Barney Ross vs. the following....

...................................

 

Wow those fights are all so close. Anyone who fought Barney Ross better pack their lunch - because its going to be a long day. He could certainly win any of those fights he was that good.

The only one I see with a very slight advantage would be Ike Williams. Rangy, mean and had muderous power. However, Barney Ross is not only a great champion but was among the toughest of the tough. Never lost by KO, not even a KD in even is his last bout versus the great pressure (arguably the greatest pressure fighter ever) Henry Armstrong he was beaten senseless, yet never dropped and no way would he ever quit. Ross was world famous for his footwork and known to be fleet of foot and could pepper that jab all night but was never a power puncher. He also wasn't afraid to bang it out, against Tony Canzoneri those guys went to war all action stuff.

On a side note I absolutely love Barney Ross. His name always makes me smile. I'm not Jewish nor even a fan of his style but the guy's life was all about redemption and overcoming the odds. Unlike Tyson he overcame his demons and did not let situations no matter how bad keep him down. He overcame every challenge but did lose a bit of himself in the process. If they made a new Hollywood film about him it would not be believed its almost like a Forrest Gump type story. He is born in the ghetto, rough times in 1929 with the great depression- people literally starving and can't get work, his Rabbi father gets killed , his mother breaks down all the kids get sent away. Without the guidance of his father, the once religious Ross turns away from Judaism and starts hanging out with the bad boys. He even gets a job working for Al Capone. He turns into a boxer trying to help put his family back together and is an absolute star fighting and beating the best of the best. He finishes boxing then goes to WW2 but its never easy for Ross.

He could have just chilled out entertaining the troops. Nope, he goes to the front lines fighting the Japanese. He becomes a war hero fighting off and killing nearly two dozen Japanese soldiers. Its said best by the virtual Jewish Library - "He gathered them in a shell crater and defended them through the night by firing more than 400 rifle rounds. When he ran out of bullets, Ross threw 22 grenades at enemy machine gun positions. Ross claimed that he said two hours of prayers, "many in Hebrew," hoping to make it through the night. Finally, at dawn, with two of his three comrades dead, wounded in the leg and foot himself and out of ammunition, Ross — who weighed less than 140 pounds — picked up his surviving wounded comrade (who weighed 230 pounds) and carried him to safety. Ross, whose helmet had more than 30 shrapnel dents, was awarded the Silver Star for heroism." You can't make this stuff up.

He gets real bad injuries from that incident and becomes a morphine addict and admits to speding $500 a day (this is the 40's that's a huge amount of money). He beats that addiction by just going cold turkey (amazing willpower) then goes around lecturing kids about drugs. He even helps the fledging state of Israel, he had some involvment in running guns to the rebels. I'm not sure about his part but seems more like he aided certain people.

The guy was a "real man" no bragging no BS he just got it done and people loved it for him. It reminds me of the saying "they don't make men like they used to" and ain't that the truth with Barney Ross. It was almost like he was being mentioned in the famous book the Count of Monte Cristo -"What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. You must look into that storm and shout ..Do your worst, for I will do mine!

 

Rafman, WELL DONE !. There will never be another Barney Ross. Never kod in the ring despite fighting such great fighters as Canzoneri, McLarnin, Billy Petrolle, Henry Armstrong, the bigger Ceferino Garcia, twice, etc. After he retired he ENLISTED in the Marines, where you described so well his heroism...I was too young to see him fight, but one night a and some young friends of mine went to a social event in NYC, where a man with gray hair was all alone at the bar nursing a drink. I recognized him as Barney Ross, but I didn't have the cujones to walk over and speak to this truly brave man...I am sure he would have appreciated my gesture...

 

Ah mi amigo what a conversation that would have been. All I know about Barney Ross is from books and fight films. But from that very story you tell it sums it up perfectly. Quiet, contented and humble in a NYC bar, when he really has all the reasons to be angry at the world or demand things from others considering how much he personally suffered or brag about how much of a man he is - nope that wouldn't be Barney. As the Bible says "He who humbles himself is exhalted and he who exhalts himself is humbled".

My mind boggles - a three time boxing champ, probably somewhat well off (however the mob did control much of boxing at that time so he was probably short changed often), the hero of the Jewish community, goes to the front lines in one of the most vicious wars in history. At that time in 1942 the Japanese were rampaging through Asia - raping, killing, real nasty stuff, the Americans had to kill almost each and every Japanese soldier down to the last man as they would never quit - and Barney wanted to be part of that. To his core he is an everyman but still the best man.

When his father was shot dead by two thugs trying to rob his store Barney was only a boy. He then turned into a petty thief and low level mob enforcer and by all accounts not a very nice man. He became everything his ultra religious father hated. But after boxing and WW2 he eventually came back to his Jewish roots and was as gentle and self sacrificing as can be- he would have made his father more than proud. What a great story and a true boxing immortal.

 

Raf, there was a book biography of Barney Ross written about 10 years ago. The author was Douglas Century and you might either buy the book or get it from your public library...There was a movie made on his life called ****** On My Back, about Barney Ross's life and struggle to overcome an addiction to morphine that started when he developed Malaria in the jungles of
Guadalc****...Cameron Mitchell played Barney Ross in that movie of his life...

 

That is a great book. I highly recommend it to anyone. Will have to that find that movie. I watched the trailer on Youtube and it seems well done. Any idea who plays Henry Armstrong? The man who plays Hammering Hank looks like he can handle himself, by any chance was he once a pro fighter? I could't find any names on the full cast sheet .

 

I found a great piece of research with even more details about Barney. It is taken from Louisproject.org:

"Fighting as a professional allowed Ross to get his siblings out of the orphanage and to buy a home for his mother. But in an all too familiar pattern, the rest of the money was spent away on the kind of wastrel life-style that other champion boxers, including Mike Tyson, succumb to. Ross was the quintessential party guy who could be seen at popular nightspots every night of the week buying drinks for the house. Most of the money, however, went to feed what can only be called a gambling addiction. Ross was a permanent feature at the racetrack where he had an uncanny ability to bet on losing horses. His friend Al Jolson, also a big racing fan, once told him not to sit near him: “Stay away from me–I don’t want to catch your poison.” After beating Bobby Pacho on March 27, 1934, Ross blew his entire purse in a single day of betting."

"At the age of 33, Barney Ross inexplicably enlisted in the Marines. He needed special permission to join since he was far over the age limit, as well as being out of shape. Douglas Century believes this was motivated as much by Ross’s lack of direction than by a gung-ho desire to fight. He ended up on Guadalc**** and in the midst of some of the fiercest fighting in the Pacific. On November 19, 1942, Ross was involved in a bloody battle that convinced him–according to an Esquire article he wrote later on–that “fighting wasn’t a game.” Century recounts the action that would lead to Ross being a decorated war hero and ultimately to morphine addiction"

"He calculated the range of a Japanese machine-gunner. He didn’t dare rise, so, lying flat on his belly, he lobbed three grenades in fast succession. The machine-gun fire halted. He crawled over to the trench in which Heavy Atkins and Freeman lay bleeding. He unhooked the grenades from their belts. As he crawled forward again, a mortar shell burst and shrapnel tore into his side, arm, and leg. In the darkness, he did his best to dress his own shrapnel wounds."

"The low-hanging leaves began to patter with a hard rain. He gathered the rainwater and did his best to give Monak, Atkins, and Freeman a few drops to drink. The Japanese infantrymen were setting up at closer range, no more than thirty yards away. One of the infantrymen was struck again. A slug tore through Barney’s left ankle and, screaming, he had to cut his boot away with his knife."

"The pain was so intense that he felt himself losing consciousness. Delirious, feverish, shaking–he didn’t yet realize he was suffering from the malaria that would plague him for years to come–he was convinced that if he blacked out he’d never awaken. He had twenty-two grenades–in some versions of the firefight it is twenty-one–and threw all except one, which he planned to hold in reserve should the Japanese soldiers storm into the foxhole ready to die."

"Barney lay in the foxhole for some thirteen hours–a cruel “lifetime,” he would later call it–watching over the wounded Marines and infantrymen. “I never expected to get out. I was crying, and praying, and shooting, and throwing grenades, and half the time, I guess, I was out of my head.” Throughout the night he had comforted himself by repeating the Sh’ma Yisroel–“Hear O Israel, the Lord is God, the Lord is One.” He prayed for himself, the wounded Marines and infantrymen, and “anybody else who was ready to die.” In his delirium he saw the visage of a living dead man, bearded, in soiled apron, surrounded by paper sacks in the nameless grocery on Jefferson Street. “You have no idea how I talked to Pa throughout that night,” Barney later told his brother George."

 

"Ross would be treated with morphine in a military hospital. His misery was compounded by recurring bouts of malaria. Later he wrote in a memoir that “The morphine lifted me out of the snake pit and let me climb into the clouds.” After returning to civilian life, he discovered that he could not do without it. He began to spend whatever money he had left after the gambling fiascos of years past on drugs. He later recalled, “I spent $250,000 on drugs in four years. Some of it was for buying silence. I paid through the nose.” When he wasn’t prowling around for his next fix, he was being feted at banquets as a war hero. In November 1944, he met with FDR for a Rose Garden ceremony. The President cited him for “his great personal courage and sincere devotion to his comrades.”

"Throughout his life, Barney Ross would not allow public opinion to dictate who would be his friend or ally. He was this way about Jack Ruby, a life-long friend he met during his hustling days on Maxwell Street. Ruby, of course, would eventually move down to Dallas and open up a strip club. Shortly after the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald, Ruby entered Dallas Police Headquarters and shot Oswald to death. Ruby’s mob connections have always suggested to some that the original plot against JFK was orchestrated by the Mafia rather than the CIA, let alone Soviet or Cuban spy agencies.Ross was a character witness at Ruby’s trial in what amounted to a lost cause. Another character witness, Hyman Rubinstein, Ruby’s Warsaw-born older brother, testified that Jack had “hung around Barney Ross all his life. He liked Barney Ross. Everybody liked Barney Ross.”

The article later on describes how Hollywood was very reluctant to make a movie about him because drugs were still so taboo.

 

Another interesting anecdote about Ross's life is while in Chicago working for Capone, he rubbed elbows with a Guy named Jacob Rubinstein. AKA Jack Ruby.

 

Ross even testified at his trial. They were life-long friends.