In my first column of 2025 I want to write about Donato Paduano, who we lost towards the end of 2024.
When I learned of his passing, I felt a gutting sense of mortality. He features among some of my earliest memories. If you grew up like I did in Montreal – where he lived – you regularly heard about him. His nickname was “Angel of the Ring”; “l’Ange du Ring”, in French. His was the first boxing name I ever knew.
Around the age of 17, when I first started going to the gym, I walked into Montreal’s Olympic Boxing Club and saw him training – I recognised him immediately. I knew right away who it was. “That’s Donato Paduano.” I couldn’t believe it – I’d struggle to describe the sense of awe I felt.
At that age fighters like Paduano were legendary heroes – almost mythical. To walk into a gym back then was to walk into a symbol of a bygone era. It was an old-type movie theatre and the gym was on the third floor of a cement building with a tarred roof. It permeated with the smell of sweat, and taped-up heavy bags – the type of scene you’d only see in 2025 in an old movie. That’s what boxing was. A building like that couldn’t have been used for anything else. My subs were $7 a month, by the way. But I digress.
Paduano’s death, at the age of 75, was another reminder that no matter how great anyone is, they reach their end. It was also sad to be reminded that he wasn’t well, and that partly because of his struggles with diabetes he never truly got to enjoy his life in retirement the way that he deserved.
He was reclusive, and he also didn’t receive the adulation his achievements ought to have justified. During such a competitive era, and as a fighter born in Italy but who relocated to Canada, he became a star at Madison Square Garden. For someone from Montreal to do that when New York was the centre of the boxing universe was unheard of, but that’s how highly thought of he was.
The fighters who beat him – Ken Buchanan was the first; Emile Griffith was another – were great fighters. Paduano also fought regularly, and at times in local rivalries closer to home, such as against Fernand Marcotte.
What he lacked, ultimately, was power. Despite his complete lack of definition and his body being round in shape, he had speed, skill, toughness and punch resistance in abundance, but at the highest level he just wasn’t a big enough puncher. The exciting fights with Marcotte, in which he climbed off the canvas, and Buchanan, who had to be at his very best to win, showed how good he was – how hard and effective his jab was, how well he moved, and the energy with which he fought.
He was also blessed with charm, which would have made him suited to working on the radio or on television when he stopped fighting. It saddened me to remember that that just didn’t happen for him in the way that it should have. He also had a vice – he gambled away a lot of the money he made.
One of my most prized possessions is a book, written by someone else, about Paduano’s life, which he signed for me. It was around 1980, I was 19 years old, and he signed it: “To Russ – one of the best trainers in the world.” I cannot even begin to describe the emotions I went through when Donato signed that to me. I will always treasure that.
He was at his peak before I became fully involved in boxing. I saw him live on a couple of occasions, but those fights came towards the end of his career – my appreciation of him instead came largely via archived footage.
He was also an Olympian, courtesy of his competing at the Games in Mexico City. By the time he made it to the Mecca of boxing, Madison Square Garden, in an era when it also staged 1971’s The Fight of the Century between Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali, he was an attraction – including for New York’s Italian population. Boxing, don’t forget, was less niche in those days.
With his passing, I lost the first boxing hero I ever knew. I lost a hero of my youth.
Russ Anber is the founder/CEO of Rival Boxing, as well as a highly respected trainer (of both pros and amateurs), a gym owner, cutman, entrepreneur, broadcaster and one of the best hand wrappers in the boxing business. Vasiliy Lomachenko, Oleksandr Usyk, Callum Smith, Zhanibek Alimkhanuly and Bakhram Murtazaliev are among the many top boxers Russ works with.
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