LAS VEGAS – Michael Katz had a way as the most polarizing boxing writer of his era of captivating the sport’s audience during the week of a big fight here on The Strip.

It was only fitting then that the cantankerous wordsmith made the boxing world take notice one last time as David Benavidez and David Morrell Jr. prepared for their pay-per-view fight Saturday night at T-Mobile Arena. Katz, 86, died Monday night in Brooklyn, where he resided in an assisted care facility.

The death of the longtime boxing writer for the New York Times and New York Daily News was revealed Tuesday.

Katz – remembered for wearing a beret, bushy beard and a neck brace – wielded a cane and considerable influence in the boxing industry during an age when newspapers vociferously covered the brutal business of boxing among promotional rivals Bob Arum, late Main Events founder Dan Duva and Don King as much as such superstars as Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield, Riddick Bowe, Julio Cesar Chavez, Roberto Duran, Marvin Hagler, Tommy Hearns, Sugar Ray Leonard, Pernell Whitaker and Oscar De La Hoya. A copy editor at The New York Times who had covered auto racing for The Paris Tribune, Katz established his legacy as a boxing beat writer and columnist in the biggest media market in the United States.

Katz was famously sued by Arum for defamation, but he was known almost as much for squabbles with fellow boxing writers. Though opinionated and prone to confrontation, Katz also had a unique understanding of boxers, which endeared him to many of them.

Katz was fondly remembered by colleague and friend Tim Smith on Tuesday as one of the most colorful characters in an often-wacky world full of them. His informative, biting boxing columns in the Daily News were widely considered required reading during the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s.

His writing career earned Katz induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in June 2012.

“I followed him as the boxing writer at the Daily News,” Smith, Premier Boxing Champions’ communications director since 2015, told The Ring. “Those were some big shoes to fill. I don’t know if I ever really filled ‘em, but you know, he was one of a kind. I don’t think there’s gonna be another Michael Katz. I don’t think there’s gonna be another boxing writer as good, as colorful, as insightful as he was. He’s definitely gonna be missed.

“You know, he rubbed a lotta people the wrong way. He was a curmudgeon. A lot of people might say he was a misanthrope. But he was a funny guy. You went to dinner with him and he could regale you with many great stories from his time in France, working at The Paris Tribune, covering auto racing and covering boxing. I liked the guy.”

Smith maintained a friendship with Katz after he moved from Manhattan to Las Vegas once he retired from full-time boxing writing in the early 2000s.

Katz was a pioneer of sorts in that he was the first prominent boxing writer to leave a newspaper job for a website during the Internet’s infancy when he joined the staff of HouseofBoxing.com, which became MaxBoxing.com. He wrote for various websites thereafter in lesser roles.

Mark Kriegel, an analyst for ESPN’s boxing broadcasts, was a general sports columnist for the New York Daily News and New York Post who considered Katz a mentor and a friend. Kriegel took calls on the sports desk at The New York Times in the fall of 1985, when Katz left for the Daily News.

Kriegel fondly recalled Katz calling him “a motherf---er,” a term of endearment toward those that knew him well.

“He was the Pope,” Kriegel said of Katz’s standing among numerous talented boxing writers of that time. “That’s what Wally [Matthews] used to call him. He was an incredibly graceful writer and you could see it in his copy at The Times. I was a kid. I didn’t know anything, but I could still tell there was something about this guy. I used to love it when he yelled at me. I swear to God. I used to love it when that motherf---er yelled at me. He was a natural-born columnist.

“Hard-drinking, hard-partying, but once he quit smoking cigarettes, it was like he became so puritanical. He’d bitch at you. You know how tight that press box is [at ringside]. You’re elbow to elbow. There’s no other press box like that in sports. I’d have a Merit cigarette there, ready to go, and he’d just be cursing at me the whole f---ing time. I wanted to write a story about him being the last angry man. We could use a few f---ing more of him.”

Katz was predeceased by his wife, Marilyn, and his daughter, Moorea, who died of cancer in August 2021. Marylin Katz died of cancer more than three decades before her daughter.

Michael Katz is survived by a granddaughter.