Thomas Gerbasi was a friend of mine.
He was also one of this generation’s finest boxing writers and his byline was a fixture for leading publications for more than two decades.
It was little more than a year ago when I flew to New York on a triple mission. Firstly, I was going to do some exploring with my son. Then, I was going to collect my awards from the BWAA after BoxingScene’s banner year. Thirdly, I was going to watch my friend, Thomas Gerbasi, deservedly scoop the Nat Fleischer Award for Excellence in Boxing Journalism. (The picture. is one I took of him with his granddaughter that night).
TG and I had been pals for some 15 years.
It might be more; it wasn’t less.
All I know is we were buddies and it started around the time I became editor at Boxing News.
Wanting to put my own stamp on the magazine, I hired a few new contributors and his was the first name on the list.
We’d conversed before. I’d always enjoyed his work and I was delighted not only when he started filing his classy, crisp copy but as our emails grew longer and we started to bond.
Within only a few exchanges we were ‘TD’ and ‘TG’ and we were not colleagues but friends.
We went from talking shop to talking everything but shop; family, food, sport, you name it. Rarely boxing.
I remember, however, one early assignment I sent his way was about the “short” history of boxing journalism on the internet.
Now, writing about boxing online had only become ‘a thing’ in the previous 10 years or so, but Gerbasi had been at the coalface, mostly with his work for House of Boxing and MaxBoxing.
With that in mind, I sent him down the rabbit hole and he emerged with some five or six thousand words chronicling those early online days in a piece for the Boxing News annual.
He never forgot that assignment and would often bring it up.
Yes, it was a long piece, but it remains the most thorough breakdown of how boxing writing really transitioned from the printed page to the screen.
I once said to him that future Boxing News editor Matt Christie was the best hire of my career, although TG wasn’t having it. “But remember who did you 5000 words on the history of boxing on the internet for you,” he quipped.
*
It was actually, in 2017, Thomas who recommended me as a member for the BWAA. I figured it was exclusively for the US writers but if TG was suggesting it, I was more than happy to go along with it. And if it was good enough for him… I was actually on a slight boxing sabbatical (not really, but it was meant to be!), and I could tell he knew I wasn’t overly-enthused at first. But soon enough I was in and I was grateful to him for that, too. In fact, I wished I’d known that I could have joined earlier.
TG knew best.
He was authentic. He was a shoulder to cry on, a cool head in a crisis, and a soldier with you in the trenches. The early days of my tenure at BoxingScene were rough, but his support was unflinching.
He knew I was gutted when he eventually left, but I knew why he did. He was a family man beyond everything else.
TG was such a colourful soul, the kind that enriches everyone he came into contact with. He had great stories, and it was not uncommon to get a message from him like this one… “One day I’ll tell you about me and [Vito] Antufermo getting lost looking for the Staten Island ferry one night in nyc.”
His work on the women’s code was ahead of its time, and his ability to draw the best out of his subjects and hit on untold stories made his catalogue of features stand out from a crowd.
**
Our shared love of food brought us closer! TG was never far away from recommending me a place, whether he knew I was about to be in the US or not. Looking at the media/links part of our WhatsApp chat, it’s just about all food pics. Mostly meat.
Another assignment I apologised for asking him to was to interview Adrien Broner.
“I get Broner, you get the bbq?” he replied.
He also knew I was what many would deem a health freak, and once sent me a picture of a platter and proudly added: “See, there’s vegetables there.”
Then there was this random beauty.
“Hey, guess what I had the other day?”
Then came the picture with the caption.
“A pickle sandwich.”
“How was that?” was my curious reply.
“Special. Didn’t know if it would work, but it was excellent.”
We’d share book recommendations, and on occasion he’d suggest a book I’d already read and vice versa.
In a day of remote offices and working environments, and despite the thousands of miles that separated us, TG and I always had time for water-cooler talk. You know, the little constants that we take for granted until they are replaced by silence.
***
I’d been holding myself together quite well for the last couple of days.
As Ricky Hatton’s biographer, and I’d like to think friend for a long time, the news of Hatton’s unexpected passing last September crushed me.
The Sunday I found out about Ricky was not good. I wept live on Sky News that night and struggled through a segment with Ariel Helwani on his show on the Monday.
Tuesday was up and down, Wednesday only marginally better.
I’d received a few messages asking when I was going to write about Ricky and while my mind was filling with thoughts and memories, I had been unable to bring myself to do anything.
On the Thursday, sat in my front room, I was finally reached for my laptop.
I opened the lid and took a deep breath.
My phone buzzed, and I had a message from my friend TG. It was on Instagram but that was not uncommon
He’d been so kind to check in about how I was feeling about Ricky’s passing on the Sunday, I figured I’d reply before I started typing anything and was submerged in my work.
“Hey Tris,” the message began. “It’s Sonia, Tom’s wife, just wanted to let you know that Tom suffered a heart attack and passed away. We are beyond devastated.”
I slammed my laptop shut and cried like I’d not cried in years. Tom was only 57.
My wife must have heard because she came in to see what was wrong.
I showed her the message as I couldn’t say much and she consoled me.
****
I gave Sonia a lot of time and space, maybe too much, considering how much her husband meant to me, but recently contacted her.
“I was going to reach out,” she said. “I thought about the times we went out to eat and he would take a picture of his plate of meat and send it to you. He would say, ‘Gotta send this to Tris.’”
I knew then it was time to make the call to TG’s widow and talk to her for the first time.
*****
“I’m hanging in there, hun,” Sonia said, but within moments we were both failing miserably at fighting back the tears.
“Same,” I said, not really sure quite what to say in our first ever conversation.
“Every day,” she said, referring to the tears that fell. “I was trying not to get emotional but it’s just been difficult, you know. He worked from home so we were pretty much together 24/7 and it’s been rough. The girls [Tom’s granddaughters]… It’s heart-breaking because the little one, she still asks for her Papa every day and just yesterday she said to me, ‘Grandma, I miss my Papa, when is he coming back?’ She’s three years old. It’s hard to explain. She knows that he missed her last birthday so she goes, ‘I know he’s not going to be here for my birthday but he’ll be here in spirit.’ And it’s just heart-breaking. And the other day I was playing with the older one, well, we were all playing together, I bought them this little game and it’s called Hungry Hippos. We each had one but there are four hippos and there was one left over so she grabs it and she goes, ‘This is Papa because he was my buddy.’”
During challenging times, TG once sent me pictures of his granddaughters and beamed: “These two help with our sanity.”
There were other pictures of “the troublemakers” that came my way over the years. He clearly adored them, as he did his Sonia.
******
Professionally, Gerbasi is much missed, not just those from press row, those he regularly exchanged messages with or those he worked for. TG was a UFC mainstay as editorial director and it was recently announced that he will be inducted into the UFC’s Hall of Fame.
One only wishes he was here to see the plaques and accept the awards that will still come his way for the years to come.
The UFC had actually invited Sonia to an event in New Jersey, asking her if she’d like to attend.
As she sat in the crowd, they made the announcement and she again wept.
“It’s all seriously so bittersweet, you know, because he’s not here. It’s nice that he’s getting acknowledged but it’s been rough,” she says. “We’ve been together 33 years and, Tris, he died on our 31st wedding anniversary. I just find it so hard. Every day I think it’s like, ‘Where are you?”
It was 33 years ago when Gerbasi first asked Sonia out. They were employees at the same company and she didn’t want to blur lines between personal and professional but they wound up going to the movies to watch The Mambo Kings.
They followed that by going for burgers and fries at a place nearby.
“The fries, we both thought were horrible,” she says, almost reluctantly smiling at the memory. “He said they tasted like ashtray fries!”
********
Through their three decades together, Sonia supported TG through his endeavours, whether it was working for the UFC, writing high-end books or as a scribe for The Ring, BoxingScene and Boxing News. She also supported him away from his laptop, whether he was starting another running challenge or playing soccer in the local park, two things he really enjoyed in their own ways.
He once sighed to me about running: “It was always the one-time work couldn’t get me. I think I have one marathon left in me.”
Of soccer, he had a similar sentiment. He thought it helped him fight off Father Time, playing with a team of younger men, and said: “I like playing. That’s my couple of hours peace.”
Because TG was always giving. Never once was an email or WhatsApp not replied to. Even out of the blue, you’d get a, “How are you doing?”
I said to Sonia: “’I’m sure he had best friends and all the rest of it, and it’s never a competition about who liked who the most, but he was just my friend.”
We started crying again at that point.
“Tom had a very small circle, he really did,” she replied. “That’s why, when I recently came across your book, I felt so bad. I have a special spot for all those books because he would always mention you, and when we would go out to eat, he would get excited, ‘I gotta send this to Tris. I gotta send this to Tris.’“
It was the same thing when I went out with my wife, Johanna.
TG always came with us and he’d get a picture of a steak, a barbecue platter, a roast dinner…
He was so much more than a colleague and he left his mark on so many who lost someone who is, frankly, irreplaceable.
Beyond the Fleischer award, the UFC Hall of Fame and everything else, he was food critic, friend, husband, and Papa.
“Tom lived his life, that’s for sure. He did,” Sonia smiled.
*
Before I started writing this piece, I thought I would look at our final message exchange and that is where I will now conclude. It is just as well I looked at that first – and wrote it down – because, as I went back through years of messages, I knew I was getting to the end and I couldn’t bring myself to scroll any further. I didn’t want them to finish.
But going back to when my friend TG messaged me after Hatton had passed away, he wrote: “Hey, you need anything you know where to find me. You’ll be okay.”
That’s how he was.
My reply to him that day, through the tears, was the last thing I ever sent him and something I mean to this very day, every day.
“Thank you, TG.”
Thank you, indeed, TG, for being my friend.
Do you have any favourite Gerbasi memories, articles, books, or food recommendations? If so…
I had some limited contact with Thomas over the recent past, mainly about football (soccer). I knew he played so we chatted about that and when I found out he didn’t support a team tried to convince him to become an Everton fan. I don’t think he was having it though, he had too much sense.
We also had brief conversations about some boxing games that allow you to replay fantasy fights either via paper and a board or on a computer. Not sure if he played them but he knew of them for sure.
We were friends on facebook, I was incredibly shocked and saddened when he passed, he seemed like a nice guy and had taken his time to speak a boxing fan in the UK he didn’t know and I appreciated that. May he rest in peace.
Beautifully written - thanks for writing this Tris.