Sad to report the passing of IBF founder and the organization’s first President Bob Lee. Lee also served as Deputy State Athletic Commissioner of New Jersey under former heavyweight champion Jersey Joe Walcott, and was a vice president of the WBA. He was forced to resign from the IBF due to a pay-for-rankings scandal in 1999. He is a member of the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame.
The Funeral for Bob Lee will be Friday, April 5, 2024 at:
St. James Baptist Church
2387 Morse Avenue
Scotch Plains, NJ
The viewing starts at 10 AM
Service starts at 11 AM
Repast will be at the Church
RIP
I know a lot of fans are not high on the leaders of the alphabet groups. That said I am sure he shared a passion for boxing with us on some level and like most he probably has loved ones who will miss him. RIP
Well said!!! The scandal brought bad opinion to the IBF but at the end of the day we are all fans of the sport doing our parts. Money under the table in Boxing is as common as burger and fries in America.
Bob Lee was just the guy they went after.
From an August 2000 article by the LA Times:
Ex-IBF President Lee Found Guilty on Six of 38 Counts
“It wasn’t the clean knockout federal prosecutors had hoped for, but they still won a solid decision Thursday when a jury found International Boxing Federation founder and former president Bob Lee guilty on six of 38 counts in a New Jersey racketeering trial.
The 66-year-old Lee, charged with taking $338,000 in bribes from promoters and managers to fix rankings and sanction fights, was found guilty of tax evasion, money laundering and interstate travel in aid of racketeering.
The jury, after deliberating 15 days at the end of a four-month trial, found Lee guilty on three counts of bribery in his dealings with Francisco Fernandez of Colombia, the IBF’s South American representative. Lee was acquitted, however, on charges stemming from improper payments made to him by promoters Bob Arum, Cedric Kushner and Dino Duva.
Lee, who could be sentenced to a term in excess of 20 years, will most likely be given three years, according to U.S. Atty. Robert Cleary.
Lee’s son, 38-year-old Robert Jr., was acquitted on all nine charges against him.
Federal prosecutors will press forward in their civil case against Lee, according to Cleary, a suit in which they are seeking a permanent injunction to keep the Lees from any involvement in the IBF while also attempting to recover the $338,000. Figuring treble damages and attorneys’ fees, that could cost the Lees more than $1 million.
The Lees have been removed from the IBF via a preliminary injunction with the organization currently being run by a court-appointed monitor.
“When you get a conviction of six felony counts on a guy who is getting on in years,” Cleary said, “I think that could act as a general deterrent. Only time will tell if it helps clean up the sport.”
Sources close to the trial have said all along that Lee has been told prosecutors would go easier on him if he turned over any evidence he had of wrongdoing on the part of promoter Don King, an unindicted co-conspirator in the case.
King has maintained his innocence.
Asked after Thursday’s verdict if there was still interest in striking a deal with Lee in regard to King, Cleary said, “Lee’s amount of cooperation is up to him.”
From the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame:
Robert W. Lee, currently resides in Fanwood, NJ, and has been living in and around Scotch Plains-Fanwood vicinity all of his life. He was graduated from the Scotch Plains-Fanwood school system and attended City College of New York, as well as Fairleigh Dickinson University in Florham Park, NJ. He and his wife, Shirley, are the parents of four children.
For six years, Mr. Lee served as Deputy State Athletic Commissioner of New Jersey, under former Heavyweight Champion of the World, Jersey Joe Walcott, After Mr. Walcott’s retirement in January 1983, Mr. Lee served as Acting Commissioner of the State Athletic Commission for one and one half years. In those capacities, Mr. Lee helped to guide New Jersey toward becoming the boxing capital of the United States and possibly the world. He has been credited with making many positive changes in the state’s boxing programs for the betterment of the sport that have been adopted by other jurisdictions and hailed as revolutionary in the industry.
From 1980-1982, Mr. Lee held the post of 2nd Vice President of the World Boxing Association, making him the highest ranking member of that world body on the continent. During 1982, Boxing Today, a national publication, named Mr. Lee as one of the four top officials in boxing and even called for his appointment as a National Commissioner of boxing.
During 1982, Mr. Lee sought to bring the presidency of the World Boxing Association back to the United States where it had not been for over nine years. Being narrowly defeated (by nine votes), Mr. Lee did not seek re-election to the vice presidency, but elected to divert his energies toward strengthening the United States Boxing Association of which he was and is the President .. In 1983, the USBA added an international division, that has since become known as the International Boxing Federation, that Mr. Lee also presides over.
Mr. Lee is the first American, since 1973, to have ever run for the position of president of an international boxing organization and the first American to have been elected to the post of president of an international boxing organizat-ion since 1973.
As President of the IBF /USBA, Mr. Lee is recognized worldwide as a leader in the boxing field and his efforts have been the catalyst for many a young boxer to get rated and box for championships nationally and internationally. Largely through Mr. Lee’s efforts, officiating changes have been made in world class boxing and some of these changes have filtered down to. state and other commissions. When speaking of the progressive course that boxing must follow and of knowledgeable people in the sport, without question the one voice that is clear and incisive is that of Robert W. Lee.
Mr. Lee has been active in the political arena, as well as in the area of civic involvement, He has served on the Board of Managers at John E. Runnells Hospital in Berkeley Heights, NJ; the Fanwood Planning Board; the Scotch Plains Recreation Commission; the Union County Psychiatric Clinic; the Union County Metal Health Board: the Scotch Plains-Fanwood Human Rights Council: the Union County Urban League Board; and, the American Cancer Society.
From The Sweet Science:
“The image some people have of me is disappointing,” said Bob Lee in a 2006 interview, “but I also feel I had a positive impact on the sport…”
Lee, the founder of the International Boxing Federation who died yesterday (Sunday, March 24) at age 91, spoke those words to Philadelphia Daily News boxing writer Bernard Fernandez who was the first person to interview him when he emerged from a federal prison in 2006. Lee served 22 months on charges that included racketeering, money laundering, and tax evasion.
Born and raised in northern New Jersey and a lifelong resident of the Garden State, Lee, a former police detective, founded the International Boxing Federation (henceforth IBF) in 1983 after a failed bid to win the presidency of the World Boxing Association. At the time, there were only two relevant sanctioning bodies, the WBA, then headquartered in Venezuela, and the WBC, headquartered in Mexico. Both organizations were charged with favoring boxers from Spanish-speaking countries in their ratings at the expense of boxers from the United States.
Bob Lee’s brainchild, whose stated mission was to rectify that injustice, achieved instant credibility when Marvin Hagler and Larry Holmes turned their back on the established organizations. Hagler’s 1983 bout with Wilford Scypion and Holmes’ 1984 match with Bonecrusher Smith were world title fights sanctioned exclusively by the IBF, the last of the three extant organizations to do away with 15-round title fights.
Lee’s world was rocked in November of 1999 when a federal grand jury handed down an indictment that accused him and three IBF officials, including his son Robert W. “Robby” Lee Jr., of taking bribes from promoters and managers in return for higher rankings. The FBI, after a two-year investigation, concluded that $338,000 was paid over a 13-year period by individuals representing 23 boxers.
The government’s key witness was C. Douglas Beavers, the longtime chairman of the IBF ratings committee who wore a wire as a government informant in return for immunity and provided video-tape evidence of a $5000 payout in a seedy Virginia motel room. Promoters Bob Arum and Cedric Kushner both testified that they gave the IBF $100,000 to get the organization’s seal of approval for a match between heavyweight champion George Foreman and Axel Schulz (Arum asserted that he paid the money through a middleman, Stan Hoffman). In return, the IBF gave Schulz a “special exemption” to its rules, allowing the German to bypass Michael Moorer who had a rematch clause that would never be honored. (In a sworn deposition, Big George testified that he had no knowledge of any kickback).
After a long-drawn-out trial that consumed four months including 15 days of jury deliberations, Bob Lee was acquitted on all but six of 32 counts. His son, charged with nine counts, was acquitted on all nine. The jury simply did not trust the veracity of many that testified for the prosecution. (No surprise there; after all, they were boxing people.) But neither did the jury buy into the argument that whatever money Lee received was in the form of gifts and gratuities, a common business practice.
The IBF was run by a court-appointed overseer from January of 2000 until the fall of 2003. Under its current head, Daryl Peoples, who came up from the ranks, assuming the presidency in 2010, the IBF has stayed out of the crosshairs of federal prosecutors.
As part of his sentence, Bob Lee was prohibited from having any further dealings with boxing and that would have included buying a ticket to sit in the cheap seats at a boxing card. This was adding insult to injury as Lee’s passion for boxing ran deep. As a boy working as a caddy at a New Jersey golf course, he had met Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson, two of the proudest moments of his life.
As for his contributions to the sport, Lee had this to say in his post-prison talk with Bernard Fernandez: “We instituted the 168-pound [super middleweight] weight class. We took measures to reduce the incidence of eye injuries in boxing. We changed the weigh-in from the day of the fight to the day before, which prevented fighters from entering the ring so dehydrated that they were putting themselves at risk. All these things, and more, were tremendously beneficial to boxing. I’m very proud of all that we accomplished.”
Bob Lee was a tough old bird. Diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in 1986, he was insulin-dependent for much of his adult life and yet he lived into his nineties. Although his coloration as a shakedown artist is a stain that will never go away, many people will tell you that, on balance, he was a good man whose lapses ought not define him.
That’s not for us to judge. We send our condolences to his loved ones. May he rest in peace.
The real tragedy of the George Foreman vs. Axel Schulz fight was that Schulz got robbed. Schulz easily outboxed the older champ!
He was a crook who did his bit to ruin the sport for personal enrichment. Bye Bob.
Boxing’s alphabet groups enrich themselves through sanctioning fees, but do little else. I have never heard of an alphabet group opening or financing a boxing gym or amateur tournament.
My hero was former world champion Graciano Rocchigianni, who successfully sued the WBC for $30 million, nearly putting the corrupt alphabet group out of business! What the WBC did to Rocky was downright dirty, and am so glad the German champ from Berlin won the lawsuit!!!
It’s another example of how people are complicated. Lee seemed to get into this sport for all the right reasons and gave back to his community extensively but got corrupted along the way. As a boxing fan, I don’t like his contribution of fighters weighing in the day before a fight. Because of Lee, we have guys entering the ring as welterweights fighting for a jr. lightweight belt. He also created another purse-leeching sanctioning body yet made it possible for other fighters to win a world title and generate more wealth in the sport. Again, complicated as he did some good things along the way. RIP, Mr. Lee.