"I lost an old friend Don Elbaum today, as did the sport of boxing, which just became less interesting and fun," wrote Teddy Atlas upon hearing the news that the eccentric Hall of Fame boxing promoter died yesterday at the age of 93. Elbaum, who promoted boxing events for nearly 70 years, began his legendary career at a time when the International Boxing Club ruled the roost.
Born on August 6, 1932 in Cincinnati, Ohio to a Belgian immigrant named Max and a New Yorker named Sally, Donald Elbaum grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania from the age of 6. Sally was a concert pianist, and Don claimed he was a child prodigy on the piano, first playing at four years old. His uncle Danny Greenstein took him to his first boxing match, and Don fell in love. He claimed to have met the original editor of The Ring, Nat Fleischer, at the age of 13. A lightweight, Don fought numerous times as an amateur before he was shipped out to Korea.
While serving during the Korean war, Elbaum found his calling. He pitted American soldiers and Koreans in boxing matches. When he returned home to the U.S., he began promoting small shows in and around Erie. Elbaum represented both boxing's delightful irreverence and its foundational flaws.
He worked with all-time greats Muhammad Ali, Sonny Liston, Floyd Patterson, and Roberto Duran. "Sugar" Ray Robinson and Willie Pep too, although both were old enough to be grandfathers at the time. At an honorary dinner, he once presented Robinson with the very gloves Sugar had used in his pro debut... or so he said. Robinson was touched by the gesture until he saw the two gloves. Both were for left hands.
Elbaum occasionally filled in for no-shows on cards he promoted. When a doctor didn't turn up, he fooled the commission by sticking tongue depressors into the mouths of the fighters and deeming them physically fit to fight on his show. He also brought another outlandish future nonagenarian into boxing, an ex-felon named Don King. "And I've been apologizing to the world ever since," Elbaum explained.
A great storyteller, he often blurred the lines between fiction and reality. He hustled, fibbed, and worked hard at his craft. In one feature story, he acknowledged to a writer that he sometimes said he was 45 years old even though he was actually 49. In truth, he was almost 60 at the time. But he promoted thousands of shows, taking risks all the while. He put on nearly 200 shows at the Tropicana in Atlantic City and was elected to that city's boxing Hall of Fame.
In 2019, he was elected to the International Boxing Hall of Fame. It was the culmination of a colorful career. "He has a core of decency about him," Teddy Atlas said, "having done so many things on a shoestring, living out of a suitcase." The writer Jack Obermayer summed Elbaum up more succinctly, "The bum is a great man."
Paradoxically, Don Elbaum was the archetype of a crusty old amoral boxing promoter and yet he was one of a kind. May his memory be a blessing.
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