THEY called him Mr Kates.
Such was the respect that perennial light-heavyweight contender Richie Kates had, it did not matter if you were in boxing, a work colleague in the New Jersey prison system or one of the youngsters he tried to teach the ways of the world to, he was referred to as Mr Kates.
Boxing obituaries will normally be about who fought who, what happened and what a fighter’s legacy was. And while Richie Kates was a terrific fighter who only just – by the narrowest of margins – failed to crack the big time, those who knew him measured him by the type of man he was rather than the brilliant ring craftsman he had been throughout the 1970s and into the early 1980s.
Kates, from Bridgeton, NJ, was born to parents who were sharecroppers in Savannah, Georgia, and was only a few months old when the family moved to New Jersey.
He had to learn how to fight early in life because he had 11 brothers and sisters, and reckoned he had about 70 amateur bouts, losing just five. He did menial jobs to make ends meet and worked for everything he had.
Aged 18, he made $50 for his first four-rounder in Baltimore and always joked that he gave his cutman $15 of that.
“I was a hard trainer. I always took it seriously,” he said.
As a young man, Kates went to
