Class of 2018

When Brian Clark opened the Ring One gym in New Haven nearly 20 years ago, he saved a lot of lives, kept kids off the streets, and began producing amateur champions and even one light heavyweight world champion in “Bad” Chad Dawson. Often putting up his own money to keep the gym open and to help out young fighters in need, Clark became an institution in New Haven, where his gym is located in one of the city’s rougher neighborhoods. Thanks to the efforts of Clark, Ring One is believed to be the oldest continuously operating boxing gym in Connecticut.

When you think of Willie Pep, you can’t help but to think of Bill Gore, who guided the gifted featherweight to two world titles. Gore’s guidance was a big reason why Pep today remains on many top 10 lists of all-time greatest fighters. Gore now joins Pep in the CBHOF, but Gore did more than just train Pep. Gore trained many champions, perhaps the one most notabe after Pep is former world light heavyweight champion Bob Foster. A Providence native, Gore was 84 when he died in Tampa, Florida in 1978. He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2008.

A native of Cleveland where he fought in the Golden Gloves, Harris would spend most of his life in Norwalk while establishing himself as the premier trainer in Fairfield County. Harris established the Meadow Gardens Boxing Club in 1989, and after his death at the age of 85 in 2012, it was renamed the John Harris Boxing Club. The high point in his career was in 1993. Harris had four fighters who made it to the National Golden Gloves. The most notable of those was Travis Simms, a CBHOF inductee who went on to become a two-time World Boxing Association light middleweight champion.

Cocoa Kid came to prominence in 1933 when as an 18-year old, he scored a stunning upset of former world featherweight champion Louis “Kid” Kaplan, who was part of the first induction class for the CBHOF in 2005. Settled in New Haven, Cocoa Kid would go on to win New England welterweight and middleweight championships. He would finish his career with a 56-10-2 record with 48 knockouts. Cocoa Kid was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2012. He passed away in Chicago in 1966.

Don Trella confirmed his status as one of the premier judges in the sport when asked to be one of the three to score the first Canelo Alvarez-Gennady Golovkin fight in 2017. Trella also judged the Golovkin-Daniel Jacobs bout as well as the Anthony Joshua-Wladimir Klitschko world heavyweight title fight. Trella has also judged bouts involving some of the most prominent fighters today including Tyson Fury, Bernard Hopkins, Roy Jone Jr, Sergey Kovalev, Gervonta Davis, Naoya Inoue, Errol Spence, Mikey Garcia, Terence Crawford, and Vasyl Lomanchenko. He has judged well over 100 world title bouts throughout the world. He was one of the original board members of the Connecticut boxing Hall of Fame, and remains a prominent figure in that organization.

Considered one of the hardest hitting featherweights of his era, Vazquez won several titles during a pro career that saw him go 22-2 with 16 knockouts. The Hartford product began his career 21-0. Along the way, he won the World Boxing Organization Latino Featherweight title, the WBA/NABA featherweight title, and the USBA featherweight championship. He won the USBA title in front of a hometown crowd in Hartford in 1997, scoring a technical knockout of Bernardo Quinones, who came into the bout with a 19-0-1 record.