When most young boys are shooting hoops or playing catch with their fathers, Ray Boom Boom Mancini stepped into a boxing gym and promised his dad, “One day I’m going to be champion.” As a child, Ray routinely perused his father Lenny Mancini’s scrap book of newspaper articles about his bouts in the 1930s and 1940s and carefully read and reread the aged newsprint.

Little Ray was consumed with his dad’s early career that abruptly ended as a result of a serious wound incurred during World War II, which earned him a Purple Heart. In many ways the Youngstown, Ohio, champ lived in his father’s shadows so much that he even took on an unthinkable aspect of Lenny’s identity, his nickname. Typically, one of the many characteristics that separate most father and son athletes from the same sport — or any profession — is their use of nicknames; and yet the Boom Boom moniker embodies the core of Lenny and Ray Mancini’s perennial connection.