Latest Wild Card celebrity guest: Bob Dylan

It’s not unusual for VIP’s and celebrities of varying degrees of fame and star power to visit the Manny Pacquiao training camp in Los Angeles just before a fight.

Last March 14 in Los Angeles, people at Freddie Roach’s Wild Card Boxing Club got the surprise of their life when legendary singer/songwriter Bob Dylan walked in while Manny sparred in preparation for his rematch with welterweight champion Timothy Bradley, who had beaten him by a highly controversial split decision last year.

A passionate boxing fan who himself had been trained in the sport, Dylan had called the gym to ask if he could drop by with a friend and watch a training session.

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“I’ve been going to that gym for 10 years, but I’ve never seen it light up the way it did in the presence of the music icon. It was like seeing an apostle.

We were all awestruck,” Fred Sternburger, Manny’s spokesperson, told RollingStone.com.

Sternburger said Dylan stayed for an hour watching Pacquiao spar eight rounds with two different partners.

“He also posed with fans for photos and signed autographs. He was very accommodating and smiled all the time.”

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Despite his training under retired boxer Bruce “Mouse”  Strauss, a fellow New Yorker from Yonkers, Dylan’s boxing avocation never took off.

We didn’t have the time to do a more in-depth research, but just a quick glance at the background of Dylan’s mentor provided us with a clue.

Also known as Ruben Bardot, Strauss earned a reputation as a loser and as a journeyman during his boxing days because he took on any fighter anywhere.

Mouse earned fame (infamy?) within the boxing circles because of the number of knockouts he had absorbed throughout his career.

Officially, he suffered 28 knockouts, but if the number was to include those he incurred using his alias Ruben Bardot, it would total an estimated 150 knockouts!

Strauss himself has made a big joke of his record number of knockouts and seems to even be proud of it.

He brags about having the distinction of being the only fighter in boxing history who has lost all his fights by knockout.

He also lays claim to being the only boxer in the whole world who lost by knockout in all the continents of the earth except Antartica.

Indeed, Strauss knockout record is hard to duplicate, much less break.

No wonder Dylan never prospered as a boxer. Can’t help but wonder how he would have fared if he had a trainer like Freddie Roach?