Were the criticisms of D'Amato during Patterson's reign justified?

Was Cus a made man?

 

Well, that is just pathetic.

 

There are a myriad of ways to respond to a post .. the turd you are defending has been one of the most despised posters on multiple boxing websites for over fifteen years. He has been kick off boards time and again for his hostile behavior and personal attacks. He is a mean spirited, nasty guy. In addition he's not bright but in streaks has lot's of free time to spew his venom and does. Occasionally I"ll drop in and stumble upon his gibberish but most times I pass him over. He just started his personalized attacks on this thread and I called him on his memorialized history as a pariah and a enrich. I then deleted it because I realized it may offend others but you responded too quickly .. sorry about that.

 

“Within the rules” doesn’t mean something is right. Who made those rules? Who had the power to bend them?

Name ONE other champion in history who bestowed a title shot on an amateur who had never had a single professional fight.

Where’s the rule that says a fighter who has never set foot in a boxing ring as a professional is qualified a contender for the heavyweight title.

What a joke. You DEFEND that fight? If there’s money to make a fight between the heavyweight champion and a dancing bear, then it’s OK? I thought you were a boxing guy.

Then to sit on the title for a complete year before his next fight — not while injured, just to refuse to defend the most important title in all of sport at the time — was WRONG. Within the rules? Who’s rules? What rules? He got away with it.

Floyd was a gentleman. But he didn’t make business decisions. Cus did. And Cus devalued and shat upon the heavyweight championship of the word.

You’re the researcher. There’s a whole thread above about Black. Why not do your own honest research into Charlie Black aka Charles Antonucci, cousin of Fat Tony Salerno, who became boss of one of the Five Families. Look into that relationship (between “Black” and Cus) and tell me how D’Amato was an anti-mob crusader.

 

I'd like to clarify these comments about the "Boxing Guild" by noting that I'm referring to the second incarnation of the "Boxing Guild" ie. "The International Boxing Guild" (New York Chapter) which was almost completely a tool for Frank Carbo and was run on racketeering principles.

That was the Guild that Cus D'amato was collecting kickbacks (euphimistically called "donations") for in 1954 and '55.

Managers who managed to get their fighters on the TV shows were required to "donate" $100 back to the Guild. Promoters were also tapped for these donations.

The Guild's predecessor - "The Boxing Managers Guild" was perhaps more independent and antagonistic to the IBC, and came about largely due to wanting a bigger share of the TV money. It was probably well infiltrated by the mob too but probably less fully controlled.
But that's NOT the Guild D'amato was collecting for. That Guild disintegrated during a second attempt at a strike in either 1950 or '51, I think.

The Guild of circa 1954 (the IBG - NY) was a mob-controlled entity. The appointments were almost certainly made by Carbo himself.
It was precisely the organization being used as primary tool to blacklist or blackball dissenters.
D'amato was collecting the kickbacks for the organization.
These are facts.

 

Let me spell this out for you because clearly, despite your insistence that you "have done the research" you either havent, didnt comprehend what you read, or your being intentionally deceptive so as not to lose an argument:

Lets start with that first very important nugget of information: Black received money from promotions when Patterson fought, rather inexplicably. You follow a correct statement with an incorrect statement. There was nothing inexplicable about him receiving money. He helped finance those promotions in doing so he brought Salerno as a backer. Cus refused to do business with the IBC and Carbo. To do so he would have had to have given up far too much of his interest and would have been beholden to them whether that means he fight this guy or that guy, get robbed fighting a 100% mob fighter such as Gavilan and Basilio had, or whether he is asked to take a dive. When you got into bed with those guys you gave up any real interest you had in your own business. So Cus goes to his friend Black and asks for help. Because, as I said, you arent fighting the mob and one of the richest men in America without help and what are you going to do? Go to the police? See how far snitches got in this era. With the IBC having all of the dates and venues you needed real money to be able to promote and you had to have alternatives to national television. Black then brought in Salerno who was with a rival family from Carbo and highly placed under Trigger Mike Coppola. Carbo wasnt going to war with those guys. Salerno provided D'amato with financial backing and contacts with closed circuit so that Cus could essentially self promote. Obviously these guys wanted a cut for their trouble. You dont get a loan from anyone without paying interest. BUT one of the many things that sets Cus apart from what Carbo and his managers were doing is that Cus wasnt using this arrangement to fleece anyone, intimidate anyone, etc. He was simply using it as financing and to Cus' credit he kept Patterson completely insulated from all of this and paid back the vig out of his own pocket. And for the record the FBI knew all of this and beyond the fact that Cus was in a roundabout way associating with "people of ill repute" there wasnt anything illegal about anything he had done. It would be a stretch to suggest it was even unethical.

Again, this is incorrect. Salerno didnt "end up" with a slice of the promotion. Salerno financially backed Rosensohn at Rosensohn's request. Rosensohn was a closed circuit man that wanted to display the Patterson fights and this dovetailed perfectly with D'amato's need for an alternative broadcast method. It was Salerno's money and other than the fact that Salerno was a gangster, which was incidental to this promotion (but against the rules of the New York State Athletic Commission). You, nor the FBI, nor anyone else, can possibly say that Salerno simply acting as bank for this promotion did anything that negatively impacted the sport. When Rosensohn lost money, because he wasnt a good businessman, he went to the New York State Athletic Commission and told of his association with Black and Salerno. He alleged that they took advantage of his naivete and assumed control of the promotional company. Nonsense. He was a lifelong business man who knew exactly what he was signing and did so because of the money involved. In business its first in, first out. Meaning if Salerno put up the money hes the first one that gets paid on any profits. Rosensohn simply tried to cut him out of this and ended up losing his license as a result because while Salerno did nothing wrong, Rosensohn had done business with a felon. The only way this came back to bite D'amato was that he was found to be acting in a tenuous promotional capacity on these fights which was barred for men holding a manager's license in New York. New York eventually banned D'amato because of this but when it was discovered that his manager's license had actually expired and he in fact had not violated the rules of New York his ban was overturned. And let me tell you something else tied to the other promotion that Salerno helped bankroll that illustrates D'amatos character: Jack Hurley was brought in by D'amato to help Rosensohn with the promotion of the Harris fight. Ostensibly he was to be paid $25,000 for his services. Despite the fight being a record gate in California the promotion lost money because D'amato had negotiated such a great deal for Patterson and Harris. As a result Rosensohn was unable to pay Hurley his guarantee. Hurley hounded Rosensohn for the money and Rosensohn went to Salerno for help who, through Charley Black asked D'amato to speak to his friend. D'amato explained the situation to Hurley and got Hurley to take half of his original asking price. Years later Hurley asked D'amato's help in a promotion. D'amato did and when Hurley sent D'amato a check for his services D'amato tore it up because of the fact that years earlier Hurley hadnt gotten his full pay for the Harris fight. Thats the crux of all of this: D'amato and managers like him didnt want to do business with guys like Carbo because he had a negative effect on the sport and was a predator plain and simple. Do you think if Carbo, even as a gangster, had come into the sport, cleaned it up, provided health insurance for the boxers, pensions, and a commissioner to over see it anyone would bat an eye now that he was a gangster? No. Theyd be calling him a saint. Instead what we got were beat up managers and promoters, exploited fighters and managers, fixed fights, dives, paid off officials, the death of smaller clubs due to practices by the IBC. Thats why we talk about this era. So simply blurting out that D'amato has tenuous mob connections isnt even germaine to the argument because those connections didnt impact the sport, the championship, Patterson, or anyone else negatively at all.

You doubt what? What exactly are you alleging that D'amato did? What that he knew Salerno bankrolled the fight? Big ****ing deal. You do realize that you can plead the fifth when you take the stand right?

And again, his fight, just like everyone else against the IBC and Carbo was because of their monopolistic, corrupting influence. You have not drawn a single conclusion, correlation, or comparison between D'amato's actions and Carbo's beyond shouting "he had mob connections" which essentially means he knew a low a level mobster. Sorry, but in this situation there is no guilt by association.

Specifically because he was found to be acting in an official capacity with the promotional company of Rosensohn despite being a fellon and not having a license. Can you show me one thing that D'amato did in regards to this that paints him in a negative light?

This should be rich.

 

I agree with all of this (except for the Guild being a monopoly) but what you leave out is how this came to be. The guild started out as a great tool for managers to combat the wealth of the power players in the sport such as Mike Jacobs and later the IBC. It was essentially a union. Thats important to keep in mind because I will revisit that. Which guild you are talking about is a big question because there were actually three or four at the time and at least two were offshoots of the original. But essentially, to simplifiy, the guild was using its clout to negotiate better contracts for its fighters with the IBC. Every year they renegotiated a better contract. Jim Norris tired of this and asked Carbo to help break the Guild/Union. Carbo, for his purposes was playing both ends against the middle. He controlled a significant portion of the managers in the Union so if his fighters got better pay so did he, if he benefitted from Norris by breaking, or seeming to break the Union, he wins there too. So Carbo enlisted the help of Jack Kearns and Bill Daly (one of his front men who also happened to be the president of the Guild). Those guys pissed in the ears of the non Carbo alligned managers and sowed discontent. Carbo had his managers follow suit and before long the Guild split into three factions. One led by mob fronted manager Al Braverman, one localized in New York, and the original guild stayed in place for a time before it collapsed under the weight of defections and the remaining members decided to split up what was left in the til equally and dissolve. Braverman, at the behest of masters went to the Athletic Commission to complain that the opposing Union was freezing out his Unions fighters. An investigation was started and the Guild was found to be doing no wrong. But Carbo and Norris persisted and and eventually tore the Guild apart. It was never found in any court to be a monopoly as you say. In fact it was never litigated. What happened was the Commissioner stated that every manager of the guild had to withdraw or lose his license to manage in the state. The managers intended to fight this action but surprise surprise Norris threw his support behind the NYSAC, Daly, Kearns, and Charley Johnston, all being paid a fortune by the IBC to help kill the guild, withdrew from it and started a tidal wave, and then Al Weill, who had worked closely with both Carbo and Norris withdrew from the guild and made a show of starting his own rival guild in another state. The last straw was that the managers intended to relocate to Baltimore where the NYSAC couldnt touch them and take the lone television network they had to air their fights on with them. The governor stepped in and blocked the network from airing fights in Baltimore and the entire venture collapsed. It was classic union busting at its best.

He absolutely did act as a collector. And there is nothing wrong with this. Remember when I said the guild was a union? Ever work in a union plant? Whether you are a member of that union or not you have to pay dues. Why? Because when those boxing managers in the union banded together and used their combined clout to negotiate better pay on TV contracts for the fighters EVERY FIGHTER, regardless of whether or not his manager was in the guild, benefited from higher pay. Why should you reap the benefits of the unions work on your behalf without paying dues? Its totally legal, totally ethical, and shown to be as such at the time. D'amato's criticism of fighters was valid because weve all seen the ungrateful fighter who took his managers money, got advancements, had his living subsidized on his way up only to jump ship for one reason or another. I seem to recall Hasim Rahman taking a bag full of Don King cash then trying to keep the money but not honor his contract with King only to lose in court. Thats what D'amato was complaining about. Greedy, shortsighted fighters who dont appreciate the time, effort, and investment that the managers put up. Show me one boxing manager who has been involved in the sport for any amount of time who wouldnt say the same thing. And regardless, bitching about ungrateful fighters is a far crime from being complicit in a criminal enterprise that drags the sport down. Can you show me one thing D'amato did to his own fighters that left them in worse shape than when he got them? Crickets.

Wrong. This a complete oversimplification of what happened. You boiled down about five years and 4 or 5 different guilds, as well as several different instances into one sentence. It doesnt work like that and Im not letting you off the hook for it. The guild was indeed a blue collar endeavor. A union designed to protect managers from larger more powerful entities. Thats not a monopoly and in fact it was found in the courts to be protected by state labor laws. You cant seperate the fact that the IBC through Carbo controlled most of the major fighters and a significant portion of the managers and then pretend that there was no crossover in how those guys infiltrated and operated within the union. Its not like Kearns, Daly, Johnston, Braverman, Bocchichio, etc were running around with a sign on their foreheads announcing they were mob fronts or being paid to bust up the union from within. Thats nonsense. Youre talking about an era when the FBI's official stance was that there was no such thing as the Mafia and most people had no ****ing clue how extensive their reach was. You have a very simple, black and white way of looking at a very complex issue and that doesnt serve your argument.

Nonsense. In fact that supposedly illegitimate organization that you think was banned was actually resurrected two years later, after D'amato had left it and was working closely with IBC and NBA whose president at the time was a Chicago puppet of Jim Norris to get Patterson stripped and have the title handed to the IBC. But hey, lets oversimplify the situation and pretend D'amato was a part of that as well.

Give your single sentence explanations of extremely complex issues thats a comical coda.

 

You are a pathetic little worm. You know that though. Ive been kicked off of boards time and again? Ive been posting online for twenty years and Ive been kicked twice in that time. Getting kicked from Cyberboxingzone I wear like a badge honor and consider myself in good company considering they kicked literally every single member down to about five remaining who sycophants pinheads, count yourself in that company. We both know their ridiculous practices literally killed that website. So yeah, I can live with that.

In regards to you I only respond because we live in a dangerous time where rampant idiocy is mistaken for knowledge and I feel the need to point this out to people who may have the misfortune to read your nonsense.

 

Refer to my post above.

 

This is interesting. I never considered this.

Whats even more remarkable is that if you watch interviews of Patterson from after the second fight dating to Liston's death Patterson was always trying to get a third fight with Liston to prove himself. Jousting at windmills maybe because the outcome likely would have been the same and nobody wanted to see it but brave none the less.

 

I absolutely defend it. I dont think there was anything wrong with it in any way shape or form. Period. Your argument seems to be that now rules at the time were wrong so lets not just question the fight itself lets question those who created the rules. Who created the rules? It was a confederation of State Athletic Commissioners who banded together to codify the sport and bring order where there had been chaos. The men who wrote those rules had been involved in the sport as long or longer than you or I and had it its best interest at heart. Go ahead look like a fool and second guess that. The fact remains that 3 weeks earlier Floyd had fulfilled his mandatory requirement and was allowed a gimme after that and if he can make a fortune for doing so good for him. Im glad he got the payday. If he wanted to wait a year, which was perfectly within the rules, more power to him.

I have and I say again. Tell me exactly how Cus' relationship with Black paints him in the same light as Carbo or the IBC? Again, Im not going to let you off by simply trying to convict someone of guilt by association. I can be friends with a murderer it doesnt make me a murderer.

 

Non-specific to who and what you’re responding to in this post, has it occurred to you that not everyone who has a differing point of view is an idiot? Your default response to anyone who had a viewpoint differing from your own seems to be “I know more about this than you, and anyone who doesn’t agree with my take knows nothing about boxing.”

I believe that not to be the case. Is there no room for discourse in your world? No room for differing conclusions nor opinions?

Relative to this discussion, the facts are (a) that Charlie Black was a mob figure by blood, by association and by action, (b) Charlie Black had what I’ll kindly call a ‘curious’ relationship with Cus D’Amato and (c) Charlie Black was barred from boxing to the point that he was not even allowed to ATTEND fights in New York.

Do you dispute any of that?

So for me (or others) to conclude that the “Cus was anti-mob” narrative is, to be generous, less than a complete picture of D’Amato’s actions and reasons for those actions, doesn’t seem out of bounds. You may not agree with it, but there is real evidence that he had mob ties himself, and it’s not unreasonable to conclude that he wasn’t just some “anti-mob, clean boxing” crusader.

Nor is it unfair for me (or anyone else) to point to the Rademacher defense as a blight on the sport and on the heavyweight title, just as it is fair game to point out that Floyd spent a whole year on the sideline after and keeping the title on freeze (which is also a form of control and locking real contenders out, which is what Cus was supposedy standing up to). Same for the McNeely defense, which was a joke.

I’m game for discussion and debate, but not if it’s going to involve name-calling and some high-and-mighty “I know more than you, you don’t know anything about boxing, you’re an ignorant poster if you don’t agree with me” attitude.

I’m off to have a family holiday dinner. Happy Thanksgiving to you. I hope we can continue this as a civil discourse.

 

Two quick things before I go:

1) The “men who wrote the rules” allowed the IBC to do what it did. Same commissions, right? So how can you defend their “best interests of the sport” when you think that wasn’t in the sport’s best interest?

Most people are more invested in self-interest. Cus was. Promoters were. Commissioners are and were. If there was money to be made, they’d allow a horse to fight for the title. And in this case, it was a horse of a different color. It was a complete joke defense.

2) How about this: for a foreign fighter (Ingo for one) to fight for a title in the U.S. (maybe to fight at all, I’d have to look deeper into it), that fighter had to have an agent. For that foreign fighter to fight Floyd or one of Cus’s boys, that agent just happened to be Charlie Black ... a mobster. That didn’t happen without Cus knowing or being involved. Simple kickback scheme.

Same with certain shady people being foisted upon a promoter to be allowed to promote a Floyd Patterson title defense.

Now maybe you can have a murderer for a friend and not be one yourself. But you CANNOT have a murdered for a friend and at the same time be held up as a crusader against murderers.

Cus had a relationship that was more than cozy with a known mob figure. He was NOT anti-mob.