WCMessenger.com: East Texas boxer found success in and out of ring

Most of us are amazed at the huge sums of money professional athletes make today. Twenty million dollars for a season is not unheard of in any of the big three professional sports - football, basketball and baseball.

There are Alex Rodriguez, Bret Favre, LeBron James and scores of others who are multimillionaires because they do something well with a ball, bat or glove.

But for at least four decades professional boxing provided the biggest payday for athletes, particularly for championship bouts. Boxing has sort of fallen by the wayside now that the big three sports are paying their performers so well, plus the "manly art" has fallen prey to some disenchantment in the public eye.

However, one boxing promotion and event stands out in my mind for how the amount of money caught the public's fancy and for one of the characters involved.

The event was a heavyweight title bout between champion Floyd Patterson and Roy Harris, on Aug. 18, 1958 in Los Angeles. Patterson retained his crown with a technical knockout (TKO) in the 12th round.

Roy Harris was the intriguing character involved and the amount of money was a then-princely $100,000 for the challenger. Harris' background, his hometown and his rise through the ranks as a legitimate contender for the heavyweight title are the stuff of legends and fairy tales.

Harris is from Cut-N-Shoot, Texas, a place between Conroe and Cleveland with a rough-and-tumble reputation. There are several stories how the town got its name. One story says it came from a remark made during a 1912 dispute over the town's only church and who would be allowed to preach in it. Another says it came from the 1930s Conroe oilfield when, it was said, if a stranger stood still in town for a minute, he'd be cut and if he ran he'd be shot.

This boxing championship contender Harris grew up in an unpainted, country-style home common in the East Texas Pineywoods of that day. That added to the mystique with the national sports press.

Prior to becoming a heavyweight contender, Harris finished public school in Conroe, then graduated from Sam Houston State Teachers College in Huntsville where I first became acquainted with him. During his school years, he honed his boxing skills through the amateur Golden Gloves program. Upon graduating from Sam Houston in December 1955, he turned pro and began headlining fight cards in Houston (most of which I saw as a sportswriter for the Sam Houston student newspaper). After a couple of years of fighting his way up the ranks, Harris was undefeated in more than 20 fights and Patterson was forced to face him.

Then came all the high-visibility build-up to the fight.

Harris was guaranteed the $100,000 purse for the fight. That figure was so astounding, especially to Cut-N-Shoot and to Conroe, which was the county seat and the retail and financial center for that area, that the First National Bank in Conroe set up a display in its lobby of $100,000 in small bills in a glass case.

Cut-N-Shoot and Conroe were featured in Harris' cover story by a then-four-year-old magazine, Sports Illustrated.

Then, there were stories of one of Harris' uncles being offended by some Patterson fan's remark at a social gathering in a Los Angeles hotel and took the offending fan and dangled him by his ankles out of a 20th story window.

Harris was a shy, easy-going guy until you ruffled his feathers. Then, he could hit hard enough to peel the skin off someone's jaw. Some say he wasn't as mean as some other members of his family or he might have beaten Patterson and been heavyweight champion.

He fought a few more fights after the title bout with Patterson, finishing with a 31-5 record, and retired. Unlike so many professional athletes, Harris was successful in life after boxing. He took that $100,000 and whatever else he made from boxing and went into the real estate business in Conroe and Cut-N-Shoot. Ultimately, he was elected Montgomery County clerk, an office he held for 28 years. In 1972 he got his law degree. He began practicing law after leaving public office and is still active.

Willis Webb is a retired community editor-publisher of more than 50 years. He can be reached by email at wwebb@wildblue.net