It is 70 years since Orville Henry, the wiry Sports Editor at the Arkansas Gazette for the thick end of six decades, first put the term Slobber-knock to print. Filing copy in March 1964, he was describing the playing style of Dennis McLure via the words of Barry Switzer who had recruited McLure to the University of Arkansas’ football programme. This was long before Switzer’s own assent to the NFL, the position of head coach at the Dallas Cowboys in 1994 and a famous SuperBowl triumph in 1995.

“DENNIS doesn’t wait for anything to come at him,” says Barry Switzer, who recruited him. “He gets to where that ball carrier is going, meets him head-on, and I’d say he slobber-knocks ’em.”

Reading about Henry, who passed away in 2002, his status as a legend of the written word acquired in a life time of detailed and colourful coverage of the Arkansas Ridgebacks, I drew the conclusion he would’ve enjoyed the absurdity of Sunday’s heavyweight fight between the one-time contender Dillian Whyte and Ghana’s improbably named Ebenezer Tetteh.

It was, as Dan Rafael had forecast it to be on the BigFightWeekend preview podcast, “a heavyweight slobber-knocker“.

Continue reading “Dillian Whyte. Slobber-knocker.” →