Royce Feour

Royce Feour, the boxing writer who covered the sport’s most iconic fights for the Review-Journal over nearly four decades and whose career led to enshrinement in at least four halls of fame, died this month after a long illness. He was 79.

Kind and gentle aren’t words often associated with boxing, but those were the words most often used to describe Feour by his family, friends and former colleagues.

The Las Vegas native was honored in 1996 by the Boxing Writers Association of America with the prestigious Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism. He was a member of the inaugural class of the Nevada Boxing Hall of Fame in 2013.

Feour was inducted into the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association Hall of Fame in 2011, the Southern Nevada Sports Hall of Fame in 2006 and the Nevada Newspaper Hall of Fame in 2005.

He retired from the Review-Journal in 2004 after 37 years, during which his loud laugh reverberated through the hallways.

Feour began dreaming of becoming a sports writer at the Review-Journal when he was a fourth-grader at Fifth Street Grammar School. His first byline in Nevada’s largest paper was in 1954 as a 14-year-old high school sophomore correspondent. He worked five years at the Las Vegas Sun before joining the Review-Journal in 1967, where he eventually became sports editor.

He attended UNR on journalism scholarships from the Las Vegas Press Club and Las Vegas Sun. He was sports editor of the student newspaper and correspondent for the Nevada State Journal and Reno Evening Gazette.

But Feour didn’t mind covering prep sports. In fact, despite having Muhammad Ali’s home phone number and being friendly with countless other famous people, Feour had a passion for high school sports in his home state. When he retired, he regularly attended prep games, mostly at Bishop Gorman, his adopted school.

Feour covered countless major championship fights in Las Vegas, dating to the Sonny Liston-Floyd Patterson heavyweight title bout in 1963 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Feour, whose Twitter handle was @GiantsLV, also was a huge fan of the San Francisco Giants and baseball in general. And he loved animals, especially dogs.

He will be greatly missed.