Gary Smith is this generation’s most decorated and distinctive magazine writer after winning an unprecedented four National Magazine Awards for non-fiction and being a finalist for the award a record ten times during his more than three decades at Sports Illustrated.

A longtime resident of Charleston, South Carolina, Smith began his career at the Wilmington [Delaware] News Journal followed by stops at the Philadelphia Daily News, the New York Daily News and the stylish monthly Inside Sports before landing at Sports Illustrated in 1982. His job at “S.I.” was to write four longform features a year. Mike Tyson and James “Buster” Douglas were among the athletes that he profiled and he also penned features on Muhammad Ali and George Foreman.

Smith said it’s one thing to see an athlete perform but it’s another to know what’s inside.

“I just felt like to really render the human soul in its most honest way, that getting to understand what human beings had been through and what had landed them with whatever coping mechanism they used would be vital so people could understand a person,” said the La Salle University graduate who stepped away from the magazine in 2014. “Some of these people were doing some extreme things and if you didn’t really lay out the soil they sprung from and what brought them to that place, they would seem like aliens or freaks, but you could very much humanize them which was the only fair thing to do. We all want someone to understand why we are who we are, rather than leaving us dangling on the vine.”

Smith’s wife, Sally, is a psychiatrist, and summed up what her husband tried to lay bare in his features.

“He is not satisfied with putting facts together. He wants to understand what is the core conflict that has driven that person,” she offered many years ago. “He hopes to tell a secret that a person might not be aware of.”

It was rumored Smith would interview no less than fifty people for one feature. Smith said that wasn’t always the case, but he wanted to be thorough, which was merely one key in trying to know and understand his subject.

“You needed patience, asking and re-asking questions because you often wouldn’t get the truest or deepest answer the first go-around. Hopefully being comfortable enough in your own skin would engender trust over time,” he explained. “There would be a lot of follow-up questions, even if I had spent a week with somebody poring over the notes and going back and calling them again and again and really taking it further and further, what their interior monologue with themselves or dialogues in some cases. What was going on and felt in each of these pivotal moments in their lives, so you’d really get a feel of what was going on in the interior.”

“That’s why I did a lot of boxing stories,” said Smith. “There was so much kindling, so much psychological tension which makes for great storytelling. No one carried around tension and opposites like boxers did. It’s fertile terrain for any writer.”

A boxer, said Smith, was figuratively naked in the ring. “These are human beings who are participating in one of the most extreme things that any human being can do,” he acknowledged of the manly sport. “There’s a reason why you end up in such an extreme circumstance. You’re involved in a public mauling. You’re risking being killed or killing. To land there is virtually always a real story. You don’t land there by accident.”

Rick Telander, who worked at Sports Illustrated for 23 years, explained what made Smith’s work stand out. “Gary Smith was a unique writer,” he said. “He immersed himself in his topic, in his subject, like no one else I’ve ever read. He used his words to paint a picture that was one thousand times better than an actual photograph. You could feel the mind and the pain and the joy and the resolve and the defeat and the victory of the person he was writing about.”

Telander, who is the lead sports columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times, said Smith was a one-of-a-kind talent.

“He used his skill with words to make you feel exactly what he felt, what you should feel, to understand the story of some other person on a journey to some place we all would recognize, foreign though it may be,” he stated. “No matter how long a Gary Smith magazine piece was, you had to finish it. You had to know. You had to read and feel the resolution. It was a kind of magic. And Gary was the magician. He was the best there was.”

Alexander Wolff, who spent 36 years at Sports Illustrated, shared a similar sentiment. “Gary had the ability to inhabit the head of his subject,” he noted. “He did that by relentlessly asking questions, often leading subjects to address matters and themes they’d never before thought about.”

Smith visited Tyson early in his career and said the one-time heavyweight king had multiple personalities.

“He was a bundle of opposites. At one moment, he’s kind of seething about the world and people and the next moment he’s just a puppy dog with his arm around your neck,” he said. “One moment walking away from my introductory handshake and leaving it hanging in the air when we first met and by the end of it, arm literally around my neck….The friction of opposites was always at play.”

Smith wrote his feature on James “Buster” Douglas after Douglas claimed the heavyweight crown from Tyson in February 1990.

“He was a gentle soul for the most part. Less extreme actually than most boxers. Therefore, it took a more extreme situation being in a ring with Mike Tyson to bring out the natural talents. He was God-gifted and a father-gifted fighter,” he remembered. “He wasn’t the kind who had easy access to all that desperation that’s needed to excel in boxing but after his mother’s death and the proximity to Tyson’s right hand, they brought out that desperation to use these natural gifts as a fighter.”

Like so many who were around Muhammad Ali, Smith was often amused by the three-time heavyweight champ.

“Ali was always a lot of fun to be with. He was mischievous and said things that could be striking,” he said. “Most of them were very interesting in a variety of ways. Ali was the prankster, and you might be the butt of his pranks.”

Among the many honors accorded Smith was the Dan Jenkins Medal For Lifetime Achievement in Sportswriting, awarded in 2019. Some of his finest work can be found in his two anthologies: “Beyond The Game: The Collected Sportswriting Of Gary Smith’’ (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000) and “Going Deep: 20 Classic Sports Stories by Gary Smith” (Sports Illustrated Books, 2008).

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Remembering Prizefighters Danny Nardico and Billy Murray: A Story for Veterans Day

“There are now over 4000 pro boxers in our armed forces” said a story in the Sept. 19, 1943 issue of the Pittsburgh Press. Some of those boxers returned from the battlefields physically unscathed and were able to extend their career. Others were damaged and never fought again and still others never returned.

Among those 4000-plus boxers who served in World War II were two former world champions who would be decorated for their heroism, Barney Ross and Lew Jenkins. Books have been written about them. Here’s a look at two others who were in the thick of that terrible conflagration, stories worth re-telling today, Nov. 11, Veterans Day in the United States, a day set aside to honor all those that served our nation in the military.

Danny Nardico

Danny Nardico (pictured on the right squaring off against 1952 foe Dan Bucceroni) was born in Ohio near Cleveland, the product of a broken home. He was two years old when his father walked out on little Danny and his six siblings.

At age 17, Nardico enlisted in the Marines. He was wounded in the Battle of Gloucester which began on the day after Christmas in 1943 on an island in New Guinea. The Marines were sent there to destroy two Japanese air bases.

Nardico, despite his tender age, was reportedly a squad leader. The bullet he took in his leg did not stop him from participating in other battles in the Pacific theater. For his valor he received a Purple Heart and a Silver Star.

As a professional boxer, Nardico spent 35 months in The Ring Top 10, rising to #3 in the light heavyweight division. He had two signature fights, the first against Jake LaMotta in Miami (actually Coral Gables) on New Year’s Eve, 1952.

Airing on CBS, this was the first nationally televised fight emanating from the state of Florida. Of greater significance, Nardico became the first man to score a knockdown against the rugged LaMotta who was then in the twilight of his career. It happened in round seven, a straight right following a left hook that dropped the Bronx Bull on his pins. Jake survived the round, just barely, and his corner pulled him out before the eighth.

The Ring recognized Nardico’s performance by naming him the Fighter of the Month.

Nardico wasn’t so fortunate in his next memorable fight. On Jan. 20, 1954, he was stopped inside the ninth frame by Charley Norkus, a banger who fought out of Jersey City. Both were in dire straights during this contest, a wild skirmish punctuated by eight knockdowns, six by Norkus. An instant classic, it was named The Ring Fight of the Year. (Danny Nardico, who came in at 181 ½, was out-weighed by 15 ½ pounds. They fought again nine weeks later and Norkus won a unanimous decision in another fierce fight.)

Before his bouts with Charley Norkus, Nardico fought Joey Maxim in a de facto eliminator for Archie Moore’s world title. An outdoor event in Miami, Nardico had Maxim on the canvas in the seventh round but couldn’t sustain the momentum and lost a 10-round decision.

Nardico quit the sport with a record of 50-13-4 (35 KOs) and became a postal worker in Tampa. He later relocated to Sacramento where his second wife, the former Rachel Galindo, had family, and opened an appliance repair shop. When that failed, he accepted a job as the recreation director at the Northern Nevada Correctional Center in Carson City, Nevada, where he and Rachel lived on the grounds of the minimum security prison. After 13 years in the Silver State, he returned to the Sacramento area with Alzheimer’s to live out his days.

Danny and Rachel were married 48 years when Danny passed away at age 85 in 2010. Speaking about her late father, Nardico’s daughter Danella Plum said, “I remember my father being strong as an ox, but tenderhearted….He had a hard exterior, but inside he was as soft as a marshmallow.”

Billy Murray

Stylistically, Billy Murray and Danny Nardico were complete opposites. Murray, who predated Nardico as a fledgling pro by roughly 10 years, was a cutie. Nardico was a brawler who willingly took two punches to land one of his own. But beyond this, both had a great deal in common.

Billy Murray 1941 photo

Both were born in Ohio – Nardico in Painesville and Billy Murray in the blue-collar Ohio River town of Bellaire – and both spent the bulk spent of their professional boxing lives in Tampa. They even had the same trainer, Bill Gore, who would be named to the International Boxing Hall of Fame, in large part because of his work with Willie Pep. And, akin to Nardico, Murray would also be feted as The Ring Fighter of the Month.

Murray, sometimes billed as Irish Billy Murray, was accorded the honor in the July 1941 issue of the self-styled “Bible of Boxing” which hit the newsstands in June. Murray was recognized for his work in the month of May where he scored six wins, upping his ledger to 29-0.

It was the dream of every young boxer to see his name on the marquee at Madison Square Garden. Billy Murray achieved that goal in August of 1942 when he was matched against the formidable Beau Jack.

Murray entered the contest with a 58-2 record, but took the fight on two days’ notice and was a heavy underdog to the former Georgia bootblack. He wound up losing a unanimous decision, but lasting the distance was a feather in his cap and he could look forward to many more engagements at the famous New York sock palace. With Bill Gore piloting his career, he might yet reach the height of stablemate Willie Pep who was then well on his way to getting a world title shot.

Then came the letter from Uncle Sam that so many young men dreaded receiving. Murray was ordered to report for his induction physical. He had been drafted into the Army.

Murray was assigned to the Air Force. He was remanded to Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi, where he was taught how to be an airplane mechanic and then to gunnery school at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, Nevada. An Air Force World War II gunner was a crew member on a bomber plane, responsible for protecting the aircraft from machine gun fire by fighting fire with fire.

Billy Murray took his 58-3 record to the grave. On Nov. 24, 1943, the day before Thanksgiving, this terse message appeared in the papers: “Cpl. William F. Murray, better known as Billy Murray was reported missing in action by the War Department.” Murray’s plane had been shot down somewhere over Italy.

Murray learned the rudiments of boxing at a gym in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, an hour’s drive from Bellaire. “Sports fans and friends of Billy Murray will always remember him and hope that he will turn up to show his wares again when the conflict is over,” read a story in the Canonsburg paper.

But he never did.

News reports do not list Billy Murray’s age but he was undoubtedly in his early twenties. He looks even younger in the few photos of him that can be found in old papers. One is reminded of the famous anti-war poem by the great sportswriter Grantland Rice.

How very young the faces were

Where all the dead men lay

…wrote Rice in the second stanza of his poem which concludes with his observation that “nearly all the dead were hardly more than boys.”

Danny Nardico, who fought in some of the fiercest boxing contests of his generation, once said, “it was all a cakewalk [compared to the War].” Today, Nov. 11, is a federal holiday, a day set aside to recognize the sacrifices of brave men like Danny Nardico and Billy Murray. And to those of you that served in the military, thank you for your service.

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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.

Boots and Bam Win in Philly

Second time arounds can be difficult.

Hometown hero Jaron “Boots” Ennis squeezed by familiar foe Karen Chukhadzhian and Philadelphia discovered why all the buzz about Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez with his blazing knockout victory on Saturday.

Two for one Philly. Two for one.

IBF welterweight titlist Ennis (33-0, 29 KOs) found Chukhadzhian (24-3) more difficult the second time around but emerged the winner again in front of more than 10,000 fans at Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, Pa.

The Philly fighter Ennis looked ready to knock the stuffing out of Chukhadzhian in the rematch. Instead, the Ukrainian fighter made good on his promise to show a different approach and a different result from their first encounter dominated by Ennis 11 months ago.

It was a blast this time.

Chukhadzhian came out blazing with left hooks and shifty angles that caught Ennis by surprise from the first round. A good thing the champion can take a good punch.

Ennis, 27, seemed more frustrated than confused by the more offensive approach of the Ukrainian. Instead of running away from the action the Ukrainian was countering and punching in-between the champion’s combos. Both got hit and both kept punching.

In the fifth round Ennis erupted with a lethal combination including a right uppercut and down went Chukhadzhian. It was only Ennis’ incredible reflexes that helped refrain from unloaded a rocket right while the Ukrainian was on one knee.

It seemed the end was near but instead of folding like an old banana the Ukrainian fighter cranked it up and the fight resumed.

Though the Ukrainian fighter resorted to hitting and holding and was deducted a point for excessive grappling in the 10^th round, he kept firing while Ennis seemed to wane in the last three rounds.

It was a tremendous showing for Chukhadzhian but fell short of winning as three judges saw Ennis the winner 119-107, 117-109, 116-110.

“I was prepared for anything coming,” said Ennis. “I wanted to get the knockout.”

Bam Wins

In the co-main boxing’s youngest world champion Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez (21-0, 14 KOs) became the first to knock out Mexico’s Pedro Guevara (43-5-1, 22 KOs) and retained the WBC super fly title.

Rodriguez, 24, pressured the veteran contender Guevara immediately and fired from various angles that forced the challenger to exchange. That was the first sign that the Mexican fighter was not going to be able to hit and move.

In the third round it seemed Rodriguez had figured out Guevara and moved in for the kill. He had promised to be the first to knock out the Mexican fighter and then opened up with a withering attack that saw both exchange with Rodriguez’s left cross connecting. It took Guevara two seconds later to collapse from the effect of the blow. He got up, and Rodriguez moved in with a feint and two blows then unleashing a hidden right uppercut that Guevara never saw.

Down went Guevara and he wasn’t getting up at 2:47 of the third round.

“I kind of already knew it was going to happen that way,” said Rodriguez of the knockout win. “I thought he was going to stand in there.”

Other Bouts

Former featherweight world titlist Raymond Ford (16-1-1, 8 KOs) rebooted as a super featherweight with a one-sided unanimous decision over Puerto Rico’s Orlando Gonzalez (23-3, 13 KOs) after 10 rounds at super featherweight.

Ford looks stronger at 130 pounds.

Ford floored Gonzalez twice with sizzling right hooks in the battle between southpaws. After dominating most of the first eight rounds Ford was forced to chase Gonzalez who refused to engage the last two rounds. After 10 rounds all three judges favored Ford 100-98 twice and 99-89.

Mexican light heavyweight Manuel Gallegos (21-2-1, 18 KOs) upset undefeated Khalil Coe (9-1-1, 7 KOs) dropping the American prospect four times before ending it in the ninth round.

Body shots by Gallegos broke down Coe’s defense who was a 20-1 favorite going into the fight. The taller Mexican fighter absorbed big shots to target Coe’s body and that proved the difference.

“I felt good, I felt strong at 175 pounds,” said Gallegos whose last fight was a loss to Diego Pacheco.

Ammo Williams (17-1, 12 KOs) returned to the win column with a blazing fifth round stoppage over Gian Garrido (11-2, 8 KOs) in a middleweight fight. In William’s last fight he lost to Hamzah Sheeraz last June in Riyadh.

Photo credit: Mark Robinson / Matchroom

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