Battle Hymn – Part 2: The Gift

Published

11 years ago

March 24, 2014

The 1934 Chicago Golden Gloves Team on the way to New York. Tony Zale, 19, is in the back row, second from left. Aaron Wade, 17, and heretofore unidentified, stands in the middle row at far left.

Four years after roving gangs terrorized Chicago’s South Side during the Race Riots of 1919, the publisher of the Chicago Tribune began a campaign to legalize boxing in Illinois. He sought to prove that the sport was not only all-American, but that it could curb juvenile delinquency. As a direct result of his efforts, the state’s ban was lifted in 1925. “We then saw our way clear to establishing a huge tourney that would do untold good in keeping youngsters off the street,” said the Tribune sports editor, “—channeling their energies into a recreational sport that would keep them out of trouble.”

The first Chicago Golden Gloves Tournament was held in 1928. There were no African American entries that year, but everyone knew that would change. In 1932, the tournament was expanded to include teams from surrounding cities. Peoria was among them.

Jack Beaty pulled his REO to the curb at 142 Green Street in Peoria and honked the horn. To the Wade boys inside, that honk marked the beginning of another great adventure. They kissed Willie Mae goodbye and spilled outside with bags stuffed with shirts, socks, and boxing gear. They climbed into a crowded back seat, an integrated back seat, and Beaty peeled off to wherever a boxing competition was being held.

Inevitably a voice from the back seat would chirp, “Where we goin’?” Inevitably came the reply: “What’s the difference?”

Affectionately called “Trick Hip” and “Short House,” Beaty was a World War I veteran who devoted forty years of his life to Peoria’s wayward boys. He gave them boxing; and so gave them its gifts: an outlet for aggression, discipline and structure, a sense of purpose, a chance for glory, a place to go. He was, said one of his fighters, “like a second father to us all.”

In those days, amateur boxers could earn merchandise checks for between $7 and $25, win or lose. It’s hard to imagine Willie Mae objecting to that, and there’s nothing quite like a sharp coat and snap-brim hat to encourage a poor boy to want more.

In 1933, middleweight Bruce and lightweight Aaron Wade were part of the Peoria Elks Boxing Team. Beaty was the manager with trainers nicknamed “Wimpy” and “Bat” assisting him. Bruce was good, but Aaron was special—short and wiry with arms so long he looked like he could tie his shoes standing up. It was estimated that he had 600 amateur bouts, maybe more. “In those years,” a teammate recalled, “we rarely trained—we didn’t have time. Oftentimes we’d make two or three ring appearances in a week.”

In early 1934, Aaron competed in Chicago’s “Tournament of Champions” and made it to the semi-finals. Meanwhile, sports editor Arch Ward was touting Ray Wosniak, a light heavyweight from Chicago’s North Side who was crashing through opponents like a berserker. Ward said Wosniak was “a mortal cinch” to win the tournament. A member of the Peoria team recalled watching a large, tan-skinned teenager from the Detroit team into the ring to face Wosniak. Known as “Poker-Face Joe,” he looked bored as he shuffled out from the corner. Wosniak let fly a left hook—“and,” said the witness “woke up in the dressing room.” Joe Louis Barrow had countered that hook with a perfectly-timed uppercut, then returned to his corner like a man in his slippers returning to bed after a midnight snack. After Aaron won his semi-final match, Joe stopped another opponent cold with a right hand that travelled six inches or less.

In March, the Chicago team boarded a train due east for the Seventh Annual Intercity Golden Gloves Tournament. Aaron Wade was among thirty-two chosen from a field of 14,000 to compete under the lights at Madison Square Garden. Future light heavyweight champion Gus Lesnevich competed as a middleweight. He wore the blue and gold trim of the New York team and took the closest decision in the finals. Wearing white and blue with Aaron on the Chicago team was future champion and Hall of Famer Tony Zale, then 19. A middleweight who volunteered to fight as a light heavyweight after Joe Louis injured his hand, Zale managed to floor his larger opponent in the first round, but lost a decision.

Aaron, two years younger than Zale, was one of only three African Americans on the Chicago side. He and them would have had to contend with racist slurs, which is one thing on a city block and quite another in an arena filled with 20,000. He shut his ears to it and made it to the finals. As he stood alone in the spotlight with a sweater thrown around his shoulders, the ring announcer hollered his name, record, occupation (“shoe shine boy”), and hometown into a microphone. A drum roll followed. Aaron probably thought it was his heart rattling out of his chest. He was up against a two-time lightweight champion of New York who had scored four knockouts in the Manhattan preliminaries.

Aaron lost “by inches” according to the Chicago Tribune.

What he gained was immeasurable.

“We are certain that the Golden Gloves tournaments are the greatest levelers in sports,” said the editors of the Tribune. To the sons of black migrants during the Depression era, it was a gift that kept on giving. The editors knew their secret. They knew that even novices had the essential ingredient of natural fighters coded in the scars of fathers who were not there, in stories told and retold by mothers and grandmothers, in rocks thrown when invisible lines were crossed. What was a bloody nose compared to the soul-searing pain of the black experience in America?

They wanted to fight. They wanted that chance denied their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents. So they took those first shy steps into boys’ clubs and boxing gyms and soon filled the amateur ranks in an around the receiving stations of the Great Migration—Chicago, St. Louis, and New York.

To Aaron Wade, the arena spotlight was no different than the morning sunlight glancing off his mother’s leavin’ train. It meant he was going somewhere. He was Peoria’s first black Golden Gloves champion; he saw his name in print in local newspapers. When white people stopped him on the street to shake his hand, he could look them square in the eye like an equal —like more than an equal.

He might have noticed older folks a little ways off, watching, and smiling to themselves.

Photo: Chicago Amateur Boxing by Sean Curtain and J.J. Johnston, pp 16-17.

Undated article by Kenneth Jones Chuck in Burrough’s Scrapbook, courtesy of Peoria Public Library; Come out Fighting by Chuck Burroughs (1977), p. 7; Joe Louis: My Life by Joe Louis with Edna and Art Rust, Jr. p. 24 (1978); Chicago Daily Tribune 3/29/34; New York Times 3/28, 29/1934; “Negroes in the Golden Gloves” by Arch Ward, undated reprint in Ebony magazine.

Special thanks to Elaine Sokolowski, recently retired from Peoria Public Library.

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

Post Views: 0

Share The Sweet Science experience!

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.

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 0

Share The Sweet Science experience!

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

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 0

Share The Sweet Science experience!

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

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 0

Share The Sweet Science experience!