It
was a cool July night this past summer as Charles “The Natural” Murray faced
his final opponent, gloves up, eyes intent. It wanted to rain. The sky
threatened to break as 5,000 boxing fans piled into Frontier Field to see 18
fighters square off in nine pairings, including Murray’s swan song.
They
call it the sweet science. It requires skill, strength, and guts. Most people
involved in the sport laud the boxers’ heart, drive, tenacity, and respect —
all of which are undeniable. Yet there still lurks an underlying brutality, and
some are intoxicated by the sport’s noirish violence. Whatever the attraction,
there is one constant fundamental: an intense passion. A passion that is
apparent to both the casual observer and the fan that jumps at every
opportunity to cheer ringside.
The
fight at Frontier Field was right out of a movie, timeless. You could almost
see it in black and white. The fighters duked it out in a ring erected over
home plate, beneath the haze of the hot infield lights. Shouts cut the air.
“Oohs” and “aahs” accompanied each landed blow or deft move. An old man with an
unlit, half-chewed cigar watched intently, kept score, and imparted wisdom.
“Stick
and move, baby,” he yelled. “Stick and move.”
A
young woman near the ring, brought to her high-heeled feet each time the action
got hot, clapped furiously.
“Break
his face,” she hollered.
It’s
in this sport, and its often-debated juxtaposition of art and brutality, that
The Flower City has earned a proud history over the past 150 years. We’ve had
our share of fight firsts, historic events, and champs. Rochester has raised
and hosted more than a few contenders on their way to fame and champions in
their prime.
Rochester
was on the map during the sport’s pre-war, wartime, and well into its post-war
heyday, when boxing was perhaps second only to baseball as America’s favorite
sport.
“Rochester
was one of the Meccas of boxing,” says Rochester Boxing Hall of Fame founder
and president, Tony Liccione. “Right up there with Cleveland and Buffalo. You
had a gym on every corner.” Liccione and Hall of Fame co-founder and boxing
historian Larry Allen can’t seem to get the names, stats, and facts out fast
enough. Their faces light up enthusiastically as it all pours out.
“Rochester
boxing history goes back to 1860,” Liccione says. “We are fortunate when we
look at the history books of boxing, you see that bare-knuckle championship
bouts took place here in Rochester with John Sullivan, Gentleman Jim Corbett
— some of the great fighters of that era.”
Worldwide
news was made August 11, 1916 when Rochester heavyweights Charley Gouse and Sam
Nolan knocked each other out at the end of the sixth round.
On
December 13, 1924, Rochester’s Mike Conroy won the South and Central American
Heavyweight title from Antolin Fierro by knocking him out in the fifth round in
Havana, Cuba.
In Rochester’s neighborhoods, boxing was and still is
more than a pastime; it’s also a ticket for kids looking for a way out.
“The
Italians, the Irish, the Germans tried to find a way out,” says Liccione. “It’s
all changed of course. The Blacks and Hispanics are where we were 50 to 60
years ago.”
“It
was their ticket out of the ghetto,” Allen says.
Allen
first fell in love with boxing when his parents took him to the Dixie Theatre
on Portland Avenue, where highlights of the James Braddock-Max Baer fight
flickered on the screen before the feature.
“Of
course in those days everything was black and white,” he says. “Harry Balough
— one of the world-renowned announcers — was wearing a tuxedo, very
elegant. And they bring down the microphone, and I’m five years old, my heart
started pounding, and I said, ‘This is fantastic.’ It was like being
transported to another world… That was the beginning of my love.”
Allen
fought in Aquinas High School’s boxing program all four years. Known as “The
Loquacious Warrior,” he successfully fought amateur after graduation and even
toyed with the idea of turning pro.
Liccione
and Allen go on and on about local historic boxing figures like Mike Dempsey,
Joey Manuel, Frankie Verna, Sr., Nello Nucelli, Ossie “The Jewish Buzz Saw”
Sussman, and Frank Powderly. They talk about events like the Kodak smoker bouts
in the ’30s, fights at The Elks Club, and the Tournament of Champions in 1940.
“The
great Sugar Ray Robinson, considered by many, pound for pound, the greatest
fighter of all time, fought his last amateur bout here in Rochester before a
crowd of 10,000 at Red Wing Stadium on Norton Street,” says Liccione.
“Against
Tommy Moyer,” adds Allen, “who almost beat him.”
And
then there’s Carmen Basilio.
“On
his way to fame, Carmen Basilio engaged in three bouts here,” says Liccione.
“Who knew that he would become one of the greatest, most courageous, most
popular boxing figures of all time?”
“My
goal from when I was a little boy was to be a world champion, to be a fighter,”
Basilio says from the trophy room in his Irondequoit home. The room is covered
floor to ceiling with portraits, trophies, boxing gloves, and magazine
clippings, including the September 16, 1957 issue of Sports Illustrated with a young Basilio on the cover. “My father
bought us boxing gloves for my brother and I. He’d make us box all the time. If
we’d get in an argument he’d say, ‘OK, box.'”
Basilio
boxed his way onto the Canastota High School boxing team.
“If
you want to know the truth,” he says, “if it wasn’t for that boxing team, I
probably would have never went to high school.”
When
Canastota dropped its boxing program, Basilio dropped out and joined the
Marines. He returned from his hitch with Uncle Sam to work on his father’s
onion farm and pick up the occasional 10 or 15 bucks fighting amateur.
“Everybody
used to say to me, ‘What are you gonna do? You gonna keep on fighting?’ And I
said, ‘Yeah. I’m gonna be champion of the world.’ No one could change my mind.
I’m glad they talked to me that way, ’cause all it did was inspire me to work
harder, to prove them wrong, make them eat their words.”
After
the 1947 harvest, Basilio couldn’t find a job. So he turned pro.
“I
had my first professional fight in November of 1947 in Binghamton,” he says. “I
won by a TKO in the second round.”
His
big chance came on September 23, 1957 when he faced Sugar Ray Robinson in
Yankee Stadium for the Middleweight Championship title in front of 38,000 fight
fans. Millions more caught the fight on TV. Robinson was favored to win, but
Basilio didn’t buy into the hype.
“Bullshit,”
he says. “He was an arrogant fool. You couldn’t talk to him, he was such a big
shot. There was no love between him and I. As a matter of fact, he hated me,
said he’s gonna knock me out, he’s gonna do this to me, do that. He didn’t
scare me. I said, ‘Let him do all the talking he wants and we’ll prove
everything the night of the fight.'”
Basilio
won by a decision after 15 rounds.
On
April 22, 1961 Carmen Basilio fought his last fight in Boston and retired with
a 56-16-7 record. He then taught physical education at Lemoyne College for 30
years.
And
though his rec room is a shrine to boxing, Basilio, now 77, doesn’t really
follow the sport anymore.
“Nobody
impresses me right now,” he says.
The
last fighter to impress him?
“My
wife.”
It wasn’t long after Basilio hung up his
gloves, that boxing, according to some aficionados, went into a decline.
Showbiz sleaze, corruption, and the almighty dollar stepped in.
Liccione,
and others like him, long for boxing’s golden age.
“Today’s
boxing, I don’t get into it much,” he says. “I don’t enjoy watching a fighter
come in with pink shoes, tassels on his braids. However, once in a while you
get Arturo Gottis, Mickey Wards, and Bernard Hopkinses that are throwbacks to
the old days.
“What
changed it,” says Liccione, “was promoters like Don King and Bob Arum after the
Basilio years, the ’50s and the ’60s.
“You
got cable, HBO, and it began a really mega-promotion with sponsors and boxers.
Millions of dollars were involved and it just kinda killed the small venue,” he
says.
“Everybody
was looking for the quick buck,” says Allen. “I think with a lot of the
champions, it’s who you know. The ratings are fixed — they’re purchased.”
And
more and more a general disdain for the sport’s brutality began to emerge.
Boxing’s vicious side started to get played up.
“There
was a lot of ‘this sport’s brutal’ and this and that,” says Montgomery Boxing
Club’s Ron Resnick. “I think a lot of bleeding hearts took away from it.”
That
fear of the sport’s violence still crops up. Six years ago, Aquinas High
School’s Mission Bouts — the annual fights that are part of the school’s
boxing program — were almost eighty-sixed. In the wake of Columbine, people
were looking for anything that might lead to violence in kids. And some
educators and doctors fixed their eyes on boxing.
A
panel, including a clinical psychologist, a dentist, a priest, and a Supreme
Court judge, was put together at Aquinas.
“It
ended up elevating the program even higher,” says Dominick Arioli, who has
coached Aquinas’s boxing program for the past 25 years. Even the psychologist
came around.
“In
the beginning, she was against it,” he says. “But, she found out that kids that
went to our program were less violent. She recommended that all kids go through
the program.”
In
fact, two former Mission Bout participants, now dentists themselves, make all
the mouth guards for the kids.
“It’s
really not that dangerous as compared to other sports,” says Pete Fornarola, an
Aquinas senior and boxer. “At Aquinas there are more injuries in more
conventional sports than there are in boxing.”
But
Arioli does acknowledge that dangers exist at the pro level, and that they can
cause concern.
“A
lot of people see the aftereffects,” he says. “These guys have been doing it
for years. Some of them have taken too many punches. I mean, they’re doing it
day in and day out. It’s gonna have its toll.”
Some
of these damaged fighters have simply fought past their shelf life.
“A
boxer really has five to seven good years in his prime,” says Liccione.
Recent
regulations have led to improvements. Resnick commends the New York State
Athletic Commission’s efforts.
“If
you watch boxing now, they’re stopping the fight a lot quicker than they did in
the ’20s and ’30s,” he says. “Back then, there were no 12 rounds. They just
kept fighting until somebody quit — last man standing.”
The integrity and drive of the small venue and the
heart of real boxing is still found in places like the Montgomery Boxing Club
on Lyell Avenue. Resnick has run the gym for the past five years and serves as
an amateur and pro trainer and local promoter.
Resnick
was an amateur boxer and trainer, and took over the gym from its former owner
when the only other option was closing down. The fight promotion came later.
“Nobody
else was doing it properly in Rochester,” he says. “I had a couple of my boxers
that were ready to turn professional. I’d seen a lot of local boxers that
should have turned professional that didn’t have the people behind them, they
didn’t have a place to box. They didn’t have the right people to put them in
the ring and put the right fights together.”
Resnick
promoted the July 28 fight at Frontier Field. It was the first outdoor boxing
event in Rochester since the Ross Vergo-Tony Pellone fight at Red Wing Stadium
in 1949.
The
program at Aquinas is another constant in the Rochester boxing scene. It’s a
holdover from boxing’s heyday, when it was considered a gentlemanly way to
settle disputes.
“Seventy-three
years ago, two students got into a fight,” says Aquinas coach Arioli. “And the
priests at the time said, ‘Let’s settle this like gentlemen. We’ll go into the
gym and put boxing gloves on.'”
One
of the priests got the idea to charge admission and give the proceeds to the
Aquinas mission. “That’s what set it off,” says Arioli. “Two kids with a beef.”
Aquinas’s
is virtually the only high-school boxing program left in the country.
“Last
year, I had 90 kids sign up,” Arioli says. “And we had 75 kids that actually
went through the program.” The Bouts, held each March, consistently sell out
and raise between $4,000 and $5,000.
“Mr.
Arioli is a great guy,” says Pete Fornarola. “Everything that he says you can
learn something from — not just about boxing, but about dedication and self
confidence.”
Fornarola
plans on pursuing boxing “however far I can go” and is looking at schools like
Pennsylvania State and University at Buffalo that have boxing programs.
Other
kids, like Ron Resnick’s 16-year-old daughter, Dena, have even loftier goals.
“I
plan to go to the Olympics,” she says. “But right now they don’t have women’s
boxing in the Olympics. Hopefully it changes. I’m hoping, I wish for it. That’s
the dream.”
Her
drive is admirable. She’s an instrumental major at School Of The Arts. She swims,
plays lacrosse, soccer, volleyball, basketball, and “even cheerleading,” she
adds with an embarrassed laugh.
“I’m
basically a tomboy,” Dena says. “I can do anything a guy can do, probably
better.” But that doesn’t always work in her favor.
“It’s
hard to find girls my age,” she says. “So I’ve been sparring guys ever since I
was little. Every guy’s got a fear about being beat up by a girl, but it’s a
motivation for me, definitely.”
Dena
helps out with the beginner program at her dad’s gym between her busy schedule
and own workout.
“It
definitely keeps me out of trouble,” she says. “I’m a good girl.” A good girl
who could knock your block off.
Amidst the youth at the Montgomery Boxing
Club gym is Robert Johnson, a boxing coach for “about 35 to 40 years” and a
highly revered figure in local boxing. He got into the sport as a child when he
didn’t measure up for basketball. And over the years he has worked with local
contenders like Pablo de Jesus, Robert Dixon, Frank Mittigan, Willie Monroe,
Charles Murray, and Robert “Pushup” Frazier. New fighters still seek out his
expertise.
“I
don’t say yes right away, anyhow,” he says. “I have to see that he really wants
to do it. Because it’s not a sport you just come in and do it half-ass. You can
get hurt in this sport. So you have to have really made up your mind that you
want to do this. Show me you want to
do this. Once you get in the ring and put those gloves on in a sparring session
with a guy that’s already boxing, that tells it, that tells ’em right away. You
gotta like to get hit.”
But
that’s only part of it, according to Johnson.
“A
boxer uses his brains as well as his hands as well as his legs,” he says. “A
puncher goes into the ring with the mentality of just brutalizing the other
guy. And that takes away from the thinking.”
Recently
retired champ and Johnson protรฉgรฉ Charles “The Natural” Murray fought around
neighborhood streets and found himself attracted to boxing’s “artistic aspect.”
“I
just happened to be good at it,” he says.
Murray
turned pro when he was 19, almost making it onto the Olympic boxing team.
“After
the Olympic trials, a couple people came to ask me about turning pro and
joining the organization,” he says. “And I went with it.”
Murray
boxed pro as a junior welterweight and won the world title in 1993. He retired
at age 35.
“It
just stopped being fun to me,” he says. “The business aspect was getting me
down a little bit. And it was hard for me to excel when I stopped having fun.”
The
fun returned for Murray about three years ago when he took over The Avenue D
Recreation Center’s Youth Boxing Program from Coach Johnson.
“It’s
a thrill for me to see them perform something that I taught them,” he says. “I
like the kids a lot. I think they look at me as a sports figure, but I’m close
to them.”
Roughly
30 kids — age five and up — tear around the gym but snap to attention when
Murray speaks. There are running drills, sprints, pushups, and sparring. Little
boys with gloves bigger than their heads meet in brief mini-bouts within a circle
of their peers. Their eyes burn fiercely as they execute Murray’s on-site
instructions amidst the cheers. Some swing wildly, wind-milling around their
opponent, other hunker down and deliver surprisingly well-executed jabs and
uppercuts. All seem to be having a great time.
“I’m
a single mom so I feel this is a good place for him to be,” says five-year-old
Jahki’s mother, Avrish Lewis. “He’s young, he’s gonna have good motivation
skills, and he’s being around males.”
She’s
not really worried about him getting hurt.
“If
he gets a scratch or a bruise, he’ll learn how to dust it off,” she says.
“That’ll help him become a man in the future, because things like that are
going to happen in life. You get boo boos all the time.”
At
the heart of the instruction are lessons these youngsters will carry with them
for life, boxing or not.
“I
teach them about giving their all into everything they do,” Murray says. “I
emphasize school to the kids and never looking at boxing as a profession but as
a recreation. I give them a lot of things about respecting each other,
respecting their selves.”
Maybe
someday one of these kids will join the ranks of current hometown up-and-comers
like Robert “Pushup” Frazier, Rodney Jones, and Jonathan Tubbs, who is “the hot
kid right now,” says Resnick.
Resnick
will promote the next big fight night in November at the Riverside Convention
Center. “I think we’ve got a good fan base,” he says. “We’re starting to build
on it.”
At
the heart of these fans and the heart of the fighters beats a passion, a drive.
Just listen to its future.
“Boxing’s
about 85 percent heart, 15 percent skill,” says Dena Resnick. “I’ve got heart.
I’ve got the heart for boxing. You’ve gotta have heart.”
The
next Boxing at the ROC is Thursday,
November 4, at the Riverside Convention Center, 123 East Main Street, 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $20-$75. Info: 254-3280. For more information:
www.rochesterboxing.com.
This article appears in Oct 20-26, 2004.
