Battle Hymn – The Untold Story of Little Tiger Wade

Published

11 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

The Challenge of Playing Muhammad Ali

Published

7 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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A Shocker in Tijuana: Bruno Surace KOs Jaime Munguia !!

Published

4 days ago

December 15, 2024

Arne K. Lang

A-Shocker-in-Tijuana-Bruno-Sarace-KOs-Jaime-Munguia

It was a chilly night in Tijuana when Jaime Munguia entered the ring for his homecoming fight with Bruno Surace. The main event of a Zanfer/Top Rank co-promotion, Munguia vs. Surace was staged in the city’s 30,000-seat soccer stadium a stone’s throw from the U.S. border in the San Diego metroplex.

Surace, a Frenchman, brought a 25-0-2 record and a 22-fight winning streak, but a quick glance at his record showed that he had scant chance of holding his own with the house fighter. Only four of Surace’s 25 wins had come by stoppage and only eight of his wins had come against opponents with winning records. Munguia was making the first start in the city of his birth since February 2022. Surace had never fought outside Europe.

But hold the phone!

After losing every round heading into the sixth, Surace scored the Upset of the Year, ending the contest with a one-punch knockout.

It looked like a short and easy night for Munguia when he knocked Surace down with a left hook in the second stanza. From that point on, the Frenchman fought off his back foot, often with back to the ropes, throwing punches only in spurts. Munguia worked the body well and was seemingly on the way to wearing him down when he was struck by lightning in the form of an overhand right.

Down went Munguia, landing on his back. He struggled to get to his feet, but the referee waived it off a nano-second before reaching “10.” The official time was 2:36 of round six.

Munguia, who was 44-1 heading in with 35 KOs, was as high as a 35/1 favorite. In his only defeat, he had gone the distance with Canelo Alvarez. This was the biggest upset by a French fighter since Rene Jacquot outpointed Donald Curry in 1989 and Jacquot had the advantage of fighting in his homeland.

Co-Main

Mexico City’s Alan Picasso, ranked #1 by the WBC at 122 pounds, scored a third-round stoppage of last-minute sub Yehison Cuello in a scheduled 10-rounder contested at featherweight. Picaso (31-0-1, 17 KOs) is a solid technician. He ended the bout with a left to the rib cage, a punch that weaved around Cuello’s elbow and didn’t appear to be especially hard. The referee stopped his count at “nine” and waived the fight off.

A 29-year-old Colombian who reportedly had been training in Tijuana, the overmatched Cuello slumped to 13-3-1.

Other Bouts of Note

In a ho-hum affair, junior middleweight Jorge Garcia advanced to 32-4 (26) with a 10-round unanimous decision over Uzbekistan’s Kudratillo Abudukakhorov (20-4). The judges had it 97-92 and 99-90 twice. There were no knockdowns, but Garcia had a point deducted in round eight for low blows.

Garcia displayed none of the power that he showed in his most recent fight three months ago in Arizona and when he knocked out his German opponent in 46 seconds. Abudukakhorov, who has competed mostly as a welterweight, came in at 158 1/4 pounds and didn’t look in the best of shape. The Uzbek was purportedly 170-10 as an amateur (4-5 per boxrec).

Super bantamweight Sebastian Hernandez improved to 18-0 (17 KOs) with a seventh-round stoppage of Argentine import Sergio Martin (14-5). The end came at the 2:39 mark of round seven when Martin’s corner threw in the towel. Earlier in the round, Martin lost his mouthpiece and had a point deducted for holding.

Hernandez wasn’t all that impressive considering the high expectations born of his high knockout ratio, but appeared to have injured his right hand during the sixth round.

Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank

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