The modern International Boxing Hall of Fame (IBHOF), located in Canastota, New York, United States, honors boxers, trainers and other contributors to the sport worldwide. The International Boxing Hall of Fame is one of two recognized international boxing halls of fame, with the other being the World Boxing Hall of Fame.
The first Boxing Hall of Fame was sponsored by Ring magazine and located for decades at the offices of the Madison Square Garden in New York City. However, in 1990, as a consequence of an initiative by Ed Brophy to honor Canastota's world boxing champions, Carmen Basilio and Basilio's nephew, Billy Backus, the village of Canastota inaugurated the new museum, which showcases boxing's rich history. Multi-award winning artist Richard T. Slone was named their official artist of the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1997 and remains so to this day.
There are ceremonies conducted every year to honor the inductees and the ceremonies are attended by many former world boxing champions, boxing celebrities and Hollywood celebrities each year. Professional boxers have to wait five years after retirement to be eligible for election into the Hall of Fame. Inductions are handled by members of the Boxing Writers Association of America and an international panel of boxing historians. Each year inductees are selected in five different categories:
- Modern: Retired boxers whose last bout was no earlier than 1943.
- Old Timer: Boxers whose last bout was no earlier than 1893 and no later than 1943.
- Old Timer: Boxers whose last bout was in or prior to 1892.
- Observers: Journalists, historians, writers and artists.
- Non-Participant: People who made contributions to the sport of boxing apart from their roles as boxers or observers.
On December 7, 2010, the Hall of Fame announced its Class of 2011. Living inductees include heavyweight champion "Iron" Mike Tyson (USA), three-division champion Julio César Chávez (Mexico), light welterweight champion Kostya Tszyu (Russia/Australia), trainer Ignacio "Nacho" Beristain (Mexico), and referee Joe Cortez (Puerto Rico). Posthumous honorees are: bantamweight contender Memphis Pal Moore (USA), light heavyweight champion Jack Root (USA), and welterweight and middleweight contender Dave Shade (USA) in the Old-Timer Category; broadcaster Harry Carpenter (UK) in the Observer Category; John Gully (UK) in the Pioneer Category; and promoter A.F. Bettinson in the Non Participant Category.
Famous quotes containing the words boxing, hall and/or fame:
“I can entertain the proposition that life is a metaphor for boxing—for one of those bouts that go on and on, round following round, jabs, missed punches, clinches, nothing determined, again the bell and again and you and your opponent so evenly matched it’s impossible not to see that your opponent is you.... Life is like boxing in many unsettling respects. But boxing is only like boxing.”
—Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)
“Having children can smooth the relationship, too. Mother and daughter are now equals. That is hard to imagine, even harder to accept, for among other things, it means realizing that your own mother felt this way, too—unsure of herself, weak in the knees, terrified about what in the world to do with you. It means accepting that she was tired, inept, sometimes stupid; that she, too, sat in the dark at 2:00 A.M. with a child shrieking across the hall and no clue to the child’s trouble.”
—Anna Quindlen (20th century)
“To anybody who can hold the Present at its worth without being inappreciative of the Past, it may be forgiven, if to such an one the solitary old hulk at Portsmouth, Nelson’s Victory, seems to float there, not alone as the decaying monument of a fame incorruptible, but also as a poetic approach, softened by its picturesqueness, to the Monitors and yet mightier hulls of the European ironclads.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)