Close Encounters with the Gloves Off: Boxing's Greats Recall the Inside Stories of Their Big Fights

By Thomas Myler

Boxers recall their highs and lows, their greatest triumphs, the background stories, and many shock revelations of their careers in this exciting collection. Acclaimed boxing writer, author, and historian Thomas Myler has interviewed every one of the pugilistic greats featured, during a career spent covering boxing; from the big names of the Roaring 1920s right through to boxing's modern era. Muhammad Ali, Jack Dempsey, Georges Carpentier, Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson, Rocky Marciano, Joe Frazier, George Foreman, and modern greats such as Mike Tyson, Sugar Ray Leonard, Evander Holyfield, and Ken Buchanan all feature. Myler has spent a lifetime around boxing and boxers and was once described by George Kimball, prize-winning author of the acclaimed Four Kings, as "one of the world's best boxing writers."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: Feb 28, 2016
• ISBN: 9781785311727

Book preview

all.

Introduction

CALL it what you will, the noble art, the sweet science, the fight game, showbusiness with blood but boxing has an excitement, a drama, a charisma all its own. True, it has its do-gooders and its abolishers because of its very nature. But the most incontrovertible piece of evidence that its critics can never ignore or deny it that boxing, in some form, has been with us as long as man can remember. Fist-fighting, as a sporting competition, has been part of our culture for thousands of years.

To set the scene for this book, it would seem appropriate to take a brief look at boxing history down the years and establish where the sport has been and where it is at the present time.

It has certainly come a long, long way since its beginnings in ancient Greece where excavations at Knossos on the island of Crete have revealed that a form of the sport was known among its inhabitants as early as 1500 BC. But it was not until the early 19th century that a boxing dynasty was established in England and later in America.

The first recognised rules were set up by the English champion Jack Broughton in 1743 and were in operation until 1838 when the London Prize Ring Rules, or the New Rules of Prizefighting as they were initially called, were introduced. These were revised in 1853 and again in 1866. In 1867 John Sholto Douglas, the ninth Marquis of Queensberry, sponsored new rules compiled by his friend John Chambers, a keen follower of prizefighting. They had first met at Magdelene College in Cambridge and the marquis, who had only a sketchy knowledge of boxing, agreed to lend the new rules his name and patronage. Thus the Queensberry Rules came into force.

In the early years of the 18th century, a typical contest had been an unregulated, no-holds-barred battle watched by a circle of spectators, hence ‘the ring’ as we know it today. There was no referee, or any set rounds or time limits. Beyond the fighters’ personal sense of sportsmanship, there were simply no rules. The object was to fight until one contestant could no longer carry on. Battles generally lasted for hours, and while fists were considered the primary weapon, no tactic was forbidden. These included gouging, throwing, kicking, strangling and often the use of a cudgel, a short thick stick.

For many years, no consideration was given to the relative weight of the contestants, and no organisation existed to give official recognition to champions or challengers. To set up a title battle, a fighter would issue, often in writing, a challenge or response to an open invitation by the so-called champion to take on worthy rivals.

In time bare-knuckle fighting went into decline and by the time the Queensberry Rules were drawn up, they were considered more in keeping with the times. America fell in line and boxing had entered a whole new era.

Wrestling tackles and other dangerous practices were banned, the length of rounds limited to three minutes with a rest of 60 seconds in between, and contestants had to wear ‘fair-sized boxing gloves of the best quality and new’.

The Queensberry Rules are basically the same today as the ones in operation a century and a half ago, although naturally with changes and modifications over the years to bring them up to date with conditions at the time. With safety at the core of all changes, these included the shortening of championship fights from 45 rounds to 25, then to 20, subsequently to 15 and today to 12. Other changes were extra weight classes, the methods of scoring fights and as recently as 1990 the changing of the weigh-in from the day of the fight to 24 hours earlier.

Even when the Queensberry Rules were introduced, old habits died hard.

There were still fights to a finish but gradually promoters saw the commercial sense in using a maximum number of rounds and, if no knockout or intervention had been achieved, having a points verdict based on which participant had done the better work over the whole fight.

Through it all, boxing has survived over the centuries in spite of some rough passages. It has fallen a victim of reformers, lawmakers, expungers, and so often the ineptitude of its own administrators. For example, take the so-called alphabet boys, or alphabet soup. This refers to the abbreviations of the various sanctioning bodies that have proliferated since the 1980s, and creating what aficionados of the sport consider ‘cheap’ world titles. These continue to be handed out like coupons at a supermarket.

Up to the 1950s there were only eight divisions, with only one champion per division, for a total of eight world champions at once. Sometimes fewer, if one boxer was the champion in two or more divisions at the one time. A contender became the world champion only by beating the then-champion or by defeating other leading contenders in elimination tournaments for a vacant title.

In those days, there were only a handful of world sanctioning bodies, the National Boxing Association, the New York State Athletic Commission, the European Boxing Union and the British Boxing Board of Control. By the 1980s many new boxing organisations had sprung up to the point where it seemed if the manager or promoter paid the requisite sanctioning fee, the boxer could fight for a somewhat dubious ‘world’ title even if his record was not generally considered by most fans and commentators as world class.

Currently there are no fewer than 17 weight divisions and, at the last count, six major sanctioning organisations for a total of 102 world champions no less. This figure could be doubled to almost 200 when one adds in ‘world’ titles variously labelled as interim, silver, diamond, emeritus, super and recess. Many boxing fans and critics belittle these ‘world’ championships and have labelled them alphabet soup titles or trinkets.

‘The situation has got to be sorted out,’ Barry McGuigan, the former world featherweight champion, said to me in a recent interview. ‘It is going to take time because it means cutting out people who at the moment are earning money. But it needs to be done. There is competition too from the Ultimate Fighting Championship, or mixed martial arts or whatever you like to call it. However, I don’t think this form of fighting involves the same level of skill as boxing. That is because in boxing you are only able to strike with your upper body, not your legs. For me, boxing at its best is the greatest skill of all. It is an art.’

In the final analysis, it can be said that boxing, with all its faults, is the great survivor. It has come through, though certainly not unscathed, to remain one of the world’s premier sports – certainly the richest. The 2015 big fight in Las Vegas between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao for the undisputed world welterweight title grossed more than $600m, with Mayweather picking up a cheque for over $200m, both all-time records. Those figures are mind-boggling in any currency.

The actual attendance was 16,507, puny compared to the 100,000-plus gates of the Roaring 20s and small even into the 1950s and 1960s, but promoters don’t need to depend on ticket sales anymore. Boxing has long since moved into totally different eras. For many years now, the television executives are the people who call the shots, and will continue to do so.

Meanwhile boxing goes on. Promoters make matches, publicists spread the news, managers get the best deals for their boxers, and trainers ensure that the contestants are in the best possible physical and mental condition. In the end, it is the boxers themselves who make the difference between winning and losing. They are on their own as they walk out to the centre of the ring under the bright lights to receive last-minute instructions from the referee.

In the following pages, you will read the views and opinions of boxers themselves, in this case legendary figures in the sport whose names are familiar to even the most casual of boxing fans and who have made an indelible mark in their chosen profession. So without any further delay, enjoy the journey by having some close encounters with many of the all-time greats. There goes the first bell. Settle back.

1

Sugar Ray Robinson

Night of the Big Heat

IT was the night of 25 June 1952 and New York City was sweltering in a record heatwave with the temperature reaching 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Conditions for the big fight at the Yankee Stadium ‘might have made Dante’s Inferno seem like a refrigerator,’ said Jim Jennings of the New York Mirror, noting that under the blazing ringside lights it was 104 degrees.

The big open-air stadium in the South Bronx was traditionally the home base of the New York Yankees baseball team but on this night Joey Maxim was defending his world light-heavyweight title against the middleweight champion Sugar Ray Robinson who was attempting to become only the third triple champion in the Queensberry Rules era, having earlier held the welterweight title.

Maxim, a solid fighter of Italian parentage who used solid boxing skills rather than punching power throughout his career, was born Giuseppe Antonio Bernardinelli in Cleveland, Ohio. He took his boxing name from the rapid-fire Maxim machine gun invented in 1884 and said to have played a large part in Britain’s imperial conquests. Maxim, too, had the capacity to rapidly throw a consistent number of left jabs at opponents.

As the sweating crowd of 47,968 passed through the turnstiles in the scorching heat, the receipts would total $421,000, the highest gross for a title fight in the 175lb division for 26 years. No wonder James D. Norris, boss of the promoting organisation the International Boxing Club, was smiling at ringside.

The remarkable fight, scheduled for 15 rounds, would end dramatically and sensationally at the end of the 13th with Robinson slumped on his stool, head on his sweating chest and mumbling he could not go on any further. As Jesse Abramson reported in the New York Herald Tribune, ‘The brilliant middleweight champion, with an unbeatable points lead, had made all the fight for the 13 rounds, outpunching and outboxing Maxim and exhausting himself on this roasting, burning night.’

When I had the pleasure of interviewing Robinson in a hotel in Glasgow during his British tour in 1964, his final year in the ring, he gave me the full story of that incredible night and much more besides.

‘The original date was 23 June but heavy rain forced the IBC to postpone it for 48 hours because a big baseball match was scheduled for the next night at the nearby Polo Grounds and the promoters had an agreement that there could not be a clash of events,’ he said, taking occasional sips of his orange juice.

‘I weighed 157 lb and Maxim 173, giving him an advantage of 15 lb but I wasn’t too worried. I’d fought and beaten heavier men before, including Jake LaMotta, and I felt I could do the same again. This wasn’t a boast but you’ve got to feel that way in boxing. Any negative feelings and you shouldn’t be in there.

‘A strange thing happened the night before the fight. I dreamt I died in the ring and there was a doctor bending over me saying, He’s dead, he’s dead. When I woke up I was really scared and I thought of calling off the fight. I was reminded of what had happened five years earlier when I knocked out the Irish-American Jimmy Doyle and he died after the fight. A few nights earlier I had dreamt Doyle had fallen dead at my feet.

‘The paramedics were taking him out on a stretcher and when I woke up I couldn’t see his face but somehow I knew it was him. Doyle had been injured in a previous fight and maybe he shouldn’t have been in the ring at all with me that night. But there you go. The press were very hard on me after the fight. When I had been asked by the coroner at the inquest if I had anything to say, I said it was my business to hurt people. I was just telling the truth about boxing but the press labelled me an insensitive person with no real feelings.

‘I didn’t box again for a few months as I was completely broken up. Later on at a charity show I gave my entire purse of $13,000 to Doyle’s mother and set up a $10,000 trust fund for her. Then, when I knocked out Flashy Sebastian in the first round and he lay still on the canvas I thought I’d killed him too. But thankfully he just had concussion. I breathed a sigh of relief.

‘But to get back to Maxim. I didn’t tell anybody about my dream of dying in the ring. I just wanted to get on with the fight. The plan worked out between my manager George Gainford and my trainers Harry Wiley and Pee Wee Beale was that I would keep the pressure on Maxim, mix up my shots, move in and out and collect the points. That’s how it worked out.’

The Press Association reported that Robinson made full use of his speed by darting in and out of Maxim before the light-heavyweight champion could set himself up for counter shots. A terrific left hook in the seventh rocked Maxim back on his heels before Robinson tore in for the kill but the heavier man held on. Still, Robinson had a commanding lead on points.

‘I was going for that light-heavyweight title and nothing was going to stop me. I don’t honestly think that Maxim hit me solidly once in the first ten rounds. He landed but not to any great extent. He was working when we clinched but on the outside he didn’t land a thing. But by tenth I felt I was getting weaker. I was breathing hard like a man in a desert needing a drink.

‘It was so hot that the referee Ruby Goldstein had to be helped out of the ring at the end of the round and Ray Miller took his place. I guess it was one of the few times two referees were ever used in a championship fight. Probably the first time ever. You could check it out but I’m fairly sure I’m right. I personally never heard of two referees in the one fight anyhow.

‘I don’t recall much about the 11th or 12th rounds and the heat was really getting to me and I was in a kind of fog but I do remember Harry Wiley shouting in my ear and telling me I only had to stay on my feet for another few rounds and I’d win. I have a vague memory of throwing a right hand in the 13th round, missing and falling flat on my face.

‘They emptied a bucket of water over me at the bell but I was all in. When the bell rang for the 14th I just couldn’t get up off my stool and I said I couldn’t go on. It was the only time I had been stopped in my career. I heard later that all officials had me well in front. One judge marked it nine for me, three for Maxim and one even. The second had it ten for me and three for Maxim. Before his collapse, referee Goldstein had it 5-2 in my favour with three even and the new referee Miller had it two for me and one for Maxim. I could not have lost the decision.

‘I think they may have carried me to the dressing room. I couldn’t remember much of what happened. In the dressing room I do recall the commission doctor sticking a needle into me and through the haze I saw the mayor of New York and I mumbled something to him about Maxim not being able to knock me out. When one of my handlers took me to the shower I dragged the mayor in along with me, fully clothed.

‘It was crazy. I kept repeating, He didn’t beat me. It was God’s will. I heard somebody behind me saying I was crazy from the heat but I said I wasn’t crazy. The next day I was feeling much better and I went to see the movies of the fight and the gloom came over me again. I had come so close to that title but that’s how it goes. You win some, you lose some,’ he shrugged with a smile. ‘Incidentally, we both lost around 20lb each in the fight. That gives you some idea of the conditions.’

A.J. Liebling of the New Yorker saw the dramatic finish like this, ‘After the 12th round, all Sugar Ray had to do was to finish the fight on his feet and he would win on points. But when he came out for the 13th, he walked as if he had the gout in both feet and dreaded putting them down. When he punched, which was infrequently, he was as late and as wild as an amateur, and when he wasn’t punching, his arms hung by his sides.

‘Maxim landed one or two fairly good shots, I thought where I sat. And then Robinson, the complete boxer, the epitome of ring grace, swung wildly and, like a child, missed his man completely and fell hard on his face. When he got up, Maxim backed him against the ropes and hit him a couple of times. The round ended and Robinson’s seconds half dragged, half carried him to his corner. He couldn’t get off the stool at the end of the one-minute interval and Maxim was declared the winner in the 14th round because the bell had rung for the beginning of the round.’

Ironically, the 15-round distance in championship fights would be officially shortened to 12 in the 1980s. Had that been the case in 1952, Robinson would have been a clear points winner and taken a third world title. Up to then, this had only been achieved by two boxers, Henry Armstrong, who won the featherweight, lightweight and welterweight titles and earlier by Bob Fitzsimmons who was champion at middleweight, light-heavyweight and heavyweight.

Over 60 years on, Robinson is rated as the greatest boxer of all time. His outstanding ability as a superb ring craftsman and hard, accurate puncher plus his flamboyant persona made him a hero to boxing fans all over the world. At his peak, and even in the closing years of his 25-year career, he was as flashy outside the ring as he was inside it. A sleek, handsome man with a ready smile, his clothes were always impeccable, with expensive rings on his perfectly manicured fingers and his black hair pomaded to a bright sheen.

I asked Robinson about his early life. While he said he was born in Detroit, a fact long accepted by several writers including his official biographer Dave Anderson of the New York Times in 1969, Herb Boyd wrote a book on Robinson in 2005 and maintained the boxer’s birth certificate showed Ailey, Georgia as his birthplace. His parents, however, were born in Dublin, Georgia, but soon moved to Detroit and later New York.

‘Things were tough in Detroit, even though it was the place to be because it was the centre of the automobile industry,’ he said. ‘My dad had a serious drink problem and he wasn’t able to hold down a job. He drifted from one job to another, ending up with nothing better than unskilled work, although other black people were getting good jobs in factories which seemed to be mushrooming all over the place.

‘Money was always a problem around the house and my mother got a job as a seamstress with a local linen company but cash was still a problem. We moved house several times but always managed to survive. It was in Detroit that I first met my idol Joe Louis, who would go on to win the world heavyweight title and hold it for nearly 12 years. I heard he trained at the Brewster Gym and I would go over and carry his gym kit for him. It was a real thrill.

‘Later on mom took me and my two sisters to New York City, but left dad behind. She explained to us that he had never really settled down and with his drink problem, we would be better off on our own. We moved house a bit in the city when the rent would go up. It was in New York that I got into boxing seriously.

‘A friend of mom’s suggested as I liked boxing that I should drop down to the Salem Crescent Athletic Club in the cellar of a Methodist church. It was there I met the chief trainer George Gainford who would later become my manager all throughout my career. He got me into amateur boxing and I won two Golden Gloves titles, at featherweight and lightweight. I might have made the US team for the 1940 Olympics in Tokyo but Japan was involved in the war and they were cancelled. I turned pro that year and I guess it all took off from there.’

Gainford organised Robinson’s fights and schedules as his official manager on record but it was Sugar Ray himself who always worked out the financial details and had the final say over contracts. ‘Yes, I suppose I was a tough guy with promoters but they can sit back and count the cash but it’s the boxers themselves to take the blows,’ he said. ‘I reckoned from early on that if I’m owed a dollar, then why should I take 50 cents? It makes sense if you think about it.’

Robinson’s financial dealings with promoter James D. Norris, particularly for his first fight with the rugged Carmen Basilio for Sugar Ray’s world middleweight title on 23 September 1957, was the work of legend, and deserves a place in any boxing anthology. As Time magazine reported at the time, ‘Robinson’s fierce pride as a boxing craftsman has been matched by his curious pride in being a slick man with a buck. Last week Sugar Ray the businessman employed a merciless hard sell to peddle Robinson the athlete.’

In the early stages of negotiations Norris suffered a near-fatal heart attack when protracted talks had broken down. Robinson had heard that the television rights had been sold to a particular network and that Sugar Ray himself had already received a higher offer from a different broadcaster.

Norris insisted that Robinson had no say in the matter but at a hastily-called meeting of the New York State Athletic Commission which was sanctioning the fight, Robinson said that if there were any TV cameras positioned at ringside he was walking back to his dressing room and going home.

‘When the chairman Julius Helfand said I was contracted for the fight and that I had better see my lawyer, I stood up and said that if their action meant taking my title away I would sue the commission for taking away my rights as a citizen. Helfand barked, Don’t threaten us. We don’t want to hear any more of your threats. I left the meeting but three days later I got my way and came away with the best contract of my career – $228,000 as my 45 per cent of the gate, $255,000 from theatre and TV rights and $30,000 from the movie and radio rights.

‘I heard that Basilio was complaining, having to settle for 20 per cent of the live gate, but with theatre and TV rights, he came out of it very well but remember he was the challenger and I was the champion. That made all the difference.

‘During the early negotiations Norris, the promoter, assigned Joe Louis, the former world heavyweight champion, to try and talk me into cutting my demands. Mind you, Louis was himself hitting hard times financially. When he called into my office in Harlem, I said to him, How can you ask me to do this? These guys, look at what they’ve done to you. If I go along with them, I’ll end up just as broke. You ought to be on my side instead of doing this. In the end, Louis had to agree.’

In a thriller, which Ring magazine called ‘a brilliant chapter in boxing history’, Robinson was beaten on a split decision, with the referee marking it for Sugar Ray and the two judges calling it for Basilio. The two clashed again six months later and this time Robinson upset the form book by regaining his title. Again, the verdict was split. This time Sugar Ray won on the cards of the two judges, with the referee marking it for Basilio.

There were plans for a third meeting but preliminary talks quickly broke down. Promoter Norris told the press, ‘Robinson is looking for 45 per cent of the gate and Basilio wants 30 per cent. To hand both boxers a total of 75 per cent is simply unreasonable. We want to forget about these two and move on to other boxers and other fights.’

What about another great rivalry, Robinson’s two clashes with Randolph Turpin? The Britisher, a former navy cook, caused a stunning upset in their first fight on 10 July 1951 when he outpointed Sugar Ray and took away his world middleweight title in London before a capacity crowd of 18,000 at the Earls Court Arena. In their return match two months later at the open-air Polo Grounds in New York, Robinson regained the championship by stopping Turpin in ten rounds before a crowd of 61,370 who paid $767,000, a record up to then for a fight below the heavyweight division.

Turpin was arguably the best British boxer of the post Second World War era. His father was from British Guiana, now the independent state of Guyana, and his mother was from the English Midlands town of Leamington Spa in Warwickshire. A heavy hitter and one of three fighting brothers, he had compiled a record of 43 fights, with two losses and a draw but entered the ring as a 6/1 underdog, with some bookies making him 10/1.

Robinson, on the other hand, had 132 fights with just one loss, reversed two weeks later. But Turpin’s supporters pointed out that at 31, Sugar Ray was seven years older than their man and this could tell over the 15 rounds. There were also stories that Sugar Ray was not as fit as he should have been and that his constant travelling all over Europe with an entourage of 14 and taking in six fights in seven weeks in six different cities had tired him out.

‘I was never one for making excuses and I won’t make them to you now but the fighting doesn’t make you tired,’ he said. ‘All the running around from country to country does. But Turpin whipped me square. He had a style I found hard to figure out. He was doing all boxing things wrong, jerking his head up when punching.

‘In the seventh round we were in a clinch when his forehead smacked against my left eyebrow and split it open. That didn’t help. I knew at the end of the 14th round that I’d lost. At the bell to end the 15th and the fight, I went over to Turpin’s corner and congratulated him. I told him I was beaten by a better man.

‘Luckily I had a return fight clause in the contract which allowed me to fight him within 64 days and get the champion’s end of the purse, 30 per cent of the gate, even though I was the challenger. Some people criticised me for leaving Turpin only 25 per cent but he and his team agreed to that before the first fight and now he was the champion.

‘I felt much fresher and sharper in the return fight. I was slightly ahead after nine rounds but George and I had planned it that way. I would pace myself in the middle rounds then step up the pace in the last five or six rounds. But the plan suddenly changed in the tenth round when Turpin butted me and the blood came out from the scar over my left eye.

‘I knew I had to get him out of there fast because the referee Ruby Goldstein was casting anxious glances at the injury and he could decide to stop the fight any minute. In desperation I lashed out with a hard right which dropped Turpin. He lay flat on his back for three seconds and took a count of nine.

‘When he got to his feet I went all out and trapped him on the ropes. I must have landed at least 20 hard blows and he looked like falling on his face to the canvas when Goldstein jumped in, wrapped his arms around Turpin and led him to his corner. I was champion of the world again after 64 days without the title and it felt real good.’

Robinson would win and lose the world middleweight title in seven championship fights, first taking it from his old rival Jake LaMotta in 13 rounds on 14 February 1951, St Valentine’s Day. The previous November he had gone on his first European tour and won all his five fights against some of the continent’s best boxers. In between the fights, he partied a lot and didn’t his manager George Gainford warn him to be taking too many chances of losing his edge?

‘George worried about everything but he needn’t have had any fears on that count,’ said Robinson. ‘I think I knew best. I was up at six o’clock every morning for a five-mile training run and I worked a lot in the gym. Even though there was no title at stake in any of the fights, I didn’t want a loss on my record which might affect my chances of getting a shot at LaMotta’s title back in the US.

‘I took eight people with me on that first European tour – my wife, George and his wife, two trainers, a golf pro, a barber and a secretary, and added a bodyguard/interpreter when we got to Paris. We had 53 pieces of luggage. I never realised I was so popular in Paris and letters arrived by the sack-load. They were for autographs, personal appearances, social functions, dinner parties, business lunches and so on.

‘My wife Edna Mae and I visited several nightclubs in the city and though neither of us drank alcohol we liked to get out on the dance floor. On one occasion the MC asked me to join the band and I sat down and played first the drums and then the piano and got a round of applause. I made around $50,000 for five fights in Europe and I think we spent half of it. Edna Mae spent a lot of time shopping in Paris. But I’d no regrets. It was worth it. I remembered when I hadn’t got two cents to rub together and now I was making up for it.

‘For the record I beat Jean Stock in two rounds in Paris and Luc van