The Beast of Stillman’s Gym, Part 3

Published

13 years ago

January 19, 2012

The Beast of Stillman’s Gym

PART 3: THE BULL IN BOSTON GARDEN

Jake LaMotta stands in a lawyer’s office in New York City. He recently found out that he was tricked into a signing a contract that would give his manager a piece of him for eight years –-and he ain’t happy. He rips a release form from his pocket and slaps it on the desk in front of him. “Sign,” he says. The manager reads it and hands it to his lawyer. “Jake, I can’t sign that,” he squeaks. “You cheap, chiseling son of a b*tch,” LaMotta says, “You sign that right here and you sign it right now or I’ll strangle you. You think I’m kidding? Right here and right now, or you go out that door dead!”

The manager signed the release, then went to the cops. He said that the fighter assaulted him by kicking him in the stomach and threatening to hit him with a heavy book-end. It made the papers and didn’t do LaMotta’s public image any favors, not that he gave a damn. He beat the rap in criminal court but lost the civil suit and it ended up costing him four large to get rid of his first and last manager. After that, his brother handled his affairs on paper though LaMotta was really in charge. LaMotta was always in charge.

Fueled by the heartfelt belief that the whole world was rotten, LaMotta belonged on a shrink’s couch as much as he belonged in a boxing ring. He fought as if pain was pleasure, often not even bothering to get out of the way of punches despite the fact that his skills were better than anyone knew. It was as if he had something to prove; Or something to pay for. “Subconsciously,” he said when he was old, “I fought as if I didn’t deserve to live.”

Out of his pathology sprang a principle that benefitted not only fans but his own legacy; LaMotta feared no man. And without a mobbed-up manager to maneuver and protect him, he came up the hard way, with a reputation built on those high-risk, low-reward killers that gave champions the heebie-jeebies. Unlike other white prospects who were fed a steady diet of low-cal cream puffs, LaMotta was eye-to-eye with boxing’s roiling, broiling, black underclass. He knew them. “A colored fighter could starve in those days… a lot of them would have to fight with handcuffs on just to get a pay night here and there,” he said, “And some of them were great, believe me.” Great enough to chase “some high-priced top-notchers right out of the ring…

“When one of those bombers got a chance against a white kid on the square, they sure tried their best to show what they could do, because they all had a dream that maybe they’d get enough of an audience clamoring for them so that someday some promoter would give them the chance they deserved and they’d get a shot at the real money. And I mean they were hungry fighters. You would just about have to kill them before they’d give up. Well, I had something going for me too, on that score –-I was just as hungry as they were.”

LaMotta knew Murderers’ Row, and Murderers’ Row knew him.

The trajectory of his career mirrored Archie Moore’s. He was tested in the same fires as Archie Moore. Both became “policemen” in the middleweight division and faced those “colored bombers” before getting a title shot years after they earned it. They never forgot the names of those men. Even in this, the loneliest of sports, the fighter knows that he does not forge himself. He knows that triumphs are measured not by what so much as by who was overcome. In a manner of speaking, both LaMotta and Moore dedicated memorials to those who heaved them into starry greatness even as they themselves stayed behind.

LaMotta was Rocky Graziano’s policeman. “Rocky liked to use the tag with me because I was knocking off guys he would like to give a miss too,” he recalled, “There are always some kinds of fighters you’d just as soon not fight –-the wild swingers, the butters, the ones you just might lose to.” Graziano called him a policeman “long before he won the championship because he didn’t want to be eliminated before he won the title,” and LaMotta was good to clear the path.

Bert Lytell was on that path, and he wasn’t going anywhere.

On April 27^th 1945, the bull snorted in his corner at Boston Garden. Bert, outweighed by 6¾ lbs, was across the ring, ripped and ready for his fourth bout that month. LaMotta had never faced a southpaw before, not that he gave a damn. He was confident that he had the answers. How to beat a southpaw? “Push him back,” he said forty years later when asked how fellow headcase Roberto Duran could defeat Marvin Hagler, “keep on top of him, don’t let him advance to you, that’s how…”

If LaMotta read recent press clippings, he would have expected this one to be aggressive and climb all over him. In February, Bert set a blistering pace against Coolidge Miller, twice ignoring the bell to end the round. Earlier in April, he “applied a sleep-producing wallop” to Irish Johnny Ryan with two seconds left in the third. Bert could sprout horns and charge in when the situation called for it, but he had more dimensions. He reminded doubting reporters that it was speed and skill that saw Robinson defeat LaMotta three out of four times. “I believe the same assets will make it possible for me to win the duke at the [Boston] Garden,” he said, “I am faster than LaMotta and when Jake comes rushing at me he will be an easy target.” He would not try to outbull this bull; instead he intended to wave a red rag just out of range to neutralize any ideas about taking away his southpaw advantage. Bert intended to confuse him.

It almost worked.

Halfway through the first round and frequently throughout the bout, a baffled LaMotta briefly turned southpaw himself in an effort to land something on the 4-1 underdog. He seemed unsure of what to do as Bert circled around him with constant right jabs and hard lefts. According to the Boston Globe, Bert was “an ambitious bicyclist”; though the Boston Evening American specified that he only backed away in the last round and spent the earlier rounds standing up and outboxing him. “Going into the eighth session,” it read the next morning, “Lytell had a commanding lead. His boxing skill and ability to score had LaMotta in serious trouble.” At one point, LaMotta stood center-ring with his hands dropped in frustration and waved him in. In the third, Bert fired over a left cross which opened a cut over his right eye; in the seventh, a left hook by LaMotta sent Bert’s mouthpiece flying.

At the end of ten rounds, LaMotta’s hand was raised in a split decision. The crowd booed loudly.

Sportswriter Jack Conway believed it would take “a return bout to determine whether LaMotta or Lytell is the better fighter,” though many of his peers argued that the better fighter had already been determined. W.A. Hamilton saw LaMotta take four rounds and those by close margins, while Bert took five rounds by country miles. Doc Almy, one of Boston’s most distinguished boxing experts, scored the fight seven rounds to three in Lytell’s favor for doing “far more than his opponent who landed more often in the air than against his rival.” Local boxing writer Eddie Welch had Bert up by eight rounds to two. “Jake LaMotta,” he quipped, “must have thought Sugar Ray Robinson was in the ring with him instead of Lytell.” Some surmised that a Massachusetts boxing rule placing undue emphasis on aggression, whether or not it is effective, worked in LaMotta’s favor.

All the same, Lytell’s “ring generalship, nimble footwork, and fine boxing” convinced Nat Fleischer that it was his best showing. The Ring took note.

It had been only twelve months since Calvin Coolidge Lytle was working as an attendant at a Brooklyn garage; only nine months since “The Chocolate Kid” lost his first professional bout. After earning the decision over LaMotta by fans and much of the boxing press if not the judges, Bert Lytell broke into the top ten of the middleweight division like a brick through a window.

____________________________

Sugar Ray, the Mob, and Bert Lytell, who finds himself chasing one and running from the other in PART 4 OF “THE BEAST OF STILLMAN’S GYM.” (Who needs Harry Potter when you can read stuff like this?)

Graphic is from Sport Magazine, 1949.

LaMotta’s issues with his manager recounted in Raging Bull by Jake LaMotta, pp. 87, 155 and “Lamotta Charged With Assaulting Manager,” Worcester Evening Gazette 11/17/44. LaMotta and Moore’s “memorials” are found in their autobiographies, and in Moore’s case, several newspaper articles from the 1950s. LaMotta-Lytell reported in Boston Evening American 4/27/45; LaMotta on how to beat a southpaw in “The Great Middleweights Talk About The Fight” by Peter Heller, Boxing Scene Collector’s Edition “Duran Vs. Hagler: The Fight of the Century.” Lytell’s fight with Ryan and comments about Robinson found in Boston Evening American, 4/13, 27/45; Lytell-Miller in Providence Journal 2/20/45; LaMotta-Lytell in Boston Evening American, Boston Globe, Boston Herald, AP, and Providence Journal 4/28/45; Nat Fleischer and Doc Almy’s comments in The Ring, July 1945.

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

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Springs Toledo

Steven Navarro is the TSS 2024 Prospect of the Year

Published

2 hours 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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