A Knockout Career

Former Terps Linebacker’s Career Has One-Two Punch as Boxing Referee and Sales Exec

Former Terps football player Jimmy Santa ’76 entered the boxing ring more than 350 times in Madison Square Garden and many other venues, and he only got hit once.

“I swear I saw stars,” Santa recalls. But he was able to finish the round — as the referee.   

In his more than 40-year bout as a boxing referee, Santa called many internationally televised title fights involving legends, including Roy Jones, Buster Douglas and Larry Holmes. He has also enjoyed a winning career in sales, now in his 40th year as a senior account manager for Givaudan, the world’s largest maker of flavorings and fragrances.

The Rye, N.Y. native was recently inducted into the Westchester County Sports Hall of Fame, both for his boxing refereeing and his college football days as a linebacker for the Terps. 

After four years playing for UMD in the early 1970s, Santa pursued an NFL career. But when he got cut from a New York Giants training camp, it was Maryland’s then-head coach Jerry Claiborne that convinced him to come back.

“If it wasn’t for him, I never would have gotten a degree,” says Santa, who pays it forward by donating to a UMD endowment. Claiborne made sure his fifth year was covered as a student assistant for the football team. “He changed my life.”

Santa earned his business degree and got his first taste of boxing while working part-time security at the Capital Centre, a former arena that hosted professional sports and major concerts. That’s where he got picked for a stint as Muhammad Ali’s personal bodyguard while the champ trained for a 1976 fight against Jimmy Young. Santa was hooked.

“I was just so enamored by the sport,” he says. “It was just the excitement and adrenaline.”

Ringside for the fight, broadcaster Howard Cosell suggested Santa become a referee. After he graduated and moved to New York for his first sales job with Procter & Gamble, he trained as a boxing referee on nights and weekends. He started out calling small matches in local gyms, eventually working his way up to matches in Madison Square Garden. He even refereed the first women’s fight at the Garden.

“By the end of my career, I was doing major fights on HBO, millions of people watching all over the world, and it was the most exciting thing I’ve ever done.”

Santa says the key to his success as a referee was knowing when to stop the fight.

“The thing I’m most proud of is no one ever got seriously injured when I was in the ring,” says Santa. “In boxing, once you say it’s over, it’s over. You can ruin a career or save a life.”

That’s the fine line with a boxing referee that’s different from any other sport, he says.

“I stopped a couple too soon. I stopped a couple too late, and thank God nobody got hurt.”

For now, Santa’s not ready to call it quits on his sales career. He’s currently living in Texas, working from his home office, which is decked out in Terps and boxing memorabilia.

“I love working, and I love working for Givaudan. I’m learning every day, and I don’t want to retire.”