Frank Palermo in hall of fame. Is this an impossible thought?

I have never read a detailed account of his life and criminal career. I believe he ran the numbers racket in Philly. He worked behind the scenes in concert with Frank Carbo in managing fighters including Ike Williams, Johnny Bratton and Sonny Liston. He was a partner with Sam Margolis in the Sansom Delicatessen near the University of Pennsylvania campus. Liston used to eat at the restaurant often.That's most of what I've read. Blinky outlived Carbo by decades and died in his early 90s. Geraldine Liston spoke highly of him.

 

He was a huge figure and contributed a lot to boxing as trainer, manager, promoter, matchmaker, etc...

He was great at developing fighters and invested a lot of money in fighters other managers and the press had written off and helped a lot of fighters reach great success that they wouldn’t have without his involvement.

However, like any person he wasn’t perfect and had a very short fuse like a lot of guys do in the boxing industry and his short fuse was the main reason he was often in legal trouble.

 

It's not like anyone is clamoring for him to get in the HOF and all this would do would be to highlight his criminal past. All risk with no reward.

 

The fact that they let anyone into the HOF now bodes well for his chances.

 

Don’t know anything about him, but if Yaqui Lopez is in the HOF then I suppose anything is possible.

 

He was scum.Name boxer he trained?

 

I also don’t know enough about him - whether he deserves entry or not based solely on contributions to boxing.

However, IF he was precluded only due to a criminal and shady past - well, wouldn’t that open up a Pandora’s Box re many pre-existing admissions and they’re not being deserved also?

Boxing often operates on very shady mechanisms and includes/invites many participants willing to move with less than righteous actions and activities.

If we preclude all those in question, the only fighters in the HOF would be guys who were also eligible for being canonised and decreed to be Saints.

Also, it takes a couple of miracles to be duly recognised- Ali had Liston, Foreman and perhaps the Spinks rematch. Not bad.

More than enough miracles, but I don’t know that Muhammad could be recognised as a Saint otherwise.

 

When Palermo quit fighting he trained amateurs for years in Ohio and Philly before becoming a full-time manager in the early to mid 30's.

 

Did Ike Williams love him?

Was he a character witness for Palermo ?

Says in this interview that Blinky Palermo told him not to take a $100,000 bribe to throw the 2nd Gavilan fight

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Some bits from the trial that put Palermo away

On April 28 Nesseth and Leonard were in Leonard's office when a call came from Carbo. Leonard testified: "* * * the voice said, `Hello, hello, hello. You know who this is?' I says, `Yeah, I know who this is.' And he says, `You're a no good' — and he used some vulgar language and called me a double-crosser and told me that he was going to get somebody to take care of me, that if he was there, he would gouge my eyes out, and I was going to get hurt, and when he meant hurt, he meant dead, and he called me another S.B. and different names, real bad names, `double-crosser,' and he says, `We are going to meet at the cross-roads,' he says, `You will never get away with it. I have had that title 25 years and no punks like you are going to take it away from me,' and he repeated that statement, he says, `When I mean get you, you are going to be dead,' he said, `We will have somebody out there to take care of you.



According to Daly, Gibson was upset, saying he was in "a jackpot" because he had allowed the title to get out of "their" hands. He had accused Leonard and Nesseth of trying to destroy him, and had stated that instead "I'll have them destroyed." There was a discussion of a near fatal assault on Ray Arcel, a Carbo-controlled manager who had asserted his independence. Daly explained the technique of assault:

"See what they do. They use a water pipe, see, You know, regular lead water pipe. Lead pipe. And about that short. About that thick. And they just get an ordinary piece of newspaper, see, newspaper don't show fingerprints. Then they take it and they wrap it just in the newspaper, see — * * * Just an ordinary piece of paper, that's all they ever use. And you sitting in a crowd. And they try to give you two bats, and they kill you with two if they can. But they whack you twice and split your — fracture your skull, and knock you unconscious, and they just drop it, they can't — there's no heat. You can't — you haven't got no weapon on you. If they said you did it, what the hell, you drop it in a crowd or out in the street. They drop it immediately. After they do it they drop it. And after they drop it — the law — they're protected by the law. They have to have witnesses. They seen them come out and that's the guy, and that's what he used." And later: "They used a couple kids from Boston to do it." Leonard: "They always use professionals, guys from out of town." Daly: "Yeah, they were kids." Leonard: "Like here, if they wanted Don and I, they're not going to use somebody that we know around here." Daly: "No. The Sicas would be home."

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/314/718/263307/

 

That interview is from the congress hearing by the way not from the trial

Ive read about Ike’s fights vs Freddie Dawson before.Fred eventually had to go down under to get a fair shake

What about the Gavilan fights,Was the Keeds managers connected?

 

Blinky was a gangster.

 

The country has a child molester running it now so Blinky getting in wouldnt be a shock

 

I was gonna post something similar

 

I doubt he cared or respected the sport. I doubt he knew much about it either.... if he wasn´t a mob guy nobody would remember him, so there you have your answer... he is famous because of his mob life.