'Pinky' Silverberg: Forgotten Flyweight Champ

''Pinky Silverberg (April 5, 1904 – January 16, 1964) was a Connecticut-based American boxer who briefly held the National Boxing Association (NBA) World Flyweight title in late 1927. With an efficient defense, Silverberg was knocked out only once in his career by Willie LaMorte in 1926. His managers were Johnny Herman, Lou Anger, and Joe Smith. Problems with his hands, which were often broken during his career, may have hampered many of his boxing performances.'

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinky_Silverberg

 

Former flyweight fighter given a champion’s legacy


'ANSONIA-For nearly 78 years he was the forgotten champion.

Few people in the boxing community or even his next door neighbors on Front Street and later Clark Street knew Pincus “Pinky” Silverberg reigned as the World Flyweight Champion in 1927.

“He never talked about his boxing,” said his son Ron. “You have to understand back in those days from a family standpoint boxing was not a highly regarded occupation.”

So for years Silverberg’s exploits including his bout with Kid Chocolate, considered the fifth greatest featherweight in boxing history were forgotten memories.


Until last year.

That’s when Mayor David Cassetti named his newly created Valley youth boxing program after Silverberg who lived in a three-story building which housed Fama’s Market on what was the intersection of Main and Front Street.


On Thursday Cassetti proclaimed that site now filled by West Springfield Auto Parts as Champion’s Corner. Underneath it is a square sign which reads: “Pinky Silverberg World Flyweight Boxing Champion 1927 Lived On This Corner.”

“I first heard of Pinky Silverberg when I was training back in the early 1970s,” said Cassetti, a former amateur middleweight champ who boxed from 1978-84. “I couldn’t believe Ansonia was home to a boxing champion. To hear that—it inspired me to train harder and want to become a champion.”

But while Cassetti knew of Silverberg few boxing experts did.

That’s what Ron Silverberg discovered while searching his father’s name on the internet during a two-week vacation from his banking job in 2000.


“He was nowhere to be found,” said an incredulous Silverberg. “There was one website that billed itself as listing every champion in every weight division ever and my father’s name was not there.

When Silverberg contacted them he was told “we never heard of your father.”

“So I went to a professional photographer and had him re-photograph my father’s promotional boxing picture as well as his championship belt and sent them,” Silverberg said. “Two weeks later they contacted me and told we found records that your father had 82 bouts. They just fell through the cracks.”

A few years later one of Ron’s daughters she learned that the Jewish Heritage Museum in Philadelphia was building an exhibit on all the Jewish boxing champions. Silverberg called to ask if his father was part of it.

“They told me he wasn’t,” Silverberg recalled. “They told me to contact Mike Silver a boxing historian in New York who was putting the exhibit together.”

And Silverberg when contacted Silver he got the familiar refrain—he, too never heard of Pinky. So Silverberg set about educating the historian with records and photos.

“He called back and apologized saying he was going to make it up to us,” Silverberg recalled.

That came in a three-page article Silver wrote in 2005 for Ring Magazine, which bills itself as “The Bible of Boxing.”

And it came again last year when Silver included Pinky in his “Stars in the Ring: Jewish Champions in the Golden Age of Boxing: A Photographic History.”

And they were not alone. Steve and Victor “Cooky” Parkosewich who grew up in the apartment next door to the Silverbergs were kept in the dark also.

“He never bragged about it,” said Victor.

“We lived five feet away,” said Steve. “Pinky would come out onto the porch and say: “Hi” but nothing about boxing. I did know he traveled a lot.”

Up and down the northeast, to Cuba even Australia, to fight.

“To get to Brisbane he had to take a train to San Francisco and then a steamer to Australia,” recalled Silverberg. “It probably took three to four weeks.”

But it was just blocks away in the Opera House that still stands on Main Street where Silverberg captured his first title—the Connecticut Flyweight championship. On Oct. 17, 1925 he beat Al Beuregard on points.

That propelled him as a potential contender for the vacant National Boxing Association (now known as the World Boxing Association) flyweight title. On Oct. 22, 1927 Silverberg was matched against Ruby “Dark Cloud” Bradley for title at the State Armory in Bridgeport. The battle lasted a brutal seven rounds before Bradley was disqualified for a low blow leaving Silverberg unable to continue. As a result Silverberg was awarded the belt.

On Dec. 3, 1927 the pair met again at the same Bridgeport arena. Only this time Silverberg was unable to make 116 pound weight limit. That led to the match becoming a non-title event which Bradley won in 10 rounds.

Shortly after that fight, Silverberg was stripped of his title because of “an unsatisfactory showing.” But that unsatisfactory showing was due to Pinky breaking a hand in the bout. Despite a doctor’s report the decision stood.

“It is the only time in boxing history that a champion was shorn of a legitimately won championship due to a poor performance in a subsequent non-title match,” Silver wrote in his photographic history released last year.

“The reason for the NBA’s stubborn refusal to restore his title appears to have involved a bureaucratic power struggle within the organization’s hierarchy,” according to Silver.

Silverberg then stepped up to the next weight class-bantam weight—where he fought the next seven years against ranked boxers like Midget Wolgast, Panama Al Brown, a bantamweight world champion, Pete Sanstol, a future Bantamweight world champion and Petey Sarron, a future Featherweight world champion.

And there was the Kid Chocolate fight on Nov. 8, 1928 in New York’s iconic boxing haven—the St. Nicholas Arena. The Kid beat Silverberg on points in a 10-round bout.

“My father lost on points to one of the greatest boxers ever,” said Silverberg.

Pinky Silverberg, whose older brother Herman also boxed professionally, fought his last bout on March 4, 1937 defeating Frankie Reese at the Star Casino in New York. In 82 fights, he won 34 lost 34 and battled to 14 draws. Of those losses only Willie LaMorte knocked Silverberg out. That took place at Footguard Hall in Hartford on April 5, 1926.

After retiring from active fights, Silverberg coached, referred and promoted local fights. In the 1950s, he found work as an aircraft engine inspector at AVCO Lycoming in Stratford.

“My father smoked and fried steaks in Crisco,” his son recalled. “No one gave a second thought to the impact of smoking or high cholesterol.”

On Jan. 16, 1964, Pinky Silverberg died at age 57 after suffering a fatal heart attack in his Clark Street home.

In 2007, he was inducted into the Connecticut Boxing Hall of Fame.

Yesterday he was given a home forever on Champion’s Corner.'

https://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Former-flyweight-fighter-given-a-champion-s-11189349.php

 

Pinky Silverberg, the boxing world champion from Ansonia that history forgot


'Pinky Silverberg, in his later years, rarely discussed his days as a boxer.

The topic was never broached during holidays or family gatherings. He kept his championship belt tucked away in a drawer of his Ansonia home. His children knew their father was once a fighter. Yet they were unaware that, for a brief period in 1927, he was the best flyweight in the world.

"He never talked about his boxing career," Bethany's Ron Silverberg says of his father. "He was the type of guy who, if he didn't want to talk about something, you didn't dare press him on it."

Still, there were clues. Pinky, 20 years retired, was treated like a conquering hero in Ansonia, often greeted as "Champ" while walking down the street. One summer afternoon Ron and a few friends were fooling around with a jump rope in front of the house. Pinky snatched it and began skipping a mile a minute, rope whooshing while the ex-fighter bounced feverishly, as if someone had suddenly hit the fast-forward button. The kids watched in silent awe.


Reasons for his reluctance to talk boxing remain unclear. Pinky died of a heart attack in 1964 at age 57. Ron, 19 at the time, can only speculate. It wasn't until he began researching his father's career a dozen years ago that the remarkable story was uncovered.


Pincus "Pinky" Silverberg was born in the Bronx to a family that included three other boys and two sisters. His father relocated to Ansonia in 1920 to find work in one of the many factories littered throughout the Naugatuck Valley. Pinky, just 16, soon began boxing professionally, adding two years to his birth date so it would be legal.


It was a struggle initially. Nine of his first 20 recorded bouts are listed as draws. But Pinky improved as he matured. Seven years into his career he'd won the Connecticut State flyweight championship and was established as one of his division's top contenders.

Then, in the summer of 1927, undisputed flyweight champ Fidel LaBarba shocked the boxing world by announcing his retirement so he could attend Stanford University. The title vacated, confusion reigned in the division. On Oct. 13, it was announced that Silverberg's fight with Ruby Bradley, scheduled for the following week at the State Armory in Bridgeport, would be for the title.

Thomas Donohue was president of the National Boxing Association (later renamed the World Boxing Association) as well as the Connecticut state boxing commissioner. His hasty decision to brand the match between Silverberg, from Ansonia, and Bradley, of Holyoke, Mass., as a title bout didn't go over well with other top contenders. Other administrators in the NBA were pushing for an elimination tournament to find the new champ. Donohue was feeling heat from all sides.

That night, Bradley was disqualified in the seventh round for a low blow. Silverberg, unable to continue, was awarded the championship. A non-title rematch between the two was held seven weeks later. Bradley was declared winner on points. Donohue, in another unprecedented move, announced he was stripping Silverberg of his title due to an "unsatisfactory performance."

According to Ring Magazine, it remains the only time in boxing history that a champion lost his belt in a non-title bout.

Pinky Silverberg continued to box for 10 more years, taking on some of the top men in his weight class. He traveled to Cuba to fight Panama Al Brown and journeyed to Australia for three bouts in the summer of 1929.

"Can you imagine what it must have been like to travel to Australia in 1929?" Ron Silverberg asked. "You took a train from Ansonia to San Francisco, which was probably five days, then took a three-week ride on a steamer to get to Australia. But he would fight anybody, anywhere."

Pinky struggled toward the end of his career, though his final bout was a victory in New York in 1937. He spent part of his retirement as a boxing referee and instructor before taking a job with AVCO Lycoming in Stratford inspecting aircraft engines.

He raised his family in Ansonia, speaking little of his days as champ, until suffering a series of heart attacks in his mid-50s.

When Pinky died, Ron Silverberg inherited his NBA championship belt. He soon found his father's reign was so brief it had been all but lost to history. In 2000, Ron took to the Internet to see what he could dig up about his father. Even the most comprehensive boxing websites had no record of Pinky Silverberg. When he contacted those online sites, the reply was typically frustrating.

"They said they'd never heard of him," Ron Silverberg said. "I told them I had proof. I had his championship belt. They wanted a $10 fee to conduct research."

Within a month, someone from the website called Ron Silverberg and apologized. They'd discovered 78 of his professional fights and confirmed that he was indeed the world's flyweight champ in the autumn of 1927. Ron Silverberg went through a similar scenario with Ring Magazine, which, using its own research, made up for its skepticism with a four-page, full-color spread on "The Man History Forgot" in the summer of 2005.

"Now, there will never be any more questions about him," Ron Silverberg said.'

https://www.nhregister.com/news/article/NEW-HAVEN-200-Pinky-Silverberg-the-boxing-world-11527045.php

 

Pinky Silverberg record at Cyber Boxing Zone:

http://www.cyberboxingzone.com/boxing/silverberg-p.htm

 

What's the problem?

Just reporting on a fighter from a great era that was so forgotten that The Ring didn't have proper archives of him or know his name, and he actually held the title. He deserves at least a small amount of recognition.

And Flyweight is one of the best divisions ever. Non arguable.

 

I hadn't heard of him either.