Just got the word from Keith Brown late morning and the word is up on the Facebook Page of Grant Lowe(Grimsley HS/East Carolina Football)….
The “best friend” ever of Greensboro Boxing has passed away….Gone….Al Lowe has died and we have lost a true giant in/from the sport of boxing…
Not all of the details are in, but they are forthcoming and people will be coming by and coming around over town the next few days talking about their memories of Al Lowe….
The Greensboro Boxing Center/The Lindley Boxing Center, call it what you want, but you can not begin to count the number of local boxers, both amateur and pros from around the world that called that place home…
Taft Wireback, the News and Record writer, used to work out on the bags and in the ring all the time at the Boxing Center back in the day….
I have been there on a given day and seen Tim(“Terrible Tim”) Witherspoon drive up in an old white Cadillac and get out and go to work at the Boxing Center, with AL Lowe in charge of his training sessions…Known as “Terrible Tim” for his toughness and meaness….He was very tough to face in workouts, in fact you didn’t want to face him if you could avoid it….Al Lowe primed Tim for world class status and he attained it…
Oliver McCall was a short-lived World Heavyweight Boxing Champion and he used to train at the Boxing Center with Al Lowe, I saw him down there, I was there in person and I later heard Michael Buffer call Oliver McCall the “Heavyweight Champion of the World” and it didn’t last long, but Oliver McCall was “The Champ” and he trained under Al Lowe’s watch down at the Lindley/Greensboro Boxing Center….Oliver McCall went by the nickname, “The Atomic Bull”….I now thinking James “Quick” Tillis may have stopped down at the Boxing Center too and it was some kind of place, back in day and you would catch a lot of the big names there in the middle of the afternoon, on a weekday…
Al Lowe was one of the U.S. Olympic Boxing coaches on a team that traveled to the Soviet Union back in the day….
Mr. Lowe helped raise and train Robert Chapman and I will never forget Robert at that old Lindley Boxing Center/Greensboro Boxing Center, beside the Lindley Recreation Center, back in the day….
Lowe did it all in boxing and he was a fair man, a good friend and a very informative instructor/teacher…
He trained his son to box, the smaller one, not Grant who was the BIG football playing lineman….
Al Lowe was “The Man” and a good friend to all, just ask Oliver McCall, Tim Witherspoon, Taft Wireback, Robert Chapman, or any other person that came through the Lindley Boxing Center program…
It is going to be up to people like Walter Johnson III to keep many of these boxing programs going on around town and I’m sure Walter, like anybody else that knew Al Lowe, would be the first one to tell you, “That man, Al Lowe, was a true Giant in the field of boxing and training”……
Let’s lift it up for a great one today, I knew him and I will never forget the days I spent in and around The Greensboro/Lindley Boxing Center….
RIP:Al Lowe
*****I’m thinking Al Lowe worked for the old J.P. Stevens company, back in his days in the workplace….*****
+++++The Boxing Center is now known at the “Al Lowe Boxing Center” and here is the link to when they dedicated the building to him from WXII TV 12…CLICK HERE