Prizefighting: End of the Street

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"Call me a come-in fighter. Call me a counterpuncher. Call me anything you want," said Featherweight Davey Moore, 29. "You really want to know what I am? I'm a street fighter, man, the best you ever saw."

Even after he won the featherweight championship of the world from Nigeria's Hogan Bassey in 1959, diminutive (5 ft. 3 in., 126 lbs.) Davey Moore liked most to boast of his boyhood reputation as the best fist-foot-knee-and-thumb fighter ever produced by Kiefer Junior High School in Springfield. Ohio. Son of a Negro clergyman, Moore was a professional of sorts by the time he was seven, fighting in impromptu preliminaries in Springfield's Memorial Hall and scrambling for coins tossed into the ring. Officially turning pro in 1953, he seemed only a so-so boxer until 1957, when he won 14 straight fights and the featherweight championship.

Davey Moore fought for only one thing —money—and he fought often. He gave Bassey a rematch, won that, and during the next four years he fought 22 times. "I ain't fightin' for no high ideals," he said. "I'm a hungry fighter, man, very hungry." Last week in Los Angeles, Champion Moore took on one more challenger, Cuban Refugee Urtiminio ("Sugar") Ramos, 23, undefeated in 43 straight fights. Moore was cocky. "This is a business," he said, "just like any other business."

But from the start it was bad. In the fifth round, Moore lost his mouthpiece, was cut inside his mouth. In the tenth, Ramos ripped off a left that dropped him to one knee. Moore popped up, ran into a storm of punches, fell again. At the count of five, he lurched to his feet, staggered across the ring, and sprawled over the ropes. With that, his manager asked the referee to stop the fight.

In his dressing room afterward, Moore told reporters: "I'd like to fight Ramos again." Then he seemed to fall asleep. He arrived at the hospital in a deep coma. Doctors diagnosed "severe contusions to the brain stem," listed his chances of survival "extremely poor."