Question for AlFrancis and Chinxkid (and nayone else whos Dad was a pro boxer)

What was it like being the son of a boxer?

Did you guys box, if so was you expected to be as good a syour Dads, was it a hindrance?

In life in general did people know who your Dads was and treat you diffferently?

just always wondered thats why

 

Everyone knows Al's dad where i come from, i can tell you that. On a websit i saw him described as 'a superstar in the swinging sixties'.

Sorry i know it wasn't directed at me.

 

Teeto ****off out of here

just joking it was intresting

 

I'll let you off if you go and make four picks in my lightweight torney bouts that are further down the classic forum page (and in the process bump them up)

 

And by the way, Chinx comes from a (historically) proper fight town, he'll be able to contribute some good stuff here.

 

i will just for you

also you get my email about Shavers

 

Hey GP, Teeto, what's up Cats?

So much to tell you it's hard to know where to start. I can tell you that I knew the fundamentals before I even started school, how to snap the jab and not pull a right hand. The hook, however, my dad's bread and butter punch didn't come so easily to me. In fact, it wasn't until he was years gone that I learned how to throw a decent left hook, and that was from a kickboxing champion in L.A. Peter Sugarfoot Cunningham, also Benny Urqidez's "sister" Lilly, who had a right hand like Marciano. Boxing was actually a fallback sport for my father, American football was his first love, made first team All City in high school as a 130 lb. fullback...

Everybody knew my father where I grew up in Pittsburgh. He wasn't a champ, wasn't as famous as Billy Conn or Fritzie Zivic, but he was an affable, more like charismatic guy, always the million dollar smile on his face, always willing to spend a few minutes when people he didn't know stopped him on the street. One thing I truly disliked was walking through downtown with my father; it took us ten minutes to walk a block. One time when I was about six, I was coming out of a downtown hotel lobby with my dad, when this tall good looking Italian looking guy was coming in. He greeted my dad, and then as many others later would, he threw up his hands and aped a sparring session. At that time i hadn't seen much of this yet, and at six years old I thought they were really fighting. So, what did I do? I stepped in between and with a beautiful straight right cross, punched this guy right in the balls. To this day, I remember the look on his face as he staggered away, dropped his hands and lost his smile. My dad hurried in to apologize and rushed me outside. It wasn't until we were around the first corner that he said, "What the hell's the matter with you? Don't you know who that was?" I had no idea who it was, couldn't understand why it should matter who it was if he was hurting my dad. "That's Vic Damone!" He said, "the famous singer." I may not have know the face but I knew the name, and it wasn't until years later when I appreciated what a big range Vic has that I forgave myself for the incident. If not for me, he never would have hit all those high notes...

But I was always proud of him, while I never wanted to make a thing out of it, brag or rely on it; in fact I'd never bring it up unless I was asked about his career and even then I just answered the questions as I could and offered no additional information. I did get challenged because of who he was; I was a good athlete and a pretty tough kid, so it was never that much of a thing. But I've know other fighters' sons, kids that were nothing like their old man, and I used to wonder how they handled that. The one thing that always hurt me, broke my heart and pissed me off, was when as a kid I'd notice somebody talking down to him. You know, the way people that have never been around the game tend to patronize fighters, tend to stereotype them as stupid or brutish or all the other things that nine out of ten fighters just aren't. My father, though a contemporary of Jake LaMotta, and I think he would have called him a friend, had the exact opposite type of personality. My dad was a sweetheart. Was one of the friendliest guys you'd ever know, and one of the most sensitive. Loved music, was a guy who cherished his mother and wife, and cried as easily as any grown man I have ever know. I never saw him fight in the ring, but I did see him stretch a 250 pound gorilla who had jumped me with his two sons when I was 12 yrs. old.

 

That's a great story Chinxkid. Great read. Thanks for sharing that.

Nothing sends my blood pressure up as much as when people patronise fighters. I despise that.

How did you handle seeing you dad fight, or did you stay home? Did he ever come home with some facial damage and if so, how did you react to it?

Edit: just reread your story again and you already answered my question.

 

Great post that Chinx, and funny as well, how you got Vic to sing the high notes, he should have give you a percentage of his earnings

 

Yeah Fists, he retired a few years before I was born when after he signed to meet Bobby Dykes they discovered he had a dead kidney, a kidney that had been dead through all those years in the ring though nobody had ever caught it before. i guess pissing blood after some of his fights was seen as par for the course. But I did see the fallout of his fight career. Saw him go through a few eye surgeries and eventually lose an eye to the game. The only fight of his on film that I've even gotten a whiff of is a 2 round fiasco with Lee Sala, the only one I've been able to zero in on and the last one i want to see. The old man got pretty brutally TKO'd in that one and I just don't need to see it.

 

I always figured I had a taste comin', T.

 

What was the heaviest your old man fought at then Chinx? What would you say was his ideal poundage?

 

One thing I just thought of that may be on point to your question, Fists. His mother spent every one of his fight nights deep in prayer at The Epiphany Church on Pittsburgh's Lower Hill, the same parish that started the famous Pittsburgh Lyceum gym in its cellar to give the neighborhood kids something to do other than just sin and confess, but that eventually was the training ground for Conn and Zivic and Greb.

 

That's a great line Teeto.

 

Haha!