Met him in the '50s in Al Netlow's bar (Netlow also fought SRR) in Coral Gables, Fla. He was sellin' insurance at the time.
All I know is he was supposed to be one of the better "boxing" middleweights in his time, and that he was the last fighter my father signed to meet, before he found out that he had a dead kidney and had to cancel, and that he had been fighting with that dead kidney for about six years.
Your mention of your dad's kidney problem (and that in a conversation you further revealed he embarked on a pro career without a useful right because of an accident), Ck, brings into sharp focus the real meaning of "old school" fighters. It's not a question of a better breed of fighters; it was a different breed of men -- men hardened by the recession. In some ways being a pro then was like being in the mafia: Each would be able to say: "This is the life we've chosen," and suck-it-up and throw-down any time, any place. They were the real Men of Respect.
Yeah J, there was never any questioning, never a "why" anyway, just a when and a where. My generation was probably the first to think we had a right to question anything; in some ways we're probably better off. I know my old man paid the price for that mindset; a plate in his right arm, losing a kidney due to playing football without any hip pads, and years after he was out of the ring, losing an eye to the game, but he was a man's man, that's for sure, and always had himself when not much else. I knew these guys growing up; so many of them were that way, and I can only imagine what you saw in your time and place. So much color they had, so much style but substance to back it up. Where I grew up the two worst things you could be were a dog or a rat; now we have fighters that muscle reporters and other civilians, male or female it doesn't matter, and mafiosi who think nothin' of turnin' states for a clean slate under an assumed name.
That's something else Chinxkid. It's hard to overcome a fighter with a hard mindset like that. That whole generation was something else. They don't call it America's greatest generation for nothing.
Thanks for that. Sometimes I wish it wouldn't have been so though. I look around and alotta guys my age still have their father, and mine's been gone going on 24 years.
