Local boxer meets violent end at age 24
By Glenn McBrady
For the St. Louis American
The first time I saw local boxer Steve Vincent in action was June 15, 2004 on a nationally televised broadcast from The Belvedere Events Center in Elk Grove Village, Ill.
Although I knew nothing about our hometown guy, I was familiar with his battle-tested opponent Jens Pulver, a veteran of mixed martial arts tournaments who had just made the transition to boxing.
Pulver would get up and dust himself off after an early knockdown and go on to edge Vincent in a razor-thin four-round split decision, but the one thing the St. Louis native on the losing end proved was that he was a natural born power puncher.
At the end of that summer I was handed the keys to the American’s “Fighting Words” column, and I attended a card at the former Marriott Hotel downtown. It was the first show I would dissect and write about, long before countless rounds of pro and amateur boxing bled into one another, dulling fond memories of the great moments of skill and bravery and anesthetizing memories of dubious judges’ decisions and early exits by half-hearted journeymen who had shown up to collect a quick check.
As I shuffled around outside the makeshift dressing rooms with a notebook and a bargain-bin tape recorder that would fail me on several occasions, I spotted Vincent’s opponent that evening – a kid from Columbia, Mo named Michael Diffenbacher. He and his red-headed girlfriend looked petrified, and they had every reason to be.
Diffenbacher was making his pro debut and had next to zero amateur experience in the bank. He sheepishly asked if I knew anything about the man he’d be facing. I didn’t want to make him even more jumpy, so I pointed out that Vincent had lost his last fight.
An hour later inside the ring, Vincent walked down his prey and landed a profound right hook that reverberated through the room like a depth charge. The result was a frightening knockout, and I was sure the fallen fighter’s jaw had come unhinged. Diffenbacher would make it out of the ring under his own power as his distraught girlfriend watched, but he would never fight again.
Over the next two years, Vincent would compile a record of 9-5-1, with 7 of his victories coming by way of knockout. When I saw him we always shook hands and talked about the progress of his career.
Last month, on August 11, nearly two years after I saw a green boxer’s career begin and end in 2 minutes and five seconds thanks to a single mortar round, I sat ringside in the same room as Vincent took 35 additional seconds to dispatch John Vaughan.
The hotel has undergone a multi-million dollar facelift and is now called the Hilton St. Louis at the Ballpark. It was exhilarating watching as Vincent’s hand was raised and a crowd that included several local celebrities and Rams players cheered.
But as the triumphant local product descended the steps from his corner and gave me a knowing wink, no one could have foreseen how quickly things would change once he stepped out of the spotlight and away from the applause that spilled from the room and down the escalator into the opulent lobby.
Just three weeks later, in the early morning hours of Labor Day, Steve Vincent was shot and killed during an apparent botched robbery attempt at Scruggs Package Liquor on St. Louis Avenue. I read a brief news report with no names listed and I didn’t find out who was involved until four days later.
I drove to the spot where it had all gone down, and in an instant the memories of that night at the Hilton were dashed as the row of oversized silver teardrop sculptures that had greeted the hotel’s well-heeled guests as they spun through the revolving doors on fight night were replaced by the image of the rusty steel cages and vertical bars that guard the liquor store’s windows and doors.
The view of majestic city buildings from the Hilton’s deck was replaced by a single, desperate structure – the eyesore of a crumbling and long abandoned Carter Carburetor Factory, with its smashed out windows forming a gap-toothed facade of urban blight several blocks from the scene of the failed crime.
A hard puncher in a hard business, Vincent’s life had ended near the store’s burnt yellow stucco walls that are the same dull color as the nicotine-stained filters of the discarded cigarettes in the oil-soaked parking lot.
The liquor store owner was allegedly the victim of a violent crime. He apparently defended his life, and I can’t imagine what he’s going through right now.
But I can imagine the sickening feeling of being robbed at gunpoint. Nearly 15 years ago, I had a sawed-off shotgun stuck in my face while working at a store in the Central West End. It was the most helpless feeling in the world. As the robber exited, he pinned an exclamation point to his actions by firing a shot into the shop’s drop ceiling.
When I called Vincent’s trainer Jim Howell to confirm what had happened, he still couldn’t believe it. He told me that his fighter hadn’t been in trouble and had a clean record.
A few days after the shooting, I was driving down Gamble in the early afternoon, past a large group of 18- to 25-year-olds loitering on one of the corners of the dead end street.
I reached the Gamble Recreation Center, an old fortress that provides sports and activities for the neighborhood kids. For my very first column, I had interviewed trainer Winston Shaw in the center’s boxing room and he had talked about his nearly 30 years of coaching kids and helping them stay on course.
He told me at that time that “boxing is simply the tool. What we’re really teaching is discipline.”
Last Thursday, as I entered Gamble exactly two years later to interview a young heavyweight prospect, Coach Shaw was standing on the steps and I asked him if he’d heard the news.
He nodded with the jaded expression of a person who had listened to the same sullen chord changes of a bitter ballad too many times.
He said, “You’re going to lose more than you save, but the ones you save make it worth it.”
We may never know what motivated Steve Vincent’s actions in those perilous overnight hours. But in the tug of war between the broad, voracious streets that swallow young lives and the greased balance beam leading to a productive future, it seems that the momentum shifted far enough last Monday to claim another promising athlete who almost made it.
