Traveler’s Blues: Rossy Relates German Inhospitability

Derric Rossy flew to Germany less than a week before he was booked to fight Edward Tepper in a heavyweight scrap. The then 35 year old New Yorker, who played football at Boston College, and now boxes out of the famed and fabled Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn, got invited to Germany to lose to Tepper, who was getting a push up the ladder.

Rossy, known at Gleason’s for being as upbeat and gentlemanly as any fighter there, held a 30-11 mark, while Tepper was 15-0.

Word on Rossy is that his record is exceedingly deceptive. By no means did he deserve all those losses, but that’s the way the stale cookie crumbles when you are tabbed the journeyman, the tough out who will put up a good fight, every time, but isn’t aligned with that marquee promoter who holds sway.

Aout five days before fight night, which unfolded at a rec hall, Rossy and crew, which included trainer Grant Seligson, got off a plane and wee looking forward to bunking at a hotel. They took a cab to a place that…wasn’t a hotel. Inside they walked and jaws dropped. It seemed the promoter had placed them in a convaslecent manor for elderly folks, which also served as a facility aiding little kids with developmental disorders. Some were running around the various rooms, wearing helmets, making guttural sounds. As Rossy relayed that to me, he took pains to make clear he has nothing against these kids, but he was looking forward to catching up on sleep after a grueling flight days before his bout.

The promoter, Rossy relays, in the below video, told him that no hotel rooms were open in and around the area.  In the insult to injury department, Rossy lost a UD10, according to the three German judges, and then contracted shingles while in Germany, which left him experiencing the most intense pain of his life.

Oh, there was one more indignity, which you will come across in the video.