This was the end of the line for the great Jose Mantequilla Napoles, his last fight ever against John Stracey in Napoles home, Mexico City. I have to say, Stracey had a lot of heart and balls on him to be able to go into the lions den and stop Napoles, Napoles was a dangerous guy and almost took Stracey out at the beginning of the fight but Stracey wanted it bad and turned the tide and stopped the great Mantequilla.
Michael Carbajal, "little hands of stone", junior flyweight and all-time great, a stalking and offensive fighter with fight changing power in both fists, 1st round or 12th round, didn't matter, if it lands he can bomb anyone out. His straight right was natural and heavy, the classic 1-2 punch was his favorite, even if it didn't land his opponent was going to back up. This worked well, as he excelled at mid-range, getting full extension and snap on his shots and often followed the right with a whipping left to the body. Very powerful inside fighter, who loved the double left combination, with a rip to the head and a hook to the body. In addition he had a good stiff jab, one that really precipitated his offensive rhythm. He liked to probe with that nice jab, looking to nail you with a right hand bomb. When Mike Tyson said "bad intentions" Carbajal matches exactly that, everything he threw had sting on it. His offensive repertoire was elite. Carbajal is ranked 55 on the Ring magazine's hardest punchers list for a reason. He had average defense, fought some tough opponents, Humberto "Chiquita" Gonzalez three times, Gonzalez was a real bad a.. that could crack and box, and he fought the legendary Jorge Arcel. He had huge heart and gave everyone problems even if he lost.
Introduced to boxing by his father, Manuel, Carbajal began competing as a teenager. In 1988 he represented the United States in the Seoul Olympics and the 5'5 ½ ” boxer captured a silver medal at 106 pounds, however many observers believed he deserved the gold.
Following the Olympics he turned professional in 1989 with his brother Danny serving as his manager / trainer. Carbajal defeated future junior flyweight champion Will Grigsby in his pro debut and would not lose for nearly five years. In only his 15th contest, he defeated Muangchai Kittikasem on July 29, 1990 for the IBF junior flyweight title. After six successful defenses, “Little Hands of Stone” put his undefeated record on the line against WBC champion Humberto Gonzalez on March 13, 1993. In 1993's “Fight of the Year” Carbajal rose from two knockdowns to dramatically halt “Chiquita” in seven rounds and partially unify the belts. Two defenses of his titles came before losing a split decision in the 1994 rematch with Gonzalez. Despite losing his championship, Carbajal became the first junior flyweight to earn a $1 million purse.
Next he gained the WBO junior flyweight title in 1994 before dropping a 12-round decision to “Chiquita” in the rubber match. Carbajal rebounded to reclaim the IBF title with a 12-round win over Melchor Cob Castro on March 16, 1996. He defended twice before losing the title to Mauricio Pastrano the next year. However, he had one more championship in him as he stopped Jorge Arce via 11th round TKO on July 31, 1999 for the WBO junior flyweight title. Following his title-winning performance, Carbajal retired from the ring with a 49-4 (33 KOs) record.
Since leaving the ring, Carbajal has owned and operated the Ninth Street Gym in Phoenix.
Michael Carbajal had three fights with Humberto "Chiquita" Gonzalez, the first one was epic, they really took each other to hell and back. Chiquita Gonzalez is a legend, he had an iron chin and like Carbajal, Gonzalez is regarded as one of boxing's hardest punchers. Chiquita was tough as hell to beat, he only lost three times in his career. In 1993, Carbajal and Gonzalez were the best in their division and were in a collision course, their first fight certainly had fireworks.
It is rare to see two stars in their prime coinciding in the same weight class, and even rarer to see them willing to face each other in a winner-takes-all clash.
Even rarer is to have that fight live up to the lofty expectations placed on it, and this was one of such cases.
Michael “Little Hands of Stone” Carbajal was 27-0 with a couple of dozen knockouts to his credit back in the early ‘90s, and had accumulated six defenses of the IBF junior flyweight title that he had taken from Muangchai Kittikasem in 1990. Gonzalez was already a proven warrior with a few more fights than Carbajal, and no less than a dozen wins defending his WBC belt in the same division. They were both considered among the finest fighters in the world, regardless of weight.
The fight was a throwback to the best eras of boxing, those in which the best fought the best, routinely, without excuses.
They met in Las Vegas on March 13, in what would become the first fight in junior flyweight history in which both fighters made one million dollars or more, and it was also the first mega-bout at that weight to be televised on pay-per-view. Both of their titles were at play, as was the promise of a spot in the world’s top 5 pound-for-pound lists for the winner.
With the underlying drama of the True Mexican vs. Mexican-American rivalry bad blood feud setting the mood, both men understood that there was more at stake than just two belts, and went to work accordingly.
Carbajal took the early lead with his smoother boxing skills and his numbing punching power, but just as he was getting comfortable he took one on the nose and went down on the seat of his pants, to the roaring delight of the crowd at the Hilton. It was go-time from then on, as they both went for the knockout with every punch they threw after that moment.
Recovering quickly, the younger Carbajal was getting his rhythm back, landing at will at the iron-chinned “Chiquita” and finding his groove in the fight. A toe-to-toe phone-booth affair it was in the third round, and it was just the beginning.
The fifth round started with a long, twelve-punch combination by Gonzalez capped by a monstrous right hook from his southpaw stance that sent Carbajal down in a heap, holding on to the top rope for dear life. He beat the count, but a different fight had just begun.
Fighting on animalistic survival instinct from then on, both fighters went looking for the stoppage with renewed interest, both throwing bombs from all angles and dominating every aspect of the game in a beautiful display of pure boxing skills.
And then, on the seventh round, with Gonzalez up by two points and the fight really starting to heat up, Carbajal landed a right hand that sent “Chiquita” staggering backwards towards the ropes, and it was do-or-die for both men from then on.
A minute later, and with only 12 seconds to go in the round, Carbajal finally tags Gonzalez with a demolishing left hook as he has him pinned against the ropes, and it’s the highlight-reel, one-punch knockout blow that puts an end to a fantastic fight.
The Ring’s Fight of the Year award was almost a formality after that, and Carbajal was also named Fighter of the Year for 1993.
They would meet in a rematch one year later. But Carbajal’s extracurricular problems had already taken its toll, and he lost both that fight and the rubber match in late 1994.
The memory of their first fight, however, was more than enough to turn both men into legends. On both sides of the Rio Grande, and beyond.
Fittingly, they were both inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame on the same year in 2006.
Here's what Michael Carbajal later said about that epic fight against Chiquita Gonzalez in 1993, which won fight of the year honors. At the time, Gonzalez was considered to be nearly unbeatable, Carbajal had to dig deep to pull it out, Gonzalez floored him twice and he picked himself up off the canvas both times and knocked Gonzalez out.
Chiquita didn’t talk a whole lot of s—. The only thing that he told me before the fight was, ‘Hey Michael, don’t run from me.’ And I go, ‘What makes you think that I’m going to run from you? We’ll see when we get in there.’ He came in and we had a high-level war. I told him, ‘I love this. I love it.’ He knocked me down in the second round with the straight left hand. It was a flash knockdown. I wasn’t hurt. He caught me, and caught me good. I got up really quick and told the ref that I was alright. I went back to my corner and told them I was alright. I knew he was going to come at me, and come at me real strong. I came back in the third round, the fourth round. We were bombing away. We knew what we were doing. We were studying each other. I’m thinking, ‘What I’m going to hit him with? What I’m going to do when he does this or that?’ The fifth round came and he had me against the ropes. We were throwing. Chiquita was lefthanded. He caught me with the right hook. I said ‘Woo!’ All I knew was that I was down again. I didn’t feel the punch at the time. When I hit the floor, I was like ‘Damn, I’m down again.’ And you see me hit the canvas. When I got up, I still couldn’t feel my right leg. I knew he was going to come at me again. When he came at me, I threw a left hook. He was going to throw a whole of punches, because he knew that I was hurt. I was throwing short shots. He was throwing wide shots. When I watched him on film, I already knew that. I was going to catch him with some short, real sharp punches. He was all over me. Once I started to feel my right leg again, I said to myself, ‘You’re mine now.’ I boxed a little bit in the sixth round, still getting my senses together, and he kept coming at me. That was good. I knew I was going to catch him. I knew I was. When I started feeling my strength coming back, I said, ‘This is it, I’m going to catch him.’ He hurt me in the sixth round again. He didn’t know that, but I did (laughs). He wore himself down. He was tired. I told my corner “I have his ass now.’ It’s when I started coming forward and I had him against the ropes. I hit him with a short right hand that wobbled him, and followed that with a left hook right on the button. I ducked after the left hook, and tried to hit him with an uppercut, because I saw him going over my shoulder. I missed, but he fell face first. The ref told me to go to the corner, I thought to myself, ‘He’s not getting up.’ I was shaking my head to my corner. He didn’t get up and I started jumping up and down. For everyone else, that’s my greatest victory. It’s the fight everyone always reminds me about.”
I want to talk about something for a minute here, in 1997 when Carbajal was at the tail end of his career, he fought "Baby Jake" Matlala, if you're not familiar with "Baby Jake" Matlala, he was called "Baby Jake" for a reason, he was only 4'10" one of the smallest boxers in history, but man could he fight. Carbajal fought Matlala in 1997 and Matlala opened up two nasty cuts on Carbajal and the fight was stopped on cuts and Matlala won, Baby Jake was something else, got to give him props. I'll talk more about "Baby Jake" Matlala later in the thread.
"Baby Jake Matlala" in action.
Carbajal during his fight with "Baby Jake" Matlala.
"Baby Jake" Matlala was one hell of a fighter, but to be fair, Carbajal was past his prime. A young Michael Carbajal might have been a different story.
KISS THE SKY: It’s hard to say what’s more impressive, the punch or the fact that Miguel Banda survived it. That’s a young (22) Michael Carbajal, in his 11th pro fight, administering a chiropractic adjustment to Banda on Jan. 12, 1990. Carbajal scored two knockdowns (Rounds 1 and 7) and won by a unanimous eight-round decision.
That brings us to Michael Carbajal's last fight against Jorge "Travieso" Arce, now Jorge Arce was quite a character, he would show up at fights wearing a cowboy hat, riding a horse and sucking on a lollipop. very charasmatic yet otherwise typical mexican fighter. Great left hook and tough as sh.., the guy just screamed entertainment, he was aggressive and was a hard and furious puncher, he could really rip shots to your body.
So In 1999, Carbajal announced his second comeback and after three wins, he traveled to Tijuana to challenge 21-year-old WBO junior flyweight World champion Jorge Arce (20-2-1), who clearly took nine of the first 10 rounds, even though Arce had hit the canvas in round six. In the 11th round, Carbajal rocked Arce with a right that sent the Mexican flying into the ropes. Referee Raul Caiz, Jr. stopped the fight, Carbajal was crowned world champion for the fifth time, and then Michael retired after the fight for good. This fight was crazy, and it showcases why hard punchers are never out of a fight. Jorge Arce really took it to Carbajal for nine rounds and was winning on the scorecards easily, and then bam, just like that, Carbajal takes him out. Here's what Carbajal later said about that wild fight:
"I wasn’t going to be able to handle these young kids, and that came with Arce. I couldn’t handle the speed. I’ve never been knocked out in my career—amateur and pro. For me, that’s great. I was stopped on cuts by Matlala, but never knocked down. Arce was beating me. He was quicker than me. He was throwing faster combinations than I was. I knew I was going to catch him. I was hitting him with the right. Arce was taking it—and he was a good little fighter. I caught him with the right in the fifth, and knocked him down. He got back, and he came back and won the rest of that round—and the other rounds, too. In the 11th, I knew I had to knock him out to win. I knew I was losing. I was calm. I didn’t go out wild. You have to be precise when you punch. I caught him again in the 11th and I thought I had him. He couldn’t stand. When the ref saw him fall back, and stopped it, I started jumping and down. I already knew I was going to retire. I thought to myself, ‘I wanted to retire with a world title.’”
Jorge Arce later said that Michael Carbajal was the hardest puncher he ever faced:
"Michael Carbajal, Whenever he hit me it hurt. The jab hurt my hands. (Arce mimics catching Carbajal’s punches on the gloves, grimacing) Ouch, ouch. His hands were like steel. Carbajal’s punches were like being hit by a steel bar. I remember every punch he gave me in the 11 rounds."
One final word about "Manitas De Piedra", he was always a dangerous guy, he could take you out at any time with one shot, I love guys like that because they add the potential for fireworks every time they step into the ring.
Jimmy Mclarnin, he was a skilled boxer and knockout artist of the depression era and one of the greatest to ever lace em' up. He had a murderous right hand, and had a lot of nicknames because of his punching power, "The Irish Lullaby" because he was Irish and put people to sleep, "The Babyfaced Assassin", "The Murderous Mick", "The Belfast Spider", he is a legend in this sport and once you look at the fighters he fought and beat you can understand why. Let's just look at his list of scalps, Barney Ross, Fidel LaBarba, Sammy Mandell, Tony Canzoneri, Louis "Kid" Kaplan, Jackie Fields, Young Corbett III, Sid Terris, Ruby Goldstein, Billy Petrolle, Al Singer, Charles "Bud" Taylor, Lou Ambers, Benny Leonard. I mean, just look at that list of names he defeated, it's ridiculous, that's Eleven Hall of Famers in that list, his resume is one of the best in boxing history period. This interview with him was conducted by the Los Angeles Times in 1989 when he was 81 years old, words can't explain what a legend he is in this sport, this interview is pure Gold.
AN OLD WARRIOR : McLarnin, 81, Recalls Hard Days of Boxing
By EARL GUSTKEY
Sept. 26, 1989
They shared hard times, those tough, rock-hard young men of America’s Depression, and they fought one another savagely.
Their names alone evoke a richness of the American melting pot and the American dream: Canzoneri, Ross, McLarnin, Petrolle, Apostoli, Zivic . . . and maybe the greatest of them all, Henry Armstrong.
They’re nearly all gone now, the great welterweights and middleweights of the Depression era. Tony Canzoneri, Barney Ross, Billy Petrolle, Fred Apostoli, Fritzie Zivic and Armstrong . . . all gone.
Still with us, however, is Jimmy McLarnin, two-time welterweight champion, who at 81, is happy, wealthy and wise.
He has lived in the same house on a quiet, leafy Glendale street the last 40 years.
Jimmy McLarnin is older than the memories of practically everyone who attends boxing shows in Southern California today. He fought in Los Angeles before there was an Olympic Auditorium. Calvin Coolidge was President when McLarnin was a hungry, 16-year-old making his debut at Vernon Arena in September, 1924.
Today, his only concessions to age are arthritic hands, and a nearly empty house. His wife of 52 years, Lillian, died last year. His four children live in the northwest and British Columbia, and Jimmy talks of selling the old Glendale house and moving closer to his children. “I’m in good health; I’m thankful for that,” he said the other day. “I watch my diet. I’m at 150 pounds now, three pounds over my fighting weight. And I walk two to three miles every day.”
McLarnin talked about the old days, about a special bond the young battlers of the 1930s America shared.
“Of all the hundreds of fighters I came in contact with in my life, I can say I can’t think of a one who I didn’t like and who didn’t turn out to be at least a halfway decent human being,” he said.
“Boxing is a whipping boy for a lot of people, but look at all the guys who made something of themselves with boxing. Look at Jack Dempsey. He was a bum, a hobo. And he became a champion, and a pretty decent human being.
“The fighters in those days . . . we all came up hungry together. None of us had it easy coming up. Our fathers worked like dogs. In a way, we loved each other. I mean, you’d try to beat a guy’s brains out in the ring, but before and after a fight, I admired all the guys I fought. They’d gone through everything I had to go through.”
The old fighter showed a visitor his trophy room. He leafed through a stack of old photographs. He pulled out a faded photo of a group of about 15 young boys, all staring intently into the camera.
“I’m in this picture,” he said. “It’s a group of newsboys in Vancouver, when I was a little kid. Can you find me?”
It was easy. Last one on the right, second row. There was an unmistakable fierceness to the little lean face. The glare from his stare leaped out, from 70-odd years ago.
McLarnin laughed, and showed some old photos from his golf days at Lakeside Golf Club.
“That’s Bing Crosby. That’s Pat O’Brien. Here I am with Spencer Tracy. . . . I got my handicap down to three at one point. I was livin’ pretty good in those days, after I retired from fighting, in 1936.”
McLarnin says he doesn’t pay much attention to the boxing scene today.
“There are so many champions, I can’t keep track of what’s going on,” he said.
James Archibald McLarnin turned pro in Vancouver when he was 15 and had 77 bouts in 13 years. Within 16 months in 1933 and 1934, he won and lost the welterweight championship twice.
At Wrigley Field in Los Angeles, he knocked out Raffaele Capabianca Giordano--known then as Young Corbett III--of Fresno, winning the title the first time.
McLarnin lost the championship a year later to Barney Ross, won it back in the rematch and lost it again in the rubber match.
In 1936, he lost and won decisions with Canzoneri, won a decision over Lou Ambers, and retired.
The list of McLarnin’s opponents reads like a page from boxing’s Who’s Who. He fought ‘em all, as they say. But the old champion was stumped when asked to single out the toughest man he had fought.
“Gosh, so many great fighters,” he said. “I could never say one guy was better than the others. But I will say that Billy Petrolle hit me as hard as anyone ever did. He was a tough, tough guy. He hit me so hard in the second round of my fight (in 1930) with him that afterward I couldn’t remember a thing from Rounds 2 through 7.”
McLarnin lost a decision to Petrolle in 1930, then defeated him twice in 1931.
“And Louis (Kid) Kaplan--oh, could he hit. He knocked me down three times in 1927 and broke my jaw. After the fight (won by McLarnin on a knockout), I remember my teeth didn’t fit together the same, but I didn’t think much about it.
“Three years later, a dentist asked me: ‘How did you break your jaw?’ Kaplan had broken my jaw and I’d never known it.
“Maybe the meanest guy I ever fought was Bud Taylor. He was a vicious . . . , really tough. I fought him in 1925, when I was just a kid and had no business in there with him. I remember the first time I fought him, in Vernon, it was my biggest payday by far at the time, $1,500. He beat me twice and I won one on a foul.
“Barney Ross was a really tough opponent. He was a great boxer and had a great chin. I can remember getting him right on the chin with some of the best shots I ever hit anyone with and he didn’t even blink.
“The greatest fighter of my era, but a guy I never fought, was Harry Greb. I fought on an undercard of his in Oakland, in 1924. He was blind in one eye, and fought you kind of twisted sideways, so he could see you. In his prime, he might have been the best there ever was. He was a middleweight and heavyweights wanted no part of him.”
In talking of the old days, McLarnin frequently refers to the hard work it took to be a world-class fighter. It was a work ethic acquired from a hard-working father, he said.
“My father was a beautiful man,” he said. “He was as hard-working and as talented a man as I ever knew. My father could do anything. He never had a lot of money, but he raised six sons and six daughters and showed all of us what hard work is.”
McLarnin was born in Inchacore, Ireland, and was 3 when his father booked third-class passage to Canada in 1910.
“We went first to Saskatchewan, where my father got a section of land and raised wheat for 15 cents a bushel,” McLarnin said.
“We later went to Vancouver. My father was in the lumber business, the furniture business and he was a butcher. He could even fix shoes.”
In his mid-teens, McLarnin fell under the influence of a popular Vancouver boxing instructor, Charles (Pop) Foster, and thus began a relationship that endured for 40 years.
McLarnin has a framed portrait of Foster on the wall of his den. When Foster died in 1956, he left $200,000 to McLarnin.
“Pop really cared about me, and he brought me along very carefully,” he said. “No fighter ever had a better manager than I did. I was a natural right-hander and he never had to help me with the right. But he spent two years with me getting my left jab ready before I turned pro.”
One of Foster’s tips earned McLarnin his welterweight championship.
“Young Corbett was a great fighter, but he made one mistake--he took me for a pigeon,” McLarnin said.
“Corbett was a defensive fighter, but Pop had noticed he had a habit of leaning forward slightly just before he threw his right hand. So we planned to let him do that a few times early in the fight, sucker him in, then try to catch him with a left hook.
“And that’s exactly the way it happened.”
March 29, 1933. New, three-bedroom homes in West L.A. were going for $3,200. A new Ford V-8 cost $490. It cost 25 cents to see “King Kong” at the RKO Hillstreet. A crowd of 50,000 saw Babe Ruth hit three home runs against the Chicago White Sox at Yankee Stadium the day before, and 15,000 saw Jimmy McLarnin win the welterweight championship at Los Angeles’ Wrigley Field.
The old champion is on his feet now, dancing softly across the carpet. He flicks out left jabs, demonstrating the set-up punches for that knockout.
“He did it once (he leans forward), I watched him carefully--then I let him do it again,” McLarnin said, from his fighting stance.
“And when he did it the third time-- Bing! (he throws a hard, quick left hook) I got him. A perfect punch, a left hook right on the chin. He went down flat, got up but could hardly stand. I knocked him into the ropes, and the referee stopped it.”
McLarnin smiled broadly at the memory, which has always been a sweet one for him because his 71-year-old father, Samuel McLarnin, was at ringside that night in 1933.
But then McLarnin grew frustrated at not being able to remember the referee (George Blake) who awarded him the title that night.
The day after the fight, The Times started the story--”McLarnin Is Ring King”--on Page 1, and described near-riotous conditions when deliriously happy McLarnin fans tried to storm the ring to reach their new champion.
Fifty-six years later, both challenger and champion from that night are still alive. Corbett is 84, suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, and lives in a rest home near Fresno. His wife attributes his illness to head injuries suffered in an auto accident in the 1950s.
McLarnin earned between $700,000 and $800,000 in Depression dollars in his fighting days. His biggest purse was $60,000 for the final fight against Ross. He earned $50,000 in 1929 for beating Sammy Mandell in Chicago. During the 1930s, he said, he never earned less than $20,000 for a fight.
And earn it he did, he said, proudly. Always, the work ethic.
“I got a dollar for my first fight and $25,000 for my last one, and in between there was a lot of tough, hard work,” he said.
You know, it's true, there are so many sad endings in boxing, guys losing all of there earnings, taking too much damage to the brain and suffering for the rest of their life from it, it's good to know that Jimmy Mclarnin lived a long healthy life after retiring. Reading that interview, it's amazing how sharp his mind was at that age, he could even remember who punched him the hardest, and that would be Billy Petrolle, aka "The Fargo Express", he certainly could crack with the best of them, I'll profile him later in the thread.
Getting back to Jimmy Mclarnin, he had an epic rivalry with the legendary Barney Ross, it was the Ali-Frazier of that era. But Jimmy Mclarnin beat a murderer's row of greats along the way.
Jimmy Mclarnin poses for the camera
Jimmy McLarnin: The Emerald of New York City
By Mike Casey
I wanted to write this one for an occasional and esteemed friend out of Riverside, California. Those of you who know your boxing characters will know the same of Bill O’Neill, who has been involved in the game for a great many years and served with distinction as a Hall of Fame president.
Ol’ Billie, to give him his pen name, writes to me occasionally about the many fighters he has known, always with the same delightfully dry wit. He makes the occasional self-effacing joke about his advancing years and lack of computer literacy, whilst craftily manoeuvring his way around the keyboard with deceptive dexterity. He still loves the fight game and keeps abreast of the latest developments with the help of his many friends, including former lightweight champ, Mando Ramos.
Bill tells me stories about the great fighters and characters, such as Jack ‘Deacon’ Hurley, Henry Armstrong, Billy Conn and Rocky Marciano. A favourite of mine about the great Hurley was the spot of comic relief he got after his boy Harry Matthews had been devastated in two rounds by Marciano. The Deacon called Harry’s wife for her take on the fight and found her to be considerably more upbeat than he had expected. Mrs Matthews, who wasn’t greatly familiar with the finer points of boxing, reasoned that the fight had been a draw because Harry had won the first round and Rocky had won the second.
However, if there was one fighter who held a special place in Bill O’Neill’s heart, it was his lifelong friend, Jimmy McLarnin, who started out as a scrawny 108-pounder at the age of sixteen, worked all the way up to the welterweight championship of the world and only took his last breath two years ago at the age of ninety-six. They called Jimmy the Belfast Spider.
When the Great Depression came along, so did McLarnin, a fiery little one-man tonic for a generation of crushed souls who so desperately needed their spirits lifting. He drew enormous crowds to his fights, mostly poor Irish-Americans who would willingly save up their few pennies to watch the exciting, clean-cut kid who also carried the name of Baby Face.
Jimmy’s pulling power did wonders for his wages, since promoters knew better than to haggle or dispute the mantra of McLarnin’s shrewd manager, Pop Foster. “James is on the card,” Pop would tell them, “and he’s got to be paid.”
Style
‘Dynamic’ is so often the word used to describe Jimmy McLarnin’s fighting style. It is an adequate word, if only because of the sheer pace at which he fought. But it doesn’t do Jimmy justice for being a cunning and skilful ring operator as well as a ferocious attacker and hustler.
His great rival Barney Ross, with whom McLarnin locked horns in three classic duels, was probably more familiar than most with Jimmy’s often understated versatility and ring guile.
“McLarnin tried to end every fight in the very first round if he could,” Barney explained. “He’d come out winging at the bell, aiming at a quick knockout. But if he didn’t connect in an early round, he’d settle back and make a boxing contest out of it, with a lot of feinting, moving and countering. He’d try to make you over confident, that maybe it wasn’t so tough being in with him after all. But don’t get careless, because that was what he’d be waiting for. You see, he’d always have that big punch back there, waiting to explode it at the first sign of a letdown. With him, you were in danger every minute and you could never afford to relax for a second.”
McLarnin held New York City in the palm of his hand, racking up some astonishing attendance figures for his many thrilling fights. His debut there in February 1928 couldn’t have been more spectacular, defining and sealing his popularity with his new legion of supporters. Jimmy knocked out the skilful and fast moving Sid Terris with a right hand blast to the jaw and was carried back to his dressing room on the shoulders of those who rushed to acclaim him.
The word quickly spread about McLarnin and the gates soared accordingly. He pulled in 18,000 to watch the Terris knockout, and his attendance figures thereafter were consistently staggering. In 1929 alone, combined crowds of nearly 80,000 came to pay homage to their boy in his fights with Ray Miller and Ruby Goldstein and in his two encounters with Joe Glick. Jimmy’s victory over Goldstein in December was just two months after the Wall Street crash, yet the fight was attended by 19,541 people paying $87,760.
McLarnin wasn’t even a world champion yet, but he had already come a long way from his poor and humble roots. Those roots when back to Hillsborough in Northern Ireland, but it was in Canada where Jimmy grew up. He was just a six-year old when his folks moved across the great pond to Vancouver and he was getting into scraps from an early age. He was ten when he picked up his first official purse of one dollar, spraining his thumbs for his troubles because he didn’t know how to punch properly.
McLarnin was still only thirteen when he met Pop Foster, one of the shrewdest fight managers the game ever saw. To Jimmy, Pop would also prove to be one of the most compassionate and generous of men. Foster and McLarnin’s father built a gymnasium for their promising youngster and the great education of Jimmy McLarnin began.
Pop Foster knew his boxing technique inside out and impressed upon Jimmy the importance of ring science. He never discouraged his feisty protégé’s love of having a good old fashioned fight, but cleverly re-shaped McLarnin’s style to incorporate skills and smarts. Pop taught Jimmy to develop speed and a good eye, working him out at a testing but sensible pace like a young racehorse. It was tough and uncompromising work, but McLarnin committed himself to the effort and was always eager to become the complete fighter. In later years, Jimmy enjoyed telling people that he already had a hundred thousand dollars in his bank account by the time he was nineteen.
Small
As a professional novice, Jimmy didn’t just face the challenge of becoming a more rounded fighter. He had another problem. He needed to beef up. So slight was the innocent looking youngster that even the hardy characters of the fight game were scared of employing him.
He told writer Peter Heller: “I lied about my age when I first started. When I came to California I said I was eighteen. I was really sixteen. I don’t like lying, but this was a matter of survival, because we were really awfully hungry. When I was came to California, I was very small – four feet eleven – and weighed 108lbs. We couldn’t get a fight because I looked so young. I was around San Francisco for something like three months before I ever could get a fight. It was really tough going. I was away from home, homesick. We lived in a little place that cost us seven dollars a month and it was a broken-down place. I had no friends or anything. It was tough. That’s where I first started in the United States.
“When I fought Fidel LaBarba he was a flyweight and I was a bantamweight. I was sixteen years old at the time. Fidel was rough. He was one of the best left hookers. He was strong and I could move good. I was a good boxer. I had a long reach, so I used it. I kept jabbing and running, jabbing and running. And I really ran, I don’t mind telling you, because it’s a very silly pair of feet that stay around and let your face get punched. So I kept moving and kept my left jab right in his face. He had a great left hook to the stomach. Oh boy, he hit me a few times and I thought all my teeth were being pulled out. He was a puncher.”
What boggles the mind about McLarnin’s 68-fight record is the astonishing quality of the men he fought and beat. No less than thirteen were world champions at some point in their own careers. Even in the formative stages of his ring education, Jimmy was duelling with true aces of different weight divisions who knew all the moves, such as Bud Taylor and the remarkable Memphis Pal Moore. The formidable Filipino whirlwind, Pancho Villa, was flyweight champion of the world when McLarnin took a decision off him in 1925. Villa had stormed to the championship with his famous victory over the great Jimmy Wilde, but Pancho was outsmarted by the young Jimmy.
McLarnin always sportingly admitted that Villa might have underestimated him and greatly admired his relentless opponent’s fighting talents. Jimmy was able to pile up points by keeping Pancho at a distance for most of the fight but still suffered for his efforts. Such was Villa’s ferocity on the inside, McLarnin’s ears were blackened by the little man’s vicious head punches.
The Belfast Spider steadily began to swell his impressive ledger. Two fights later, he blitzed future welterweight champion Jackie Fields in two rounds at the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles, knocking Jackie down four times.
Jimmy’s knockout of Louis (Kid) Kaplan at the Chicago Coliseum in 1927 was a see-saw thriller, in which McLarnin learned a lot about his own resolve and resilience. Knocked down in the first and second rounds, Jimmy roared back to deck the Kid in the fourth and fifth before knocking him out in the eighth. Getting floored was a new experience for Jimmy, but he proved he was made of the right stuff. Kaplan tired as wise old Pop Foster worked his magic in the corner and calmly guided Jimmy through the stormy waters. Foster told McLarnin when Kaplan was ready to be taken and Jimmy took him.
Finished
Jimmy wasn’t yet the finished article. When he challenged Sammy Mandell for the world lightweight crown at the Polo Grounds in 1928, the Irish lad ran into a boxing master who beat him convincingly over fifteen rounds. “He gave me a beautiful boxing lesson,” McLarnin would admit.
Jimmy was an outstanding lightweight, but the strain of making the poundage was beginning to tell on him. It was at welterweight that he would be in his true element and wage some of his most thrilling contests against genuine fellow greats of the ring.
He sucked up the Mandell defeat, bested Sammy in two subsequent meetings and rolled on to greater things. Courageous to the core, McLarnin decisioned Young Jack Thompson at Madison Square Garden in 1930 despite suffering a broken hand in the first round.
People still write stories about Jimmy’s unforgettable trilogy with the barn-burning warrior known as the Fargo Express, Billy Petrolle. Non-stop Billy was never a world champion in his vastly more competitive era, but was a glorious fighting man who troubled everyone he fought and seemed incapable of having a dull fight. Coming into his first match with McLarnin, the sprawling record of the Fargo Express stood at a mighty 99-17-12.
Billy gave Jimmy a rude shock at Madison Square Garden, twice decking him for nine counts in the fourth round in chugging to an upset points victory. McLarnin was believed to have injured his right hand in the second round of that torrid war and certainly used it sparingly for the duration of the fight.
But Jimmy got his revenge. The New York fans were treated to two more feasts from McLarnin and Petrolle over the following nine months, Jimmy winning both and regaining his berth as one of the world’s greatest welterweights.
It was McLarnin’s ability to read the game of boxing and recognise its many technical subtleties that made him such an exceptional little battler. Pop Foster was always telling him to watch out for this and that, and Jimmy learned to adapt his own style to different requirements. He learned a lot when he stopped a fat old man called Benny Leonard in 1932. The bloated, fading impersonation of the once fabulous Ghetto Wizard, who is still regarded by a many experts as the all-time king of the lightweights, was still good enough to box most men’s ears off and hit them with sledgehammer force to keep them sweet. McLarnin could see Benny’s greatness and noticed how the old maestro could capitalise on any weakness he spotted in his opponent. Jimmy was grateful for the win and could only imagine how much greater Leonard had been as a peerless youngster.
McLarnin was close to the big bauble and he went to Wrigley Field in Los Angeles to collect. Yet still it was regarded as a major upset when he tore the welterweight crown from the great Young Corbett III in one sensational round, courtesy of one booming right. The oft-forgotten Corbett would lose just twelve times in his 157-fight career and was far from finished after McLarnin dropped the bomb on him, going on to scalp the likes of Billy Conn, Fred Apostoli, Mickey Walker and Gus Lesnevich.
Jimmy McLarnin, the adopted Emerald of New York City, was on top of the world. It was the spring of 1933 and he would cross swords with only one man over the next two years in a pulsating three-fight saga that would thrill New Yorkers and captivate the entire boxing world. He was about to do business with Beryl Rosofsky. Beryl, of course, always sounded much fiercer as Barney Ross.
Greats
To this day, they stick together like a more primitive version of Laurel and Hardy in the minds and hearts of historians. McLarnin and Ross, Ross and McLarnin. Any way you roll it off the tongue, it sounds smooth and warmly familiar. Look at various lists of the all-time great welterweights, and Jimmy and Barney are still locked together in similarly lofty positions. So they should be.
The two little titans drew 60,000 people into Madison Square Garden for their opening epic, when Barney took Jimmy’s title. McLarnin regained it in the second chapter, but Ross finished on top in their final set-to at the Polo Grounds in 1935.
These are the bare facts. But all three fights went to the wire and all three were desperately close, despite the often ridiculously wide scoring of the officials. After each memorable saga, opinion was sharply divided on which man had truly won. When Ross won the third battle, ringside observer Gene Tunney was aghast, offering the opinion that McLarnin had won thirteen of the fifteen rounds at least.
Jimmy was typically philosophical and took it all with good sportsmanship and grace. He never was one to rage and rant when he felt that life had dealt him a bad hand. He recognised Barney as an excellent fighter and he was quite correct in that summation. Ross couldn’t hit like Jimmy, but his skills could very often make an opponent look inadequate.
Everybody wanted a fourth fight between the two wonderful magicians, especially the enthralled Irish and Jewish communities of New York. Jimmy kept busy in the only way he knew how, not by kicking a couple of tomato cans, but by seeing off a couple of gents with the resounding names of Tony Canzoneri and Lou Ambers.
But the fourth fight with Ross never did come. The negotiations got complicated and Jimmy ran out of patience. It was at this point that he and Pop Foster played their final masterstroke. They hung ‘em up. Jimmy was twenty-nine, in excellent health and had shrewdly saved and invested his earnings. Why go and spoil a good thing?
When Pop Foster died, he famously left two hundred thousand dollars to his beloved Jimmy to boost his coffers even more. The luck of the Irish? Perhaps.
But you look at the career of Jimmy McLarnin, you look at his determination and his fighting spirit, and you mix in his mettle as a man. He fashioned all those fine qualities out of hard work, common sense and a willingness to learn from his mistakes. There weren’t too many times, to this writer’s knowledge, when he pleaded for some luck. If he got some in the end, God bless him.
Jimmy Mclarnin was a bad a.., he was aggressive, could box your ears off, and take you out with that right hand at any time, one of my all-time favorites.
Jimmy Mclarnin detonates his right hand on Lou Brouillard.
Jimmy Mclarnin used to do a backflip after a win, love this photo, I collect type 1 original boxing photos and I've been looking for this one on eBay for a while now with no luck so far.
In 1932, Jimmy Mclarnin fought the great Benny Leonard, if you're not familiar with Benny Leonard, he is considered by many to be the greatest lightweight in history, and a candidate for one of the greatest pound for pound fighters ever. Benny Leonard was world lightweight champion for seven years, he was called the "Ghetto Wizard", he was Jewish and got his start by fighting in the streets of New York as a means of self defense. In his prime, Benny Leonard was called the "brainiest" of boxers and once said that boxing is more mental than physical, you have to be able to out think your opponent more than anything else. Boxing is indeed a mental chess match and Benny Leonard was a master at it. Not much film exists of Benny Leonard in his prime, there is a film of him fighting another all-time great southpaw Lew Tendler, but the film is from 1922 and of poor quality. But you can tell from the 1922 film of Leonard that he was something special, I don't think anyone looks as good as a pure boxer until Sugar Ray Robinson and Willie Pep were filmed in the 1950s. Anyway, Jimmy Mclarnin and Benny Leonard fought in 1932 and it was filmed, and it was Benny Leonard's last fight ever, he had been retired for Seven years and came out of retirement to fight Jimmy Mclarnin because it was a good payday. In the fight, Benny Leonard is obviously way past his prime, but you can still see flashes of the magic that made him one of the greatest of all-time. He gave an intelligent and skillful performance, showing good footwork, head movement, a good jab, and counterpunching ability. When I say Leonard is one of the greatest of all-time, I mean it, Leonard is a boxing god, his name is enough to send chills up your spine in the boxing community, and with good reason, he basically WAS a 1920s version of Sugar Ray Robinson, the complete fighter, iron chin, could box circles around you, or knock you out. Anyway, Jimmy Mclarnin won the fight against Leonard by stoppage in the 6th round, it was a passing of the torch kind of fight, Mclarnin was yet to enter his prime, young and hungry, and he was just too much for Leonard, very aggressive and throwing lots of hard leather. I'll be talking about Benny Leonard later in the thread, you just can't talk about the history of boxing without talking about the great Benny Leonard.
Jimmy Mclarnin on the left faces off with Benny Leonard.
Jimmy McLarnin also had a great two fight series with Tony Canzoneri, Canzoneri is another all-time great, a five-time world champion, he was a tough as nails Italian that ranks right up there with the best to ever do it. He beat McLarnin in their first fight, but McLarnin got his revenge in the rematch.
Tony Canzoneri lands a left to the chin of Jimmy McLarnin.
Oct. 5, 1936: Canzoneri vs McLarnin II
Tony Canzoneri vs Jimmy McLarnin. Two of the very best from one of boxing’s greatest decades, the 1930’s, the Depression years, that glorious time of Kid Chocolate, Barney Ross, Henry Armstrong and Joe Louis.
Only a year separated the two greats in age and by 1936 they were both grizzled, though still-formidable, veterans. But between May of that year, when the two gave fight fans a thrilling ten round battle, and the following October when they locked up a second time, something happened to Canzoneri. A gifted pugilist in his prime, with sharp reflexes, crafty moves and dangerous power in both fists, he suddenly didn’t have it anymore. His prime was gone for good.
Canzoneri vs McLarnin
Just the year before “Canzi” was still a force to be reckoned with, seemingly not that far removed from the form he had when he was regarded as clearly the finest boxer in the game with big wins over Jackie “Kid” Berg, Kid Chocolate and Billy Petrolle. In fact, less than two years prior he had dropped a pair of close, hard-fought decision battles to Barney Ross and then in May of ’35 he regained the lightweight crown from the always tough Lou Ambers.
Meanwhile McLarnin was coming off his own great series with Ross, a trilogy of superb fifteen round battles which saw “The Baby Faced Assassin” lose the first and third clashes, leaving McLarnin empty-handed in terms of title belts. Not in terms of money, though. All three matches had been huge events and McLarnin looked to only add more funds to his bulging bank account as he set to rumble with Canzoneri at Madison Square Garden twice in the same year, both matches scheduled for ten rounds.
The first Canzoneri vs McLarnin match was a terrific battle that only became more dramatic with each action-packed round. It was made further memorable due to a bizarre incident just before the opening bell. After receiving the referee’s instructions, Canzoneri turned and walked into the overhead microphone hard enough to leave him slightly dazed. Naturally McLarnin took advantage, battering Tony about the ring in the opening round, but after that, “The Dublin Dynamiter” was clearly out-classed as Canzoneri recovered and went on to out-box his rival with authority. Bouncing energetically about the ring and consistently beating McLarnin to the punch, the Italian-American showed the New York fans the kind of skills which had made him one of boxing’s truly great lightweight champions. He even tried for a knockout in the last two stanzas and the judges all gave Tony the win by scores of eight rounds to two.
But as it turned out, that was Canzoneri’s last great performance. Four months later he defended his lightweight title against Ambers and he suddenly appeared aged beyond his years, dropping a one-sided points loss that saw “The Herkimer Hurricane” win almost every round. Afterwards, no less an expert than Benny Leonard judged Canzoneri finished as an elite fighting force. “Youth licked Tony tonight,” he told the press. “After all, he’s been tossing leather for eleven years.”
But Canzoneri was far from ready to pack it in. A month later, it was time for a rematch with McLarnin, but the second meeting of these two ring legends would be of a very different order from their first. The match in May had been a thrilling shoot-out with both men looking to land big shots, but McLarnin’s aggressiveness had given Canzoneri chances to counter and land solid blows.
Canzoneri vs McLarnin
This time McLarnin boxed conservatively behind his left jab and it proved a winning strategy. Canzoneri couldn’t get past the left hand of “The Belfast Spider” and in the later rounds he bore the wounds of war: a swollen and bleeding right eye and a split lip. He was such a gory sight that by the seventh round fans were calling for the match to be stopped, but the proud former champion survived to hear the final bell.
The decision went to McLarnin, who would compete just once more, winning a ten round non-title match against Ambers, before he walked away from boxing for good. But his adversary, despite the fact he just no longer had the spark that made him an all-time great, journeyed on, losing another bid for the world title against Ambers and then answering the bell twenty-two more times before Al “Bummy” Davis knocked him out with his powerful left hook and finally ended the amazing career of the one-and-only Tony Canzoneri.
One last word about McLarnin, he's fascinating, there's really no other way to put it, a tough as hell Irishman from the depression era, nicknamed "The Babyfaced Assassin", could spark his opponent out with a thunderous right hand at any time, what more can you ask for?
Merqui Sosa. Some guys you just have to watch, doesn't matter if they win or lose, you have to watch them because they hit really hard and Merqui Sosa was one of those guys. Roy Jones Jr said Sosa hit him the hardest out of everyone he fought, James "Lights Out" Toney said Sosa hit him the hardest, that should tell you all you need to know about how hard Sosa punched. He was a guy that brought it every time he stepped in the ring, sometimes he had to be saved from himself, but he was always game. Sosa went the distance with James Toney, which is saying a lot because Toney is one of the best to ever do it, and Sosa had two real knock down drag outs with Prince Charles Williams. His fight with Roy Jones Jr, prime Roy was just too fast for him, as is the case with everyone Roy fought during his prime, did think the stoppage was a bit premature though. But Merqui Sosa was fun to watch and always dangerous because of his power. He couldn't really box worth a darn, he was one of those guys that was going to try to take you out, or brawl with you on the inside and that always makes for an exciting fighter.
Merqui Sosa's fights with Prince Charles Williams are one's for the ages, your classic fight in a phone booth type battles, the first one won fight of the year in 1995. The fight was stopped after round 7 because the ring doctor determined that both men were so busted up that neither could continue. The second picked up where the first one left off, this rivalry was one of the most brutal in boxing history.
Merqui Sosa after the first fight with Charles Williams.
Forgotten Fades: Merqui Sosa vs Prince Charles Williams 1 & 2
In my boxing lifetime, the best fight that I have ever watched is Diego Corrales vs Jose Luis Castillo I. That fight was 10 rounds of unbelievable ebb and flow with a finish not even a rocky movie could do justice. However, the point of this article series isto focus on the classic wars that do not get the attention that they rightfully deserve. Corrales-Castillo has received more than enough adulation and praise from all areas of the boxing world. The first fight that I thought of that was so underrated and in need of a spotlight was Merqui Sosa vs Prince Charles Williams. To me their 2 fights were the most violent that I have ever seen at light heavyweight.
Merqui Sosa was a tough hard punching fighter from the Dominican Republic who operated from 160 to 175. He had been in the ring with some of the boxing best of the time: James Toney, Michael Nunn, and Frankie Liles. In fact he had come very close to handing to James Toney his first career loss in an unsuccessful bid for the IBF Middleweight title. Prince Charles Williams, a pro since 1978, was looking to regain some career momentum coming off an almost 6 year title reign as IBF Light Heavyweight Champion.
The first fight, held on 1/13/1995, is one of the most savage fights ever seen at the time. There were very few clinches in this phone booth war. Absolutely mind numbing ebb and flow. Blood and sweat flying everywhere. The punishment doled out by both men was incredible. To watch this as it played out it had the feel that that someone needed to save these 2 warriors from themselves. After the 7th round, referee Ron Lipton and the ringside doctor stepped in and stopped the fight. What made this stoppage unique is that they ruled that both men were unable to continue. Sosa had a possible broken cheekbone while Prince Charles had a nasty cut around his eye. The result was an extremely rare double TKO which was ruled official asa technical draw. The scorecards though showed that Sosa was up significantly on all 3 judges’ cards, something that didn’t sit right with Sosa.
Now after a fight like that one would think that a significant time off for rest and recovery would be the movefor both fighters. Instead a rematch wassigned and took place only a mere 5 months on 6/30/1995 after that fight. Both men picked up where they left off in an even more savage slugfest. However the judges were not needed this time around. At the beginning of the 10th round, the tank went zero all ofa sudden for Prince Charles. Prince Charles got hit with a right hand that had him out on his feet in a corner. Sosa then ripped off a murderous left uppercut, overhand right, left hook, and right hook combination that had Prince Charles swaying helplessly in the corner. The referee, John Carroll, incredulously issued a standing 8 count instead of stopping the fight like it needed tobe. It took some missteps from Prince Charles for him to officially bring an end to the fight giving Sosa arguably his career best win.
The aftermath of this fight was not pretty. Prince Charles was carried out of the ring on a stretcher while a visibly emotional Sosa was on the verge of tears in the post-fight interview concerned about his condition. His skills completely faded after these 2 wars, Prince Charles would fight and win one more low level fight a year after and retire in 1996. Merqui would soldier on until 2000 going 9 and 5 in his final 14 fights but never really regaining the brief world class form he had as the wars added up. You never hear these 2 fighters mentioned much less these series of fights or for that matter any of their fights. If you’re a boxing fan check these fights out, you will not be disappointed.
You could argue that this rivalry actually ruined Sosa and Williams, that's how much it took out of them, Williams was done after this and Sosa wasn't far behind. It was unbelievable how many flush shots landed, no clinching, both guys just bombing the heck out of each other.
Prince Charles Williams v Merqui Sosa: The Friday 13th fight that was so savage it had to be stopped and called a draw
“I called the fighters into the middle of the ring. I gave them final instructions that are uniquely mine, ‘I remind you both now, respect each other, obey my commands and we are going to keep this strictly professional.’
“We are still in mid-ring and Sosa growls at Williams, ‘Aqui jungle.’ I asked him later what he specifically meant and Merqui said, ‘I was telling him, now, here is going to be a jungle’.”
RON LIPTON, REFEREE
THE jungle is one of the most hostile and inhospitable places to wage war. Fighting humidity, disease and uncompromising terrain whilst under constant threat of ambush from an enemy skilled in the art of concealment and camouflage takes a special type of mindset.
It is 24 years since Merqui Sosa welcomed “Prince” Charles Williams to the jungle but once the opening bell sounded, the pair dispensed with tactics and stealth and engaged in their own form of hand to hand combat. With nowhere to hide, the light-heavyweights stood in front of each other and fought.
After seven cruel rounds, those charged with protecting the fighters from each other and themselves negotiated a peace treaty and brought a temporary end to hostilities. On January 13 1995 – a Friday – Sosa and Williams fought each other to a literal standstill.
The balmy baseball diamonds of San Pedro de Macorís in the Dominican Republic are a world away from the frigid January air of the Atlantic City boardwalk but that is exactly where Merqui Sosa found help when he needed it most.
“I had a coach from Brooklyn at that time. I knew I had a tough fight ahead of me so my wife’s parents had a house in Brooklyn, just by the ‘R’ train across from Church Avenue and I would use it for my training camp,” Sosa – born in the Dominican Republic but raised in the Bronx – told Boxing News. “My coach either didn’t want to go or maybe he thought I would lose but he failed to come for a week. I told him it was an important fight for me and it was his job. If he couldn’t do it I told him I needed to find another coach.
“I called my amateur coach in the Dominican Republic [Rudy Zapata] and I flew him to New York to help me. He knew me very well. I always did my best in the ring. I never needed anybody to push me in the ring or force me to do what I loved to do.
“It had been five or six years since I’d seen Rudy. I listened to my coach and he had been with me all over the world fighting. I needed somebody I could trust. It was the best answer for me.”
TELLING THE TALE: Sosa is fit and well today
Sosa is one of boxing’s nearly men. An exciting brawler good enough to get himself into position, just slightly too crude to capitalise. He is the type of fighter who gave more to boxing than the sport gave back to him. After a bid for the super middleweight title ended in defeat at the hands of Michael Nunn in 1993, Sosa decided on a final run at light heavyweight. Williams would welcome him to the 175lb division.
“I was ready for him. In 1991 they wanted me to fight him. My friend at the time said no because I’d just lost two fights and he said if I lost one more fight it was probably going to be like this always. I listened to him and told the matchmaker.
“In 1991 I was fighting at middleweight and he was a light heavyweight. A few years later they gave me the fight and we told the matchmaker that I was ready for him now.
“I told him that if he beat me I would change my name. I won’t be Merqui Sosa anymore.”
If Sosa was fully aware of what lay ahead, a solemn look crossed Prince Charles Williams’ face as he sat on his stool after finally spending three minutes trading punches with Merqui Sosa. Boxers often operate on instinct in the heat of battle but Williams seemed suddenly aware of the situation he found himself in. More naturally gifted than Sosa, Williams had spent six years defending the IBF light heavyweight title before Henry Maske outboxed him and James Toney made him pay for an ill advised drop to super middleweight. To get back into world title contention, he would need to demonstrate his quality once again.
Ron Lipton always loved getting his teeth into a fight. During his days as a heavy handed amateur he was a friend and sparring partner of Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter and became one of the leading figures in the battle to overturn his wrongful murder conviction. Rather than having his enthusiasm for the sport beaten out of him during years spent working alongside world class operators like Dick Tiger, the experience only increased his admiration for the fighters and, eager to remain as close to the action as he possibly could, Lipton became a professional referee.
“I started in 1991 and I found out that a lot of referees don’t study the fighters when they take on an assignment,” Lipton told BN. “Some do, some don’t. Sometimes you don’t know what bout you’re going to be assigned so what I do is look at the entire card and study every single one of them. I read everything I can and study film to look for their tendencies, just like a good coach would. I did it for that fight and it helped me a lot.
“Merqui Sosa was what we call a ‘bricklayer.’ Every punch is a bomb and he’s throwing bricks in there. Williams was more of a boxer-puncher and it was the perfect melding of styles for a great fight. I knew they could handle themselves in there.
“There was hardly a clinch in the whole fight. They were throwing bricks and it was only a matter of time before someone’s body just gave out from the punishment.”
Lipton would go on to design fight sequences for some major boxing projects and plays – “Ron Lipton is the finest fight choreographer in the world,” Dr. Ferdie Pacheco said in July 2000 – but on January 13th 1995, Lipton found himself with a key role in a drama not even he could have pieced together. If Williams had been taken aback by Sosa’s initial aggressiveness, it hadn’t take him long to reciprocate. The battle lines had been drawn.
The following evening – just a five-minute stroll along the freezing boardwalk from Bally’s -Vinny Pazienza and Roberto Duran would meet at the city’s more prestigious Convention Centre. Two more ageing fighters searching for one final opportunity and the accompanying pay check. But for Commissioner of the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board, Larry Hazzard Snr, 1995’s schedule began with the lower profile card headlined by Sosa and Williams.
COMMISSIONER: Larry Hazard was stunned by the violence of the fight
“I didn’t expect it. I generally don’t expect a fight to be overly violent,” Hazzard told BN “I expected that it’d be a very competitive fight based on the history of these guys. Prince Charles Williams, of course, was a boxer-puncher type of fighter and Merqui Sosa on the other hand was very aggressive brawler type. They say that styles make fights. These two fighters had the signature type styles that would make for a good fight.
Hazzard has seen and done pretty much everything during a career which has earned him a place in the Hall of Fame but within a few rounds it became obvious that he was presiding over something unique.
“These guys were just punching each other, Arturo Gatti style. Back and forth, back and forth. Every time it seemed like the referee was going to stop the fight on behalf of one fighter, the other guy would rally back and have the other in trouble. They were like rock ‘em, sock ‘em robots.
“I was raising questions to the doctor as well as him raising his concerns. We were pretty much in concert with our thinking. This was really an aberration from what we were used to seeing. Often you’ll see one fighter taking the bulk of the punishment when the other fighter has established himself as being superior but in this fight both fighters were pretty much even. It was really rare.”
The action was brutal but Sosa versus Williams never ventured into the cartoon like technicolour violence of the Rocky films. It paints a much starker picture of the savagery of professional boxing. Both men entered the ring expecting to fight for their careers but in front of spectators reclining in the red velvet seats of a hotel conference room, Sosa and Williams were suddenly fighting for their lives.
“I always said I don’t want my fans to go to to the toilet to pee. I don’t want my fans to go and buy popcorn. I want my fans to stand up and call my name,” Sosa said.
“As an amateur I was always like that. I won a lot of trophies for having the best fight at the event. I love that kind of fight.
“If you don’t enjoy what you’re doing you shouldn’t be there. You need to enjoy what you’re doing. I was a baseball player but I like action more so I became a fighter. I enjoyed boxing because there was always action. I don’t wait for my opponent to bring the action. I put the action on him.
“After the second round the fight became tough for him and he was maybe fighting for survival. I hurt him very well. I fought like that all of my career. I was doing what I loved doing so it wasn’t difficult for me.”
Sosa might have been in his element but the sheer intensity of the fight was beginning to create a problem for the officials. The war showed absolutely no sign of abating. If anything, the give and take nature of the fight had ratcheted up the ferocity. Officially, only the referee can stop a fight but suddenly the condition of the fighters became the topic a three-way discussion between Lipton, Hazzard and chief physician, Dr Frank Doggett. Between them, they decided to take matters out of Sosa and Williams’ hands.
“I remember at the end of the seventh round I called the doctor up and told him I was concerned about Sosa’s cheekbone and Williams’ cut because it was inside the orbital bone. I’d called him up before that to check the guys but the hellacious facial damage was getting worse so at that juncture, I asked him to come up to the ring to examine both guys.” remembered Lipton.
“My whole thing is the welfare of the fighter. I was concerned about the amount of punishment they were taking. Not just the facial injuries but the brutality of the fight.
SWOLLEN: But Sosa insists he could have continued
“They both wanted to continue. If I hadn’t stopped it, they’d both still be fighting right now.”
“That’s the thing that makes this fight stand out,” added Hazzard. “It was the only time in my entire career – as a referee and as a commissioner – that a fight had to be stopped because both fighters were basically declared by the ringside physician as being unable to continue. That’s rare. I haven’t seen that happen again anywhere.
“We have seen brutal battles before. The most brutal fight that I’ve ever seen was the ‘Thrilla in Manila’ with Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. This fight doesn’t come close to Ali v Frazier but in terms of punishment being meated out at that level, in many ways there are comparisons. It certainly reaches that point.”
Sosa – ahead on the scorecards – rose from his stool and somehow mustered the energy to raise his arms in celebration. Within minutes,Williams also had his hand raised. The judges had been rendered useless. With neither fighter deemed to be in any position to continue, the fight was declared a technical draw.
“The fight was tough,” Sosa admits when he thinks back. “I think I was winning and I thought that they should have given the fight to me because I was ahead when they stopped it. I know that Prince Charles didn’t want to give up so maybe it was a good decision that they decided to give us a draw.
A DRAW: Neither fighter seems happy with the result
“Michael Buffer didn’t like that he had to announce a draw but the commissioner said that it was a doctor’s decision and that was it. I was screaming, ‘I won, I won!’ but I didn’t.”
The events of January 13th 1995 are seldom mentioned and its combatants are rarely celebrated. Apart from the respect of all who witnessed the fight and a place in the history books, the only thing either man left Atlantic City with was the promise of a few extra dollars for an inevitable rematch which took place just six months later.
“I enjoyed both fights,” laughed Sosa. “I enjoyed the second one better. I won.”
Merqui Sosa vs Prince Charles Williams I highlights, I've tried to imagine being in a fight like this, must feel like sticking your head inside a 450° oven for 30 minutes, what a war. Both these guys had granite chins to be able to absorb this type of punishment and not go down for the count.
Merqui Sosa vs Roy Jones Jr, Jones was just too fast for Sosa, thought the fight was stopped a bit early, Sosa was known for having an iron chin and being able to continue fighting , but Jones was giving him a pretty good trouncing and by this time Sosa had already been through two hellacious fights with Williams. Sosa didn't like the fight being stopped and went after the referee for a second, he had that warrior spirit. Roy Jones later said that Sosa was the hardest puncher he ever faced, Jones said Sosa hit so hard that it hurt even when he missed and that he knew he had to hurry up and get Sosa out of there because he hit so hard.
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Napoles was so slick, the way he constantly pivoted you couldn't tell when his jab was coming.
Napoles was young in this photo.
This was the end of the line for the great Jose Mantequilla Napoles, his last fight ever against John Stracey in Napoles home, Mexico City. I have to say, Stracey had a lot of heart and balls on him to be able to go into the lions den and stop Napoles, Napoles was a dangerous guy and almost took Stracey out at the beginning of the fight but Stracey wanted it bad and turned the tide and stopped the great Mantequilla.
Mantequilla Napoles in his prime.
Michael Carbajal, "little hands of stone", junior flyweight and all-time great, a stalking and offensive fighter with fight changing power in both fists, 1st round or 12th round, didn't matter, if it lands he can bomb anyone out. His straight right was natural and heavy, the classic 1-2 punch was his favorite, even if it didn't land his opponent was going to back up. This worked well, as he excelled at mid-range, getting full extension and snap on his shots and often followed the right with a whipping left to the body. Very powerful inside fighter, who loved the double left combination, with a rip to the head and a hook to the body. In addition he had a good stiff jab, one that really precipitated his offensive rhythm. He liked to probe with that nice jab, looking to nail you with a right hand bomb. When Mike Tyson said "bad intentions" Carbajal matches exactly that, everything he threw had sting on it. His offensive repertoire was elite. Carbajal is ranked 55 on the Ring magazine's hardest punchers list for a reason. He had average defense, fought some tough opponents, Humberto "Chiquita" Gonzalez three times, Gonzalez was a real bad a.. that could crack and box, and he fought the legendary Jorge Arcel. He had huge heart and gave everyone problems even if he lost.
Introduced to boxing by his father, Manuel, Carbajal began competing as a teenager. In 1988 he represented the United States in the Seoul Olympics and the 5'5 ½ ” boxer captured a silver medal at 106 pounds, however many observers believed he deserved the gold.
Following the Olympics he turned professional in 1989 with his brother Danny serving as his manager / trainer. Carbajal defeated future junior flyweight champion Will Grigsby in his pro debut and would not lose for nearly five years. In only his 15th contest, he defeated Muangchai Kittikasem on July 29, 1990 for the IBF junior flyweight title. After six successful defenses, “Little Hands of Stone” put his undefeated record on the line against WBC champion Humberto Gonzalez on March 13, 1993. In 1993's “Fight of the Year” Carbajal rose from two knockdowns to dramatically halt “Chiquita” in seven rounds and partially unify the belts. Two defenses of his titles came before losing a split decision in the 1994 rematch with Gonzalez. Despite losing his championship, Carbajal became the first junior flyweight to earn a $1 million purse.
Next he gained the WBO junior flyweight title in 1994 before dropping a 12-round decision to “Chiquita” in the rubber match. Carbajal rebounded to reclaim the IBF title with a 12-round win over Melchor Cob Castro on March 16, 1996. He defended twice before losing the title to Mauricio Pastrano the next year. However, he had one more championship in him as he stopped Jorge Arce via 11th round TKO on July 31, 1999 for the WBO junior flyweight title. Following his title-winning performance, Carbajal retired from the ring with a 49-4 (33 KOs) record.
Since leaving the ring, Carbajal has owned and operated the Ninth Street Gym in Phoenix.
Michael Carbajal had three fights with Humberto "Chiquita" Gonzalez, the first one was epic, they really took each other to hell and back. Chiquita Gonzalez is a legend, he had an iron chin and like Carbajal, Gonzalez is regarded as one of boxing's hardest punchers. Chiquita was tough as hell to beat, he only lost three times in his career. In 1993, Carbajal and Gonzalez were the best in their division and were in a collision course, their first fight certainly had fireworks.
It is rare to see two stars in their prime coinciding in the same weight class, and even rarer to see them willing to face each other in a winner-takes-all clash.
Even rarer is to have that fight live up to the lofty expectations placed on it, and this was one of such cases.
Michael “Little Hands of Stone” Carbajal was 27-0 with a couple of dozen knockouts to his credit back in the early ‘90s, and had accumulated six defenses of the IBF junior flyweight title that he had taken from Muangchai Kittikasem in 1990. Gonzalez was already a proven warrior with a few more fights than Carbajal, and no less than a dozen wins defending his WBC belt in the same division. They were both considered among the finest fighters in the world, regardless of weight.
The fight was a throwback to the best eras of boxing, those in which the best fought the best, routinely, without excuses.
They met in Las Vegas on March 13, in what would become the first fight in junior flyweight history in which both fighters made one million dollars or more, and it was also the first mega-bout at that weight to be televised on pay-per-view. Both of their titles were at play, as was the promise of a spot in the world’s top 5 pound-for-pound lists for the winner.
With the underlying drama of the True Mexican vs. Mexican-American rivalry bad blood feud setting the mood, both men understood that there was more at stake than just two belts, and went to work accordingly.
Carbajal took the early lead with his smoother boxing skills and his numbing punching power, but just as he was getting comfortable he took one on the nose and went down on the seat of his pants, to the roaring delight of the crowd at the Hilton. It was go-time from then on, as they both went for the knockout with every punch they threw after that moment.
Recovering quickly, the younger Carbajal was getting his rhythm back, landing at will at the iron-chinned “Chiquita” and finding his groove in the fight. A toe-to-toe phone-booth affair it was in the third round, and it was just the beginning.
The fifth round started with a long, twelve-punch combination by Gonzalez capped by a monstrous right hook from his southpaw stance that sent Carbajal down in a heap, holding on to the top rope for dear life. He beat the count, but a different fight had just begun.
Fighting on animalistic survival instinct from then on, both fighters went looking for the stoppage with renewed interest, both throwing bombs from all angles and dominating every aspect of the game in a beautiful display of pure boxing skills.
And then, on the seventh round, with Gonzalez up by two points and the fight really starting to heat up, Carbajal landed a right hand that sent “Chiquita” staggering backwards towards the ropes, and it was do-or-die for both men from then on.
A minute later, and with only 12 seconds to go in the round, Carbajal finally tags Gonzalez with a demolishing left hook as he has him pinned against the ropes, and it’s the highlight-reel, one-punch knockout blow that puts an end to a fantastic fight.
The Ring’s Fight of the Year award was almost a formality after that, and Carbajal was also named Fighter of the Year for 1993.
They would meet in a rematch one year later. But Carbajal’s extracurricular problems had already taken its toll, and he lost both that fight and the rubber match in late 1994.
The memory of their first fight, however, was more than enough to turn both men into legends. On both sides of the Rio Grande, and beyond.
Fittingly, they were both inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame on the same year in 2006.
Here's what Michael Carbajal later said about that epic fight against Chiquita Gonzalez in 1993, which won fight of the year honors. At the time, Gonzalez was considered to be nearly unbeatable, Carbajal had to dig deep to pull it out, Gonzalez floored him twice and he picked himself up off the canvas both times and knocked Gonzalez out.
Chiquita didn’t talk a whole lot of s—. The only thing that he told me before the fight was, ‘Hey Michael, don’t run from me.’ And I go, ‘What makes you think that I’m going to run from you? We’ll see when we get in there.’ He came in and we had a high-level war. I told him, ‘I love this. I love it.’ He knocked me down in the second round with the straight left hand. It was a flash knockdown. I wasn’t hurt. He caught me, and caught me good. I got up really quick and told the ref that I was alright. I went back to my corner and told them I was alright. I knew he was going to come at me, and come at me real strong. I came back in the third round, the fourth round. We were bombing away. We knew what we were doing. We were studying each other. I’m thinking, ‘What I’m going to hit him with? What I’m going to do when he does this or that?’ The fifth round came and he had me against the ropes. We were throwing. Chiquita was lefthanded. He caught me with the right hook. I said ‘Woo!’ All I knew was that I was down again. I didn’t feel the punch at the time. When I hit the floor, I was like ‘Damn, I’m down again.’ And you see me hit the canvas. When I got up, I still couldn’t feel my right leg. I knew he was going to come at me again. When he came at me, I threw a left hook. He was going to throw a whole of punches, because he knew that I was hurt. I was throwing short shots. He was throwing wide shots. When I watched him on film, I already knew that. I was going to catch him with some short, real sharp punches. He was all over me. Once I started to feel my right leg again, I said to myself, ‘You’re mine now.’ I boxed a little bit in the sixth round, still getting my senses together, and he kept coming at me. That was good. I knew I was going to catch him. I knew I was. When I started feeling my strength coming back, I said, ‘This is it, I’m going to catch him.’ He hurt me in the sixth round again. He didn’t know that, but I did (laughs). He wore himself down. He was tired. I told my corner “I have his ass now.’ It’s when I started coming forward and I had him against the ropes. I hit him with a short right hand that wobbled him, and followed that with a left hook right on the button. I ducked after the left hook, and tried to hit him with an uppercut, because I saw him going over my shoulder. I missed, but he fell face first. The ref told me to go to the corner, I thought to myself, ‘He’s not getting up.’ I was shaking my head to my corner. He didn’t get up and I started jumping up and down. For everyone else, that’s my greatest victory. It’s the fight everyone always reminds me about.”
A few photos from Michael Carbajal vs Chiquita Gonzalez I.
I want to talk about something for a minute here, in 1997 when Carbajal was at the tail end of his career, he fought "Baby Jake" Matlala, if you're not familiar with "Baby Jake" Matlala, he was called "Baby Jake" for a reason, he was only 4'10" one of the smallest boxers in history, but man could he fight. Carbajal fought Matlala in 1997 and Matlala opened up two nasty cuts on Carbajal and the fight was stopped on cuts and Matlala won, Baby Jake was something else, got to give him props. I'll talk more about "Baby Jake" Matlala later in the thread.
"Baby Jake Matlala" in action.
Carbajal during his fight with "Baby Jake" Matlala.
"Baby Jake" Matlala was one hell of a fighter, but to be fair, Carbajal was past his prime. A young Michael Carbajal might have been a different story.
KISS THE SKY: It’s hard to say what’s more impressive, the punch or the fact that Miguel Banda survived it. That’s a young (22) Michael Carbajal, in his 11th pro fight, administering a chiropractic adjustment to Banda on Jan. 12, 1990. Carbajal scored two knockdowns (Rounds 1 and 7) and won by a unanimous eight-round decision.
One other thing about the epic Chiquita Gonzalez fight, it earned Michael Carbajal fighter of the year honors.
That brings us to Michael Carbajal's last fight against Jorge "Travieso" Arce, now Jorge Arce was quite a character, he would show up at fights wearing a cowboy hat, riding a horse and sucking on a lollipop. very charasmatic yet otherwise typical mexican fighter. Great left hook and tough as sh.., the guy just screamed entertainment, he was aggressive and was a hard and furious puncher, he could really rip shots to your body.
Jorge Arce with his trademark cowboy hat.
Jorge throws a left hook to his opponents body.
Jorge Arce on his horse, Arce was entertaining as heck, and a savage in the ring.
So In 1999, Carbajal announced his second comeback and after three wins, he traveled to Tijuana to challenge 21-year-old WBO junior flyweight World champion Jorge Arce (20-2-1), who clearly took nine of the first 10 rounds, even though Arce had hit the canvas in round six. In the 11th round, Carbajal rocked Arce with a right that sent the Mexican flying into the ropes. Referee Raul Caiz, Jr. stopped the fight, Carbajal was crowned world champion for the fifth time, and then Michael retired after the fight for good. This fight was crazy, and it showcases why hard punchers are never out of a fight. Jorge Arce really took it to Carbajal for nine rounds and was winning on the scorecards easily, and then bam, just like that, Carbajal takes him out. Here's what Carbajal later said about that wild fight:
"I wasn’t going to be able to handle these young kids, and that came with Arce. I couldn’t handle the speed. I’ve never been knocked out in my career—amateur and pro. For me, that’s great. I was stopped on cuts by Matlala, but never knocked down. Arce was beating me. He was quicker than me. He was throwing faster combinations than I was. I knew I was going to catch him. I was hitting him with the right. Arce was taking it—and he was a good little fighter. I caught him with the right in the fifth, and knocked him down. He got back, and he came back and won the rest of that round—and the other rounds, too. In the 11th, I knew I had to knock him out to win. I knew I was losing. I was calm. I didn’t go out wild. You have to be precise when you punch. I caught him again in the 11th and I thought I had him. He couldn’t stand. When the ref saw him fall back, and stopped it, I started jumping and down. I already knew I was going to retire. I thought to myself, ‘I wanted to retire with a world title.’”
Jorge Arce later said that Michael Carbajal was the hardest puncher he ever faced:
"Michael Carbajal, Whenever he hit me it hurt. The jab hurt my hands. (Arce mimics catching Carbajal’s punches on the gloves, grimacing) Ouch, ouch. His hands were like steel. Carbajal’s punches were like being hit by a steel bar. I remember every punch he gave me in the 11 rounds."
One final word about "Manitas De Piedra", he was always a dangerous guy, he could take you out at any time with one shot, I love guys like that because they add the potential for fireworks every time they step into the ring.
"Little Hands of Stone" in his prime.
Jimmy Mclarnin, he was a skilled boxer and knockout artist of the depression era and one of the greatest to ever lace em' up. He had a murderous right hand, and had a lot of nicknames because of his punching power, "The Irish Lullaby" because he was Irish and put people to sleep, "The Babyfaced Assassin", "The Murderous Mick", "The Belfast Spider", he is a legend in this sport and once you look at the fighters he fought and beat you can understand why. Let's just look at his list of scalps, Barney Ross, Fidel LaBarba, Sammy Mandell, Tony Canzoneri, Louis "Kid" Kaplan, Jackie Fields, Young Corbett III, Sid Terris, Ruby Goldstein, Billy Petrolle, Al Singer, Charles "Bud" Taylor, Lou Ambers, Benny Leonard. I mean, just look at that list of names he defeated, it's ridiculous, that's Eleven Hall of Famers in that list, his resume is one of the best in boxing history period. This interview with him was conducted by the Los Angeles Times in 1989 when he was 81 years old, words can't explain what a legend he is in this sport, this interview is pure Gold.
AN OLD WARRIOR : McLarnin, 81, Recalls Hard Days of Boxing
By EARL GUSTKEY
Sept. 26, 1989
They shared hard times, those tough, rock-hard young men of America’s Depression, and they fought one another savagely.
Their names alone evoke a richness of the American melting pot and the American dream: Canzoneri, Ross, McLarnin, Petrolle, Apostoli, Zivic . . . and maybe the greatest of them all, Henry Armstrong.
They’re nearly all gone now, the great welterweights and middleweights of the Depression era. Tony Canzoneri, Barney Ross, Billy Petrolle, Fred Apostoli, Fritzie Zivic and Armstrong . . . all gone.
Still with us, however, is Jimmy McLarnin, two-time welterweight champion, who at 81, is happy, wealthy and wise.
He has lived in the same house on a quiet, leafy Glendale street the last 40 years.
Jimmy McLarnin is older than the memories of practically everyone who attends boxing shows in Southern California today. He fought in Los Angeles before there was an Olympic Auditorium. Calvin Coolidge was President when McLarnin was a hungry, 16-year-old making his debut at Vernon Arena in September, 1924.
Today, his only concessions to age are arthritic hands, and a nearly empty house. His wife of 52 years, Lillian, died last year. His four children live in the northwest and British Columbia, and Jimmy talks of selling the old Glendale house and moving closer to his children. “I’m in good health; I’m thankful for that,” he said the other day. “I watch my diet. I’m at 150 pounds now, three pounds over my fighting weight. And I walk two to three miles every day.”
McLarnin talked about the old days, about a special bond the young battlers of the 1930s America shared.
“Of all the hundreds of fighters I came in contact with in my life, I can say I can’t think of a one who I didn’t like and who didn’t turn out to be at least a halfway decent human being,” he said.
“Boxing is a whipping boy for a lot of people, but look at all the guys who made something of themselves with boxing. Look at Jack Dempsey. He was a bum, a hobo. And he became a champion, and a pretty decent human being.
“The fighters in those days . . . we all came up hungry together. None of us had it easy coming up. Our fathers worked like dogs. In a way, we loved each other. I mean, you’d try to beat a guy’s brains out in the ring, but before and after a fight, I admired all the guys I fought. They’d gone through everything I had to go through.”
The old fighter showed a visitor his trophy room. He leafed through a stack of old photographs. He pulled out a faded photo of a group of about 15 young boys, all staring intently into the camera.
“I’m in this picture,” he said. “It’s a group of newsboys in Vancouver, when I was a little kid. Can you find me?”
It was easy. Last one on the right, second row. There was an unmistakable fierceness to the little lean face. The glare from his stare leaped out, from 70-odd years ago.
McLarnin laughed, and showed some old photos from his golf days at Lakeside Golf Club.
“That’s Bing Crosby. That’s Pat O’Brien. Here I am with Spencer Tracy. . . . I got my handicap down to three at one point. I was livin’ pretty good in those days, after I retired from fighting, in 1936.”
McLarnin says he doesn’t pay much attention to the boxing scene today.
“There are so many champions, I can’t keep track of what’s going on,” he said.
James Archibald McLarnin turned pro in Vancouver when he was 15 and had 77 bouts in 13 years. Within 16 months in 1933 and 1934, he won and lost the welterweight championship twice.
At Wrigley Field in Los Angeles, he knocked out Raffaele Capabianca Giordano--known then as Young Corbett III--of Fresno, winning the title the first time.
McLarnin lost the championship a year later to Barney Ross, won it back in the rematch and lost it again in the rubber match.
In 1936, he lost and won decisions with Canzoneri, won a decision over Lou Ambers, and retired.
The list of McLarnin’s opponents reads like a page from boxing’s Who’s Who. He fought ‘em all, as they say. But the old champion was stumped when asked to single out the toughest man he had fought.
“Gosh, so many great fighters,” he said. “I could never say one guy was better than the others. But I will say that Billy Petrolle hit me as hard as anyone ever did. He was a tough, tough guy. He hit me so hard in the second round of my fight (in 1930) with him that afterward I couldn’t remember a thing from Rounds 2 through 7.”
McLarnin lost a decision to Petrolle in 1930, then defeated him twice in 1931.
“And Louis (Kid) Kaplan--oh, could he hit. He knocked me down three times in 1927 and broke my jaw. After the fight (won by McLarnin on a knockout), I remember my teeth didn’t fit together the same, but I didn’t think much about it.
“Three years later, a dentist asked me: ‘How did you break your jaw?’ Kaplan had broken my jaw and I’d never known it.
“Maybe the meanest guy I ever fought was Bud Taylor. He was a vicious . . . , really tough. I fought him in 1925, when I was just a kid and had no business in there with him. I remember the first time I fought him, in Vernon, it was my biggest payday by far at the time, $1,500. He beat me twice and I won one on a foul.
“Barney Ross was a really tough opponent. He was a great boxer and had a great chin. I can remember getting him right on the chin with some of the best shots I ever hit anyone with and he didn’t even blink.
“The greatest fighter of my era, but a guy I never fought, was Harry Greb. I fought on an undercard of his in Oakland, in 1924. He was blind in one eye, and fought you kind of twisted sideways, so he could see you. In his prime, he might have been the best there ever was. He was a middleweight and heavyweights wanted no part of him.”
In talking of the old days, McLarnin frequently refers to the hard work it took to be a world-class fighter. It was a work ethic acquired from a hard-working father, he said.
“My father was a beautiful man,” he said. “He was as hard-working and as talented a man as I ever knew. My father could do anything. He never had a lot of money, but he raised six sons and six daughters and showed all of us what hard work is.”
McLarnin was born in Inchacore, Ireland, and was 3 when his father booked third-class passage to Canada in 1910.
“We went first to Saskatchewan, where my father got a section of land and raised wheat for 15 cents a bushel,” McLarnin said.
“We later went to Vancouver. My father was in the lumber business, the furniture business and he was a butcher. He could even fix shoes.”
In his mid-teens, McLarnin fell under the influence of a popular Vancouver boxing instructor, Charles (Pop) Foster, and thus began a relationship that endured for 40 years.
McLarnin has a framed portrait of Foster on the wall of his den. When Foster died in 1956, he left $200,000 to McLarnin.
“Pop really cared about me, and he brought me along very carefully,” he said. “No fighter ever had a better manager than I did. I was a natural right-hander and he never had to help me with the right. But he spent two years with me getting my left jab ready before I turned pro.”
One of Foster’s tips earned McLarnin his welterweight championship.
“Young Corbett was a great fighter, but he made one mistake--he took me for a pigeon,” McLarnin said.
“Corbett was a defensive fighter, but Pop had noticed he had a habit of leaning forward slightly just before he threw his right hand. So we planned to let him do that a few times early in the fight, sucker him in, then try to catch him with a left hook.
“And that’s exactly the way it happened.”
March 29, 1933. New, three-bedroom homes in West L.A. were going for $3,200. A new Ford V-8 cost $490. It cost 25 cents to see “King Kong” at the RKO Hillstreet. A crowd of 50,000 saw Babe Ruth hit three home runs against the Chicago White Sox at Yankee Stadium the day before, and 15,000 saw Jimmy McLarnin win the welterweight championship at Los Angeles’ Wrigley Field.
The old champion is on his feet now, dancing softly across the carpet. He flicks out left jabs, demonstrating the set-up punches for that knockout.
“He did it once (he leans forward), I watched him carefully--then I let him do it again,” McLarnin said, from his fighting stance.
“And when he did it the third time-- Bing! (he throws a hard, quick left hook) I got him. A perfect punch, a left hook right on the chin. He went down flat, got up but could hardly stand. I knocked him into the ropes, and the referee stopped it.”
McLarnin smiled broadly at the memory, which has always been a sweet one for him because his 71-year-old father, Samuel McLarnin, was at ringside that night in 1933.
But then McLarnin grew frustrated at not being able to remember the referee (George Blake) who awarded him the title that night.
The day after the fight, The Times started the story--”McLarnin Is Ring King”--on Page 1, and described near-riotous conditions when deliriously happy McLarnin fans tried to storm the ring to reach their new champion.
Fifty-six years later, both challenger and champion from that night are still alive. Corbett is 84, suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, and lives in a rest home near Fresno. His wife attributes his illness to head injuries suffered in an auto accident in the 1950s.
McLarnin earned between $700,000 and $800,000 in Depression dollars in his fighting days. His biggest purse was $60,000 for the final fight against Ross. He earned $50,000 in 1929 for beating Sammy Mandell in Chicago. During the 1930s, he said, he never earned less than $20,000 for a fight.
And earn it he did, he said, proudly. Always, the work ethic.
“I got a dollar for my first fight and $25,000 for my last one, and in between there was a lot of tough, hard work,” he said.
You know, it's true, there are so many sad endings in boxing, guys losing all of there earnings, taking too much damage to the brain and suffering for the rest of their life from it, it's good to know that Jimmy Mclarnin lived a long healthy life after retiring. Reading that interview, it's amazing how sharp his mind was at that age, he could even remember who punched him the hardest, and that would be Billy Petrolle, aka "The Fargo Express", he certainly could crack with the best of them, I'll profile him later in the thread.
Getting back to Jimmy Mclarnin, he had an epic rivalry with the legendary Barney Ross, it was the Ali-Frazier of that era. But Jimmy Mclarnin beat a murderer's row of greats along the way.
Jimmy Mclarnin poses for the camera
Jimmy McLarnin: The Emerald of New York City
By Mike Casey
I wanted to write this one for an occasional and esteemed friend out of Riverside, California. Those of you who know your boxing characters will know the same of Bill O’Neill, who has been involved in the game for a great many years and served with distinction as a Hall of Fame president.
Ol’ Billie, to give him his pen name, writes to me occasionally about the many fighters he has known, always with the same delightfully dry wit. He makes the occasional self-effacing joke about his advancing years and lack of computer literacy, whilst craftily manoeuvring his way around the keyboard with deceptive dexterity. He still loves the fight game and keeps abreast of the latest developments with the help of his many friends, including former lightweight champ, Mando Ramos.
Bill tells me stories about the great fighters and characters, such as Jack ‘Deacon’ Hurley, Henry Armstrong, Billy Conn and Rocky Marciano. A favourite of mine about the great Hurley was the spot of comic relief he got after his boy Harry Matthews had been devastated in two rounds by Marciano. The Deacon called Harry’s wife for her take on the fight and found her to be considerably more upbeat than he had expected. Mrs Matthews, who wasn’t greatly familiar with the finer points of boxing, reasoned that the fight had been a draw because Harry had won the first round and Rocky had won the second.
However, if there was one fighter who held a special place in Bill O’Neill’s heart, it was his lifelong friend, Jimmy McLarnin, who started out as a scrawny 108-pounder at the age of sixteen, worked all the way up to the welterweight championship of the world and only took his last breath two years ago at the age of ninety-six. They called Jimmy the Belfast Spider.
When the Great Depression came along, so did McLarnin, a fiery little one-man tonic for a generation of crushed souls who so desperately needed their spirits lifting. He drew enormous crowds to his fights, mostly poor Irish-Americans who would willingly save up their few pennies to watch the exciting, clean-cut kid who also carried the name of Baby Face.
Jimmy’s pulling power did wonders for his wages, since promoters knew better than to haggle or dispute the mantra of McLarnin’s shrewd manager, Pop Foster. “James is on the card,” Pop would tell them, “and he’s got to be paid.”
Style
‘Dynamic’ is so often the word used to describe Jimmy McLarnin’s fighting style. It is an adequate word, if only because of the sheer pace at which he fought. But it doesn’t do Jimmy justice for being a cunning and skilful ring operator as well as a ferocious attacker and hustler.
His great rival Barney Ross, with whom McLarnin locked horns in three classic duels, was probably more familiar than most with Jimmy’s often understated versatility and ring guile.
“McLarnin tried to end every fight in the very first round if he could,” Barney explained. “He’d come out winging at the bell, aiming at a quick knockout. But if he didn’t connect in an early round, he’d settle back and make a boxing contest out of it, with a lot of feinting, moving and countering. He’d try to make you over confident, that maybe it wasn’t so tough being in with him after all. But don’t get careless, because that was what he’d be waiting for. You see, he’d always have that big punch back there, waiting to explode it at the first sign of a letdown. With him, you were in danger every minute and you could never afford to relax for a second.”
McLarnin held New York City in the palm of his hand, racking up some astonishing attendance figures for his many thrilling fights. His debut there in February 1928 couldn’t have been more spectacular, defining and sealing his popularity with his new legion of supporters. Jimmy knocked out the skilful and fast moving Sid Terris with a right hand blast to the jaw and was carried back to his dressing room on the shoulders of those who rushed to acclaim him.
The word quickly spread about McLarnin and the gates soared accordingly. He pulled in 18,000 to watch the Terris knockout, and his attendance figures thereafter were consistently staggering. In 1929 alone, combined crowds of nearly 80,000 came to pay homage to their boy in his fights with Ray Miller and Ruby Goldstein and in his two encounters with Joe Glick. Jimmy’s victory over Goldstein in December was just two months after the Wall Street crash, yet the fight was attended by 19,541 people paying $87,760.
McLarnin wasn’t even a world champion yet, but he had already come a long way from his poor and humble roots. Those roots when back to Hillsborough in Northern Ireland, but it was in Canada where Jimmy grew up. He was just a six-year old when his folks moved across the great pond to Vancouver and he was getting into scraps from an early age. He was ten when he picked up his first official purse of one dollar, spraining his thumbs for his troubles because he didn’t know how to punch properly.
McLarnin was still only thirteen when he met Pop Foster, one of the shrewdest fight managers the game ever saw. To Jimmy, Pop would also prove to be one of the most compassionate and generous of men. Foster and McLarnin’s father built a gymnasium for their promising youngster and the great education of Jimmy McLarnin began.
Pop Foster knew his boxing technique inside out and impressed upon Jimmy the importance of ring science. He never discouraged his feisty protégé’s love of having a good old fashioned fight, but cleverly re-shaped McLarnin’s style to incorporate skills and smarts. Pop taught Jimmy to develop speed and a good eye, working him out at a testing but sensible pace like a young racehorse. It was tough and uncompromising work, but McLarnin committed himself to the effort and was always eager to become the complete fighter. In later years, Jimmy enjoyed telling people that he already had a hundred thousand dollars in his bank account by the time he was nineteen.
Small
As a professional novice, Jimmy didn’t just face the challenge of becoming a more rounded fighter. He had another problem. He needed to beef up. So slight was the innocent looking youngster that even the hardy characters of the fight game were scared of employing him.
He told writer Peter Heller: “I lied about my age when I first started. When I came to California I said I was eighteen. I was really sixteen. I don’t like lying, but this was a matter of survival, because we were really awfully hungry. When I was came to California, I was very small – four feet eleven – and weighed 108lbs. We couldn’t get a fight because I looked so young. I was around San Francisco for something like three months before I ever could get a fight. It was really tough going. I was away from home, homesick. We lived in a little place that cost us seven dollars a month and it was a broken-down place. I had no friends or anything. It was tough. That’s where I first started in the United States.
“When I fought Fidel LaBarba he was a flyweight and I was a bantamweight. I was sixteen years old at the time. Fidel was rough. He was one of the best left hookers. He was strong and I could move good. I was a good boxer. I had a long reach, so I used it. I kept jabbing and running, jabbing and running. And I really ran, I don’t mind telling you, because it’s a very silly pair of feet that stay around and let your face get punched. So I kept moving and kept my left jab right in his face. He had a great left hook to the stomach. Oh boy, he hit me a few times and I thought all my teeth were being pulled out. He was a puncher.”
What boggles the mind about McLarnin’s 68-fight record is the astonishing quality of the men he fought and beat. No less than thirteen were world champions at some point in their own careers. Even in the formative stages of his ring education, Jimmy was duelling with true aces of different weight divisions who knew all the moves, such as Bud Taylor and the remarkable Memphis Pal Moore. The formidable Filipino whirlwind, Pancho Villa, was flyweight champion of the world when McLarnin took a decision off him in 1925. Villa had stormed to the championship with his famous victory over the great Jimmy Wilde, but Pancho was outsmarted by the young Jimmy.
McLarnin always sportingly admitted that Villa might have underestimated him and greatly admired his relentless opponent’s fighting talents. Jimmy was able to pile up points by keeping Pancho at a distance for most of the fight but still suffered for his efforts. Such was Villa’s ferocity on the inside, McLarnin’s ears were blackened by the little man’s vicious head punches.
The Belfast Spider steadily began to swell his impressive ledger. Two fights later, he blitzed future welterweight champion Jackie Fields in two rounds at the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles, knocking Jackie down four times.
Jimmy’s knockout of Louis (Kid) Kaplan at the Chicago Coliseum in 1927 was a see-saw thriller, in which McLarnin learned a lot about his own resolve and resilience. Knocked down in the first and second rounds, Jimmy roared back to deck the Kid in the fourth and fifth before knocking him out in the eighth. Getting floored was a new experience for Jimmy, but he proved he was made of the right stuff. Kaplan tired as wise old Pop Foster worked his magic in the corner and calmly guided Jimmy through the stormy waters. Foster told McLarnin when Kaplan was ready to be taken and Jimmy took him.
Finished
Jimmy wasn’t yet the finished article. When he challenged Sammy Mandell for the world lightweight crown at the Polo Grounds in 1928, the Irish lad ran into a boxing master who beat him convincingly over fifteen rounds. “He gave me a beautiful boxing lesson,” McLarnin would admit.
Jimmy was an outstanding lightweight, but the strain of making the poundage was beginning to tell on him. It was at welterweight that he would be in his true element and wage some of his most thrilling contests against genuine fellow greats of the ring.
He sucked up the Mandell defeat, bested Sammy in two subsequent meetings and rolled on to greater things. Courageous to the core, McLarnin decisioned Young Jack Thompson at Madison Square Garden in 1930 despite suffering a broken hand in the first round.
People still write stories about Jimmy’s unforgettable trilogy with the barn-burning warrior known as the Fargo Express, Billy Petrolle. Non-stop Billy was never a world champion in his vastly more competitive era, but was a glorious fighting man who troubled everyone he fought and seemed incapable of having a dull fight. Coming into his first match with McLarnin, the sprawling record of the Fargo Express stood at a mighty 99-17-12.
Billy gave Jimmy a rude shock at Madison Square Garden, twice decking him for nine counts in the fourth round in chugging to an upset points victory. McLarnin was believed to have injured his right hand in the second round of that torrid war and certainly used it sparingly for the duration of the fight.
But Jimmy got his revenge. The New York fans were treated to two more feasts from McLarnin and Petrolle over the following nine months, Jimmy winning both and regaining his berth as one of the world’s greatest welterweights.
It was McLarnin’s ability to read the game of boxing and recognise its many technical subtleties that made him such an exceptional little battler. Pop Foster was always telling him to watch out for this and that, and Jimmy learned to adapt his own style to different requirements. He learned a lot when he stopped a fat old man called Benny Leonard in 1932. The bloated, fading impersonation of the once fabulous Ghetto Wizard, who is still regarded by a many experts as the all-time king of the lightweights, was still good enough to box most men’s ears off and hit them with sledgehammer force to keep them sweet. McLarnin could see Benny’s greatness and noticed how the old maestro could capitalise on any weakness he spotted in his opponent. Jimmy was grateful for the win and could only imagine how much greater Leonard had been as a peerless youngster.
McLarnin was close to the big bauble and he went to Wrigley Field in Los Angeles to collect. Yet still it was regarded as a major upset when he tore the welterweight crown from the great Young Corbett III in one sensational round, courtesy of one booming right. The oft-forgotten Corbett would lose just twelve times in his 157-fight career and was far from finished after McLarnin dropped the bomb on him, going on to scalp the likes of Billy Conn, Fred Apostoli, Mickey Walker and Gus Lesnevich.
Jimmy McLarnin, the adopted Emerald of New York City, was on top of the world. It was the spring of 1933 and he would cross swords with only one man over the next two years in a pulsating three-fight saga that would thrill New Yorkers and captivate the entire boxing world. He was about to do business with Beryl Rosofsky. Beryl, of course, always sounded much fiercer as Barney Ross.
Greats
To this day, they stick together like a more primitive version of Laurel and Hardy in the minds and hearts of historians. McLarnin and Ross, Ross and McLarnin. Any way you roll it off the tongue, it sounds smooth and warmly familiar. Look at various lists of the all-time great welterweights, and Jimmy and Barney are still locked together in similarly lofty positions. So they should be.
The two little titans drew 60,000 people into Madison Square Garden for their opening epic, when Barney took Jimmy’s title. McLarnin regained it in the second chapter, but Ross finished on top in their final set-to at the Polo Grounds in 1935.
These are the bare facts. But all three fights went to the wire and all three were desperately close, despite the often ridiculously wide scoring of the officials. After each memorable saga, opinion was sharply divided on which man had truly won. When Ross won the third battle, ringside observer Gene Tunney was aghast, offering the opinion that McLarnin had won thirteen of the fifteen rounds at least.
Jimmy was typically philosophical and took it all with good sportsmanship and grace. He never was one to rage and rant when he felt that life had dealt him a bad hand. He recognised Barney as an excellent fighter and he was quite correct in that summation. Ross couldn’t hit like Jimmy, but his skills could very often make an opponent look inadequate.
Everybody wanted a fourth fight between the two wonderful magicians, especially the enthralled Irish and Jewish communities of New York. Jimmy kept busy in the only way he knew how, not by kicking a couple of tomato cans, but by seeing off a couple of gents with the resounding names of Tony Canzoneri and Lou Ambers.
But the fourth fight with Ross never did come. The negotiations got complicated and Jimmy ran out of patience. It was at this point that he and Pop Foster played their final masterstroke. They hung ‘em up. Jimmy was twenty-nine, in excellent health and had shrewdly saved and invested his earnings. Why go and spoil a good thing?
When Pop Foster died, he famously left two hundred thousand dollars to his beloved Jimmy to boost his coffers even more. The luck of the Irish? Perhaps.
But you look at the career of Jimmy McLarnin, you look at his determination and his fighting spirit, and you mix in his mettle as a man. He fashioned all those fine qualities out of hard work, common sense and a willingness to learn from his mistakes. There weren’t too many times, to this writer’s knowledge, when he pleaded for some luck. If he got some in the end, God bless him.
Jimmy Mclarnin was a bad a.., he was aggressive, could box your ears off, and take you out with that right hand at any time, one of my all-time favorites.
Jimmy Mclarnin detonates his right hand on Lou Brouillard.
Jimmy Mclarnin used to do a backflip after a win, love this photo, I collect type 1 original boxing photos and I've been looking for this one on eBay for a while now with no luck so far.
Jimmy Mclarnin knocks out Al Singer at Yankee Stadium in 1930.
I love photos that were used as images on cards, this Jimmy Mclarnin is sick.
In 1932, Jimmy Mclarnin fought the great Benny Leonard, if you're not familiar with Benny Leonard, he is considered by many to be the greatest lightweight in history, and a candidate for one of the greatest pound for pound fighters ever. Benny Leonard was world lightweight champion for seven years, he was called the "Ghetto Wizard", he was Jewish and got his start by fighting in the streets of New York as a means of self defense. In his prime, Benny Leonard was called the "brainiest" of boxers and once said that boxing is more mental than physical, you have to be able to out think your opponent more than anything else. Boxing is indeed a mental chess match and Benny Leonard was a master at it. Not much film exists of Benny Leonard in his prime, there is a film of him fighting another all-time great southpaw Lew Tendler, but the film is from 1922 and of poor quality. But you can tell from the 1922 film of Leonard that he was something special, I don't think anyone looks as good as a pure boxer until Sugar Ray Robinson and Willie Pep were filmed in the 1950s. Anyway, Jimmy Mclarnin and Benny Leonard fought in 1932 and it was filmed, and it was Benny Leonard's last fight ever, he had been retired for Seven years and came out of retirement to fight Jimmy Mclarnin because it was a good payday. In the fight, Benny Leonard is obviously way past his prime, but you can still see flashes of the magic that made him one of the greatest of all-time. He gave an intelligent and skillful performance, showing good footwork, head movement, a good jab, and counterpunching ability. When I say Leonard is one of the greatest of all-time, I mean it, Leonard is a boxing god, his name is enough to send chills up your spine in the boxing community, and with good reason, he basically WAS a 1920s version of Sugar Ray Robinson, the complete fighter, iron chin, could box circles around you, or knock you out. Anyway, Jimmy Mclarnin won the fight against Leonard by stoppage in the 6th round, it was a passing of the torch kind of fight, Mclarnin was yet to enter his prime, young and hungry, and he was just too much for Leonard, very aggressive and throwing lots of hard leather. I'll be talking about Benny Leonard later in the thread, you just can't talk about the history of boxing without talking about the great Benny Leonard.
Jimmy Mclarnin on the left faces off with Benny Leonard.
Benny Leonard in his prime.
Jimmy McLarnin also had a great two fight series with Tony Canzoneri, Canzoneri is another all-time great, a five-time world champion, he was a tough as nails Italian that ranks right up there with the best to ever do it. He beat McLarnin in their first fight, but McLarnin got his revenge in the rematch.
Tony Canzoneri lands a left to the chin of Jimmy McLarnin.
Oct. 5, 1936: Canzoneri vs McLarnin II
Tony Canzoneri vs Jimmy McLarnin. Two of the very best from one of boxing’s greatest decades, the 1930’s, the Depression years, that glorious time of Kid Chocolate, Barney Ross, Henry Armstrong and Joe Louis.
Only a year separated the two greats in age and by 1936 they were both grizzled, though still-formidable, veterans. But between May of that year, when the two gave fight fans a thrilling ten round battle, and the following October when they locked up a second time, something happened to Canzoneri. A gifted pugilist in his prime, with sharp reflexes, crafty moves and dangerous power in both fists, he suddenly didn’t have it anymore. His prime was gone for good.
Canzoneri vs McLarnin
Just the year before “Canzi” was still a force to be reckoned with, seemingly not that far removed from the form he had when he was regarded as clearly the finest boxer in the game with big wins over Jackie “Kid” Berg, Kid Chocolate and Billy Petrolle. In fact, less than two years prior he had dropped a pair of close, hard-fought decision battles to Barney Ross and then in May of ’35 he regained the lightweight crown from the always tough Lou Ambers.
Meanwhile McLarnin was coming off his own great series with Ross, a trilogy of superb fifteen round battles which saw “The Baby Faced Assassin” lose the first and third clashes, leaving McLarnin empty-handed in terms of title belts. Not in terms of money, though. All three matches had been huge events and McLarnin looked to only add more funds to his bulging bank account as he set to rumble with Canzoneri at Madison Square Garden twice in the same year, both matches scheduled for ten rounds.
The first Canzoneri vs McLarnin match was a terrific battle that only became more dramatic with each action-packed round. It was made further memorable due to a bizarre incident just before the opening bell. After receiving the referee’s instructions, Canzoneri turned and walked into the overhead microphone hard enough to leave him slightly dazed. Naturally McLarnin took advantage, battering Tony about the ring in the opening round, but after that, “The Dublin Dynamiter” was clearly out-classed as Canzoneri recovered and went on to out-box his rival with authority. Bouncing energetically about the ring and consistently beating McLarnin to the punch, the Italian-American showed the New York fans the kind of skills which had made him one of boxing’s truly great lightweight champions. He even tried for a knockout in the last two stanzas and the judges all gave Tony the win by scores of eight rounds to two.
But as it turned out, that was Canzoneri’s last great performance. Four months later he defended his lightweight title against Ambers and he suddenly appeared aged beyond his years, dropping a one-sided points loss that saw “The Herkimer Hurricane” win almost every round. Afterwards, no less an expert than Benny Leonard judged Canzoneri finished as an elite fighting force. “Youth licked Tony tonight,” he told the press. “After all, he’s been tossing leather for eleven years.”
But Canzoneri was far from ready to pack it in. A month later, it was time for a rematch with McLarnin, but the second meeting of these two ring legends would be of a very different order from their first. The match in May had been a thrilling shoot-out with both men looking to land big shots, but McLarnin’s aggressiveness had given Canzoneri chances to counter and land solid blows.
Canzoneri vs McLarnin
This time McLarnin boxed conservatively behind his left jab and it proved a winning strategy. Canzoneri couldn’t get past the left hand of “The Belfast Spider” and in the later rounds he bore the wounds of war: a swollen and bleeding right eye and a split lip. He was such a gory sight that by the seventh round fans were calling for the match to be stopped, but the proud former champion survived to hear the final bell.
The decision went to McLarnin, who would compete just once more, winning a ten round non-title match against Ambers, before he walked away from boxing for good. But his adversary, despite the fact he just no longer had the spark that made him an all-time great, journeyed on, losing another bid for the world title against Ambers and then answering the bell twenty-two more times before Al “Bummy” Davis knocked him out with his powerful left hook and finally ended the amazing career of the one-and-only Tony Canzoneri.
One last word about McLarnin, he's fascinating, there's really no other way to put it, a tough as hell Irishman from the depression era, nicknamed "The Babyfaced Assassin", could spark his opponent out with a thunderous right hand at any time, what more can you ask for?
A young Jimmy McLarnin.
Very rare book about Jimmy McLarnin.
Jimmy McLarnin in his prime.
Merqui Sosa. Some guys you just have to watch, doesn't matter if they win or lose, you have to watch them because they hit really hard and Merqui Sosa was one of those guys. Roy Jones Jr said Sosa hit him the hardest out of everyone he fought, James "Lights Out" Toney said Sosa hit him the hardest, that should tell you all you need to know about how hard Sosa punched. He was a guy that brought it every time he stepped in the ring, sometimes he had to be saved from himself, but he was always game. Sosa went the distance with James Toney, which is saying a lot because Toney is one of the best to ever do it, and Sosa had two real knock down drag outs with Prince Charles Williams. His fight with Roy Jones Jr, prime Roy was just too fast for him, as is the case with everyone Roy fought during his prime, did think the stoppage was a bit premature though. But Merqui Sosa was fun to watch and always dangerous because of his power. He couldn't really box worth a darn, he was one of those guys that was going to try to take you out, or brawl with you on the inside and that always makes for an exciting fighter.
Merqui Sosa's fights with Prince Charles Williams are one's for the ages, your classic fight in a phone booth type battles, the first one won fight of the year in 1995. The fight was stopped after round 7 because the ring doctor determined that both men were so busted up that neither could continue. The second picked up where the first one left off, this rivalry was one of the most brutal in boxing history.
Merqui Sosa after the first fight with Charles Williams.
Forgotten Fades: Merqui Sosa vs Prince Charles Williams 1 & 2
In my boxing lifetime, the best fight that I have ever watched is Diego Corrales vs Jose Luis Castillo I. That fight was 10 rounds of unbelievable ebb and flow with a finish not even a rocky movie could do justice. However, the point of this article series isto focus on the classic wars that do not get the attention that they rightfully deserve. Corrales-Castillo has received more than enough adulation and praise from all areas of the boxing world. The first fight that I thought of that was so underrated and in need of a spotlight was Merqui Sosa vs Prince Charles Williams. To me their 2 fights were the most violent that I have ever seen at light heavyweight.
Merqui Sosa was a tough hard punching fighter from the Dominican Republic who operated from 160 to 175. He had been in the ring with some of the boxing best of the time: James Toney, Michael Nunn, and Frankie Liles. In fact he had come very close to handing to James Toney his first career loss in an unsuccessful bid for the IBF Middleweight title. Prince Charles Williams, a pro since 1978, was looking to regain some career momentum coming off an almost 6 year title reign as IBF Light Heavyweight Champion.
The first fight, held on 1/13/1995, is one of the most savage fights ever seen at the time. There were very few clinches in this phone booth war. Absolutely mind numbing ebb and flow. Blood and sweat flying everywhere. The punishment doled out by both men was incredible. To watch this as it played out it had the feel that that someone needed to save these 2 warriors from themselves. After the 7th round, referee Ron Lipton and the ringside doctor stepped in and stopped the fight. What made this stoppage unique is that they ruled that both men were unable to continue. Sosa had a possible broken cheekbone while Prince Charles had a nasty cut around his eye. The result was an extremely rare double TKO which was ruled official asa technical draw. The scorecards though showed that Sosa was up significantly on all 3 judges’ cards, something that didn’t sit right with Sosa.
Now after a fight like that one would think that a significant time off for rest and recovery would be the movefor both fighters. Instead a rematch wassigned and took place only a mere 5 months on 6/30/1995 after that fight. Both men picked up where they left off in an even more savage slugfest. However the judges were not needed this time around. At the beginning of the 10th round, the tank went zero all ofa sudden for Prince Charles. Prince Charles got hit with a right hand that had him out on his feet in a corner. Sosa then ripped off a murderous left uppercut, overhand right, left hook, and right hook combination that had Prince Charles swaying helplessly in the corner. The referee, John Carroll, incredulously issued a standing 8 count instead of stopping the fight like it needed tobe. It took some missteps from Prince Charles for him to officially bring an end to the fight giving Sosa arguably his career best win.
The aftermath of this fight was not pretty. Prince Charles was carried out of the ring on a stretcher while a visibly emotional Sosa was on the verge of tears in the post-fight interview concerned about his condition. His skills completely faded after these 2 wars, Prince Charles would fight and win one more low level fight a year after and retire in 1996. Merqui would soldier on until 2000 going 9 and 5 in his final 14 fights but never really regaining the brief world class form he had as the wars added up. You never hear these 2 fighters mentioned much less these series of fights or for that matter any of their fights. If you’re a boxing fan check these fights out, you will not be disappointed.
You could argue that this rivalry actually ruined Sosa and Williams, that's how much it took out of them, Williams was done after this and Sosa wasn't far behind. It was unbelievable how many flush shots landed, no clinching, both guys just bombing the heck out of each other.
Prince Charles Williams v Merqui Sosa: The Friday 13th fight that was so savage it had to be stopped and called a draw
“I called the fighters into the middle of the ring. I gave them final instructions that are uniquely mine, ‘I remind you both now, respect each other, obey my commands and we are going to keep this strictly professional.’
“We are still in mid-ring and Sosa growls at Williams, ‘Aqui jungle.’ I asked him later what he specifically meant and Merqui said, ‘I was telling him, now, here is going to be a jungle’.”
RON LIPTON, REFEREE
THE jungle is one of the most hostile and inhospitable places to wage war. Fighting humidity, disease and uncompromising terrain whilst under constant threat of ambush from an enemy skilled in the art of concealment and camouflage takes a special type of mindset.
It is 24 years since Merqui Sosa welcomed “Prince” Charles Williams to the jungle but once the opening bell sounded, the pair dispensed with tactics and stealth and engaged in their own form of hand to hand combat. With nowhere to hide, the light-heavyweights stood in front of each other and fought.
After seven cruel rounds, those charged with protecting the fighters from each other and themselves negotiated a peace treaty and brought a temporary end to hostilities. On January 13 1995 – a Friday – Sosa and Williams fought each other to a literal standstill.
The balmy baseball diamonds of San Pedro de Macorís in the Dominican Republic are a world away from the frigid January air of the Atlantic City boardwalk but that is exactly where Merqui Sosa found help when he needed it most.
“I had a coach from Brooklyn at that time. I knew I had a tough fight ahead of me so my wife’s parents had a house in Brooklyn, just by the ‘R’ train across from Church Avenue and I would use it for my training camp,” Sosa – born in the Dominican Republic but raised in the Bronx – told Boxing News. “My coach either didn’t want to go or maybe he thought I would lose but he failed to come for a week. I told him it was an important fight for me and it was his job. If he couldn’t do it I told him I needed to find another coach.
“I called my amateur coach in the Dominican Republic [Rudy Zapata] and I flew him to New York to help me. He knew me very well. I always did my best in the ring. I never needed anybody to push me in the ring or force me to do what I loved to do.
“It had been five or six years since I’d seen Rudy. I listened to my coach and he had been with me all over the world fighting. I needed somebody I could trust. It was the best answer for me.”
TELLING THE TALE: Sosa is fit and well today
Sosa is one of boxing’s nearly men. An exciting brawler good enough to get himself into position, just slightly too crude to capitalise. He is the type of fighter who gave more to boxing than the sport gave back to him. After a bid for the super middleweight title ended in defeat at the hands of Michael Nunn in 1993, Sosa decided on a final run at light heavyweight. Williams would welcome him to the 175lb division.
“I was ready for him. In 1991 they wanted me to fight him. My friend at the time said no because I’d just lost two fights and he said if I lost one more fight it was probably going to be like this always. I listened to him and told the matchmaker.
“In 1991 I was fighting at middleweight and he was a light heavyweight. A few years later they gave me the fight and we told the matchmaker that I was ready for him now.
“I told him that if he beat me I would change my name. I won’t be Merqui Sosa anymore.”
If Sosa was fully aware of what lay ahead, a solemn look crossed Prince Charles Williams’ face as he sat on his stool after finally spending three minutes trading punches with Merqui Sosa. Boxers often operate on instinct in the heat of battle but Williams seemed suddenly aware of the situation he found himself in. More naturally gifted than Sosa, Williams had spent six years defending the IBF light heavyweight title before Henry Maske outboxed him and James Toney made him pay for an ill advised drop to super middleweight. To get back into world title contention, he would need to demonstrate his quality once again.
Ron Lipton always loved getting his teeth into a fight. During his days as a heavy handed amateur he was a friend and sparring partner of Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter and became one of the leading figures in the battle to overturn his wrongful murder conviction. Rather than having his enthusiasm for the sport beaten out of him during years spent working alongside world class operators like Dick Tiger, the experience only increased his admiration for the fighters and, eager to remain as close to the action as he possibly could, Lipton became a professional referee.
“I started in 1991 and I found out that a lot of referees don’t study the fighters when they take on an assignment,” Lipton told BN. “Some do, some don’t. Sometimes you don’t know what bout you’re going to be assigned so what I do is look at the entire card and study every single one of them. I read everything I can and study film to look for their tendencies, just like a good coach would. I did it for that fight and it helped me a lot.
“Merqui Sosa was what we call a ‘bricklayer.’ Every punch is a bomb and he’s throwing bricks in there. Williams was more of a boxer-puncher and it was the perfect melding of styles for a great fight. I knew they could handle themselves in there.
“There was hardly a clinch in the whole fight. They were throwing bricks and it was only a matter of time before someone’s body just gave out from the punishment.”
Lipton would go on to design fight sequences for some major boxing projects and plays – “Ron Lipton is the finest fight choreographer in the world,” Dr. Ferdie Pacheco said in July 2000 – but on January 13th 1995, Lipton found himself with a key role in a drama not even he could have pieced together. If Williams had been taken aback by Sosa’s initial aggressiveness, it hadn’t take him long to reciprocate. The battle lines had been drawn.
The following evening – just a five-minute stroll along the freezing boardwalk from Bally’s -Vinny Pazienza and Roberto Duran would meet at the city’s more prestigious Convention Centre. Two more ageing fighters searching for one final opportunity and the accompanying pay check. But for Commissioner of the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board, Larry Hazzard Snr, 1995’s schedule began with the lower profile card headlined by Sosa and Williams.
COMMISSIONER: Larry Hazard was stunned by the violence of the fight
“I didn’t expect it. I generally don’t expect a fight to be overly violent,” Hazzard told BN “I expected that it’d be a very competitive fight based on the history of these guys. Prince Charles Williams, of course, was a boxer-puncher type of fighter and Merqui Sosa on the other hand was very aggressive brawler type. They say that styles make fights. These two fighters had the signature type styles that would make for a good fight.
Hazzard has seen and done pretty much everything during a career which has earned him a place in the Hall of Fame but within a few rounds it became obvious that he was presiding over something unique.
“These guys were just punching each other, Arturo Gatti style. Back and forth, back and forth. Every time it seemed like the referee was going to stop the fight on behalf of one fighter, the other guy would rally back and have the other in trouble. They were like rock ‘em, sock ‘em robots.
“I was raising questions to the doctor as well as him raising his concerns. We were pretty much in concert with our thinking. This was really an aberration from what we were used to seeing. Often you’ll see one fighter taking the bulk of the punishment when the other fighter has established himself as being superior but in this fight both fighters were pretty much even. It was really rare.”
The action was brutal but Sosa versus Williams never ventured into the cartoon like technicolour violence of the Rocky films. It paints a much starker picture of the savagery of professional boxing. Both men entered the ring expecting to fight for their careers but in front of spectators reclining in the red velvet seats of a hotel conference room, Sosa and Williams were suddenly fighting for their lives.
“I always said I don’t want my fans to go to to the toilet to pee. I don’t want my fans to go and buy popcorn. I want my fans to stand up and call my name,” Sosa said.
“As an amateur I was always like that. I won a lot of trophies for having the best fight at the event. I love that kind of fight.
“If you don’t enjoy what you’re doing you shouldn’t be there. You need to enjoy what you’re doing. I was a baseball player but I like action more so I became a fighter. I enjoyed boxing because there was always action. I don’t wait for my opponent to bring the action. I put the action on him.
“After the second round the fight became tough for him and he was maybe fighting for survival. I hurt him very well. I fought like that all of my career. I was doing what I loved doing so it wasn’t difficult for me.”
Sosa might have been in his element but the sheer intensity of the fight was beginning to create a problem for the officials. The war showed absolutely no sign of abating. If anything, the give and take nature of the fight had ratcheted up the ferocity. Officially, only the referee can stop a fight but suddenly the condition of the fighters became the topic a three-way discussion between Lipton, Hazzard and chief physician, Dr Frank Doggett. Between them, they decided to take matters out of Sosa and Williams’ hands.
“I remember at the end of the seventh round I called the doctor up and told him I was concerned about Sosa’s cheekbone and Williams’ cut because it was inside the orbital bone. I’d called him up before that to check the guys but the hellacious facial damage was getting worse so at that juncture, I asked him to come up to the ring to examine both guys.” remembered Lipton.
“My whole thing is the welfare of the fighter. I was concerned about the amount of punishment they were taking. Not just the facial injuries but the brutality of the fight.
SWOLLEN: But Sosa insists he could have continued
“They both wanted to continue. If I hadn’t stopped it, they’d both still be fighting right now.”
“That’s the thing that makes this fight stand out,” added Hazzard. “It was the only time in my entire career – as a referee and as a commissioner – that a fight had to be stopped because both fighters were basically declared by the ringside physician as being unable to continue. That’s rare. I haven’t seen that happen again anywhere.
“We have seen brutal battles before. The most brutal fight that I’ve ever seen was the ‘Thrilla in Manila’ with Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. This fight doesn’t come close to Ali v Frazier but in terms of punishment being meated out at that level, in many ways there are comparisons. It certainly reaches that point.”
Sosa – ahead on the scorecards – rose from his stool and somehow mustered the energy to raise his arms in celebration. Within minutes,Williams also had his hand raised. The judges had been rendered useless. With neither fighter deemed to be in any position to continue, the fight was declared a technical draw.
“The fight was tough,” Sosa admits when he thinks back. “I think I was winning and I thought that they should have given the fight to me because I was ahead when they stopped it. I know that Prince Charles didn’t want to give up so maybe it was a good decision that they decided to give us a draw.
A DRAW: Neither fighter seems happy with the result
“Michael Buffer didn’t like that he had to announce a draw but the commissioner said that it was a doctor’s decision and that was it. I was screaming, ‘I won, I won!’ but I didn’t.”
The events of January 13th 1995 are seldom mentioned and its combatants are rarely celebrated. Apart from the respect of all who witnessed the fight and a place in the history books, the only thing either man left Atlantic City with was the promise of a few extra dollars for an inevitable rematch which took place just six months later.
“I enjoyed both fights,” laughed Sosa. “I enjoyed the second one better. I won.”
Merqui Sosa vs Prince Charles Williams I highlights, I've tried to imagine being in a fight like this, must feel like sticking your head inside a 450° oven for 30 minutes, what a war. Both these guys had granite chins to be able to absorb this type of punishment and not go down for the count.
Merqui Sosa vs Roy Jones Jr, Jones was just too fast for Sosa, thought the fight was stopped a bit early, Sosa was known for having an iron chin and being able to continue fighting , but Jones was giving him a pretty good trouncing and by this time Sosa had already been through two hellacious fights with Williams. Sosa didn't like the fight being stopped and went after the referee for a second, he had that warrior spirit. Roy Jones later said that Sosa was the hardest puncher he ever faced, Jones said Sosa hit so hard that it hurt even when he missed and that he knew he had to hurry up and get Sosa out of there because he hit so hard.