Bert Randolph Sugar (born June 7, 1937, in Washington, D.C.) is a boxing writer/sports historian residing in Chappaqua, New York.
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Sugar graduated from the University of Maryland. He earned a JD and MBA from the University of Michigan in 1961. After passing the bar exam, he worked in the advertising business in New York City for ten years.[1] During his time in the advertising business, he wrote the well-known jingle for Nestle's chocolate - "N-E-S-T-L-E-S. Nestle's makes the very best."[2]
Sugar bought Boxing Illustrated magazine in 1969 and was editor until 1973. From 1979–1983 he was editor and publisher of The Ring. In 1988 he once again began editing Boxing Illustrated. In 1998 he founded Bert Sugar's Fight Game.
Sugar has written over 80 books, mostly on boxing history. Various boxing books that Sugar has written include Great Fights, Bert Sugar on Boxing, 100 Years of Boxing, Sting like a Bee (with José Torres), The Ageless Warrior (Preface, with Mike Fitzgerald) and Boxing's Greatest Fighters. Sugar was called "The Greatest Boxing Writer of the 20th Century" by the International Veterans Boxing Association.[3]
In May 2009 he and Running Press published Bert Sugar's Baseball Hall of Fame: A Living History of America's Greatest Game.[4]
He has also appeared in several films playing himself, including Night and the City, The Great White Hype and Rocky Balboa. Interviews with Sugar feature in Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson. He has been called Runyonesque (in reference to Damon Runyon) by Bob Costas, and "one of the foremost historians alive," by the Boston Globe newspaper. Along with Lou Albano he helped write The Complete Idiot's Guide to Pro Wrestling. He writes a regular sports column for Smoke Magazine, a quarterly cigar lifestyle magazine.
Sugar was elected to the International Boxing Hall of Fame in January 2005. In May 2010, Sugar received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor.