Literary Notes: Rocky Marciano and More

John Jarrett has been writing about boxing since 1951 when his first article, a piece about Rocky Marciano, was published in Boxing News. Since then, he has been involved with the sweet science in myriad ways including ongoing service as Northern Area Secretary for the British Boxing Board of Control for forty years. During that time, he has written nine books, he most recent of which (Rocky Marciano published by Pitch Publishing) brings Jarrett back to his creative roots.

All biographies of Marciano are written in the shadow of Russell Sullivan’s definitive work, Rocky Marciano: The Rock of His Times (University of Illinois Press, 2002). But Marciano is a subject who continues to inspire writers to write.

Rocco Francis Marchegiano was born into a struggling working-class family in Brockton, Massachusetts. The first time that he auditioned in the gym for trainer Charlie Goldman (who would ultimately sculpt the rough-hewn block of marble into greatness) Goldman told him, “If you done anything right, I didn’t see it.”

Shirley Povich of the Washington Post later quoted an unnamed observer of the boxing scene as saying, “Rocky Marciano can’t box a lick. His footwork is what you’d expect from two left feet. He throws his right hand in a clumsy circle and knows nothing of orderly retreat. All he can do is blast the breath from your lungs or knock your head off.”

No fighter trained harder than Marciano. That was one of the keys to his success. Asked to elaborate on his training regimen, he noted, “After a while, you get to hate all the guys around you. You get to hate the sight of their faces and the sound of their voices.”

Marciano lost four of the twelve amateur fights that he engaged in. Three decades later, Bob Girard (one of the men who beat him) reminisced, “I beat him because it was three rounds. There were a hundred guys who might have stayed three rounds with Rocco. But no man in the world was gonna beat Rocco in fifteen rounds.”

Jarrett offers an extensive recounting of Marciano’s ring career. There’s a particularly good retelling of the September 23, 1952, fight between Marciano and Jersey Joe Walcott when Marciano, trailing on all three scorecards at the start of round thirteen, seized the heavyweight throne with a highlight-reel knockout.

But as is often the case in this book, the most compelling writing with regard to Marciano-Walcott I comes from Jarrett’s judicious choice of quotes rather than his own prose. Here, the choice verbiage originated with Peter Wilson of the Daily Express, who wrote, “Then, like the car you never see on the dark road, the shell which you never hear, shocking, irrevocable, came that tremendous horrifying right. It left Walcott looking down his own spine with eyes that could not see. He crumpled forward, clutching for a rope, knees grayed by the resin dust. A brown paper bag burst by a thoughtless child. A headless, thoughtless, sightless, senseless, paralyzed man. Style, skill, pacing of the fight and good punching, all had availed nothing. Youth and strength are invincible.”

In his dressing room after the fight, Walcott was asked about the knockout punch and acknowledged, “I don’t remember anything. He caught me open and that was it. I don’t know if it was a right or left. I just don’t remember anything.”

Jarrett has done a great deal of research regarding Marciano’s fights. But there’s no new scholarship in his book, nor does he do much to place Marciano in the political and social context of his times. Also, when it comes to Marciano’s personal life, Jarrett tends to view him through rose-colored glasses, painting the portrait of a man who felt ambiguous about boxing because “he hated the time it took away from his family in Brockton.”

In truth, the historical record developed by Sullivan and others suggests that Marciano was more interested in whoring around than in being a good husband and father.

That said; Jarrett’s writing flows nicely and he’s passionate about his subject. Fans of Rocky Marciano will enjoy the book.

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Never Stop by Simba Sana (Bolden Books) isn’t a boxing book. It’s a coming-of-age memoir written by a man who grew up in inner-city poverty, escaped, and then had to navigate the world outside it. But boxing keeps popping up in his life.

There’s a warning flag of sorts in an “author’s note” at the beginning of Never Stop that states, “This is a work of creative nonfiction. The events are portrayed to the best of Simba Sana’s memory. While all the stories in this book are true, some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of the people involved.”

Changing names to protect privacy is understandable. And memory is what it is. The phrase “creative fiction” might leave readers a bit wary.

But Sana writes well and his work demands attention from the start. The opening paragraph reads, “My mother never told me anything about her past – not one thing. This may be hard to believe, but she talked to herself more than she ever actually spoke to me. I grew accustomed to this at home. But as I got older, I became keenly aware that her habit of engaging in intense conversations with herself was not ordinary behavior.”

As Sana (then named Bernard Sutton) moved through adolescence, he trained at several boxing gyms and developed an affinity for the sweet science. Later, he earned master’s degrees from Howard University and St. John’s College and moved into the corporate world.

The most intriguing portion of Never Stop insofar as boxing is concerned deals with the period of time that Sana managed Beethaeven Scottland.

During his sojourn through various gyms, Sana had established a rapport with Scottland. By 1997, “Bee” had fallen out with his manager and walked away from boxing with an 11-4-2 record. In 1998, Simba began managing him on a handshake agreement. Scottland won his first fight back and, by late-2000, had a 20-6-2 record. Meanwhile, Sana was roughly $5,000 in the hole, not having cut Bee’s purses for most fights and having advanced the money for various expenses.

In November 2000, Scottland dumped him. It hurt.

“All the work I’d put in with Bee,” Sana recalls, “and then bam! Just like that. I was no longer Bee’s manager. It was like all my work meant nothing. Bee avoided me, and I didn’t go out of my way to find him either.”

On June 26, 2001, Scottland fought his first fight under new management against unbeaten George Khalid Jones and was knocked out in the tenth round. Sana watched it unfold on ESPN2 and acknowledges, “As Bee lay on the canvas, I felt vindicated. I had been wronged and part of me wanted him to pay for what he did to me.”

That’s impressive honesty given what soon turned Sana’s “sense of satisfaction” to concern. Scottland was carried from the ring on a stretcher and died six days later.

Never Stop is a good book.

Thomas Hauser can be reached by email at thauser@rcn.com. His most recent book – There Will Always Be Boxing – was published by the University of Arkansas Press. In 2004, the Boxing Writers Association of America honored Hauser with the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism.

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