"The sport came to Béla Biszku, he also spoke with him, but he did not allow him to continue his professional career. In the end, they stopped talking to him, and took away his passport," said the son of the boxing legend in the interview.
Twenty years ago, the defining figure of world boxing, the three-time Olympic champion László Papp, fell asleep forever. The champion, nicknamed Görbe, and his wife had a child, László Papp Jr., who does everything to make sure people don't forget his father. By the way, he became a television and radio operator, and although he was familiar with the world of wrestlers, it never occurred to him to become one.
“My father never forced me to become a boxer.
He took me to training as a child, but I was much more interested in music, I played drums in amateur beat bands at the time. By the way, he also loved music, my grandfather taught him classical violin. He had a good sense of rhythm, but we could see that in the ring as well"
- says the 68-year-old younger László Papp, who has not secretly written a book about his father with the intention of keeping his memory alive.
"Because if someone has never heard of him, he knows who he was. I talked a lot with my father, wrote down these discourses and looked through more than a thousand newspaper articles. I am not a writer, which is why I showed the manuscript to the Kossuth Prize-winning Hungarian poet and writer Tibor Gyurkovics. I asked her to definitely tell me if it's not good. After reading it, he said it was fine, it could become a book."
According to László Papp Jr., his father was a pious man, a sensitive man who could be spread on bread. Of course not in the ring. There he strove to be better than his rival by fair means. As is well known, László Papp won the Olympic championship title three times and successfully embarked on a professional career, but the Communist Party leadership ultimately did not allow him to compete for the professional world championship belt. According to his son, all this caused a serious break in his father's soul.
"I think it also contributed to his later illness. My father became a broken, depressed man when they stopped wrestling with him. I was there, I saw it, I felt it all. It happened many times that he sat down to watch TV and then just stared at nothing. I knew that at this time he was thinking about what would have happened if he had been allowed to box for the world championship belt."
According to the boy's memory, when György Marosán was sidelined by the János Kádár family, his father went to Marosán, who told him that he could no longer help, and that he too was driven home.
"The sport came to Béla Biszku, my father also talked to him, but he did not allow him to continue his professional career. In the end, they stopped talking to him, and took away his passport"
continued László Papp younger.
According to the son of the boxing legend, twenty years was just enough for his father to fade from the collective memory: "Where he lived longer, we lived, my father is an honorary citizen, there is a relief on his former house. So three districts cherish his memory, and we were very happy when the boxing association, still led by Sándor Csötönyi, succeeded in having the arena built after the burned down Budapest Sports Hall bear my father's name.
Since the opening, we have been trying to get his name written on the building as well."
László Papp Jr. was the secretary of the boxing association for ten years, and he experienced it there as well. Unfortunately, young wrestlers don't even know who László Papp was.
"A group of children came to the association, and the professional director asked them to name a Hungarian Olympic champion. I sat in the background and listened. They said the name of Balzsay Karcsi because he was in the news a lot at the time. Nothing else... but Karcsi is not an Olympic champion"
- continues the younger László Papp, 68, who had two children, Gergő, and the younger, Tamás.
The latter is 40 years old and runs László Papp's official page on Facebook, and the memorial page now has 15,000 followers. Papp Tamás remembers his grandfather well, for example the summers at Lake Szelidi, where they were with him.
"It is also a pleasant memory that before the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, my brother and I went to the boxing training camp on Száztághegy several times. There I met boxers such as István Kovács, György Mizsei or Pali Lakatos, and of course the future national team captain, Uncle Öcsi Szántó, with whom I am in contact"
says his grandson.
Boxing did not captivate him either, he did not become a boxer, but he soon realized that his grandfather was a famous man. "I remember once we were walking on the sidewalk in Dunapataj, the long-distance bus passed us, then it stopped, the driver got out, approached us, shook my grandfather's hand and said that he thanked God that he was able to meet him in person. These experiences are burned into one's memory." He created the László Papp memorial page because he felt that something had to be done so that the name of the legend of the three-time Olympic champion would not be forgotten. Tamás Papp said that the family has neither financial resources nor connections, but
they are trying to team up with professionals, for example, to create a film showing the life of László Papp.
"Of course, I can be accused of bias, but I'm not alone in the opinion that such a feature film would suit the grandfather, who can be set as an example for posterity both as a human being and as a boxer," says his grandson.
At the same time, the descendants of the boxing legend are happy that the arena was named after him, and also that his memory is cherished in some districts. The family hopes that it will be possible to organize a naming ceremony to name a Papp László utca after the existing Papp László tér in Budapest...
Featured image: László Papp and his little son. The photo was taken in 1963. Photo: MTI/László Petrovits
