Roger Donoghue

Roger Donoghue, the son of an Irish immigrant, was a professional middleweight boxer who won twenty-five out of twenty-seven professional bouts; on August 29, 1951, he fought George Flores at the old Madison Square Garden in New York City. Donoghue knocked Flores out forty-six seconds into the eighth round, but Flores died four days later and Donoghue never boxed professionally again. However, he became known as a trainer - he taught Marlon Brando how to box for "On The Waterfront" (1954) and James Dean for "Rebel Without A Cause" (1955) and was known in artistic circles as a raconteur and storyteller who provided Budd Schulberg with Brando's signature line ("I coulda been a contender") in "On the Waterfront", as an answer to Schulberg's query "Could you have been a champion?"