ALL THE DEVILS The LIFE and DEATH of TREVOR BERBICK
TREVOR BERBICK, who reigned briefly as the WBC heavyweight champion in 1986, left behind one of the strangest legacies in boxing history: for being the last man Muhammad Ali faced in the ring, in a shambolic promotion exiled to the Bahamas; for being the first title-fight victim of Mike Tyson (in which Berbick suffered such a spectacular kayo loss that he became a permanent Youtube loadstone, like Baby Shark or Gangnam Style); for a bonkers parking lot melee with comebacking ex-champion Larry Holmes seen coast-coast on every sports newscast in America; for his savage murder in Jamaica, after years of scandalous headlines had made him a laughing stock across the globe.
These grim footnotes are hardly surprising when one considers that Berbick was an entrenched member of “The Lost Generation” of heavyweights, a motley, miserable, and morose collection of overweight and undermotivated malcontents who would eventually disintegrate in various blowouts of marijuana, cocaine, Colt 45, late-night revels, Twinkies and Whoppers.
Unlike his Lost Generation stablemates, however, Berbick rarely entered the ring out of condition. His difficulties between the ropes had nothing to do with binge eating, womanising, cocaine, or liquor. After all, Berbick would steer himself back home to peruse his dog-eared bible after training sessions, break out into impromptu hymns, and spend most of his Sundays at church, where he would often preach, energetically, at the pulpit. Long before George Foreman made his miraculous return in the late 1980s, Trevor Berbick had been billed as
