Craziest out-of-the-ring stories?

Larry Merchant claimed he witnessed Sonny Liston arguing with some hookers trying to settle up. At one point Sonny barked,"What about all them sandwiches you ate?!"

 

Joe Louis and Rocky Marciano were in the same casino in Vegas, early 60's when Louis, who was always broke, asked Marciano, who was the ultimate tightwad, to loan him gambling money.

"Let me borrow a hundred, Rock, I'm feelin' hot I'll win it back and give you a few extra bucks"* he said.

Marciano lends him a hundred bucks, Louis loses it.

A half hour later Louis comes back, he says "Just give me one more hundred, Rock, I swear to you, I'm ripe to hit it big..."

Marciano, who had a wallet that moths flew out of when he opened it snorted, but gave Louis, who was a buddy another $100 dollars. The Rock really was a soft-hearted guy.

He then goes to another part of the Casino and tells his brother, or an aide, I can't remember which "If Joe Louis comes around looking for me, tell him I left, the guy's going to want to borrow more money..."

A few minutes later Louis comes around to Marciano's brother/aide and says "Hey, where's Rocky, I have to speak to him."

"Oh Joe, sorry he left, you missed him." The man replied.

"Oh Jeez that's too bad, I just hit a jackpot, and I wanted to give him his $200 back."



*not direct quotes, but along the lines.

 

LOL. Great post

 

http://classicboxingsociety.blogspot.ie/2015/04/the-johnny-bratton-imposter.html

 

One day around 1932 Chuck Wiggins was drinking in the Empire Tap Room, when in strolled Tommy O’Brien, a good middleweight from the west coast. Tommy could bend his elbow with the best of them, and since Chuck was an old friend, the two sat down to do some serious drinking. After a number of drinks, O’Brien turned to Wiggins, “You Know Chuck, you are a great guy, and have done me a lot of favors, and I’ll always like ya, but I always figured you ain’t as rough as people say. Someday, I hope we get a chance to fight each other, cause I think I can whip your butt.”
Wiggins shrugged his shoulders, and said, “Bartender, give us another drink.” Then turning to Tommy O’Brien, “Lets finish this drink, and then go out in the alley, and get this out of your system. The loser comes back in, and buys the house a drink.”
Finishing their drinks, both walked back to an area in the alley. Wiggins takes off his thick glasses, and both take off their coats. “I’m ready when you are,” said Chuck. Punches started flying. Down goes O’Brien flat on his back. Wiggins extends his hand to Tommy and helps him up. “You slipped Tom, get up.”
O’Brien got up, and away they went again. A couple of minutes, and Tommy again hits the deck.
“You ready to buy that house drink, Tommy?” asked Chuck as he helped O’Brien to his feet. “I’m convinced,” replied Tommy.
They dusted themselves off; strolled back inside as if nothing happened, and stayed drunk together for the rest of the week.

 

"They drew a pistol on us and took the belt back"

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


"Juan Zurita, he was past due for a defense so they named me as contender and gave me a shot at it. They threatened to take the title away from him.
Since I was a little kid, I had envisioned being lightweight champion. I dreamed about the lightweight title and I finally won it. So I guess when I won it that night I probably leaped about five feet in the air. I knocked him out in the second round. It was a combination, I'll never forget it, it was a right hand to the body and a left on his chin. He went down for the full count.
I was almost killed down there, too, for beating him. The Mexicans, we were almost killed. Then the Mexicans started throwing bricks and things. The cops, our bodyguards, two cops, looked around, they were gone. Connie McCarthy (my manager), he was knocked out with a brick to the head. His head was split open with that brick. That's when the Mexican came up, he said "Gimmie the belt!" I haven't seen the title belt since that night, since April 18th, 1945. I saw the belt for maybe five minutes. I haven't seen it since. Maybe it's down in Mexico City now. The fellow pulled a pistol out. He was going to kill all of us. So I said "Give the man the damn belt!" They took the belt back. They drew a pistol on us and took the belt back. We made it to the dressing room. They followed us to the airport the next morning."

- Ike Williams.

 

In 1918, former World Lightweight Champion Ad Wolgast escaped from the hospital where he was being held and lived for a time in the mountains of North Carolina, where he was eventually “discovered” and given over to the care of Jack Doyle, a boxing promoter from Vernon, California. *Doyle offered to let Wolgast live and train with him, with the stipulation that Wolgast would never again be allowed to enter a prizefighting ring, and as a result, Wolgast spent the next seven years (from 1920 to 1927) diligently training every day, skipping rope, running, and shadow boxing for a fight that never came. *Wolgast trained from sun up to sun down, and would retire exhausted each evening with the belief that his title shot was always a day away. *For close to seven years, this ritual went on, with Doyle offering encouragement and keeping Wolgast preoccupied and singularly focused, in a sad re-embodiment of his former self.

 

Paul Berlenbach (the "Astoria Assassin"), was born a deaf mute, and remained so until the age of eighteen...then a miraculous event occurred...while working at a disability camp for children, the 18 year old Berlenbach tried to recover a boy's kite stuck at the top of the tree's branches...climbing a pole Berlenbach released the kite from the branches but touched a live electrical wire and was electrocuted, and fell unconscious to the ground...medics were called and worked on Berlenbach frantically and he was revived.
To his amazement his hearing was restored to normal and the 18 year old Berlenbach after a long treatment developed normal speech.
He then became a wrestler, then switched to boxing becoming a LH champion (1925-26) in a golden age of great light-heavyweights all due to a miracle performing a good deed.

 

REFEREE ALMOST ACCUSED OF MURDER

On 5 October 1982, Belfast’s Hugh Russell and Davy Larmour clashed at the Ulster Hall for the Irish bantamweight title. The fight, which was also a final eliminator for the British title, was a truly bloody affair that went the full fifteen rounds. Russell was awarded the narrowest of decisions by referee Mike Jacobs in a ring that resembled a butchers apron. On returning to London, Jacobs left his white shirt in to be dry-cleaned. However, when he returned to collect it he was handed an official letter from the girl in the shop asking him to report to the local police station. Once there, Jacobs was taken into a room and asked by CID how his shirt had come to be covered in so much blood? A simple explanation that he had refereed a boxing match in Belfast duly resolved the matter with the police. It seemed that the owner of the dry-cleaners had become suspicious when he was handed in the shirt and phoned police as he was convinced that Jacobs had been involved in a bloody murder.

 

1938

"For a few days at least, there were two Jimmy Slatterys"

http://classicboxingsociety.blogspot.ie/2015/02/blog-post_88.html?m=1

 

A knock on the Hotel door. Les opens it. It is the young hotel porter, a painfully thin Negro, and he is deeply sorry suh, but there is someone downstairs who is insisting on seeing Mistuh Darcy. Sez he is an Oss-tralian, too. And he used to be a boxer. The thing is, Mistuh Darcy, it is difficult to know much of him, ‘cos he might be drunk, but he sez his name is ‘Griff’, ‘Griffa’, sum’n like that?

Young Griffo? The boxing hero of Australia, who had left home shores in 1893 never to return? Great! Show him up! But Mistuh Darcy, he very drunk, not too good dressed, terrible, rotten, black teeth, and thuh hotel probably wouldn’t want likes of him in the building… Fine, but please get him!

And so the young porter does, returning shortly afterwards and furtively pushing a fat old drunk man into Mistuh Darcy’s room before skedaddling. He is going to catch hell from management, if they find out.

And so there they are, Les Darcy and Young Griffo—each a hero before heading to America to seek their international fame and fortune—meeting in a New York hotel room in the early days of 1917.

They talk.

The fact that ‘Young Griffo’ is no longer young is obvious, as is the fact that the young porter hadn’t been exaggerating in his description. Griffo’s teeth are terrible, he reeks of alcohol, and is evidently doing it very tough indeed. These days one of his tricks to get more alcohol is to take a handkerchief into a bar, stand on it and bet someone that they can’t lay a single punch on him for a whole minute while he doesn’t take a step off the hankie, but simply dodges and ducks all their blows! No, he couldn’t win a real fight in the ring these days, but by God he can still keep himself in grog.

They laugh and talk. Les is delighted to meet this Australian legend, and later tips the porter a quarter, telling the disbelieving young man that the ‘fat old alko’—as the porter would later describe Griffo, whom he brought up to Les’s room—was once one of the greatest featherweight boxers of them all.

(Peter Fitzsimons)

 

"I knocked on the bedroom door and a voice you associate with misty New York dockside rasped: ‘Friend or foe?’

‘Friend, I think.’

Inside there were blue whorls of cigar and cigarette smoke, a small crown of American lounge suits and a plump man in ragged trousers and short padding barefoot and swinging an arm as thick as your thigh.

‘… So I keep coming forward like this, left foot first, and I hit him a shot with the right, and I see his eyes roll up in his head and I give him the left to finish him…’

‘Rocky, you remind me of a skunk…!’ Somebody interrupting. I backed quickly for the door.

The Rock’s eyes widened below the stitch mark – one eye took thirteen stitches, seeing him through just one million dollar world title defence: ‘A skunk?’

‘The way you fought, Rocky, like a skunk with a farm dog and the dog keeps backing away because he knows what a punch that skunk packs in his tail!’

‘Right! Joe Louis couldn’t take my shot to the head – not even high on the head. I got to him with one high on the head and I see his eyes go “Great to meet ya!”’ The Rock comes for me. ‘Have a cup of coffee! You’re welcome!’ The Rock opens his fist and there’s a cup and saucer hidden in it.

The honesty in the round, hearty face is humiliating. I told the Rock we’re talking of banning boxing in Britain.

‘Right! Well, it’s got to come! It’s got to – in fifty, twenty-five years’ time – no, less than that – it’s got to come; as people get more civilized, they’re going to ban boxing.’

‘Rocco, my baby!’ A man lying full-length on a divan barks: ‘Whaddya sayin’…!’

‘I tell you it’s got to. They will outlaw boxing. A hundred years from now we’ll be like the gladiators, something out of history.’ The sad, gentle eyes. ‘There won’t be any boxers any more – aw, boxing’s just got to go. Less than twenty-five years, ten years or less than that maybe. In America they let fighters go on till one of them’s half-dead – Joe Louis couldn’t take a shot to the head any more.’

‘He couldn’t take one on the button, Rocky!’

‘He couldn’t take a punch anywhere on the head any more. Even high on the head. People say to me, “Rocky, you made me scream watching you fight, you looked like you’re going to get killed the way you keep coming forward taking all those punches on the chin…”’ The Rock shakes his head amusedly. ‘But I never did.’

He tucks the bristling chin into the protective shoulders. ‘I always had my chin down here. I never used to take any punches on the chin. Nobody can take punches on the chin.

‘Rocky, baby…’

‘Only time I left myself wide open was when they put wintergreen in my water bucket to try and stop me winning the world championship and my eyes stung so I had to lift my chin just to see and Walcott nailed me on the chin and nearly knocked me out.’

‘Crooks! Wintergreen they put in his water bucket!’

‘Talk about divine justice. The officials handling me in that fight, awhile after they all dropped dead.’ The Rock massaged his chin quickly.

Are there punch-drunk boxers in America? ‘Not many. Ezzard Charles. Oh, he’s banged up, oh God yes he is. After he met me.

‘Rocco, baby! He is not! Charles is not.’

‘Aw, yes. Aw, terrible, yes. He is.’ The Rock demonstrates with a press picture showing his victim’s face like a chocolate marshmallow crushed between the Rock’s fists.

‘Think! What kind of money Cassius Clay versus Rocky would take now! Rocky could take Clay right now!’

There is a famous story of the Rock’s pugilistic encounter in a wartime brawl in a British pub. ‘Right! That’s true. But if I get in trouble like that now I have to back away. Talk my way out of it. I have to … I never like to see people hurt. I was an old man when I won the world title – I was twenty-eight. That’s why Patterson can’t beat Clay! He’s an old man. He’s twenty-seven.’

The Rock’s finger’s play constantly with the poke of his English ratting cap on his head. Going bald has hurt the Rock more than anything could do in the ring. He wears the cap even indoors and, for public appearances, a well-made American hair-piece.

‘Over here in Britain boxing is so civilized anyway. They’d never let me become heavyweight champion of England – I bleed too easy. Sure there are fights that not quite right. But not the world heavy championship. There’s too many people like Norman Mailer – like you – watching us all the time.’

The eyes soften. ‘I don’t even go to the fights any more. Don’t like to see people getting hurt. I’m a bad fight referee even.’ The Rock admits it sadly. ‘I spoil the fights. Soon as one of the fellers starts bleeding a little even, I stop the fight. The crowd don’t like it. You hear the crowd yelling. Screaming. Go on! Let ‘em fight! Beat him to death, go on! That’s the really brutal part of the boxing. The crowd.

Outside I met a sports writer. ‘You saw Marciano – what’s he like? More animal than man, I suppose?’ "

(John Summers - 1965)

 

Jack Mcauliffe, who retired as undefeated lightweight champion of the world in 1896, once had a ****** that rode his neck when he did roadwork.
Twenty miles was customary in those days - they trained for finish fights - so the ****** and McAuliffe saw a lot of territory together.

"The Monk would hold on with his legs around my neck, and if I stopped too fast he would grab my ears to stop from falling off" McAuliffe said years later.
*'The Monk' (as McAuliffe referred to him)

McAuliffe in his glory had been a great friend of John L. Sullivan and of a bantamweight named Jack Skelly from Yonkers. The three were engaged to perform in a Salzburg festival of the sweet science promoted by the Olympic Club of New Orleans in September 1892.
On September 5, McAuliffe was to defend his lightweight title against Billy Myer. On the 6th, Skelly would try to win the featherweight championship from the incumbent George Dixon. And on the third climatic night, the great John L would annihilate an upstart from San Francisco named Jim Corbett.

"I thought the ****** would bring us all luck" McAuliffe said "He started good. When I knocked Billy out in the fifteenth the monk was up on the top rope as the referee said 'Ten!' and hopped off on to my shoulder before the man got my hand up. I took him and threw him in the air and caught him, I was so happy...."Oh, you jewel of a ******!" I said, and when I was on the table after the fight he played in the hair on my chest like I was his brother.....Then Skelly fought Dixon, and when Dixon knocked him out I thought I noticed a very peculiar look on the ******'s face, like he was glad to see Skelly get it. I said to myself 'I wonder who you are.' I gave him the benefit of the doubt, but when Corbett stopped Sullivan, I grabbed the ****** by the neck and wrung it like a chicken. I've often felt bad about it since. God help me, I have a very bad temper."

 

If Victor Perez's story ended with his boxing career, it would still have been rather notable. The Tunisian-born Jew became the youngest world champion in boxing history when he took the flyweight crown shortly after turning 20.

He didn't stay on the top for long. A love affair with a French actress and a hard-partying lifestyle derailed his career. He soon lost his title, and couldn't regain it.

When World War II came, Perez thought that he would be safe in Paris. He was sadly mistaken, as the Nazis caught him and sent him to Auschwitz.

And this is when the storyline veers. When the Nazis found out about Perez's boxing past, they forced him to fight for their amusement, often against boxers twice his size. He kept emerging victorious, using the food he won to feed his fellow prisoners. When the Nazi defeat became all but certain, Auschwitz's prisoners were taken on a Death March. Four months before the war would end, Perez was caught giving bread to another prisoner. He was shot on the spot.

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

From www.boxrec.com:

Perez was arrested by local police on October 10, 1943, and deported to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. According to reports, Perez was forced to fight in the bi-weekly boxing matches at the camp. The fights were bet on by the Nazi officers in command of the camp. The winners of these matches were awarded with bread and soup, while the loser was executed.
Perez's first fight in the camp was against a German-Jewish heavyweight (inmate) named Iorry. Even though his opponent was over a foot taller, and 50 pounds heavier, Perez scored a knockout. Perez went on to fight twice a week, every week, for the next 15 months, reportedly scoring 140 straight knockout victories.

In 1945, Perez was evacuated from the camp. It was reported that on the road near a camp called Gleiwitz, Perez attempted to pass bread through a fence to another inmate, and was shot and killed by Nazi guards. Some sources list his death in January 1945, others in March.

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

Perez was a fighter who was full of energy; He was not a power hitter but was a non-stop puncher; He lost only 28 of 134 bouts and scored 27 knockouts; During his career, he won the NBA Flyweight Championship of the World, the IBU Flyweight Championship of the World and the Flyweight Championship of France

Victor defeated such men as Frankie Genaro, Emile Pladner, Valentin Angelmann, Nicolas Petit-Biquet, Eugene Huat, Kid Francis, Aurel Toma, Vittorio Tamagnini, Kid Socks and Carlos Flix

Perez was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 1986

 

which is a reminder of this...

The story of Harry Haft who was a survivor of a Nazi concentration camp in WW2, surviving by winning bare-knuckle fights in which the loser died during the fight or was executed. Eventually he escaped the camp and his life brought him to professional boxing and eventually meeting Rocky Marciano in the ring.

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"Harry Haft was born in Poland in 1925. “It was anything but good fortune to be born a Jew in Poland in 1925,” wrote his son. “Harry would think back on his birth as his first act of survival in an increasingly miserable time.”

One of eight children, Haft was sturdy and strong from the day he was born. His mother, who was so heavy she did not even know she was pregnant with him, was working over a basin when he dropped from her body, landing headfirst on the floor.
His father died when he was three years old, and from the time he was a youngster, the wide-shouldered and extremely muscular fatherless Haft had a fiery temper, which was displayed mostly against anti-Semitic youths. Early on it was obvious that if provoked, he had no qualms about finishing arguments with his massive fists.

In 1939, when he was 14 years old, Haft witnessed the German occupation of Poland. Under Nazi occupation, Haft together with his older brother ran a smuggling business.
In 1941, Haft was deported to Auschwitz because he was Jewish.
Because of his strong physical stature an SS overseer trained him to be a boxer, and had him compete at fights to the death in front of the military personnel. The fights took place at the concentration camp Jaworzno, which was situated at a coal mine north of Auschwitz. Haft fought 76 fights at this concentration camp. When the camp in Jaworzno was dissolved because of the advancing Soviet Red Army, the inmates were sent on death marches.
Having witnessed countless acts of horrific sadism, Haft made his escape. He stole the uniform and weapon of a German soldier whom he had killed with his bare hands. He then tried to pass himself off as a lost soldier to an elderly German couple who he encountered at their farmhouse. When they suspected—or he thought they suspected—that he might not be who he said he was, he feared that they would turn him into authorities. Knowing he would be tortured or killed if that occurred, Haft shot them to death without giving it a second thought.
After eventually journeying to America, via the assisstance of American liberators, Haft arrived in New York and began boxing out of desperation.
While boxing in America, Haft encountered even more problems, especially when gangsters Frankie Carbo and Blinky Palermo tried to take control of his career. He won his first twelve fights, but lost against a more experienced boxer in Westchester County Center on 5 January 1949. After this loss, his career never recovered. His final fight was against Rocky Marciano, on 18 July 1949 in Rhode Island Auditorium, in what was Marciano's 18th professional fight. Haft claimed that he was threatened by the Mafia and forced to throw the fight against Marciano.

As Haft warmed up in the dressing room, he said three men entered and threatened to kill him if he did not go down in round one. After they departed, Haft asked his manager what he should do. The manager just shrugged his shoulders and said he did not know.
Having already survived Nazi death camps, the undeterred Haft refused to go along. An article in the Providence Journal described him as “a rusher with very little style,” and said that he “landed the first good punch of the fight, a hard right to Marciano’s midsection.”
Marciano hurt Haft in the second with a right hand that sent him reeling into the ropes. Two follow-up lefts had Haft groggy at the bell.
“Two hard punches to Haft’s head—a left and a right—were Marciano’s openers in the third,” reported John Hanlon in the Journal. “At the halfway mark, Haft rallied briefly. But it was too late.”
Marciano hit Haft with a left to the gut that he followed up with his fabled right hand. Haft was finished. According to the Journal, he “received a fine reception as he left the ring.”

After his loss to Marciano, Haft retired. He married in 1949 and opened a fruit and vegetable store in Brooklyn.
In April 2007, Haft was included in the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. He died in November of the same year, aged 82.