Feb 26, 1925. The night that Jack Delaney beat Tiger Flowers....twice....in the same fight!!... "Delaney was also involved in a bizarre match with future middleweight champion Tiger Flowers. After a round had passed, Delaney floored Flowers with a straight right hand. The referee counted Flowers out, but his corner protested that he had received a "fast count". The Flowers faction became unruly and a riot seemed imminent. Flowers demanded that the match resume, and Delaney amazingly agreed. The two fought until the fourth round, when Delaney again fired an irresistible right hand that knocked Flowers senseless. This time there was no controversy, as Flowers did not come close to arising in time. When Flowers did come to, he went to Delaney's dressing room and said "Ah want to thank you, Mr. Delaney, and tell you that Ah is convinced." " http://news.google.com/newspapers?n...X9RAAAAIBAJ&sjid=UA8EAAAAIBAJ&pg=6975,4975175
“I could see he was upset in the ring and that is when I said to him, ‘I will give you a rematch. Wherever you want the fight to take place, I will be there. If you want the fight to take place in Australia, I will be there. Your mother can be the referee; your father can be the judge; and your friends can be the supporters. I will knock you out.’” - Azumah Nelson speaking after his draw with Jeff Fenech in Las Vegas, June 1991. WBC president Jose Sulaiman was keen for a rematch and was concerned that Fenech would opt to take on WBA champion Hector Lopez, as they had installed him as their number-one contender. Eventually, an agreement was reached. Fenech signed a new contract with Don King for one fight only; the Australian would receive a percentage of the television rights and $2 million. Azumah would receive the same pay prior to paying expenses to his management support staff. The fight was scheduled for March 1, 1992, and would be staged in Melbourne. The rematch was good news for Azumah, as it finally guaranteed him a substantial payday to match his glittering career. He had only suffered one defeat in the past nine years, and that was to Pernell Whitaker on the eve of his wife’s passing away. Azumah had headed to Spain for an operation on his elbow, which had troubled him in the first fight. He had the operation in Zaragoza and based himself there for his recuperation and training with Buffalo before heading to Melbourne. Fenech was quoted in Fist magazine as saying, “I’ve really lived for this moment, when I can get Nelson into the ring again. Now that we’ve signed and got a date and a venue, I’m a very relieved and happy man. There have been some great sporting events in Australia, and this will be as big as any.” He went on to “guarantee” there would be no draw in the rematch. Probably his most shocking statement was when he was quoted in the media as saying, “The only way they’re going to take him home to Ghana is in a body bag.” Azumah’s reported response was, “Tell Fenech he is playing with fire, and it will burn him.” Finally, the day of the most anticipated sporting event in Australia arrived. The fight was to take place on a Sunday to tie in with television in the U.S. On the undercard that night was another boxer with a bright future from the Johnny Lewis stable making his professional debut, Kostya Tszyu, who knocked out Australian Darrell Hiles in just seventy seconds. The rain started to fall in Melbourne, which reduced the crowd from an expected sell-out to close to thirty-seven thousand. However, many Australian highfliers were ringside, including media ty**** Kerry ******, Olympian Dawn Fraser, iconic Aussie actor Paul Hogan, and former WBC featherweight world champion Johnny Famechon, who arrived in a wheelchair after having been hit by a car while jogging outside Sydney’s Warwick Farm racecourse the previous year. This was Azumah’s seventeenth world title fight in almost ten years. He was thirty-three years of age; he had fought in seven different countries; and he had been a world champion for eight years. Yet few gave him any chance of victory against a younger fighter in his own backyard. Azumah was incredibly confident going into this rematch and, as he had done previously, had ensured that the fight would be aired live on television back home in Ghana. Knowing that there would be plenty of excitement back home, he contacted his good friend, Obi Oblitey. Obi recalls, “He sent a message to me and one of our friends, who has now died, as he knew the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation would come and interview us. He said they will ask us how we see the fight and told us to tell them he would stop Fenech in round seven. So we did.” In his corner, Azumah had his brother, and he had told him to tell him when round six had finished so that he could be true to that prediction. It took Azumah one minute and forty-five seconds of the first round to have Fenech on the canvas. “Before the fight, I hear his coach telling him—he is a good coach—he is telling him, ‘Be careful. Azumah’s left hook is dangerous. Watch out.’ So from the first round, the guy was watching my left hook. All of a sudden in the first round, I just jab, one, two, three, four, and then boom—I landed a right and he went down. The left hook didn’t come because I knew he was looking for the left hook. I changed the style and I put him down. I knocked him down again in the second and almost in the third,” Azumah remembers with a trademark smile. Round two saw Fenech come back well from the knockdown, but Azumah was still the aggressor and benefitted when what appeared to be a slip by Fenech was ruled a knockdown by Mercante. This was a very different fight from the one in Las Vegas. Azumah looked stronger, fitter, and much sharper than his opponent, and went forward more often than he had in the first encounter. Round three saw the two toe-to-toe, as they had been in Las Vegas, and Fenech landed some telling blows. The bell sounded and Mercante struggled to separate the two, and words were exchanged. Azumah, despite his prediction, failed to knock out Fenech in round seven, and he explains why this was the case. “I told my brother, ‘Listen, I will knock this guy out in the seventh round. I will set him up, and after the sixth round I will knock him out in the seventh, so when we get to the sixth round let me know.’ But in between the rounds, my brother was enjoying watching the fight so much and he was so happy. At the seventh round, he came to me and said, ‘Brother, sorry I forgot to tell you it was the sixth round. It’s the seventh round.’ I said, ‘I told you to tell me the sixth round, so I could knock him out in the seventh. Now I cannot knock him out in the seventh. I will have to do it in the eighth and set him up this round.’ The bell went for the seventh round, and I start setting him up. At the end of the round, I looked at my brother, and I said to him, ‘Now I am going to knock him out this round'. “In the seventh and eighth rounds, I give myself to him and he just starts punching. When I set him up, I went to the corner. He is throwing the punches and I am blocking, but I slow my punches down, so I am just touching him. I am hardly hitting him, just touching him. Then he realises the punches are slow and there is no power. He could lose himself and start throwing punches, trying to knock me out. As soon as he did that, his guard came down and I went boom, boom, and landed the punches and he went down.” Ever the warrior, Fenech quickly leapt to his feet, but that could have been his mistake. His trainer, Johnny Lewis, climbed the steps to the ring, towel in hand, desperately trying to see how his fighter was, but Mercante, who waved the fight on, obstructed his view. Azumah turned Fenech back onto the ropes and fired off six unanswered blows to the head before Mercante stepped in and stopped the fight at the same moment that Lewis’s towel hit the canvas behind him. Two minutes and twenty seconds into round eight, Jeff Fenech had lost his first professional fight, and Azumah had recorded a victory that was named the “Upset of the Year for 1992” by The Ring magazine. The disappointed Australian crowd that had booed Azumah when his name was announced at the start of the bout showed great sportsmanship at the end of the bout, acknowledging a great champion. Many realised that they had just witnessed two great champions go head-to-head in their own backyard. It was after this fight with Jeff Fenech that Azumah went from being “The Terrible Warrior” in the ring to being known as “The Professor,” a moniker that certainly suited his age far better. There has been conjecture over who gave the champ his new ring name, but it would appear that it was in fact Azumah himself. At the press conference after the fight, where both fighters complimented each other, Azumah said, “I am a professor of boxing. Fenech is a great fighter, but today I proved that I’m better.” The media around the world appeared to love the description, as the title “Professor” was linked to his name by more than one media outlet in their post-fight write-ups. Ultimately, the origin matters not, but from that day forward Azumah Nelson became known as “The Professor.” (by Ashley Morrison)
Graziano, so nervous he twice had to be told to relax, then told how the man approached him in the dressing room and made the $100,000 proposition... http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xvSNIQK3A...498_509621572516194_2377290129640822734_n.jpg
"Gene Tunney is sitting in the back row" he whispered.."he's got a cap pulled down over his eyes and is wearing smoked glasses"... http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Jzk9ApgTA...550_510256655786019_2338949228780115057_n.jpg
"I knew from the quiver in his voice that the gentleman calling on the phone wanted to tell me something he knew would knock my socks off. He was so right. "They found a Harry Greb film!" "You're full of you-know-what," I said. "Did you see it yet?" "No. Not yet. But I'm getting a tape in a few days." "Good," I said. "Give me a call after you do." To understand the historic significance of what the gentleman was saying , you need some background. From the day when collecting boxing films became a cult art form, the most astute cult members grew increasingly frustrated when not an inch of film footage of Greb, an immortal of fistic immortals, had been uncovered. Compounding that frustration was the fact that extensive footage had been discovered of dozens of famous boxers, even 19th-century champion John L. Sulliven. As a matter of fact, the very first boxing movies were taken of an exhibition between Jim Corbett and Peter Courtney at Edison, New Jersey, in 1894, which was the year Greb was born. How could there be nothing on Greb? My old friend, the late dean of boxing film collectors, Jim Jacobs, and I kidded each other for more than a quarter-century about the non-existence of Greb fim footage. Many times I would call Jacobs. "Hey, Jimbo," I'd say, "You know what the mailman delivered this morning?" "Don't give me that again," Jacobs would snort, knowing instinctivly that I was throwing him another Harry Greb curve. Jimmy knew I was jiving, but it was still fun. The last time I saw Jacobs was a year before his death. He had come to our offices in Rockville centre in search of still photos of Stanley Ketchel. He found three pictures that he wanted. I promised I'd have prints made and send them to him. With Ketchel out of the way, we turned, as usual, to our favorite mystic subject. "If somebody--somebody astute about fight films, not just a guy who knows nothing about collecting--found, say, Greb footage in his cellar or attic, and he called me for a deal, I would trade him anything I have in my collection for whatever he has of Harry greb," Jacobs said. You can understand why, when i recieved that out-of-the-blue phone call about the possible discovery of Greb footage, why I immediately thought of my dear, late friend. As hopeful as I was that this would not turn out to be yet another Greb false alarm, I had mixed emotions. Wouldn't it be a shame if this was indeed the real thing and Jimmy hadn't lived long enough to enjoy it? It was indeed the real thing! Remarkably sharp film footage of Greb had been discovered in the archives of a major American University, where it had rested, unnoticed, for about 65 years. You can imagine how tense and excited I was as I sat in the screening room with the young man who had brought me the film, collector Phil Guarnieri, waiting to see for myself wether or not this whole thing was for real. The first thing to fill the screen was the smiling face of Harry greb; the same face I had seen in hundreds of still photo's for more than half a century. But this time the face was alive. The eyes blinked, the head turned, the lips curled into a mischeivous smile. I was astonished and moved to the point of tears. "I've got to be dreaming. This can't be! Pinch me, phil," I said to the young collector seated next to me. "Tell me I'm not dreaming." For the next four minutes 43 seconds I was mesmorised, watching the great harry greb punching the bag, skipping rope, sparring with Philadelphia Jack o'Brien, exercising, clowning for the camera, playing handball, and suddenly dressed in the tight-fitting, striped suit of a broadway dandy, with an oversiazed brimmed straw hat and a broad grin on his one-of-a-kind face. (We all have lookalikes, but not Greb. He was a true original.) To have an opportunity to see harry greb alive and in the prime of life was beyond my wildest dreams, comparable for a fight film collector to seeing Abraham Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg Address or Napoleon bidding farewell to his troops at waterloo. My only regret is that Jim Jacobs was not sitting with me in that screening room the day Harry greb was re-incarnated. Had he been there, years of kidding and teasing would have been erased by less than five minutes of wonderful reality." (by Stanley Weston) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUpN1x1uhms
the story of 'nipper' ... pat daly (born - glamorgan, wales)....who turned professional at aged 10 in 1923...went on to become rated in the bantamweight world top 10 with ring magazine and fought his last fight aged 17...with professional record of 99 wins, 11 losses and 8 draws...including wins over british and european champions of the day... http://i1127.photobucket.com/albums/l629/dougm1971/boxing related/trag1.jpg http://i1127.photobucket.com/albums/l629/dougm1971/boxing related/trag2.jpg
ex-champ johnny bratton not angered over his imposter.. http://i1127.photobucket.com/albums/l629/dougm1971/boxing related/232.jpg http://i1127.photobucket.com/albums/l629/dougm1971/boxing related/233.jpg http://i1127.photobucket.com/albums/l629/dougm1971/boxing related/234.jpg
By Wright Thompson from ESPN... ....................................... I went to see Muhammad Ali on Thursday night, and hours later I'm still struggling with the profound sadness of the evening. I'm not sure if other people felt it as strongly as I did, but I walked out of the 5th Street Gym in a daze. Arriving at the party, I wasn't sure what I'd find. I'd heard he has good days and bad days. I know he loves children and still likes to laugh. Maybe he'd be feeling warm and nostalgic. The occasion was a joyous one. Ali's old trainer, Angelo Dundee, was reopening his famous gym and Ali agreed to attend the celebration. I wanted to see him for lots of reasons. Part of it was a "bucket list" sort of deal. But I also wanted a glimpse of the old Ali. Does that person still exist? If you're in the room with him, can you still feel the spark? Hundreds of people packed into the gym. We were all pouring sweat. Entire shirts, drenched. There was no air conditioning. Every so often, folks stepped out into the muggy Miami night to cool off. While they waited, people talked among themselves about wanting to see Ali. They talked about him like he was the Eiffel Tower or the Grand Canyon. He's an attraction. Something to see, not to be moved by the experience, but to check it off. I saw my own motives reflected in the people around me, and it made me feel guilty. A few old friends and lots of boxing people came, but much of the crowd was there to worship in the church of celebrity. The altar was set: velvet rope outside with a guest list and VIP badges, a deejay inside, party girls in tight dresses and trendy shoes. A man dressed as a gaucho served meat. The bartenders looked dressed for the midnight shift at the Tropicana. The only thing missing was bottle service. The whole event felt like a South Beach club opening. I slid out the door to get a break. On the street, I saw Bert Sugar, the famous old boxing writer. He wore a seersucker jacket and smoked a thick cigar. He looked at the new gym, and at the Wachovia bank next door, where the original stood until they knocked it down. I asked Sugar if it made him sad to see Ali. "No," he says. He said seeing Ali makes him think about him how fast the world moves. Everyone from that time is old or gone. Nothing reminds him more of his vanished youth than seeing Ali struggle. When they were kings, indeed. "We were young with Ali," he says. Once, Ali could knock out George Foreman. Now? Every morning, Dundee's right-hand man Mark Grismer told me, he has to make a decision. His Parkinson's medicine controls the shakes and allows him to be in public, but he can't talk when he takes it. So he has to choose: shake or talk? A few years ago, Sugar tells me, he asked Ali if he regretted boxing. Ali told him that if he didn't box, he'd have been a sign painter in Louisville. The pleasure was worth the pain. "To become the most famous man in the world?" Sugar says, trailing off. Back inside the party, it was really, really hot. Every man in the place had a wringing wet shirt. The crowd grew restless, aggressive. They wanted their dose of celebrity and they wanted it 10 minutes ago. "Put your cameras away," one organizer yelled. "This is no joke!" "If you have a phone or a camera," another yelled, "it's gone." Some movement in the corner got the crowd's attention, and everyone rushed to the back. Another velvet rope cordoned off a wide, round table. Partygoers pressed against the rope, bunched up close. "Let me see Ali so I can leave," a man said. "I'm about ready to throw in the towel," another said. "I've seen him before." An organizer screamed at the crowd. "Ali is not coming unless everybody takes two steps back," he yelled. "Is he actually here?" a guy asked. The event folks were red-faced. "He's not coming if you don't back up!" "We're about to lose our guest of the evening. We're not gonna have our guest. I'm serious!" It became apparent that Ali was in the building, and he wasn't coming out until there was more room. This went on and on, with organizers standing on chairs, screaming into the crowd. People stared at the back door, as if to will him to walk through it. No one moved. A woman got on the microphone. "I know it's hot. I know everybody's a little bit cranky. Mr. Ali doesn't want to feel claustrophobic." "You knock over the ropes," an organizer yelled, "he's not gonna come out." Then, after a half-hour of bouncers pushing back the crowd, Ali arrived. He shuffled to his seat. His sister-in-law, Marilyn, and his manager, Bernie, helped. He sat down and drank a glass of water while Marilyn held a napkin under his mouth. It felt like a zoo. This wasn't a ****tail party for Ali. It was a public viewing. "I saw the top of his head!" a woman gushed. The crowd chanted: "Ali! Ali! Ali!" A woman aimed a camera and Marilyn and Bernie pointed frantically. A guy took a picture and a bouncer snatched his phone and then physically pushed him toward the door. "You gotta go," he said. The event folks wanted to make sure everyone else got the message. "There's the first example," they crowed. Ali sat at the table. Marilyn slipped a pair of sunglasses on his face. Someone put a photo book about him on the table and Ali opened it up. It was a circus around him, and, in the middle of the madness, he gently lifted each page and turned, his long fingers delicate on the glossy paper. Soon, after 20 minutes, he'd be whisked into a waiting SUV, where Marilyn would strap him into the front seat. But in the moment, people crowded around him for official photos, dozens of people, moving in and out, grinning, putting their arms around him like he was a mascot. He didn't acknowledge them, or look at the camera. They smiled and posed. He looked down at the book. I wondered what he was thinking, if he felt like a freak show at the carnival. I wondered if he remembered the old building next door, remembered the Beatles coming to visit him there, remembered the promise of those days. He looked sick, and I thought about how much he must love Angelo to fly down here for this. His lips were pursed. He looked absent and lost, like a wax statue, and I found myself 15 feet away from the most famous man in the world, overcome with sadness. I hoped this was just a bad day, hoped tomorrow would be different. The groups of people came and went for their picture, one woman giving a fist pump and hollering "Yeah!" after the shutter clicked. Ali just sat there, sunglasses hiding his famous eyes. He flipped the pages, slowly looking at photographs of the man he used to be.
Artie Levine, who stood at 5' 8", was a right handed slugger, with an orthodox fighting style. His left hook made him a fighter who no one looked forward to facing in the ring. He was trained by Charley Goldman, the famed trainer of boxing legend Rocky Marciano. Levine fought professionally for eight years (1941–49) before retiring at the age of 24. On November 6, 1946, Levine challenged Sugar Ray Robinson. Robinson claimed Levine hit him with the hardest punch of his career when he knocked Sugar Ray down and out for a 21-second long count. Instead of directing Levine back to his corner, the referee walked him to his corner then returned about 10 seconds later to begin the count on Robinson. Robinson came back and KO'd Levine in the tenth round. Of the fight, The Ring Magazine wrote: Sugar ... was almost kayoed in the fourth round. A left hook, followed by a right cross, both to the chin, put (him) down and almost out... Sugar rose unsteadily and called upon all his ring skill and stamina to last out the round...Sugar had several other close calls during the course of the evening. Artie's left hooks and resounding right crosses occasionally found their marks and with telling effect. Robinson's class and body punching were taking their toll from the heavier Levine as the bout progressed. Sugar started the tenth with knockout intent. With the round about two minutes gone, Sugar paralyzed Artie with a right to the solar plexus. Then Sugar became a 'killer,' throwing punches with reckless abandon to both head and body with the result that Artie was beaten to the floor. (The Ring, January 1947, page 34) "Yes, I was the first guy to knock him out. They gave him a long count….I knocked him out, but they gave him a 20-second count. There was a riot at ringside. They protected him at Cleveland. The referee walked me back to my corner and then he picked the count up at ‘one.’ He was supposed to start the count immediately upon him going down….It was the largest crowd they ever had in Cleveland at that time. Any fight. I got $25,000 for that fight. It was a lot of money in that time. I got half of the money. $12,500. The manager paid the expenses out of my share. This was an agreement we had. Isn’t that terrible? I got half.”
the payout sheet for the night sugar ray leonard beat tommy hearns in 81 http://i.imgur.com/OdPCHha.gif http://boxrec.com/show_display.php?show_id=2085
They say I havent trained hard enough for this fight. Who is to be the judge of how hard I work? I have worked all right, harder than most people think. Thats Randy Turpin before the fight with Olson. He only spars 30 rounds leading up to it, and does this with his featherweight-size brother Jackie. Beats the hell out of Jackie, sure, but it aint a real workout. Does he not take Carl Bobo Olson seriously? Or is he distracted, something on his mind A woman. Adele Daniels. The light-skinned beauty from Harlem that Turpin met on his first trip outside of England, back in 51 when he gave the middleweight title back to Sugar Ray Robinson, the belt hed taken just months before. Turpins in New York again and shes hanging around. Getting crazy at his hotel, making a scene. George Middleton, Turpins manager, had warned Randy about Adele when they first met. Randys getting the message now, and hes trying to hide out, staying at the camp, laying low. He wont train in public, wont talk to the press, even telling folks he may just fly back to England, forget the whole thing. Bobo Olson doesnt believe all the talk, thinks Turpin is in great shape. Thinks his opponents camp is trying to mess with his head, get him to let his guard down. So he trains twice as hard. A few weeks before the match, Adele Daniels accuses Randy Turpin of assault. The fight is held at Madison Square Garden, in front of almost 19 000. With Sugar Ray retired, the World Middleweight title is vacant the winner will take it. So they get to it. Turpin owns the first three rounds, despite his head being elsewhere. In the fourth, Olson opens up Randys cheek with a jab. They go back and forth a bit, but its Olsons round. By the sixth, Olson is taking control, leading the fight. Ninth round, Turpin gets a couple good shots in, regains confidence. He comes at Bobo with a left hook, but Olson slips it. Turpin comes at him with a right, but gets caught with a left hook of Olsons. Back against the ropes, four, five, six big punches from Olson, no answer from Turpin. Randy gets off the ropes, throws his right but cant land it. Back to the ropes and its left, right, left, right from Olson and Turpin goes down. He beats the count and the round is over. Turpins caught on the ropes with another left hook in the tenth and is down for the second time. The eleventh, bang-bang, double-jab from Bobo, putting Turpin on the ropes again. Turpin gets away, only to get caught with a brutal belly shot, and hes leaning, leaning. It goes on like this, Turpin being held up, Olson moving in, working it. Randy does get a good round off in the thirteenth, avoids punishment and dishes out some of his own, but its late. In the last round, the fifteenth, Turpin lets it hang out, goes for the knockout, but he just cant land the shot he needs. He takes the round, and theres some pride in that, but the night is Olsons. If I had been in my natural mental state, I could have stopped him about the eighth round. But Ive had so many personal troubles recently, I wasnt myself. Thats Turpin after the fight. He says Olson is no Sugar Ray. Adele Daniels drops the assault charges a couple weeks after the fight. She does end up suing Turpin for $100, 000 in damages, but gets only $3500, out of court, in the winter of 55. Turpin just fades after that, losing the bouts he needs to stay relevant. When he wins hes putting down nobodies in nothing-fights. He finally retires in the early sixties. Short on cash, he turns to professional wrestling, but he was never a showman and even those crowds tire of him. In 1966, hes bankrupt. He shoots himself, and hes gone. But you go to Market Square in Warwick, England and youll find a statue of Randy Turpin. You look at that fighting pose, and you can flash way back to July 1951, when he took the belt from Sugar Ray in fifteen rounds. Way back when he got his taste, when everything shone so bright. ~ David Como
the oldest ages of participants in a professional boxing match... William Jubb vs. George Washington Brown from boxrec via the new york times - (Jubb was 92 & Brown was 80.) They boasted "whiskers of the Kentucky colonel type and through the four rounds both vainly tried time and again to reach the button. Round one found octogenarians waving like palm trees in the gentle ocean breeze." Brown floored Jubb's false teeth in the third stanza. By the end of the bout "both aspirants were locked in an embrace on the floor [after falling during a clinch] as 2,000 tourists cheered.... Charles W. Eldridge, the referee, 101 years old, declared the battle a draw." New York Times http://boxrec.com/list_bouts.php?human_id=250894&cat=boxer
"The perfect prizefighter, to me, next to Dempsey, in type the pure, unspoiled standard bearer of the prize ring was a middleweight from Nebraska by the name of Ace Hudkins. He wasn't the best fighter in the world, indeed he was never a world's champion; but he was tough, hard, mean, cantankerous, combative, foul, nasty, courageous, acrimonious, and filled at all times with bitter and flaming lust for battle. If there was a kindly trait in Hudkins, I never knew it. He weighed roughly around 150 pounds and had sort of pinkish, tousled hair, a long stubborn jaw that always showed a four-day stubble of beard, and a pair of the most baleful and vindictive blue eyes ever placed in a human head. His lips were thin and his teeth always bared in a snarl. He was utterly vicious, truculent, and brutal. He would heel, rip, thumb and butt with his head. He was meant to be strictly a rough-and-tumble bar-room fighter." (Paul Gallico - sports editor of the New York Daily News) . . New Yorkers had gathered to cheer their favorite, Ruby Goldstein, the pale-skinned boy with the big eyes they called the Jewel of the Ghetto on a warm June night in 1926. They had cheered him through 23 straight victories; tonight would be another as he knocked out some rube from out West, a raw kid called Ace Hudkins. When the fight was made, another ghetto favorite, lightweight Sid Terris, sounded a warning. Sid had outboxed Hudkins in Chicago for a decision a few months previously, and he cautioned, "That Hudkins, he's too tough. Keep him away from Ruby, I'm telling you. He'll chase anybody out of the ring" But they hadn't heard of Ace Hudkins in New York and they backed Ruby with every dollar not nailed down. It was all over inside four rounds. Ace climbed off the canvas in the first round and in round four hung Goldstein over the ropes like a bundle of wet washing. The Evening Journal headline on June 26 said it all: '$400,000 Changed Hands. It would be remembered as the fight that broke the Jewish banks.' It was the fight that made Ace Hudkins. (by John Jarrett)
The joint was packed, a full house, with people standing around the ropes. Stooped over, waving Clay's letter of intent, I shuffled my way to the front of the crowd, chirping in my best Southern falsetto, 'Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo! Is that Cautious Clay I see up there? Cautious, why are you afraid to fight a little ol' washerwoman?' When I reached the ring, I swung the mop and bucket through the ropes and then climbed through. Out came the rags. Out came the box of Grandma's Lye Soap. Cassius looked stunned. He was quiet and confused, just like he'd been when I'd chided him about his Popeye arms in Louisville. I knew full well how ridiculous I looked, but the stunt had the desired effect. Diles quickly instructed his cameraman to swing over to me before he stuck his microphone in my face. Naturally, I stayed in character. 'Cautious Cassius backed out of fighting me,' I cackled, waving the letter of intent at the camera. 'He's chicken. How can he possibly be afraid of fighting someone like little ol' me?' My stunt was the lead item on all the TV sportscasts later that evening, and in the next day's papers Clay danced around the questions by saying he wasn't going to fight anybody - least of all - that dirty Chuvalo - before his upcoming title shot against Liston in February. My appearance in drag wasn't the only excitement at the Big D that afternoon. While all the commotion was going on in the ring, somebody slipped into the dressing room and swiped Clay's wallet. A handful of shady suspects who were hanging around the room were questioned, but the culprit was never found. I later found out that Cassius only had about $80 in his billfold, but he was furious that anyone would have the temerity to rob him. I guess he found out Detroit was a lot less friendly than Louisville. (by George Chuvalo)