Kolpack: An ode to Bill Sorensen and the glory days of boxing

FARGO — The temperature was hot as blazes in August of 2018 when yours truly walked around the old west town of Medora, North Dakota, with Bill Sorensen. He greeted everybody, and knew almost everybody. Friendly as a North Dakota summer day is long. The manager of home-grown boxing great Virgil Hill was three years removed from Hill s last fight, a good time to reflect on the insistent drama known as pro boxing. It would be no slight to call Sorensen one of the more important behind-the-scenes figures in the history of North Dakota sports. He died this week at the age of 76. The aw-shucks mayor in Bismarck from 1990-2002 — the height of Hill s career — took over as the boxer s manager when there were questions of honesty with Hill s former management. There were insinuations, if not proof, of bad investments. Hill made $1.3 million in his 1991 loss to Thomas Hearns at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, a payday that would vanish over the course of the next several months.