Tommy Morrison’s final headline was the saddest of all.
He’s like the rest of us that way: all too mortal.
Morrison died on Sunday night at the age of 44 — the same number of knockouts, incidentally, he had as a professional boxer. That just seems so Tommy Morrison: a simple number, 44, but it was everything he had, and all he could give.
Morrison’s short life did produce more headlines than most, but they were too often not the good kind.
I was lucky enough to be ringside for a few of Morrison’s fights — a couple of big ones, anyway, and then the really huge one. Upon hearing today’s news, here are a few recollections from those moments:
* Before the 2006 Oklahoma-Boise State Fiesta Bowl, the most impossibly shocking ending to a sporting event I’d ever witnessed was when Morrison was knocked out, beaten to a semi-conscious pulp, in less than three minutes by someone named Michael Bentt.
The Tulsa Convention Center was actually vibrating with excitement before that 1993 fight. Morrison had just beaten George Foreman — yeah, that George Foreman — to take the WBO crown and needed a tune-up before a $7 million payday with Lennox Lewis for the WBC title.
The championship fight against Lewis, of course, never happened, because Bentt — a journeyman fighter who never did anything of note before or since — simply shocked us all. (Lewis did knock out Morrison a few years later in a non-title bout.)
The city, the state, the entire region was trying to wrap its arms around the former state fair amateur and claim him as one of their own, boxing’s next “Great White Hope” being none other than an Oklahoma original. There was music and Harleys and cigars and tuxedos and models in short, shimmering skirts. There was HBO and smoke and lights, and cheers that filled your ears for a week.
But in the end, there was only Michael Bentt leaping into the arms of his trainers — seemingly every bit as surprised as the rest of us — and Tommy Morrison laying on the canvas with a bloodied mouth, his eyes inconclusively trying to focus on all those stunned faces in the crowd.
* In 1995, after Morrison had returned to championship form with six wins and a draw, he met up with No. 1 contender Donovan “Razor” Ruddock at Municipal Auditorium in downtown Kansas City. It was a classic brawl from the opening bell, the kind of fight Morrison lived for. But more than that, that fight showed a toughness and grit and resolve that most of us didn’t know Morrison had.
Ruddock caught Morrison with an uppercut to the chin in the first round, and Morrison went to his knees. It was a thunderous blow, harder than anything with which Bentt had hit Morrison. It looked like Morrison was headed for another prime-time meltdown.
Instead, Morrison regained himself and nearly put Ruddock down in the second round. Morrison got in trouble again in the sixth round, but countered with his signature punch — a left hook he seemingly launched from all the way back in Jay, Okla. — and put Ruddock on the canvas. Morrison then ended the fight with a furious and bloody flurry that pulverized Ruddock's face.
In the post-fight press conference, Morrison recognized me as a sports writer from Oklahoma, and while someone else was answering a question, he smiled a swollen smile at me and slowly nodded, as if assuring me he was back.
* Morrison flashed me a completely different look less than a year later during a press conference at the Southern Hills Marriott. That’s the day he revealed to the world that he had contracted HIV and that he was retiring from boxing.
Although Morrison officially fought three more times (at least one, in 2007, was called a "fake fight" by the Kansas City Star), that day in Tulsa ended his career. It was a stunning turn of events, a young, powerful athlete cut down in his prime just as it seemed he had the world on a string.
But the image that stays with me from that day isn’t of Morrison. It was that of his friend and promoter, Tony Holden, and the profound sadness on Holden’s face. It takes real pain, shocking and unfathomably deep, to wear that much sorrow.
Morrison supposedly was distantly related to John Wayne. He played the ring villain opposite Sylvester Stallone in “Rocky V”. He started boxing at age 10 and won “Toughman” contests against grownups when he was 13. He was 48-3-1 in the ring as a professional, though he fought hundreds of times.
But his final battle was unwinnable.
Tommy Morrison was a strong and courageous but flawed and tragic figure, a sports champion who was just a small-town guy, an Oklahoman we should never forget.
He lived too fast, and he died too young.
Follow John E. Hoover on Twitter.
PUT ON YOUR GAME FACE: Visit the Tulsa World's Sports Extra for complete coverage of OU, OSU, TU, high school sports and the OKC Thunder.
