Joe Hipp Update

Joe "The Boss" Hipp still has it.  The following excerpts are from the Flathead Beacon newspaper in Kalispell, Montana.  The article, entitled "UPDATE: Browning Boxing Legend Joe Hipp Returns to the Hometown Ring" by Dillon Tabish.  The photo is also from the Flathead Beacon.  The link to the entire article is below. 
By Dillion Tabish, Flathead Beacon, July 14, 2012:

Former world champion Joe Hipp returned to the boxing ring in his hometown last weekend for the first time in seven years.

Hipp won in the fifth round with a TKO against Harry Funmaker in Browning on July 14. Hipp hiked his lifetime record to 44-7 with 30 knockouts. It was his first fight since 2005. Known during his career as "The Boss," Hipp was the first Native American to fight for a world heavyweight championship and also win one. In 1995, he fought Bruce Seldon for the WBA title at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. He won the WBF title in 1999. Hipp was inducted into the American Indian Athletic Hall of Fame in 2009.

"You just never get tired of boxing," he said during weigh-ins at Burton Boxing in Kalispell on July 13. "And my grandkids wanted to see me fight."

Browning's Joe Hipp holding championship belts he won throughout his professional boxing career. - Dillon Tabish/Flathead Beacon

http://www.flatheadbeacon.com/articles/article/vegas_quality_boxing_event_comes_to_browning/28771#.UGmR-uk_GMY.mailto

"The Old Man And The Sea" of Cortez

 

What do Ernest Hemingway and I have in common?  We are both wearing the exact same style of fishing shorts in these two pictures.  Check out the shorts. That's Hemingway on a fishing boat some place in the Caribbean, and that's  me with the captain of a small fishing boat in the Sea of Cortez, just out of Cabo San Lucas. Or, could it have been in the Arctic Ocean, looking at the way the captain is dressed for cold weather? 

In June we went to Cabo San Lucas for a wedding.  Some of the groom's family made arrangements to go fishing and invited me.  I'd long thought about going "deep sea sport fishing" but never did.  This was a chance.  That, plus the romantic idea of joining the likes of writer and "tough guy" Ernest Hemingway. 

 


Cabo San Lucas is certainly beautiful and warm, with blue sky and water and lots of sport fishing.  Cabo San Lucas is located on the southern tip of Mexico's Baja California Peninsula, on the same latitude as Hawaii.  It's approximately 1,000 miles south of San Diego.  It is now definitely a tourist destination. 


 


 
Although the Sea of Cortez is named after Spaniard Captain  Hernan Cortez, his navigator Fancisco de Ulloa is credited with discovering Cabo San Lucas in 1537.  It has a history of pirates raiding Spanish ships taking treasures back to Spain.  A fort was established there and the area was opened up to further exploration.  In 1730 a Jesuit mission was built.  The biggest obstacle to development was lack of a steady water supply.

That's one of the things I wondered about when I got there-- Where does the fresh water come from?  I have since learned that the

Laguna Mountains to the north produce about 30 inches of rain each year from the clouds.  The rain feeds into the underground Rio San Jose and accumulates underground and in nearby estuaries.  The stored water is then treated for consumption.  At any rate, the fresh water problem has been solved in Cabo San Lucas.

Staring at the surf we noticed flying manta rays. There were quite a few of them close to shore.  For game, people fish for all types of marlin, sailfish, and sometimes sword fish.  There are also dorado (mahi mahi), yellowfin tuna and several types of shark.  We were going to fish for the tuna.

 

We were picked up on the beach by a couple of small boats and then we bought some live bait from another small boat anchored out.  You could see many local residents relied upon tourists fishing, just as many worked in the tourist hotels.

We started fishing for the yellowfin tuna, and we caught some before too long.  Apprently, that's not always the case.   While the water had a little bit of chop to it, particularly where the Sea of Cortez collided with the Pacific Ocean, it wasn't so bad that I got sick-- only pretty queasy. 

After catching a few tuna, the chop was getting to us gringos and we decided to turn back to town.  But, on the way the captain spotted a marlin and asked if "we" wanted to catch it.  We said okay.  This is the way it actually worked-- the captain got his engine running again (it had broken down and we had bobbed up and down in the waves for a while as he tried to fix it, breathing the gasoline fumes, which didn't help a whole lot), quickly got in front of the swimming marlin, got a stiff pole, and then baited a hook and threw it over in front of the marlin (while I steered the boat for him, thankful for having something to hold on to).  Sure enough, the marlin grabbed the bait and was hooked-- all thanks to el capitan.



Sam, the other adult in our small fishing party, had caught and reeled in marlins on other trips to Cabo, so he asked if I wanted to reel in this one.  Wanting to save face and act like Ernest Hemingway, I agreed.  That's when I started identifying with "The Old Man and the Sea."  It didn't take days to reel in the marlin, but it still seemed like a long time to this queasy, thristy (my mouth no longer had any spit in it) ol' man.  I never felt like giving up-- but maybe secretly hoped the marlin would break loose and free me. 

Hemingway's short story "The Old Man and the Sea" was written by Hemingway in Cuba in 1951 and published in 1952.  Apparently, it was his last major work of fiction produced and published in his lifetime.  Born in 1899, Hemingway commited suicide in Ketchum, Idaho in 1961, at the age of 61.  Anyway, "The Old Man and the Sea"  is one of Hemingway's most famous works.  It was made into a Hollywood movie starring Spencer Tracy in 1958, and into a television movie starring Anthony Quinn in 1990. 

"The Old Man and the Sea" centers upon Santiago, a Cuban fisherman who has had a string of bad luck.  One day he goes out and finally catches a fish, hooking a monster marlin.  Santiago respects the marlin and battles it for a couple of days in a test of wills, holding on while being pulled by the marlin out to sea.   Santiago finally wins and the too-big-to-get-into-the-boat marlin is tied to the side of the small fishing skiff as Santiago returns to shore.  Of course, sharks attack and eat the marlin, so Santiago returns to port with only the large skeleton tied to his small boat.  But, at least all the townspeople see that he his luck had returned and he had caught a very large fish.  He's not a "has-been" yet. 

In the Hollywood movie, Spencer Tracy at times almost looks possessed.  Note that in the pictures, Spencer Tracy and I are wearing almost the exact same shirt.  The similarities don't end there, however.  While there is no picture of me, battling the marlin for probably less than 20 minutes, with the exact same possessed expression of a desparate man who had been fighting a fish for days, I'm sure it was there on my face to be seen.  (Instead of a fishing line, imagine pulling on a five-mile long drinking straw with the other end in a tall, cool Diet Coke on ice.  That's what I was imagining). 

Would I do it again?  Well, probably not-- although later in the month a couple of friends and I went out on the Pacific Ocean off the Washington coast, fishing for salmon, which will be the subject of another post. 

Land Ho!

Hood Canal "Deadliest Catch"

"Deadliest Catch" might be the best show on television. Those guys are amazing. So, last May when I was invited to go shrimping on Hood Canal, it conjured up all sorts of thoughts-- mostly that it would be as close as I'll ever get to being like those crabbers in Alaska (which isn't very close . . . . I know).

Hood Canal and the rest of Puget Sound were created about 13,000 years ago, during the Late Pleistocene by a great ice sheet. The Marmes Man was probably walking around the ice sheet about that time. (Watch for a future post on the Marmes Man and Dry Falls).


Hood Canal was named by the Captain George Vancouver in 1792, when he was making a detailed survey of the Coast of British Columbia. His ships were named the Discovery and Chatham. The United States Board on Geographic Names decided on "Hood Canal" as the official name in 1932.













http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hood_Canal

We were going to catch the "spotted" or "spot" shrimp or, officially, pandalus platyceros. The spotted shrimp (or prawn) is found from Alaska to Southern California, as well as in the Sea of Japan and Korea Straight. Spot shrimp are the largest species of shrimp in Puget Sound and can reach more than nine inches in length, excluding the antennae. They are reddish-brown and deep-pink in color and are recognized by the white spots on their body. They are most commonly found 300 feet deep and below on sandy and rocky floors.
















Interestingly, spot prawns are "protandric hermaphroditic" meaning that each individual initially matures as a male and then passes through a transition stage to become a female. Spot prawns usually live for about 4 years, starting their lives as males and maturing at one year of age. They function as mature males for 2 years and then transform into females in their final year of life. Females might mate only once. http://www.bcseafoodonline.com/files/spot_prawn.html

The season is only open a couple of days each year. Due to extremely high catch rates in 2010, the Hood Canal quota was attained in four days, so no additional days of fishing were allowed in 2010. There are a lot of technical and scientific papers about spot shrimp on the internet, particularly because they are harvested commercially, too. There are also some websites for sport shrimpers, which I suppose is what we were called that afternoon. Still, we had to have a shellfish license from Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, and our limit was 80 shrimp per person.

The shrimp pots had a yellow buoy marked with a name and contact information and 250-350 feet of rope. Inside the pot is a mesh bait container. The bait can be made of different things, as shrimp are omnivores and will feed on most fishy things-- fish guts and meat sprayed with fish oil for additional scent, scented pellets, or the favored canned cat food.

For many years the cat food “Puss’n Boots” was a popular and effective choice because it was soaked in fish oil. "If it isn't 'Puss n'Boots' cat food you're not fishing. I usually use cat food, with addition ingredients with fish scraps as hanging bait. You need the odor to draw the shrimp in and the hanging bait to keep them in."-- James Schufreider. http://www.gamefishin.com/wa/features/shirmp.htm

The company has gone out of business. It was made by Coast Fishing Co. of South California, which was bought out by Quaker Oats and later sold to Del Monte. It was later discontinued due to lack of sales. I don't know what "Puss'n Boots" smelled like, as we always fed our dog "Friskies."














We put the shrimp pots over the side of the boat and let them soak-- just like they do in "Deadliest Catch." They were down about 300 feet. Gloves are good for hauling the pots, but we had a winch aboard.

That was it-- shrimping on Hood Canal in the spirit of all the great fishermen.

(Captain Phil Harris 1956-2010)

Joe "The Boss" Hipp

I saw heavyweight boxer Joe Hipp break Mike Cohen’s jaw in 1991. I remember Cohen bent over the canvas spitting out a tooth. I was sitting at ringside at the Executive Inn in Fife Washington as the guest of boxing promoter Brian Halquist. Hipp was 29 for that fight. Later that evening I got to meet him and shake his hand.

(That’s Halquist on the left of the black-and-white photo below. Halquist had been working on a couple of projects involving convicted triple-killer Charles Rodman Campbell and “Seattle Arsonist” Paul Keller, people I’d represented at one time).

Joe Hipp was a professional boxer between 1987 and 2005 (an 18-year career)-- although he is scheduled to come out of retirement to fight on March 7, 2009 in Billings Montana (at the age of 47). In his professional career Hipp has won 43 (29 by KO) and lost 7 (6 by KO) with no draws.

Hipp was born in Montana in 1962 and fought out of Yakima Washington. He is a member of the Blackfoot Tribe. Joe's mother was a Blackfoot and Joe was born on a reservation. Hipp began his professional career in 1987 at the age of 25. He was the first man of Native-American ancestry to box for a version of the heavyweight championship when he fought Bruce Seldon in Las Vegas in 1995.

In 1992 Joe Hipp fought Tommy Morrison (called “The Duke" because he was a grandnephew of Hollywood star John Wayne) in one of the most remembered fights of Morrison's career. Suffering from what was later discovered to be a broken hand and broken jaw, Morrison had to rally late in the fight to score a technical knockout in the ninth round. Hipp described the fight as “A great war! I lost the first 3 rounds when he was trying his best to take me out. But then I thought-- if I'm gonna lose, I'm not gonna lose backing up-- so I stood and traded with him. But the ref stopped it. It was hard fight-- I broke his jaw, he broke my cheek bone.”

Morrison was in the 1990 Movie Rocky V with Sylvester Stallone. In 1993 he fought for the WBO (World Boxing Organization) heavyweight title against legend George Foreman (who was making a comeback) and won that 12-round decision.

Hipp became a favorite and was referred to as "The Boss" by his loyal fans. In 1994 he captured the NABF (North American Boxing Federation) heavyweight title with a points win over Alex Garcia. That gave Hipp a shot at WBA (World Boxing Association) heavyweight champ Bruce Seldon.

Hipp relinquished his own NABF title (held 1994-1995) in order to challenge Bruce Seldon for the WBA title. The 1995 title bout was on the under card of the Mike Tyson v. Peter McNeeley fight, which was Tyson’s first fight after being released from prison for rape. The fight was stopped in the 10th round by the referee after Hipp had massive swelling and bleeding on his face. Hipp and others felt the Seldon fight was another bad stoppage.

Basically, if Hipp was standing upright he wanted to keep fighting. He didn’t want to be pulled out of a fight simply because his sight was being affected by swelling around his eyes. His bravery and willingness to grit his teeth and take the pain were pure Hipp.

Joe Hipp has also spent a lot of time throughout his career going around working and talking to troubled kids. He’s helped raise money for the non-profit All Nations Foundation out of Puyallup Washington. (In 2000 an anonymous arsonist burned Hipp’s Yakima house to the ground. He has no idea who deliberately torched his home. Not even his cat survived the blaze). It’s reported that in December 2005 Hipp was a FEMA worker at the Hurricane Katrina disaster. He joined other Blackfeet who were called upon due to their experience in wildfires and search and rescue missions. In 2007 Hipp was working for his former manager Ray Frye at a Seattle area sweeping company. He’s also co-owned a small construction company.

Joe Hipp is scheduled to come out of retirement to fight March 7, 2009 in Billings Montana with something called the CBA heavyweight title on the line (Carolina Boxing Association?). He’s billed as “Indian Joe.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Hipp
http://www.indianz.com/board/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=35738
http://www.insideboxing.com/Local_Scene/North%20Carolina/local_boxing_news_and_informatio.htm

"Seattle Arsonist" Paul Keller (in glasses) and triple-murderer Charles Rodman Campbell (in custody)--

Harry "Kid" Matthews

Beginning in 1964 my family was living in Everett. Later, I got my hands on a used 1963 Chevrolet Corvair. It had four cylinders. Well, there's not much a guy can do to "soup up" a Corvair. That is-- except maybe get louder exhaust pipes. But pipes never go on easily. A guy might have to have some modifications done by a welder. So, that's what I did. I found a welding shop in Everett.




I told my Dad about my plans and he said "That guy was a professional boxer." Huh? "Harry 'Kid' Matthews."





Sure enough, the welder said he was Harry "Kid" Matthews. He said little more than that. He simply fixed the exhaust. I paid him $10 or so. He wrote a receipt. I should have kept it.

Before WWII Matthews came from Idaho and ended up in the Seattle area, where he established himself as a respectable "main event" fighter. He was a contender in the middleweight division. Then he joined the US Army and didn't box again until 1946. Despite winning regularly after the war, Matthews was unable to make much progress with his career.

Meanwhile, Jack Hurley had managed fighters in Chicago in the 1930s, and also promoted fights for the Chicago Colesium in the 1940s. He eventually came to the Seattle area and set up a long residence at the downtown Olympic Hotel.




In 1949 Hurley discovered Harry "Kid" Matthews. Hurley refined Matthews's style and used his cunning public relation skills to build up Matthews. Matthhews appeared on the October 1951 cover of "The Ring" boxing magazine.

Hurley was known as a perfectionist and would drill his fighters to do exactly what he expected of them. As a result, knowledgable people could tell a Hurley-trained fighter from others. http://www.boxrec.com/media/index.php/Harry_(Kid)_Matthews





Hurley kept Matthews busy in the Northwest in 1950 before sending him off to New York City in 1951. In July 1952, Matthews was matched against heavyweight Rocky Marciano in Yankee Stadium. After winning the first round in the eyes of most, he was knocked out by Marciano in the second round.

After that Harry "Kid" Matthews fought primarily in the Northwest. He retired in 1956 with a respectable career (1937 - 1956) record of 90 wins (KO 61), 7 losses (KO 3) and 6 draws. http://www.boxrec.com/list_bouts.php?human_id=012220&cat=boxer&pageID=1

After his boxing career ended, Matthews owned and operated a welding shop in Everett, Washington. He also began training Everett Heavyweight Ibar Arrington 1978. Born in 1922, he died in Everett in 2003 at age 81.

Gerry Lindgren

Gerry Lindren was born in Spokane, Washington in 1946, and he may still be considered as having been the best high school long distance runner in the United States of all time.

In 1964, when he was a senior at Spokane's Rogers High School, Lindgren ran 5000 meters in 13:44 (min:sec), setting a US high school record that remained unbroken for 40 years. Another record he established was his time of 8:40 for an indoor 2-mile race, which remains the fastest US 2-mile time ever run indoors .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerry_Lindgren

The City of Spokane was especially proud of Gerry Lindgren.

On July 25, 1964, when he was 18, Gerry Lindgren outran two experienced Russian runners to win the 10,000 meter event in the US-USSR Track Meet in Los Angeles, California. I remember sitting in the family car at the side of the road listening to the race over the car radio with my folks. What a thrill it was that Spokane's Gerry Lindgren had beaten the Russians! It's been reported that Senator Robert Kennedy was in the stands that day.

Lindgren later attended Washington State University in Pullman Washington, majoring in political science. While at WSU Lindgren won 11 NCAA Championships.

The following information is gleaned from an interesting and detailed November 27, 2005 article by Greg Bishop, Seattle Times staff reporter, titled "The Longest Run: The Story of Gerry Lindgren," which may be found at--

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/sports/2002648977_lindgren27.html

It seems that Lindgren had obstacles to overcome as a child-- he was small and bullied in school; Gerry saw himself as a skinny "whimp" with a high squeaky voice; his alcoholic father was physically abusive to the entire family; and Gerry had once entertained thoughts of suicide.

Gerry also had obstacles to overcome as a runner and as an Olympic competitor-- a sprained ankle in 1964; an inflamed Achilles tendon in 1968; a car that hit him while training for the 1972 Olympics in Munich; and even a police bullet which he claims creased his head.

Strangely and without explanation, Lindgren's wife woke up one day in 1980 and found a note on the kitchen table which simply said "Get a divorce. Sell the business." Gerry moved to Hawaii where he still lives and coaches runners. He's written a book about his life and running, but the book doesn't mention his three children he never got to know-- the three kids he never calls when he returns to the Puget Sound area. Rather, Lindgren "has told reporters they don't exist."

Gerry Lindgren, who held national high school records in the 1,500 meters, 3,000 meters, mile, 2 miles and 3 miles-- the skinny underdog who beat he powerful Russians-- was truly Spokane's favorite son.

A guy can only wonder and hope it all works out in the end.

Coach Dean Hebert has posted that when Lindgren left in 1980, it was actually the second time he ran. "He appears to be a tortured soul. [But] in any event there is no doubt that runners such as he, Steve Prefontaine, Frank Shorter, Jim Ryun and others ushered in the running boom of the 1970s." http://coachdeanhebert.wordpress.com/2008/01/15/gerry-lindgrens-book-on-running/