If I’m counting right, I only saw TG in-person twice: once in 2019 and again in 2023. There was a chance to see him in 2021, but I opted to shoot photos of a debuting fighter instead, a choice he playfully never let me live down (fair). But every time anyone on the team got the chance for face-to-face time with him, we always came away with the same loving sentiment: “Oh, you know TG.” I’d always ask what anecdotes he told, and he’d almost always bring up the legendary tale of his one boxing match, chewing up the scenery as he recounted the New York Daily News coverage, particularly the line which read: “Gerbasi was in trouble from the opening bell.” At the dinner in 2023, when he hadn’t brought it up midway through the meal, I egged him on, and he “reluctantly” went into every nook and cranny of the tale.
And that’s who he was: a storyteller’s storyteller. Whether it was about boxing, MMA, roller derby or his own life, Gerbasi could spin a yarn that would have you rolling with laughter or stunned in amazement, and he’d do it all with a roll of his eyes and sly grin that proved he did, in fact, love it all despite the facade he put up otherwise. I used to joke that Gerbasi was the quintessential New York-based sportswriter. You’d hear plenty about the work he didn’t want to do or the annoyances of fighters or managers giving him the run-around, but it was so obvious he loved it all whether he wanted to admit it or not.
Given the state of sports reporting, it’s easy to lionize people you could consider “throwback,” but after decades of underappreciation from the wider MMA public, he deserves all the flowers. He wrote dozens of stories each month, giving as much due to the first fighter on a card as he would a multi-time champion whose legacy was long secured. One of the best parts of my job has been getting to read a handful of his stories each week, partly because I needed to figure out a title for them (despite our best efforts to put that onus on him), but also because I just enjoyed his writing. There was a blend of wit, love, care and earnestness that is increasingly rare in the sport and sportswriting as a whole. Reading a Gerbasi story meant learning and loving the sport or an athlete more, and those who read or received his coverage understood that. In 2022, when Gerbasi was inducted into the International Women’s Boxing Hall of Fame, I was tasked with a quick write-up with a warning to the tune of: he’ll hate this, but he’ll appreciate it too, and when the story was published, he delivered an email expressing as much.
