Throwing punches for a good cause
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. >> Boxing will return to the Saratoga Springs City Center on Saturday, March 25, the site of one of the area’s most memorable televised fights. But, for the first time in his 60-year career, Uncle Sam Boxing Club creator Bob Miller won’t be in the ring, or in the corner. Instead, the boxing community is coming together to support the local legend who was injured in a car accident on Oct. 15.
Miller suffered a spinal cord injury and is fighting to regain mobility in his arms and upper body.
The event to raise funds for him is an amateur boxing show featuring the West Point Boxing team versus the Canadian Boxing team along with locals, including Albany’s Cody Zappone and Schuylerville’s Joe Barcia. The anticipated 17-bout show will benefit the Bob Miller Fund.
“Back in October I was on my way up to the hospital when Bob had his neck surgery up in Vermont and I was with his son, Shannon,
and I said ‘Shannon, we got to put something together,’” Dave Wojcicki, Miller’s close friend said at a press conference Monday morning at the Saratoga Spring City Center. “Bob works with a lot of Canadian guys, so I said we’ll do Canadian against the West Point fellas and Ray Barone from West Point is a great guy and he always brings guys that are ready to fight and then a lot of our local guys because it’s our region, I didn’t want to exclude them. We have Cody Zappone, three or four other guys, 17 to 18 bouts. It started as a snowball and ended up as an avalanche.”
Miller began boxing at age 13 and enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1963, boxing while in basic training and paratrooper school. He founded the Uncle Sam Boxing Club in Troy in 1972 and managed, trained area boxing contenders and champions along with being in the corner each time for his two sons, Shawn and Shannon Miller.
Shannon Miller faced Vinny Maddalone at the City Center in 2005 as part of ESPN’s Friday Night Fight series and was called by former Saratogian reporter and current ESPN boxing analyst Dan Rafael, “ESPN2s most dramatic fight and best heavyweight bout of the year,” and added it to his Top 10 fights of 2005.
When news of the accident reverberated throughout the boxing community, the often fractured parties clamored together to help out the Bob Miller Fund raise funds for a specialty van and motorized wheelchair.
“The emotion that the local boxing community all felt and the local boxing community, Tyrone (Jackson), Garrick (Johnson), other people will tell you we usually all don’t get along, but it’s like one big family, sometimes it’s a dysfunctional family, but it is a family,” Lisa Elovich, founder of Pugnacious Promotions, LLC said. “Everyone in the boxing community really cares about each other, so as you can imagine when the entire boxing community found about what happened to Bob, everybody was devastated and there was no way that we couldn’t do something to support him and everybody, individually, each boxing gym, the Albany Boxing Gym, Schenectady Boxing Gym, Saratoga, Andy Schott’s Boxing Gym, all wanted to work together to support Bob.”
Elovich had left the boxing world behind her, moving onto a new career as president of One With Life Tequila, LLC in Saratoga Springs, but she too came to the aid of the Miller’s in their time of need.
“I enjoyed working with the boxing community as the
founder of Pugnacious Promotions, it was probably the best thing I ever did in my life because there are no people like boxers,” Elovich said. “When people have a boxer’s heart it goes way beyond the boxing ring, it’s about having courage, it’s about having fortitude and putting everything out there on the line and boxing people are the best people that I have ever known. I was very sad when I left the boxing community to move onto other endeavors. I don’t plan on getting back in; this was something that I’m doing to help the Miller family because I have so much love and respect for Bob Miller.”
Saratoga Springs Chamber of Commerce president Todd Shimkus was on hand to support Saturday’s event.
“Saratoga Springs, here in Saratoga County in certainly a sport mecca for a number of different types of activates and boxing is certainly one of those,” Todd Shimkus said. “We really appreciate the opportunity to bring people to downtown Saratoga Springs to see this incredible event which also has such an important family component to it in supporting the boxing community.
“We are pushing this out there, we are trying to promote the fact that you can come and see some great amateur boxing here at the City Center this Saturday, it’s a great opportunity for people to come downtown and have a good time, to enjoy this great sport in this great community and we certainly hope people will do that.”
The expected 17-card event will include three expected female bouts, the two competing teams from West Point and Canada along with Zappone who is coming off a tough decision just two weeks ago and the hopeful successful return of Barcia after a one-year layoff due to injuries.
As part of the fundraising theme of Saturday’s boxing event, Melissa Miller and her family have worked with local businesses to provide several exciting raffle items including a round of golf for four from Saratoga National Golf Club and tickets to the New York Giants versus the Los Angeles Rams.
“Bringing it back here, boxing is the best therapy for Bob Miller right now,” Wojcicki said. “Helping with the matches, he’s going to stay as the president of our association, we’re going to put some tournaments together for other places, Bob’s not giving up, he’s still the ‘Bobfather of Boxing.’”
Tickets to the event are $20 in advance for general admission, $25 at the door with ringside seats $50 and dinner tables for six for $475. Tickets may be purchased at Three Vines Bistro, 32 Congress Street Plaza in Saratoga or by contacting Dave Wojcicki at 577-6945.