In March of 1958, Curtis Cokes got to see his first professional boxing match- for $120. That’s not what he paid. It’s what he made.
“The first professional fight I saw, I was in it,” says the fifty-one-year-old former world welterweight boxing champion of his first bout, a sixth-round victory against Manuel Gonzales. “I got paid $75 for the fight and a $45 bonus for making it a good one.”
Cokes, who retired from professional boxing in 1973, lives in relative obscurity considering his record of a hundred wins- thirty-seven by knockout-and fourteen losses. Of course, Cokes was one of many black boxers who were barred from the bright lights and big money of Golden Gloves competition in the years preceding the civil rights movement. In 1966, when he again whipped Gonzales to claim the world welterweight title, he earned just $12,000, a paltry sum by today’s standards.
“Boxing is a big joke these days, but it’s making bigger money,” scoffs Cokes, head-faking a punching bag at the Pike Boxing Club in East Dallas, where for the past three years he has trained young fighters for the same Golden Gloves competition that once shunned him and his race. “Nowadays, it’s who”s the most promotable and bankable. When I fought, we didn’t get the hype like fighters do now.”
Cokes’s career brought few big fights or large purses, but he used his modest fame and fortune to his advantage. In 1967 he used a bus he owned to transport black Texas Instruments employees to work. “Getting to work was a task for many of them because they lived so far away,” remembers Cokes. “They rode that bus for two years until it got wrecked.”
In 1972 Hollywood called. Actually it was the late film director John Huston, who personally telephoned Cokes to offer him a part in Fa! City, a low-budget flick starring Stacy Keach and Jeff Bridges. The movie was about a prize fighter trying to make it to the big time, and Huston pegged Cokes not for the part of the fighter, but as a ladies’ man who eventually stole Keach’s girl.
Today Cokes manages about eighteen professional fighters, including one who is currently ranked and another that Cokes expects will get a title shot next year. When the Dallas Park and Recreation Department asked Cokes to train its Golden Gloves team, he accepted.
“I think sports helps kids,” says Cokes. “They learn quickly that they have to stay in school in order to keep coming here. So if they’re in school most of the day, and then come here to train, they’re too tired at the end of the day to fool around with somebody’s hubcaps or mess with drugs.”
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