Milwaukee fans of old-fashioned boxing -- the kind without kicking, rassling or Oriental fighting tricks -- haven't had much to cheer about for a long time. For the first half of the 20th century, both amateur and professional boxing were big on the local sports scene. The Sweet Science started dying out here in the 1960s, and since then has been pretty moribund. Every now and then, the patient jerks or sputters for a moment or two, but then resumes its ghostly sleep.
The man who kept local amateur boxing on life-support for the last 10 years by promoting occasional shows at State Fair and the Martin Luther King Center, died on Thursday. Al Moreland, 72, was a fixture on the local ring scene since he started the Al Moreland Boxing Club in 1964. He was born in Arkansas, did some fighting in the U.S. Air Force, and moved here in 1958.
Over the years, he trained amateur and professional boxers at Garfield Park, the Brooks-Braggs gym, and the King Center. For several years, he had his own gym at 2307 N. 34th, but it folded in 1994 for lack of funds.
Moreland's boxing program operated on the proverbial shoestring.
"I have the promotional knowledge, but not the promotional dollar," he once lamented.
One of his amateur cards was shortened when the padding under the shopworn ring canvas bunched up into a ball in the middle of the ring.
As a stringer for the Milwaukee Journal and later the Journal Sentinel, I covered most of Al's amateur cards and the pro ones he promoted in the early ‘90s. They were generally awful, especially when it came to starting on time and ending before deadline. Al once likened promoting a boxing show to baking a cake: "You got to get all your ingredients in the right order and start from the bottom up." He wasn't happy when I wrote that the result "sometimes more resembles slumgullion stew." Looking for press coverage for an upcoming card, Chef Moreland once vowed, "I done put the kitchen sink in this one."
For 20 years, he was Milwaukee's most prolific fight promoter, often going into personal debt to run his shows -- and usually threatening after every one to quit such an unprofitable business and return to his first love, baseball.
But he didn't because Moreland believed that boxing was the most feasible alternative to gang activity and drugs for kids. "I've seen it make a difference," he said.
Though he barely had enough equipment for his own program, Moreland often shipped gloves, headgear and other items to Africa for programs that were even needier than his.
His passing is another blow to a sport on the ropes.
