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Florence “Flo” Anthony, an entertainment journalist and the publicist for boxing greats Muhammad Ali, Larry Holmes and her husband, Michael Spinks, has died, according to Grio.
She was 74.
Anthony died on August 6, 2026 from cancer.
Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1952, Anthony became an entertainment reporter and covered the sport of boxing, where she turned publicist for some of the greatest fighters in boxing history.
She joined the New York Post in 1986 as an agate clerk with ambitions of covering sports, an arrangement that ended when editors moved her to entertainment.
As she recounted in a 2013 interview cited by Deadline, the transition came with a blunt assessment of her performance in the sports role, but the result was historic.
She described going “from the first African American woman in the sports department to the first African American woman in the entertainment department,” ultimately becoming the first woman on staff in the department that houses Page Six.
Television made her a household presence.
Anthony became a regular contributor and occasional co-host on E!’s “The Gossip Show” across its entire run from 1993 to 1998, and appeared on programs hosted by Joan Rivers, Maury Povich, Sally Jessy Raphael and Geraldo Rivera. She was also a frequent voice on TV One’s “Unsung” and “Life After.”
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