OUT OF THE PAST

Published

13 years ago

August 22, 2011

boston_north_end

The Italianate courtyard of the Boston Public Library is a secret place for scholars and students. It is modeled after Rome’s Palazzo della Cancelleria with its marble arches and stone corridors forming a square of sixteenth century masonry. There’s a vision rising out of the fountain in the center –a nude sculpture called Bacchante and Infant Faun. Condemned during the Victorian era, it depicts wanton revelry in honor of the god of wine.

On Thursday, I sat on one of the ornate chairs before an ornate table and gazed upon another vision –this one fully clothed and at study. Torrents of ash blonde hair kept spilling forward over her open book. She’d throw it over a shoulder. It fell again. She tucked it behind an ear. It untucked and launched itself back onto the page. The fifth time she threw it back, she bristled. I was tickled. When she packed her things and arose out of her chair like a bacchante in a blue dress, she glanced my way. To my dismay, she turned and went in the wrong direction. I watched her go and then watched her turn back toward (what I deemed) destiny’s direction. There were about six steps between us –which meant that I had about six seconds to find words that struck a balance between confident and cute. As it happened nothing happened. She breezed by my nonchalant pose and gave me a look as if my zipper was down. Unfortunately, it was.

Boston has many secret places that only the locals know, and a storied past at every corner –but you won’t find either if you ignore the proverbial warnings about driving in this city. You’d be better off on a horse. This city wasn’t planned on a grid like New York or Washington; it wasn’t planned at all. Ralph Waldo Emerson said that cows did the urban planning and he wasn’t wrong enough. “In Boston town of old renown,” an old postcard reads, “the gentle cows the pathways made, which grew to streets that keep strangers quite dismayed.”

It is best explored on foot.

After a wardrobe adjustment and few minutes repairing chipped pride, I left the Palazzo and strolled through the ritzy Back Bay. The Mechanics Building stood around the corner on Huntington Avenue and hosted hundreds of boxing matches. One of them involved Harry Greb and Kid Norfolk in 1924. It ended after the referee disqualified the wrong guy, at least according to the menacing crowd that almost tore the walls down. The match was trumpeted by the dailies as “the fastest and most curious contest ever in a Boston ring.” In 1959 the building was razed to make way for the Prudential Plaza …to make way for placid modernity:

The spot where Greb and Norfolk brawled like sailors is now a reflecting pool.

I walked down Boylston Street toward what was once the Combat Zone, past the site of the Gilded Cage, a strip club managed in the sixties by a former champion from the twenties named Johnny Wilson.

Born Giovanni Panica, Wilson was a Sicilian-American out of Charlestown and never out of connections –with friends like mob bosses Frank Costello and Al Capone why should he be? For three years he ducked Greb to stay connected to his tainted crown. When Greb finally cornered him, he hammered Wilson’s “overhanging nose” for fifteen rounds and took that crown. Another middleweight named Jock Malone was confident that he could do to Wilson what Greb did; so confident, in fact, that he promised the press that he would jump into Boston Harbor if he lost. Wilson knocked him out. The next day, a crowd of thousands gathered at the Charlestown Bridge to see if he’d keep his word. Malone was there on time. He climbed over the railing and posed for a moment fully dressed and wearing a straw hat. “I owe Wilson a splash!” he called out before plunging fifty feet into the brine. Boston cheered as he swam ashore and triumphantly hopped into a waiting car.

Wilson lost five of his next seven and hung up the gloves. He ran a speakeasy during Prohibition and got adjusted to cigars and sleeping til noon. By the time I arrived on the scene, he was pushing 80 and still had his hair parted down the middle, black and slicked back –Roaring Twenties style. In the evening he’d have a glass of burgundy, light up a cigar, and walk these same streets for hours on end, reminiscing.

I went left at Boylston Square, maneuvering my way through artsy types and Emerson students in flip-flops. The Paramount Theatre approached out of the past.

When it was built during the Hoover administration, the Paramount was a movie house –one of the first of its kind, all class. By the time Nixon got in, it was a dilapidated creep joint, all crass. The only white guys at this end of Washington Street wore raincoats; the rest didn’t even pretend to be part of civil society. Sharp ones with sharp eyes scanned for easy marks. The broken ones lay down in dark corners. By the eighties they were lying around on the sidewalks too. Young hoodlums like this one couldn’t even maintain a respectable swagger without stepping over them.

The Paramount reopened last year –all class once again. A seven thousand bulb marquee lights up Washington Street like a dream, like a great comeback.

As the evening sky turned orange and then dimmed, I was in the North End –the old Italian enclave a stone’s throw from Faneuil Hall. The Fisherman’s Feast, a tradition brought from Sicily to these shores a hundred years ago, was beginning. A crowd was carrying a statue of the Madonna down to Christopher Columbus Park to bless the fishing waters. Heralded by a marching band, the procession winded its way back to a chapel where the statue rested. Green, white, and red confetti littered byways lined with carts hawking salsicce, arancini, pizza, and –best of all– cannoli from Mike’s Pastry. A gypsy offered handwriting analysis. A master of ceremonies sat in a booth and heckled the yuppies who didn’t buy raffle tickets. “You wit tha green shirt, buy a raffle ticket… Where you goin’? Where you goin’?”

Local boxing legend Tony DeMarco was there –it was his night.

Unlike fellow Siciliano Johnny Wilson, DeMarco was born right here, on Fleet Street. Way back in ’55 he became one of the shortest welterweight champions in history with one of the longest nicknames –“Short, Dark, and Harmful.” He lost his title to a fiercer Italian in Carmen Basilio though he never lost his friends. They all came out this evening to see him honored by the Madonna del Soccorso di Sciacca Society as the “Italian-American of the Year.” He climbed the stairs onto a makeshift stage as if it was a ring and carried a water bottle in his hand. He’s pushing 80 now, and the busted beak and heavy scarring around the brows told me he got off easy. There were no signs of impairment, no sobering reminders of those twenty-four rounds with Basilio that would have killed lesser men.

When he took the microphone he offered no war stories. He spoke instead of love and friendship. His father was from the fisherman’s town of Sciacca in Sicily, his mother was too (“God bless her soul”), so this feast is close to his heart. “I know they see me now,” he said as tears welled up, “I am as proud to receive this award as I was when I became welterweight champion of the world.”

His arms spread wide as if to embrace the cheering crowd. Camera phones clicked where once flashbulbs exploded.…

It was getting late when I sat on an ornate chair before an ornate table in front of Caffe Vittoria. Hanover Street still bustled with tourists looking for secret places and hints of the North End’s storied past. I sipped espresso. Boston is a sentimental city, I mused. It’s a city that holds onto yesterday so tightly that even its new glories are often old glories restored, if only for a night.

With that, I walked back toward Boylston Square …and wished I had a cigar.

……Image via c21rooney on Flickr. Contemporary fight reports involving Greb can be found on Bill Paxton’s website: harrygreb.com; Details about Johnny Wilson in 1970 from Bud Collins’ “Portrait of an Ex-Champ” (Boston Globe 11/15/70); Jock Malone’s dive off the Charlestown Bridge reported by the Boston Daily Globe 8/1/24 (“Malone Leaps 50 Feet Into The Harbor, Big Crowd Watching”). DeMarco’s ascension to the title is also reported by the Globe, 4/2/1955 (“DeMarco Wins Welter Crown; TKO Victor Over Saxton In 14^th”)…..

…Tony DeMarco’s autobiography, Nardo: Memoirs of a Boxing Champion (written with Ellen Zappala) has just been released. Order it soon and he’ll sign it….

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

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Steven Navarro is the TSS 2024 Prospect of the Year

Published

1 hour ago

December 18, 2024

Arne K. Lang

Steven-Navarro-is-the-TSS-2024-Prospect-of-the-Year

“I get ‘Bam’ vibes when I watch this kid,” said ESPN ringside commentator Tim Bradley during the opening round of Steven Navarro’s most recent match. Bradley was referencing WBC super flyweight champion Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez, a precociously brilliant technician whose name now appears on most pound-for-pound lists.

There are some common threads between Steven Navarro, the latest fighter to adopt the nickname “Kid Dynamite,” and Bam Rodriguez. Both are southpaws currently competing in the junior bantamweight division. But, of course, Bradley was alluding to something more when he made the comparison. And Navarro’s showing bore witness that Bradley was on to something.

It was the fifth pro fight for Navarro who was matched against a Puerto Rican with a 7-1 ledger. He ended the contest in the second frame, scoring three knockdowns, each the result of a different combination of punches, forcing the referee to stop it. It was the fourth win inside the distance for the 20-year-old phenom.

Isaias Estevan “Steven” Navarro turned pro after coming up short in last December’s U.S. Olympic Trials in Lafayette, Louisiana. The #1 seed in the 57 kg (featherweight) division, he was upset in the finals, losing a controversial split decision. Heading in, Navarro had won 13 national tournaments beginning at age 12.

A graduate of LA’s historic Fairfax High School, Steven made his pro debut this past April on a Matchroom Promotions card at the Fontainebleau in Las Vegas and then inked a long-term deal with Top Rank. He comes from a boxing family. His father Refugio had 10 pro fights and three of Refugio’s cousins were boxers, most notably Jose Navarro who represented the USA at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and was a four-time world title challenger as a super flyweight. Jose was managed by Oscar De La Hoya for much of his pro career.

Nowadays, the line between a prospect and a rising contender has been blurred. Three years ago, in an effort to make matters less muddled, we operationally defined a prospect thusly: “A boxer with no more than a dozen fights, none yet of the 10-round variety.” To our way of thinking, a prospect by nature is still in the preliminary-bout phase of his career.

We may loosen these parameters in the future. For one thing, it eliminates a lot of talented female boxers who, like their Japanese male counterparts in the smallest weight classes, are often pushed into title fights when, from a historical perspective, they are just getting started.

But for the time being, we will adhere to our operational definition. And within the window that we have created, Steven Navarro stood out. In his first year as a pro, “Kid Dynamite” left us yearning to see more of him.

Honorable mention: Australian heavyweight Teremoana Junior (5-0, 5 KOs)

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The Challenge of Playing Muhammad Ali

Published

10 hours ago

December 18, 2024

Thomas Hauser

There have been countless dramatizations of Muhammad Ali’s life and more will follow in the years ahead. The most heavily marketed of these so far have been the 1977 movie titled The Greatest starring Ali himself and the 2001 biopic Ali starring Will Smith.

The Greatest was fictionalized. Its saving grace apart from Ali’s presence on screen was the song “The Greatest Love of All” which was written for the film and later popularized by Whitney Houston. Beyond that, the movie was mediocre. “Of all our sports heroes,” Frank Deford wrote, “Ali needs least to be sanitized. But The Greatest is just a big vapid valentine. It took a dive.”

The 2001 film was equally bland but without the saving grace of Ali on camera. “I hated that film,” Spike Lee said. “It wasn’t Ali.” Jerry Izenberg was in accord, complaining, “Will Smith playing Ali was an impersonation, not a performance.”

The latest entry in the Ali registry is a play running this week off-Broadway at the AMT Theater (354 West 45th Street) in Manhattan.

The One: The Life of Muhammad Ali was written by David Serero, who has produced and directed the show in addition to playing the role of Angelo Dundee in the three-man drama. Serero, age 43, was born in Paris, is of Moroccan-French-Jewish heritage, and has excelled professionally as an opera singer (baritone) and actor (stage and screen).

Let’s get the negatives out of the way first. The play is flawed. There are glaring factual inaccuracies in the script that add nothing to the dramatic arc and detract from its credibility.

On the plus side; Zack Bazile (pictured) is exceptionally good as Ali. And Serero (wearing his director’s hat) brings the most out of him.

Growing up, Bazile (now 28) excelled in multiple sports. In 2018, while attending Ohio State, he won the NCAA Long Jump Championship and was named Big Ten Field Athlete of the Year. He also dabbled in boxing, competed in two amateur fights in 2022, and won both by knockout. He began acting three years ago.

Serero received roughly one thousand resumes when he published notices for a casting call in search of an actor to play Ali. One-hundred-twenty respondents were invited to audition.

“I had people who looked like Ali and were accomplished actors,” Serero recalls. “But when they were in the room, I didn’t feel Ali in front of me. You have to remember; we’re dealing with someone who really existed and there’s video of him, so it’s not like asking someone to play George Washington.”

And Ali was Ali. That’s a hard act to follow.

Bazile is a near-perfect fit. At 6-feet-2-inches tall, 195 pounds, he conveys Ali’s physicality. His body is sculpted in the manner of the young Ali. He moves like an athlete because he is an athlete. His face resembles Ali’s and his expressions are very much on the mark in the way he transmits emotion to the audience. He uses his voice the way Ali did. He moves his eyes the way Ali did. He has THE LOOK.

Zack was born the year that Ali lit the Olympic flame in Atlanta, so he has no first-hand memory of the young Ali who set the world ablaze. “But as an actor,” he says, “I’m representing Ali. That’s a responsibility I take very seriously. Everyone has an essence about them. I had to find the right balance – not too over the top – and capture that.”

Sitting in the audience watching Bazile, I felt at times as though it was Ali onstage in front of me. Zack has the pre-exile Ali down perfectly. The magic dissipates a bit as the stage Ali grows older. Bazile still has to add the weight of aging to his craft. But I couldn’t help but think, “Muhammad would have loved watching Zack play him.”

****

Twenty-four hours after the premiere of The One, David Serero left the stage for a night to shine brightly in a real boxing ring., The occasion was the tenth fight card that Larry Goldberg has promoted at Sony Hall in New York, a run that began with Goldberg’s first pro show ever on October 13, 2022.

Most of the fights on the six-bout card played out as expected. But two were tougher for the favorites than anticipated. Jacob Riley Solis was held to a draw by Daniel Jefferson. And Andy Dominguez was knocked down hard by Angel Meza in round three before rallying to claim a one-point split-decision triumph.

Serero sang the national anthem between the second and third fights and stilled the crowd with a virtuoso performance. Fans at sports events are usually restless during the singing of the anthem. This time, the crowd was captivated. Serero turned a flat ritual into an inspirational moment. People were turning to each other and saying “Wow!”

****

The unexpected happened in Tijuana last Saturday night when 25-to-1 underdog Bruno Surace climbed off the canvas after a second-round knockdown to score a shocking, one-punch, sixth-round stoppage of Jaime Munguia. There has been a lot of commentary since then about what happened that night. The best explanation I’ve heard came from a fan named John who wrote, “The fight was not over in the second round although Munguia thought it was because, if he caught him once, he would naturally catch him again. Plus he looked at this little four KO guy [Surace had scored 4 knockouts in 27 fights] the way all the fans did, like he had no punch. That is what a fan can afford to do. But a fighter should know better. The ref reminds you, ‘Protect yourself at all times.’ Somebody forgot that.”

photo (c) David Serero

Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His most recent book – MY MOTHER and me – is a personal memoir available at Amazon.com. https://www.amazon.com/My-Mother-Me-Thomas-Hauser/dp/1955836191/ref=sr_1_1?crid=5C0TEN4M9ZAH&keywords=thomas+hauser&qid=1707662513&sprefix=thomas+hauser%2Caps%2C80&sr=8-1

In 2004, the Boxing Writers Association of America honored Hauser with the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism. In 2019, Hauser was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

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L.A.’s Rudy Hernandez is the 2024 TSS Trainer of the Year

Published

2 days ago

December 16, 2024

Arne K. Lang

L.A.’s Rudy Hernandez is the 2024 TSS Trainer of the Year

If asked to name a prominent boxing trainer who operates out of a gym in Los Angeles, the name Freddie Roach would jump immediately to mind. Best known for his work with Manny Pacquaio, Roach has been named the Trainer of the Year by the Boxing Writers Association of America a record seven times.

A mere seven miles from Roach’s iconic Wild Card Gym is the gym that Rudy Hernandez now calls home. Situated in the Little Tokyo neighborhood in downtown Los Angeles, the L.A. Boxing Gym – a relatively new addition to the SoCal boxing landscape — is as nondescript as its name. From the outside, one would not guess that two reigning world champions, Junto Nakatani and Anthony Olascuaga, were forged there.

As Freddie Roach will be forever linked with Manny Pacquiao, so will Rudy Hernandez be linked with Nakatani. The Japanese boxer was only 15 years old when his parents packed him off to the United States to be tutored by Hernandez. With Hernandez in his corner, the lanky southpaw won titles at 112 and 115 and currently holds the WBO bantamweight (118) belt. In his last start, he knocked out his Thai opponent, a 77-fight veteran who had never been stopped, advancing his record to 29-0 (22 KOs).

Nakatani’s name now appears on several pound-for-pound lists. A match with Japanese superstar Naoya Inoue is brewing. When that match comes to fruition, it will be the grandest domestic showdown in Japanese boxing history.

“Junto Nakatani is the greatest fighter I’ve ever trained. It’s easy to work with him because even when he came to me at age 15, his focus was only on boxing. It was to be a champion one day and nothing interfered with that dream,” Hernandez told sports journalist Manouk Akopyan writing for Boxing Scene.

Akin to Nakatani, Rudy Hernandez built Anthony Olascuaga from scratch. The LA native was rucked out of obscurity in April of 2023 when Jonathan Gonzalez contracted pneumonia and was forced to withdraw from his date in Tokyo with lineal light flyweight champion Kenshiro Teraji. Olascuaga, with only five pro fights under his belt, filled the breach on 10 days’ notice and although he lost (TKO by 9), he earned kudos for his gritty performance against the man recognized as the best fighter in his weight class.

Two fights later, back in Tokyo, Olascuaga copped the WBO world flyweight title with a third-round stoppage of Riku Kano. His first defense came in October, again in Japan, and Olascuaga retained his belt with a first-round stoppage of the aforementioned Gonzalez. (This bout was originally ruled a no-contest as it ended after Gonzalez suffered a cut from an accidental clash of heads. But the referee ruled that Gonzalez was fit to continue before the Puerto Rican said “no mas,” alleging his vision was impaired, and the WBO upheld a protest from the Olascuaga camp and changed the result to a TKO. Regardless, Rudy Hernandez’s fighter would have kept his title.)

Hernandez, 62, is the brother of the late Genaro “Chicanito” Hernandez. A two-time world title-holder at 130 pounds who fought the likes of Azumah Nelson, Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather Jr., Chicanito passed away in 2011, a cancer victim at age 45.

Genaro “Chicanito” Hernandez was one of the most popular fighters in the Hispanic communities of Southern California. Rudy Hernandez, a late bloomer of sorts – at least in terms of public recognition — has kept his brother’s flame alive with own achievements. He is a worthy honoree for the 2024 Trainer of the Year.

Note: This is the first in our series of annual awards. The others will arrive sporadically over the next two weeks.

Photo credit: Steve Kim

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