Boxing
Teddy Atlas
Teddy Atlas, whose boxing career was cut short by injury, trained world champions Mike Tyson, Barry McGuigan, Simon Brown and Michael Moorer, who he famously cajoled into defeating Evander Holyfield. While training fighters and serving as ESPN’s lead boxing analyst, Atlas founded the Dr. Theodore Atlas Foundation, a grassroots philanthropic organization helping Islanders in need, in his father’s name.(Read more...)
Tony Canzoneri
Tony Canzoneri, a five-time world boxing champion – winning titles as a featherweight, lightweight and junior-welterweight – was among the best pound-for-pound fighters in his prime, which coincided with the height of the fight game’s 1930s popularity. Canzoneri fought 18 world champions and six Hall of Famers on his way to a 141-24-10 record that propelled him into the World Boxing Hall of Fame, the International Hall of Fame, and the Ring Magazine Hall of (Read more...)
Frankie Genaro
Frankie Genaro, born Frank DiGennara, the 1920 Olympic flyweight champion and two-time world flyweight champion as a professional, is the only Staten Islander to win an individual Olympic gold medal. He won his first professional title in 1928, lost a unification bout for the NBA and WBU titles, won them back, and fought title defenses in New York, Toronto, London, Paris and Barcelona. Ranked No. 3 all-time among flyweights by Ring Magazine, he’s in the (Read more...)
Gabe Perillo
Gabe Perillo, a 1944 112-pound Navy boxing champion who studied art on the G.I. Bill, combined his love of the two disciplines to become one of the nation’s renowned sports artists. Perillo painted 18 covers for Ring magazine, and his portraits were a staple of ESPN’s “Sports Century” and “50 Greatest Athletes” series. But he was best known on Staten Island for his “Fuzzy Professor” illustrations of local sports figures in the Staten Island Register.(Read more...)