The night I arrived in Las Vegas in my 1996 visit there, I stayed at the Plaza Hotel. (I’ve mentioned this particular time in this blog previously.) One of things I decided to do that night was visit the other hotels that made up the Fremont Street Experience, then a newly built canopied area of casinos that made up the downtown portion of Las Vegas.
Visiting the Las Vegas Club brought an awkward experience. A former boxer had been hired as a greeter, and I shook hands with him. Now, at that time in my life I followed boxing pretty religiously, but I had NO idea who the heck that guy was. I can still remember that he was an African-American man who wore a purple bandana under his chin. The file cabinet of my mind recalled the menagerie of heavyweight champions during the 1980’s, thanks to the proliferation of boxing organizations that wanted their own “world” champions.
Tony Tubbs? Pinklon Thomas? Tim Witherspoon? John Tate? Greg Page? Perhaps a champ at a lower weight class? Every name I could think of drew a blank.
I felt kind of bad that I didn’t know that former boxer’s name. Still can’t place it all these years later.
A Slice Of Big Pauly 