International Boxing Hall Of Fame

For all intents and purposes, this Italian was the Nat Fleischer of European boxing. Beginning in 1962 and for the next three decades he published La Bibbia De Pugilato, an Italian-type version of The Ring Record Book, only Ballarati broke down his 900+ page annual reference guide by country. Thus, you would find Roberto Duran listed in the Panama section, Carlos Monzon in Argentina, etc. etc. ...

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Like fellow publishing moguls in the Hall of Fame, Fleischer and Richard K. Fox, Ballarati, a resident of Rome, also tried his hand at managing. Although he guided the careers of many contenders, he never had a world champion. Ballarati was a boxing purist who bemoaned the proliferation of world sanctioning bodies. He was very much concerned with the sport's steady decline in popularity in the western world.

 

Toward this end he published several encyclopedic boxing books that dealt solely with the sport's all-time greats called Champions of the Past. He was generally regarded as the preeminent preservationist and historian on the continent.