again offered a spot for three more years.”
Along the way, he met his wife and they settled down and raised a family. Today he’s a gastroenterologist with Clinical Associates of Towson, Md., where he’s been honored with the Peoples’ Choice award together with awards for compassionate care and seeing patients on time.
“Being a Red Sox fan and a Patriots fan, I always thought I’d go back to Brockton,” said Corkum, “but once you’re married to a local girl you’re never leaving.”
And that, as Paul Harvey would say, is the rest of the story.
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HORSING AROUND: America’s Day at the Races on FS1 is anchored by men and women who know their stuff, be it in the paddock or at the mutuels windows. Maggie Wolfendale correctly picks a longshot every card, and Richard Migliore has a sharp eye for speedy steeds going off at long odds.
Wolfendale shares paddock duties with Acacia Courtney, and both know what’s happening behind the scenes. Courtney recently explained why a colt named Oak Hill was being saddled outside the stall. “They kept him away because he was quite studdish in his debut,” she explained.
Bob Baffert’s 3-year-old colt Authentic won last Saturday’s Haskell Invitational at Monmouth. The next two betting favorites also hit the board, and that combined with the short six-horse field resulted in a minuscule trifecta that paid $3.20 on fifty cents.
Saratoga’s best bet today is Volatile in the Grade II Vanderbilt Stakes (6:16 p.m. post). Steve Asmussen’s fleet gray colt was 2/100ths of a second off the track record his last out at Churchill Downs.
Despite the absence of fans, the handle for the first Saturday at Saratoga was $21.6 million, slightly off last year’s tally of $23.8 million.
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If MLB.com’s positional rankings are accurate, it might be a long short season for the Red Sox. Only three Boston players are in the top 10 at their respective positions: shortstop Xander Bogaerts, outfielder J.D. Martinez and reliever Brandon Workman.
The Yankees by contrast have seven players in the top 10 — outfielders Giancarlo Stanton, Aaron Hicks, Brett Gardner, and Aaron Judge, starting pitcher Gerrit Cole and relievers Aroldis Chapman and Adam Ottavino.
It’s no surprise, therefore, that the Yankees are 4-1 to win the World Series, and the Red Sox are 40-1.
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SQUIBBERS: The silence is deafening regarding the upcoming UMass football season. Losing a $1.9 million payday at Auburn will hurt, but the state legislature will make it right. This one’s not on AD Ryan Bamford. … A year ago, Manny Machado was a highly prized free agent and today he’s the 10th best third baseman in the majors. No wonder the Yankees stayed away after he said, “I’m not the type that’s going to be Johnny Hustle.” … Caddy John Blair reports that Dave Boginni won his fifth club championship at Shelter Harbor in Charlestown, R.I., last weekend. … “Glenn from Greenfield” sounded a lot like Glenn Brown calling into Felger & Mazz on Monday. Was that really you, Mr. Met? … Bryson DeChambeau’s tee shot off the first tee at Muirfield Village last week traveled 423 yards over a dog leg and landed 54 yards from the green. Yeah sure, I can do that. … Ads for Ageless Core Energy remind me of the New Yorker cartoon of the fat guy with a cigarette dangling from his mouth who can’t find his 007 pajamas. … Happy 80th birthday to Northfield’s Sam Richardson, who recently celebrated his 57th anniversary with wife Barbara. … The summer song of ’67 aired on Sirius-XM recently and the lyrics reminded me of our current crisis. “There was a virus going ’round, Papa caught it and he died last spring.” If you said it was “Ode to Billy Joe” by Bobby Gentry, you’re a winner. … We love our dogs as much as our baseball heroes, which is why last week’s item about Carlton Fisk caught the attention of reader Brad Councilman. “Sleeping on the floor next to me,” he emailed, “is a dog named Pudge.”
Chip Ainsworth is an award-winning columnist who has penned his observations about sports for four decades in the Pioneer Valley. He can be reached at chipjet95@yahoo.com
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