Greg Page, former heavyweight champ, dead at 50
At one time, however fleeting it was, Greg Page stood atop the boxing world when he defeated South African Gerrie Coetzee (pronounced Coat-zeeah) at the Sun City Resort in Bophutatswana in 1984 at the age of 26. But his victory was like much of his career - mired in controversy and doubt. It turns out that his knockout of Coetzee occurred 48 seconds after the round should have ended. After that, he held the title for a mere five months, losing to forgettable Tony Tubbs. That victory was the apogee of a meteoric career which came to an end this past Monday. Page passed away from the lingering effects of a serious brain injury at his home in Louisville, Kentucky.
Page came from a boxing family where, as he put it in a 1982 interview, his father took him to the gym at the age of 5 and told him, “Son, you have two choices. Either you box or you box.” He “chose” boxing even though he preferred basketball. At 17, he reached the National Golden Gloves semifinals in the heavyweight division and then, the next year, scored as a runner-up in the final championship bout. It was in that 17th year that he actually sparred with fellow Louisville native Muhammad Ali for three rounds, prompting the Great One to exclaim that “that boy hit me so hard it jarred my kinfolks in Africa.” That prompted some boxing mavens to look on Page as the next Ali.
In 1977 and ‘78, he won the Amateur Athletic Union heavyweight championship, concluding his amateur career with a sparkling record of 94 wins and 11 losses. He turned pro and knocked out his first professional opponent and afterward ran his record to 11-0. He advanced to the U.S. Boxing Association title with a TKO victory over Stan Ward and seemed poised to take the crown away from WBC heavyweight champion ”Terrible” Tim Witherspoon but when he came into the ring in March 1984, he had let himself go, weighing in at an unhealthy 240 pounds. In a fight he should have won, he showed to many a suspect will to win. Even Witherspoon noted that something was missing from Page when he said “If he had heart, he would have taken me out.”
And during all this time, Page supported his posse, a group of some 20 to 25 wanna-bees, stragglers, panhandlers, bums and hangers-on. It was costing him a fortune. And then began the legion of personal problems which would haunt him until his eventual dying day - a constant battle with his weight, disputes with promoters, a myriad of injuries and a slate of questionable opponents. After his 1985 loss to Tubbs, he dropped off the radar screen, fighting only six times between the years 1986 to 1996.
But he eventually began to fight anew and after beating up on another roster of unforgettable opponents, came up against Robert Davis, an undefeated fighter, in a bout staged in New York City. Page lost by a technical knockout in the 8th round. By this time, he was also working as a painter in a factory to supplement his meager income. Then came a fight against Dale Crowe on the night of March 9, 2001.
The fight was staged in a nightclub in Erlanger, Kentucky, just south of the Kentucky-Ohio state line. The conditions were dire. Decaying dead rats littered a corner of Page’s dressing room. The fight was touted as the championship of Kentucky. Page was beaten, sustaining serious brain damage in the process. He was never able to care for himself again after the fight, having been rendered paralyzed on his left side with garbled speech. He filed suit against Kentucky boxing authorities, alleging that there had been inadequate medical equipment and provisions available at the last fight in the Erlanger nightclub. In 2007, his wife agreed to a settlement with the state of Kentucky for $1.2 million. Although the state admitted no wrongdoing, it did agree to rename the amended regulations to professional boxing as the “Greg Page Safety Initiative.” Among the changes was a provision for the presence of a licensed physician to conduct a thorough physical examination of all fighters after bouts.