SPOTTED: Kyla and local celeb

Who is Bobby "Sugar" Hinds?

If you met him you would know it.

Sunday night I was meeting up with my improv group to discuss some business. Sarah and I were the first ones there and discovered that our meeting place (a bar) was closed. We decided to wait in the street for everyone else to arrive before moving to a second location.

This was when our lives changed forever.

A man in his 70's carrying a very large laminated poster of Bobby Hinds, a UW-Madison boxing champion from 1956 approached us.

"That's me," he pronounced unrolling the poster and pointing at the very cute boxer, "what do you think? Not bad huh?"

We admitted he was pretty hot back in the day.

More of our group showed up and he convinced us to let him buy us a drink. We put our important buisness aside to hang out with a man who DOES NOT know the meaning of the word modest and who isn't ashamed to admit it.

I can relate to that. Hey it ain't braggin' if it's true!

We sat down, ordered our drinks and he began to talk. He told us his life story (some of the details are supplemented from a Sports Illustrated article).

Bobby had a troubled childhood and was arrested for armed robbery before the age of 10. At a reformatory school in Wisconsin he discovered boxing and earned a boxing scholarship to University of Wisconsin--Madison. He graduated in 1956 with a degree in art and criminal psychology. While in college he racked up 32 straight wins. He then went pro for eight fights WHILE working as an art teacher at East High in Madison.

His best story was from his time as high school art teacher/pro boxer. He was asked to fight on short notice. He didn't know that his fight was on the undercard of a Sugar Ray Robinsin-Gene Fullmer (big time boxers) title fight that was being nationally televised. (He told us it was the FIRST nationally televised boxing fight ever....I cannot verify that fact).

Anyway, he had called in sick to fight. The superintendent saw it on television. He was fired the next day. He probably became the first person to be in that situation. You know, when you call in sick and your boss sees you on The Price is Right or the background of the Today show?

After that he became famous for jump-rope selling. It became a full-time job and even got him an appearance on the Johnny Carson Show. Since then he has done pretty well for himself. He basically invented the infomerical (he very successfully sells exercise equipment).

Eventually we had to tear ourselves apart from Bobby to start our meeting, no way would work get done in his presence.

But we all learned a big lesson that night:

Carry a large poster of yourself around town to SHOW people how awesome you were/are. It works.

Me, Dylan, Linda and Sarah with Bobby (and his poster):

Bobby demonstrating his old moves on Dylan: