{"id":368259,"date":"2025-08-23T22:20:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-23T22:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/368259\/"},"modified":"2025-08-23T22:20:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-23T22:20:09","slug":"boxing-lifer-don-elbaum-was-a-one-of-a-kind-gem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/368259\/","title":{"rendered":"Boxing lifer Don Elbaum was a one-of-a-kind gem"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Don Elbaum, one of the all-time Runyan-esque characters, lighter-weights boxer with a flattened nose as proof, boxing promoter, Boxing Hall of Famer and manufacturer of wild ideas, died last week at 94.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d call him \u201cIf,\u201d but not for his dreamy what-if? side, but for the two letters in the word if. In his case \u201cif\u201d stood for \u201cinsufficient funds.\u201d But he knew I was a soft touch, so he\u2019d put the bite on me. He suggested that I could profit because he\u2019d pay me back \u2014 fat chance \u2014 while I could refund my check to him as a work expense.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But he was worth the time and every dime. Sometimes he slept in the penthouse suite, other times in the bus station. Or police station. He was right out of central casting for Million Dollar Movie boxing flicks in black and white.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And every time he called there was a story.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Don Elbaum, one of the all-time Runyan-esque characters, lighter-weights boxer with a flattened nose as proof, boxing promoter,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":368260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[1935,128897,44802,79,70635,24395,87808,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-368259","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-equal-time","10":"tag-new-york-mets","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-sports-columnists","13":"tag-sports-media","14":"tag-sports-plus","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115080411537440625","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}