[professordp]

You'll have to bear with me a little on this one since I'm going back in my memory more than forty years ago.

Back in the late 1960s, Al Certo converted an old movie house in our community into a boxing arena with cards featuring local New Jersey talent. One night I saw a card that headlined Chuck "Bayonne Bleeder" Wepner versus "Showboat" Clay Thomas. Chuck won by way of a thrid round TKO.

I recall Thomas as a stocky, somewhat flabby, African-American with an unkempt Afo who just sort of shuffled slowly around the ring. For the first two rounds, Wepner seemed to be carrying him. Early in the third, Thomas tagged Chuck with a decent hook. Wepner then went to work on him until referee Harold Valan called a halt with about a minute left. Thus the Showboat was sunk.

After the match I spoke to Certo who informed me that Thomas was a "ring veteran" who had fought Ernie Terrell. Al was and is a very nice guy. What he didn't tell me was that Terrell knocked the Showboat cold in one round when they met in 1960 at Chicago Stadium!

A native of Paterson, NJ (I'll bet he was pals with Mel Turnbow!), Thomas bounced around the small venues in New Jersey, New York City, and New England as an undercard fighter for a decade. He even had a few fights in Texas as well.

Beyond Wepner and Terrell, the only familiar names on his record were Marion Connor, Jimmy Dupree, and Sonny Banks, all of whom defeated him.

From the looks of things, the Showboat was actually a light heavy who had problems managing his weight, and as the years went by, you sort of get the impression that he didn't work very hard on this issue.

Just as a final note, the fight I saw was actually the Showboat's last. Now that's something that I can tell the grand children!