The Kansas City Chiefs were a slight favorite to win the Super Bowl on Sunday but Team Tampa would destroy K.C. in a boxing competition.
The Tampa area has produced many more top fighters than its Kansas City counterpart even though both are large metropolitan areas in terms of population, Tampa with around 3.2 million people and K.C. with 2.2 million.
Team Tampa (which includes those from neighboring St. Petersburg and Clearwater) is led by Hall of Famer Winky Wright and former welterweight titleholder Keith Thurman (Clearwater). Wright was born in Washington D.C but raised in St. Petersburg, where he continues to live.
Tampa also boasts former super middleweight beltholder Jeff Lacy (St. Petersburg), 1932 Olympic gold medalist Eddie Flynn (Tampa), two-time 130-pound title challenger David Santos (St. Petersburg) and 1940s heavyweight contender Tommy Gomez (Tampa), one of The Ring Magazine’s 100 hardest punchers.
The Tampa list doesn’t include Orlando, which is about an hour-and-15-minute drive due east. Former light heavyweight champ Antonio Tarver is among those from Orlando.
Kansas City (with includes Overland Park and Kansas City, Kansas)? Slim pickings.
Many top fighters were reared in Missouri but most were from St. Louis, which is 3½ hours away from Kansas City.
The best K.C. area product might’ve been Tommy Campbell, a top-rated lightweight in the 1940s and early 1950s who fought many of the best 135-pounders of his era. Doc Williams (K.C.) was a top light heavyweight in the 1940s and ’50s. And 154- and 160-pounder Tony Chiavererini (K.C.) was stopped by Sugar Ray Leonard and Wilfredo Benitez but outpointed Tampa-based Tony Licata, a good fighter in his prime.
Jackie Darthard is a tragic story. The talented middleweight, nicknamed the “Kansas City Slicker,” was a rising talent in the late 1940s when he died of injuries suffered in a fight with Bert Lytell. Darthard was only 18.
To be clear, the Kansas City area has produced some good fighters. The problem for K.C. is that their names aren’t nearly as well known the Tampa area products mentioned above.
Indeed, the Kansas Chiefs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers are evenly matched on the football field. Not so in the boxing ring.
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