BoxRec

kikibalt wrote:Wasn't Burgess Meredith great in the 1939 movie "Of Mice and Men"?

Yes Frank. I thought Burgess Meredith was great in "Of Mice and Men". It's a classic. He was also the best actor to ever play the Penguin in the old Batman television series. Here is a clip from the movie "Of Mice and Men" with Burgess Meredith, Charles Bickford and Lon Chaney Jr, as George, Slim and Lennie.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1anlq ... -1939-clip

Here is an interesting MySpace page dedicated to Burgess Meredith:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fu ... =146758193

Thanks, Randy, "Of Mice and Men" one of the all time great movies, sad movie, but great none the less.

Larry Holmes

Mickey Cohen

Crusaders in the underworld: The LAPD takes on organized crime


The Gangster Squad was formed in 1946 to keep East Coast Mafia out of L.A. Its 'anything goes' approach endured through the 1950s in an era when justice was found far from the courthouse.

By Paul Lieberman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

Sgt. Willie Burns had a Tommy gun on the bench in front of him when his 18 handpicked candidates arrived at the 77th Street station on the edge of Watts. It was a cool evening in November 1946, and the men came in topcoats and hats. Burns wore his low, almost over his eyes, like the bad guys.

Years later, he told a grand jury: "My primary duties were to keep down these gangster killings and try to keep some of these rough guys under control." But he hadn't given his fellow LAPD cops any hint of why they'd been summoned that night. Now he laid it out.

If they joined the Gangster Squad, their targets would be the likes of Bugsy Siegel, the playboy refugee from New York's Murder Inc., and Jack Dragna, the Sicilian banana importer who quietly lorded over the city's rackets.

Then there was Mickey Cohen, the dapper former prizefighter who had come to town as Bugsy's muscle but soon had his own cafe on North La Brea and a "paint store" nearby with three phones to take bets. That's where he'd shot a produce broker whose family ran competing bookie joints. Mickey said the man came at him with a .45, the one found beside the body, and there were no witnesses to contradict his story. "It was me or him," Mickey said. "I let him have it."

There had been three more mob rub-outs around L.A. since then, including the shotgunning of two Chicago men outside a Hollywood apartment. That one generated a "Gangsters in Gambling War" headline that was a prime reason Police Chief C.B. Horrall wanted those 18 cops to see what a Thompson submachine gun looked like.

"You'll be working with these," Burns told them.

The deal was: If they signed on, they'd continue to belisted on the rosters of their old stations. They'd have no office, only two unmarked cars. They'd almost never make arrests. They'd simply gather "intelligence" and be available for other chores. In effect, they would not exist.

Burns gave them a week to ponder advice from an old lieutenant at the 77th, who said an assignment like that could get you in good with the chief. "Or you could end up down in San Pedro, walking a beat in a fog."

After the week, only seven came back, making a squad of eight, counting Burns.

"We did a lot of things that we'd get indicted for today," said Sgt. Jack O'Mara.

On the job a decade before J. Edgar Hoover's FBI acknowledged the existence of the Mafia, they took an anything-goes approach to making life hell for Mickey Cohen and driving other such characters from the Southern California sunshine.

They used a look-alike Pac Bell truck to plant bugs, to hell with warrants. They did secret favors for Jack Webb, who glorified the LAPD with his "Dragnet" TV show. They stole evidence from mobsters and neutralized a pesky newspaper columnist. And Jack O'Mara personally set a trap for the showboating Mickey, to prove he was a killer.

There were close calls -- grand jury investigations, lawsuits and a skeptical chief or two -- but they endured through the 1950s. That's when one of their cases changed the ground rules for policing in California and when one of their own -- Jerry Wooters, the most reckless of them all -- grew far too friendly with L.A.'s homegrown hoodlum, Jack "the Enforcer" Whalen.

But when "the Enforcer" made the mistake of confronting Mickey and his crew at a hangout in the Valley, a bullet between the eyes signaled that the Gangster Squad's time was over, and so was a defining era in the city's history.

Noir L.A. was a time and place where truth was not found in the sunlight, and justice not found in marble courthouses, and where not a single gangland killing was solved, not one, for half a century. Not on paper, anyway.

Their first assignment: the visitors shaking down Hollywood restaurants and nightclubs. "Hoodlum types from Rhode Island," in O'Mara's words, "what we called 'dandruff.' "

The fear of evil outsiders had been a refrain in L.A. before any of these cops were born. You could go back to 1891, when this was a community of 70,000 with a police force of 75, and hear Chief John Glass warn of "Eastern crooks" seeking warm weather and easy pickings. After the turn of the century, the invaders were upgraded to "Eastern gangsters," and in 1927 Det. Ed "Roughhouse" Brown became a local legend by escorting Al Capone to the train when the notorious mobster was discovered in a downtown hotel. "I thought you folks liked tourists," Capone said before returning to Chicago.

Now a new group of "tourists" was demanding 25% of the take at landmarks such as the Mocambo and Brown Derby, and the club owners did not want to go to court, worried what might happen to their families. A state crime report would warn anew of an "Invasion of Undesirables." "What are you gonna do?" O'Mara asked.

The view was great from the hills off Mulholland Drive. So why not escort these hoodlums up there and, as O'Mara put it, "have a little heart-to-heart talk with 'em, emphasize the fact that this wasn't New York, this wasn't Chicago, this wasn't Cleveland. And we leaned on 'em a little, you know what I mean? Up in the Hollywood Hills, off Coldwater Canyon, anywhere up there. And it's dark at night."

Amid that darkness, he would "put a kind of a gun to their ear and say, 'You want to sneeze?' "

That was O'Mara's signature, the gun in the ear and a few suggestive words: "Do you feel a sneeze coming on? A real loud sneeze?"

The squad members met on street corners or in parking lots. Their 1940 Fords had 200,000 miles on them and holes in the floorboard so they could pour fluid into the master cylinders. At times five men rode in one, and if several smoked cigars, their suits would stink so bad they'd hang them outdoors at night.

Their three Tommy guns came with 50-round drums and beautiful violin cases, but were a pain -- they couldn't leave them in the trunk and risk having them stolen. O'Mara slept with his under his bed.

When they did get an office, it was a cubbyhole in the decaying Central station, which had horse stalls from the 1880s.

It was tempting to see them as a wrecking crew, with several resembling another new team in town, the football Rams. Doug "Jumbo" Kennard stood 6-foot-4, Archie Case weighed 250 and Benny Williams was construction-strong -- one of the cops who built the Police Academy in their spare time.

But a team needed a quarterback or two, men tough and clever, like Burns, who'd been a gunnery officer during the war. Or Jack O'Mara.

Born in 1917, he spent his toddler years in Portland, Ore., until ice storms inspired his father to pile the family into a Model T and drive south. Jack landed at Manual Arts High, where he wasn't the speediest guy on the track team but never understood how anyone beat him. For fun, he boxed.

Not quite 135 pounds, he had to stuff himself with bananas and ice cream to make the weight for the LAPD, which needed men in the wake of its scandals of the 1930s, when a mayor and chief were caught selling promotions and a rogue squad planted a bomb under the car of a civic reformer. "It was a lousy, crooked department," said Max Solomon, Bugsy Siegel's attorney.

O'Mara became part of a generation that was supposed to change all that. At the academy, he foolishly kept racing the fastest man in the Class of 1940, Tom Bradley, the former UCLA track star and future mayor, though he had no chance of winning.

He worked patrol and traffic until Pearl Harbor, when the U.S. Coast Guard gave him an aptitude test and sent him to a cryptography unit in the Aleutian Islands, part of the effort to intercept Japanese communications and break their code. Who knew he had brains? When he returned, he was a pipe-smoking, 165-pound Spencer Tracy look-alike, and just the sort Burns wanted for his hush-hush unit.

Other cops suspected they were internal spies, headhunters, a rumor that started when a beat officer confided to the chief's office that a bookmaking barber was inviting cops to "get on the take." The squad caravaned to the barbershop, "ripped everything, kicked all the walls out," O'Mara said, and shaved the guy's head with his own razors.

Pleased, the brass gave them more muscle: 6-foot-5 Jerry Greeley and Lindo "Jaco" Giacopuzzi, a 230-pound former all-Valley football lineman who had built himself up carting milk cans at his family's dairy. When that pair got a Tommy gun, they showed they understood the rules of this gig -- that there were none in dealing with Mickey Cohen and his ilk. Asked to stake out the clothing store Mickey had opened, they decided to leave his crew guessing whether they were cops or out-of-town hoods.

They took the plates off their unmarked car and found others -- from Illinois -- in the trash at the DMV, then parked up the block from Mickey's place. One of Mickey's men went out to investigate and "every time he'd pass by us, we'd put our coat up and pull our hat down," Giacopuzzi recalled. "So when we left, I was driving, and all the men in Mickey's establishment there came out on the sidewalk . . . and I took the car and I swerved it . . . and Greeley leaned way out of the window with the Tommy gun. And you should have seen them hit the deck."

It was a great prank to share with the squad, the fake drive-by, and maybe they wouldn't have done it later, after someone -- not faking -- came by Mickey's haberdashery on the Sunset Strip with a shotgun. That was no laughing matter, the dead body that marked the start of the Sunset Wars.

The squad made news for the first time on Nov. 15, 1947, with a report that Willie Burns and O'Mara had led a "flying detachment" that rousted six Midwesterners on Wilshire in a limo with New York plates. The six were booked on suspicion of robbery, though there was no evidence they had yet committed any crime in Los Angeles. Photographers were invited into the Wilshire station to snap them seated on a bench, several with bowed heads. Then four were escorted to the county border.

Of course, no one knew then what would become of the two men who were allowed to stay on promises of good behavior. Who could have guessed that James Fratianno, an ex-con "used-car salesman" from Cleveland, would become infamous as Jimmy the Weasel, the L.A. mob's most prolific hit man? Who could have guessed that James Regace would rise to head that mob three decades later, under his real name, Dominic Brooklier?

What mattered at the time was that the squad had sent some suspicious characters packing and thus sent a signal to the civilian populace and to Mickey et al. That second audience did get the message -- the bug in Mickey's Brentwood home made that clear.

His right-hand man, Neddie Herbert, was overheard the day after the roust, saying: "I can't meet you at the Mocambo, I'm afraid they'll pick me up." At 3:30 a.m., he updated Mickey: "Somebody else got picked up. Jesus Christ. I'm getting out of this. I want to live to be a grandfather."

"They can't make anybody leave town," Mickey said. "It's against the Constitution."

The Gangster Squad could not take credit for that eavesdropping, or be blamed when it turned into a fiasco. The squad was still getting organized when vice detectives leaped at an opening provided by Mickey's renovation of a ranch house on Moreno Drive. Five posed as construction workers, when the real ones took off, and hid a microphone between the wood bin and the fireplace.

The bug was set by the time Mickey and Lavonne Cohen moved in, and soon was picking up barking by Tuffy, their bulldog. The vice team's mistake was hiring a private bugging expert, because he secretly ran a second line to his own listening post. For a year it gave him -- along with the LAPD -- a window into what Mickey was up to: talking about fixing charity boxing matches, telling someone back East that "we need a shotgun in the outfit," grumbling about greedy cops who "grab it and tear your arm off" when you offer them "a gift."

But the bug picked up nothing of note on June 20, 1947, when Bugsy Siegel was shot through the eye while reading the Los Angeles Times in his living room a few miles east. Mickey kept mum about Bugsy's demise, which left him and Jack Dragna to fight for control of local gambling.

Mickey's crew did complain about the leader of the Gangster Squad, Willie Burns, and how some cops were harassing customers at his haberdashery. "It's ridiculous," Mickey said. "Anybody who they see leave the store they take right downtown." Not long after, Burns' wife received flowers at home, a funeral arrangement.

Some hoodlums understand the wisdom of anonymity, but the 5-foot-5 Mickey was the opposite breed, like Capone, or later John Gotti. Mickey cultivated his image as a "dese, dem and dose" sort who worked his way up to monogrammed silk pajamas.

He could claim to be a local boy too, for while he was Brooklyn-born, as Meyer Harris Cohen, his mother moved west to Boyle Heights, where he got a paperboy's education in the streets and began boxing with a Star of David on his trunks. He moved East to compete as a top featherweight and settled in Cleveland and Chicago, where he met the Capones and segued into "rooting," his term for "sticking up joints."

Now Mickey sped between nightspots in an entourage of Cadillacs and boasted that he wore suits just twice, then sold them at his store. He made no secret of his hand-washing mania, either, cleaning them constantly for fear that germs, not bullets, would get him.

But he was no joke -- a commission appointed by Gov. Earl Warren estimated that "the Cohen gang" had 500 bookies under its wing, with Mickey demanding $40 a week for each telephone in return for his protection. And although the LAPD once was the place to secure that protection, by 1947 he found it easier to do business in some of the county's other 46 law enforcement jurisdictions, especially Burbank, whose police chief soon was able to buy a 56-foot yacht, largely with cash.

Yet it wasn't easy to get the goods on Mickey, for he'd say one instant that a gambling joint was worth "over half a million," then lament that he still owed $45,000 on his house and, oh yeah, "I haven't booked a horse in four years."

Later, Mickey insisted he knew all along the cops had "a bug in my rug" and that's why he dished them so much nonsense. But he seems to have learned of the bug by chance, when his gardener plunged a shovel through an underground wire. Mickey had his property swept and found the mike by the wood box.

Soon after, he obtained partial transcripts of his conversations, 126 pages of notes that the private bug man apparently had taken and now was selling along the Sunset Strip. The San Francisco Chronicle and the L.A. Times got them too, generating "Cohen's Secrets" and "Cohen's Big Deals" headlines . . . and questions about why the man still walked free if authorities had all that dirt on him.

That's why the Gangster Squad had its own bug man.

From an Iowa farm family that came west in a covered wagon, Con Keeler had grown up tinkering with radios and could cobble together crude bugs using telephone and hearing aid parts. He also knew Navy intelligence officers who were developing eavesdropping systems that did not require long, telltale wires -- a welcome innovation given that Mickey would be looking for wires.

In this system, the mike was connected to a transmitter that sent signals you could pick up blocks away. The downside was that you had to hide a six-pack of batteries with the transmitter and replace them every week. But the first challenge was planting the equipment.

That was especially daunting at Mickey's house because someone -- probably Dragna -- had exploded dynamite under it. Mickey now had round-the-clock guards, swinging searchlights and an armored front door with a porthole window.

The answer? A diversion. As soon as Mickey and Lavonne went out one night, two squad members began digging noisily in a nearby lot. When Mickey's guards went to have a look, Keeler climbed a fence and crept though an orange grove behind the house. He had burlap over his shoes to silence his footsteps and ammonia on his clothes to drive off dogs.

The bombing had left splintered openings under the house, and Keeler was able to slide one bug inside a closet where Mickey stacked dozens of pairs of shoes. Then he crept out through the orchard and past the home of an English physician who had worked for British intelligence in the war and was letting them use his garage as a listening post.

But they hadn't counted on what their bugging would do to Mickey's TV. At a time when only 10 million Americans had sets, he had the fanciest sold by W&J Sloane department store, with a "distinguished mahogany" cabinet and 45 tubes to guarantee clear reception. Now they overheard him ranting about the screwy lines on Channel 2.

Listening from the doctor's garage, the squad knew what was up -- their transmission was too close to the lowest frequency picked up by a TV. Mickey was likely to figure it out also.

"We could hear him call up and raise hell with W&J Sloane company. 'Take this goddamn thing out of here or come out and have somebody fix it!' " O'Mara recalled. "Sure enough, they sent a technician out."

O'Mara had an idea -- intercept the repair truck. "Pulled him over, talked to him. He was scared, but he agreed. 'I'd like you to take a man,' I said."

Mickey wanted service? He'd get two men fiddling with the back of his set. "While we're in, we put in another bug. Right in his TV. And the batteries to run the damn bug."

This one used a slightly different frequency that would not put annoying oscillations on Channel 2.

"Mickey said, 'Fine, well, fine, thank you, guys' and gave 'em 25 bucks apiece for a tip, you know. Well, my guy takes Mickey aside and says, 'Lookit, I'll be back in here once a week and take care of it. You know, there's a lot of bugs in televisions and stuff you have to work out.' "

Mickey had to think his lavish tips were why the repairman was so eager to get into his TV every week.

OK, so the bug couldn't hear much when Mickey's TV was on, and it was on all the time. But O'Mara sensed that their mission might be measured by small victories, and it was a small victory, for sure, to be able to say, a half-century later . . . and that's how Mickey Cohen wound up paying for his own bugging.

[email protected]

Rick, we like the same fighters and we like them for the same reasons. Some fighters may never win a title but they are champions none the less. Errnie was also one of my father's favorite. I wrote the following a while back on my website.

When I saw this photo of Ernie “Indian Red” Lopez recently, I couldn’t help but be moved. You can still see the fighter’s determination, but you can also see the pain of a hard life, whether by his own choosing, or by fate, circumstances and life. I wonder if he realizes just how vital a part of California’s boxing history he is, especially to Los Angeles boxing history, which has become, arguably the best fight town in the country, in terms of a fan base, and in it’s rich contribution to boxing in general. Lopez was inducted into the California Boxing Hall of Fame on March 6, 2004, and he certainly deserved it. Thanks to Don Fraser for making sure it happened.

Ernie “Indian Red” Lopez began his professional career on January 1, 1964, winning a 6 round decision over Armand Laurenco, at The Castaway Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. They would fight two more times, drawing in the second fight, and Lopez stopping him in their third fight in the first round of a ten round fight. He fought his last fight against future welterweight champion John H. Stracey on October 29, 1974 at the Royal Albert Hall in Kensington, London. He was stopped in the seventh round of a scheduled 10 round fight. In between those two fights he fought the likes of Armando Muniz, Jose “Mantequilla” Napoles, Emile Griffith and Hedgemon Lewis. Lopez and Lewis had three fights, with Lopez stopping Lewis twice, and losing a decision in the second fight. He was a mainstay at the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles, and in the Hotel arenas in Las Vegas. His career record reads: 60 fights with 47 wins, 23 of them by KO, he lost 12 times and he drew once. Not too shabby.

For reasons of his own Ernie seemingly dropped off the planet, beginning in the 1970’s he hitchhiked and roamed the country, coming back from time to time to visit with his family, however briefly. In the early 1990’s he disappeared completely. The family had no idea if Ernie was dead or alive, until early 2004, with the help of the Los Angeles Police Department, he was found in the Presbyterian Night Shelter in Fort Worth, Texas.

Any fight fan knows that Ernie is the older brother of Danny “Little Red” Lopez. I hope that they have reconciled any differences they may have had. One was a champ, one wasn’t. Two different fighters, two different weight classes, completely different opponents, one should not reflect on the other. With or without an official title Ernie “Indian Red” Lopez will a always be a champ to his many fans. He always fought with heart and was crowd favorite. If ever a boxer’s life and career called out for movie to be made, it’s Lopez’. I can’t imagine a more compelling story. We are proud that he is one of Los Angeles’ Greats![/quote]_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________



Randy, you and I see so much the same. How could we not? We have to rely on stories from guys like Frank or Hap Navarro to really get that Hollywood Legion era feeling. How I love all the Keeny Teran stuff you guys have contributed, not to mention Bolanos. My only memory of Gil Cadilli was from a 1971 house warming party for Ruben & Carol Navarro, who'd just bought a cool two-story Spanish style home in Monterey Park. Gil was there, Joe Pimentel, Porky Acuna (Ruben's cuz), who was leaving for Marine boot camp the following week. Viet Nam was going hot & heavy at the time. Trainer Julio Flores turned up, with another Flores stablemate, Ronnie Cisneros. But Cadilli was the guy I was curious about, a guy whom I'd seen at the Main St. Gym training boxers, one I knew had fought the great Willie Pep, to name one of many.

Gil was having a good time, and drank a bit, fell asleep in the corner of the kitchen. I had to leave, I was with friends. As I said my "good byes", the phone rings and Ruben answers. It's Mando Ramos, and he needs directions. The night was young as I strolled off early in the evening, but from what I heard, things would soon heat up. Navarro and Ramos were a pair to draw too, add Raul Rojas and Frankie Crawford . . . forget about it. Forget about the L.A. Rams lineman from the 60's, the real Los Angeles "Fearsome Foresome" was a quartet of L.A. lightweights who occasionally "partied" together.

You know one of my greatest post-boxing career Olympic Auditorium stories took place in the very late 70's, when working on a boxing TV movie ("The Contender"). While we shot the footage, I had full access to the Olympic to set lights for the production. Remember when Jimmy Lennon would signal to somebody in the rafters to lower the microphone? Then the mike would fall from the sky, attached to it's cable, which disappeared high in the Olympics rafters. If you looked closely, as I did, I saw catwalks that lined the ceiling of the auditorium. There was this kinda rope-type stairway with thin wood steps laced in, that was to climb up to get to the catwalks. You know, kinda circus-like for an established auditorium. You had to pull a rope to get the "tarzan" type ladder in position to climb, and also tie it off, or you'd end up swinging from a vine high above the Olympic's ringside seats. What the Hell, I'm game, this is what lighting tech's like myself often had to do. A few moments later, I was right up in those rafters, right with the spirits of boxing from days gone by. I had the best view of the ring, from directly above it, where occasionally a daring TV director will mount a camera for an "artsy" touch to an otherwise basic situation.

I didn't have the luck of knowing every square foot of the Legion, but I do know the Olympic.

Just rambling. Hey guys, in three weeks from this very moment, we'll all be sitting face-to-face, and I look forward to it.


-Rick

kikibalt wrote:Crusaders in the underworld: The LAPD takes on organized crime


The Gangster Squad was formed in 1946 to keep East Coast Mafia out of L.A. Its 'anything goes' approach endured through the 1950s in an era when justice was found far from the courthouse.

By Paul Lieberman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

Sgt. Willie Burns had a Tommy gun on the bench in front of him when his 18 handpicked candidates arrived at the 77th Street station on the edge of Watts. It was a cool evening in November 1946, and the men came in topcoats and hats. Burns wore his low, almost over his eyes, like the bad guys.

Years later, he told a grand jury: "My primary duties were to keep down these gangster killings and try to keep some of these rough guys under control." But he hadn't given his fellow LAPD cops any hint of why they'd been summoned that night. Now he laid it out.

If they joined the Gangster Squad, their targets would be the likes of Bugsy Siegel, the playboy refugee from New York's Murder Inc., and Jack Dragna, the Sicilian banana importer who quietly lorded over the city's rackets.

Then there was Mickey Cohen, the dapper former prizefighter who had come to town as Bugsy's muscle but soon had his own cafe on North La Brea and a "paint store" nearby with three phones to take bets. That's where he'd shot a produce broker whose family ran competing bookie joints. Mickey said the man came at him with a .45, the one found beside the body, and there were no witnesses to contradict his story. "It was me or him," Mickey said. "I let him have it."

There had been three more mob rub-outs around L.A. since then, including the shotgunning of two Chicago men outside a Hollywood apartment. That one generated a "Gangsters in Gambling War" headline that was a prime reason Police Chief C.B. Horrall wanted those 18 cops to see what a Thompson submachine gun looked like.

"You'll be working with these," Burns told them.

The deal was: If they signed on, they'd continue to belisted on the rosters of their old stations. They'd have no office, only two unmarked cars. They'd almost never make arrests. They'd simply gather "intelligence" and be available for other chores. In effect, they would not exist.

Burns gave them a week to ponder advice from an old lieutenant at the 77th, who said an assignment like that could get you in good with the chief. "Or you could end up down in San Pedro, walking a beat in a fog."

After the week, only seven came back, making a squad of eight, counting Burns.

"We did a lot of things that we'd get indicted for today," said Sgt. Jack O'Mara.

On the job a decade before J. Edgar Hoover's FBI acknowledged the existence of the Mafia, they took an anything-goes approach to making life hell for Mickey Cohen and driving other such characters from the Southern California sunshine.

They used a look-alike Pac Bell truck to plant bugs, to hell with warrants. They did secret favors for Jack Webb, who glorified the LAPD with his "Dragnet" TV show. They stole evidence from mobsters and neutralized a pesky newspaper columnist. And Jack O'Mara personally set a trap for the showboating Mickey, to prove he was a killer.

There were close calls -- grand jury investigations, lawsuits and a skeptical chief or two -- but they endured through the 1950s. That's when one of their cases changed the ground rules for policing in California and when one of their own -- Jerry Wooters, the most reckless of them all -- grew far too friendly with L.A.'s homegrown hoodlum, Jack "the Enforcer" Whalen.

But when "the Enforcer" made the mistake of confronting Mickey and his crew at a hangout in the Valley, a bullet between the eyes signaled that the Gangster Squad's time was over, and so was a defining era in the city's history.

Noir L.A. was a time and place where truth was not found in the sunlight, and justice not found in marble courthouses, and where not a single gangland killing was solved, not one, for half a century. Not on paper, anyway.

Their first assignment: the visitors shaking down Hollywood restaurants and nightclubs. "Hoodlum types from Rhode Island," in O'Mara's words, "what we called 'dandruff.' "

The fear of evil outsiders had been a refrain in L.A. before any of these cops were born. You could go back to 1891, when this was a community of 70,000 with a police force of 75, and hear Chief John Glass warn of "Eastern crooks" seeking warm weather and easy pickings. After the turn of the century, the invaders were upgraded to "Eastern gangsters," and in 1927 Det. Ed "Roughhouse" Brown became a local legend by escorting Al Capone to the train when the notorious mobster was discovered in a downtown hotel. "I thought you folks liked tourists," Capone said before returning to Chicago.

Now a new group of "tourists" was demanding 25% of the take at landmarks such as the Mocambo and Brown Derby, and the club owners did not want to go to court, worried what might happen to their families. A state crime report would warn anew of an "Invasion of Undesirables." "What are you gonna do?" O'Mara asked.

The view was great from the hills off Mulholland Drive. So why not escort these hoodlums up there and, as O'Mara put it, "have a little heart-to-heart talk with 'em, emphasize the fact that this wasn't New York, this wasn't Chicago, this wasn't Cleveland. And we leaned on 'em a little, you know what I mean? Up in the Hollywood Hills, off Coldwater Canyon, anywhere up there. And it's dark at night."

Amid that darkness, he would "put a kind of a gun to their ear and say, 'You want to sneeze?' "

That was O'Mara's signature, the gun in the ear and a few suggestive words: "Do you feel a sneeze coming on? A real loud sneeze?"

The squad members met on street corners or in parking lots. Their 1940 Fords had 200,000 miles on them and holes in the floorboard so they could pour fluid into the master cylinders. At times five men rode in one, and if several smoked cigars, their suits would stink so bad they'd hang them outdoors at night.

Their three Tommy guns came with 50-round drums and beautiful violin cases, but were a pain -- they couldn't leave them in the trunk and risk having them stolen. O'Mara slept with his under his bed.

When they did get an office, it was a cubbyhole in the decaying Central station, which had horse stalls from the 1880s.

It was tempting to see them as a wrecking crew, with several resembling another new team in town, the football Rams. Doug "Jumbo" Kennard stood 6-foot-4, Archie Case weighed 250 and Benny Williams was construction-strong -- one of the cops who built the Police Academy in their spare time.

But a team needed a quarterback or two, men tough and clever, like Burns, who'd been a gunnery officer during the war. Or Jack O'Mara.

Born in 1917, he spent his toddler years in Portland, Ore., until ice storms inspired his father to pile the family into a Model T and drive south. Jack landed at Manual Arts High, where he wasn't the speediest guy on the track team but never understood how anyone beat him. For fun, he boxed.

Not quite 135 pounds, he had to stuff himself with bananas and ice cream to make the weight for the LAPD, which needed men in the wake of its scandals of the 1930s, when a mayor and chief were caught selling promotions and a rogue squad planted a bomb under the car of a civic reformer. "It was a lousy, crooked department," said Max Solomon, Bugsy Siegel's attorney.

O'Mara became part of a generation that was supposed to change all that. At the academy, he foolishly kept racing the fastest man in the Class of 1940, Tom Bradley, the former UCLA track star and future mayor, though he had no chance of winning.

He worked patrol and traffic until Pearl Harbor, when the U.S. Coast Guard gave him an aptitude test and sent him to a cryptography unit in the Aleutian Islands, part of the effort to intercept Japanese communications and break their code. Who knew he had brains? When he returned, he was a pipe-smoking, 165-pound Spencer Tracy look-alike, and just the sort Burns wanted for his hush-hush unit.

Other cops suspected they were internal spies, headhunters, a rumor that started when a beat officer confided to the chief's office that a bookmaking barber was inviting cops to "get on the take." The squad caravaned to the barbershop, "ripped everything, kicked all the walls out," O'Mara said, and shaved the guy's head with his own razors.

Pleased, the brass gave them more muscle: 6-foot-5 Jerry Greeley and Lindo "Jaco" Giacopuzzi, a 230-pound former all-Valley football lineman who had built himself up carting milk cans at his family's dairy. When that pair got a Tommy gun, they showed they understood the rules of this gig -- that there were none in dealing with Mickey Cohen and his ilk. Asked to stake out the clothing store Mickey had opened, they decided to leave his crew guessing whether they were cops or out-of-town hoods.

They took the plates off their unmarked car and found others -- from Illinois -- in the trash at the DMV, then parked up the block from Mickey's place. One of Mickey's men went out to investigate and "every time he'd pass by us, we'd put our coat up and pull our hat down," Giacopuzzi recalled. "So when we left, I was driving, and all the men in Mickey's establishment there came out on the sidewalk . . . and I took the car and I swerved it . . . and Greeley leaned way out of the window with the Tommy gun. And you should have seen them hit the deck."

It was a great prank to share with the squad, the fake drive-by, and maybe they wouldn't have done it later, after someone -- not faking -- came by Mickey's haberdashery on the Sunset Strip with a shotgun. That was no laughing matter, the dead body that marked the start of the Sunset Wars.

The squad made news for the first time on Nov. 15, 1947, with a report that Willie Burns and O'Mara had led a "flying detachment" that rousted six Midwesterners on Wilshire in a limo with New York plates. The six were booked on suspicion of robbery, though there was no evidence they had yet committed any crime in Los Angeles. Photographers were invited into the Wilshire station to snap them seated on a bench, several with bowed heads. Then four were escorted to the county border.

Of course, no one knew then what would become of the two men who were allowed to stay on promises of good behavior. Who could have guessed that James Fratianno, an ex-con "used-car salesman" from Cleveland, would become infamous as Jimmy the Weasel, the L.A. mob's most prolific hit man? Who could have guessed that James Regace would rise to head that mob three decades later, under his real name, Dominic Brooklier?

What mattered at the time was that the squad had sent some suspicious characters packing and thus sent a signal to the civilian populace and to Mickey et al. That second audience did get the message -- the bug in Mickey's Brentwood home made that clear.

His right-hand man, Neddie Herbert, was overheard the day after the roust, saying: "I can't meet you at the Mocambo, I'm afraid they'll pick me up." At 3:30 a.m., he updated Mickey: "Somebody else got picked up. Jesus Christ. I'm getting out of this. I want to live to be a grandfather."

"They can't make anybody leave town," Mickey said. "It's against the Constitution."

The Gangster Squad could not take credit for that eavesdropping, or be blamed when it turned into a fiasco. The squad was still getting organized when vice detectives leaped at an opening provided by Mickey's renovation of a ranch house on Moreno Drive. Five posed as construction workers, when the real ones took off, and hid a microphone between the wood bin and the fireplace.

The bug was set by the time Mickey and Lavonne Cohen moved in, and soon was picking up barking by Tuffy, their bulldog. The vice team's mistake was hiring a private bugging expert, because he secretly ran a second line to his own listening post. For a year it gave him -- along with the LAPD -- a window into what Mickey was up to: talking about fixing charity boxing matches, telling someone back East that "we need a shotgun in the outfit," grumbling about greedy cops who "grab it and tear your arm off" when you offer them "a gift."

But the bug picked up nothing of note on June 20, 1947, when Bugsy Siegel was shot through the eye while reading the Los Angeles Times in his living room a few miles east. Mickey kept mum about Bugsy's demise, which left him and Jack Dragna to fight for control of local gambling.

Mickey's crew did complain about the leader of the Gangster Squad, Willie Burns, and how some cops were harassing customers at his haberdashery. "It's ridiculous," Mickey said. "Anybody who they see leave the store they take right downtown." Not long after, Burns' wife received flowers at home, a funeral arrangement.

Some hoodlums understand the wisdom of anonymity, but the 5-foot-5 Mickey was the opposite breed, like Capone, or later John Gotti. Mickey cultivated his image as a "dese, dem and dose" sort who worked his way up to monogrammed silk pajamas.

He could claim to be a local boy too, for while he was Brooklyn-born, as Meyer Harris Cohen, his mother moved west to Boyle Heights, where he got a paperboy's education in the streets and began boxing with a Star of David on his trunks. He moved East to compete as a top featherweight and settled in Cleveland and Chicago, where he met the Capones and segued into "rooting," his term for "sticking up joints."

Now Mickey sped between nightspots in an entourage of Cadillacs and boasted that he wore suits just twice, then sold them at his store. He made no secret of his hand-washing mania, either, cleaning them constantly for fear that germs, not bullets, would get him.

But he was no joke -- a commission appointed by Gov. Earl Warren estimated that "the Cohen gang" had 500 bookies under its wing, with Mickey demanding $40 a week for each telephone in return for his protection. And although the LAPD once was the place to secure that protection, by 1947 he found it easier to do business in some of the county's other 46 law enforcement jurisdictions, especially Burbank, whose police chief soon was able to buy a 56-foot yacht, largely with cash.

Yet it wasn't easy to get the goods on Mickey, for he'd say one instant that a gambling joint was worth "over half a million," then lament that he still owed $45,000 on his house and, oh yeah, "I haven't booked a horse in four years."

Later, Mickey insisted he knew all along the cops had "a bug in my rug" and that's why he dished them so much nonsense. But he seems to have learned of the bug by chance, when his gardener plunged a shovel through an underground wire. Mickey had his property swept and found the mike by the wood box.

Soon after, he obtained partial transcripts of his conversations, 126 pages of notes that the private bug man apparently had taken and now was selling along the Sunset Strip. The San Francisco Chronicle and the L.A. Times got them too, generating "Cohen's Secrets" and "Cohen's Big Deals" headlines . . . and questions about why the man still walked free if authorities had all that dirt on him.

That's why the Gangster Squad had its own bug man.

From an Iowa farm family that came west in a covered wagon, Con Keeler had grown up tinkering with radios and could cobble together crude bugs using telephone and hearing aid parts. He also knew Navy intelligence officers who were developing eavesdropping systems that did not require long, telltale wires -- a welcome innovation given that Mickey would be looking for wires.

In this system, the mike was connected to a transmitter that sent signals you could pick up blocks away. The downside was that you had to hide a six-pack of batteries with the transmitter and replace them every week. But the first challenge was planting the equipment.

That was especially daunting at Mickey's house because someone -- probably Dragna -- had exploded dynamite under it. Mickey now had round-the-clock guards, swinging searchlights and an armored front door with a porthole window.

The answer? A diversion. As soon as Mickey and Lavonne went out one night, two squad members began digging noisily in a nearby lot. When Mickey's guards went to have a look, Keeler climbed a fence and crept though an orange grove behind the house. He had burlap over his shoes to silence his footsteps and ammonia on his clothes to drive off dogs.

The bombing had left splintered openings under the house, and Keeler was able to slide one bug inside a closet where Mickey stacked dozens of pairs of shoes. Then he crept out through the orchard and past the home of an English physician who had worked for British intelligence in the war and was letting them use his garage as a listening post.

But they hadn't counted on what their bugging would do to Mickey's TV. At a time when only 10 million Americans had sets, he had the fanciest sold by W&J Sloane department store, with a "distinguished mahogany" cabinet and 45 tubes to guarantee clear reception. Now they overheard him ranting about the screwy lines on Channel 2.

Listening from the doctor's garage, the squad knew what was up -- their transmission was too close to the lowest frequency picked up by a TV. Mickey was likely to figure it out also.

"We could hear him call up and raise hell with W&J Sloane company. 'Take this goddamn thing out of here or come out and have somebody fix it!' " O'Mara recalled. "Sure enough, they sent a technician out."

O'Mara had an idea -- intercept the repair truck. "Pulled him over, talked to him. He was scared, but he agreed. 'I'd like you to take a man,' I said."

Mickey wanted service? He'd get two men fiddling with the back of his set. "While we're in, we put in another bug. Right in his TV. And the batteries to run the damn bug."

This one used a slightly different frequency that would not put annoying oscillations on Channel 2.

"Mickey said, 'Fine, well, fine, thank you, guys' and gave 'em 25 bucks apiece for a tip, you know. Well, my guy takes Mickey aside and says, 'Lookit, I'll be back in here once a week and take care of it. You know, there's a lot of bugs in televisions and stuff you have to work out.' "

Mickey had to think his lavish tips were why the repairman was so eager to get into his TV every week.

OK, so the bug couldn't hear much when Mickey's TV was on, and it was on all the time. But O'Mara sensed that their mission might be measured by small victories, and it was a small victory, for sure, to be able to say, a half-century later . . . and that's how Mickey Cohen wound up paying for his own bugging.

[email protected]

Frank . . . These guys were known as the "Hats", because they all wore hats on their missions, etc. The late Al Goossen, father of the Goosen brothers, was on the "Hat Squad". The group is often portrayed in current films, such as "Mulholland Falls", with Nick Nolte. The "Hats" answered to nobody, including the Chief, William Parker, who put the group together. Today, of course, there are the naive who believe that LAPD no longer has such a crew. Yeah, they do.

-Ricardo

kikibalt wrote:
Larry Holmes

In the ring, I consider Larry Holmes an under-rated former champ who would have beaten Ali, at any point of Muhammad's career. That's my opinion, of course. However, outside the ring the most positive comment I can make regarding Larry Holmes is that he's proven himself a 24 karat pain-in-the-ass and world class cultural embarrassment.

Is there any other way to see it? Attempting to charge kids $25 for his autograph at last years HOF Induction? Great boxers have great charactor, generally speaking. Holmes defies such a notion.

-Rick Farris

NORMAN

His name was Norman Burdick. Little white guy with crooked teeth and a wide smile. Sandy hair and blue eyes that always had mischief in them. Not particularly good lookin. Had moles on his face,but I don't think Norman worried about his looks much. Before Vietnam got going ,we'd all pile in the car and get on the 32nd Street Navy Base and box in the gym. Dick Wood who ran things would let us have the run of the house after his Navy fighters were done working out.

I was the biggest of our group. I was in pretty good shape then. Playing ball at City College was probably when my body was responding the best. Norman was the smallest. But this kid was all piss and vinegar. He'd get tired sparring with the guys his size and always wanted to mix it with me. None of us were very skilled so when Norman wanted to do combat with me I could hit him when I wanted. The thing was though Norman wouldn't stop coming in. I'd give him some terrible wallops,but the kid never stopped coming in. I'd bust him up to the point that I'd say,"Norman,you win. I've had enough."
It was always like that. There was no quit in Norman. He had guts.

Before Norman got his draft notice he hooked up with a cute little number by the name of Linda. She was friends with Norman's older brother Kenny. Kenny was cool. He'd go to the liquor store and buy us beer because we were under age. Later Kenny's wife went blind from some rare disease.

Norman loved Linda and soon they had a son. When Norman got his notice Linda was very afreid. Norman,the cocky guy he was,told her everything would be OK.Linda,though,could not get her mind off him going to war.

I didn't think much about it when Norman went to Nam,but sure enough a Viet Cong mortar shell landed next to him blowing apart part of Norman's skull.He was dragging his wounded buddies from the battlefield when he caught a round. He was in the neuro surgeon ward back in San Diego at Balboa Naval Hospital.

I remember the first time we went there to see him. His head was all bandaged. He couldn't walk straight. He broke into that smile with all the crooked teeth.
"How you guys doing?,he asked
"Pretty good pal. How's it with you?"
"Linda left me. She's got the boy."
"What happened,?"
"I guess she freaked out when I went over seas. Couldn't stand being alone. Became a hooker."
I couldn't believe it.
"What are you going to do now?"
"Try to get well so I can get back in the ring and kick your ass."
We all busted up at that one. Perfect timing.

I saw Norman about a year later. He'd been in re hab for about 10 months. He was walking with a cane down by the beach. When he saw me he showed me the crooked teeth. He told me he had a metal plate in his head.
"Roger,you ready to take me on in the gym?"
"Naw,Norman. By now you'd kick my ass."

The following photos with Oscar De La Hoya were taken at Schurr High School in Montebello in 1993 just prior to his fight with Jeff Mayweather. The kids are my Daughters, Meranda and Savannah, and my son Andrew. Oscar was still squeaky clean and still fresh from the Olympics. I always thought he was a decent guy.

Rick Farris wrote:

kikibalt wrote:
Larry Holmes

In the ring, I consider Larry Holmes an under-rated former champ who would have beaten Ali, at any point of Muhammad's career. That's my opinion, of course. However, outside the ring the most positive comment I can make regarding Larry Holmes is that he's proven himself a 24 karat pain-in-the-ass and world class cultural embarrassment.

Is there any other way to see it? Attempting to charge kids $25 for his autograph at last years HOF Induction? Great boxers have great charactor, generally speaking. Holmes defies such a notion.

-Rick Farris

I hold a similar view Rick. I won't say outright that Holmes would have beaten Ali, but I have always felt that he was one of the few, if fighting at their peak, that stood a hell of a chance. Completely underrated as a fighter and as a champion. I think because of the attributes you just mentioned, he will never rate as high as he should. Most fans still haven't forgotten his "Rocky couldn't carry my jock strap" remark. Still, rated strictly on his fighting ability and his heart, (his fighting heart , not his lack of compassion for kids heart) he ranks as one of the best.

Rick Farris wrote:Rick, we like the same fighters and we like them for the same reasons. Some fighters may never win a title but they are champions none the less. Errnie was also one of my father's favorite. I wrote the following a while back on my website.

When I saw this photo of Ernie “Indian Red” Lopez recently, I couldn’t help but be moved. You can still see the fighter’s determination, but you can also see the pain of a hard life, whether by his own choosing, or by fate, circumstances and life. I wonder if he realizes just how vital a part of California’s boxing history he is, especially to Los Angeles boxing history, which has become, arguably the best fight town in the country, in terms of a fan base, and in it’s rich contribution to boxing in general. Lopez was inducted into the California Boxing Hall of Fame on March 6, 2004, and he certainly deserved it. Thanks to Don Fraser for making sure it happened.

Ernie “Indian Red” Lopez began his professional career on January 1, 1964, winning a 6 round decision over Armand Laurenco, at The Castaway Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. They would fight two more times, drawing in the second fight, and Lopez stopping him in their third fight in the first round of a ten round fight. He fought his last fight against future welterweight champion John H. Stracey on October 29, 1974 at the Royal Albert Hall in Kensington, London. He was stopped in the seventh round of a scheduled 10 round fight. In between those two fights he fought the likes of Armando Muniz, Jose “Mantequilla” Napoles, Emile Griffith and Hedgemon Lewis. Lopez and Lewis had three fights, with Lopez stopping Lewis twice, and losing a decision in the second fight. He was a mainstay at the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles, and in the Hotel arenas in Las Vegas. His career record reads: 60 fights with 47 wins, 23 of them by KO, he lost 12 times and he drew once. Not too shabby.

For reasons of his own Ernie seemingly dropped off the planet, beginning in the 1970’s he hitchhiked and roamed the country, coming back from time to time to visit with his family, however briefly. In the early 1990’s he disappeared completely. The family had no idea if Ernie was dead or alive, until early 2004, with the help of the Los Angeles Police Department, he was found in the Presbyterian Night Shelter in Fort Worth, Texas.

Any fight fan knows that Ernie is the older brother of Danny “Little Red” Lopez. I hope that they have reconciled any differences they may have had. One was a champ, one wasn’t. Two different fighters, two different weight classes, completely different opponents, one should not reflect on the other. With or without an official title Ernie “Indian Red” Lopez will a always be a champ to his many fans. He always fought with heart and was crowd favorite. If ever a boxer’s life and career called out for movie to be made, it’s Lopez’. I can’t imagine a more compelling story. We are proud that he is one of Los Angeles’ Greats!

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Randy, you and I see so much the same. How could we not? We have to rely on stories from guys like Frank or Hap Navarro to really get that Hollywood Legion era feeling. How I love all the Keeny Teran stuff you guys have contributed, not to mention Bolanos. My only memory of Gil Cadilli was from a 1971 house warming party for Ruben & Carol Navarro, who'd just bought a cool two-story Spanish style home in Monterey Park. Gil was there, Joe Pimentel, Porky Acuna (Ruben's cuz), who was leaving for Marine boot camp the following week. Viet Nam was going hot & heavy at the time. Trainer Julio Flores turned up, with another Flores stablemate, Ronnie Cisneros. But Cadilli was the guy I was curious about, a guy whom I'd seen at the Main St. Gym training boxers, one I knew had fought the great Willie Pep, to name one of many.

Gil was having a good time, and drank a bit, fell asleep in the corner of the kitchen. I had to leave, I was with friends. As I said my "good byes", the phone rings and Ruben answers. It's Mando Ramos, and he needs directions. The night was young as I strolled off early in the evening, but from what I heard, things would soon heat up. Navarro and Ramos were a pair to draw too, add Raul Rojas and Frankie Crawford . . . forget about it. Forget about the L.A. Rams lineman from the 60's, the real Los Angeles "Fearsome Foresome" was a quartet of L.A. lightweights who occasionally "partied" together.

You know one of my greatest post-boxing career Olympic Auditorium stories took place in the very late 70's, when working on a boxing TV movie ("The Contender"). While we shot the footage, I had full access to the Olympic to set lights for the production. Remember when Jimmy Lennon would signal to somebody in the rafters to lower the microphone? Then the mike would fall from the sky, attached to it's cable, which disappeared high in the Olympics rafters. If you looked closely, as I did, I saw catwalks that lined the ceiling of the auditorium. There was this kinda rope-type stairway with thin wood steps laced in, that was to climb up to get to the catwalks. You know, kinda circus-like for an established auditorium. You had to pull a rope to get the "tarzan" type ladder in position to climb, and also tie it off, or you'd end up swinging from a vine high above the Olympic's ringside seats. What the Hell, I'm game, this is what lighting tech's like myself often had to do. A few moments later, I was right up in those rafters, right with the spirits of boxing from days gone by. I had the best view of the ring, from directly above it, where occasionally a daring TV director will mount a camera for an "artsy" touch to an otherwise basic situation.

I didn't have the luck of knowing every square foot of the Legion, but I do know the Olympic.

Just rambling. Hey guys, in three weeks from this very moment, we'll all be sitting face-to-face, and I look forward to it.


-Rick

Hey, great rambling Rick! Speaking of Tarzan, believe it or not, I'm every bit as good as Johnny Weissmuller with the Tarzan yell, well, almost as good. I could do a voice over for a movie. Tarzan was my childhood hero. I drove everyone nuts with my yell.

I'm also looking forward to seeing you and everyone else. Can't wait.

Randy

I found this old menu, probably from the late 50's or early 60's, in my father's garage. My mother sold the house in 1999 and we were cleaning it out. I thought it was worth saving. It's a little bit of pop and cultural history and symbolic of a simpler times. Just a few good items at a reasonable price. Nowadays most menus look more like a telephone listing for all the boxing ranking organizations. Too many selections. It's enough to give a guy a nervous breakdown.

Rick Farris wrote:

Randyman wrote:

bennie wrote:Former British and European middleweight champ Kevin Finnegan has been found dead in his flat in West London at the relatively young age of 60.
In the context of today's boxing scene, with 'world' titles seemingly given away, it is incredible to think this man never got a sniff at a world title shot. The younger brother of the better-known Chris licked the likes of Bunny Sterling, Tony Sibson, Gratien Tonna, Jean Claude Bouttier, Frankie Lucas, gave "Marvelous" Marvin Hagler a real war in the first of two fantastic efforts in the States in 1978 (both stopped on cuts, just two months apart) and looked desperately unlucky in the second of three 15-round classics with Alan Minter, who staggered home to a debatable decision in 1976.
Quite simply, Kevin Finnegan was gifted.
After his five wars with Minter and Hagler, both of whom went on to win the undisputed world middleweight title, Finnegan enjoyed a glorious, totally unexpected twilight to his career. In 1979 he outboxed Sibson over 15 rounds for the British title - just after "Sibbo" had destroyed "The Animal" Lucas - and then avenged a defeat to the ferocious Gratien Tonna with another magnificent boxing display in 1980 in France to lift the European title (his points loss to Tonna in the mid-1970s possibly cost him a shot at Carlos Monzon) and picked up a couple of nice paydays abroad in defence of the European belt. Finnegan fought well in his very last fight with Matteo Salvemini in Italy in September 1980, flooring the local man with a beautiful counter right, but Salvemeni proved a bit too energetic and took the points.
Sadly, Kevin, from Iver in Buckinghamshire, struggled in vain to find any meaning to his life once his career ended as he wandered around aimlessly, getting drunk and sleeping rough in a park in Uxbridge, although he clearly owned a property, where he was found by police.
Marvin Hagler always said Finnegan gave him his hardest fight. What a boxer, what a character, what an epitah.

Bennie, Well done! you did Finnegan proud! If you have a photo of him, please post it. I took the liberty of posting this obituary on my website. I hope you don't mind.

Randy

I agree, Randy. Bennie is a great writer. Thanks Bennie, and thanks for all your postings on the U.K. The photos and stories you posted on Amir Khan's recent loss were printed out and shared with a few people I work with who are followers of Khan. I also need a little help from you, regarding potential Hall of Famers from Great Britain. You know them up close and personal and, if they are HOF worthy, we want them on the ballot. We want to keep it the WORLD Boxing HOF, and seek worthy International Inductees. Any ideas?

-Rick Farris

Khan will be back, I'm sure of it. In fact he will be even more popular here if he comes back well. We Brits like our heroes humbled and then redeemed.
Hall of Famer? Howard Winstone. He was a class boxer, a Welsh wizard, who had the misfortune to be at his best when a certain Vicente Saldivar was also at his best.
Maurice Hope, too. The Hackney southpaw stopped Vito Antuofermo a few years before the Hagler draw, and Rocky Mattioli, and stopped them both in Italy. Yes, he ran into Benitez as champ and got sparked in the 12th, but Benitez was right at his peak at light-middleweight. Believe me, Hope would have destroyed someone like Tony Ayala. Too strong, too fit, too determined.
Incidentally, Mo is a good friend to Benitez today when Benitez, I'm sure, struggles for friends. It sums up Mo. A class act.

Randyman wrote:The following photos with Oscar De La Hoya were taken at Schurr High School in Montebello in 1993 just prior to his fight with Jeff Mayweather. The kids are my Daughters, Meranda and Savannah, and my son Andrew. Oscar was still squeaky clean and still fresh from the Olympics. I always thought he was a decent guy.

Nice shots, Randy. Oscar is a wholesome guy, no doubt about it, the kind of guy you would want as your neighbour.
Your boxing hero? Not really.

Rick Farris wrote:

kikibalt wrote:
Larry Holmes

In the ring, I consider Larry Holmes an under-rated former champ who would have beaten Ali, at any point of Muhammad's career. That's my opinion, of course. However, outside the ring the most positive comment I can make regarding Larry Holmes is that he's proven himself a 24 karat pain-in-the-ass and world class cultural embarrassment.

Is there any other way to see it? Attempting to charge kids $25 for his autograph at last years HOF Induction? Great boxers have great charactor, generally speaking. Holmes defies such a notion.

-Rick Farris

Ebay has messed up a lot of top fighters (and celebrities, in general), given those 'fans' who procure autographs and immediately sell them. Joe Frazier also charges for his autograph; Hagler refuses to sign altogether.
Neil Armstrong attends the odd convention and his autograph, obviously, sells for thousands on ebay. He knows this and has refused all requests since 1994, but even the wikipedia biography on Armstrong contains the quote: "If you shove something close enough in front of his face, he'll sign."

kikibalt wrote:Thanks, Randy, "Of Mice and Men" one of the all time great movies, sad movie, but great none the less.

Steinbeck can send you into a deep depression.

kikibalt wrote:Kevin Finnegan


"Kevin"

By Diego

Cheers, Diego. Finnegan was a 'bleeder' who lacked discipline and a big punch, but he he loved it in there, and I would love to see footage of Kevin driving Hagler back and sending the Boston Irish into a frenzy. Even the doctor didn't want to stop it when Finnegan picked up an horrendous cut.

Just in case you weren't feeling too old today, this will certainly change things:

The people who are starting college this fall across the nation were born in 1987.

They are too young to remember the space shuttle blowing up.

Their lifetime has always included AIDS.

The CD was introduced the year they were born.

They have always had an answering machine.

They have always had cable.

Jay Leno has always been on the Tonight Show.

Popcorn has always been cooked in the microwave.

They never took a swim and thought about Jaws!

They don't know who Mork was or where he was from.

They never heard: 'Where's the Beef?', 'I'd walk a mile for a Camel', or 'de plane Boss, de plane'.

McDonald's never came in Styrofoam containers.

They don't have a clue how to use a typewriter.

Do you feel old yet? (Sorry) Pass this on to the other old fogies on your list. Notice the larger type, that's for those of you who have trouble reading.

Save the earth. It's the only planet with chocolate!!!!!

by Marc Abrams

RONNY RIOS SCORES FIRST ROUND STOPPAGE IN PRO DEBUT FORMER AMATEUR STANDOUT IMPRESSES HUGE CROWD IN ONTARIO

LOS ANGELES, CA (October 25, 2008) Last night at the sold out Doubletree Hotel in Ontario, California, 18 year old Ronny Rios let his fists do the talking as he announced loud and clear in his pro debut that he is ready for the major leagues with a first round stoppage of Puerto Rico’s Fermin Perez.

The former amateur standout wasted no time as he moved aggressively from the opening bell with crunching body shots and wicked right hands leads to the head which wobbled Perez. Displaying his trademark fast hands, the super bantamweight raised the crowd from their seats as fans cheered on the stoppage at the 1:28 mark of the opening stanza.

Said the Santa Ana resident, “This was terrific, it’s a great feeling to turn professional. I was a little nervous before the fight but once the bell rang and we got to swinging it all came together pretty well. The fans were great and I hope to be back in the ring soon.”

Stated manager Frank Espinoza, “This was a perfect start to Ronny’s career.. Fans now can see why I truly believe he can be a world champion. Just like Israel Vazquez and Martin Castillo, he’s very focused and well prepared.. Before the fight it was nice and relaxed in his dressing room. He warmed up, hit the mitts, put on his robe and calmly walked to the ring. He’s a real pro and didn’t seem to be the least bit affected by all the attention.”

Rios’ pro debut has been much anticipated for the last few months given his popularity in Southern California. His much heralded amateur career included first place finishes at the United States Men’s Nationals (twice), National Golden Gloves, World Golden Gloves, Under 19 Nationals, National Silver Gloves and the National Junior Golden Gloves.

Continued Espinoza, “After his last amateur fight he signed with the Espinoza Boxing Club in early September. Everyone who saw him fight as an amateur was looking forward to him turning pro. The fans tonight were thrilled with what they saw and I’ll have an announcement on his next fight in the near future.”

Rios is trained by Hector Lopez at the TKO Boxing Gym in Santa Ana.

The ESPINOZA BOXING CLUB was started in 1991 by Los Angeles area businessman Frank Espinoza. Espinoza has earned numerous accolades for his management skills from many boxing newspaper and internet writers.

In 2006, Espinoza was awarded the Manager of the Year award from the World Boxing Hall of Fame and inducted into the California Boxing Hall of Fame.

In the September 2008 issue of Ring Magazine, Espinoza was praised for his outstanding handling of the career of junior featherweight world champion and “Pound for Pound” superstar Israel “EL MAGNIFICO” Vazquez.

Vazquez is currently ranked on numerous Pound for Pound lists including # 4 by Yahoo Sports, # 5 by Ring Magazine and # 7 by ESPN.

Espinoza also has managed retired former world champion Martin “EL GALLITO” Castillo and currently manages world ranked Alex Valdez and Miguel “EL ANESTESISTA” Huerta in addition to undefeated prospects Manuel “SUAVECITO” Roman, Jesus “POLLO” Hernandez, Luis Ramos, Carlos Molina, Abraham Lopez and Ronny Rios.

Ebay has messed up a lot of top fighters (and celebrities, in general), given those 'fans' who procure autographs and immediately sell them. Joe Frazier also charges for his autograph; Hagler refuses to sign altogether.
Neil Armstrong attends the odd convention and his autograph, obviously, sells for thousands on ebay. He knows this and has refused all requests since 1994, but even the wikipedia biography on Armstrong contains the quote: "If you shove something close enough in front of his face, he'll sign."[/quote]

I read that Joe Frazier was charging $50 per autograph on a visit to the UK a couple of years ago. Like you say Bennie this is down to people selling the autographs on EBay.

Khan will be back, I'm sure of it. In fact he will be even more popular here if he comes back well. We Brits like our heroes humbled and then redeemed.
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Interesting that you think that about Khan Bennie. I think there is more chance he will go the way of Errol Christie.

Khan won't be matched with a puncher for a long, long time, Rob.