“Five thousand fans let loose a roar of approval. . . . San Francisco’s pugilistic public has found a hero worthy of its adulation,” trumpeted boxing’s tabloid, The Ring, in August 1940 after Ray Lunny defeated rival Verne Bybee. Six decades later, those sold-out Lunny-Bybee fights still echo in the boxing world.
Lunny, a legendary pugilist and longtime Stanford boxing coach, died May 20 in San Mateo. He was 83.
Raised in San Francisco, Lunny got his first pair of boxing gloves as a Christmas present and participated in his first regulation amateur fight at 15, winning 57 of his next 60 matches. In 1936, the lightweight won the San Francisco Golden Gloves title. In 1938, manager Joey Fox phoned him from L.A. with an offer to box professionally. Lunny won fight after fight and became known for his accuracy, speed and precision. “He had the ability to force his opponent to throw the punch he wanted, when he wanted it,” says his son, Ray Lunny III.
From 1938-40, Lunny went 22-0-2, with 10 knockouts. His first professional loss came in October 1941 in a nontitle fight against Chalky Wright, who a few months later won the featherweight crown. “He was the best I ever fought,” said the ever-respectful Lunny in an interview with The Ring.
World War II ended Lunny’s fighting career. He enlisted in the Coast Guard, and when he returned, he had passed his athletic peak. He retired in 1944 after losing his last three fights.
In 1947, he came to Stanford as boxing coach and physical education instructor. The Farm produced some outstanding fighters under Lunny, including Ed Rothman, ’61, who placed second in the 1960 NCAA finals. But the NCAA dropped the sport in the early 1960s, and Stanford boxing—along with Lunny’s collegiate coaching career—ended in 1972.
Lunny went on to coach his son, Ray, through a stellar boxing career in which he was ranked among the top 10 lightweight and junior lightweight boxers in the world.
In 1991, the elder Lunny was inducted into the World Boxing Hall of Fame—one of only a few non-world champions to earn that honor.
Jack Laird, ’40, former associate director of development for athletics, knew all the Stanford coaches, “but Lunny was kind of special,” he says. “You think of a boxer as a rough guy, but he was a real gentleman.”
Coach Lunny went into the ring with all his students and taught them more than feints and jabs. “He saw young men who had never lost at anything—and my dad had,” recalls his son. “He really loved these guys, so it was his desire to give every one of them a bloody nose. He wanted them to find out that getting a bloody nose, in the ring or in life, was not the end of the world. They could come back and do even better.”
In addition to his son, Lunny is survived by his wife of 59 years, Carney; a daughter, Carney, ’66; four grandchildren; and a brother.
