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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Bygone Days: Muhammad Ali at the Piano in the Lounge at the Tropicana

Published

18 hours ago

October 7, 2024

Arne K. Lang

Bygone Days: Muhammad Ali at the Piano in the Lounge at the Tropicana

Among other things, Las Vegas in “olden days” was noted for its lounge shows. Circa 1970, for the price of two drinks, one could have caught the Ike and Tina Turner Review at the International. They performed three shows nightly, the last at 3:15 am, and they blew the doors off the joint.

The weirdest “lounge show” in Las Vegas wasn’t a late-night offering, but an impromptu duet performed in the mid-afternoon for a select standing-room audience in the lounge at the Tropicana. Sharing the piano in the Blue Room in a concert that could not have lasted much more than a minute were Muhammad Ali and world light heavyweight champion Bob Foster. The date was June 25, 1972, a Sunday.

What brought about this odd collaboration was a weigh-in, not the official weigh-in, which would happen the next day, but a dress rehearsal conducted for the benefit of news reporters and photographers and a few invited guests such as the actor Jack Palance who would serve as the color commentator alongside the legendary Mel Allen on the closed-circuit telecast. On June 27, Ali and Foster would appear in separate bouts at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Ali was pit against Jerry Quarry in a rematch of their 1970 tilt in Atlanta; Foster would be defending his title against Jerry’s younger brother, Mike Quarry.

In those days, whenever Las Vegas hosted a prizefight that was a major news story, it was customary for the contestants to arrive in town about three weeks before their fight. They held public workouts, perhaps for a nominal fee, at the hotel-casino where they were lodged.

Muhammad Ali and Bob Foster were sequestered and trained at Caesars Palace. The Quarry brothers were domiciled a few blocks away at the Tropicana.

The Trop, as the locals called it, was the last major hotel-casino on the south end of the Strip, a stretch of road, officially Highway 91, the ran for 2.2 miles. When the resort opened in 1957, it had three hundred rooms. Like similar properties along the famous Strip, it would eventually go vertical, maturing into a high-rise.

In 1959, entertainment director Lou Walters (father of Barbara) imported a lavish musical revue from Paris, the Folies Bergere. The extravaganza with its topless showgirls became embedded in the Las Vegas mystique. The show, which gave the Tropicana its identity, ran for almost 50 full years, becoming the longest-running show in Las Vegas history.

—

Although the Quarry brothers were on the premises, Ali and Foster arrived at the Blue Room first. After Dr. Donald Romeo performed his perfunctory examinations, there was nothing to do but stand around and wait from the brothers to show up. It was then that Foster spied a grand piano in the corner of the room.

Taking a seat at the bench, he tinkled the keys, producing something soft and bluesy. “Move over man,” said Ali, not the sort of person to be upstaged at anything. Taking a seat alongside Foster at the piano, he banged out something that struck the untrained ear of veteran New York scribe Dick Young as boogie-woogie.

When the Quarry brothers arrived, Ali went through his usual antics, shouting epithets at Jerry Quarry as Jerry was having his blood pressure taken. “These make the best fights, when you get some white hopes and some spooks,…er, I mean some colored folks,” Young quoted Ali as saying.

This comment was greeted with a big laugh, but Jerry Quarry, renowned for his fearsome left hook, delivered a better line after Ali had stormed out. Surveying the room, he noticed several attractive young ladies, dressed provocatively. “I can see I ain’t the only hooker in here,” he said.

—

The doubleheader needed good advance pub because both bouts were considered mismatches. In the first Ali-Quarry fight, Quarry suffered a terrible gash above his left eye before his corner pulled him out after three rounds. Ali was a 5/1 favorite in the rematch. Bob Foster, who would be making his tenth title defense, was an 8/1 favorite over Mike Quarry who was undefeated (35-0) but had been brought along very carefully and was still only 21 years old. (In his syndicated newspaper column, oddsmaker Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder said the odds were 200/1 against both fights going the distance, but there wasn’t a bookie in the country that would take that bet.)

The Fights

There were no surprises. It was a sad night for the Quarry clan at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Muhammad Ali, clowning in the early rounds, took charge in the fifth and Jerry Quarry was in bad shape when the referee waived it off 19 seconds into the seventh round. In the semi-wind-up, Bob Foster retained his title in a more brutal fashion. He knocked the younger Quarry brother into dreamland with a thunderous left hook just as the fourth round was about to end. Mike Quarry lay on the canvas for a good three minutes before his handlers were able to revive him.

—

In the ensuing years, the Tropicana was far less invested in boxing than many of its rivals on the Strip, but there was a wisp of activity in the mid-1980s. A noteworthy card, on June 30, 1985, saw Jimmy Paul successfully defend his world lightweight title with a 14^th-round stoppage of Robin Blake. Freddie Roach, a featherweight with a big local following and former U.S. Olympic gold medalist Henry Tillman appeared on the undercard. The lead promoter of this show, which aired on a Sunday afternoon on CBS (with Southern Nevada blacked out) was the indefatigable Bob Arum who seemingly has no intention of leaving this mortal coil until he has out-lived every Las Vegas casino-resort born in the twentieth century.

—

I may drive past the Tropicana in the next few hours and give it a last look, mindful that Muhammad Ali once frolicked here, however briefly. But I won’t be there for the implosion.

On Wednesday morning, Oct. 9, shortly after 2 a.m., the Tropicana, shuttered since April, will be reduced to rubble. On its grounds will rise a stadium for the soon-to-be-former Oakland A’s baseball team.

A recognized authority on the history of prizefighting and the history of American sports gambling, TSS editor-in-chief Arne K. Lang is the author of five books including “Prizefighting: An American History,” released by McFarland in 2008 and re-released in a paperback edition in 2020.

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WBA Feather Champ Nick Ball Chops Down Rugged Ronny Rios in Liverpool

Published

3 days ago

October 5, 2024

Arne K. Lang

WBA-Feather-Champ-Nick-Ball-Chops-Down-Rugged-Ronny-Rios-in-Liverpool

In his first fight in his native Liverpool since February of 2020, Nick Ball successfully defended his WBA title with a 10^th-round stoppage of SoCal veteran Ronny Rios. The five-foot-two “Wrecking Ball” was making the first defense of a world featherweight strap he won in his second stab at it, taking the belt from Raymond Ford on a split decision after previously fighting Rey Vargas to a draw in a match that many thought Ball had won.

This fight looked like it was going to be over early. Ball strafed Rios with an assortment of punches in the first two rounds, and likely came within a punch or two of ending the match in the third when he put Rios on the canvas with a short left hook and then tore after him relentlessly. But Rios, a glutton for punishment, weathered the storm and actually had some good moments in round four and five.

The brother of welterweight contender Alexis Rocha and a two-time world title challenger at 122 pounds, Rios returned to the ring in April on a ProBox card in Florida and this was his second start after being out of the ring for 28 months. He would be on the canvas twice more before the bout was halted. The punch that knocked him off his pins in round seven wasn’t a clean shot, but he would be in dire straits three rounds later when he was hammered onto the ring apron with a barrage of punches. He managed to maneuver his way back into the ring, but his corner sensibly threw in the towel when it seemed as if referee Bob Williams would let the match continue.

The official time was 2:06 of round ten. Ball improved to 21-0-1 (12 KOs). Rios, 34, declined to 34-5.

Semi-wind-up

A bout contested for a multiplicity of regional 140-pound titles produced a mild upset when Jack Rafferty wore down and eventually stopped Henry Turner whose corner pulled him out after the ninth frame.

Both fighters were undefeated coming in. Turner, now 13-1, was the better boxer and had the best of the early rounds. However, he used up a lot of energy moving side-to-side as he fought off his back foot, and Rafferty, who improved to 24-0 (15 KOs), never wavered as he continued to press forward.

The tide turned dramatically in round eight. One could see Turner’s legs getting loggy and the confidence draining from his face. The ninth round was all Rafferty. Turner was a cooked goose when Rafferty collapsed him with four unanswered body punches, but he made it to the final bell before his corner wisely pulled him out. Through the completed rounds, two of the judges had it even and the third had the vanquished Turner up by 4 points.

Other Bouts of Note

In a lightweight affair, Jadier Herrera, a highly-touted 22-year-old Cuban who had been campaigning in Dubai, advanced to 16-0 (14 KOs) with a third-round stoppage of Oliver Flores (31-6-2) a Nicaraguan southpaw making his UK debut. After two even rounds, Herrera put Flores on the deck with a left to the solar plexus. Flores spit out his mouthpiece as he lay there in obvious distress and referee Steve Gray waived the fight off as he was attempting to rise. The end came 30 seconds into round three.

In a bantamweight contest slated for 10, Liverpool’s Andrew Cain (13-1, 12 KOs) dismissed Colombia’s Lazaro Casseres at the 1:48 mark of the second round.

A stablemate and sparring partner of Nick Ball, Cain knocked Casseres to the canvas in the second round with a short uppercut and forced the stoppage later in the round when he knocked the Colombian into the ropes with a double left hook. Casseres. 27, brought an 11-1 record but had defeated only two opponents with winning records.

In a contest between super welterweights, Walter Fury pitched a 4-round shutout over Dale Arrowsmith. This was the second pro fight for the 27-year-old Fury who had his famous cousin Tyson Fury rooting him on from ringside. Stylistically, Walter resembles Tyson, but his defense is hardly as tight; he was clipped a few times.

Arrowsmith is a weekend warrior and a professional loser, a species indigenous to the British Isles. This was his twenty-fourth fight this year and his 186^th pro fight overall! His record is “illuminated” by nine wins and 10 draws.

A Queensberry Promotion, the Ball vs Rios card aired in the UK on TNT Sports and in the US on ESPN+.

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Alimkhanuly TKOs Mikhailovich and Motu TKOs O’Connell in Sydney

Published

4 days ago

October 4, 2024

Arne K. Lang

Alimkhanuly-TKOs-Mikhailovich-and-Motu-TKOs-O'Connell-in-Sydney

IBF/WBO world middleweight champion Janibek Alimkhanuly, generally regarded as the best of the current crop of middleweights, retained his IBF title today in Sydney, Australia, with a ninth-round stoppage of game but overmatched Andrei Mikhailovich. The end came at the 2:45 mark of round nine.

Favored in the 8/1 range although he was in a hostile environment, Alimkhanuly (16-0, 11 KOs) beat Mikhailovich to a pulp in the second round and knocked him down with one second remaining in the frame, but Mikhailovich survived the onslaught and had several good moments in the ensuing rounds as he pressed the action. However, Alimkhanuly’s punches were cleaner and one could sense that it was only a matter of time before the referee would rescue Mikhailovich from further punishment. When a short left deposited Mikhailovich on the seat of his pants on the lower strand of rope, the ref had seen enough.

Alimkhanuly, a 2016 Olympian for Kazakhstan, was making his first start since October of last year. He and Mikhailovich were slated to fight in Las Vegas in July, but the bout fell apart after the weigh-in when the Kazakh fainted from dehydration.

Owing to a technicality, Alimkhanuly’s WBO belt wasn’t at stake today. Although he has expressed an interest in unifying the title –Eislandy Lara (WBA) and Carlos Adames (WBC) are the other middleweight belt-holders — Alimkhanuly is big for the weight class and it’s a fair assumption that this was his final fight at 160.

The brave Mikhailovich, who was born in Russia but grew up in New Zealand after he and his twin brother were adopted, suffered his first pro loss, declining to 21-1.

Semi-wind-up

Topping the flimsy undercard was a scheduled 8-rounder between Mikhailovich’s stablemate Mea Motu, a 34-year-old Maori, and veteran Australian campaigner Shannon O’Connell, 41. The ladies share eight children between them (Motu, trained by her mother in her amateur days, has five).

A clash of heads in the opening round left O’Connell with a bad gash on her forehead. She had a big lump developing over her right eye when her corner threw in the towel at the 1:06 mark of round four.

Motu (20-0, 8 KOs) was set to challenge IBF/WBO world featherweight champion Ellie Scotney later this month in Manchester, England, underneath Catterall-Prograis, but that match was postponed when Scotney suffered an injury in training. Motu took this fight, which was contested at the catchweight of 125 pounds, to stay busy. O’Connell, 29-8-1, previously had a cup of coffee as a WBA world champion (haven’t we all).

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