BELLINGHAM, Wash. --- In the fall of 1966, Fraser Scott was standing on the football field at Civic Stadium returning kickoffs for Western Washington State College (now Western Washington University). Just three years later, he was standing in a boxing ring in Naples, Italy, fighting for the World Middleweight championship.

A graduate of Lake Washington High School in Kirkland, Wash., Scott saw limited action at Western in his lone season. He returned four kickoffs for 101 yards, including one for 54 yards against Portland State. The 5-foot-9, 165-pound redheaded running back also had 17 carries for 48 yards and returned one punt for 14 yards.
 
At Lake Washington, Scott was an all-star player for a program that dominated the KingCo League. During that time he became involved in Golden Gloves, winning two regional crowns.
 
Scott also fought as an amateur while at Western. He transferred to Bellevue CC and later attended Seattle University.
 
Between his one-year stay at Western and his world middleweight fight, Scott competed in a couple of boxing "Smokers," fundraising activities for Viking Athletics, at Sam Carver Gymnasium.
 
Occasionally, Scott asked other football players to work out with him. One was fullback/linebacker Bob Unick, then a senior from Ferndale.
 
"One time he asked me to spar with him," recalled Unick. "He wanted someone bigger than him, and I was around 5-foot-9 and 225 pounds. I told him that I'd do it if there were no blows to the head. We began and just seconds into the match, he hit me under my rib cage. It felt as though his hand had gone into one side and come out the other. The pain was incredible. I immediately took off the gloves and walked away."
 
In 1968, Scott, who was nicknamed "Society Red," turned professional and in just over one year had a record of 17-0-1 with eight knockouts. His biggest victory was a two-round; cut-eye stoppage of former junior middleweight champion Denny Moyer.
 
In 1969, Scott, just 21 years old, was awarded a title shot against middleweight king Nino Benvenuti (78-3-1, 32 knockouts). That took place on Oct. 4 in Benvenuti's hometown of Naples at Stadio San Paolo, which hosted soccer preliminaries for the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome.
 
Benvenuti was a prohibitive favorite to beat the American upstart, but Scott surprised many by giving him quite a tussle. The fight, sanctioned by both the World Boxing Association and World Boxing Council, ended in round seven of the scheduled 15-rounder when the Italian referee disqualified Scott for head butting. It was a highly controversial stoppage and Benvenuti retained his title.
 
Scott claimed that he was fighting out of a crouch. As was sometimes the case with American boxers fighting in Europe, this was caused in part by differences in styles in Europe and America, with American fighters getting punished in some cases for fighting out of a crouch by foreign referees.
 
After his loss to Benvenuti, Scott would go 6-6 for the remainder of his professional career while experiencing the seamier side of the sport.
 
Scott finished with a record of 23-7-1. He then wrote a book about his career entitled "Weigh-In, the selling of a middleweight," published in 1974, and had a long running column in a major boxing publication.
 

Q&A with Fraser Scott
 
How did you find yourself playing football for the Vikings?
 
"It was just one of those things. It wasn't as though I was on top of the paperwork. I was looking around and a friend of mine said that I was accepted (into Western) … I just walked on (for football) and I was able to play occasionally."
 
"I remember most of the guys on the team. (Defensive end) Dave Weedman was like Superman. He was 6-foot-5 and 235 pounds. Back then, he was a GIANT!
 
"I have lots of good memories of the team and that season."
 
What is a game-day recollection you have from your season of football at Western?
 
"I remember my first attempt at returning a kickoff. Looking up at the sky and the ball is descending and I catch it and run. I dropped the ball, but due to my lucky life, it bounced right back up into my hands and I returned it for over 50 yards. I remember running along the sideline, passing Coach (Fred) Emerson as a matter of fact, and he's waving his arms and yelling, 'This way. Run, run, run!'"
 
What is a memory you have of Western as a student?
 
"I had a Poli Sci teacher and we were sitting in class, and right outside the window was one of the first protests of the Vietnam War. And during our class, he looked out there and said, 'Now that's Poly-Sci.' I thought that was priceless. Here was a bunch of unarmed kids thinking that they can take the world into their hands and change it for the better. It was fabulous."
 
How did your boxing career go during your time at Western?
 
After football season, I was heading down to Seattle just about every afternoon to go to a gymnasium in Seattle called the Cherry Street Gym. This was where I basically learned to be a prize fighter. How to throw a jab, how to throw a right hand, how to throw a left hook, all by the book, and take it from there … The things you learn from fighting people better than you. What I learned about myself was that I was a pretty cool customer. When I was under attack, I knew what to do. I didn't panic."
 
How did your prize-fighting career begin?
 
"I was fighting in the Golden Gloves before and during my time at Western.
 
Later, with the protests going on, taking on the challenge of changing the government, change how we were governed, was basically something I couldn't resist. Of course, I expressed it in my own way. So, during the summer of 1968 when (Martin Luther) King and (Bobby) Kennedy were shot down, I found my myself going down to L.A. in the back of a Pontiac station wagon, headed for the Olympic Auditorium. I had no appointment and I didn't have any fights, but I thought that I'd give it a shot. So, I set up shop in one of the gyms down there - Jake's Gym - and it was in Watts, a couple of years after the riots there. I was the only white guy there, a totally black gym. So, you established instant street credibility when you stepped in the ring and started working out with these guys, and my life has never been the same since.
 
"These were some really tough guys. I had basically jumped into the deep end. But I enjoyed every minute of it. I was as nervous as a cat every day, because you had things to learn and if you could shut up for a minute, you could actually learn it. You learned it fighting them. That's basically how you could do it, by standing up to them and they accepted you so quick into their ranks that it made your head swim.
 
"I started picking up fights in that Olympic Auditorium, four rounders. And 20 months later, I was fighting for the middleweight championship of the world. It happened very fast, but basically everyday it was discipline, energy and focus. And that's what athletics has always taught me. That's how you succeed in the game."
 
What are your thoughts about your boxing career?
 
"That's one of those things where, is it harder to remember how bad it was or is it easier to remember the lessons I learned from it? Which prevailed? It's easier to remember the good lessons of sports that I learned from it than the bad things that I involved myself in.
 
"I can sort of relate to disillusionment. When it comes to business, it's about money. The person who has most of the money versus running the show. The lion's share of the money goes to the guy in control. I found myself in a world where I didn't think they were doing the right thing, but they were doing it and they seemed to be happy about it. And they were controlling me in one sense, and I didn't like that. So, I decided to fix a couple of fights. It was not a great decision, but the disillusion that I was feeling at the time and the place. So, I basically created a little crime spree. I fixed a fight here, fixed a fight there. But finally I realized that I couldn't keep this up and so I essentially blew the whistle on myself and my international crime spree was over. Simple as that."
 
What did you learn from boxing?
 
"In the turmoil, when you're two feet away from the guy, when you are in the middle of the storm, you basically have to keep your eyes open and react and learn how to hit. I could hit really hard with both hands and I had all the punches, and I had a feel for it. And I was cool under attack. Calm and collected.
 
"That was the one thing that I had over a lot of fighters was that I could think. Here was one thing so simple that I did … Ten seconds to go (in a round) and my manager would shout a code word and I would back up and go toward my corner so that I had an extra few seconds to rest. Gave me five seconds more of rest.
 
"From the first round on you're dismantling your opponent. Once you get into a pattern, the punches follow naturally one after the other. For three minutes at a high level.
 
"I wasn't in the game that long, but I changed my style a couple of times. I started off very cautious, basically totally on defense until the guy showed me what he had. Then I got changed. The only way I was going to beat Benvenuti in his hometown would be to attack, So, from the first bell, I just attacked, attack, attack. It was like a very highly skillful German Panzer blitz. One thing after another, it all worked together. You got the air going and ground forces. You got this and you've got that, and you're just attacking with everything you have, and at that moment you're breathing extremely hard, but you don't even notice that you're out of breath. The bell rings, you don't even want to sit down, you're so psyched up. But, of course, I was just 21 years old at the time and I was in superb shape.
 
"But when you're attacking, it's a lot harder than defending, frankly. Army guys will tell you this. So, I really respect the offensive fighter.
 
"After my crime spree, I just got out of the game totally. I harbored some ill feelings about it, which is understandable. But I took a job writing for a boxing magazine. At that time Mike Tyson was fighting and I really liked the guy's style, constant attack, and I interviewed him. He was about my size, but he weighed 215. So, he was not a very big guy and he had to overcome the size of his opponent all the time. And in a lot of ways I did too. But he had to attack relentlessly. I knew that he had only so many years to mount attacks like that."
 
How did you go about writing, "Weigh-In?"
 
"I wrote first drafts of it in a restaurant that I bought as a prizefighter. Then I went to New York City to see if I could sell this thing. There was a guy named Jack Scott (a prominent critic of organized athletics during the 1960's and early 1970's). He had set up a sports department, which was involved in all manners of sport, good and bad, and investigations of what's bad with the sports scene, at Oberlin College.
 
"So, I went to Oberlin College and hung out with him, and he put me in touch with a man who became my agent and is still my friend. I went back to New York City and wrote the final draft of it on the Upper West Side (neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, New York City, that lies between Central Park and the Hudson River) during the summer of 1975. I had an editor for that, but we didn't talk too much about what to do …. I'd write and go to downtown Manhattan and deliver what I had. Then I'd trudge back to the Upper West Side and bang it out for the next day.
 
What was really good is that after it was all over and my rent was due, I was looking for a new place. I didn't stay around there (UWS); I ambled my way down to Greenwich Village. I found a place and lived there for two years, writing other stuff and pursuing other angles. I will forever be grateful for that experience. This was maybe eight years after Bob Dylan escaped the village, so it was still the old village before people were buying townhouses for $10 million. No, it was the old sleepy kind of village, full of musicians, artists, hippies and anarchists. So, the whole atmosphere was just ripe and so much fun. I'll never forget that."
 
What did you do after your boxing career?
 
"Well, I keep writing. I was up at five o'clock this morning writing. I pace around, I think, I try to arrange my thoughts … After I wrote the book after my adventures in prize fighting, both good and bad, I just kept writing. I picked up a couple of assignments here and there. I turned most of them down because I wanted to write a certain way as a novelist … I tried to invent my own way of looking at the world, and that's what I've been doing ever since."
 
You often talk about being as nervous as a cat. What do you mean?
 
"I'm always nervous as a cat. What I realize about this now at a certain age, is that everything is trying to kill you. If you aren't nervous with all that going on? It's man vs. dark, man vs. light, man vs. nature, man vs. beast, man vs. man. How can you not be nervous?
 
"That's why essentially I truly want women to take over this world. I really believe that they have a better idea of how to survive. Women are completely inclusive and what they are talking about, people should listen."
 
Tell us about your wife and family.
 
"If it hadn't been for my wife, of now 36 years, I would probably be adrift somewhere. But I got lucky and married a woman who was probably the first feminist, the 'Original Feminist,' I'll call her. She was able to dismantle all of the patriarchal notions that I had – man vs. woman … You see it today. They have a different way of looking at things and frankly, it's a better way. It makes more sense. It's basically non-violent. Without her hand on me, I wouldn't have been able to do anything that I had wanted. I was lucky enough to be a work-at-home dad when our kids were young. Hands on fathership. I mean that was fabulous. And that's all due to her. We're still married, and love each other.
 
"She was a couple of years younger than me. We went to the same high school. We've known each other for 50-some years. I don't know what she sees in me. I know what I see in her. That's a good thing. To this day, that befuddles me.
 
"We have two daughters (Madelyn and Lily). One (Madelyn) went to Western (and graduated in 2017 with a bachelor of arts degree in business administration and marketing and a minor in art history)."
 
You've written a couple of novels. Do you intend to get them published?
 
"I'm going to try and sell them one of these days. Basically I write for myself right now. I have my little stories to tell. My little dramas. I could push them if I wanted to, but that's another deal. You have to be fairly aggressive. … But you'd be surprised how many times people call up and want me to do something. But I don't have the will to do it because frankly, I'm enjoying doing it basically for myself. You start bringing (commercialism) into it and it becomes something else. It's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just something else. But the way my life is right now, how enjoyable it is, and as nervous as I am. Making a phone call sometimes is a high bar for me because basically I like to stay private to a large degree."
 
You certainly seem to have lived life on the edge?
 
"That's true. That goes hand in hand with the game. Getting ready for a fight. I know who I'm fighting. I know how good they are. You're not going to take something like that very lightly. You're going to think about that all the time. Not obsess over it. In a cool, rational way, figure out a way to dismantle their mistakes and emphasize your own … There are certain elements you can transfer to real life.
 
"If you like being nervous as a cat, and I do. Serena Williams said it very well recently She said 'Pressure is a privilege.' And I thought, that is so profound. And she heard that from Billie Jean King. I wouldn't like to think any other way.
 
"I take no pills, I take no medicine. I work on my feet basically all day. I have a stand-up desk. I always like to work outside with a shovel, weeding a garden, cutting, chopping. That's my exercise. My muscle tone is still very good. Very little infirmities. Old guy with a ponytail, a lot of it is grey. Don't have any trophies, ribbons, diplomas and this and that.
 
"I've always thought in a different way. I've tried to do things in a way that made sense to me. That means that you have to be able to change. You have to recognize when you're wrong. That's one of my strengths is realizing when I sound stupid."
 
Your thoughts about raising your kids as a stay-at-home dad?
 
"That was one of the greatest achievements of my life. Nowadays, when I see them, it's pretty easy to have tears come to my eyes. The pleasure of thinking about them, my eyes just well up.
 
"As far as raising them, it was absolutely crazy. Kids are very, very demanding and it's very easy to overlook all the fun that you are having while you've got nine things to do that involve their demands and teaching them how to be independent, reading to them, and getting them up. Donna will tell you that doing this together was one of the greatest things that we will probably ever accomplish as human beings. Being the stay-at-home dad was incredible. The most rewarding thing was hearing laughter from the kids. They're having a good time. It's something that more fathers should do. That's starting to seep into the culture."
 
How would you describe yourself?
 
"I love people. I love people that are different than me. I love cultures. I love living in this world … We need to build alliances rather than divide things. The future hope of human kind will be our alliances with people. That's one thing that I try to teach myself constantly."
 
Written by Paul Madison who served 48 years as sports information director at WWU from 1966 to 2015. He is now in his fourth year as the school's Athletics Historian.