PHILADELPHIA — The Philadelphia boxing community is a pretty tight-knit cast of organically shaped characters. It covers all kinds. It encompasses superstar fighters like Jaron “Boots” Ennis and Stephen Fulton, and legends like Bernard Hopkins, and yes, Danny “Swift” Garcia, you, too, are entering that realm, Hall of Famers, like J. Russell Peltz and Bernard Fernandez, walking historians like Stephen”Breadman” Edwards, my guy man-in-the-know and budding broadcaster Marc Abrams, and filled with guys, a ton of guys like Samuel Teah, gritty, dirt-under-the-fingernail types who are trying to reach the unreachable boxing pot of gold very few attain with every ounce of skill they have.

There are the usual squabbles that come from dysfunctional families like ours. Though when something unthinkable happens, like on Black Friday, when Teah was tragically killed at the age of 36, it’s a community that closes ranks fast and embraces. It’s like a relative passing, and in Sam’s case, way too young. He’ll never see his children grow.

Everyone liked Teah. Sam always gave an honest effort in the ring, which was manifested in his honest background. His record was 19-5-1 (8 knockouts), often of the blood-and-guts variety. He bounced around in his youth, born in Monrovia, Liberia, moved to Ghana at 6, escaped the falling bombs of a Liberian civil war and settled in Philadelphia.

He thought his life bombs were behind him.

Unfortunately, they continued.

Sam told me about them.

Columns are something I rarely do. This story is different. This touched home, because the last column I did was on Sam Teah. It turned out to be a little more than I thought. 

This is where the Philadelphia boxing community comes in. They heard and knew about Teah’s death before the Philadelphia police department did. Word spread fast.

It’s news you don’t expect to hear on a frigid Friday night in the middle of covering a district championship football game. A good friend called me to ask if I heard. When I’m covering something I tend to get locked in, no matter if it’s ringside for a Las Vegas fight, Eagles, college basketball, NCAA lacrosse, high school basketball or football, my attention is narrowed on that. This news broke that last night. It was a thunderbolt from hell you don’t expect to hear, especially about someone who survived hell. To say I was stunned would be an understatement. I would have fallen flat on my face if I wasn’t frozen in that metal pressbox folding chair.

I got to really know Sam through the 2017 story. It certainly falls under the category topping just-when-you-think-you-heard-it-all. Sam went through it all. He lost his family in a fire. It’s why it hit close when thew news surfaced he was tragically killed yesterday on Black Friday.

Hopefully the feeling in my face will return from the cold last night. More games to cover and we have David Benavidez-Demetrius Andrade tonight, only the focus will be interrupted by Sam time. Let’s hope they remember Sam Teah tonight. Let’s hope Vegas gives him a 10 count. He wasn’t a world champion or a crossover star. He just epitomized a sport in which survival skills are a prerequisite, and Sam did it well. Everyone who knew him was hurt by this.

Everyone has a story.

They all deserve to be told.

I’m happy I got to tell his.

He used to wear six numbers stitched on the back of his trunks, “12-26-08.” Sam was asked frequently what the numbers meant. He would tell them that’s the date his family was killed in a fire.

Maybe someday, a Philly fighter will have stitched “11-24-23” in the back of their trunks in memory of Sam.

Today, we know, they are thinking of him.

Punching the keyboard with heavy, profound sadness, RIP Samuel Teah.

Joseph Santoliquito is hall of fame, award-winning sportswriter who has been working for Ring Magazine/RingTV.com since October 1997 and is the president of the Boxing Writers Association of America.
Follow @JSantoliquito

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