A fighter’s pride, an airplane ticket and a funeral: The tragic tale of journeyman boxer Bradley Rone

Rone was well-liked, an expert and hopeless in a dangerous game, a true fighting guy

It was only $800, just enough to pay for the airline ticket.

Bradley Rone was a fun guy, everybody said he was a fun guy, a nice guy. He was known in Las Vegas as TC, short for Top Cat.

In Vegas, which is both the fight capital of the world and the sport’s dirtiest basement, Rone was banned from boxing. Still, that was the city the boy from Cincinnati called home.

Rone had lost his right to fight in Las Vegas when Marc Ratner, the boxing commissioner at the time, refused him a licence in a bold attempt to save him from his own bravery, his foolish trust in others and an inability to say ‘No’. As I said, Rone was a famously fun guy.

In the summer of 2003, Rone had fought on 53 occasions and won just seven times. He was 34 and on a losing streak of 26 consecutive fights. His fights were legal, but mostly unethical outings against the local boxer in a faraway town. It was the business and Brad Rone was both expert and hopeless in a dangerous game. Still, he badly needed that $800.

Bradley Rone (r) is punched by Michael Grant (Getty)

Every time that Rone packed his boxing kit bag, left his fiancée behind and got in a car or on a flight to the latest fight, he knew what was expected, he knew the outcome. It was what Rone did and Ratner had decided that he did it a bit too well for his own health.

So Rone lived in that other part of Las Vegas, the boxing underbelly, a place barely disturbed by the millions and the neon. Rone used the gyms to turn a buck or two as a hired sparring partner, available for cash to anybody in search of a body to hit and pay.

Rone worked for Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis, took their best, a big man for the big men to hurt their hands against. And the money from the sparring and the fights, well, it came and went. Rone was a fun guy, a nice guy.

Trainers, managers and matchmakers found him when a job popped up, one that required a man with Rone’s dimensions and talents; he was a heavyweight without fear, with guts, but no threat. There once lived a glorious fight fixer in New York called Johnny Bos – think Joe Exotic without the husbands, but with a white fur coat – who found bodies for promoters to stack in the records of their fighters. Bos built Frank Bruno and Rone would have been perfect for Bruno one night at the Royal Albert Hall. It’s legal, just a bit dirty.

“Boxing gave him a chance to make money and see the world,” said Sean Gibbons, a matchmaker, fight fixture and old-fashioned ducker and diver getting a living in the modern business. Rone fought in Hawaii, Germany and Denmark and all over the dubious roadmap of boxing’s regulated states.

After four losses at the start of his career, Rone went to prison and missed five years. He was sentenced for defending the honour of his sister, attacking a man that had attacked her. He was also a man of honour.

In Las Vegas he was friends with former world champions Eddie Mustafa Muhammad and Cornelius Boza-Edwards; both truly great fighters who left the ring without the riches they deserved, but with their integrity. Rone was not at the mercy of savages and creeps: Ratner, Boza, Muhammad and even Gibbons knew decency.

Rone fought a dozen men who won world titles or fought for major titles. He never jumped on the floor, he never fought a fixed fight. He got in the ring, took his beating and went home, both counting the cash and putting ice on the wounds. He was a boxing man.

On the afternoon of 17 July 2003, Rone accepted a fight with Billy Zumbrun in Cedar City, Utah, the following night. He had done that before, taken a fight at just over 24-hour’s notice. He had lost on points to Zumbrun the previous month; this time he desperately needed the $800 purse. Rone and Boza drove the 170 miles to the Raceway in Cedar City. It was a solemn journey, no conversation, but that could happen with a fighter before a fight.

The local promoter had called the night Ring Devastation.

At the end of round one, Rone turned and then collapsed. He had not been hit or hurt. He just collapsed. He was taken to hospital. He had suffered a heart attack and he was pronounced dead that night.

In the dressing room, they found just five bucks and his fiancée’s phone in his bag – there was no way to contact her.

Back in Las Vegas, it was left to Gibbons to go to the apartment and break the news to Helen Ruffin, Rone’s fiancée. On the bed in the apartment, Gibbons noticed that a brand new suit had been spread out. It was to be Rone’s special suit. He would have taken it with him on the flight, the flight paid for by the $800 he was making in Cedar City.

You see, just four hours before Rone agreed to fight Zumbrun, he had spoken to his sister. She had told him that their mother had died. Rone loved his mother, Thelma. He never had the money for the flight back. He took the fight. He died. A week later, at the Landmark Cemetery in Evandale, Ohio, the gravediggers scooped out two holes adjacent to each other. Rone did make his mother’s funeral – they were buried together. He wore his new suit.

“He had a broken heart – he couldn’t handle the loss,” said Celeste Moss, his sister.

Bradley Rone is certainly my type of fighting guy.