Ralph Dupas
Encyclopedia
Ralph Dupas was a boxer from New Orleans who won the world light middleweight
Light middleweight
Light Middleweight , is a weight division in professional boxing, above 147 pounds and up to 154 pounds ....

 championship.

Early boxing career

Dupas was the second of eleven children of a New Orleans fisherman, Peter Dupas. He became a professional boxer in 1950 at the age of 14. Trainer Angelo Dundee
Angelo Dundee
Angelo Dundee is an American boxing cornerman. He is best known for his work with Muhammad Ali , and has worked with 15 world boxing champions, including Sugar Ray Leonard, José Nápoles, George Foreman, Jimmy Ellis, Carmen Basilio, Luis Rodriguez and Willie Pastrano.-Professional career:Born in...

 saw Dupas fight and took him to Miami to train him.

Dupas became a ranked contender in the lightweight
Lightweight
Light-weight is a class of athletes in a particular sport, based on their weight.-Professional boxing:The lightweight division is over 130 pounds and up to 135 pounds weight class in the sport of boxing....

 division when he defeated Armand Savoi in 1953. By 1955, after beating a variety of top fighters such as Paddy DeMarco
Paddy DeMarco
Paddy DeMarco, alias Billygoat, was a lightweight professional boxer from Brooklyn, New York.-Personal life:DeMarco was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, but died in Salt Lake City, Utah....

 and Kenny Lane, Dupas was the top-ranked lightweight in the world. In May 1957 Dupas challenged Joe Brown
Joe Brown (boxer)
Joe Brown was an accomplished boxer who won the undisputed Lightweight Championship of the World in 1956, making 11 successful defences before losing his crown in his old age to Carlos Ortiz in 1962. Brown was a classic boxer and a knockout puncher...

 for the lightweight title, but lost by an eighth-round knockout.

Dupas moved up to the welterweight
Welterweight
Welterweight is a weight class division in combat sports. Originally the term "welterweight" was used only in boxing, but other combat sports like kickboxing, taekwondo and mixed martial arts also began to use it for their own weight division system...

 division. He defeated future middleweight
Middleweight
Middleweight is a division, or weight class, in boxing. Early boxing history is less than exact, but the middleweight designation seems to have begun in the 1840s. In the bare-knuckle era, the first middleweight championship fight was between Tom Chandler and Dooney Harris in 1897...

 champion Joey Giardello
Joey Giardello
Carmine Orlando Tilelli was an American boxer who was the middleweight champion of the world from 1963 to 1965, and was better known by his professional pseudonym of Joey Giardello.-Early life:...

 in 1961, but lost a 1962 welterweight title shot to Emile Griffith
Emile Griffith
Emile Alphonse Griffith is a former boxer who was the first fighter from the U.S. Virgin Islands ever to become a world champion. He is perhaps best known for his controversial third fight with Benny Paret in 1962 for the welterweight world championship...

. In 1963, Sugar Ray Robinson
Sugar Ray Robinson
Sugar Ray Robinson was an African-American professional boxer. Frequently cited as the greatest boxer of all time, Robinson's performances in the welterweight and middleweight divisions prompted sportswriters to create "pound for pound" rankings, where they compared fighters regardless of weight...

 beat him by a controversial decision.

Championship

Another championship fight for Dupas materialized in the light middleweight division. Champion Denny Moyer
Denny Moyer
Denny Moyer was an American boxer who held the world light middleweight title between 1962 and 1963. He finished his career with a 97–38–4 record.-Early life:...

 came to New Orleans on April 29, 1963, and Dupas won the title with a fifteen-round unanimous decision. He lost the title in September of that year to Italian Sandro Mazzinghi by a thirteen-round knockout. After that match, Emile Griffith once again knocked him out in a non-title bout.

Post-championship career

Dupas briefly retired in 1964 and worked as a card dealer in Las Vegas
Las Vegas Strip
The Las Vegas Strip is an approximately stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard in Clark County, Nevada; adjacent to, but outside the city limits of Las Vegas proper. The Strip lies within the unincorporated townships of Paradise and Winchester...

. He returned to the ring in 1966 and had little success. He retired for good after five fights that year.

After boxing

After he retired, Dupas began to exhibit signs of dementia pugilistica
Dementia pugilistica
Dementia pugilistica is a type of neurodegenerative disease or dementia, which may affect amateur or professional boxers as well as athletes in other sports who suffer concussions...

. His brother Tony, also a former fighter, moved Ralph from Las Vegas back to New Orleans and put him in a nursing home.
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