
The renowned Italian boxing promoter and sports journalist/broadcaster Rino Tommasi passed away at the age of 90.
Born on February 24, 1934 in Verona, Italy, Tommasi was the son of Virgilio Tommasi, an Olympic high jumper in the 1924 and 1928 Olympic Games. Rino started out as a boxing promoter in Italy in his mid 20 and produced numerous boxing events from 1959-1970, involving Italian greats such as Giulio Rinaldi, Nino Benvenuti, Ray Robinson (vs Fabio Bettini 1964), Henry Cooper (vs Piero Tomasoni) and Bruno Arcari. Among the fights promoted by Tommasi were: Salvatore Burruni-Pone Kingpetch for the WBC Flyweight title (with Curtis Cokes-Fortunato Manca on the undercard) and Benvenuti in WBC title fights against Sandro Mazzinghi II, Fraser Scott and Luis Rodrguez.
After leaving the boxing business in 1970, Tommasi worked as a journalist for the Gazzetta dello Sport magazine and mainly covered boxing and tennis for four decades.
In his youth, Tommasi played tennis and was good enough to reach the 2nd category level in Italy. In 1947 he wrote his first article for a newspaper, for the Marche edition of Il Messaggero. During his journalism career he also collaborated with La Repubblica, Il Gazzettino and Il Mattino. In 1968 he was named chief of the press office of SS Lazio, a position Tommasi held for a year. In 1970 he started publishing the tennis magazine Tennis Club.
Tommasi was a prominent figure at the US Open in the 90s where he worked in the media center, broadcasting, writing and also penning a daily column in the US Open draw sheets.
In 1981, Tommasi was hired by Silvio Berlusconi, then a rising television tycoon, to become director of the sport services of his network Canale 5. Ten years later he became chief of the sport activities at Tele+. In the 1980s Tommasi hosted the TV show La Grande Boxe, dedicated to analysis of the most famous boxing fights. His main television activity was commenting on boxing and, starting from the 1990s, tennis games with his friend Gianni Clerici, initially on TV Koper-Capodistria, a Yugoslav channel also airing in Italy, and then moving to pay-TV channels such as Tele+ and finally (until 2010) Sky Sport. He also collaborated with Dahlia TV.
In total, Tommasi commented on more than 400 boxing fights, seven NFL Super Bowls and 149 Grand Slam tennis tournaments.
ATP · Italy · Muhammad Ali · Rino Tommasi · Sugar Ray Robinson
Steve · January 14, 2025 at 7:37 am
I will definitely check out his work. Thanks