Good article on Galento

This was written by boxing referee and former amateur boxing star Ron Lipton:

"...Galento was from Orange NJ. I trained for awhile at Sam Magee's Ringside Gym which was right behind the Normandy Inn. Galento came in there for years and was Sam's best buddy. They loved to booze it up.

Galento came into the gym and watched me spar with a gigantic muscular light heavy-named Sugar Cliff Ryan whose back was made out of steel cables. I banged him all over the ring exploding and raining shots on the big man and dropped him with a vicious left hook. He was a wide puncher and I ate up those kind of guys. Galento was smoking a big cigar watching and talking with Sam who was supposed to be in my corner for a tv fight coming up at Symphony Hall in Newark.

Galento comes over and I believe he was starting to suffer from diabetes which later cost him his leg. He was truly a rough and scary man an absolute fearless animal who you would have to kll with an axe to stop on the street. He ruined another local fighter crippling him for life, a nice man by the name of Don Petrin.

I knew all these things and Tony would almost never admit if anyone beat him so help me God, including Louis and Baer, BUT, there was a tough amateur champion from that area, who was a Diamond belt, Golden Glove and everything else champ, called Elmer "Shrimp" Palardy. He was a Capt of Police in West Orange and his son Mike, me and the Capt had many brawls of legend in the area. He told me that the two hardest hitters he had EVER seen in his life bar none was Frankie Zamaris who stopped Melio Bettina in two, and Tony Galento whose left hook would actually kill you if he kept landing it solid before the ref could save a man.

Well Galento, says words to the effect, "Hey Kid, Sam tells me you he thinks you will go all the way, so I'm going to show you how to shorten that hook up ok, hit em on the belt line, and bring it to the ***** when the ref is on the other side etc."
Well, just like in the Gentleman Jim movie with Errol Flynn, when Flynn goes into the Olympic club and hands his cigar to Alexis Smith to hold while he boxes with the English instructor, Galento just hands me the Cigar while I still have my gloves on and takes his jacket off.

I'm balancing the lit cigar on my glove with Sam watching, drunk out of his mind, Galento and him lit, and this old fat man with slits for eyes, wallops this heavy and I do mean hard as a rock bag hanging there with a left hook, bare knuckles, and it made me shudder.

The punch would have killed me dead on the spot. It was so vicious, fast and hard that to this day it seemed to me harder than David Tua's hook who I refereed twice up close. That bag almost broke in half, it doubled the bag in mid air and we had some mean hitting heavyweight in that gym that could punch and they NEVER came close to what this little fat man did while drunk, out of shape and old let alone without warming up.

I saw Sonny Liston in person workout in Philly and in preparation for the 2nd Ali fight and on films. Galento's hooks was harder trust me.

If Marciano in his superb condition at 185 took on Tony it would be a bloodbath. If you had the right ref in there like me, I would let it go to the finish. I go with the Rock on condition, integrity, determination and *****. Galento had the hook in spades, unparalled viciousness, and every dirty trick in the book from heeling, thumbing or whatever.

He made Fritzie Zivic look like a Fairy. He lifted Joe Louis off his feet, and the most amazing beating to me was the job he did on Lou Nova who was big, strong and in shape. I have a hi lite of that fight and it looked so brutal it is beyond belief...--RON LIPTON"

 

I believe the story too. Something sure as hell put Louis flat on his back.