Ray ‘Boom Boom’ Mancini pulls no punches at Cannock event

The former Lightweight Champion of the World kept an audience of more than 250 at Cannock’s Bar Sport captivated in his second ‘evening with…’ show at the town’s boxing mecca in the last two years. This time he appeared alongside former undisputed lightweight world champion 'The Tartan Legend' Ken Buchanan MBE.

The Italian American from Ohio thrilled pugilist fans of the 1980s with his exciting whirlwind knockouts which saw him involved in some of the most memorable contests of his era.

“I knew my fighting style was not made for a long career, I was fan friendly, a pressure fighter,” He said.

While it is also argued he inadvertently brought about one of the most significant changes in the sport’s history when championship fights were reduced from 15 rounds to 12 in the years after he stopped Korean Deuk Koo Kim in the 14th round of their 1982 bout. Kim died four days later after suffering severe brain damage.

But Mancini disputes the theory. He said: “After that fight, because it was prime time, Saturday afternoon, there was outrage. It was a very vicious and savage fight. But you have to understand the last 15 round fight was in 1988, six years later. That was a TV decision. There is no medical evidence to say there are more serious injuries or fatalities in the last three rounds. It is like reducing a 26-mile marathon to 20 miles because runners hit the wall in the last miles.”

As well as the tragic death of Kim the contest took its toll on Mancini.

“I went into depression,” he said. “It bothered me that why him not me. But after I thought I won the world title for a reason. I was blessed.

“But that is the day I lost the love for the game.”

With Telford’s own former super middleweight world champion Richie Woodhall posing the questions much of the early talk focused around Mancini’s father Lenny whose own promising boxing career was cut short after he was wounded in the Second World War.

It is he who Ray inherited the moniker ‘Boom Boom’ from and whom was his sole inspiration for getting into the sport.

He said: “My father would have, could have, should have, been the world champion if it wasn’t for World War II.

“Ever since I was a little boy I wanted to win the world championship for my father. People used to say ‘that’s cute’, but there was nothing else I wanted to do. I was blessed to achieve that."

Mancini challenged the great Alexis Arguello for the world title in October 1981 only to be stopped in the 14th round. But in May 1982 he would realise his dream becoming the WBA Lightweight World Champion after destroying Arturo Frias in Las Vegas in the first round.

He would make several successful defences either side of the tragic Kim fight and then numerous unsuccessful attempts to regain it when he lost it to Linvingstone Bramble in 1984. Mancini retired in 1992 by which time he had already embarked on an acting career appearing in films such as The Dirty Dozen: The Fatal Mission in 1988.

But it was his retelling of the time he auditioned for the role of Mr Pink in Quentin Tarantino’s cult hit Reservoir Dogs which gained the loudest cheer of the night.

Mancini said he passed two auditions only for the director to tell him he could not have the part because he was ‘Ray Boom Boom Mancini’ adding he was only invited back because Tarantino was ‘waiting for him to fail’.

“I felt like knocking the table over, I said you have only brought me back to make a fool out of me, and thought I will punch you so you p*** blood for a month,” Mancini recollected.

He added: “Then I realised I am in a room full of people and in the entertainment business you can get a reputation for being crazy. So I turned around and said ‘how was that for acting’.”

Ray Mancini was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2015.