The Wobble

[H2O Man]

39. One of the things

I found funny in amateur boxing was that the winner was given twice as much "gas money" than the loser. Not that I ever got the short end, but other guys from my team did!

Note: I did fight on one pro card. I was on the undercard the night a guy who would win the light heavyweight title in less than a year lost an upset decision to an old family friend. There was a snotty-nosed undefeated kid I couldn't stand since his amateur days. A year before, he tried being friendly with me in the dressing room of a tournament I won. Me being the kid with a chip on my shoulder, I told him I didn't like his attitude in the ring and would kick his ass eventually. He was arrogant in the ring, conceited about his skill level. There wasn't room enough for both of us in NYS. So although he was a weight class heavier than me, I kicked his ass in front of 5,000 people. (He was a good sport afterwards, so I kind of liked him.)

My brother and I had fought for a former pro who fought Charlie Burley and others from the infamous "Murderers' Row," and had been a stable mate of Jack Dempsey's early in his career. Carl was a great guy -- a retired cop, who scared us by never driving less than twice the speed limit, even in the winter. But he was purely offensive in boxing skills. Kind of an early Carmen Basilio, who was sorely offended if an opponent missed a punch. Since our middle brother was able to teach both offense and defense -- he was later a student of Angelo Dundee and Manny Steward -- we opted to fight out of our own club. (Carmen did my brother's pro debut, and I'll tell you what Rubin had to say about that sometime!)

Since we fought from a neighborhood outside a hamlet with a population of 35, city promoters started out matching us against their top dogs. That led to them matching us against their top dogs who were at least one weight class above us. When that didn't work well for them, they wanted us to fight sacrificial lambs, something I only did once ..... two guys who should have fought me refused to even get dressed, so in my 324th fight, they put me in with a kid in his first fight. I could have stopped him, but let up when I'd hurt him. That was my last amateur fight, before taking my frustrations out on that other fellow.

The worst thing, in my opinion, was the scoring that always favored the home-town fighters. I remember one time, my brother told a promoter he was hesitant to put our guys on his cards, due to bad decisions. The guy said, "Tell you what -- we'll put two of your guys against black kids, so as long as it goes to the decision, your guys will win." At the time, two of the four of us going to fight on that card were black.

I think that USA Boxing does a better job these days than the AAU did back in my day. But they aren't totally clean -- I told two commissioners about a guy who wore illegal (and dangerous) hand wraps. They refused to do anything. So I said if one of my guys was to fight him, the would be wearing the exact same wraps. They acted like I was out of line.