I didn’t know until now, he died a week ago from diabetes Boxer Antwun Echols, known as 'Kid Dynamite,' dies in Iowa at age 51
Damn! I was a big Echols fan in the 2000s. Probably the biggest Echols fan on the forum at the time. RIP to him. Very limited, but could punch like a muthafucker. Of course, outside of the two Hopkins fights, he'll always be remembered for his war with Charles Brewer.
I had his fight with Brian Barbosa on VHS. That's a pretty underrated brawl, and it ended with Echols knocking Barbosa out the ring. I've never seen it posted on YouTube, unfortunately.
echols was an interesting guy. met him once at the post fight press conference for casamayor and freitas. someone came up to him and told him, "hopkins said (about echols) you gotta cut that muthafuckas heart out to beat him" and all the while echols is just grinning with this crazed look on his face.
Echols had tough luck in going up against a prime B-Hop. Had he gone up against Joppy instead, and he might have won a belt.
Antwun Echols,Brian Barbosa, Shannon Briggs, Charles Brewer, Andrew Council ,Robert Allen etc are some of the "2nd tier" names from that period when I started getting back into boxing in the late 1990s. Seriously good fighters albeit very very limited in certain ways. They all ran into good champions when they tried to unify or fought for titles in their own rights. I'm sure they'd be champions or at the very least contenders again today. Echols wasn't really any worse than Jeff Lacy but he lacked amateur schooling and exposure not to mention careful management. Today a guy like him would, with proper management, be moved into very lucrative fights. Echols is known to me not just for the war with Brewer but for that plodding hapless loss to Mundine. Incredibly hard puncher, a bit like Hurricane Carter, physically and stylistically. Sad to see how many of these guys suffer health issues that aren't ostensibly boxing related.
I wouldn't say Echols and Hurricane Carter had anything in common outside of power. Carter's technique was light years better than Echols'.
