Battle Hymn – The Untold Story of Little Tiger Wade

Published

10 years ago

March 17, 2014

SERIES INTRODUCTION

Many boxing historians will tell you the Golden Age began after New York passed the Walker Law in 1920 and ended in 1950, when local fight clubs closed and television ratings became a false arbiter of talent. During that thirty-year span, boxing took hold of American ideals and reinforced them six nights a week. To the sons of poor black migrants and second-generation immigrants, it offered spectacles that seemed to rise up out of the dust of a mythical past. It glorified the individual— global celebrities in the Roaring Twenties, archetypes for the Depression era, and real-life heroes during World War II. At least one boxing historian insists that no less than nine of the ten greatest fighters of the last century appeared in those three decades.

Aaron “Little Tiger” Wade, a San Francisco slugger you have probably never heard of, faced down two of them.

When Wade fought his way into the middleweight top ten in October 1945, he fought his way into the most dangerous division of the time. Jake LaMotta, rated third, had just lost a disputed split decision to arch-nemesis Sugar Ray Robinson (a decision he still disputes nearly seventy years later), while fourth-rated Rocky Graziano knocked out the welterweight champion twice that summer. Both were at their misanthropic peaks. On the throne was Tony Zale; the “Man of Steel” had just been released from military service and was gearing up to defend the title.

All of them were beset by a broiling pack of black fighters who came to be called “Murderers’ Row.”

Holman Williams was rated first, Charley Burley second, Wade was eighth, and Bert Lytell, whom Wade had defeated in September, was ninth. Zale, LaMotta, and Graziano were feeling the angry glare of half the row’s membership. They were lucky there weren’t more. Jack Chase was rated among them in March and would enter the light heavyweight ratings in October 1946. Cocoa Kid was there the previous month until he made the fateful mistake of fighting Archie Moore.

Archie Moore. Even then he was a beast. But he was a beast surrounded. Between 1942 and 1952, the only middleweights who beat him were Eddie Booker, Chase, Burley, Williams, and Wade — Murderers’ Row.

When they weren’t going after Moore (they got at him 18 times), they were going after each other. They had to; name-contenders were suspiciously unavailable and champions were hiding behind their thrones. Taken together, the 62 times they fought each other recall a battle royal from the bad old days. Every member of the row was black. They were all subsisting on what seemed like coins thrown by local promoters. Forced to trek across the continent in search of willing opponents, they would invariably run into fellow members in backwater arenas. They careened through brutal, bloody careers with false hope, blind-folded to the truth. They were desperate and it showed —in and out of the ring.

Only later did history look back and see the truth of their condemnation. Moore was the first. After they were gone, he carried on, bearing their scars and finally seizing a throne at the ripe old age of 36. He had them on his mind when he did. He began mentioning their names in interviews with awe and gratitude. Late in his career, he would get annoyed when reporters made their silly assumptions about the big noises he fought. When they stuck a microphone in his face and aimed their questions around Rocky Marciano to boost circulation, Moore wouldn’t oblige. Burley, he said. Booker.

Others followed Moore’s lead. Jim Murray said they were “the most exclusive men’s club the ring has ever known.” Budd Schulberg called them “that murderers’ row of Negro middleweights.” In the early 2000s, Allen S. Rosenfeld and Harry Otty published landmark biographies of Charley Burley. They did us another favor by expanding the spotlight to include Burley’s fiercest rivals, but found many of them shrouded in myth and misinformation. Murderers’ Row was a place of secrets.

In 2009, I took up Moore’s torch and became something of a private investigator hired by ghosts. My first project was Eddie Booker’s last fights. In 2010, Chasing Jack Chase was published, followed by Just Watch Mah Smoke: The Secret Journeys of Cocoa Kid in 2011 and The Beast of Stillman’s Gym in 2012. In between those, I collaborated with J.J. Johnston and Douglas Cavanaugh to unveil a film clip of Holman Williams in action.

Little Tiger Wade was at the dark end of the street. I couldn’t find him at first, his essence I mean. He had no criminal record like Chase, no military record like Cocoa Kid or Lytell, no film clip, and his troubles were private. His seventy-nine bout record, as listed on Boxrec.com, isn’t even complete. I found scraps of evidence pointing toward more, including a dusty statement by a reliable source claiming that Wade had exactly 152 professional bouts with a knockout percentage over 60%. I printed out sixty-eight newspaper fight reports on microfilm, though they lack detail and provided few leads.

For months, Wade remained a stranger. Then I found a retired postal worker in San Francisco named Alan Roy Wade. It was his son.

Wade turned professional in 1935 and had his last fight in 1950. He never got a shot at the title when the title was singular and had all the glory of a universal truth. His was an era of corruption and injustice, though at least then the sports writers could think linearly and didn’t tout make-pretend championships and silly belts. Wade looked up in a straight line and saw the middleweight throne shining in the distance. He pursued it with all of his powers. He never reached it, but he did what he could with what he had. And that’s all that can be asked of any man.

After his ring battles were behind him, he retreated into anonymity. I could found no evidence that he ever received an accolade for any of his life’s accomplishments, though there were many. He came close. In 1985, the Northern California Veteran Boxers’ Association planned to honor him for his contributions to boxing. An awards dinner was scheduled for April 12. He would have heard applause one more time. He would have been given a plaque and a club jacket with his name embroidered across the front. But he died two months earlier, and his widow received it instead.

Aaron Wade’s story has never been told.

Until now.

CHECK BACK SOON FOR PART 1 OF “BATTLE HYMN.”

Eye of the Tiger by Jakarutu (http://www.deviantart.com/art/Eye-of-the-Tiger-33901860).

“Golden Gloves History” note dated 1973 found in Chuck Burrough’s Scrapbook, courtesy of Peoria Public Library. Thanks to the International Boxing Research Organization.

Special thanks to Spider Joe Burke of the Northern California Veteran Boxers’ Association.

Springs Toledo can be contacted at scalinatella@hotmail.com.

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Springs Toledo

Ramon Cardenas Channels Micky Ward and KOs Eduardo Ramirez on ProBox

Published

16 hours ago

April 24, 2024

Arne K. Lang

Ramon-Cardenas-Channels-Micky-Ward-and-KOs-Eduardo-Ramirez-on-ProBox

The Wednesday night bi-monthly series of fights on the ProBox TV platform is the best deal in boxing; the livestream is free with no strings attached! Tonight’s episode was headlined by a super bantamweight match between San Antonio’s Ramon Cardenas and Eduardo Ramirez who brought a caravan of rooters from his hometown in Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico.

Cardenas, coached by Joel Diaz, entered the contest ranked #4 by the WBA. He was expected to handle Ramirez with little difficulty, but this was a close, tactical fight through eight frames when lightning struck in the form of a left hook to the liver from Cardenas. Ramirez went down on one knee and wasn’t able to beat the count. It was as if Cardenas summoned the ghost of Micky Ward who had a penchant for terminating fights with the same punch that arrived out of the blue.

The official time was 1:37 of round nine. Cardenas improved to 25-1 with his14th win inside the distance. Ramirez, who was stopped in the opening round by Nick “Wrecking” Ball in London in his lone previous fight outside Mexico, falls to 23-3-3.

Co-Feature

In an upset, Tijuana super welterweight Damian Sosa won a split decision over previously undefeated Marques Valle, a local area fighter who was stepping up in class in his first 10-round go. Sosa was the aggressor, repeatedly backing his taller opponent into the ropes where Valle was unable to get good leverage behind his punches.

The 25-year-old Valle, managed by the influential David McWater, was the house fighter. This was his 10^th appearance in this building. He brought a 10-0 (7) record and was hoping to emulate the success of his younger brother Dominic Valle who scored a second-round stoppage of his opponent in this ring two weeks ago, improving to 9-0. But Sosa, who brought a 24-2 record, proved to be a bridge too high.

The judges had it 97-93 and 96-94 for the Tijuana invader and a disgraceful 98-92 for the house fighter.

Also

In a fight whose abrupt ending would be echoed by the main event, 34-year-old SoCal featherweight Ronny Rios, now training in Las Vegas, returned to the ring after a 22-month hiatus and scored a fifth-round stoppage over Nicolas Polanco of the Dominican Republic.

A three-punch combo climaxed by a left hook to the liver took the breath out of Polanco who slumped to his knees and was counted out. A two-time world title challenger, Rios advanced to 34-4 (17 KOs). Polanco, 34, declined to 21-6-1. The official time was 0:54 of round five.

—

The next ProBox show (Wednesday, May 8) will have an international cast with fighters from Kazakhstan, Japan, Mongolia, and the United Kingdom. In the main event, Liverpool’s Robbie Davies Jr will make his U.S. debut against the California-based Kazakh Sergey Lipinets.

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Haney-Garcia Redux with the Focus on Harvey Dock

Published

3 days ago

April 22, 2024

Arne K. Lang

Haney-Garcia-Redux-with-the-Focus-on-Harvey-Dock

Saturday’s skirmish between Ryan Garcia and WBC super lightweight champion Devin Haney was a messy affair, and yet a hugely entertaining fight fused with great drama. In the aftermath, Garcia and Haney were celebrated – the former for fooling all the experts and the latter for his gallant performance in a losing effort – but there were only brickbats for the third man in the ring, referee Harvey Dock.

Devin Haney was plainly ahead heading into the seventh frame when there was a sudden turnabout when Garcia put him on the canvas with his vaunted left hook. Moments later, Dock deducted a point from Garcia for a late punch coming out of a break. The deduction forced a temporary cease-fire that gave Haney a few precious seconds to regain his faculties. Before the round was over, Haney was on the deck twice more but these were ruled slips.

The deduction, which effectively negated the knockdown, struck many as too heavy-handed as Dock hadn’t previously issued a warning for this infraction. Moreover, many thought he could have taken a point away from Haney for excessive clinching. As for Haney’s second and third trips to the canvas in round seven, they struck this reporter – watching at home – as borderline, sufficient to give referee Dock the benefit of the doubt.

In a post-fight interview, Ryan Garcia faulted the referee for denying him the satisfaction of a TKO. “At the end of the day, Harvey Dock, I think he was tripping,” said Garcia. “He could have stopped that fight.”

Those that played the rounds proposition, placing their coin on the “under,” undoubtedly felt the same way.

The internet lit up with comments assailing Dock’s competence and/or his character. Some of the ponderings were whimsical, but they were swamped by the scurrilous screeching of dolts who find a conspiracy under every rock.

Stephen A. Smith, reputedly America’s highest-paid TV sports personality, was among those that felt a need to weigh-in: “This referee is absolutely terrible….Unreal! Horrible officiating,” tweeted Stephen A whose primary area of expertise is basketball.

Harvey Dock

Dock fought as an amateur and had one professional fight, winning a four-round decision over a fellow novice on a show at a non-gaming resort in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. He says that as an amateur he was merely average, but he was better than that, a New Jersey and regional amateur champion in 1993 and 1994 while a student New Jersey’s Essex County Community College where he majored in journalism.

A passionate fan of Sugar Ray Leonard, he started officiating amateur fights in 1998 and six years later, at age 32, had his first documented action at the professional level, working low-level cards in New Jersey. The top boxing referees, to a far greater extent than the top judges, had long apprenticeships, having worked their way up from the boonies and Dock is no exception.

Per boxrec, Haney vs Garcia was Harvey Dock’s 364^th assignment in the pros and his forty-second world title fight. Some of those title fights were title in name only, they weren’t even main events, but, bit by bit, more lucrative offerings started coming his way.

On May 13, 2023, Dock worked his first fights in Nevada, a 4-rounder and then a 12-rounder on a card at the Cosmopolitan topped by the 140-pound title fight between Rolly Romero and Ismael Barroso. It was the first time that this reporter got to watch Dock in the flesh.

Ironically (in hindsight), the card would be remembered for the actions of a referee, in this case Tony Weeks who handled the main event. Barroso was winning the fight on all three cards when Weeks stepped in and waived it off in the ninth round after Romero cornered Barroso against the ropes and let loose a barrage of punches, none of which landed cleanly. Few “premature stoppages” were ever as garishly, nay ghoulishly, premature.

With all the brickbats raining down on Weeks, I felt a need to tamp down the noise by diverting attention away from Tony Weeks and toward Harvey Dock and took to the TSS Forum to share my thoughts. Referencing the 12-rounder, a robust junior welterweight affair between Batyr Akhmedov and Kenneth Sims Jr, I noted that Dock’s Las Vegas debut went smoothly. He glided effortlessly around the ring, making him inconspicuous, the mark of a good referee. (This post ran on May 15, two days after the fight.)

Folks at the Nevada State Athletic Commission were also paying attention. Dock was back in Las Vegas the following week to referee the lightweight title fight between Devin Haney and Vasyl Lomachenko and before the year was out, he would be tabbed to referee the biggest non-heavyweight fight of the year, the July 29 match in Las Vegas between Terence Crawford and Errol Spence Jr.

The Haney-Garcia fight wasn’t Harvey Dock’s best hour, I’ll concede that, but a closer look at his full body of work informs us that he is an outstanding referee.

—

While the Haney-Garcia bout was in progress, WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman threw everyone a curve ball, tweeting on “X” that Devin Haney would keep his title if he lost the fight. Everyone, including the TV commentators, was under the impression that the title would become vacant in the event that Haney lost.

Sulaiman cited the precedent of Corrales-Castillo II.

FYI: The Corrales-Castillo rematch, originally scheduled for June 3, 2005 and aborted on the day prior when Castillo failed to make weight, finally came off on Oct. 8 of that year, notwithstanding the fact that Castillo failed to make weight once again, scaling three-and-a-half pounds above the lightweight limit. He knocked out Corrales in the fourth round with a left hook that Las Vegas Review-Journal boxing writer Kevin Iole, alluding to the movie “Blazing Saddles,” described as Mongo-esque (translation: the punch would have knocked out a horse). After initially insisting on a rubber match, which had scant chance of happening, WBC president Jose Sulaiman, Mauricio’s late father, ruled that Corrales could keep his title.

Whether or not you agree with Mauricio Sulaiman’s rationale, the timing of his announcement was certainly awkward.

Haney’s mandatory is Spanish southpaw Sandor Martin (42-3, 15 KOs), a cutie best known for his 2021 upset of Mikey Garcia. A bout between Haney and Martin has the earmarks of a dull fight.

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In a Shocker, Ryan Garcia Confounds the Experts and Upsets Devin Haney

Published

4 days ago

April 21, 2024

David A. Avila

In-a-Shocker-Ryan-Garcia-Confounds-the-Experts-and-Upsets-Devin-Haney

Its good to be crazy. Like a fox.

Ryan “KingRy” Garcia knocked down WBC super lightweight titlist Devin Haney three times to remind everyone of his fighting abilities in winning by majority decision on Saturday.

“I just knew what I could do,” Garcia said.

Fans will not forget the lanky kid from Victorville, California now.

Garcia (25-1, 20 KOs) fooled everyone in playing crazy weeks before the fight, then showed shocking power to hand Haney (30-1, 15 KOs) his first loss as a professional at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

Haney’s WBC super lightweight title was not at stake for Garcia because he weighed three pounds over the limit.

After Garcia seemingly acting out of control on social media, Haney’s guard must have slipped in the first round during the first few seconds as Garcia connected with that hellish left hook and Haney, with a look of shock in his eyes, almost went down. He barely survived the first round.

“He caught me with it,” said Haney.

During the next few rounds, Haney proceeded to advance toward Garcia seemingly fully aware of the lethal left hook. He used feints and rights to score with a busier approach as Garcia seemed cocked and ready to counter with a left hook.

In the fourth round it seemed Haney was confident he had regained control of the fight, but every time he opened up with more than a two-punch combination Garcia reminded him whose hands were faster and more dangerous.

Though Garcia seldom jabbed he seemed bent on looking for the right moment to unleash his deadly left hook. And every time the Southern California fighter opened up with a combination he scored and Haney dare not exchange.

A few times Haney smiled as if signifying he escaped.

In the seventh round Haney looked to punish Garcia’s body and instead was met with a three-punch combination included a left hook to the chin and down went Haney slumped on the ground. He managed to beat the count and as soon as Garcia came within reach Haney wrapped his arms around him with a python grip. Despite the warnings by referee Harvey Dock, the fallen fighter would not release and Garcia impatiently fired a weak punch during the break. The referee deducted a point from Garcia though he could have deducted a point from Haney for not obeying his instructions to release his hold. Haney actually went down three times in the round but only one was counted by the referee.

From that point on Haney was very cautious but still looking to win by decision.

Though Garcia kept using a shoulder-roll defense that left his body exposed, he would retaliate with three and four punch combinations that usually Haney could defend against other fighters.. But Garcia’s blazing combinations were too fast to defend.

In the 10^th round Haney looked to attack and was countered by Garcia’s right and a blinding left hook to the chin and another two blows that sent the former undisputed lightweight champion to the floor again.

It didn’t look good for Haney to survive.

Garcia walked into the 11^th round still composed and never out-of-control He dared Haney to exchange and when within striking distance Garcia unleashed another lightning combination and down went Haney again with a defeated look.

Both fighters had fought each other as amateurs six times so there were no surprises between them. But Garcia’s power and speed were superior and that was the difference in a professional fight.

In the final round both were cautious with Garcia’s combination punching proving too dangerous for Haney to open up. Garcia celebrated early as the round ended confident of victory.

After 12 rounds Garcia was seen the victor by majority decision 112-112, 114-110, 115-109.

“You really thought I was crazy,” Garcia told the interviewer and the crowd. “You guys hated on me.”

Other Bouts

Arnold Barboza (30-0) won a curious split decision victory over United Kingdom’s Sean McComb (18-2) in a 10-round super lightweight fight. McComb’s long reach and busy southpaw style gave Barboza trouble. But he managed to win the fight though the crowd was not pleased.

Bektemir Melikuziev (14-1, 10 KOs) defeated France’s Pierre Dibombe (22-1-1) by technical decision after eight rounds due to a cut on his eye from an accidental head butt. It was a very competitive super middleweight fight.

Costa Rica’s David Jimenez (16-1, 11 KOs) outworked John “Scrappy Ramirez (13-1, 9 KOs) in a 12-round scrap to upset the Los Angeles based fighter. After a few close rounds Jimenez simply bullied his way inside and forced Ramirez against the ropes and unloaded his guns.

After 12 rounds two judges saw it 117-111 and 116-114 all for Jimenez.

“I’m a hard-working man from Cartago I come from nothing,” said Jimenez. “My corner told me I had to work inside.”

Charles Conwell (19-0, 14 KOs) stepped on the gas early with vicious body shots and uppercuts and blasted through the resilient Nathaniel Gallimore (22-8-1, 17 KOs) for several rounds. After a brutal fifth and sixth round the referee halted the one-side beating in favor of Conwell who was fighting for the first time under the Golden Boy banner.

Another winner was Sergiy Derevyanchenko (15-5) by decision over Vaughn Alexander (18-11-1) in a super middleweight match.

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