MADISON, Wis. -- John J. Walsh, the coach who guided the University of Wisconsin to eight NCAA boxing championships and 35 individual titles has died at age 89.

Walsh coached the Badgers' boxing team from 1934 to 1958. The NCAA team championship trophy was eventually named in honor of Walsh, the man who presided over one of college athletics' greatest dynasties.

Walsh, also an attorney, died in Madison on Thursday night.

E.C. Wallenfeldt, in his book on college boxing, "The Six-Minute Fraternity," wrote of Walsh, "No other coach in the history of intercollegiate boxing even approached that kind of success."

Walsh was born in Minneapolis in 1912, and began boxing as a young boy.

"I started boxing up there at about eight years of age," he said in a 1991 unpublished interview for the Wisconsin Oral History Project.

He first came to Madison in 1933 as a boxer for St. Thomas College of St. Paul, Minn. He so impressed George Downer, the director of Wisconsin's athletic publicity, that Downer hired Walsh the next year to coach the Badgers.

Walsh retired as coach when Wisconsin boxer Charlie Mohr died after collapsing in the locker room following an NCAA tournament match in 1960. The sport was dropped by the NCAA following Mohr's death.