A celebrated trainer, much-loved broadcaster and boxing icon – Emanuel Steward left an everlasting mark on the sport he loved.
Late on Thursday night, the game suffered a great tragedy when it was confirmed this proud son of Detroit, and founder of the world-famous Kronk gym, had passed away, aged 68.
Although a phenomenal amateur fighter in his own right, it was as a trainer he would find global acclaim. Nobody trained more world champions than ‘Manny’ Steward. He trained 43.
In 1980, Hilmer Kenty was his first, and Detroit’s first since the great Joe Louis. Kenty’s success and the emergence of Tommy Hearns heralded an era when Steward’s Kronk headquarters would become the most-feared boxing production line on the planet.
Hearns grew into the sport’s first four-weight world champion under the watchful eye of the master trainer, while the Motor City Cobra’s super-fights against Hagler, Leonard and Duran are among the greatest ever witnessed.
Wilfred Benitez, Julio Cesar Chavez, Evander Holyfield, Gerald McClellan, James Toney, Oscar De La Hoya, Lennox Lewis and Wladimir Klitschko are just some of the others who benefited from Steward’s wisdom.
Particularly the last two, and biggest men on that list, owe him a debt of gratitude. Both coming off the back of devastating losses – Lewis to Oliver McCall and Klitschko to Corrie Sanders – Steward remodelled their styles and took both men to greater heights.
Steward’s roll call reads like a who’s who of modern greats; and in 1997 he was rewarded with a place alongside many of them as an inductee to the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
By then he was about to begin lending his unsurpassable knowledge to American broadcaster HBO, calling fights with that unmistakable soothing tone from ringside. In that role he endeared himself to a whole new generation of fight fans.
Few who heard it could forget his commentary on the first war between Arturo Gatti and Micky Ward, particularly the ferocious ninth round where Steward was out of his seat, exhilaration propelling his sentences as he proclaimed it ‘the round of the century’.
That was a passion for boxing Steward never lost and was something that helped make him such a fantastic ambassador for a sport that is never without its detractors.
He was one of boxing’s good guys and, forgetting the elite for a moment, just think of the many thousands of lives he changed for the better by opening the doors of his gyms to troubled young people.
Steward’s illness was a quick one and there is comfort in his sister’s words that he wasn’t in pain in his final hours. Yet with boxing having already lost Joe Frazier and Angelo Dundee in the past 12 months, it seems time is catching up with some of the faces of its golden era.
Steward was a figurehead of the sport for almost 50 years, and as former heavyweight king Lewis aptly summarised: “This has been a tragic year for the boxing world, and in Manny we’ve truly lost one of its crown jewels.”
* For breaking news, follow us on @Sport_360 or find us on Facebook.
