BoxRec

The Hurricane


“I don’t like it here,” Jackson said. “I want to go back to the mountains, shoot a mouse. No mouses here.” “You can’t go back now,” Freddie Brown said in a soothing voice. Then he turned to me. “Hurricane found a new interest,” he said. “He shoots rats with a twenty-two. He calls them mice.” “Mouses,” the fighter corrected him. “I shoot them between the eyes.” He seemed depressed. “He finds them on the dump,” Freddie said. When Jackson saw that Freddie wasn’t going to take him back to the mountains, he wandered away and sat down, morosely staring at his feet.
“I don’t know where he gets the energy,” said Freddie, who looked underweight. “The hardest worker I ever seen before him is Marciano, but Marciano works steady and then he rests good. Also he eats good. Jackson don’t sleep enough and he don’t eat enough. These boys that ain’t used to good food, it don’t agree with them.” “What kind of food is he used to?” I asked. “He wants hot dogs,” Freddie said. “And also ice cream and pie. We got him to accept hamburgers as a substitute, but you got to watch him all the time. He fell out of a canoe which I had told him not to get into it, and he can’t swim good. He wants to ride a horse, he thinks he is Eddie Arcaro. And he could easy shoot himself instead of them rats.” Freddie shuddered.





14th July, 1954 -

Whitey Bimstein, Freddie Brown, and Lippy Breidbart all came into the ring with their primitive. Jackson weighed a hundred and ninety and a half, which indicated that he had overdone his self-induced training sessions. Nino Valdes’s weight was announced as two hundred and four, which showed that he had done more work than customary, but not too much. In the first round Valdes, boxing straight up, moved forward methodically and punched at Jackson’s body. Jackson, fidgeting about, did not accomplish anything.

Jackson stood up in his corner halfway through the one-minute rest period and did what gym teachers call “running in place,” at the same time waving his arms. When the bell rang, he rushed out to meet Valdes, dabbing and slapping. Valdes took aim like a bowler and knocked him through the ropes, at which point, since Jackson’s body was very nearly horizontal, the referee should have started a count, in my opinion, even though the lower strand prevented the animal’s body from touching the canvas. Valdes—“mucho nice boy,” as he would have said—turned and went to a neutral corner. The referee disentangled Jackson and upended him, and Valdes knocked him down again a couple of times. Each time Jackson fell—he did even that grotesquely, landing once sitting, once kneeling—he bounced up at the count of two or three. But the referee, because of a fairly new rule of the New York State Athletic Commission, had to stand in front of him and count eight before permitting the opponents to resume action. According to a collateral rule, if one boxer knocks the other down three times in one round, the referee has to stop the fight.

By my reckoning—and I was not alone—the second knockdown was really the third, and the referee, Al Berl, should consequently have stopped the fight there if he was going to be a precisionist. But Berl let them go to it again. Jackson was fluttering like a winged bird, making a difficult though harmless target, and Valdes, conscious of the three-knockdown rule, was following him about, eager to bring him down, even for a half second, before the round ended. Valdes has had many fights, has always finished strong, and was in good condition, but he seemed at this point to be heaving. Perhaps it was merely emotion, for he could not have anticipated a chance to knock off work so early. Several times he aimed as deliberately as if he were about to hurl a sack of sugar at a toad but missed. Finally he missed Jackson’s head with his right fist and, in recovering, hit him on the back of the neck with his forearm, as big around as a normal collar. He may simply have been trying to keep himself from falling. Anyway, Jackson’s knees hit the floor, and Berl, perhaps to compensate for the time he hadn’t counted, flung his arms wide in token of a technical knockout. Jackson promptly jumped up. In Pierce Egan’s time the victor might have offered to knock the loser out again to satisfy him, but that was before the Athletic Commission. (I know an old boxer who was awarded a fight on a foul because the other fellow was biting him. My friend was enjoying himself, so he said he would go on with the match if the fellow would promise to stop biting. The opponent promised, but he didn’t keep his word. “Maybe he hadn’t ate lately,” my man says.) They towed Valdes into the corner of the ring farthest from Jackson and, snuggling against his flank, make him hold up his right hand for the benefit of the photographers, who got a picture like one of those circus shots taken under the elephant’s trunk. From the way Valdes was grinning, he had a pretty good program lined up for the rest of the evening. Meanwhile Jackson was standing in his corner, shaking his head and refusing to leave the ring. He demanded the privilege of being hit some more. I could see Whitey and Freddie and a policeman arguing with him. At last they persuaded him to leave.





The show had drawn forty-five hundred cash customers—possibly six thousand in all, including deadheads, but even that is only a third of the Garden’s capacity, and there was no trouble getting around. The evening seemed so incomplete that I decided to visit Jackson’s dressing room, off the corridor on the north side of the arena, to hear the losing faction’s story. There were perhaps twenty colored people outside the door, including several attractive girls. As I approached, the door flew open, and Jackson, dressed and carrying a suitcase, dashed through the group and ran up the stairs that lead to an exit on 50th Street, about midway between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. “Tommy, come back!” one of the girls yelled. I followed Jackson out, not knowing quite what he might do, and ran slap into a storm, of which I had been unaware. It was a short, intense squall that had just hit the city, and it seemed to me an exaggerated reaction to the defeat of Tommy Jackson. To him, however, marching off into the rain, it may have seemed a fitting recognition of the occasion. He turned south on Ninth, and my curiosity was not strong enough to draw me more than a short distance into the rain after him. Then I began working my way back toward Eighth, taking advantage of intervening marquees and saloons for cover. At Muller’s, on the north side of the street, they have Münchner beer on tap, and I sheltered there longer than at any other place. By the time I got around to the main entrance of the Garden the storm had died to a drizzle, but there were still a couple of dozen fight people under the big marquee talking about the night’s events. I saw a second named Izzy Blanc, who had worked a pair of the minor bouts, and asked him if he knew what had happened to Jackson. “He’s walking around the Garden in the rain,” he said. “He’s been around ten times since I’ve been standing here.” We waited, and within a minute Jackson swung by—silent, head forward, looking like a priest who has found he has no vocation or like an actor hissed from the stage. I asked Izzy if he had seen the disputed knockdown, but he, a diplomat, offered a good alibi. “After the second knockdown I was on my way to the dressing room,” he said. “I had the emergency.” He meant he had been engaged to second one of the boxers in the final four-rounder, and he had sensed that it was going to be needed earlier than anybody had expected. “I had my back to the ring,” he said. The rain was easy to ignore now, and Izzy said he was going to walk up Eighth, stopping by a couple of bars where he might meet other fight people. “We’ll probably find Whitey at the Neutral Corner,” he said. The Neutral is a bar on the southwest corner of 55th and Eighth, and when we got there, Whitey was on a stool smoking a cigar and having a glass of beer. “If they want to rune boxing,” he said, “that’s the way to do it. He wrastled him to the ground just when the kid was hitting his stride.” “His what?” I said “Sure,” Bimstein said. “He was just beginning to come on good.” “How about the first three knockdowns?” I asked. “There was only one knockdown,” Whitey said. He rejected my proposition that Berl had let the animal off the time he got knocked through the ropes. “And the second thing he called a knockdown, that was a push, too,” Whitey said. He appeared calm, not bitter, and acted as if it were a matter of little moment to him if the Commission wanted to take the bread out of its own mouth. “He was just sizing the fellow up,” he said. “And the fellow trips him, and boom, Berl stops the fight.” I began to suspect we hadn’t seen the same fight that evening.

(A.J. Liebling)



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xucbDkwcH5A


.

When he broke camp five detectives rode shotgun with him to New York, underlining how serious they had taken the many death threats to his life. He didn't say much, said one, and he "looked so distant we joked that he was sitting there waiting for us to give him the menu for his last meal."

There were only a handful of people in Frazier's room that night - Durham, Futch, an assistant, Les Peleman, and a Philly cop bodyguard. Joe was gloved and ready. Durham took him to the far corner of the room, put his hands on his shoulders, looked him straight in the eye and in his signature voice said: "Well, we're here. I want you to know what you've done, boy. There will never be another Joe Frazier. They all laughed. You got us here. There's not another human who ever lived I'd want to send out there, not even Joe Louis. Win tonight, and the road will be paved with gold.

Joe knelt in the corner of the room and prayed aloud: "God, let me survive this night. God protect my family. God grant me strength. And God...allow me to kick the shit out of this mothafucker!."

............................................................


A more just world would have celebrated Frazier's victory that night. From the beginning, however, careful observers knew that the story wasn't going to play out like that. "Joe's such a decent guy," veteran trainer Futch said of Frazier before the fight, "but when he beats Ali, Joe is going to be to go down as one of the most unpopular black champions of all time."

The next day Ali was public again, the X-rays were negative. He wanted his legions to know that he didn't lose, it was a bad decision, and that he had only trained for a six-round fight. He had shown remarkable heart and endurance, now with cameras grinding he was trying to steal the fight back from Joe, issuing some subtle, dippy call for a referendum, and he was succeeding. Privately, he was of another mind: "We been whupped. Maybe I'll get some peace now. We all have to take defeats in life." Joe watched on television at the Pierre, had Ali's comments read to him as he lay in bed. "It's not like I even won," he said. "He's robbin' me. Like nothin' changed!" He struggled to his feet. He tried to lift the TV set, to hurl it across the room. He was too weak. Durham guided him back to bed, saying: "Now, now, Joe. You know he aint got any sense." Nevertheless, Frazier continued to seethe. A commission doctor came by, suggested he be moved to a hospital in the Catskills. "What?" Joe said. "So he can make more headlines, show how he beat me so bad I gotta be put in a hospital?" Joe slipped out of the Pierre, to St Luke's Hospital in Philly. For twenty-hours, Dr James Guffe had him lay in a bed of ice. Joe dreamed a spirit had taken his hand, said he would be okay. "I could feel his touch. He was right there." They told him the next morning there had been no visitors.

His life hung out there for several days. His blood pressure was in another galaxy, and he had a kidney infection. Day and night, every five minutes, doctors scurried in and out of his room. They thought they would lose him to a stroke. Durham was in London on business, and quickly hustled back. But for a time, only Joe Hand, a cop and stockholder, sat out the nights with him.

"Let him live," Joe said to no one in particular. Joe stayed in a deep sleep, almost a coma. When he awoke, he mumbled over and over: "Don't say a word, Joe. Don't let Ali find out I'm here." At one point, four doctors lingered ominously over his bed. He awoke one time, and said: "All the money I made for people, and you're the only one here, Joe." Hand tried to comfort him, what could he say to a man on the brink? Finally, Joe broke through, like he had through Ali's mechanized jab, and he began to stabilize. One doctor sighed and said: "It was close."

Joe Frazier stayed in St Luke's hospital for three weeks.


(by Mark Kram)

It was vicious. It was bloody. It was grueling. And it was fantastic.

Each man forced the other to fight harder and dig deeper than at any other point in their lives, much less their boxing careers. One was forced to climb off the canvas while the other was driven toward it a number of times. The fight’s cuts were so deep and so pulsating that the crimson covered their torsos and made portions of the canvas sticky. The blood-letting was only exceeded by the Mexico City crowd’s desire to crown a new champion.

25-year-old Chartchai Chionoi, 46-10-2 (31) was making the third defense of the WBC flyweight title he won from Scotland’s Walter McGowan via cut-induced ninth round TKO in front of his home fans in Bangkok. Since then he had fought five times and won them all, four by KO and two in defense of his title (KO 3 Puntip Keosuriya and another cut-marred TKO 7 over McGowan). Chionoi wasn’t the most skilled boxer but he used his iron will and phenomenally heavy hands to carry him to the very top of his profession. The Torres fight marked only the second time Chionoi ventured beyond the Far East and because of what happened the first time around — McGowan led on points in their London rematch at the time of the stoppage — one had to doubt whether the Thai would walk out with the title still strapped around his waist. Another point of concern: Chionoi, who normally struggled to make the 112-pound limit, scaled a stunningly light 109¾, two full pounds less than Torres and 15¼ pounds lighter than his non-title go against Mimoun Ben Ali just 51 days earlier.

Efren Torres, 48-4-1 (32), was a dangerous hitter, especially early as 23 of his knockouts had occurred in four rounds or less. His last three losses signified his quality as he lost two fights to Hiroyuki Ebihara (12-round split decision, KO by 7) and, in his first title opportunity 13 months earlier, pushed 72-1-6 WBA king Horacio Accavallo to the limit before dropping a close decision to the Argentine under an unusual 20-point must scoring system (Torres lost by scores of 297-294 twice and 298-293). The 24-year-old challenger had won four straight since then, including a five round KO over Octavio Gomez and, most recently, a 10-round points nod over perennial contender Joe Medel in a bantamweight contest.

The terms of battle were established right after the opening bell. Torres sportingly extended his left glove to touch Chionoi’s but the defending champ ignored the entreaty and unloaded a wild overhand right that missed the target badly and threw him off balance. From there they probed for openings and it was clear that the circling Torres was far more nimble than the flat-footed Chionoi. Torres’ quicker combinations and sharper punching enabled him to shade a close first round.

The second saw Chionoi accelerate the pace and unleash his full assortment of uniquely angled power shots. The Thai won a brief but explosive mid-ring exchange and moments later a thudding right to the jaw floored Torres along the ropes. Up at two, Torres quickly wiped his gloves on his trunks and brightly stared into referee Arthur Mercante’s eyes as he administered the mandatory eight. The visage that Mercante assessed also included a nasty cut over the left eye, a gash that would spill untold crimson on the canvas and would require 15 stitches to close. Determined not to let his circumstances get the best of him, Torres eagerly waded back into the fire and got in several effective hooks and crosses before the bell.

Chionoi again fanned on the big right to start the third but hit the target with his deceptively fast hammers as Torres moved and searched for openings. Less than a minute into the session the pair engaged in a vigorous toe-to-toe exchange that moved to all parts of the ring. Torres mixed his attack well between head and body while Chionoi’s attention was locked on worsening the cut. A huge right gonged off Torres’ chin but this time the Mexican’s legs held firm. As the round neared its end Torres connected with his own sweeping right that caused the champion to lean his torso back but little more.

The fourth started with another big exchange at ring center and this time Torres hit pay dirt as a compact right caused Chionoi’s right knee to buckle and the crowd to erupt in joyful waves. A double hook to the body and jaw drove the Thai to the ropes, sparking a torrent of blows from the challenger. Torres pelted Chionoi from every angle imaginable but the champion’s chin, legs and composure managed to remain strong. As he passed by Mercante glanced at Torres’ cut, whose byproducts now covered the challenger’s face, but chose to let the action continue unabated. Realizing the fight might be stopped at any time, Torres increased the pressure even more and worked over Chionoi with a succession of hooks to the head and body. Through it all Chionoi remained unflappable and near round’s end he landed with a tightly arced hook to the chin that served to stop Torres’ advance momentarily.

Chionoi missed with another overhand right to start round five – why he continued that tactic remained a mystery – but he fared better when he maneuvered Torres to the ropes and landed a good body-head combo. The faster Torres continued to pepper Chionoi with sharp punches that piled up points but unfortunately for the challenger the cut continued to bleed. A heavy one-two twisted Chionoi’s head but improbably ignited an energetic counterattack that prompted Torres to cut his surge short. Still, the blows prompted notice to the left side of Chionoi’s face, which was swelling noticeably.

Round six was a big round for Torres as he buzzed Chionoi twice with fusillades of close-range punches, some of which worsened the bulge above the champion’s left eye. Chionoi’s situation worsened early in the seventh when, following a fantastic mid-ring exchange, a Torres hook to the jaw sent him reeling toward the ropes. Under today’s rules his stumble would have been ruled a knockdown but here it just allowed Torres to swarm him uninterrupted. Only a champion’s pride kept the Thai on his feet.

With every passing round the blood cascading from Torres’ face became more of an issue, especially when the bout moved to long range in the eighth and ninth rounds. The taller Chionoi’s jab stabbed Torres’ face, which was now a bright red mask, but Chionoi’s growingly misshapen visage, which now saw blood coming out of the nose, wasn’t much better. The crimson covered both men’s torsos and trunks and one had to wonder how much longer either man’s body would hold up. At the start of round 10, a Torres corner man was seen wiping the blood off the sticky canvas.

Sensing time might be running out for him, Torres summoned a surge in the 11th that had Chionoi cut over the left eye, tottering about the ring and bent at the waist. Once again, the ultra-tough Thai survived without hitting the floor but that said, he still absorbed a frightful beating.

That beating continued throughout the first two minutes of the 12th. But in between taking bombs Chionoi slipped in enough punches to keep the blood flowing from Torres’ face. A stupendous hook-cross to the face caused Torres’ legs to buckle, forced the challenger into instant retreat and quieted Torres’ boisterous fans.

Entering the 13th the scoring couldn’t have been more divided. Mercante had Torres a huge 116-107 winner while one judge somehow had Chionoi up 115-111. The third jurist had neither ahead as the tally read 113-113. As the fighters prepared to answer the bell they looked as if they had spent the afternoon at a slaughterhouse.

Chionoi jolted Torres’ head with a tightly delivered hook early in the round but an even shorter hook caused the champion to pause. Seconds later Mercante stared into Torres’ face and didn’t like the damage he saw. He led the challenger to a neutral corner and summoned the ring physician, who briefly dabbed the blood with a tissue before waving his arms and stopping the contest at the 1:15 mark of round 13.

The instant Chionoi realized he had won he ran toward Torres’ corner, dropped to the floor and wrapped his arms around the challenger’s shins, which may well have been a gesture of humility and respect for a fight well waged.

“He’s the toughest man I ever fought,” Chionoi said through an interpreter. “He is definitely the second best flyweight in the world.”

Torres probably begged to differ, for it appeared that had he not been cut he would have had a good chance of lifting the title. The only way to settle the score was to have a second fight, and perhaps a rubber match.

That’s exactly what happened. Thirteen months later they returned to the El Toreo in Mexico City and this time Torres benefited from a Chionoi injury. A horribly swollen left eye slammed shut, prompting Mercante and the ring doctor to stop the contest in round eight. Thirteen months after that, they met in Bangkok, where Chionoi regained the title by close but unanimous decision.

(by Lee Groves)




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHfAgSWSUoY

" 'Oh Johnny, leave me alone. I've got work to do.'. She started toward a cupboard in the kitchen. John said 'All right, I'll leave you alone..' then grabbed for her, whipped out his .32 caliber revolver and fired at her several times. Then he shot himself in the head."


continue reading here..

http://classicboxingsociety.blogspot.ie ... ost_5.html

"He got to me, and I hated him for it, I never hated anybody before. I decided to punish him before I knocked him out. I wanted it to go into later rounds, but he kept calling me dirty names during the fight. So I ended it." - Joe Louis

One of the great non-world champions, Lew Tendler ('Lefty Lew')...a man responsible for making southpaws more acceptable than any other boxer before, battles and loses a close decision against the great Benny Leonard, a man regarded as highly as Sugar Ray Robinson in his day. Maybe the greatest fight between jewish boxers ever.

Reuters Telegram covered the fight: “Sixty thousand people saw Benny Leonard defend his Lightweight Championship against Lew Tendler. The latter had the best of the first 5 rounds and gave a splendid exhibition. Leonard, who was groggy, began to recover in the 7th round and thereafter had the best of it, in the opinion of the newspapermen, some of who favored awarding a draw. The bout was officially 12 rounds and a no decision.” The ringside press called it a NWS12 loss for Tendler. But many felt Lew dominated Benny throughout the fight.

The Vancouver Journal had a more revealing take on this fight: “In the 8th round Leonard was nearly out on his feet. His knees sagged and his eyes were glazed but he was still able to talk.”

Talk? Yes, Leonard talked Tendler out of a championship. Leonard whispered, “You are not winning,” the Journal reported. “You will miss the next one,” the champion hissed through a hole in his jaw where a tooth had just been knocked out. Tendler was badly rattled and tore in another left hook which missed. Leonard then went into a clinch, and in the next round took the lead.” Others at ringside claimed that Leonard spoke to Tendler in Yiddish (an Eastern European dialect which fused German, Hebrew, Aramaic and Slavic languages) which broke Lew’s concentration.

.........................

The gate was $450,000. Leonard the champion got $190,000. Tendler the challenger received $90,000.

A year later on July 24, 1923, the two men fought again. There was a great demand for the rematch and a great deal of money to be made. The second fight took place at Yankee Stadium. The “House That Ruth Built” was packed. A crowd of 60,000 paid over $452,650 to watch the rematch. It was the first championship fight to be held at the new ballpark.

The fight turned out to be anticlimactic. The champion wisely chose to not mix it up with Lew. Benny carefully boxed the hard punching Tendler. He used all of his skills and coasted to an easy UD15.

(By Norman Marcus)

...........................

In the rematch, Hype Igoe wrote, "Leonard worked in circles around and toward the back of Tendler’s southpaw left so that Tendler was always shifting to get set again.” Leonard kept the southpaw off-balance and then countered effectively. “It was the finest job from any angle of boxing that this writer ever saw…and I don’t expect to see it duplicated.” Leonard walked away with a clear-cut 15 round decision.

A small collection of 1937 'Boxing' magazines (UK) from the humble shed archives here...these were given to me by my grandfather who was a big boxing fan too....i have taken snaps of the inside and a few articles etc....for anyone reading interested, follow this link to see them...

https://www.facebook.com/classicboxings ... permPage=1

('Boxing' became what is now known as the 'Boxing News' magazine in the 1940's)

"Pick Tunney, and you can't miss" - Harry Greb

By the time that they stepped into the ring, under the lights of Madison Square Garden—the mecca of boxing's golden age—the grudge between the two had been played out in newspaper interviews for months. Saddler and Pep despised one another, and it was palpable. From the opening moments of the bout to the conclusion, their mutual hatred and desperation not to lose to the other was painted across the ring canvas in perhaps the wildest, dirtiest title fight in boxing history.

The style of Willie Pep was something to behold. Against the average boxer or puncher, Pep would circle the ring, normally to his left, and wait for his opponent to follow. When they did, Pep would step in and land a stiff punch on their snout. It was simple, but he turned it into an art form. A great deal of Pep's best offence actually came from the southpaw stance, in an era when switching stances was seen as almost obscene.

The problem was that Sandy Saddler was perhaps the best ring cutter of his generation.

Saddler didn't have an awful lot of class at range—he had a stiff jab, but didn't combination punch. What Saddler aimed to do was to check his opponent's hands, jump in with a hard punch, then grip behind the head and go to work with one hand.

After two rounds of solid boxing from Pep, Saddler was able to trap Pep in a corner, get a grip behind his head, and start uppercutting.

The beauty of Saddler's uppercut was that if an opponent did manage to stand up straight enough to not be pulled down onto it, he would deliberately miss the uppercut and elbow them in the face. The upward elbow is a nasty trick because it is exceptionally good at creating cuts and hard to spot in a boxing match.

Willie Pep was not known for his fight—he had brittle hands, rarely knocked anyone out, and was far more of an artist than a finisher. But in against Saddler, knowing it was his last chance to show that he could beat his rival, Pep showed a kind of venom on his punches which he had never shown up to that point.

But Saddler, in addition to having a head like a cinder block, was smart to Pep's game. He'd been in with Pep through three fights already, that's a masters degree in boxing however you look at it. In between taking series of five or six hard punches on the dome and just walking through them, Saddler would make Pep miss, tie him up, and start hitting from the clinch.

Saddler's dirty infighting made Pep turn dirty to get away from it. Where the cross face, with the forearm in front of the opponent's neck or face, is permissable in boxing, using the heel of the palm (sometimes known as heeling) is not. Pep repeatedly thrust his palm into Saddler's face as he desperately tried to create room to move and to work.

The bout rapidly descended into a street fight. Saddler began cranking on the overhook in every clinch—remembering that it was a shoulder separation which took place in one of these clinches which forced Pep to retire from their previous bout.

In retaliation, Pep began tripping Saddler. Then Saddler got behind Pep and started punching from the back. The two consistently refused to separate at the referee's instructions, and at one point the referee was thrown to the floor. It will come as no surprise that after this bout both Pep and Saddler had their boxing licenses suspended indefinitely (though with both being such fan favourites this didn't last long).

Saddler continued, throughout the bout, to have difficulty cornering Pep. Against a boxer with excellent ring craft, swinging as they circle out just doesn’t work. Every time Pep circled, Saddler tried to greet him with a hook, and Pep ducked clean under it.

Against an elite out fighter, it is almost always best to cut them off with a body hook because, while your head can change levels, there is no removing the body from the line of fire along the ropes. Once Saddler began to use body hooks more liberally, he found himself with Pep against the ropes more and more often. If some of these body shots happened to go low, Saddler wouldn't complain.

At the end of the ninth round, the fighters returned to their corners and the doctor hurriedly inspected Pep's eye. His right eye had been cut open by Saddler's constant barrage of lefts in the second round, and since then it had only been getting worse. Pep couldn't see out of one side, the only side which Saddler really threw any offence, being a converted southpaw, and was forced to concede defeat.

(by Jack Slack)

1952

doug.ie wrote:

How on earth did the Doctors manage to stitch that wound?

palooka wrote:

doug.ie wrote:

How on earth did the Doctors manage to stitch that wound?

Crikey - took me a minute to work this picture out - I thought the slit was the eye...I was thinking 'how did his eye get up there'.
What a great fighter Pep was - perhaps top ten best ever..

Following is a piece forwarded to CBS (Classic Boxing Society)* from friend of the page Charlie Norkus Jr which gives a brief insight into, and around, everyday life in the classic Stillman's Gym, New York, in 1957.

...........................................

Stillman's Gymnasium at 919 Eighth Ave., New York City, is probably the best known institution for the training of professional practitioners in the Manly Art of Modified Murder in the world today. With good reason, it is called the "Eighth Avenue University" by the New Yorker's A. J. Leibling, one of the wisest boxing writers today.

Honolulu boasts two colleges where similar instruction is offered — the Hawaiian Pine College, where Stan Harrington is at the head of his class and his manager Ted Kawamura is something like president and maybe dean of men combined, and the Armory College, where many visiting professors, such as Ramon Fuentes, hold forth from time to time.

We had not paid a visit to Stillman's university for about 10 years, tout when we dropped in one day this week at noon we found very little change. The bare beams that hold up the roof of the ancient structure and the scarred dark walls look as though they have not had a coat of paint since our last visit, or for that matter since our first, about the same year "Tobacco Road" was starting its long run on Broadway.

But if you're inclined toward such matters, you'll notice that something of the culture of Stillman's, and to an even greater degree that of Madison Square Garden four blocks down the avenue, has permeated the area. From 49th St. to 55th, along Fee Avenue, there are many signs of the cauliflower industry. Two bars in the area are Mickey Walker's "Toy Bulldog" saloon, in which we understand the former Bulldog no longer has a financial interest, and the "Neutral Corner," where Lou Stillman holds forth in the afternoon between noon and evening seminars at the gymnasium. Then there's the Ring Magazine office on 49th St.

Pets for Fighter

Not so easily recognizable by the uninitiate, but just as closely related to the fight game as the pictures of pugs in the store windows, are two pet shops in the same block as Stillman's, one of them next door to the entrance. There you can buy a nondescript pup, or black racer snake for $5, or a monkey for considerably more. You can also buy a white mouse for considerably less. The old fad among fighters, for having pets has come back and the rating and opulence of a young battler is judged among his fellows, to some extent, by the kind of pet he -keeps. It would take someone who gets TV fights pretty often, for instance, to afford the upkeep of a good sized monkey, together with paying for the wreckage he might cause, but nearly any preliminary boy could maintain a white mouse in the style to which it is accustomed, if Although it is now in revival, there is nothing new about the fad among fighters, the most famous pet, perhaps, being the "tame" lion kept by Rudy Robert Fitzsimmons, when the Australian was heavyweight and he also liked to scare the daylights out of unsuspecting sports writers by turning him loose among them without any advance notice.

Workouts at Stillman's come twice daily, at 12 noon, lasting till about 2:30 p.m., and at 5 p.m. until about 7 p.m. The second seminar is held largely for fighters who have daytime jobs such as longshoring or trucking, and come in for their instruction and training after work.

Part Time Fighter

This category includes a good many able scrappers. For instance, Jimmy Archer, a favorite at St. Nick's Arena, said to be the oldest boxing club in America, is a longshoreman and the dockers turn out en masse to see him. Two of his recent battles have been close decisions over Tony Decola, who was a warehouseman in Brooklyn until recently when he moved to California. Both these are welterweights and both look like able opposition for Stan Harrington, any time Honolulu promoter feel like bringing them.

We attended, a noon workout, that being the time most of the "names" appear, and found a fair complement of practitioners present. There was Johnny Bus-so of Brooklyn, presently ranked ninth among the lightweights. There was Lulu Perez, also of Brooklyn, who was ranked near the top a year or so ago, and there was Charlie Norkus, a heavyweight who upset several promising title hopes a couple of years ago and who seems to have gone to fat somewhat since being dropped from the national ratings.

Also present was tall, ascetic-looking Eddie (Pigeon) Lynch, a lightweight who has no national rating, but whose appearances at St. Nick's have occasioned much excitement. The furor over Lynch is not. altogether because of the boxing, though Lynch has proved an eager mixer, but because his many followers from the West by turning loose pigeons all over Side celebrate his appearances the place. Lynch, you see is a pigeon-fancier.

At the last Lynch showing, the police department and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals turned out in full force after warning Lynchs followers someone would get pinched if any pigeons were turned loose. None were, but the hoots and catcalls caused almost as much disturbance as the pigeons. Began in Tenements Pigeon-owning and flying, it should be explained, is not related to the current fad among fighters for pets, but rises rather from New York's tenement district where rooftops afforded the only space for entertainment. Some of New York's livelier element, such as "Owney the Killer." Madden, once top man in the underworld, have been pigeon-fanciers.

This day, however, Eddie Lynch confined his activities to shadow-boxing with a bathrobe on and punching the bags in the back room. He is recovering from an attack of the Asian flu, and anyhow, Stillman's is a very chilly place this time of year. One doubts that they bother to turn on any heat until, there's maybe a foot of snow being scraped off the New York streets.

The boys at Armory and Hawaiian Pine Colleges don't know how good they have it by comparison. The management at Stillman's operates a loudspeaker system spasmodically toy which it informs casual customers, such as your correspondent, who pay 50 ' cents to watch the workouts, just who's fighting whom in which of the two rings. But even without the speaker, it would be fairly easy to tell who the "names" are.

Novices Work Hardest

As for years past, fighters who are well known or rated nation-ally conduct a sort of running horseplay with Lou Stillman and the other old-timers, while a boy whose shirt proclaims him a winner of the "Kansas City Star Golden Gloves," sticks earnestly to the business of shadow-boxing, doing weird calisthenics and waiting his turn in the ring.

Once they're inside the ring, the recognized practitioners work with a maximum of skill and a minimum of violence. Usually, though not always, they are treated with much respect by their sparring/partners. Charlie Norkus went three rounds with a square-built Negro and the exertion and punishment were hardly more than one would get from shadow-boxing.

Johnny Busso took it nice and easy with Harry Bell, a boy who has fought a few main events, concentrating largely on a long left hook and short combinations to the body.

But two long-limbed unknowns from Harlem Tattled each other with such punches that the horseplay with Lou Stillman stopped for the moment and, everyone watched. Nobody went down, however, and when the gong sounded, the two tapped each other in a show of good will as they climbed out of the ring.

At 2:30, Lou Stillman left the place for his assistants to lock up and stopped in at the "Neutral Corner" to regade an audience with how he introduced Jack Demp-sey to his best trainer, "Jerry the Greek."


(By Edward Rohrbough - Honolulu Record)






...............


*Classic Boxing Society (where these posts are uploaded prior to here) -
http://classicboxingsociety.blogspot.ie/
https://www.facebook.com/classicboxingsociety

If Victor Perez's story ended with his boxing career, it would still have been rather notable. The Tunisian-born Jew became the youngest world champion in boxing history when he took the flyweight crown shortly after turning 20.

He didn't stay on the top for long. A love affair with a French actress and a hard-partying lifestyle derailed his career. He soon lost his title, and couldn't regain it.

When World War II came, Perez thought that he would be safe in Paris. He was sadly mistaken, as the Nazis caught him and sent him to Auschwitz.

And this is when the storyline veers. When the Nazis found out about Perez's boxing past, they forced him to fight for their amusement, often against boxers twice his size. He kept emerging victorious, using the food he won to feed his fellow prisoners. When the Nazi defeat became all but certain, Auschwitz's prisoners were taken on a Death March. Four months before the war would end, Perez was caught giving bread to another prisoner. He was shot on the spot.

..................

From www.boxrec.com:

Perez was arrested by local police on October 10, 1943, and deported to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. According to reports, Perez was forced to fight in the bi-weekly boxing matches at the camp. The fights were bet on by the Nazi officers in command of the camp. The winners of these matches were awarded with bread and soup, while the loser was executed.
Perez's first fight in the camp was against a German-Jewish heavyweight (inmate) named Iorry. Even though his opponent was over a foot taller, and 50 pounds heavier, Perez scored a knockout. Perez went on to fight twice a week, every week, for the next 15 months, reportedly scoring 140 straight knockout victories.

In 1945, Perez was evacuated from the camp. It was reported that on the road near a camp called Gleiwitz, Perez attempted to pass bread through a fence to another inmate, and was shot and killed by Nazi guards. Some sources list his death in January 1945, others in March.

...........................

Perez was a fighter who was full of energy; He was not a power hitter but was a non-stop puncher; He lost only 28 of 134 bouts and scored 27 knockouts; During his career, he won the NBA Flyweight Championship of the World, the IBU Flyweight Championship of the World and the Flyweight Championship of France

Victor defeated such men as Frankie Genaro, Emile Pladner, Valentin Angelmann, Nicolas Petit-Biquet, Eugene Huat, Kid Francis, Aurel Toma, Vittorio Tamagnini, Kid Socks and Carlos Flix

Perez was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 1986

Dec 4, 1961

Sonny Liston vs. Albert Westphal
Convention Hall, Philadelphia

The fight was delayed because the gloves provided for Liston were too small for his hands.

Liston put Westphal down for the count in round one with a right to the jaw. It was the first time Westphal was ever floored.

"Do you think your performance tonight scared Patterson?" a reporter asked Liston. "How long have I been the No.1 challenger?" Liston asked. "About a year and a half," someone volunteered. "That's how long he's been scared of me," Liston said.

When Archie Moore beat Joey Maxim for the World Light-Heavyweight title in 1952, Maxim earned $100,000 - while Moore's end amounted to....$800 !!