Tim Puller Dead at Age 52

Timothy Puller died on May 29 at the age of 52. The 6'6" heavyweight contender fought as "The Hebrew Hammer."

Puller was born on June 30, 1969 in Israel. His dad was Yemeni and his mom was a Holocaust survivor from the Netherlands. As an adult, Tim donned a tattoo of the Star of David and barbed wire on his left arm. "The star represents my mom," he told Rick Warner of the AP in 1996, "and the barbed wire represents the concentration camps. I don't want anyone to forget what happened during the war."

At 18, after graduating high school, he moved to Philadelphia in the U.S. Puller had no amateur career and learned his trade through sparring. In 1988, he moved to San Francisco and soon migrated over to Las Vegas. In 1990, he turned pro.

"I want to show Jews can fight," Tim told Warner in '96. He won his first six fights, half by KO. He avenged his first loss and on December 3, 1994 he fought for a minor sanctioning body's vacant heavyweight world title belt against Sherman Griffin. Puller stopped Griffin in the eighth to win the strap, but never defended the title.

He went into a 1995 fight with undefeated prospect Chris Byrd (11-0) sporting a record of 13-2. Stopped in the fifth, the Hebrew Hammer then fell to Tim Witherspoon and Lou Saverese, both second round TKOs. About the losses, he told Ira Berkow of The New York Times, "They were learning experiences."

Puller used the jab like a big man should, but his dearth of amateur experience contributed to his lack of fluidity in the ring. The massive man sure was intimidating though. He wore earrings and liked to show off his massive biceps. But there was another side to Tim. He told Berkow he read books "to keep my mind sharp, and to know what's going on in the world." He spoke Hebrew, Dutch, and English.

After a string of six wins against lesser opponents, he battled James "Quick" Tillis and pulled off the best win of his career on October 16, 1999. Tim had given away nearly 50 pounds to Tillis. But a stoppage loss to the much smaller and less experienced Marvin Hunt in his next bout essentially ended his career. He came back 13 years later, but lost that fight and finished with a record of 20-7 with 11 KOs. He was stopped five times.

Around the end of his career in 2000, he married. The couple had two children. Puller spent his post-boxing career in the auto industry in the Seattle, Washington area managing loans. In March of 2019, Tim shared a picture of him and his son on social media. With the picture, he wrote, "I miss my best friend."

Three months earlier, Tim's 16 year old son had taken a gun from a friend's apartment in an apparent attempt to impress a girl. Then, tragedy struck. Tim and his wife filed a missing person's report. When their son was found two weeks later, he was arrested. He pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter and was sentenced to serve ten years for, as the presiding judge described, "an act of stupidity and youthfulness." The judge concluded, "He certainly did not want to kill his friend."

The day after his son turned 17 years old, Tim wrote, "You spend your whole life as a father, as a parent, trying to do the best for your children. But you never know what life's going to bring. I love and miss him so much. Hold your kids tight, give them an extra hug and kiss this morning, tell them how much you love them because you never know what life brings you tomorrow."

By 2020, visits with his son became virtual because of covid-19. In September of 2021, Tim was hospitalized and flirted with death. He pulled through for the moment.

"Boxing took him all over the world," his wife of 22 years wrote after his death. "I know the last few years have been hard to watch, and I am confident this has something to do with the impact of boxing at 19 years old. Brain damage affected his health in ways that didn't manifest until later in his life." Tim's brain was donated to the Keene Lab at the University of Washington shortly after his death.

May Timothy's memory be a blessing.

David Kaminsky to Fight on October 8

Super middleweight southpaw David Kaminsky is scheduled to make his comeback on October 8 at Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, California. Kaminsky is scheduled to appear on the undercard of the Sebastian Fundora-Carlos Ocampo fight, which will air on Showtime.

Kaminsky (6-1, 3 KOs) will have been out of the ring for nearly 28 months when October 8th rolls around. The California resident will have turned 22 years old by then. An Israeli, David has had several fights dates this past spring and summer, but unfortunately, they have fallen through.

Dignity Health Sports Park, formerly known as StubHub Center, is an outdoor stadium completed in 2003 that has witnessed some classic fights in recent years, including Timothy Bradley-Ruslan Provodnikov, two of the four amazing fights in the Israel Vazquez-Rafael Marquez tetralogy, and the first of the bruising Brandon Rios-Mike Alvarado trilogy just to name a few. Hopefully, Kaminsky avoids the level of punishment the men in those fights endured.

No opponent has yet been announced.

A Podcast about Boxing and the Holocaust

During the Holocaust, Nazis sometimes pitted concentration camp inmates against one another in boxing matches for their own enjoyment. The loser was often killed. In a fantastic podcast called Holocaust Histories, Jonathan Bonder explores not only these fights, but also the lives of the boxers and the wider historical context.

In each episode a boxer's life is a starting point to delve deeper into his country's history during the Shoah. The subject of the first episode, Victor Perez, is from Tunisia, which harbors its own little-known history during that period. Thus far the podcast has covered Greece, Italy, Germany, and Poland.

Bonder first became interested in these horrific Holocaust bouts through Reinhart Kleist's 2014 graphic novel The Boxer about Harry Haft, a Holocaust survivor and professional boxer who was the subject of a eponymous book by Haft's son and a recent HBO film called The Survivor. Bonder told Jacob Gurvis of the Jewish Telegraph Agency, “I don’t think enough people know about a lot of these people’s stories, like I didn’t. I'm Jewish, I am a sports fanatic, and I didn’t know about this."

Knowledge of the tragedy fades as the years pass. "I think Holocaust discussion and education is important," Bonder told The Jewish Boxing Blog, "as are the individuals and their stories."

Noting that there aren't many high-quality podcasts about the Holocaust, Bonder's hope is to bring a "cinematic" feel to each episode. "If it’s more entertaining then ultimately it will be more educational," he told Gurvis. "The message will get across better."

His professional work as a sound editor contributes to the podcast's success. Haunting music fuses with speeches and news clips to create an intense yet solemn mood. While any discussion of the Holocaust is just too difficult for many, Bonder's steady narration makes it eminently listenable. By placing the boxers within the context of historical events, he treats the boxers and these death matches, not as bizarre sideshows, but with the proper level of importance they deserve. These bouts are yet another prime example of Nazi cruelty, but also of the human spirit's unconquerable will to survive.

While Jewish boxers such as Perez, Pacifico Di Consiglio, Leone Efrati, Eric Seelig, Salomo Aroucho, Jacko Razon and others have been covered over the course of the first six episodes, Holocaust Histories also includes non-Jewish victims as well. Featured in their own episodes have been Johann Trollmann, a Sinti, and Teddy Pietrzykowski, a Polish dissident. Jews were the primary target of Nazi vilification, but it's important to remember other groups suffered as well.

Personally, Bonder has had an on-again-off-again love affair with boxing. "My love of boxing started around the Holyfield-Tyson fights," he told The JBB, "and as a Canadian, I was a big fan of Lennox Lewis around that boxing-era." Lewis retired in 2003.

He then mentioned the 2013 Ring Magazine Fight of the Year. "Bradley vs. Provodnikov renewed my love for the sport." Seemingly as an act of penance for a dubious split decision victory over Manny Pacquiao nine months earlier, Timothy Bradley decided to exchange fire with brawler Ruslan Provodnikov when he could have assuredly boxed his way to victory. By the middle rounds, both men were on the verge of being stopped. Out on his feet when the final bell sounded, Bradley, who would suffer from headaches for weeks after the fight, earned a slim unanimous decision victory.

Uniquely suited to do a podcast about boxing and the Holocaust, Jonathan Bonder produces an excellent series in Holocaust Histories. It's an invaluable resource, one that has greatly added to The JBB's own Holocaust boxing page. For fans of Jewish boxing, Holocaust Histories is an essential listen.