Michael Katz, a feisty Hall of Fame sportswriter who brought a deft touch, a caustic wit and a deep understanding of fighters and trainers to his coverage of boxing for The New York Times and The Daily News, died on Jan. 27 in Brooklyn. He was 85.
Nick Black, his son-in-law, confirmed the death, at a rehabilitation facility. He did not cite a cause, but Mr. Katz had had various ailments over the years, including diabetes, kidney failure and a brain tumor.
Mr. Katz’s combative style emerged most clearly during his 15 years as the boxing columnist for The News. Shortly after Mike Tyson’s 91-second demolition of Michael Spinks in their heavyweight title fight in 1988, Mr. Katz excoriated Tyson for betraying people in his camp, including his manager Bill Cayton, whom he sued on the day of the bout. (Tyson said that he would not have signed a contract that year if he had known that his other manager, Jimmy Jacobs, was dying. Mr. Jacobs died that March.)
“You’ve turned your back on too many people who were kind to you, who got you out of the ghetto and tried to get the ghetto out of you,” Mr. Katz wrote in a column published on Tyson’s 22nd birthday. “You call them ‘Jews in suits,’ which offends me, though I seldom wear suits.”
Mr. Katz was one of the country’s leading boxing journalists during a vigorous period for the sport, from the mid-1970s until the early 2000s. He wrote about remarkable high-profile fighters like Muhammad Ali, Larry Holmes, Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Oscar De La Hoya and Tyson, and promoters like Don King and Bob Arum.
“Boxers have a hard exterior, but there’s a softer side to them,” Tim Smith, who succeeded Mr. Katz as The News’s boxing columnist in 2000, said in an interview. “Mike had a way of chipping away at that hard outer layer and getting to the essence of the men.”
Mr. Katz was easy to spot: Short and stout, he had a bushy beard, wore a beret and a neck brace (for pain caused in a car accident in the 1980s), and walked with a cane because of spinal issues.
His personality offered contradictions. He could be sweet, a devoted mentor and a friendly competitor. He could also be loud and profane.
Mark Kriegel, a boxing analyst at ESPN who worked with Mr. Katz at The News and regarded him as a mentor, prized being insulted by Mr. Katz, even with the worst name in his arsenal, which made him feel welcome.
“He used the same profanity to make people feel bad as well,” he added.
Mr. Katz liked to tweak the powerful. In the late 1990s, when he felt that Mr. Arum was shielding De La Hoya from facing strong opponents, he gave the fighter the nickname Chicken De La Hoya.
And when Mr. Arum, who is Jewish, scheduled a fight on Yom Kippur in 1997, Mr. Katz criticized the promoter, first in The News — “Arum risking big penance,” he wrote — then, more harshly, in an article in International Boxing Digest. Mr. Arum sued Mr. Katz for libel in federal court, but the case was eventually dropped.
“Mike apologized,” said Thomas Hauser, a lawyer and writer, who acted as an intermediary between the two men.
Wallace Matthews, a former boxing writer for Newsday, said that Mr. Katz “hated Arum,” But, he added, “He was an equal opportunity hater, which is a really good quality when you’re a boxing writer.”
Michael Katz was born on Dec. 2, 1939, in the Bronx. His father, Louis, owned a doughnut shop, where Michael learned how to stuff jelly doughnuts quickly. His mother, Lillie (Pesner) Katz, managed the home.
At the City College of New York, which he attended from 1958 to 1961, Michael wrote for one of the student newspapers, The Campus, and became its sports editor. He joined The Times as a copy boy in 1961, then rose to news clerk and copy editor before moving to Paris in 1966 to be sports editor of the paper’s international edition; a year later, he moved into the same role with The International Herald Tribune.
He was fired in 1970 for refusing his editors’ request to change the design of his page layouts, said Gerald Eskenazi, a friend and colleague at The Times who met him at City College. Mr. Katz wrote freelance articles from Europe — where he developed a fascination with auto racing, particularly the 24 Hours of Le Mans, although he did not drive — and in 1972 returned to The Times, where he covered many sports but eventually focused on boxing.
In 1981, he received the Nat Fleischer Award from the Boxing Writers Association of America for excellence in boxing journalism.
Four years later, Vic Ziegel, The News’s executive sports editor, poached Mr. Katz from The Times to write four columns a week. In a note to readers, Mr. Ziegel wrote that “there isn’t a better sportswriter in town.”
Seeking to work less and spend more time with his daughter, Moorea Katz, he left The News in 2000 to write for a website, HouseofBoxing.com, which became Maxboxing.com. Sometime later, he moved to another website, Boxingscene.com. He retired around 2008.
He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, N.Y., in 2012.
He is survived by a granddaughter. His wife, Marilyn Neale, died in 1990, and his daughter died in 2021.
Mr. Katz watched ringside in Las Vegas in 1997 as Tyson was disqualified for biting off pieces of Evander Holyfield’s ears in their heavyweight championship fight.
“You are a biter, not a fighter, Michael,” he wrote in The News. “You will go down in history, not with Muhammad Ali and Joe Louis, but with Dracula and Hannibal Lecter.
“Happy birthday, Michael. Don’t blow out the candles. Blow town.”