Boxing trainer Emanuel Steward, a member of the Boxing Hall of Fame who was considered the greatest of his generation as well as a goodwill ambassador for the sport, died Thursday, Yahoo Sports reports.
Steward, who was 68 years old, worked with the likes of ex-heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis and Oscar De La Hoya. No cause of death has been released.
… Steward was best known as the trainer who developed Thomas Hearns into one of the most fearsome fighters of his generation.
But Steward was also a master who was able to help fighters of all styles improve their games …
In addition to being a great trainer, he developed a reputation as an outstanding analyst on HBO. Steward's excitement about a good fight was palpable — boxing pundits will recall his famous exclamation at the end of the ninth round of the May 18, 2002, fight between Arturo Gatti and Micky Ward, "This should be the Round of the Century!" …
"He's going to be most known as one of the greatest trainers in the history of the sport," [close friend and HBO broadcast partner] Lampley said. "That's the central element of his identity. He's my best friend and it's on a personal level I have the most appreciation for him. But he is the man who groomed Thomas Hearns and who built an iconic inner city gym in the working class capital of America.
"What tells you a lot about the man he was is that he made a tremendous mark in his early days training what one would think was his natural constituency, black American fighters in the middle weight classes. But then he moved on and trained an English heavyweight champion, a Ukrainian heavyweight champion and an Irish middleweight. He was just spectacular."
Read more at Yahoo Sports.
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