Randyman wrote:I was having fun with my grandson Trevor yesterday at my daughter Lori's house. He wants so bad to learn to box but his dad, my son-in-law Tom, has absolutely no interest in boxing. Maybe if I take him to see some kids fight he'll change his mind.
Randy
It doesn't get any better than that. You're blessed. Rog
Don't I know it! Thanks Rog, that goes for all of us. Life ain't perfect but it has some awfully sweet moments!
Randy
You are a terrific Grandad Randy.
These are great pictures and Trevor will remember these moments always.
With you and Jeri as Grandparents , he is in the best hands.
I'm not especially fond of the zoo. I look at it as a jail for the animals,especially the big animals. Elephants chained to a post. Seals swimming in a pond. Lions roaming their pen. No wonder it's a tough time getting these once giants of the planet to fornicate. They're depressed being locked up in Alcatraz for the animals.
A long time ago my kids wanted to go to the zoo. I took the brood and let them walk around. I told them to meet me in front of the tortoises. I don't know why I picked the tortoises,but there was my butt parked on a bench with a bag of popcorn in one hand and a soda in the other.
I was perusing these land tanks when I got to thinkin' that someone told me they live to be over a hundred years. One guy in there was a monster. He had to be 200. I'm watching this guy when all of a sudden he lifts himself up slowly and begins to walk on his tiny legs. Like everything was in slow motion. I see he's headed towards another tortoise on the other side of the living quarters. This big monster is moving slowly but steadily.
After a half hour he makes it over to this other tortoise. Then to my surprise he begins to climb up this other tortoise from behind. He's gonna' bang her! Slowly his thing comes out shaped like a boomerang. Just when he's about to make baby tortoises this zookeeper walks out and lifts the big guy and takes him back over to where he began.
The wife and kids come over right after this little episode and ask me for more money so they can ride on the Sky Lift. See,I told you the zoo was a drag.
Im not real fond of the zoo either Rog.
Last time I went to Lincoln Park Zoo here in Chicago, my wife told off some punk who was walking along with his crew , pants down below his ass yelling obscenities into his cell phone.
Kids everywhere hearing this. My wife told him to pipe down, he started to say something to her and I told him I was gonna throw him into the fuc.in Polar Bear Tank. He settled down.
I wasnt playing, this asshole was going into the water with the bear.
Another pleasant Sunday afternoon in Chicago.
Mel Epstein told me that Dave Shade had an "educated left hand".
He could jab in a variety of ways that would keep opponents off-
balance, breaking their timing. Many years later, Mike Tyson would
tell me that Shade was one of Cus D'Amato's all-time favorites.
A master boxer. (Image courtesy of John Bardelli)
Jimmy MacLarnin and "Pop" Foster. Perhaps the greatest boxer-manager relationship in history. Pop had Jimmy from the time he was a boy, taught the future two-time welter champ how to box and punch, managed his money so that when Jimmy retired he was a millionaire. Pop himself was wealthy and when he died, left his fortune MacLarnin. As a young pro, I'd have the opportunity to meet MacLarnin in the office of George Parnassus on more than one occasion. I was well aware of his place in boxing history and honored to be in his presence. At the time, MacLarnin was in his 60's, good-looking, fit, had the look of the successful businessman that he was. At the time Jimmy MacLarnin lived in a beautiful estate in the hills above Glendale, Calif. not far from where I lived. One of Jimmy's former oppenents was another Parnassus friend, Billy Wallace. Wallace had fought MacLarnin early in Jimmy's career and actually had floored the future champ with a left hook, although MacLarnin would rise to win the bout. Fifty years later, they were the best of friends and the stories they would tell us were classic! (Photo courtesy of John Bardelli)
dagosd2000 wrote:How about going to the shoe store and sliding your feet under the X Ray machine? Did that so many times as a kid just for fun,I'm surprised my feet don't look like crab legs.
X-Ray machine, at a shoe store? thats a new one on me, no never did that....
Huh? Are you pulling our legs?
Naw
This is on the level. The machine looked like a scale or a stamp machine. You slid your feet under it with your shoes on. The X Ray made it possible to to see your toes. Ask Pug,they used to have a lot of 'em in Chicago,but I think they were finally banned in the early 50's.
Gonna' take a short break. Have to go out and get some tartar sauce to put on my feet.
I'm not especially fond of the zoo. I look at it as a jail for the animals,especially the big animals. Elephants chained to a post. Seals swimming in a pond. Lions roaming their pen. No wonder it's a tough time getting these once giants of the planet to fornicate. They're depressed being locked up in Alcatraz for the animals.
A long time ago my kids wanted to go to the zoo. I took the brood and let them walk around. I told them to meet me in front of the tortoises. I don't know why I picked the tortoises,but there was my butt parked on a bench with a bag of popcorn in one hand and a soda in the other.
I was perusing these land tanks when I got to thinkin' that someone told me they live to be over a hundred years. One guy in there was a monster. He had to be 200. I'm watching this guy when all of a sudden he lifts himself up slowly and begins to walk on his tiny legs. Like everything was in slow motion. I see he's headed towards another tortoise on the other side of the living quarters. This big monster is moving slowly but steadily.
After a half hour he makes it over to this other tortoise. Then to my surprise he begins to climb up this other tortoise from behind. He's gonna' bang her! Slowly his thing comes out shaped like a boomerang. Just when he's about to make baby tortoises this zookeeper walks out and lifts the big guy and takes him back over to where he began.
The wife and kids come over right after this little episode and ask me for more money so they can ride on the Sky Lift. See,I told you the zoo was a drag.
Im not real fond of the zoo either Rog.
Last time I went to Lincoln Park Zoo here in Chicago, my wife told off some punk who was walking along with his crew , pants down below his ass yelling obscenities into his cell phone.
Kids everywhere hearing this. My wife told him to pipe down, he started to say something to her and I told him I was gonna throw him into the fuc.in Polar Bear Tank. He settled down.
I wasnt playing, this asshole was going into the water with the bear.
Another pleasant Sunday afternoon in Chicago.
Brian
Think of it? You go to the zoo and they ask what did you see?
"Oh,I so saw some guy get thrown into the polar bear tank and get eaten."
Brian
Forgot to mention. We used to go to the Brookfield Zoo. When I went back to Chicago a few years back,I revisited the place. It was the middle of summer. About 90 degrees and humidity to match. You could smell that zoo from Peoria.
kikibalt wrote:
Mel Epstein told me that Dave Shade had an "educated left hand".
He could jab in a variety of ways that would keep opponents off-
balance, breaking their timing. Many years later, Mike Tyson would
tell me that Shade was one of Cus D'Amato's all-time favorites.
A master boxer. (Image courtesy of John Bardelli)
-Rick Farris
A few pages back I asked Frank if he could access any of the stories from the boxing writers that were on that poster. Tad,Damon Runyan,Dan Parker,et al. Those guys wrote about the Dave Shades,Jack Brittons,Johnny Dundees,and the Bennie Leonards. The pugs who had 250 fights. The dawn of the scientific fighter. I have some old newspapers with reporting on the fights done by these writers. Sometimes I go to the newspaper archives on line to read about the fight the day after.
The last one I read was a New York Times review of the Leonard/Britton fight for Jack's Welter Title. Benny lost on a foul. Now there have been a lot of Jewish fight historians that have proclaimed that Benny didn't want Jack's title so he fouled the Irishman. That never settled right with me so I looked up the story from back when the fight happened 80 years ago. There was a round by round analysis. Britton was outpointing Leonard. Jack was ahead on the cards. It sounded like Benny's added weight had slowed him down.
Hap and Frank go back,but to go back further, going on line to the archives can give us some good obsrevations from the guys who were there.
kikibalt wrote:
Mel Epstein told me that Dave Shade had an "educated left hand".
He could jab in a variety of ways that would keep opponents off-
balance, breaking their timing. Many years later, Mike Tyson would
tell me that Shade was one of Cus D'Amato's all-time favorites.
A master boxer. (Image courtesy of John Bardelli)
-Rick Farris
A few pages back I asked Frank if he could access any of the stories from the boxing writers that were on that poster. Tad,Damon Runyan,Dan Parker,et al. Those guys wrote about the Dave Shades,Jack Brittons,Johnny Dundees,and the Bennie Leonards. The pugs who had 250 fights. The dawn of the scientific fighter. I have some old newspapers with reporting on the fights done by these writers. Sometimes I go to the newspaper archives on line to read about the fight the day after.
The last one I read was a New York Times review of the Leonard/Britton fight for Jack's Welter Title. Benny lost on a foul. Now there have been a lot of Jewish fight historians that have proclaimed that Benny didn't want Jack's title so he fouled the Irishman. That never settled right with me so I looked up the story from back when the fight happened 80 years ago. There was a round by round analysis. Britton was outpointing Leonard. Jack was ahead on the cards. It sounded like Benny's added weight had slowed him down.
Hap and Frank go back,but to go back further, going on line to the archives can give us some good obsrevations from the guys who were there.
Diego,
On the lower right hand corner is the name Hype Igoe, Hype's grandson,
Kevin Igoe, is the one that send me this magzine cover.
kikibalt wrote:
Mel Epstein told me that Dave Shade had an "educated left hand".
He could jab in a variety of ways that would keep opponents off-
balance, breaking their timing. Many years later, Mike Tyson would
tell me that Shade was one of Cus D'Amato's all-time favorites.
A master boxer. (Image courtesy of John Bardelli)
-Rick Farris
A few pages back I asked Frank if he could access any of the stories from the boxing writers that were on that poster. Tad,Damon Runyan,Dan Parker,et al. Those guys wrote about the Dave Shades,Jack Brittons,Johnny Dundees,and the Bennie Leonards. The pugs who had 250 fights. The dawn of the scientific fighter. I have some old newspapers with reporting on the fights done by these writers. Sometimes I go to the newspaper archives on line to read about the fight the day after.
The last one I read was a New York Times review of the Leonard/Britton fight for Jack's Welter Title. Benny lost on a foul. Now there have been a lot of Jewish fight historians that have proclaimed that Benny didn't want Jack's title so he fouled the Irishman. That never settled right with me so I looked up the story from back when the fight happened 80 years ago. There was a round by round analysis. Britton was outpointing Leonard. Jack was ahead on the cards. It sounded like Benny's added weight had slowed him down.
Hap and Frank go back,but to go back further, going on line to the archives can give us some good obsrevations from the guys who were there.
Diego,
On the lower right hand corner is the name Hype Igoe, Hype's grandson,
Kevin Igoe, is the one that send me this magzine cover.
Frank
That's great that he thinks enough of you to send something like that. I have newspapers going back to Corbett and Langford. Dempsey and Tunney's 2nd fight in Chicago. Lots of Joe Louis. Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb.Lindburgh landing in Paris. Pearl Harbor bombed. I've got this stuff buried in a warehouse. That with the books and paintings and other sports memorabilia, I can't fit another page. I don't know where anything is. Only that it's in there someplace. When my grandson turns 18,he gets it all except for the paintings.
Thanks for showing me the way here. Here's one of Hype's
articles for his 20 greatest fights. You may have seen me
post it before, but thought some here might enjoy.
My 20 Greatest • * *
By Hype Igoe
International News Service Sports Writer
NEW YORK, Mar. 12.—David Belasco once told me that if ever
it was within his capabilities to put a ring fight behind the footlights,
he would try, perhaps, and no doubt fail utterly, to instill the
gripping drama of Dempsey's slaughter of Firpo, the "Wild Bull
of The Pampas," in 1923.
Belasco did well to talk of that drama of dramas. I doubt that he
or any other play builder could have infused the tenseness, the
heart-gripping, the fury of the savage international title bout
which Lasted barely four minutes all told.
Visiting Dempsey's training camp at Tom Luther's White Sulphur
Springs 12 miles out of Saratoga, I had had a dare to go on
the road with Dempsey. "guess'! we'll do away with road work this morning, Hype. Let's run over what this fellow Firpo has. I've never seen him you know, said Dempsey. "What has he got?"
"Well," I began, "he's quite ungainly yet he has tremendous
power and he can knock you out If he belts you with his best
punch.
"What is it like—how does she go?" asked the champion.
"It Is a peculiar right hand swing for the heart, ribs or stomach. He clubs with It, swinging sldcways at you with the gripped glove turned palm up."
I carefully illustrated how Firpo deliveied this blow. Firpo had
told me that ho had been a woodsam in In his native Argentine and
had developed the punch while cutting the heavy underbrush
with a glorified bowey knife.
"Show me the punch again, do it Slow motion. Do it In sections so
that I'll get the whole drift of It exclaimed Dempsey.
Once more, this time with meticlous i exactitude, I went
through the rhythm of the punch Dempsey drank in every move
Then he said suddenly:
"Swell, I've got every bit of now. Let him try that side-wheel
er and I'll knock his Spanish brains out wilh a left hook, the
likes of which he never encounterd ," said Dempsey In his piping
voice.
Dempsey thought he had It down pat. When the bell rang for
the first round on the Polo Grounds, both banged away with
rights? "and Firpo, with astounding speed beat the great champion to the punch This is how he crossed both Dempsey and myself. When
Firpo let loose that right hander he didn t sweep for the body Instead
he brought it up with almost the same peculiar motion
and the blow landed with a resounding thud against Dempscy's
blue chin bristles.
It was a devilish punch and the champion fell In and grasped Flrpo
about the middle nnd momentarily sagged until his knees almost
touched the canvns. Then began the drama over which Belasco
had raved. Seven times he went down, did Flrpc. Often
Dempsey, under the rules then in vogue stood right over the Wild
Bull waiting for him to gel up. Dcmpscy often remarked that a fight is a flght and the business at hand Is to lick the other fellow
punch all the fight out of him
..Just after Firpo had been floored for the seventh time he got up and rushed Dempsey to the ropes ,almost in front of me.
About Dcmpsey's Impromptu sprawl into the press row, he
wasn't punched through the ropes he was pushed! You hear silly
yarns that we news wr.ters saved Dcmpsey's title by pushing him
bnck Into the ring. He was weaving in front of the middle rope
when Firpo let fly for his head. When Dempsey weaved, the
blow caught him on the chest He merely flipped over the middle
strand as he was pushed off balance.
I'll match my trained ring eyes with any man's and thats
what really is what happened. he wasnt | unconscious or anything like
As he reached up and caught the middle rope in his gloved hand. Jack Lawrence gave Jack bustle a little shove
The second round, a punch or twoand the Wild bull of the
Pampas ., faded like Ferdinand of the Disney cinema classic.
One thing concerning that great extravaganza will always remain
with my memory and I mention it as proof that men had gone stark
mad with each succeeding punch Usually I had an old and trusted
telegraph operator at my left. This night, they had sent a youngster
.to do' my 'telegraphing
After the seventh knockdown I turned to say something to the
operator and he was GONE! What to do now. Then I felt an uncomfortnble
pressure on my left hand I looked at it and discovcred a pair of feet. Looking up, there he was standing on my hand and I
hadn't even felt It!
Iskigoe
kikibalt wrote:Thanks Kevin for posting that great article written by your granddad and welcome to our
thread.
Gee,that brought me to my knees. The Dempsey/ Firpo fight written by Hype Igoe. Thanks Kevin. Welcome aboard. It was writers like your grand dad that inspired me to read and write. The Era they lived in was the best this Country ever went through. They captured it with their typewriters and pencils. The early Hemingway. Ring Lardner. F.Scott Fitzgerald. The one thing all the great American writers of the turn of the century had was that they honed their talents writing about sports. Boxing was probably the sport that served their skills the best. Thanks again.
kikibalt wrote:Kicking back watching an old B-Western Movie.
"Lightning Raiders"
With "Buster Crabbe & Al "Fuzzy" St. John"
They take me back to my youth.
Flash Gordon with Buster Crabbe. Ming the Merciless. They can make movies about Outer Space with all the special effects they want,but they don't have those actors today that made those old movies something special.
BoxBuzz wrote:Still appreciating page after page! 2008 gets high marks for the introduction of this thread. The numbers indicate a lot of loyal readers!
I'm not especially fond of the zoo. I look at it as a jail for the animals,especially the big animals. Elephants chained to a post. Seals swimming in a pond. Lions roaming their pen. No wonder it's a tough time getting these once giants of the planet to fornicate. They're depressed being locked up in Alcatraz for the animals.
A long time ago my kids wanted to go to the zoo. I took the brood and let them walk around. I told them to meet me in front of the tortoises. I don't know why I picked the tortoises,but there was my butt parked on a bench with a bag of popcorn in one hand and a soda in the other.
I was perusing these land tanks when I got to thinkin' that someone told me they live to be over a hundred years. One guy in there was a monster. He had to be 200. I'm watching this guy when all of a sudden he lifts himself up slowly and begins to walk on his tiny legs. Like everything was in slow motion. I see he's headed towards another tortoise on the other side of the living quarters. This big monster is moving slowly but steadily.
After a half hour he makes it over to this other tortoise. Then to my surprise he begins to climb up this other tortoise from behind. He's gonna' bang her! Slowly his thing comes out shaped like a boomerang. Just when he's about to make baby tortoises this zookeeper walks out and lifts the big guy and takes him back over to where he began.
The wife and kids come over right after this little episode and ask me for more money so they can ride on the Sky Lift. See,I told you the zoo was a drag.
Im not real fond of the zoo either Rog.
Last time I went to Lincoln Park Zoo here in Chicago, my wife told off some punk who was walking along with his crew , pants down below his ass yelling obscenities into his cell phone.
Kids everywhere hearing this. My wife told him to pipe down, he started to say something to her and I told him I was gonna throw him into the fuc.in Polar Bear Tank. He settled down.
I wasnt playing, this asshole was going into the water with the bear.
Another pleasant Sunday afternoon in Chicago.
Brian . . . This is one of the reason's I respect you as I do, you stand up!
Randyman wrote:I was having fun with my grandson Trevor yesterday at my daughter Lori's house. He wants so bad to learn to box but his dad, my son-in-law Tom, has absolutely no interest in boxing. Maybe if I take him to see some kids fight he'll change his mind.
Great stuff, Randy! Nothing better than sharing what you know with a good kid, and who better than your own Grandson? Memories of my grandfather and how he made boxing possible for me are the best I have. Have a talk with your son-in-law as my grandpa did with my dad. If it was not for my grandfather and boxing, I would not be here today. It isn't about becoming a fighter, it's about shaping a man. If the boy turns out anything like you, he will be OK.
Rog
