Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 30, 1993 TAG: 9305300180
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: D8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From Associated Press reports
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Conn died at a Veterans Affairs hospital in the city where he grew up. VA spokesman David Cowgill said Conn had lived at the hospital for several years.
Conn held the light heavyweight title, but it was the fight with Louis in June 1941 for which he became part of boxing lore.
Conn was leading Louis eight rounds to four when he made the mistake that was to haunt him for the rest of his life. He tried to slug it out with champion. Louis knocked him out in the 13th round.
"I couldn't knock out anybody," Conn recalled in 1987. "And I tried to knock out Joe Louis."
A rematch was arranged almost immediately, but before the fight could be held, Conn met another opponent who slowed his return to the ring. A longstanding feud between Conn and his father-in-law, a former boxer named Jimmy Smith, flared up when Conn and his wife, Mary Louise, took their newly christened child to the Smith home.
Smith took a swing at Conn and the younger man retaliated with a blow to Smith's head. Conn was left with a broken left hand.
After the hand healed, but before the Louis match could be rescheduled, both Conn and Louis were inducted into the Army during World War II. In a rematch after the war, Louis knocked out Conn in the eighth round.
Conn won 63 fights, lost 11 and fought one draw from 1935 until 1948. He was the light heavyweight champion from July 1938 until May 1941.
In another sports death:
Bobby Joe Green, one of the NFL's leading punters during his 14-year career with Pittsburgh and Chicago, died of a heart attack at his home Friday in Gainesville, Fla. He was 57.
"He really was one of the great athletes," said Don Deal, a University of Florida teammate. "When he first walked on campus you knew he was going to be a superstar."
The Texas native played two seasons with the Pittsburgh Steelers before joining the Chicago Bears for the next 12. In 1961, he averaged 47 yards on 73 punts, an average that remains as one of the 10 best NFL history. Green was a member of George Halas' NFL champion Bears in 1963.
He left the NFL at the end of the 1973 season, was the Gators' kicking coach from 1979-89 and ran a specialty advertising business for the past four years.
Keywords:
FOOTBALL
by CNB