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ALBANY — It’s not often you run into a former Marine whose side job for 10 years was boxing as a welterweight in Hawaii.
Meet Harrison “Young” Kennedy. He complied a 23-7 record from 1970-80.
Born in Blakely, Kennedy moved to Florida at an early age, joined the Marines and was stationed in Hawaii.
“I never moved back to Georgia,” the 71-year-old Kennedy said. “It’s been 42 years since I came back this way. My mother (Ella May) got sick and I came back to take care of her.”
Along the way he picked up the snappy nickname that would remain with him for the rest of his life.
“When I was working on a job with my brother, Lawrence, before I left to go into the Marines, because I was smaller than my brother, he called me ‘Young’ Kennedy, and the nickname stuck with me,” Kennedy said.
He spent 14 years in the Marine Corps, serving as a grunt with the 9th Battalion, 1st Marines in Vietnam. The unit was infamously known as “The Walking Dead” because it had the highest casualty rate of any U.S. Unit during the conflict.
“I was wounded and earned a Purple Heart, but I didn’t take it.” When asked why not, Kennedy stood, pulled up this shirt and displayed a round scar on his lower left side. Pointing to the spot, he said, “This is my Purple Heart and I always carry it with me.”
Kennedy recovered and was sent back to Hawaii, where he resumed boxing. That’s when he met Muhammad Ali
“I was boxing in the military in Hawaii and Ali came to Honolulu and that’s where I met him. We talked and got to know each other,” Kennedy said. “In 1974 he came back later and brought a team of boxers with him. He was in training to fight George Foreman in the ‘Rumble in the Jungle in Zaire.’
“After he left, I wrote a story about how he was going to beat George Foreman and I sent it to him. He wrote me back and said he was moved by my story. He called it a masterpiece. He told me the world was going to see the biggest upset it had ever seen. And he predicted it.”
The fight pitted Foreman, the undefeated heavyweight champion, against Ali, who had lost a split decision the year before to Ken Norton. Ali won by knockout in the eighth round.
Kennedy’s boxing career, however, was not on the same trajectory. He fought in Hawaii as a super welterweight from 1970-80 before finally hanging up his gloves with a 23-7 record. He never boxed outside of the state of Hawaii. During a decade of professional boxing, Kennedy’s largest purse was $10,000.
Kennedy said he got the boxing bug as a 12-year-old boy.
“There was police sergeant named Hernandez and he used come into the gym and he got me interested in boxing,” Kennedy said. “Society was a lot different back then, with the black and white thing. It made you want to believe in something. I began boxing professionally in 1970.
“I never will forget my first fight. I was junior middleweight and it was in the Honolulu International Center against against a big Japanese guy. I don’t remember his name but I wasn’t sure of myself and beat me by TKO in the second round. I learned from that fight,” Kennedy said. “We fought two more times later that year and I won both times. In Hawaii I fought a lot of Japanese, Mexicans and Koreans.
“Some of my hardest fights were against the Mexicans. Those guys were rough. Most of those guys had been around a long time and they knew what they were doing. I got to hand it to them.”
Kennedy got out of boxing in 1980 and attended Honolulu Community College for two years.
“I had a chance to get this good job under the Veterans Readjustment Program,” he said. “I worked overseas on Midway and the Marshall Islands. I worked on those missile ranges providing protection for the missile batteries.”
He later worked on special convoy security escorts in Iraq and Kuwait.
Now that his mother has passed away, he said, he’ll soon be leaving his home state again.
“I’ve lived a full, good life,” Kennedy said. “Now I’m going back to Hawaii.”
The Army West Point Boxing team hosts the 65th Annual Brigade Boxing Open to compete for who will be representing Army in the National Collegiate Boxing Association Championships, March 19th 2021, West Point NY (U.S. Army Photo by CDT Ellington Ward)
The Army West Point Boxing team hosts the 65th Annual Brigade Boxing Open to compete for who will be representing Army in the National Collegiate Boxing Association Championships, March 19th 2021, West Point NY (U.S. Army Photo by CDT Ellington Ward)
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Action photographs from the Ricky Hatton v Vyacheslav Senchenko boxing at the Manchester Arena on Saturday the 25 November 2012 .
© Vincent Cole
Joshua -parker promotion.
Weigh in.
Motor point arena,.
Cardiff,wales.
Pic lawrence lustig.
Anthony joshua and joseph parker weigh in ahead of their fight on eddie hearns matchroom promotion at the principality stadium, cardiff on saturday(March 31st)
Welsh Wonders Marvel in Merthyr; Merthyr Mayhem – The Review
Thirteen professional boxing bouts and the debut of four of Wales’ top talents had set the scene for Saturday 23rd July at Merthyr Tydfil Leisure Centre. Sanigar Events had once again put on a stacked bill of bouts with a number of Wales’ best prospects and biggest names right now.
We had Swansea boys Sonny Lee and Kristian Touze make their professional debut, along with Treharris’s Gavin Gwynne.
Boxing Media UK sat and witnessed some fine performances and some even finer wins.
Buckle up tight as the ‘Merthyr Mayhem’ was set to unfold on a warm night in the South of Wales
The men's boxing team. On the back: "1950 Wolverine. Acc # 345."
not dated
Subjects
Michigan State University --Athletics
Michigan State University -- Boxing
Repository:Michigan State University Archives & Historical Collections, 101 Conrad Hall, East Lansing, MI 48824, http://archives.msu.edu
Resource Identifier: A001638