Billy Harold
Name: Billy Harold
Alias: Joe Larson
Birth Name: Vito Fabrizio
Hometown: San Francisco, California, USA
Birthplace: San Francisco, California, USA
Died: 1963-05-16 (Age:58)
Pro Boxer: Record
According to Alan Ward's sports column, "On Second Thought," in digital form in the June 27, 1954 edition of the Oakland Tribune (Oakland, California) on Newspapers.com, Vito Fabrizio, a newspaper pressman over a span of more than twenty-five years and working for the Oakland Tribune at the time, was a boxer who fought as Billy Harold in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1920s. Much of the column is devoted to a description of Fabrizio as a boxer, mostly as a featherweight; a newspaper pressman; and a family man with a wife and three children.
A number of Oakland fans remembered when Fabrizio made a big splash locally at beginning of his career under the ring name of Joe Larson when he knocked out another young boxer, Teddy Silva, in the third round. Like Fabrizio, Silva would go on to have an interesting career as a boxer. Shortly after his victory over Silva, Fabrizio would box for the rest of his career as "Billy Harold" and reportedly had 225 bouts before retiring in 1930. An older brother, Meade, known as "Meache" to people close to him, acted as Fabrizio's advisor and trainer. In addition, Meache also was a newspaper pressman and was working beside Fabrizio at the Oakland Tribune at the time that Ward's column with the description of Fabrizio appeared in Tribune.
According to the California, Death Index, 1940-1997 database on Ancestry.com, one Vito Fabrizio was born on October 7, 1904 in California and died on May 16, 1963 in Alameda County, California.
According to the Cuyahoga County, Ohio Marriage Records and Indexes, 1810-1973 database on Ancestry.com, one Vito Fabrizio, a 30-year-old pressman and a native of San Francisco, California, married one Jennie Vacariello, a native of Cleveland, Ohio, on September 28, 1935. At the time of his marriage, Fabrizio was a resident of Oakland, California.