Michael Katz, once one of the best and possibly the most influential boxing writer in America, died in an assisted living facility in Brooklyn on January 27 at age 85.

Katz was a visual mix between a Thomas Nast pen-and-ink drawing of Santa Claus and Karl Marx. Everyone in boxing recognized his short rotund frame, unkempt hair, and shaggy beard which disappeared into a neck collar worn to ease the pain caused by a long-ago automobile accident and spinal stenosis. On one occasion, he walked into a barber shop in Las Vegas for a haircut. The barber took one look at him and said, "Not here, buddy."

Mark Kriegel called his longtime friend's look "Hasidic psychedelic."

Rounding out his appearance, Katz walked with a cane, was rarely seen without a beret on his head, and wore the same sport jacket (which looked as though it needed to be dry-cleaned) every day. He was widely known for his scowl and reputation as a curmudgeon.

Katz was born in the South Bronx in 1939. His father owned a succession of small businesses including, at one time, a jelly donut factory. “The only thing I was ever truly great at,” Katz said years ago, “was putting jelly into jelly donuts. I did it for maybe three years. It’s called punching donuts, and I was the best jelly-donut puncher in New York, probably the world. If there had been a world championship for punching donuts, I would have won it.”

After graduating from high school, Katz enrolled as an engineering student at CCNY with the intention of becoming a chemical engineer. But he was sidetracked when he began writing sports for CCNY’s undergraduate student newspaper. “The minute I began,” he later reminisced, “I told myself, ‘This is what I want to do with my life.’”

Katz became Sports Editor and ultimately Editor-In-Chief of the paper, attending one hundred consecutive CCNY basketball games along the way. While still in college, he became a “stringer” covering CCNY sports for the New York Times, and worked nights as a copy boy for journalism’s “gray lady.”

Robert Lipsyte, who became a ground-breaking sports journalist in his own right, later recalled, "I was an established writer when Mike came to the Times as a copy boy, and I thought of him as a needy guy who smoked too much dope. We had one run in early on. He was supposed to get a piece of mine to the composing room on deadline. It was critical and he hadn't done it. I tracked him down. He was listening to music and smoking dope. I gave him hell. He apologized. And that bonded us in a strange sort of way. A lot of the kids who worked at the Times had an Ivy League swagger about them. Mike certainly didn't. And he was irascible even then, which I saw as a cover for a fat little guy in pain. I felt sorry for him and over time I became fond of him."

After college, Katz worked his way up the Times ladder from day clerk to news assistant and finally a sports-desk editor’s job. In 1966, he moved to Europe where he wrote articles for the Times and the International Herald Tribune. In 1972, he returned to the United States and the Times. His duties soon expanded to include writing a weekly motor sports column (he never learned how to drive) and covering other sports on a sporadic basis. “Eventually, they offered me the Yankees and Knicks,” he recalled. “But those beats involved too much traveling, so I turned them down. Then they offered me the Giants, and I said ‘yes’.”

Meanwhile, 1976 was a watershed year for boxing in America with the premiere of Rocky and the United States Olympic boxing team winning five gold medals in Montreal. That same year, Muhammad Ali fought Richard Dunn in Munich. Katz was in Europe on another assignment, and his editor asked him to cover the fight. After that, he wrote sidebar stories for Ali-Norton III and Ali-Shavers."

"Around that time," Katz later recalled, "Dave Anderson, who had a regular column and was also the paper’s main boxing writer, asked if I’d take some of the load off his shoulders. After that, it was just a matter of time until I became the paper’s fulltime boxing writer."

Being a boxing writer was very different in those days than it is now. Print was a powerful medium, and virtually every major newspaper in America had a writer on staff who specialized in the sweet science. They weren't necessarily great writers, but most of them were pretty good. And they weren't just reporters sitting in the press section. They were knowledgeable about boxing.

"It was a good time to be a boxing writer," Bernard Fernandez who covered the sport for the Philadelphia Daily News recalls. "There was a great group of guys like Jerry Izenberg, George Kimball, Ron Borges, Eddie Schuyler, and Katz who were following in the footsteps of writers like Red Smith and Jim Murray. We were a fraternity."

"It sounds like a cliche," Ron Borges (then the boxing beat writer for the Boston Globe) adds. "But it was an honor to be part of that group. In our tiny little part of the world, everybody knew who we were, and what we wrote had an impact on the sport. When there was a big fight, we were always there. We traveled all over the world - the Philippines, Zaire. Different personalities, all good at their job. And guys wrote real articles. It wasn't about tweeting."

Katz found a home and an extended family in boxing. He understood fighters and their mindset and cared about them. He was an old-school journalist who kept a sharp eye on what was happening inside the ring and also on what was going on in the back rooms of the sport. He was opinionated and judgmental, hated injustice, and didn't suffer fools gladly.

"Sometimes somebody will come to me," he noted. "They'll say, ‘You’ve got to write this; you’ve got to help me; we’re both in boxing.’ And I’ll say to him, ‘No, I’m not in boxing; I’m a newspaper guy.’"

Among the other thoughts that Katz uttered were:

* “I don’t really have a philosophy of writing. I just try to find out what’s happening and report it. I write what I find. I roll with the punches. I’m honest with people, so I’ve been able to develop good contacts. I don’t think I’m a great writer. But I can hold my own with most of the competition.”

* "There are some great people in boxing. Fighters, in particular, have a certain nobility about them."

* "If you want to write about fighters, go to the gyms. Stop fucking around at press conferences and go to the gyms and talk to the fighters and trainers there."

* "The only real sports in the world are boxing and horse racing. But you can corrupt people more easily than horses, so horse racing is more honest."

* "There are times when I get fed up with the bullshit and the way fighters are exploited, and I feel like walking away from it all. But when I’m covering a great fight - Leonard-Hearns, Pryor-Arguello, Holyfield-Tyson - you know which ones the great fights are -- I know in my heart that it’s an honor and a privilege to be at ringside writing about boxing."

Katz was happy at the New York Times. But in 1985, Vic Ziegel (one of his closest friends) was named Sports Editor for the New York Daily News and offered him a job with the dual roles of a once-a-week columnist and the paper's main boxing writer. The job promised more money and more freedom. So Mike took it.

New York at that time was far-and-away the most important media market in the world. Among boxing writers, Katz was the leader of the pack.

"I was intimidated when I first met him," Wally Matthews (then with Newsday) remembers. "I was a 26-year-old kid and he was Michael Katz. He was the ringleader of the crew. I used to call him The Pope. But he was one of the first guys to welcome me when I walked onto the beat. And I honestly believe that, if Katz hadn't given me his stamp of approval, none of the other big-name writers would have accepted me."

"I remember noticing his work when I was a kid," Mark Kriegel (later with the Daily News and now with ESPN) recalls. "There was always something in his writing that made it distinct. When I was in graduate school, one of my professors told me, 'Read this guy, Katz.' I met him in an elevator when I was a copy boy at the Times. He was gracious to me then. Later, when I started writing for the Daily News, he was a wonderful teacher and a generous one."

Jim Lampley is widely regarded as the greatest blow-by-blow commentator in the history of boxing.

"When I started calling boxing for ABC back in 1986," Lampley recounts, "one of the first things I was told by [producer] Alex Wallau was that it was critically important that I get on Michael Katz's good side. It wasn't just about what Katz might write. It was also about the influence that he had with other members of the boxing print media."

Hall of Fame trainer Teddy Atlas remembers that era and says, "Mike was around when every major newspaper had a real boxing writer. He was a good one. He took his job very seriously. If he thought you didn't deserve to be with the writers on press row, you had to stay away from him. He felt you had to earn that right. But I have to tell you something. I remember, one time, Katz threw a bottle of water at a writer he didn't think belonged in the press section and hit him in the back of the head. The bottle was pretty much empty and Katz had a weak arm. But let's be honest; that's not proper behavior."

Not proper behavior.

One heard that fairly often in connection with Katz. Impulse control was not his strong point.

Writers in the press section have been yelling at photographers leaning against the ring apron for a hundred years, telling them to keep their heads below the bottom ring rope so they don't obstruct the writers' view. But that's different from whacking a photographer in the head with a cane hard enough to raise a lump.

There were also times when Katz verged on being cruel.

"I didn't like him," Top Rank's Hall of Fame matchmaker Bruce Trampler says. "I thought he was a bully and an unpleasant surly guy who took cheap shots and tried to hurt people."

More ominously, Katz got into fist fights.

An article in the March 11, 1984, New York Times headlined "Times's Reporter Arrested at Fight" reads, "Michael Katz, a sports reporter for The New York Times, was arrested and charged with battery and disorderly conduct in Las Vegas after the Tim Witherspoon-Greg Page boxing match Friday night. The arresting officer, identified by the Las Vegas police as F. Figlia, said in his report that he heard an altercation behind him in the arena and, when he turned, he saw Mr. Katz strike another man on the shoulder. Officer Figlia, who was in plainclothes, said that he intervened and that Mr. Katz hit him on the lip. Mr. Katz said that he was trying to reach some boxing figures for interviews when a man he described as drunk punched him. Mr. Katz said that he punched back and that the plainclothes officer then punched him and wrestled him to the ground. Mr. Katz was released on his own recognizance and ordered to appear in court in Las Vegas next Friday."

That wasn't an isolated incident.

Jerry Eskenazi began working for the New York Times as a copy boy in 1959 and was with the paper for 45 years. He and Katz were lifelong friends.

"Mike was an anomaly." Eskenazi says. "He could be tender, particularly with his wife and daughter and granddaughter. He was kind-hearted with his friends. He was the best newspaperman I knew. He was an honest journalist. He was unafraid to challenge authority. I never had a problem with him. We never had cross words. I always liked being around him."

But Eskenazi was witness to the aftermath of one of Katz's many rages.

"It was in Las Vegas," Jerry recalls. "Sometime in the '80s, not the time that he was arrested. Mike was the last guy in the press room and the security guard wanted to close the room and Mike refused to leave. The guard tried to remove him and they got into a physical altercation. I visited Mike in the hospital afterward. He was in a hospital bed. There were bruises all over his face. He was all beaten up."

Then tragedy struck. In 1990, Mike's wife, Marilyn, died of cancer at age 37, leaving him with the responsibility of caring for their eight-year-old daughter, Moorea.

"I remember going to the funeral," promoter Artie Pelullo says. "I knew Mike fairly well and I liked him. He was always crotchety, but I was okay with that. His daughter was at the funeral - a little girl, cute as a button. I sat there in the church and I asked myself, 'What's going to happen to that little girl.' I felt very sorry for her. And I couldn't begin to imagine the burden that Katz had to carry because he was going to have to raise that child on his own."