Twenty five years ago today, one of the fiercest wars in boxing history was waged in Las Vegas. Just one day after Aaron Pryor-Alexis Arguello I, Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini defended his WBA lightweight championship with a fourteenth-round knockout of Duk Koo Kim of South Korea. The fight was shown on national television, and just a few days later, Kim died of brain injuries suffered during the fight. Neither Mancini nor the sport was ever the same afterwards, and in the coming years, championship fights were shortened to twelve rounds. Mancini seemed to lose his aggression after that. He suffered publicly with the guilt but always spoke eloquently about it over the years. He has gracefully grown into an elder statesman for the sport, and was in attendance for a symbolic passing of the Youngstown, Ohio torch to Kelly Pavlik, who joined Mancini on the champions roll by winning the world middleweight championship in September. Mancini still looks great. Boxingtalk remembers Duk Koo Kim, who embodied the warrior spirit all boxing fans admire, and we salute Ray Mancini for the class and grace he has exhibited under tragic circumstances. Kevin Iole and Ron Borges have both written excellent articles about this event, available on yahoo! and espn's sites respectively.
