BoxRec

BIGMARK wrote:just been listening to Bunce on the radio and he had Kevin Mitchell (the jorno not the boxer) on as guest to plug his new book that sounds like a good read it's called Jacobs Beach: The Mob, the Garden, and the Golden Age of Boxing and here's a piece about it:

New York in the Fifties was the most interesting, the most vibrant city in the world. As American culture burst into life – it gave us television, beatniks, rock 'n roll, Marilyn and Elvis, Cold War paranoia, the Pill – New York was its epicentre.

New York gave the world a couple of other things too: one bloody and brutal but the king of sports, the other simply bloody and brutal. The Fifties were boxing’s last real heyday. Never again would the sport be so glamorous or so popular. And that’s where New York’s other gift to the world – the Mob - came in.

Gangsters have been around boxing for ever, but 1950s New York was special. Most of the decade’s major fights took place in the city, at boxing’s spiritual home, Madison Square Garden. Most of the deals that made or ruined the lives of the era’s many fine fighters were done on a famous strip of pavement across the road from the Garden: Jacobs Beach. And the man standing on that strip of pavement was a charming Italian murderer called Frankie Carbo.

Carbo had lurked in the long shadows of professional boxing since Prohibition, but this was his time. Through his willing associates, the International Boxing Club, he exercised total control over sport’s most dubious neighbourhood. Under Carbo, the Mob reached its apogee in the fight game; and under Carbo it would breathe its last ugly gasp. The Mob would be replaced by men dedicated to its traditions, but none would be able to match its power. When the Mob had had done it, boxing would never be the same again.

Kevin Mitchell’s gripping new book is the unsanitised story of those times and that place, of Rat Pack cool and the fading of the Mob’s peculiar glamour, brilliantly told through the eyes of the men who were there.

chinny wrote:

-KOKid- wrote:Currently reading the Charlie Magri autobio, "Champagne Charlie".
Good stuff, and quite funny in parts.

See some Amazon sellers have it used but in good condition from only £0.01.
Now if that's not value for money, then what is?

Didn't boxrec poster James Mcdonnell ghost write/ 'edit' that?

Scottrf wrote:My Dundee book (My View from the Corner) is signed, bought it second hand, doesn't look like a print?

Anyone know if it usually has that?

chinny wrote:

Scottrf wrote:My Dundee book (My View from the Corner) is signed, bought it second hand, doesn't look like a print?

Anyone know if it usually has that?

I have an old second hand copy which isn't signed..

King Tubby wrote:Was you the fella interviewed by Steve Bunce the other night FB?

King Tubby wrote:Was you the fella interviewed by Steve Bunce the other night FB?

-KOKid- wrote:Some books I've read this summer:



"The Years of The Locust", by Jon Hotten.
Interesting story about the murder of promotor Rick Parker by Tim "Doc" Anderson.
I remember reading about this when it happened in 1995, but have not thought about it since.
If this account of the boxing world at lower level is even close to the truth, it is downright creepy.
Easy and good read.

King Tubby wrote:Anyone read Nipper? Advertised on here a few weeks ago. Steve Bunce interviewed his Grandson on the radio the other week.

Alex wrote:Thanks Tel! Though it's Nipper Pat Daly.

Nipper Read is the bloke who brought down the Krays.