One thing I forgot to mention about Dick Tiger, he had these tribal scars on his chest, it gave him an even more sinister and savage appearance, he was just a man you didn't want to be in the ring with anyway, he really beat the hell out of guys, but the tribal scars really made him even more intimidating. He came from an African tribe in Nigeria called the Ibo tribe, and he got those scars when he was ten years old, they were burned and cut into his chest with a hot knife, it was part of a tradition in the tribe to prove your bravery.
Dick Tiger fought Joey Giardello four times, this was a good and sometimes bitter rivalry. If you're not familiar with Joey Giardello, he is an all-time great middleweight fighter, a tough-as-they-come Italian that could box and punch I'll profile him later in the thread. Starting in 1959 and ending in 1965, Tiger and Giardello would mix it up four times, with both fighters splitting the series with two wins apiece. It was a thrilling series, these guys were as evenly matched as any two guys that fought four times. Both guys were fighting to their strength with Tiger applying pressure and banging away and Joey always moving to his left jabbing and throwing that hard right hand when Tiger over committed, and some real good tactical fighting. Like I said, this series got downright nasty at times, the politics of boxing.
SAD CASE OF A NEGLECTED TIGER
NIGERIA'S DICK TIGER, WITH AN EASY WIN OVER TOUGH RUBIN CARTER, PROVED AGAIN THAT HE IS AS GOOD A MIDDLEWEIGHT AS WARY CHAMPION JOEY GIARDELLO COULD HOPE TO FIND. BUT WILL THEY MEET? JOEY IS IN NO HURRY
Pinched by a large knot of reporters into his dressing room last week at Madison Square Garden, Dick Tiger was shedding his robe and his gloves, and as the questions fell it became obvious he was shedding something else—his faith or, as H. L. Mencken wrote, "an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable."
Tiger, neatly and furiously, had just destroyed Rubin Carter, but he was impassive and no more elated than a shoemaker who has just finished operating on one of 50 pairs of shoes. Outside, in the dim glow of the Garden lobby, people were calling him the best middleweight around, but there in the dressing room Tiger, visibly disheartened and frustrated, knew that he was just a fighter with no place to go. He had given up—not on himself but on Joey Giardello, the middleweight champion who, critics contend, is responsible for the ridiculous inertia in the best division in boxing.
'Proud' Benzema calls time on international career with France
"I am going home," said Tiger, hammering each word crisply. "In Nigeria I have a bookstore and some real estate. I am not broke. I do not need Giardello. He is no gentleman. A gentleman keeps his word. Eighteen months ago [when Tiger lost the title to Giardello in Atlantic City] he promised we would fight again. And then again here in March, after I beat Rivero, he came in my dressing room and said right before the press, 'Tiger, I will fight you next.' Ha! I am glad I met many nice Americans before I met Joey Giardello."
Meanwhile, following the Tiger-Carter fight, Giardello—according to Giardello—was sitting home waiting for a call from Tiger.
"Yeah," says Giardello. "I told him to call me if he takes Carter. But does he call? I don't hear a word from him. Listen, if he wants to fight me why doesn't he sit down and talk with me. Neither Tiger or his manager have come around to talk about a fight. All of a sudden I'm the rat in the picture. I'm not ducking Tiger. Who's Tiger? He's my meat. I'll tell you right now, I want him bad. But I'm not going to ask him to fight me. He's got to ask me. Not just go shooting his mouth in the press. I'm the champion. Print that.
"Also, a lot of people are saying Teddy Brenner and the Garden has offered me $75,000 to fight Tiger in the Garden. Yeah, well that's a lot of bull. Sure, Brenner has offered me a big money match in the Garden, but that's all he has done. Just offered. I don't see any contract. Brenner just talks. Let him come up with a contract. The only concrete offer I've received is from Sugar Ray Robinson. The contract is there and all I gotta do is sign it. [Robinson, who recently won a tax suit against the government which had dragged through the courts since his bout with Carmen Basilio in September 1957 had come up with a substantial money offer.] I'm liable to sign with Robinson any time. Brenner and Tiger are all wet. Print that. All they gotta do is stop mouthin' off and come up with a contract, and I'll fight Tiger in the Garden in August or September. But I don't hear from none of those bigmouths."
Giardello did not have to wait long for communication from one of the "big-mouths." Lew Burston, Tiger's acting manager (Jersey Jones is in the hospital with a stroke), called Giardello later that day. "Giardello," says Burston, "told me, 'You've got my word I'll fight Tiger in September.' He didn't mention any particular night so we'll have to wait and see. Dick is 35 and he can't wait much longer. This time we hope Giardello means what he says."
Most boxing people, although suspicious of Giardello's latest pang of conscience, would like nothing better. Tiger is, perhaps, boxing's most admired figure at the moment, and there pervades an unusually sensitive opinion—for boxing, at any rate—which holds that Tiger has been grossly mistreated.
There are a number of reasons for Tiger's popularity. To begin, there is Tiger the man. He is a courtly, soft-spoken person with impeccable manners—one feels that he should be standing in front of a big, white southern mansion waiting for Zachary Scott to arrive. The image is absurd because Tiger, articulate and intensely interested in politics, is more a symbol of emerging Nigeria than the graying, hat-in-hand retainer his good manners sometimes suggest. But most of Tiger's appeal emanates from the fact that he is the embodiment of a rare species called the professional fighter. When Tiger is in the ring the spectators know that it will not be Tiger's fault if the fight becomes tedious. "I am a fighter," says Tiger. "It is all that I have ever wanted to be, and it is all that I know. I love to fight. The fighter fights. It is that simple. He does not run. I am proud to be a fighter."
Against Rubin Carter, Tiger amply demonstrated his simple philosophy. A short man, he fought Carter as he has all other tall men during the past 10 years—with his feet wide apart and moving straight ahead. "He reminds me of those movies of British soldiers fighting in India," said one ringsider. "They move ahead in a straight line and they're getting knocked down one after another, but they keep comin'. That's Dick Tiger." Carter, a sharp puncher who also does not believe in retreat, was expected to be a perfect opponent for Tiger. He did not disappoint. Until he was later discouraged, Carter took the fight to Tiger and this is not considered wise, but nobody in boxing has ever been moved to marvel at Carter's ring intelligence.
The first round was uneventful as far as the fans were concerned, but Tiger, throwing a right—his right is decidedly inadequate—and then following with a left hook at the end of the round, found his pattern. The harmless right and the seemingly sweeping left hook added up to something lethal because at the tail end of all that motion was another left hook, short and quite explosive. It was to produce one of the more forgettable evenings in Carter's career.
Tiger caught Carter early in the second round. The left hook—Tiger leaps when he throws it, a habit that led to his adoption of the pseudonym Tiger—smashed into Carter's jaw, and Rubin drooped to the floor, his head hanging outside the bottom ropes. Carter was up at the count of three and, though unsteady on his feet and obviously weakened, refused to hold and was soon at Tiger again. Tiger, his left hand sawing away at Carter's head, dropped Rubin a second time. Carter wobbled to his feet at the count of six, four counts after the bell signaling the end of the round. Referee Zack Clayton made an ambiguous motion with his right hand. To him it meant the fight would go on for at least another round, but to almost everybody else in Madison Square Garden the gesture indicated that he was stopping it. Tiger, obviously siding with the majority, smiled, did a slow pirouette in one corner of the ring and acknowledged the roar of the crowd with a wave of his hand. He was eight rounds premature.
After a wary third round Carter went down again in the fourth. Apparently convinced—Carter takes a lot of convincing—that he was being a trifle foolish, charging into Tiger's best guns, Carter decided to box. The idea was good, but the execution was not, for Carter is no boxer. He jabbed his way through the remaining rounds—much to the annoyance of the crowd of 9,785—and carefully, if not picturesquely, circled away from Tiger's left hand. Once he did catch Tiger with a straight right hand, but Tiger seemed more surprised than stunned. The fight was no challenge for the judges, who gave most of the rounds to Tiger.
"At least he didn't knock my socks off," said Carter, who was having difficulty later removing his socks in the dressing room. He held an ice pack to his eye, and his drooping mustache, minus the Fu Manchu ends, which he had been forced to snip off before the fight, made his eyes seem even more lachrymose than they generally are as he continued to ridicule himself. "Tiger is a great fighter," he said. "He just whipped me good. Compared to Tiger, Giardello is only half a fighter. He'd kill Giardello if he fought him the way he fought me tonight. Man, that guy is some tough. But I'm real tired. I need a long rest now."
Carter, who has been a busy fighter with six bouts in the last five months, will no doubt benefit from a layoff, but the aging Tiger cannot wait much longer for Giardello. Giardello, who himself is crowding 35, does not have time to wait, either. His skills have been diminished by the years and his easygoing attitude toward title defenses (he is so disdainful of them that he has had only one in his 18 months as the fellow at the top). Yet he is still quite "hungry." He has not made much money from the championship, and whoever he fights will have to come up with a bundle, it seems. While Robinson doesn't exactly own Fort Knox, he does have more money than other likely challengers, and he is appealing to Giardello for another reason: he is 11 years older than the champion. So where does this leave Dick Tiger, the best uncrowned middleweight around? Probably with nothing more than an illogical hope for—if not belief in—the occurrence of the improbable.
Dick Tiger and Joey Giardello would meet four times, with Dick Tiger winning Giardello winning the second and third fights, and Tiger winning the first and fourth, all four fights were decision affairs. The first meeting between Dick Tiger and Joey Giardello would take place in 1959. Dick Tiger, the British Empire middleweight champion, pounded out a unanimous 10-round decision over Giardello in Chicago Stadium. There were no knockdowns in the televised bout. Giardello was unable to cope with Tiger's effective left hooks. The 10 rounds were routine and without bloodshed. It was the second victory for Tiger before a television audience in his United States campaign. His left hook, especially in close, was one main weapon in piling up points. Giardello could not land his right which had accounted for 27 knockouts at the time.
Tiger and Giardello really took each other to the edge of the abyss in their Four fights.
Tiger vs Giardello II also took place in 1959 and Joey Giardello won a 10 round decision over Tiger. The third meeting took place in 1963 in Atlantic City, and Joey Giardello would finally keep the promise he made at his father's graveside, to become a world champion.
Joey Giardello lands a left hook to the face of Dick Tiger.
Dec. 7, 1963 - Joey Giardello, the scarred 33-year-old veteran from Philadelphia, took the middleweight title from Dick Tiger of Nigeria tonight, boxing, slugging, and ducking through 15 grueling rounds like a man with his back against the last wall in the world. Giardello was never expected to go the distance, but his legs got stronger and his punching sharper to the swelling roar of an estimated 12,000 at Atlantic City Convention Hall’s first championship fight. Paul Cavalier, the referee, scored eight rounds for Giardello, five for Tiger, and two even. Under New Jersey rules, there were no judges for the bout, which was perhaps the most stunning boxing upset of 1963. If there had been any strategy, it was abandoned through the final four rounds — an avalanche of solid left hooks, pummeling, and apparently low blows. By the 14th, the crowd was on its feet to stay, screaming: “Take him Chubby, take him!” It’s been a long time since they called Giardello “Chubby” — somewhere back in Brooklyn or South Philly — but it must still mean something. Joey took the 14th going away, and his numerous backers in the arena smelled the title. “Jo-Jo, baby!” they yelled through a 15th round during which both fighters were wary, staying away from each other in fear of that one deal-closing punch that somehow was never thrown tonight. Then it was over, with Giardello exhausted but triumphant, possessing a lifetime record of 94 victories, 22 defeats, 7 draws, and 1 no-decision bout. “I started slow because I wanted to be sure I could go 15 rounds,” Giardello said in the middle of the wild scene in his dressing room as friends yelled and pounded him. “I wanted to make sure the legs were there. They were. I had to win it. I was nervous all day. I need this title. I must have fought this fight 90 times today. I was jumpy. I kept thinking of how to make him fight my fight. I did. I fooled around in the last round. I danced around to show him he would have to go after me. I played it safe because I was so sure I was ahead. The referee only gave me eight rounds? Well, I thought I won 11. I’ll give Tiger a return match for sure. He was man enough to give me a chance at the title. It’s 99.9% it will be him unless I get a big money offer with somebody else.” Giardello thought a little and added: “Now maybe some of those who wouldn’t give me a fight will. Maybe I’m clean now. Ask Gene Fullmer if he’ll fight me now.” This was a reference to the out-of-ring troubles Joey had a couple of years ago, when he wound up in court after a fight in a Philadelphia gas station. He was accused of hitting the service attendant. The usual prefight pomp was interrupted tonight by moments of silence for President Kennedy and for the 22nd anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Tiger and Giardello fought for the fourth and final time in 1965, like I said earlier, this rivalry got a bit nasty because Tiger felt that Giardello wouldn't give him a chance to win the middleweight title back after the 1963 defeat. This is an interview with Joey Giardello right before their fourth and final fight.
The fourth fight took place in Madison Square Garden and Dick Tiger was pissed, he fought like a man possessed. It was also Giardello's last—as a fighter. In the second round, Tiger ripped a left hook to Joey's jaw that knocked him halfway across the ring. Twice more, in the seventh and twelfth rounds, Joey was rocked by solid punches to the head. Legs rubbery, hair matted with sweat, blood trickling down his lumpy face from cuts over both eyes, he stubbornly fought on, even though his cause was hopeless. After 15 rounds, the judges' verdict was unanimous for Tiger. Giardello had no excuses. "I wanted to show New York a good fight," he said, and announced that he was retiring. At that, Champion Tiger could only wonder rhetorically: "How can he live if he does not fight?" That was Dick Tiger, he ate, slept, and breathed fighting, he couldn't imagine a life without it. Here are the highlights of Dick Tiger vs Joey Giardello IV, you want to see how brutal Dick Tiger could be, this fight was a damn inferno, Tiger was hell bent on making Giardello pay and wait years for a shot to get the title back. I have to hand it to Giardello, he had a chin made of cast iron to be able to take some of the bombs Tiger was dropping on him.
Another fight I want to mention before I forget, Dick Tiger vs Henry Hank, this middleweight showdown took place in 1962 and was one of the best middleweight fights ever, an apocalyptic slugfest of mythical proportions. For an idea of the fight, picture Hagler-Hearns for 7 rounds longer. This was Tiger's last fight before finally getting his first title shot against Gene Fullmer. For over a year, both titleholders (Fullmer and Pender) had shied away from defending against Tiger, and watching this fight it's easy to see why. Hank was a top 5 rated contender and a tremendous puncher; he could be outboxed, but seldom was beaten at close quarters - and few even dared to try to match him there. However, Tiger stood right in front of Hank all night long, picked off most of his punches, withstood the ones that managed to break through his guard, and pounded him right back all night long. This fight is one of the most definitive showcases for Tiger's immovable strength, technical skill (if a bit unorthodox and awkward-looking), tireless workrate, and iron chin. He does miss a number of his punches - partly because of Hank's slippery head movement, and partly because of his own bad habit of head-hunting at this stage of his career - but he compensates for that by tirelessly wailing away. If you watch the entire fight on YouTube, note the left hook by Hank that nails Tiger flush on the chin in the final 30 seconds of the last round, and no reaction whatsover from Tiger, my god Tiger was hard as fu..... nails. Here are the highlights.
In 1966, Dick Tiger moved up to light heavyweight and challenged Jose "Chegui" Torres for his light heavyweight title, it is very difficult to move up in weight class because you're fighting guys that are naturally bigger and stronger than you. Jose Torres was trained by Cus D'Amato, who would later make Mike Tyson into what he became. Cus was famous for teaching his peekaboo style to his fighters and Jose Torres utilized that style, albeit in a different way. The person credited with coming up with the peekaboo boxing style is in fact Cus D’Amato. He took the basis for the new boxing style from his favorite fighter, Maxie Rosenbloom, Maxie Rosenbloom was a highly respected defensive fighter who kept a low stance with his hands held high. Unfortunately many boxing critics during that era thought Rosenbloom's style was boring and lacked aggression. Cus tweaked the style to make it more aggressive while keeping its defensive elements intact. The purpose of the stance was simple: move your head to avoid punches and land powerful counters. Many boxing critics during this time laughed at the style and jokingly called it the “peekaboo boxing style.” They jokingly called the style peekaboo because the guards looked similar to someone playing peekaboo with a baby. D’Amato soon made these critics eat their words and proved the effectiveness of the peekaboo style. Jose Torres was one of the best fighters that Cus D’Amato trained. During his career, the he fighter became the lineal light heavyweight champion. Chegui Torres is considered one of his era’s best light heavyweight fighters. Dick Tiger was a 3-1 underdog to Jose Torres, Tiger took a boxing lesson from the Torres in the first five rounds and then came on like a tidal wave. In the 6th, Tiger began to score inside with both hands to the head and body. From then on Tiger dominated the fight and the champion grew more and more listless. The crowd of 13,654 which had cheered Torres at the start, roared for Tiger to keep charging. When the unanimous verdict was announced, it was greeted with rousing cheers.
Back When Dick Tiger Became Light Heavyweight Champion
When Bernard Hopkins surgically dismantled Antonio Tarver to win the light heavyweight championship, he accomplished what another former middleweight champion did forty years earlier. On December 16, 1966, Dick Tiger, a Blue collar lunch pail workman challenged Jose “Chegui” Torres for the title. Tiger wasn’t supposed to win. The odds were stacked against him. He was going in against a man who had the height, weight, and reach on his side. And then, there were the speculating whispers that at 37, Tiger’s best days were already in the pages of history. The speculation about age helped to install Torres as a solid 12-5 favorite, gaining credibility eight months earlier when Tiger lost his middleweight championship to Emile Griffith, the welterweight champion. Not only did he lose, but he was decked for the first time in his career. And though the decision was debatable, it added fuel the belief that Tiger’s career was on the downward spiral. Don’t get me wrong, as challengers went, Tiger was as valid as anyone else. He was a two-time champion; a systematic puncher, who could still ring the bell of opponents who traded with him. Beyond that, the promoters knew that his gate appeal of being a longtime Madison Square Garden favorite would generate more greenbacks than #1 challenger Roger Rouse. The Torres/Tiger fight wasn’t a classic in the annals of fistic history, but there was interest because Jose Torres brought with him the promise of being something special. He was a fighter with style and speed, possessing a brilliant variety of fistic attributes, and who overcame being stalled in his title quest by Cus D’Amato. Not only that but he was a renaissance man, attracting a literary and political following from Pete Hamill, Norman Mailer to Mayor John Lindsay. For Tiger, the move up to light heavyweight was a kind of rebirth. He no longer had to concern himself with the 160 pound weight limit. For the Torres fight, he packed 167 pounds into his compact 5’8” frame. And though his body still appeared to be sculpted by Auguste Rodin, rippling with tightly knotted muscles bulging beneath the skin, there remained the incessant questions about the wear and tear of the years; was anything left in the tank? Those whispers about age echoed like a siren. Nick Florio, adviser to Torres, and who was in Tiger’s corner when he lost to Emile Griffith said, “Fighters of Tiger’s age sometimes lose it all in one fight…Tiger might have reached that…point.” Tiger acknowledged the years. He told Arthur Daley of the New York Times that his roadwork around the Central Park reservoir was now different. It wasn’t about running, but rather, walking or jogging, to just to keep moving for an hour. Round one prefaced the night as the usually slow starting Tiger quickly took the role of aggressor and fought in a different style, out of a semi-crouch. He ducked and bounced out of his crouch to land flurries to the body. Tiger’s body punching not only won him the round, but began paving his road to victory. In this fight, Tiger wrote new pages to his legacy by showing diversity; the ability to change styles. In the years leading up to this fight, he was dogmatically labeled as a stubborn head-hunter who craved for opponents to accept his invitation to trade punches so he could counterpunch. It wasn’t that body punching was unfamiliar territory, it was that for this fight it had to become the focal point. Back in 1959, when he first arrived in the states from England that wasn’t the case. Body punching wasn’t part of his resume, but he proved to be a good student. In fact, his proficiency got so good that it was a dominant reason why his management took the short money just to get Gene Fullmer into the ring in 1962. In rounds two and three, Tiger continued to work downstairs as Torres fought out of his customary peek-a-boo stance and landed some head shots, but the punches were long and didn’t have power. Torres needed and wanted an impressive victory. Though his recent bouts were against top contenders, he didn’t show the fire of a masterpiece in progress that was on display March 30, 1965, when he KO’d Willie Pastrano to win the title. His first title defense was against Wayne Thornton, and after an explosive first round, the fight degenerated into a mulling affair without electricity. Then, he desperately needed the last two rounds to regain his title against the aging and fatigued Eddie Cotton. The only notable defense was a second round knockout over Chic Calderwood. Round four followed the script of the preceding three. Torres continued to fight out of the peek-a-boo, flicking punches at his smaller rival while Tiger fought with hands high, inching forward, bobbing and weaving in an attempt to get inside. The reasoning to attack the body was spurned on because of Torres’ pancreas condition which occurred after his July 31, 1965 non-title tilt with Tom McNeeley. The health condition shelved Torres for nine months. Though given the go ahead to fight, the condition weighed on his mind. It left a mental and psychological imprint that wasn’t easily erased. And certainly, that imprint wasn’t helped by Tiger’s tattooing body attack. As Tiger continued his body assault in the fifth, Torres landed a few long right hands, one of which hurt Tiger. But strangely, and uncharacteristically, Torres didn’t follow up. After five rounds, the official scoring was 3-2 Torres; 3-2 Torres; 2-2-1. The sixth round and seventh rounds slowed to a crawl with Tiger’s body shots edging Jose’s head shots on the scorecards. Torres seemed content to jab, move and hold. As the fight progressed, an interesting, though not exciting, paradox was developing. As Torres later commented, “Every time I tried to press the guy, he moved back.” The paradox was cemented when Tiger attempted to bait and coax Torres. Torres knew of Tiger’s brutal counterpunching, and thus, didn’t take the bait. Robert Lipstye, writing in the New York Times observed these paradoxical moves without many punches, as leaving Tiger and Torres in the middle of the ring, moving the shoulders and feet “in a strange little dance.” To Torres, a thinking man, the paradox was puzzling because it was contrary to what he had expected. During training up in the Catskills at the Concord Hotel in Kiamesha Lake, the Torres camp studied replays of Tiger’s fight against Rubin Carter, which they felt showed Tiger at his best. And though Tiger won convincingly, they saw that when Carter stayed away and boxed, Tiger was left groping, unable to counterpunch. The message was simple: box and you win. Tiger always had problems with fighters who used the finer points of the sweet science. There was Griffith, and before that Joey Archer and Joey Giardello, and before that Gene Fullmer, who uncharacteristically boxed Tiger in their second fight. By using guile and boxing, you could frustrate Tiger’s counterpunching rhythm, making him hesitate whereupon his stalking became mere following. At times during his career, Tiger’s frustration surfaced during bouts. In reporting on the first Tiger/Fullmer bout, A.J. Liebling wrote that during the eleventh round Tiger, who was easily winning, “paused in his pursuit and, raising his hands, motioned the champion (Fullmer) to come to him again and fight.” So, before the fight, when all the pros and cons were added up on paper, it looked like an easy Torres victory, whereby one could speculate that maybe Tiger was underestimated. After all, Torres wasn’t one of those previously mentioned middleweights; he was a solid light heavyweight with the advantages of age, speed, weight and height. Not only that, but he was a rising star, full of a champion’s bravado that had him constantly campaigning, clamoring for a fight against Muhammad Ali. To some it may have been just another light heavyweight dreaming, but it did make for good copy. As the fight ticked into its second half, the championship fire in Torres seemed to only be smoldering, waiting for one of his classic volleys to ignite the embers into a blaze. The blaze never happened. The perfect plan went awry because the Torres camp pigeon-holed Tiger, believing he was an aging inflexible head-hunter. In reality, beyond changing his fighting style, Tiger wasn’t as crude as perceived. He wasn’t an aimless head-hunter, but rather was a disciplined stalking counterpuncher throwing short meaningful punches. The eighth was close as Torres landed with punches to the head, while Tiger continued to press the issue downstairs. At one point, it seemed that Tiger was hurt, but Torres didn’t follow up. He didn’t appear to want to expend energy beyond a certain point. He seemed unwilling or simply unable to do it. When they did mix it up, it was Torres who gave ground. In the ninth, Torres rocked Dick’s head back, but Tiger came right back ripping to the body and then landed a left hook to the head, his best punch of the night. It should be noted that Tiger didn’t make many meaningful attempts at Torres’ head, concentrating on the body, which he continued through round ten. At one point during the round, Tiger forced Torres to hold after a flurry. After ten rounds the official scoring was 7-3 Tiger; 5-4-1 Tiger; 7-2-1 Tiger. Torres came back strong in the eleventh round, hurting Tiger with a series of lefts and rights. But like in the fifth round, instead of following up, he went back to jabs. Torres seemed to tire in the eleventh and twelfth rounds, and ringside whispers wondered if Torres was in the best of shape. When right, Torres was a picture book fighter, a quick flashing artist. In this fight, the flashy artistic combination punching was a memory. He was taken out of his game. The fight wasn’t being dictated by him. Later, Torres disclosed that because of his health condition, he had trained only ten days for the fight even though he was at camp for a month. If true, this could explain why he was lethargic and lacked drive, but it would be an injustice not to give Tiger credit. Throughout the fight, his fighting heart pulsated; he kept punching, and his punches were crisper. The thirteenth and fourteenth rounds were give and take rounds with Tiger starting fast and Torres rallying and then Tiger coming on as the rounds ended. The final stanza witnessed Torres rallying with combinations as the round and the fight ended. The late rally harkened back to the Cotton fight, when it saved his title. This time it didn’t work. The decision was unanimous for Tiger: 10-5; 8-6-1; 10-4-1. Tiger’s ability to change; his constant body attack excavated the light heavyweight championship from Torres, making him, at the time, the fifth oldest man to achieve a championship. As for Torres, he fought a cautious fight; fighting in spurts, attempting to use his quickness and jab to keep Tiger at bay; and when Tiger got inside, he held. There are those who said that Torres looked good in only the 5th and 11th rounds, when he hurt Tiger, but in both cases didn’t follow-up the advantage. Before the fight Torres was considered an artist painting a masterpiece in progress. Afterwards, it was Tiger’s painting that would hang in the gallery of light heavyweight history. After all the years, fourteen years as a professional, Tiger fought with the pride of a champion and made the most out of what remained in his tank. That’s what blue-collar guys tend to do.
Tiger gave Torres a rematch and the rematch was almost a carbon copy of the first fight, and Dick Tiger retained his light heavyweight title, Torres made a late surge but Tiger had done enough to win the fight. After the fight, a riot broke out when Torres fans became enraged at Tiger being awarded the decision and began hurling things into the ring.
Bottles, pieces of chairs and other missiles were tossed into the ring and the ringside sections Tuesday night shortly after light heavyweight champion Dick Tiger of Nigeria was awarded a split decision over Puerto Rican-born Jose Torres in a very close return, 15-round title bout. A late surge by Torres excited his followers and probably touched off the riot. Well behind on all scorecards, he staggered the 37-year-old Nigerian with a sweeping left and right to the jaw in the 12th round and captured the last four rounds on all scorecards. Torres went after his rival from the opening bell and they fought a fierce battle for three rounds. Tiger, getting in close, dominated the next five rounds. Torres spurted in the 9th and 10th, lost the 11th and then started his drive in the 12th.
After the Torres fights, Tiger defended his light heavyweight title against Roger Rouse. By this time, Dick Tiger was old in boxing years, he had been declining but he still had a little bit left in the tank.
TIGER HAMMERS HOME A SERMON
THINGS ARE TOO EASY IN AMERICA, SAID THE LIGHT-HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION FROM NIGERIA. TO PROVE HIS POINT HE DROVE INTO SOFT-PUNCHING ROGER ROUSE WITH A STRAIGHTFORWARD FURY THAT BELIED HIS ADVANCING YEARS
Two nights before Roger Rouse fought Dick Tiger for the light-heavyweight championship, a computer in the Clark County Courthouse in downtown Las Vegas predicted that Rouse would win by a decision. Whereupon Tiger turned to the machine and said, "You're a liar." As events proved, Tiger was right. It was he who won when the referee sensibly stopped the fight in the 12th round. In a way, Tiger's victory was doubly sweet; not only did the better man win, but man triumphed over machine, although Tiger did not see it that way. "A computer," he explained, "is made by human beings."
Tiger was not half as distressed by the computer's prediction as by the fact that he felt he was not properly dressed for the scene in the courthouse. "Why did you not tell me to dress up?" he asked Lew Burston, one of his American representatives. "I, too, have a nice shirt in my drawer that I could have put on." Tiger, that stumpy, gnarled, inflexible man, has a great deal of pride; he does not want to appear to be uncouth or a savage. He refuses to be photographed in front of trees, believing that such pictures conform with a stereotype of Africa. "Rome wasn't built in a day," Tiger said recently. "And," he added, "Las Vegas was once a desert."
Too, Tiger has a great love for his profession and for his title ("My title," as he always says), and he does not care to see either demeaned. "If you're in the ring to fight a man like myself," he says, "put up a good fight. Don't take it easy." He has no use for clever boxers and considers their art unmanly. "I'm not in there to play tricks," he says, "to go indirect, to fly around like a bird. I fight hard. That is what I get paid to do. I have a job, I train hard. I entertain the public. I go my way."
In his philosophy, the opponent plays little more than a supporting role. Until last Friday night, Tiger had never seen Rouse fight, nor had he seen him in a film, which was of no concern to Tiger. "I'm going to see him for an hour on the 17th," he said. "That's time enough. It's the business I'm in. There's no need to be in a hurry. Take your time. In life I always take things easy. I been fighting now 15 years. I fought all kinds. I fought them as they fought me. That's life. Things come and go. I think of my past years. In my past years I was nobody, had nothing, nobody knew me. Things come and go."
In the Las Vegas Convention Center they went very well for Tiger, disastrously for Rouse and, incidentally, the promoters, as only 3,733, who paid $44,500, came to see the show.
According to Teddy Bentham, Carlos Ortiz' trainer who was brought in to work Rouse's corner, "There's got to be a way to beat a style. If you can't find a way to beat a style, your fighter won't win." Tiger's style is unadorned, "direct," as Tiger would say. He comes at you in a straight line, in somewhat of a crouch, and looks to close and then bang to the body. He favors his left hook, which he generally sets up with a right hand, and if he is not a notably big puncher, he is made of stern stuff.
"He's a piece of steel in the ring," says Mike Kaplan, who refereed Tiger's fight with Florentino Fernandez. "I felt the metal when I tried to break them." Even more to the point, Tiger is indomitable, or, as Bentham says, "Sometimes you have a fighter who don't want to get beaten."
But, as Bentham also says, "there isn't a system in the world can't be beaten." Joey Giardello, Joey Archer and Emile Griffith, all of whom beat Tiger, showed how it could be done—simply by making themselves scarce. All three moved on Tiger, meaningfully jabbed, made him reach, kept him off balance. "A good trombone man will beat Tiger," said Freddie Steele, the old middleweight champion, who was in Vegas for the fight. "Rouse will have to be sliding that left out all night long."
Indeed, this was how Rouse intended to fight. "Get up close," Bentham told him in the dressing room before the fight. "Bop, bop, bop. Get out of there. In. Out. Stick and move. Stick and move. Ah, you know how to fight. I don't have to tell you."
And, in this fashion, Rouse won three of the first four rounds. Although he is not a particularly pretty boxer, he did what he was told—jabbed, stayed on the move and, for good measure, hit Tiger coming in with short, sneak rights. For his part, Tiger tried to get under the jab to reach the body. As his trainer, Chickie Ferrara, had said, "Rouse got a nice long body that attracts me a lot."
In the early rounds Tiger's long, lunging solitary left hooks to the head seemed futile, even foolhardy, to almost everyone but Ferrara and Jersey Jones, Tiger's other American representative. "Come on, chase him, chase him," they exhorted Tiger from the steps leading up to his corner.
From the fifth through the eighth rounds, Rouse did much as before, except that he largely neglected his right, and, as Tiger began to press him, Rouse's resolve visibly waned. In a sense he lost the fight long before the first knockdown. "I wanted to concentrate more on the jab." he said afterward. "I felt I was reaching too much with it and that he was getting under it. And I thought I should stop throwing the right. It's dangerous punching down. I felt he might come over the top."
Instead, because Rouse was, in fact, reaching with the jab, Tiger, who was troubled with bleeding from a minor cut over his left eye, came in, both beneath the jab and, to Rouse's eventual pain and sorrow, over it. Rouse throws what they call "an elbow jab"; that is, instead of shooting the fist straight out and bringing it back along the same path, he jabs primarily and weakly with his forearm like a man bending his elbow at the bar. The move momentarily leaves his head, in the words of Cus D'Amato, "hanging out there like a lantern in a storm."
Despite his shortcomings, Rouse was still in the fight until the ninth round, when he failed to do what he was told. Bentham said to him in the dressing room after the fight, "Remember when I kept saying 'Don't pull back?' Then that's the one round you pull back." Bentham amplified: "The style was right. Everything was perfect going up to the round he got knocked down. I said, 'Don't pull back.' All he had to do was give it a little bend. I thought he was home in the ninth round. Them was all sucker punches."
Tiger threw a long, loopy left, and Rouse pulled back from it, nowhere far enough. It caught him flush on the mouth, split his lip open, cracked his mouthpiece and knocked him on his back. Rouse got up, but he was not the man he used to be and Tiger chased him the rest of the ninth, although he did not catch up.
In the 10th round, he did. He caught Rouse in close with another hook. As the challenger grabbed him around the waist, Tiger kept hitting Rouse, who, still hanging on, slid to the floor. This time he arose at two and was a bloody sight, like Macbeth coming, astonished, out of Duncan's bedchamber. Rouse was even bleeding from the left knee.
When the bell rang for the 12th round, Rouse was still sitting bemusedly on his stool, suddenly alone and defenseless, innocent. A few moments later Tiger hit him with a right hand. Rouse fell forward, somersaulting, but again was up at two. He stood submissively by the ropes while Referee Jimmy Olivas picked up the mandatory eight count. Olivas, never finishing the count, changed his mind and indicated the fight was over. "He was out on his feet, plus the cut," Olivas explained. "He was cut too bad."
Olivas was right in both respects. The cut took 14 stitches and, in any case, Bentham and Pete Jovanovich, Rouse's manager, were about to stop the fight themselves. "I said, 'Let's stop it,' after the 11th," Bentham said, "but Rouse said to let him go another round."
"I have a thousand thoughts," Jovanovich said later. "Might have done. Should have done. Could have done. But you can't refight it. I don't know much about boxing. I wish I did."
"He was doing all right," Bentham said. "He was driving him crazy. It's only that when you lose, everything is wrong. Ah, but I don't like losing."
"I heard about things like that," Rouse said. "I never thought it would happen to me. They all say you can't win them all. I never would have believed it. Oh———! Somebody told me once, you can't win them all. I sure would like to get another shot at it, but I guess we won't. Oh———!"
"We never lost," Jovanovich said. "We've just paused for a while."
An hour after the fight, Tiger was in his room in the Hotel Fremont, fiddling with the dial of his shortwave radio, waving the aerial like a wand, trying to pick up news of the war in Nigeria; he is from Aba, in the secessionist Republic of Biafra. Tiger had hoped to find a Voice of America broadcast, but all he got were unearthly screeches, voices speaking Spanish and news of Vietnam.
"So, I have broken the tie," he said as he waited for Chickie Ferrara to prepare his bath. Tiger was referring to the telegram he had received, which informed him that his wife had given birth to a girl a week before the fight and that mother and daughter were doing fine. "It is good," Tiger went on. "Now I have four girls and three boys. This telegram lifted a large stone from my mind. It let me know my family was not dead. Chickie, is the bath ready yet?"
"Don't be impatient, Dick," Ferrara said. "You have a long soak ahead. Then I want to strip the eye." At this, Tiger looked at himself in a mirror and smiled at what he saw. "It is an ugly face," he said.
"Are you kidding?" asked Freddie Brown, who is one of Tiger's seconds. "That's a good-looking face. In fact, tonight you were handsome. Tell me the secret. How do you do it?"
"It is no mystery," said Tiger, who is 38. "The older I am, the more better I get."
Lew Burston, who is 70 and says he has been in boxing for 109 years, and Jersey Jones, who is 69, came into the room. "The right hand under the heart in the fifth round was murder," said Burston. "He should have been arrested for that punch." Years ago when he promoted in Paris, Burston was known as Le Juif Errant because, as he is fond of saying, he made 52 round trips to Europe by boat before the war. "Paris will always be lovely," Burston says. "Paris will always be soft. But the soft, quiet, gentle way is not found so often, and the butchers no longer chop your meat with two sharp knives."
"Rouse ain't a bad fighter, but his own left was what killed him," said Ferrara. "He couldn't push Dick off with the blow, even when it landed. But what's the difference? He wasn't going to beat Dick anyway."
At last Tiger's bath was ready. "To be hurt," he said, sitting in the tub in the vaporous bathroom, "is not so bad as long as you get paid for it. Sometimes I have been injured in training. Then it is bad. It is for nothing—free. And pain is part of the price. I am not glad I got my eye cut, but this is O.K. It mean I earned my money. I have bled for it. Life to be good must be hard, otherwise the sweet things cannot be appreciated.
"Here, in this country, things are too easy, I think. Everything must be the easy way, the good soft way. Seldom do I see parents hit their children. No one has control. Not the father, not the mother. With us, the child does as his parents say. My father taught me, and I teach my children. That is how the child learns strength. From seeing how the father lives, how he does his life. There is nothing wrong with working hard and sweating. That is the way life must be lived. Then it is satisfying, and a man can enjoy his rewards. You see, nothing for nothing is nothing. But if you have to climb high up the tree to pick the good red apple, ah, then the apple is sweet.
"To me boxing is a good sport. I would not be here today if it were not for boxing. It has given me a good life because I have put every effort into it. Always from life we must give before we can get. I got $75,000 for beating Roger Rouse tonight. If you have the money, the money tell you what you have to do. If you have little money you do little things; if you have big money you do big things. Seventy-five thousand, that is a lot of money. Too much money if the fight is too easy, but it is never easy if a man comes to fight. In a way, Roger Rouse disappointed me. Yes, he tried hard, but I expected him to come to me to try to take my title from me, but he was running.
"I don't know how long I will go on, this I don't think about. But when the time comes I will know. I put myself into boxing, and I will take myself out when I have to. I will do that when my punches get lazy, when I cannot make myself train, when I cannot get up in the dark morning, while others are still asleep, and run."
This brings us to Dick Tiger vs Bob Foster, the only time Dick Tiger was ever knocked out in his career. But before I talk about that, I want to talk about Tiger's homeland of Africa. His people in his homeland were fighting for their independence and it was a major part of Dick Tiger's life. He helped in anyway he could, often putting his earnings from boxing into the cause, or helping to train troops. It was his home, it was where his heart was, and his family.
DICK TIGER FIGHTS TWO WARS
TAKING A TEMPORARY LEAVE FROM BIAFRA'S STRUGGLE WITH NIGERIA, THE LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION GETS READY FOR HIS OWN BATTLE OF SURVIVAL AGAINST BOB FOSTER
In this corner is Richard Ihetu, alias Dick Tiger. At 39 years of age—he will be 40 on August 14—Tiger is the oldest champion in boxing. He is also probably the oldest 2nd lieutenant in the army of Biafra, the secessionist African state fighting for its independence from Nigeria. In the other corner is Bob Foster, 29, an explosive puncher who used to work, fittingly, in a bomb factory. Foster is 6'3½"; Tiger is 5'8". Tiger likes to work inside, brutalizing the body so the head will collapse, while Foster prefers to flatten an opponent with a single blow. Both men are aggressive to the extreme, and their fight for the light heavyweight title on May 24 in Madison Square Garden promises to be a war.
For Dick Tiger there is another war, the turmoil and terror between Biafra and Nigeria. Early last March, Tiger left Biafra to start training in Manhattan for the Foster fight. He works out weekdays in the New Garden Gym, a walk-up sweatbox on Eighth Avenue, and he passes his off-hours watching TV in his West Side hotel room, window-shopping, writing letters and promoting the cause of Biafra. In his dressing cubicle at the gym, a patriotic poster proclaims the "Days to Remember," such as the massacre of Biafrans in northern Nigeria on May 28, 1966. Tiger is so committed to the cause of Biafran independence that it dismays his co-manager, Jersey Jones. Not long ago, after Tiger had finished giving an interview, Jones stuck his head in the cubicle. "Are you still talking about that Nigerian-Biafran mess?" Jones asked. "Why don't you talk about the fight?"
'Proud' Benzema calls time on international career with France
Softly Tiger said, "Without Biafra, the championship title is no good to me. Without Biafra, my title is nothing."
"C'mon, Dick," Jones said in a gentle tone. "Forget about Biafra. Bring your wife and kids over here and settle down."
"The United States is a very good country, a very nice country," Tiger replied, "but Biafra is my home. I was born in Biafra. I will die in Biafra."
Jones turned away silently.
The most compelling fact in Dick Tiger's life now is not his pressing ring style or his relatively advanced age but that he is an Ibo. The Ibos are the Biafrans. Biafra used to be part of Nigeria, which was an invention of colonial Britain. It was not a single nation but a conglomeration of peoples stuffed inside a boundary line determined by the Great Powers of the 19th century. When the British gave up their hold on Nigeria about seven years ago, the Ibos, 12 million strong, were one of the peoples who made up the new country. Energetic and enterprising, the Ibos were the businessmen, doctors, lawyers, teachers and doers of Nigeria. "Ibo people are not lazy people," Tiger says proudly. "Whatever we are doing, we put all our effort there. If we are studying, we study very hard. We like peace. We like to be jovial. We don't get angry very quick. We play, we laugh and we are good business people. And we respect law. Sometimes God watch for us."
Originally native to eastern Nigeria, the Ibos spread throughout all Nigeria, and their spirit of enterprise often aroused envy or hostility. The Ibos, moreover, are largely English-speaking Christians. Tiger, his wife and their seven children are Anglicans. By contrast, the Hausas of northern Nigeria, the rivals of the Ibos, are Arabic-speaking Moslems who have little truck with newfangled ways. As a result, the short, unhappy history of independent Nigeria has been mostly a struggle between Ibo and Hausa.
In the spring and fall of 1966 the Hausas turned on the Ibos who had settled in the north. The massacres were appalling. "They killed both soldiers and civilians," Tiger says. "About 30,000. They chased everybody from the east. All of them run home." In between massacres the Hausas also overthrew and shot General Aguiyi-Ironsi, an Ibo who was the Nigerian chief of state. (Six months previously, General Ironsi had overthrown the Hausa-oriented regime of Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa.) In May 1967 the Ibos decided that they had had enough of Nigeria. Eastern Nigeria, the Ibo homeland, set itself up as the independent republic of Biafra, so named after a bay on the coast.
Ever since then the Nigerian government, dominated by northerners, has been warring against Biafra in an attempt to end the secession. Biafra has managed to hold out, but the fighting has been vicious, heightened by religious animosities. The Biafrans accuse the Nigerians of conducting a jihad, or Moslem holy war, against them. "They believe that killing me as a Christian will make them go to heaven," says Tiger. "The whole northerners feel that way."
Tiger had to leave Biafra last fall for his fight with Roger Rouse, but when he returned home in December he promptly joined the Biafran army. "I volunteered," he says, "because everybody there have to do something." Though he has not been called upon to fight, he has helped to condition troops. Most of Tiger's money from past fights is tied up in real-estate holdings in Lagos, the Hausa-held Nigerian capital. He does not know if he will ever get his investments back, but Biafran independence comes first. "What I am doing now is to box," he says, "and whatever little money I get I try to donate to the war effort." In addition, Tiger has helped care for the wounded after bombing raids on Aba, his home town, and Ogui. "One day they killed about 100 in Ogui because over there they have an open market," he says. "In that open market the Nigerian bombers come and throw bombs about three times, and they killed over 100 persons that very day. I wasn't there, but as soon as it was announced we went there with the car to try to help and carry the bodies." According to Tiger, the Nigerians are using Egyptian pilots to fly British planes against Biafra. The Russians, who were said to be helping Nigeria, are supposed to have left, Tiger says. Presumably Nigeria did not look like a winner. So far only two countries, Tanzania and Gabon, have recognized Biafra, but Tiger believes others would if Biafra's story were known.
Tiger is a constant but unhappy reader of The New York Times. "The agent they have is in Lagos, and he writes what the Lagos people tell him," Tiger says. "He doesn't even come to Biafra. He doesn't know what is happening. When the [Nigerian] soldiers from the front go back, whatever they tell him is sent over here. He say, 'Nigeria did this.' But this is nothing. He didn't even see it himself." To Tiger, Nigerian victory claims are ridiculous. "Even now our troops are over into Nigeria," he says. "We are fighting them back with ammunition we got from them. Whatever happens, Biafra will never give up. This is a war of survival. If they left only one person, that person must fight until he dies. That is our country. They can't make me run away from my country. It's better that I die there than to carry my children and start running."
When the war began, Nigeria cut off communications to Biafra and imposed a naval blockade. In order to get to New York, Tiger flies out by an undisclosed route. "When we leave Biafra," he says, "I just go straight on until they drop me. When the plane is in the air and I'm flying, I don't know anything except that I'm going to New York." Since arriving in New York this time, he has written several letters to his wife, but he has yet to receive an answer. He is especially concerned because he has heard that the Nigerians bombed St. Michael's Church in Aba on a Sunday. When Tiger is at home, he and his wife attend St. Michael's.
With the war at home preying on Tiger's mind, the question arises whether he will be able to bring the necessary concentration to bear in his fight with Foster. Tiger believes he can. "Every man has worry of his own," he says. "If I carry my worry into the ring, that's no good. That might result bad. So now I'm worried, but when I step into the ring I forget about everything and mind what is in front of me. Then after that I come out of the ring." Neither does his age seem a problem to him in the encounter with Foster. "I feel fine," he says. "I want to fight until I'm 45, to be the champion until the age of 45. I'm serious."
Of Foster, he shrugs and says, "He's one of the fighters. When I go into the ring I say, 'another payday.' I just go in, and I just throw punches. People who watch me fight, they know my style. I keep going. I have fought those who can jab, so it's no news to me. I'll fight him my way. I have to go in to fight him underneath. That is my style of fighting. He'll try to keep me outside, but I won't let him. I don't care how tall or how big a fighter is. When I get a good punch, I say that's nothing. No matter how hard they punch, I punch better. Nervous? Years ago, yes, but not now. I'm too old."
Foster is scarcely just another fighter. Besides having the height and reach on Tiger, he will have weight, a well-muscled 174 or 175. By comparison, Tiger is expected to come in at around 168, and Foster's manager, Mushky Salow, rates Tiger as only a heavy middleweight. In the trade, Foster has such a reputation as a deadly puncher that he is treated as an opponent to be avoided. Last year, Salow says, Jimmy Ellis, now the World Boxing Association heavyweight champion, turned down an offer to fight him. Indeed, Tiger's camp agreed to make the match for the light heavyweight title only after getting a $100,000 guarantee.
If it had not been for Salow's handling, Foster would still be getting the runaround and working in York, Pa. "This guy's a lifesaver," Foster says of his manager. "He took me out of the bomb factory."
Foster has had 33 professional fights and has won 29, 23 by knockouts, mostly in the early rounds. "The minute I see an opening I just let the punch go," he says. Raised in Albuquerque, he turned down a football scholarship at the University of New Mexico to enlist in the Air Force. As a youngster, Foster had won the local Golden Gloves featherweight title, and in the service he resumed boxing. He had 101 fights, winning 89 by knockouts. After five years in the Air Force he turned pro, won his first nine and then stepped out of his class in both weight and experience to fight Doug Jones on short notice. "I needed the money," Foster says. Jones, then the No. 2 heavyweight contender, won by a KO in the eighth. (Previously, in the Air Force, Foster had beaten Jones by a decision.) Foster knocked out his next two opponents and then began getting the runaround. He had to go to Lima, Peru to take on Mauro Mina. He clobbered Mina, so much so that Mina suffered a detached retina, but the Peruvians gave Mina the decision. Back in the States, Foster won three more (KO 3, KO 1, KO 1). Then he overreached again against Ernie Terrell, who scored a seventh-round technical. After seven straight victories (six of them KOs), he lost a 10-round decision to Zora Folley.
By this time Foster decided he was going nowhere. He took a job at the American Machine & Foundry factory in York. "I was bringing home $150 a week," he says. "My wife was working as a cook in a hospital, and she was bringing home $162. I forgot all about fighting. I didn't see where I needed fighting if I wasn't going anyplace. So I just forgot about it and set my mind to working and taking care of my four kids."
Enter Mushky Salow of Hartford, Conn. Now 49, Mushky may be described as a sportsman or, as he succinctly puts it, a "former vending-machine magnate." Without benefit of rehearsal, he probably could replace Stubby Kaye in Guys and Dolls. Mushky has been in and out of boxing since he managed Willie Pep as an amateur. His last fighter was Red Top Davis, a featherweight contender of a dozen years ago. Mushky had first heard of Foster when Al Weill raved about him as the next heavyweight champion. Weill did not sign Foster—another manager did—but Mushky stayed at a discreet distance because, as he says, "Who's gonna interfere with anything that Weill started out to do?"
Mushky followed Foster's career, and, when Foster went to work at the bomb factory, Mushky stepped in. He knew about Foster's defeats, but he blamed them on bad managing. "Do you t'row a guy with nine professional fights in with a top contender?" Mushky asks. "Do you t'row him in with Ernie Terrell, to boot, who had maybe 30 pounds on him, in his 17th fight?"
Mushky bought Foster's contract from a lawyer for $4,000 in October 1966 and began a training program. A German promoter offered $5,000 for a fight in Berlin, but Mushky turned it down. Mushky says, "I told Bob, 'You'll be fighting for the title if you listen to me.' So now I put him in Norfolk, Va. with Leroy Green, and he got $300 or something. He came over to me after the fight and he says, 'Jesus, I think you know what you're doin'.' I say, 'Why do you say that?' He says, 'You know when I entered the ring,' he says, I wasn't quite sure of myself,' he says, 'but you get anybody for me now. I can fight again.' "
Mushky matched Foster with Slim Jim Robinson, who went out in one after "a short bomb," and then Andres Selpa, the South American light heavyweight champ, who disappeared in two. Foster hit Selpa with, in Mushky's joyous words, "a left hook in the belly. The guy screeched—you could hear him—like a guy shot." Eddie Cotton was next. Foster had Cotton down in the first, but then Eddie covered up for the second and part of the third. Frustrated at being unable to find a conventional opening, Foster struck Cotton on the top of the skull with a left hook, and Cotton sank like a clubbed ox. "After that," says Mushky, "we were waiting for the one shot with Tiger."
To hear Mushky and Foster talk, Foster will take the light heavyweight title and then the heavyweight championship as well. "Ain't nothin' out there," Foster says. He admits Tiger is a good fighter ("I give the old man a lot of respect"), but he is not about to be pressed by him. "I don't back up for nobody," Foster says. "Somebody is going to go. I say within six or seven rounds." For Dick Tiger, there appear to be two wars of survival, one back home in Biafra, the other in the Garden next week.
So, in 1968, Dick Tiger stepped up to challenge Bob Foster aka "The Deputy Sheriff." I profiled Bob Foster earlier in the thread, he is the hardest punching light heavyweight in the sports history, and one of the hardest punchers period in the sports history, he's ranked number 17 on Ring magazine's 100 hardest punchers list for a reason, Dick Tiger had a lot of balls stepping up to him. There's really not much to say about it, the fight was going along and they were exchanging at center ring, and then it happened, Bob Foster caught Tiger with one of his murderous left hooks, the same left hook that had taken out many fighters. It was hard to watch the great Dick Tiger get knocked out like that, but he was in with a guy that had every advantage against him, height, weight, reach, and it didn't help matters that Bob Foster was an apocalyptic puncher, and I'm not kidding when I say that, Bob Foster's knockouts were often terrifying, his number 17 ranking on that list is a joke, he should be ranked in the top 5 in my opinion.
Bob Foster catches Dick Tiger with a left hook, the only time in Dick Tiger's career that he was knocked out.
Dick Tiger vs Nino Benvenuti, this would be Tiger's curtain call. After losing to Bob Foster, Tiger's career looked to be just about over, but he gave us one more good performance, before he went. I'm sorry for spending so much time on Tiger, just love this guy and believe that in his prime he could go toe to toe with just about any middleweight in history, drop him in any era and he raises hell with them. Nino Benvenuti is an all-time great fighter that had a brutal uppercut punch, he once had a record of 65-0. This was a great win for the past prime Tiger. To be fair to Benvenuti, he broke his finger in round One and it's nearly impossible to win once that happens, especially against a guy like Dick Tiger, but it was still a good performance from Tiger considering he was sick during this time and would pass away from Liver cancer two years later.
Dick Tiger and Nino Benvenuti in their 1969 fight.
Benvenuti Breaks Hand, Loses Decision to Tiger
NEW YORK - There's still a lot of fight left in old soldier Dick Tiger, and Nino Benvenuti, broken finger and all, can attest to the firepower carried by the 39-year-old Biafran. Tiger, the former middleweight and one-time light heavyweight king, vaulted right back into the 175-pound championship contention Monday night by hammering out a unanimous 10-round decision over Benvenuti in a light heavyweight contest at Madison Square Garden. A crowd of 14,305, many of whom thought they were coming to see Tiger’s farewell as a title contender, cheered in delight as the likeable Biafran showed skills and strength belying his years to spoil the Italian’s debut in the heavier division. Heaviest Weight Benvenuti weighed 164, heaviest in his career, and Tiger was 166. Benvenuti, suffering only his third defeat in 82 bouts, broke the index finger on his right hand in the first round and made a valiant effort to make a fight of it. But Tiger, a relentless plodder who keeps boring in, was the aggressor and it was a matter of conjecture whether a physically fit Benvenuti could nave taken the gentleman from Biafra. Benvenuti, an aspiring actor, did a terrific job of concealing the injury and it wasn’t until the post-fight interview that newmen and Tiger learned of the broken finger. “I hurt my hand in the first round when I threw a punch to his head,” said the mop-haired 160-pound champion. “After I threw the punch I had pain and I knew something was wrong. With one hand it’s not possible to make a good fight.’ Tiger, an 18-year ring veteran who was registering his 60th win and 12th in 16 Garden outings (old and new Garden), probably put it best when he said: “he (Benvenuti) was beaten by a good pro.” Tiger, gracious in victory, added: “I hope this doesn’t discourage Benvenuti. He’s a good fighter.” Tiger said he planned to return to Biafra in a week or two to be reunited with his wife and eight children. Asked if he had hopes of a title bout with Bob Foster, the man who dethroned him as light heavyweight king, Tiger replied, “I wouldn’t mind Foster but he wants $lOO,OOO and I haven’t got it." The broken finger could put a , crimp in Benvenuti’s next title defense this summer. He must sign by June to defend the 160pound title. Nino went to a hospital after the fight to have the finger X-rayed. Tiger’s plan was to keep throwing punches and it worked to near perfection as he . managed to get on the inside and scored heavily to the body, The Biafran piled up an early lead by dominating the first three rounds, coasted through the middle rounds and fought on fairly even terms through the final rounds as he showed I signs of tiring. There were no knockdowns but Benvenuti suffered a slight cut above the left eye. Tiger’s best round was the seventh when he drove his opponent into the ropes with lefts and rights to the body.
In 1970, Dick Tiger challenged Emile Griffith for the middleweight crown, When they met in 1966, Griffith won Tiger's world middleweight crown on a unanimous but disputed decision. Tiger had waited four years for a chance to get even, but it was too late. This would be the last fight of Dick Tiger's legendary career.
Griffth breezes past Tiger
Associated Press | July 16, 1970
Emile Griffith breezed past slow, ring-rusty 40-year-old Dick Tiger last night and won a unanimous decision in a 10-round match at Madison Square Garden.
Tiger, who weighed 167, had a 10-pound edge on Griffith, 157.
There were no knockdowns or anything close to it although Tiger did slip down briefly in the fifth round of the fight, witnessed by a crowd of 8,071 paying $46,976 and special network television audience.
Tiger, plainly showing his age and the effects of an eight-month layoff, was unable to cope with Griffith's constant moves and quick hands.
Although Griffith, 32, was a few notches below his old form when he held the welter and middleweight crowns, he was an easy winner in this rematch of a disputed fight of four year ago.
The fans cheered Tiger and booed Griffith when he bounced into the ring wearing a purple velvet jacket with yellow trim. They booed during the fight when he showboated and did the old Kid Gavilan or Ali shuffle and stuck out his head as though daring Tiger to hit him.
The Tiger was unable to put together combinations. When he did get close enough to Griffith to cut loose he only threw them one at a time. Too often missing. Only in the final seconds of the last round did he break through with any effectiveness.
Referee Della stepped between the two men in the 10th round and warned them for talking to one another. Tiger gestured that Griffith had started it, as, indeed he had. Griffith appeared to be taunting Tiger throughout the fight.
Emile, spurred by the shrill magpie chirps of his mother and cousin Bernard in ringside seats, bobbed his head, bounced on his toes, flicked jabs and threw few solid punches.
This was the final fight of Tiger's career. He died 17 months later of liver cancer.
Before I forget, I do want to talk about Dick Tiger losing his middleweight crown to the great Emile Griffith in a controversial bout which led to Tiger moving up to light heavyweight. They fought two times, the first fight was in 1966 and the second fight was in 1970 and would be the last fight of Tiger's career. At the time of their first fight, Emile Griffith was a welterweight and had moved up to middleweight to challenge Tiger for his crown. If you're not familiar with Griffith, he is an all-time great in the sport, he was built like a damn tree trunk from the waste up, he had this huge and powerful upper body and shoulders, he was strong as hell and could box and punch. Back in 1962, Emile Griffith had tragically killed another fighter in the ring, the fighter's name was Benny "Kid" Paret and Griffith really struggled with Paret's death. What happened was, Emile Griffith was a homosexual man and Benny Paret had made some remarks about Griffith in that manner before a couple of their fights. This upset Griffith tremendously and when they fought for the last time, Griffith remembered those remarks and fought angry. He gave Paret a pretty good beating, in hindsight the referee Ruby Goldstein should have jumped in earlier to stop the fight, but as a result of the beating, Paret died from his injuries and it really ate away at Griffith for the rest of his life, I'll get more into that later in in the thread. But in 1966, Dick Tiger and Emile Griffith fought, Griffith came in giving away 10 pounds to Tiger, it was a good back and forth fight with momentum swings, a tough fight to judge, and Dick Tiger would be knocked down for the first time in his career in this fight when he went down to one knee in the 9th round.
Dick Tiger goes down to one knee in the 9th round. It was the first time in Tiger's career that he had been down.
SHRINKING POPPY'S NONBOUT WITH A RELUCTANT TIGER
THE MIDDLEWEIGHT TITLE CHANGED HANDS, BUT IT WAS HARD TO PICK A WINNER AS EMILE GRIFFITH PEDALED BACKWARD AND DICK TIGER PUNCHED MOSTLY AIR
Three miles from Grossinger's, that monument to conspicuous consumption, and in a setting that had all the economy and soft emptiness of an Andrew Wyeth painting, sat Candy MacFarlane—a quick, slick sparring partner—tapping out a bongo beat on a produce can. Pausing and pointing up to a room inside a farmhouse where Tiger was sleeping. Candy said: "He can move now, yeah. When he do move, you got to be out there. Way out, or...." Candy walloped the can with a right hand. Chickie Ferrara, Tiger's trainer, nodded and then said, smiling: "For what it's worth. A fighter must do two things. Be good to his mother and keep his tail off the floor. Who does them better than Tiger?"
What Ferrara appeared to be saying was what most of the prefight expertise eventually would decide: Dick Tiger, a dedicated (the mother bit) professional who had never been knocked down in 70 bouts, could not lose his middleweight title to Welterweight Champion Emile Griffith. Griffith—though just as decent to his mother and 13 other relatives besides—was considerably lighter than the Nigerian, and reputedly less indestructible. Yet last week in Madison Square Garden, Tiger did the opposite of what was expected of him. He lost his title to Griffith in a soporific fight that produced only two good rounds, and in so doing gave Griffith a chance to contest the legality of a preposterous New York State Athletic Commission law that declares "one man, one title." Afterward, a dejected Tiger said in his dressing room, "I am a stranger in this country. Once more they steal my title."
Tiger was not alone in his indignation. The press, which ruled (17-5) for Tiger in a poll prior to the official decision, relied on an old, unwritten boxing canon that the challenger must clearly take his title from the champion. This, obviously, Griffith did not do, but Tiger's defense was singularly spiritless. He looked devastating, but he was not; the savagery and intimidation of the old Tiger were not there. Unlike the Giardello fight, when he regained his title by using a sharp jab on the inside, Tiger did nothing positive; he merely reacted for 15 rounds, most of the time ineffectively, and did not "make" his fight. He proved, this time conclusively, that he cannot adjust to a boxer and that he still had not learned to "move," as Candy MacFarlane thought he had.
If the fight, which drew 14,934 spectators who were looking forward to a classic evening, was simply a nonfight, it did illustrate graphically that Griffith is not a limited fighter. When he cares, he can be very good. Three days before the fight Griffith turned to his cousin Bernard, who is also a handler, and said: "Bun-ard, I am a racehorse." He was. But most of all, Griffith, who has used his strength to manhandle the welterweight division, showed against Tiger that he alone—the subterranean Griffith which he never expresses—is responsible for his failure to approach the kind of greatness that he flashed in the eighth and ninth rounds.
Despite the pleading caterwaul of his mother, whom he calls Chubby Checkers, and Cousin Bun-ard at ringside, in the first seven rounds Griffith was doing as little as, if not less than, Tiger. He simply kept circling to his left, minimizing the power of Tiger's deadly left hook. The hook did catch Griffith in the fourth round, but it did no damage.
Then, in the eighth round, Griffith began to enliven the bass drum beat of the fight set by the plodding Tiger. He opened the action with a hook to the head and followed quickly with a right to the jaw. Tiger, a trifle wobbly, shook his head, then blinked his eyes as Emile scored another hard hook. Later Tiger caught a left-right combination and a solid right to the jaw. Tiger, it seemed, was dropping his guard and pulling his head away when Griffith threw his hook; the left side of his head was there.
Griffith continued the aggression in the ninth round. He began with a straight left, then pivoted back and chopped a right high on Tiger's left cheek. Tiger, for the first time in his career, dropped to one knee; although up immediately—and with his record still intact of never having had his posterior on the floor—lie was visibly stunned. A left-right-left combination almost sent Tiger down a second time, but he recovered before his knee touched the canvas.
It appeared now that it was just a matter of time, but in the 10th round Griffith seemed to become lost in that private world of his. A prizefight (theorizes Griffith's trainer and Co-Manager Gil Clancy) is a test of wills, and Emile had imposed his will on Tiger in the eighth and ninth rounds, but now, inexplicably, he was backing off and handing control of the fight back to Tiger.
Howie Albert, Griffith's other manager, suggested that Clancy slap Griffith in the face, as he had done in the first Benny Paret fight. "I rejected that, but I tried everything else," Clancy said later. "After the ninth I told him not to go wild but to keep up the pressure. I told him to throw not one hard punch, but combinations. Finally, in the 12th, I told Emile the fight was close, maybe even. I was screaming at him."
Griffith responded in the 13th, but by this time the 36-year-old Tiger was a whole man again and very much back in the fight. Tiger scored with a good hook in the 14th, and Griffith became cautious once again. The 15th was like most of the other rounds. Put a question mark by it.
The crowd response to Griffith's victory was not negative, but one doubts whether it would have been negative if Tiger had won. Said one spectator who had a large bet on Tiger: "I had Tiger winning 10-4-1, but I'm not upset. It was that kind of fight."
The same could not be said for Tiger, who, though hurt and bewildered, desperately clung to his poised, austere manner, even as a tear rolled down his cheek. "I am glad you were here to see this awful thing." Tiger said in his dressing room as Chickie Ferrara's trembling hand held an ice pack to his left cheekbone. "The winner should have the decision, but tonight the winner was the loser," he said slowly, smacking each word. "In Nigeria, where I come from, it takes two fighters to make a fight. But here in America I see that the man who runs wins the fight." One of his handlers interrupted, saying: "Yeah, the house fighter has the title now. But I guess that's not unexpected." He was referring to the opinion in boxing circles that Griffith is a Garden fighter.
"Still," continued Tiger, "when I go home the people will not stop calling me onyeizi [champion]. The officials should give the privilege to the champion. He cannot lose the title, the challenger must come and take it away. But Griffith—he is a nice boy, and I am not angry at him—he ran. If I were to throw a lot of punches, then I would be hitting nothing but air. He did not want to fight. Yes, he hurt me, but I did not get hurt bad. My pride is the only hurt in me." Quietly, and in disbelief, he concluded his sad monologue: "They took my title away from me."
Later, when the room was nearly empty, Tiger, bending over one of his countrymen in a wheelchair, felt the real pain of his defeat.
"I lose everything," the man said. "I have nothing."
"I tried my best," said Tiger. "I know, but I have nothing," said the man. "Give me something, my friend."
Tiger just shook his head sadly and turned to walk away.
"You must have something for me," said the man. Tiger turned to the man and made a motion as though he were cutting his wrist with a razor blade, indicating that the man could take his blood.
"No," said the man.
"Here," said Tiger, picking up his pale-blue boxing trunks. Then, hesitating, he said, "No, I promised these to my tailor." He then gave him his boxing gloves, and the man wheeled out of the room.
"He lost everything?" said Tiger. "I have nothing, either." Spoken like a true landlord.
Tiger, to be certain, has considerably more than nothing. Though he often looks even less than pedestrian in his battered hat and long, fly-front coat, he is a sort of prosperous Rotarian in Nigeria. There he owns a cosmetics shop, which his wife runs, and a 2,000-seat theater, and he has the respect that a leading real estate man and landlord would have in such a country. He is a penurious, unemotional man, who trained for the Griffith fight in an atmosphere that reflected his personality. He could never understand why Griffith, who is fond of flamboyant frippery and dancing, trained amid the gaudiness and action of the Concord Hotel. Doubtless he would find it even more difficult to understand why Griffith has nothing more to show for his eight years of punishment than 14 well-housed, well-fed relatives.
"How many relatives are there really?" Griffith's mother was asked in the dressing room.
"Let's see," she said, pausing to count them on her fingers. "Foeteen! Poppy has foeteen relatives."
"Why do you call him Poppy?"
"Because, next to me, he is the head of the house, the house's poppy," she said.
At this point, Griffith, breaking away from reporters, jumped off the table and charged over to his mother and began stomping his feet and screaming. "This is my night, my night!" he yelled, and then he asked a friend to escort his mother out.
The night did belong to Griffith, but despite his words he was not certain of it. He knew he had once again failed to produce a sensational fight, failed to be the kind of Griffith boxing keeps expecting him to be but has not seen since he killed Paret in their third fight.
"I really wanted a sensational fight," said Emile. "I needed it to win the Hickok belt [the award for the best athlete of the year] and I want that beautiful belt so badly. I kept thinking about it and all those beautiful, shining stones before my eyes. Then I thought, 'I don't want to lose that belt because I was careless,' so I boxed him."
"It made me sick," said Gil Clancy, talking of how Emile let Tiger get away. "He just would not believe what he saw. I have almost, but not quite, captured Emile's mind. When I am able to do this completely, then he will believe the obvious—he is a great fighter."
True, Griffith admitted, Tiger's reputation, the stories of his enervating punch and his strength, eventually had an effect. Griffith did not believe them, but more and more they intruded upon his thinking. Even after he knocked Tiger down, even after he proved that he was the stronger of the two on the inside, Griffith refused to believe in himself. "I just wasn't sure," said Griffith.
"Do you think you ran from Tiger?" he was asked.
"I run from no man, how you like that!" he said, angrily walking away from the circle of reporters.
"Emile Griffith," pondered Howie Albert, "will always be 16 years old."
"If Howie say that, that's right," said Griffith, when the crowd had faded. "I have done nothing but fight. I have never had time to grow up. Hey! Where's my mommy? Where's Bun-ard?"
"You sent her out," someone said.
"Oh, that's right," he remembered.
Outside, his exiled mother, wearing a pink hat and a pink flower as big as an apple on a black dress, stood along with Bun-ard and 12 other beaming people—waiting for their Poppy, who has yet to blossom.
I've really enjoyed talking about Richard Ihetu, aka Dick Tiger, I guess it's about time to wrap it up and get to the next fighter. My final thoughts on the great Dick Tiger, as far as being a fighter is concerned, in his prime he could go toe to toe with any middleweight in history in my opinion, the guy was always in phenomenal shape, he looked like he was chiseled out of granite, he was probably the strongest middleweight in history, and Dick Tiger didn't know the meaning of the word "retreat." I forget which fight it was, but a referee in one of Tiger's fights was quoted as saying that when he went to separate Tiger and his opponent, he was in shock because he could feel Tiger's power, his strength, as he separated them, that was how strong Tiger was. He could be outboxed, but no middleweight in history wins a straight up shootout with Tiger, if you chose to exchange with him, you were going to take a beating or be sat down. He was involved in some real man fights, fights that took years off of your career, see his wars with Henry Hank, Joey Giardello, and Gene Fullmer. Those were infernos, not fights, and what I mean by that is, fights where you and your opponent were going to take some serious damage, you were probably going to be pissing up blood afterwards, you were probably going to be scarred for life, I would compare fights like that to being inside an inferno for 12 rounds. You don't play boxing, you take serious beatings in this sport, beatings that make you wonder later on in life how the hell you survived them. You walk through fire in this sport. Nobody in the history of boxing was tougher than Dick Tiger, he didn't walk through fire, he lived in it, he thrived in it.
Dick Tiger was famous for his smile, he was as nice as can be outside the ring, but once he stepped through those ropes, there was nothing nice about him, he was focused on nothing but your destruction.
Rocky Graziano. One of the most exciting fighters in the history of the sport. A devastating puncher, he's ranked number 23 on Ring magazine's hardest punchers list, the fans loved him because he was an action packed fighter and this made him a big-time gate attraction. But he's most famous for his three fight series with Tony Zale "The Man of Steel", those were three of the biggest bloodbaths in the sports history, all three fights lasted a total of 15 rounds, had 7 knockdowns and ended with a brutal knockout. One thing about Rocky Graziano, he was balls to the wall, he was going to take you out or go out on his shield trying.
Rocky Graziano: Inarguably The Most Exciting Fighter Of All Time
Debates rage regarding the greatest boxer ever (Joe Louis, Ali, Armstrong, Kid Chocolate, Sugar Ray Robinson etc.). However, there’s no argument concerning the most exciting fighter of all-time: Rocky Graziano who won the Middleweight championship in 1947. A Graziano bout ensured fans would be rising from their chairs to witness a titanic battle – reminiscent of what those blood-soaked-gladiators endured in Roman times. There was no quit in the Brooklyn-born Thomas Rocco Barbella; he didn’t know the meaning of the word. His grit, determination and charisma is testified from his jaw-dropping record. Fifty-two of his sixty-seven victories during an eleven-year career (1942-1952) were accomplished via knockouts – an astounding 78% clip. This is just 10% below what the great Rocky Marciano tallied. Graziano’s career can be divided into three distinct phases. The first one consisted of 44 contest: starting with his March 1942 pro debut against Curtis Hightower and ending Oct 1944 versus Bernie Miller. Both bouts were held at Brooklyn’s Broadway Arena and finished with a 2nd round TKO. Only four points losses and three draws detracted from Rocky’s victory count, with twenty-six of his wins being knockout victories. With rare exceptions, the opposition was rather mediocre (27 of Rocky’s 44 opponents had a losing record). The second phase got off to an inauspicious start. Graziano dropped a unanimous decision to Harold Green (39-5-1) November 1944 at MSG, although Green was down for a “9” count with 15 seconds left in the final tenth round. Green also won via majority decision in their return set-to 6 weeks later. One year later, Graziano left nothing to chance in their third tilt. He closed the show with a third round KO. However, the action wasn’t yet finished, as the AP clearly noticed: “As referee Ruby Goldstein completed the count of ten, Green jumped to his feet, yelling that Rocky had hit him illegally on the break, and tore after Rocky. Goldstein threw his arms around Green and led him to his corner. There, Green eluded Goldstein and tore across the ring to Rocky’s corner. Irving Cohen and Whitey Bimstein, Rocky’s co-manager and trainer saw him coming and threw themselves before Rocky. By this time Sol Gold, Freddie Brown and Charles Duke, Green’s corner, had followed Green across the ring and joined in the shoving and pushing. Graziano threw his robe away and the two struggled to reach each other. It was not until the police entered the ring that order was restored.” Two 1945 TKO victories against the highly-ranked duo of Billy Arnold (29-1) and Al “Bummy” Davis (64-9-4) set the table for a Middleweight title elimination bout March 29, 1946 against the highly regarded Marty Servo (46-2-2) whose only two defeats were decision losses to Ray Robinson. Servo was the prohibitive favorite but got totally dominated during the two-round hammering, going down three times before referee Arthur Donovan ordered a halt. The showdown with champion Zale was held September 27, 1946 before a 40,000 crowd at Yankee stadium. It set the template for all three memorable fights: non-stop action, draining drama, constant offense and savage fury. Graziano was down for a five-count in the first round, but he came back and dropped Zale at the end of the second round for a three-count. By round five, Zale looked like a thoroughly beaten fighter. In as gutsy display of courage as ever witnessed, Zale showed the heart of a true champion and gathered the strength to fire a right to Graziano’s solar plexus while following it up with a perfectly-timed left hook to the chin. Graziano went down and didn’t rise until just after referee Ruby Goldstein had completed the ten count in the 6th round. Ring Magazine ranked it #5 in its 100 Fights of the Century. The rematch got delayed when the New York State Athletic Commission revoked Graziano’s boxing license on February 1947 and threatened to bar him for life for failure to report two $100, 000 bribe offers. The NBA, which controlled boxing virtually everywhere in the U.S. outside of New York, did not recognize NYSAC’s decision and ordered the rematch be held in Chicago later that year. A sell-out crowd of 20,000 at Chicago Stadium witnessed another -blood-drenched struggle – with the roles being reversed. Zale dominated the first round. By its end, the challenger’s right eye was swollen and closing rapidly. In the second round the pace picked up dramatically, as Zale attempted to capitalize on the injury, although “The Rock” stunned Zale at the end of the round. RG barely escaped round three. He suffered a knockdown and brutal assault along the ropes. The end seemed in sight. The ref could’ve stopped it after round four, as the wounds were severely affecting Graziano’s vision. Then a miracle happened. A coin pressed around Rocky’s right eye by his corner caused incredible pain, but prompted a marked improvement in his eyesight. Graziano underwent a primal reawakening, raining bomb after bomb down on the plucky champion in round five. Zale attempted a comeback in round six, but was fading fast as three flush rights sent him down and he barely climbed back to his feet. When the ref saw Zale draped helplessly over the middle strand of the ropes facing backwards, he halted the onslaught. Bleeding and exhausted “The Rock” told the sportswriters: “Hey mum, your bad boy done good. Somebody up there likes me.” The 1948 rubber match was another brutal affair. A leaping right by Zale put Rocky down for an “8” count in round one. Both warriors were looking to blast one another straight out of the ring. Graziano rallied in the second, evening things up with his aggressiveness. In the third, Zale’s relentless pummeling left Graziano staggering, propped up only by the ropes. As the action moved toward the ring center, fifteen unanswered body and chin shots put Rocky down for an “8”count. He arose, barely aware of his surroundings. The fight should’ve been stopped at this point as RG could barely stand on his feet. Then, a crunching right to the body and pulverizing left hook to the chin knocked Rocky unconscious: the same combination that had felled him in their first bout, Graziano always said of Zale: “He was the toughest fighter I ever met.” The final phase features 29-year old “The Rock” clawing his way back to another title shot. Four 1949 KO victories embellished off by a last minute TKO win over Charlie Fusari (60-4-1) on September 1949 at the Polo Grounds in a bout he was losing, demonstrated the fire still burned in Rocky’s gut. A reinvigorated Graziano tore through the division like a man possessed. He was victorious in 19 outings over 2 ½ years, while defeating his opponents with knockouts on thirteen occasions. Three victories in 1950 and 1951 over top-ranked Tony Janiro would snatch Rocky another title shot. The Graziano/Janiro trilogy was capped September 1951 at Detroit’s Olympia Stadium. On the brink of a decision loss, RG pulled off another adrenalin-drenched display of last minute heroics, grabbing a TKO with only 15 seconds remaining in the final round. Rocky was a massive underdog against the legendary Middleweight champ Sugar Ray Robinson on April 1952, but still managed to floor Robinson in the third round before getting whipped. When the definitive history of boxing is finally written, a separate chapter should be devoted to the massively crowd pleasing Rocky Graziano who gave the sport its most exciting moments.
Rocky Graziano grew up a troubled youth in the streets of East Manhattan, boxing probably saved his life. As a fighter, Graziano wasn’t in the business of backing down, as he set out to destroy the opposition with explosive, sledgehammer punches, he is considered one of boxing's greatest knockout artists. A crude puncher and true street fighter, Graziano mauled his opponents with a tireless attack and potent right hand. His ability to take a punch was legendary; opponents ultimately withered as they tried to stop a man who appeared made of rock.
Rocky Graziano was a champ...and a character
"Pound-for-pound, punch-for-punch, violence-for-violence, Graziano-Zale was by far the greatest rivalry in boxing history," says Steve Farhood, former editor-in-chief of Ring magazine, on ESPN Classic's SportsCentury series.
Today, for many, the name Rocky conjures up memories of the Sylvester Stallone movies. Rocky I tells the tale of a fighter that rises from obscurity to fight a seemingly invincible champion. In numerous sequels, Rocky fights war after war in the ring, winning some and losing some but always promoting the image of the struggling underdog.
Flash back to the forties and early fifties, some three decades before these movies' release, and we find the original Rocky. Graziano.
Graziano went 67-10-6 as a middleweight. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1991.
He too fought some wars in the ring, not always observing the rules as set down by the Marquis of Queensbury. The cinematic Rocky came from the tough streets of South Philadelphia and frequently had trouble mastering the nuances of English grammar. The real-life Rocky was a Noo Yawker through and through and not only had similar difficulties with the language but at times seemed to have created an entirely new dialect.
Rocky Graziano was the middleweight champion for 11 months during the late forties, but his three wars with Tony Zale plus his winning personality have contributed to making the Rock a ring legend.
Born Rocco Barbella on the Lower East Side of New York on Jan. 1, 1919, Rocky was the son of a third-rate former boxer named Fighting Nick Bob, who worked as a longshoreman. Because he was unmanageable to his parents, Rocky was sent to live with his grandparents as a kid before moving back home.
Rocky grew up on Manhattan streets stealing things that began with, in his words, " 'a' -- a piece of fruit, a radio, a car, anything that wasn't nailed down."
At 12, Rocky and his pals were caught jimmying a gum machine and it was off to the first of several stints in reform school. As his boyhood pal, former middleweight champion Jake LaMotta, said, "We were the first juvenile delinquents."
Dropping out of school in the sixth grade, young Barbella began running with a juvenile gang that specialized in petty theft and street fighting with rival gangs. By his own estimate, he spent at least half of his time before his twenty-first birthday in reform schools or jail cells.
In 1939, a friend took Rocky to Stillman's Gym in New York to see if he could turn Rocky's natural aggressions into more useful pursuits. After Rocky got his head handed to him by a more seasoned pugilist, he put the gloves aside temporarily. However, he soon put them back on and won the Metropolitan AAU welterweight title.
"I got a medal which I hocked for $15 and thought this can't be too bad a racket," he said. A budding professional was born.
After spending much of his adolescence in reform schools, protectories and the city jail, Rocky was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1942. After going AWOL several times and punching out a captain, he spent seven months in the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kans., and then was discharged dishonorably on April 29, 1943.
While in the Army, Rocky had become a professional fighter, taking the last name of his sister's boyfriend, Graziano, in order to avoid detection by the Army. He went 35-6-5 with 25 kayos from 1942-44. His career took off in 1945 when he knocked out top-rated middleweight Billy Arnold in the third round after being whipped over the first two.
He followed this spectacular victory with kayos over Al "Bummy" Davis and welterweight champ Freddie "Red" Cochrane twice in nontitle bouts. He knocked out Harold Green, who had defeated Rocky twice by decision at the end of the previous year, in the third round. After Rocky knocked out welterweight champ Marty Servo in the second round in a nontitle bout on March 29, 1946 -- sending Servo into retirement -- he was set for his first title fight.
It was against Zale on Sept. 27, 1946. Zale had spent the last four years in the service and his title had been frozen during that time. A crowd of 37,827 came to Yankee Stadium to see if the local hero could dethrone the Man of Steel from Gary, Ind.
Zale's manager, Sol Gold, was apprehensive going into the fight, citing Graziano's propensity for stretching the rules. Gold said Graziano had choked Cochrane with his left hand while clubbing him with his right, hit Davis while he was down and failed to go to a neutral corner against Servo.
Graziano, an 11-5 favorite, was floored in the opening round by a left hook. In the second round, he decked Zale with a series of rights, and only the bell saved the champ. Graziano continued to punish Zale for the next three rounds.
The sixth round began with Graziano landing more fierce rights. Suddenly, Zale, who thought he had broken his right thumb in the fourth round, unleashed a vicious right to the solar plexus that paralyzed Graziano. A left hook then sent the challenger to the canvas. By the time Graziano had regained his wind, referee Ruby Goldstein had counted 10. When Graziano rose, he was ready for more while Zale, although still the champion, had the look of the beaten fighter.
Soon after the fight, Graziano was suspended by New York State Athletic Commisioner Edward Egan for allegedly failing to report a $100,00 bribe to throw a bout against Cowboy Ruben Shanks. Graziano, though, was allowed to fight in other states and on July 16, 1947, he had his rematch with Zale in Chicago Stadium.
Zale took the fight to Rocky from the outset, swelling Graziano's right eye in the first round and decking him in the third. But again Graziano showed the heart that made him a crowd favorite as he rallied in the fifth round, taking some of the starch out of Zale.
Midway through the sixth, Rocky uncorked a series of rights that knocked down the champion. After Zale got up, Graziano drove him to the ropes with a stinging flurry of punches that caused the ref to stop the fight. The kid from the Lower East Side was the middleweight champion of the world.
The rubber match, on June 10, 1948 at Roosevelt Stadium in Newark, N. J., had little of the drama of the previous two fights. Zale, a 12-5 underdog, floored Graziano in the first round before knocking him cold with a left hook at 1:08 of the third to regain his crown.
Graziano's suffered a third round KO in his title bout against Sugar Ray Robinson on April 16, 1952.
After staying away from the ring for a year, Rocky returned and went 20-0-1 (with 17 knockouts) over the next three years. This earned Graziano another title shot, this time against Sugar Ray Robinson, considered by many to be the greatest fighter ever pound for pound.
On April 16, 1952 in Chicago Stadium, Rocky consistently connected in the first two rounds and scored a flash knockdown at the start of the third. The trip to the canvas served as Sugar Ray's wakeup call. Midway through the round he exploded with two hooks and a right to knock out Graziano.
"I've met many tough fighters in my long career," Robinson said, "but no one ever stung me more than Rocky did."
Graziano fought once more, losing a decision to Chuck Davey in September 1952, before retiring with a 67-10-6 record with 52 knockouts. He turned to show business and in 1953 got a job on the "Martha Raye Show" as a foil for the comedienne, becoming famous for his new take on the English language. Rocky remained in the public eye for the next three decades doing guest appearances on variety shows, as a spokesperson for the Claridge Casino and appearing in television commercials.
After Rocky wrote his autobiography, "Somebody Up There Likes Me" in 1956, it was turned into a popular movie starring Paul Newman.
Graziano's health began to decline in the late eighties. He suffered a stroke in April 1990 and a month later he died at 71 on May 22. At his funeral, former middleweight champ Vito Antuofermo said Rocky was "what a fighter should be. He was tough, could hit like a mule and had all the guts in the world."
Let's get down to it, Rocky Graziano is most famous for his three fights with Tony Zale, these three fights are some of the best fights in boxing history that are still talked about to this day. When these two stepped in the ring with each other, it was damn the torpedoes.
Graziano vs Zale I
Best of A Century:
Fight of The Decade: 1940-1949
Tony Zale Vs. Rocky Graziano 1 Sept. 27, 1946
It was Rock vs. Steel. The fiery, aggressive Rocky Graziano with the devastating right hand against Tony Zale, the "Man of Steel", with the Iron chin and will to match.
Rocky Graziano, the popular slugger from Manhattan's Lower East Side, was a big favorite to take the Middleweight Championship from the older, rustier, Tony Zale.
After all Zale had not fought in five years due to a stint in the Navy during the 2nd World War. Zale had won the NBA Middlweight title by kayoing Al Hostak in 13 rounds in 1940. He unified the title by decisioning George Abrams, the NY title claimant, the following year. Then came Pearl Harbor and a long period of inactivity. Meanwhile, the 9 years young challenger had been a busy fighter with recent kayo's over Al "Bummy" Davis, Freddie Cochrane, and Marty Servo.
A throng of some 40,000 screaming fans came into Yankee Stadium expecting a new champion to be crowned. Instead they were proud witnesses to one of the greatest fights of all time. Zale demonstrated early that he was a champion who came to win. A classical left hook landed flush and dropped Rocky for a four count in the first round. One of the most brutal slugfests in history was on.
Rocky came storming back with the whirlwind rage of a mighty thunderstorm. Rocky pressed the attack, firing a volley of lefts and rights that had the champion reeling around the ring by the end of the first exciting round.
Graziano caught Zale in the 2nd with a flurry of power punches that had Tony on the brink of defeat. Zale's lip was spit, his face badly swollen. In the third, a series of puninshing right hands drove Zale into the ropes. He was literally pounded into the canvas by Rocky's piston-like right hand blows. He was hammered like a piece of steel being forged at one of the steel mills from Zale's hometown of Gary, IN. Zale, amazingly pulled himself up at three. He was in serious trouble and had to be dragged to the corner by his seconds as the bell ended the third round.
It takes fire to make steel. Graziano had the fire and Zale was molded into a "man of steel" that night. The two warriors continued to pound away in the fourth and fifth. At the end of five rounds it looked like Zale was finished. The younger man had finally wore him down. He was ready to be taken. In fact many of the fans were calling for the fight to be stopped.
Then suddenly in the sixth, Zale, with Iron fists, took the fight right out of Rocky with a killer right to the heart. Graziano went down. He got up but was still hurt. Zale then shot a perfect left hook to the chin that dropped Graziano, well, like a rock. Graziano later wrote in his autobiography, "That jolt shot from my head to my feet. The feeling went out of my feet and I went whang on the canvas like I didn't have any feet at all." Referee Ruby Goldstein counted him out.
The Ring Magazine International Ratings panel named this fight the fourth greatest fight of all time.
It was the beginning of a great rivalry, for Rocky would come back to win the title in the rematch the following year, in another thriller, that also ended in 6 rounds. Then Zale would regain the title in the rubbermatch in 1948.
The first Graziano-Zale fight was a was a battle for the ages, the sequel was a blood soaked inferno.
Rocky Graziano and Tony Zale during their rematch, both spattered in blood.
July 16, 1947: Zale vs Graziano II
In 1945 Rocky Graziano stood at the precipice of ruin. Just 26-years-old, with a record of 35-6-5, he had lost two matches in a row, two high profile defeats at Madison Square Garden, against fellow New Yorker Harold Green. But instead of regrouping and taking on some soft touches, the decision was made to gamble Rocky’s entire career on a single fight, another main event at the Garden, this time against impressive young power puncher Billy Arnold. If Rocky suffered a third consecutive defeat it meant the end of his days as a headliner; everything was riding on this one match. A showdown between two heavy hitters, it was a big draw for the Garden, but Rocky was a six-to-one underdog.
And as early as the second round it appeared the odds-makers called it right. Only 18-years-old, Arnold was a sensation thanks to his crushing power, scoring 27 stoppage wins in his first 28 fights. In round two he had Rocky teetering on the edge, seemingly one punch away from disaster, but Graziano survived and then in the third, out of nowhere, he slammed home his big right hand. Arnold crashed to the canvas; he rose but went down two more times before the referee decided enough was enough. The gamble had paid off; Rocky had restored his reputation as one of the fight game’s most explosive and exciting performers. Later that same year, after scoring back-to-back wins over Freddie Cochrane, he got revenge on Green with a one-punch, third round KO and it was official: Graziano had earned a shot at the world title.
Fortune had a way of smiling on the bad boy from Brooklyn with the whiplash right whose real name was Thomas Barbella. No one will ever argue a case for “The Rock” being a brilliant boxer or one of the sport’s great middleweights. But he was a tremendous competitor and one of boxing’s best “catchers,” constantly attacking and happy to absorb five or six punches to land one of his own. Plus, Rocky had an excellent manager in Irving Cohen who, according to scribe Lester Bromberg, always looked for matches against smaller men, some pundits at the time referring to Graziano as “the best middleweight in the welterweight division.”
Time and again Rocky snatched victory from the jaws of defeat with that potent right hand and now he had put together a streak of big wins over Arnold, Green, Cochrane, Al “Bummy” Davis, and Marty Servo, Graziano enjoying a weight advantage in most of these tilts, and all of them attracting crowds to Madison Square Garden. And it was Rocky’s good luck to have waiting for him at the top of the middleweight division one Tony Zale who, as it turned out, was a match made in heaven for the Brooklyn battler, in part because the champion was 35-years-old and a long time removed from serious competition. A little incident called World War II had interrupted Tony’s reign; his match against Rocky was the champion’s first title defense in almost five years.
And so it proved to be the kind of fight Graziano needed, an all-out, toe-to-toe shootout, and even in defeat the fight only boosted Rocky’s profile and marketability. It was, and is, regarded as one of the greatest slugfests in boxing history. High excitement charged the huge Yankee Stadium crowd from the opening bell as the two tough middleweights wasted no time in throwing their hardest shots. Zale floored Rocky with a wild left hook in the opening frame but the challenger scrambled to his feet and tore back in for more. It was non-stop, fast-paced, toe-to-toe brawling with Graziano dominating the second round, splitting open Zale’s lip and decking him at its end, the bell saving the champion from what looked like certain defeat.
The younger and fresher challenger continued to attack in the third, chasing Zale all over the ring and landing heavy punches, but to everyone’s astonishment “The Man Of Steel” came back in round four. Digging both fists to Rocky’s belly and backing his man up, Tony rode the momentum into the fifth before the tables suddenly turned again and it was Graziano’s turn to unleash a two-fisted attack, the champion now hurt and seemingly one punch away from oblivion.
When the bell rang to end round five, Zale, who initially staggered towards the wrong corner, appeared finished. Dazed and bleeding copiously from the nose, he blankly stared at his cornerman, Art Winch, who, likely thinking the next round might be Zale’s last, told his fighter, “He’s more tired than you are, Tony. He’s starting to wing ’em. Take a chance with him this round.”
Tony did and thus saved his title. Graziano, looking to end it, attacked, throwing a long fusillade of blows, and when he stopped to take a breather, Zale, one of boxing’s all-time best body punchers, stepped in and sunk home a booming right hand to the challenger’s belly. The punch froze Rocky and he never saw the left hook that exploded on his jaw and sent him to the floor where he was counted out for the first time in his career.
It had been an all-time great slugfest and a miraculous win for Zale, who at the end appeared as surprised as anyone with the result. Rocky credited that right hand to the body with “[knocking] the wind out of me. It straightened me up, tightened me all over, so it even clogged up my ears. Then I heard ‘eight, nine, ten’ … it all came so fast.”
That electrifying first Zale vs Graziano clash was of course The Fight Of The Year for 1946, and no time was wasted in putting together a rematch, initially scheduled for March at Madison Square Garden. But the New York State Athletic Commission suspended Graziano’s license for his failure to report a bribe attempt, a charge later thrown out for lack of evidence. Zale vs Graziano II was rescheduled for July in Chicago and Tony’s hometown fans from nearby Gary, Indiana helped Chicago Stadium set a new indoor gate record, with some nineteen thousand filling the stands. And if the fans of “The Man Of Steel” didn’t leave happy that night, they still got more than their money’s worth as Zale and Graziano once again put on a spectacular slugfest.
This time it was Graziano who appeared to have too much to overcome as the first round saw Zale take charge and land a series of punishing blows to both body and head and by the end of the round the challenger’s right eye was swollen and closing fast. The champion only picked up the pace in the second as he sought to capitalize on the injury, but then Rocky got home his right hand, the punch stunning Zale and at the bell Tony went to the wrong corner.
Reflecting the ferocity of the Chicago rematch, Rocky and Zale are spattered in crimson.
But round three was all Zale; he inflicted a nasty cut over Graziano’s left eye, scored a knockdown, and then pinned Rocky to the ropes with a fearsome assault. At the bell, the challenger’s face was a mask of blood and the referee told Rocky he would stop the fight if he continued to take such punishment. Despite this, round four was more of the same as the breakneck pace continued and Zale looked to end it, while Graziano was clearly bothered by his wounds and having trouble with his vision.
Before round five Graziano’s corner took drastic action to restore their man’s sight, breaking the swelling around his right eye and pressing it with a coin. Perhaps the pain of these procedures awakened something primal in Rocky, or maybe his improved sight gave him newfound energy, for the challenger tore out of his corner and attacked with abandon in round five, and indeed his accuracy was much improved as he dramatically reversed the momentum and found the range for his bombs, bringing loud exclamations from the crowd as he landed one huge punch after another. To everyone’s astonishment, the fighter who had appeared finished just minutes before was now in charge and inflicting serious damage.
Zale attempted to rebound at the start of round six, but he was fading and Rocky knew it. The challenger kept charging forward behind his cannon of a right, battering Tony from one side of the ring to the other. Three flush right hands sent Zale down, and though he gamely climbed to his feet, he was almost driven out of the ring by the fury of Rocky’s follow-up attack. Draped over the middle strand of the ropes, his back turned to Graziano, Zale was defenseless and the referee halted the match at 2:10 of the round.
It was another shocking and thrilling come-from-behind victory, not to mention another Fight Of The Year, but this time it was Graziano saving a huge win from the fire. Fortune had once again smiled on “The Rock,” the new middleweight champion of the world. Bleeding and exhausted he then uttered what would become his immortal tagline: “Hey, mum, your bad boy done good. Somebody up there likes me.”
The end of the great battle.
A third and final Zale vs Graziano clash took place the following year in Newark, New Jersey, and while it too was a terrific war, with Zale winning by a clean and decisive third round knockout, all agreed it did not equal the first two torrid battles for sheer excitement. However, of the three legendary clashes in this all-time great rivalry, it was the only one to be filmed. Tragically, we have no footage of the first great war, and of the second we have only some poor quality film shot from the stands which omits the fight’s conclusion. And so we must rely on the written testaments from the sportwriters of the day, who unanimously hailed the first two Zale vs Graziano battles as among the most action-packed and exciting in all of boxing history.
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One thing I forgot to mention about Dick Tiger, he had these tribal scars on his chest, it gave him an even more sinister and savage appearance, he was just a man you didn't want to be in the ring with anyway, he really beat the hell out of guys, but the tribal scars really made him even more intimidating. He came from an African tribe in Nigeria called the Ibo tribe, and he got those scars when he was ten years old, they were burned and cut into his chest with a hot knife, it was part of a tradition in the tribe to prove your bravery.
The scars are visible on his chest.
Dick Tiger fought Joey Giardello four times, this was a good and sometimes bitter rivalry. If you're not familiar with Joey Giardello, he is an all-time great middleweight fighter, a tough-as-they-come Italian that could box and punch I'll profile him later in the thread. Starting in 1959 and ending in 1965, Tiger and Giardello would mix it up four times, with both fighters splitting the series with two wins apiece. It was a thrilling series, these guys were as evenly matched as any two guys that fought four times. Both guys were fighting to their strength with Tiger applying pressure and banging away and Joey always moving to his left jabbing and throwing that hard right hand when Tiger over committed, and some real good tactical fighting. Like I said, this series got downright nasty at times, the politics of boxing.
SAD CASE OF A NEGLECTED TIGER
NIGERIA'S DICK TIGER, WITH AN EASY WIN OVER TOUGH RUBIN CARTER, PROVED AGAIN THAT HE IS AS GOOD A MIDDLEWEIGHT AS WARY CHAMPION JOEY GIARDELLO COULD HOPE TO FIND. BUT WILL THEY MEET? JOEY IS IN NO HURRY
Pinched by a large knot of reporters into his dressing room last week at Madison Square Garden, Dick Tiger was shedding his robe and his gloves, and as the questions fell it became obvious he was shedding something else—his faith or, as H. L. Mencken wrote, "an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable."
Tiger, neatly and furiously, had just destroyed Rubin Carter, but he was impassive and no more elated than a shoemaker who has just finished operating on one of 50 pairs of shoes. Outside, in the dim glow of the Garden lobby, people were calling him the best middleweight around, but there in the dressing room Tiger, visibly disheartened and frustrated, knew that he was just a fighter with no place to go. He had given up—not on himself but on Joey Giardello, the middleweight champion who, critics contend, is responsible for the ridiculous inertia in the best division in boxing.
'Proud' Benzema calls time on international career with France
"I am going home," said Tiger, hammering each word crisply. "In Nigeria I have a bookstore and some real estate. I am not broke. I do not need Giardello. He is no gentleman. A gentleman keeps his word. Eighteen months ago [when Tiger lost the title to Giardello in Atlantic City] he promised we would fight again. And then again here in March, after I beat Rivero, he came in my dressing room and said right before the press, 'Tiger, I will fight you next.' Ha! I am glad I met many nice Americans before I met Joey Giardello."
Meanwhile, following the Tiger-Carter fight, Giardello—according to Giardello—was sitting home waiting for a call from Tiger.
"Yeah," says Giardello. "I told him to call me if he takes Carter. But does he call? I don't hear a word from him. Listen, if he wants to fight me why doesn't he sit down and talk with me. Neither Tiger or his manager have come around to talk about a fight. All of a sudden I'm the rat in the picture. I'm not ducking Tiger. Who's Tiger? He's my meat. I'll tell you right now, I want him bad. But I'm not going to ask him to fight me. He's got to ask me. Not just go shooting his mouth in the press. I'm the champion. Print that.
"Also, a lot of people are saying Teddy Brenner and the Garden has offered me $75,000 to fight Tiger in the Garden. Yeah, well that's a lot of bull. Sure, Brenner has offered me a big money match in the Garden, but that's all he has done. Just offered. I don't see any contract. Brenner just talks. Let him come up with a contract. The only concrete offer I've received is from Sugar Ray Robinson. The contract is there and all I gotta do is sign it. [Robinson, who recently won a tax suit against the government which had dragged through the courts since his bout with Carmen Basilio in September 1957 had come up with a substantial money offer.] I'm liable to sign with Robinson any time. Brenner and Tiger are all wet. Print that. All they gotta do is stop mouthin' off and come up with a contract, and I'll fight Tiger in the Garden in August or September. But I don't hear from none of those bigmouths."
Giardello did not have to wait long for communication from one of the "big-mouths." Lew Burston, Tiger's acting manager (Jersey Jones is in the hospital with a stroke), called Giardello later that day. "Giardello," says Burston, "told me, 'You've got my word I'll fight Tiger in September.' He didn't mention any particular night so we'll have to wait and see. Dick is 35 and he can't wait much longer. This time we hope Giardello means what he says."
Most boxing people, although suspicious of Giardello's latest pang of conscience, would like nothing better. Tiger is, perhaps, boxing's most admired figure at the moment, and there pervades an unusually sensitive opinion—for boxing, at any rate—which holds that Tiger has been grossly mistreated.
There are a number of reasons for Tiger's popularity. To begin, there is Tiger the man. He is a courtly, soft-spoken person with impeccable manners—one feels that he should be standing in front of a big, white southern mansion waiting for Zachary Scott to arrive. The image is absurd because Tiger, articulate and intensely interested in politics, is more a symbol of emerging Nigeria than the graying, hat-in-hand retainer his good manners sometimes suggest. But most of Tiger's appeal emanates from the fact that he is the embodiment of a rare species called the professional fighter. When Tiger is in the ring the spectators know that it will not be Tiger's fault if the fight becomes tedious. "I am a fighter," says Tiger. "It is all that I have ever wanted to be, and it is all that I know. I love to fight. The fighter fights. It is that simple. He does not run. I am proud to be a fighter."
Against Rubin Carter, Tiger amply demonstrated his simple philosophy. A short man, he fought Carter as he has all other tall men during the past 10 years—with his feet wide apart and moving straight ahead. "He reminds me of those movies of British soldiers fighting in India," said one ringsider. "They move ahead in a straight line and they're getting knocked down one after another, but they keep comin'. That's Dick Tiger." Carter, a sharp puncher who also does not believe in retreat, was expected to be a perfect opponent for Tiger. He did not disappoint. Until he was later discouraged, Carter took the fight to Tiger and this is not considered wise, but nobody in boxing has ever been moved to marvel at Carter's ring intelligence.
The first round was uneventful as far as the fans were concerned, but Tiger, throwing a right—his right is decidedly inadequate—and then following with a left hook at the end of the round, found his pattern. The harmless right and the seemingly sweeping left hook added up to something lethal because at the tail end of all that motion was another left hook, short and quite explosive. It was to produce one of the more forgettable evenings in Carter's career.
Tiger caught Carter early in the second round. The left hook—Tiger leaps when he throws it, a habit that led to his adoption of the pseudonym Tiger—smashed into Carter's jaw, and Rubin drooped to the floor, his head hanging outside the bottom ropes. Carter was up at the count of three and, though unsteady on his feet and obviously weakened, refused to hold and was soon at Tiger again. Tiger, his left hand sawing away at Carter's head, dropped Rubin a second time. Carter wobbled to his feet at the count of six, four counts after the bell signaling the end of the round. Referee Zack Clayton made an ambiguous motion with his right hand. To him it meant the fight would go on for at least another round, but to almost everybody else in Madison Square Garden the gesture indicated that he was stopping it. Tiger, obviously siding with the majority, smiled, did a slow pirouette in one corner of the ring and acknowledged the roar of the crowd with a wave of his hand. He was eight rounds premature.
After a wary third round Carter went down again in the fourth. Apparently convinced—Carter takes a lot of convincing—that he was being a trifle foolish, charging into Tiger's best guns, Carter decided to box. The idea was good, but the execution was not, for Carter is no boxer. He jabbed his way through the remaining rounds—much to the annoyance of the crowd of 9,785—and carefully, if not picturesquely, circled away from Tiger's left hand. Once he did catch Tiger with a straight right hand, but Tiger seemed more surprised than stunned. The fight was no challenge for the judges, who gave most of the rounds to Tiger.
"At least he didn't knock my socks off," said Carter, who was having difficulty later removing his socks in the dressing room. He held an ice pack to his eye, and his drooping mustache, minus the Fu Manchu ends, which he had been forced to snip off before the fight, made his eyes seem even more lachrymose than they generally are as he continued to ridicule himself. "Tiger is a great fighter," he said. "He just whipped me good. Compared to Tiger, Giardello is only half a fighter. He'd kill Giardello if he fought him the way he fought me tonight. Man, that guy is some tough. But I'm real tired. I need a long rest now."
Carter, who has been a busy fighter with six bouts in the last five months, will no doubt benefit from a layoff, but the aging Tiger cannot wait much longer for Giardello. Giardello, who himself is crowding 35, does not have time to wait, either. His skills have been diminished by the years and his easygoing attitude toward title defenses (he is so disdainful of them that he has had only one in his 18 months as the fellow at the top). Yet he is still quite "hungry." He has not made much money from the championship, and whoever he fights will have to come up with a bundle, it seems. While Robinson doesn't exactly own Fort Knox, he does have more money than other likely challengers, and he is appealing to Giardello for another reason: he is 11 years older than the champion. So where does this leave Dick Tiger, the best uncrowned middleweight around? Probably with nothing more than an illogical hope for—if not belief in—the occurrence of the improbable.
Dick Tiger and Joey Giardello would meet four times, with Dick Tiger winning Giardello winning the second and third fights, and Tiger winning the first and fourth, all four fights were decision affairs. The first meeting between Dick Tiger and Joey Giardello would take place in 1959. Dick Tiger, the British Empire middleweight champion, pounded out a unanimous 10-round decision over Giardello in Chicago Stadium. There were no knockdowns in the televised bout. Giardello was unable to cope with Tiger's effective left hooks. The 10 rounds were routine and without bloodshed. It was the second victory for Tiger before a television audience in his United States campaign. His left hook, especially in close, was one main weapon in piling up points. Giardello could not land his right which had accounted for 27 knockouts at the time.
Tiger and Giardello really took each other to the edge of the abyss in their Four fights.
Tiger vs Giardello II also took place in 1959 and Joey Giardello won a 10 round decision over Tiger. The third meeting took place in 1963 in Atlantic City, and Joey Giardello would finally keep the promise he made at his father's graveside, to become a world champion.
Joey Giardello lands a left hook to the face of Dick Tiger.
Dec. 7, 1963 - Joey Giardello, the scarred 33-year-old veteran from Philadelphia, took the middleweight title from Dick Tiger of Nigeria tonight, boxing, slugging, and ducking through 15 grueling rounds like a man with his back against the last wall in the world. Giardello was never expected to go the distance, but his legs got stronger and his punching sharper to the swelling roar of an estimated 12,000 at Atlantic City Convention Hall’s first championship fight. Paul Cavalier, the referee, scored eight rounds for Giardello, five for Tiger, and two even. Under New Jersey rules, there were no judges for the bout, which was perhaps the most stunning boxing upset of 1963. If there had been any strategy, it was abandoned through the final four rounds — an avalanche of solid left hooks, pummeling, and apparently low blows. By the 14th, the crowd was on its feet to stay, screaming: “Take him Chubby, take him!” It’s been a long time since they called Giardello “Chubby” — somewhere back in Brooklyn or South Philly — but it must still mean something. Joey took the 14th going away, and his numerous backers in the arena smelled the title. “Jo-Jo, baby!” they yelled through a 15th round during which both fighters were wary, staying away from each other in fear of that one deal-closing punch that somehow was never thrown tonight. Then it was over, with Giardello exhausted but triumphant, possessing a lifetime record of 94 victories, 22 defeats, 7 draws, and 1 no-decision bout. “I started slow because I wanted to be sure I could go 15 rounds,” Giardello said in the middle of the wild scene in his dressing room as friends yelled and pounded him. “I wanted to make sure the legs were there. They were. I had to win it. I was nervous all day. I need this title. I must have fought this fight 90 times today. I was jumpy. I kept thinking of how to make him fight my fight. I did. I fooled around in the last round. I danced around to show him he would have to go after me. I played it safe because I was so sure I was ahead. The referee only gave me eight rounds? Well, I thought I won 11. I’ll give Tiger a return match for sure. He was man enough to give me a chance at the title. It’s 99.9% it will be him unless I get a big money offer with somebody else.” Giardello thought a little and added: “Now maybe some of those who wouldn’t give me a fight will. Maybe I’m clean now. Ask Gene Fullmer if he’ll fight me now.” This was a reference to the out-of-ring troubles Joey had a couple of years ago, when he wound up in court after a fight in a Philadelphia gas station. He was accused of hitting the service attendant. The usual prefight pomp was interrupted tonight by moments of silence for President Kennedy and for the 22nd anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Tiger and Giardello fought for the fourth and final time in 1965, like I said earlier, this rivalry got a bit nasty because Tiger felt that Giardello wouldn't give him a chance to win the middleweight title back after the 1963 defeat. This is an interview with Joey Giardello right before their fourth and final fight.
The fourth fight took place in Madison Square Garden and Dick Tiger was pissed, he fought like a man possessed. It was also Giardello's last—as a fighter. In the second round, Tiger ripped a left hook to Joey's jaw that knocked him halfway across the ring. Twice more, in the seventh and twelfth rounds, Joey was rocked by solid punches to the head. Legs rubbery, hair matted with sweat, blood trickling down his lumpy face from cuts over both eyes, he stubbornly fought on, even though his cause was hopeless. After 15 rounds, the judges' verdict was unanimous for Tiger. Giardello had no excuses. "I wanted to show New York a good fight," he said, and announced that he was retiring. At that, Champion Tiger could only wonder rhetorically: "How can he live if he does not fight?" That was Dick Tiger, he ate, slept, and breathed fighting, he couldn't imagine a life without it. Here are the highlights of Dick Tiger vs Joey Giardello IV, you want to see how brutal Dick Tiger could be, this fight was a damn inferno, Tiger was hell bent on making Giardello pay and wait years for a shot to get the title back. I have to hand it to Giardello, he had a chin made of cast iron to be able to take some of the bombs Tiger was dropping on him.
Dick Tiger got some joy out of making Joey Giardello pay.
Some great photos from the Dick Tiger vs Joey Giardello rivalry.
Brutal body shot from the powerful Tiger.
Another fight I want to mention before I forget, Dick Tiger vs Henry Hank, this middleweight showdown took place in 1962 and was one of the best middleweight fights ever, an apocalyptic slugfest of mythical proportions. For an idea of the fight, picture Hagler-Hearns for 7 rounds longer. This was Tiger's last fight before finally getting his first title shot against Gene Fullmer. For over a year, both titleholders (Fullmer and Pender) had shied away from defending against Tiger, and watching this fight it's easy to see why. Hank was a top 5 rated contender and a tremendous puncher; he could be outboxed, but seldom was beaten at close quarters - and few even dared to try to match him there. However, Tiger stood right in front of Hank all night long, picked off most of his punches, withstood the ones that managed to break through his guard, and pounded him right back all night long. This fight is one of the most definitive showcases for Tiger's immovable strength, technical skill (if a bit unorthodox and awkward-looking), tireless workrate, and iron chin. He does miss a number of his punches - partly because of Hank's slippery head movement, and partly because of his own bad habit of head-hunting at this stage of his career - but he compensates for that by tirelessly wailing away. If you watch the entire fight on YouTube, note the left hook by Hank that nails Tiger flush on the chin in the final 30 seconds of the last round, and no reaction whatsover from Tiger, my god Tiger was hard as fu..... nails. Here are the highlights.
In 1966, Dick Tiger moved up to light heavyweight and challenged Jose "Chegui" Torres for his light heavyweight title, it is very difficult to move up in weight class because you're fighting guys that are naturally bigger and stronger than you. Jose Torres was trained by Cus D'Amato, who would later make Mike Tyson into what he became. Cus was famous for teaching his peekaboo style to his fighters and Jose Torres utilized that style, albeit in a different way. The person credited with coming up with the peekaboo boxing style is in fact Cus D’Amato. He took the basis for the new boxing style from his favorite fighter, Maxie Rosenbloom, Maxie Rosenbloom was a highly respected defensive fighter who kept a low stance with his hands held high. Unfortunately many boxing critics during that era thought Rosenbloom's style was boring and lacked aggression. Cus tweaked the style to make it more aggressive while keeping its defensive elements intact. The purpose of the stance was simple: move your head to avoid punches and land powerful counters. Many boxing critics during this time laughed at the style and jokingly called it the “peekaboo boxing style.” They jokingly called the style peekaboo because the guards looked similar to someone playing peekaboo with a baby. D’Amato soon made these critics eat their words and proved the effectiveness of the peekaboo style. Jose Torres was one of the best fighters that Cus D’Amato trained. During his career, the he fighter became the lineal light heavyweight champion. Chegui Torres is considered one of his era’s best light heavyweight fighters. Dick Tiger was a 3-1 underdog to Jose Torres, Tiger took a boxing lesson from the Torres in the first five rounds and then came on like a tidal wave. In the 6th, Tiger began to score inside with both hands to the head and body. From then on Tiger dominated the fight and the champion grew more and more listless. The crowd of 13,654 which had cheered Torres at the start, roared for Tiger to keep charging. When the unanimous verdict was announced, it was greeted with rousing cheers.
Back When Dick Tiger Became Light Heavyweight Champion
When Bernard Hopkins surgically dismantled Antonio Tarver to win the light heavyweight championship, he accomplished what another former middleweight champion did forty years earlier. On December 16, 1966, Dick Tiger, a Blue collar lunch pail workman challenged Jose “Chegui” Torres for the title. Tiger wasn’t supposed to win. The odds were stacked against him. He was going in against a man who had the height, weight, and reach on his side. And then, there were the speculating whispers that at 37, Tiger’s best days were already in the pages of history. The speculation about age helped to install Torres as a solid 12-5 favorite, gaining credibility eight months earlier when Tiger lost his middleweight championship to Emile Griffith, the welterweight champion. Not only did he lose, but he was decked for the first time in his career. And though the decision was debatable, it added fuel the belief that Tiger’s career was on the downward spiral. Don’t get me wrong, as challengers went, Tiger was as valid as anyone else. He was a two-time champion; a systematic puncher, who could still ring the bell of opponents who traded with him. Beyond that, the promoters knew that his gate appeal of being a longtime Madison Square Garden favorite would generate more greenbacks than #1 challenger Roger Rouse. The Torres/Tiger fight wasn’t a classic in the annals of fistic history, but there was interest because Jose Torres brought with him the promise of being something special. He was a fighter with style and speed, possessing a brilliant variety of fistic attributes, and who overcame being stalled in his title quest by Cus D’Amato. Not only that but he was a renaissance man, attracting a literary and political following from Pete Hamill, Norman Mailer to Mayor John Lindsay. For Tiger, the move up to light heavyweight was a kind of rebirth. He no longer had to concern himself with the 160 pound weight limit. For the Torres fight, he packed 167 pounds into his compact 5’8” frame. And though his body still appeared to be sculpted by Auguste Rodin, rippling with tightly knotted muscles bulging beneath the skin, there remained the incessant questions about the wear and tear of the years; was anything left in the tank? Those whispers about age echoed like a siren. Nick Florio, adviser to Torres, and who was in Tiger’s corner when he lost to Emile Griffith said, “Fighters of Tiger’s age sometimes lose it all in one fight…Tiger might have reached that…point.” Tiger acknowledged the years. He told Arthur Daley of the New York Times that his roadwork around the Central Park reservoir was now different. It wasn’t about running, but rather, walking or jogging, to just to keep moving for an hour. Round one prefaced the night as the usually slow starting Tiger quickly took the role of aggressor and fought in a different style, out of a semi-crouch. He ducked and bounced out of his crouch to land flurries to the body. Tiger’s body punching not only won him the round, but began paving his road to victory. In this fight, Tiger wrote new pages to his legacy by showing diversity; the ability to change styles. In the years leading up to this fight, he was dogmatically labeled as a stubborn head-hunter who craved for opponents to accept his invitation to trade punches so he could counterpunch. It wasn’t that body punching was unfamiliar territory, it was that for this fight it had to become the focal point. Back in 1959, when he first arrived in the states from England that wasn’t the case. Body punching wasn’t part of his resume, but he proved to be a good student. In fact, his proficiency got so good that it was a dominant reason why his management took the short money just to get Gene Fullmer into the ring in 1962. In rounds two and three, Tiger continued to work downstairs as Torres fought out of his customary peek-a-boo stance and landed some head shots, but the punches were long and didn’t have power. Torres needed and wanted an impressive victory. Though his recent bouts were against top contenders, he didn’t show the fire of a masterpiece in progress that was on display March 30, 1965, when he KO’d Willie Pastrano to win the title. His first title defense was against Wayne Thornton, and after an explosive first round, the fight degenerated into a mulling affair without electricity. Then, he desperately needed the last two rounds to regain his title against the aging and fatigued Eddie Cotton. The only notable defense was a second round knockout over Chic Calderwood. Round four followed the script of the preceding three. Torres continued to fight out of the peek-a-boo, flicking punches at his smaller rival while Tiger fought with hands high, inching forward, bobbing and weaving in an attempt to get inside. The reasoning to attack the body was spurned on because of Torres’ pancreas condition which occurred after his July 31, 1965 non-title tilt with Tom McNeeley. The health condition shelved Torres for nine months. Though given the go ahead to fight, the condition weighed on his mind. It left a mental and psychological imprint that wasn’t easily erased. And certainly, that imprint wasn’t helped by Tiger’s tattooing body attack. As Tiger continued his body assault in the fifth, Torres landed a few long right hands, one of which hurt Tiger. But strangely, and uncharacteristically, Torres didn’t follow up. After five rounds, the official scoring was 3-2 Torres; 3-2 Torres; 2-2-1. The sixth round and seventh rounds slowed to a crawl with Tiger’s body shots edging Jose’s head shots on the scorecards. Torres seemed content to jab, move and hold. As the fight progressed, an interesting, though not exciting, paradox was developing. As Torres later commented, “Every time I tried to press the guy, he moved back.” The paradox was cemented when Tiger attempted to bait and coax Torres. Torres knew of Tiger’s brutal counterpunching, and thus, didn’t take the bait. Robert Lipstye, writing in the New York Times observed these paradoxical moves without many punches, as leaving Tiger and Torres in the middle of the ring, moving the shoulders and feet “in a strange little dance.” To Torres, a thinking man, the paradox was puzzling because it was contrary to what he had expected. During training up in the Catskills at the Concord Hotel in Kiamesha Lake, the Torres camp studied replays of Tiger’s fight against Rubin Carter, which they felt showed Tiger at his best. And though Tiger won convincingly, they saw that when Carter stayed away and boxed, Tiger was left groping, unable to counterpunch. The message was simple: box and you win. Tiger always had problems with fighters who used the finer points of the sweet science. There was Griffith, and before that Joey Archer and Joey Giardello, and before that Gene Fullmer, who uncharacteristically boxed Tiger in their second fight. By using guile and boxing, you could frustrate Tiger’s counterpunching rhythm, making him hesitate whereupon his stalking became mere following. At times during his career, Tiger’s frustration surfaced during bouts. In reporting on the first Tiger/Fullmer bout, A.J. Liebling wrote that during the eleventh round Tiger, who was easily winning, “paused in his pursuit and, raising his hands, motioned the champion (Fullmer) to come to him again and fight.” So, before the fight, when all the pros and cons were added up on paper, it looked like an easy Torres victory, whereby one could speculate that maybe Tiger was underestimated. After all, Torres wasn’t one of those previously mentioned middleweights; he was a solid light heavyweight with the advantages of age, speed, weight and height. Not only that, but he was a rising star, full of a champion’s bravado that had him constantly campaigning, clamoring for a fight against Muhammad Ali. To some it may have been just another light heavyweight dreaming, but it did make for good copy. As the fight ticked into its second half, the championship fire in Torres seemed to only be smoldering, waiting for one of his classic volleys to ignite the embers into a blaze. The blaze never happened. The perfect plan went awry because the Torres camp pigeon-holed Tiger, believing he was an aging inflexible head-hunter. In reality, beyond changing his fighting style, Tiger wasn’t as crude as perceived. He wasn’t an aimless head-hunter, but rather was a disciplined stalking counterpuncher throwing short meaningful punches. The eighth was close as Torres landed with punches to the head, while Tiger continued to press the issue downstairs. At one point, it seemed that Tiger was hurt, but Torres didn’t follow up. He didn’t appear to want to expend energy beyond a certain point. He seemed unwilling or simply unable to do it. When they did mix it up, it was Torres who gave ground. In the ninth, Torres rocked Dick’s head back, but Tiger came right back ripping to the body and then landed a left hook to the head, his best punch of the night. It should be noted that Tiger didn’t make many meaningful attempts at Torres’ head, concentrating on the body, which he continued through round ten. At one point during the round, Tiger forced Torres to hold after a flurry. After ten rounds the official scoring was 7-3 Tiger; 5-4-1 Tiger; 7-2-1 Tiger. Torres came back strong in the eleventh round, hurting Tiger with a series of lefts and rights. But like in the fifth round, instead of following up, he went back to jabs. Torres seemed to tire in the eleventh and twelfth rounds, and ringside whispers wondered if Torres was in the best of shape. When right, Torres was a picture book fighter, a quick flashing artist. In this fight, the flashy artistic combination punching was a memory. He was taken out of his game. The fight wasn’t being dictated by him. Later, Torres disclosed that because of his health condition, he had trained only ten days for the fight even though he was at camp for a month. If true, this could explain why he was lethargic and lacked drive, but it would be an injustice not to give Tiger credit. Throughout the fight, his fighting heart pulsated; he kept punching, and his punches were crisper. The thirteenth and fourteenth rounds were give and take rounds with Tiger starting fast and Torres rallying and then Tiger coming on as the rounds ended. The final stanza witnessed Torres rallying with combinations as the round and the fight ended. The late rally harkened back to the Cotton fight, when it saved his title. This time it didn’t work. The decision was unanimous for Tiger: 10-5; 8-6-1; 10-4-1. Tiger’s ability to change; his constant body attack excavated the light heavyweight championship from Torres, making him, at the time, the fifth oldest man to achieve a championship. As for Torres, he fought a cautious fight; fighting in spurts, attempting to use his quickness and jab to keep Tiger at bay; and when Tiger got inside, he held. There are those who said that Torres looked good in only the 5th and 11th rounds, when he hurt Tiger, but in both cases didn’t follow-up the advantage. Before the fight Torres was considered an artist painting a masterpiece in progress. Afterwards, it was Tiger’s painting that would hang in the gallery of light heavyweight history. After all the years, fourteen years as a professional, Tiger fought with the pride of a champion and made the most out of what remained in his tank. That’s what blue-collar guys tend to do.
Tiger gave Torres a rematch and the rematch was almost a carbon copy of the first fight, and Dick Tiger retained his light heavyweight title, Torres made a late surge but Tiger had done enough to win the fight. After the fight, a riot broke out when Torres fans became enraged at Tiger being awarded the decision and began hurling things into the ring.
Bottles, pieces of chairs and other missiles were tossed into the ring and the ringside sections Tuesday night shortly after light heavyweight champion Dick Tiger of Nigeria was awarded a split decision over Puerto Rican-born Jose Torres in a very close return, 15-round title bout. A late surge by Torres excited his followers and probably touched off the riot. Well behind on all scorecards, he staggered the 37-year-old Nigerian with a sweeping left and right to the jaw in the 12th round and captured the last four rounds on all scorecards. Torres went after his rival from the opening bell and they fought a fierce battle for three rounds. Tiger, getting in close, dominated the next five rounds. Torres spurted in the 9th and 10th, lost the 11th and then started his drive in the 12th.
Dick Tiger vs Jose Torres II.
After the Torres fights, Tiger defended his light heavyweight title against Roger Rouse. By this time, Dick Tiger was old in boxing years, he had been declining but he still had a little bit left in the tank.
TIGER HAMMERS HOME A SERMON
THINGS ARE TOO EASY IN AMERICA, SAID THE LIGHT-HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION FROM NIGERIA. TO PROVE HIS POINT HE DROVE INTO SOFT-PUNCHING ROGER ROUSE WITH A STRAIGHTFORWARD FURY THAT BELIED HIS ADVANCING YEARS
Two nights before Roger Rouse fought Dick Tiger for the light-heavyweight championship, a computer in the Clark County Courthouse in downtown Las Vegas predicted that Rouse would win by a decision. Whereupon Tiger turned to the machine and said, "You're a liar." As events proved, Tiger was right. It was he who won when the referee sensibly stopped the fight in the 12th round. In a way, Tiger's victory was doubly sweet; not only did the better man win, but man triumphed over machine, although Tiger did not see it that way. "A computer," he explained, "is made by human beings."
Tiger was not half as distressed by the computer's prediction as by the fact that he felt he was not properly dressed for the scene in the courthouse. "Why did you not tell me to dress up?" he asked Lew Burston, one of his American representatives. "I, too, have a nice shirt in my drawer that I could have put on." Tiger, that stumpy, gnarled, inflexible man, has a great deal of pride; he does not want to appear to be uncouth or a savage. He refuses to be photographed in front of trees, believing that such pictures conform with a stereotype of Africa. "Rome wasn't built in a day," Tiger said recently. "And," he added, "Las Vegas was once a desert."
Too, Tiger has a great love for his profession and for his title ("My title," as he always says), and he does not care to see either demeaned. "If you're in the ring to fight a man like myself," he says, "put up a good fight. Don't take it easy." He has no use for clever boxers and considers their art unmanly. "I'm not in there to play tricks," he says, "to go indirect, to fly around like a bird. I fight hard. That is what I get paid to do. I have a job, I train hard. I entertain the public. I go my way."
In his philosophy, the opponent plays little more than a supporting role. Until last Friday night, Tiger had never seen Rouse fight, nor had he seen him in a film, which was of no concern to Tiger. "I'm going to see him for an hour on the 17th," he said. "That's time enough. It's the business I'm in. There's no need to be in a hurry. Take your time. In life I always take things easy. I been fighting now 15 years. I fought all kinds. I fought them as they fought me. That's life. Things come and go. I think of my past years. In my past years I was nobody, had nothing, nobody knew me. Things come and go."
In the Las Vegas Convention Center they went very well for Tiger, disastrously for Rouse and, incidentally, the promoters, as only 3,733, who paid $44,500, came to see the show.
According to Teddy Bentham, Carlos Ortiz' trainer who was brought in to work Rouse's corner, "There's got to be a way to beat a style. If you can't find a way to beat a style, your fighter won't win." Tiger's style is unadorned, "direct," as Tiger would say. He comes at you in a straight line, in somewhat of a crouch, and looks to close and then bang to the body. He favors his left hook, which he generally sets up with a right hand, and if he is not a notably big puncher, he is made of stern stuff.
"He's a piece of steel in the ring," says Mike Kaplan, who refereed Tiger's fight with Florentino Fernandez. "I felt the metal when I tried to break them." Even more to the point, Tiger is indomitable, or, as Bentham says, "Sometimes you have a fighter who don't want to get beaten."
But, as Bentham also says, "there isn't a system in the world can't be beaten." Joey Giardello, Joey Archer and Emile Griffith, all of whom beat Tiger, showed how it could be done—simply by making themselves scarce. All three moved on Tiger, meaningfully jabbed, made him reach, kept him off balance. "A good trombone man will beat Tiger," said Freddie Steele, the old middleweight champion, who was in Vegas for the fight. "Rouse will have to be sliding that left out all night long."
Indeed, this was how Rouse intended to fight. "Get up close," Bentham told him in the dressing room before the fight. "Bop, bop, bop. Get out of there. In. Out. Stick and move. Stick and move. Ah, you know how to fight. I don't have to tell you."
And, in this fashion, Rouse won three of the first four rounds. Although he is not a particularly pretty boxer, he did what he was told—jabbed, stayed on the move and, for good measure, hit Tiger coming in with short, sneak rights. For his part, Tiger tried to get under the jab to reach the body. As his trainer, Chickie Ferrara, had said, "Rouse got a nice long body that attracts me a lot."
In the early rounds Tiger's long, lunging solitary left hooks to the head seemed futile, even foolhardy, to almost everyone but Ferrara and Jersey Jones, Tiger's other American representative. "Come on, chase him, chase him," they exhorted Tiger from the steps leading up to his corner.
From the fifth through the eighth rounds, Rouse did much as before, except that he largely neglected his right, and, as Tiger began to press him, Rouse's resolve visibly waned. In a sense he lost the fight long before the first knockdown. "I wanted to concentrate more on the jab." he said afterward. "I felt I was reaching too much with it and that he was getting under it. And I thought I should stop throwing the right. It's dangerous punching down. I felt he might come over the top."
Instead, because Rouse was, in fact, reaching with the jab, Tiger, who was troubled with bleeding from a minor cut over his left eye, came in, both beneath the jab and, to Rouse's eventual pain and sorrow, over it. Rouse throws what they call "an elbow jab"; that is, instead of shooting the fist straight out and bringing it back along the same path, he jabs primarily and weakly with his forearm like a man bending his elbow at the bar. The move momentarily leaves his head, in the words of Cus D'Amato, "hanging out there like a lantern in a storm."
Despite his shortcomings, Rouse was still in the fight until the ninth round, when he failed to do what he was told. Bentham said to him in the dressing room after the fight, "Remember when I kept saying 'Don't pull back?' Then that's the one round you pull back." Bentham amplified: "The style was right. Everything was perfect going up to the round he got knocked down. I said, 'Don't pull back.' All he had to do was give it a little bend. I thought he was home in the ninth round. Them was all sucker punches."
Tiger threw a long, loopy left, and Rouse pulled back from it, nowhere far enough. It caught him flush on the mouth, split his lip open, cracked his mouthpiece and knocked him on his back. Rouse got up, but he was not the man he used to be and Tiger chased him the rest of the ninth, although he did not catch up.
In the 10th round, he did. He caught Rouse in close with another hook. As the challenger grabbed him around the waist, Tiger kept hitting Rouse, who, still hanging on, slid to the floor. This time he arose at two and was a bloody sight, like Macbeth coming, astonished, out of Duncan's bedchamber. Rouse was even bleeding from the left knee.
When the bell rang for the 12th round, Rouse was still sitting bemusedly on his stool, suddenly alone and defenseless, innocent. A few moments later Tiger hit him with a right hand. Rouse fell forward, somersaulting, but again was up at two. He stood submissively by the ropes while Referee Jimmy Olivas picked up the mandatory eight count. Olivas, never finishing the count, changed his mind and indicated the fight was over. "He was out on his feet, plus the cut," Olivas explained. "He was cut too bad."
Olivas was right in both respects. The cut took 14 stitches and, in any case, Bentham and Pete Jovanovich, Rouse's manager, were about to stop the fight themselves. "I said, 'Let's stop it,' after the 11th," Bentham said, "but Rouse said to let him go another round."
"I have a thousand thoughts," Jovanovich said later. "Might have done. Should have done. Could have done. But you can't refight it. I don't know much about boxing. I wish I did."
"He was doing all right," Bentham said. "He was driving him crazy. It's only that when you lose, everything is wrong. Ah, but I don't like losing."
"I heard about things like that," Rouse said. "I never thought it would happen to me. They all say you can't win them all. I never would have believed it. Oh———! Somebody told me once, you can't win them all. I sure would like to get another shot at it, but I guess we won't. Oh———!"
"We never lost," Jovanovich said. "We've just paused for a while."
An hour after the fight, Tiger was in his room in the Hotel Fremont, fiddling with the dial of his shortwave radio, waving the aerial like a wand, trying to pick up news of the war in Nigeria; he is from Aba, in the secessionist Republic of Biafra. Tiger had hoped to find a Voice of America broadcast, but all he got were unearthly screeches, voices speaking Spanish and news of Vietnam.
"So, I have broken the tie," he said as he waited for Chickie Ferrara to prepare his bath. Tiger was referring to the telegram he had received, which informed him that his wife had given birth to a girl a week before the fight and that mother and daughter were doing fine. "It is good," Tiger went on. "Now I have four girls and three boys. This telegram lifted a large stone from my mind. It let me know my family was not dead. Chickie, is the bath ready yet?"
"Don't be impatient, Dick," Ferrara said. "You have a long soak ahead. Then I want to strip the eye." At this, Tiger looked at himself in a mirror and smiled at what he saw. "It is an ugly face," he said.
"Are you kidding?" asked Freddie Brown, who is one of Tiger's seconds. "That's a good-looking face. In fact, tonight you were handsome. Tell me the secret. How do you do it?"
"It is no mystery," said Tiger, who is 38. "The older I am, the more better I get."
Lew Burston, who is 70 and says he has been in boxing for 109 years, and Jersey Jones, who is 69, came into the room. "The right hand under the heart in the fifth round was murder," said Burston. "He should have been arrested for that punch." Years ago when he promoted in Paris, Burston was known as Le Juif Errant because, as he is fond of saying, he made 52 round trips to Europe by boat before the war. "Paris will always be lovely," Burston says. "Paris will always be soft. But the soft, quiet, gentle way is not found so often, and the butchers no longer chop your meat with two sharp knives."
"Rouse ain't a bad fighter, but his own left was what killed him," said Ferrara. "He couldn't push Dick off with the blow, even when it landed. But what's the difference? He wasn't going to beat Dick anyway."
At last Tiger's bath was ready. "To be hurt," he said, sitting in the tub in the vaporous bathroom, "is not so bad as long as you get paid for it. Sometimes I have been injured in training. Then it is bad. It is for nothing—free. And pain is part of the price. I am not glad I got my eye cut, but this is O.K. It mean I earned my money. I have bled for it. Life to be good must be hard, otherwise the sweet things cannot be appreciated.
"Here, in this country, things are too easy, I think. Everything must be the easy way, the good soft way. Seldom do I see parents hit their children. No one has control. Not the father, not the mother. With us, the child does as his parents say. My father taught me, and I teach my children. That is how the child learns strength. From seeing how the father lives, how he does his life. There is nothing wrong with working hard and sweating. That is the way life must be lived. Then it is satisfying, and a man can enjoy his rewards. You see, nothing for nothing is nothing. But if you have to climb high up the tree to pick the good red apple, ah, then the apple is sweet.
"To me boxing is a good sport. I would not be here today if it were not for boxing. It has given me a good life because I have put every effort into it. Always from life we must give before we can get. I got $75,000 for beating Roger Rouse tonight. If you have the money, the money tell you what you have to do. If you have little money you do little things; if you have big money you do big things. Seventy-five thousand, that is a lot of money. Too much money if the fight is too easy, but it is never easy if a man comes to fight. In a way, Roger Rouse disappointed me. Yes, he tried hard, but I expected him to come to me to try to take my title from me, but he was running.
"I don't know how long I will go on, this I don't think about. But when the time comes I will know. I put myself into boxing, and I will take myself out when I have to. I will do that when my punches get lazy, when I cannot make myself train, when I cannot get up in the dark morning, while others are still asleep, and run."
Tiger vs Rouse.
This brings us to Dick Tiger vs Bob Foster, the only time Dick Tiger was ever knocked out in his career. But before I talk about that, I want to talk about Tiger's homeland of Africa. His people in his homeland were fighting for their independence and it was a major part of Dick Tiger's life. He helped in anyway he could, often putting his earnings from boxing into the cause, or helping to train troops. It was his home, it was where his heart was, and his family.
DICK TIGER FIGHTS TWO WARS
TAKING A TEMPORARY LEAVE FROM BIAFRA'S STRUGGLE WITH NIGERIA, THE LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION GETS READY FOR HIS OWN BATTLE OF SURVIVAL AGAINST BOB FOSTER
In this corner is Richard Ihetu, alias Dick Tiger. At 39 years of age—he will be 40 on August 14—Tiger is the oldest champion in boxing. He is also probably the oldest 2nd lieutenant in the army of Biafra, the secessionist African state fighting for its independence from Nigeria. In the other corner is Bob Foster, 29, an explosive puncher who used to work, fittingly, in a bomb factory. Foster is 6'3½"; Tiger is 5'8". Tiger likes to work inside, brutalizing the body so the head will collapse, while Foster prefers to flatten an opponent with a single blow. Both men are aggressive to the extreme, and their fight for the light heavyweight title on May 24 in Madison Square Garden promises to be a war.
For Dick Tiger there is another war, the turmoil and terror between Biafra and Nigeria. Early last March, Tiger left Biafra to start training in Manhattan for the Foster fight. He works out weekdays in the New Garden Gym, a walk-up sweatbox on Eighth Avenue, and he passes his off-hours watching TV in his West Side hotel room, window-shopping, writing letters and promoting the cause of Biafra. In his dressing cubicle at the gym, a patriotic poster proclaims the "Days to Remember," such as the massacre of Biafrans in northern Nigeria on May 28, 1966. Tiger is so committed to the cause of Biafran independence that it dismays his co-manager, Jersey Jones. Not long ago, after Tiger had finished giving an interview, Jones stuck his head in the cubicle. "Are you still talking about that Nigerian-Biafran mess?" Jones asked. "Why don't you talk about the fight?"
'Proud' Benzema calls time on international career with France
Softly Tiger said, "Without Biafra, the championship title is no good to me. Without Biafra, my title is nothing."
"C'mon, Dick," Jones said in a gentle tone. "Forget about Biafra. Bring your wife and kids over here and settle down."
"The United States is a very good country, a very nice country," Tiger replied, "but Biafra is my home. I was born in Biafra. I will die in Biafra."
Jones turned away silently.
The most compelling fact in Dick Tiger's life now is not his pressing ring style or his relatively advanced age but that he is an Ibo. The Ibos are the Biafrans. Biafra used to be part of Nigeria, which was an invention of colonial Britain. It was not a single nation but a conglomeration of peoples stuffed inside a boundary line determined by the Great Powers of the 19th century. When the British gave up their hold on Nigeria about seven years ago, the Ibos, 12 million strong, were one of the peoples who made up the new country. Energetic and enterprising, the Ibos were the businessmen, doctors, lawyers, teachers and doers of Nigeria. "Ibo people are not lazy people," Tiger says proudly. "Whatever we are doing, we put all our effort there. If we are studying, we study very hard. We like peace. We like to be jovial. We don't get angry very quick. We play, we laugh and we are good business people. And we respect law. Sometimes God watch for us."
Originally native to eastern Nigeria, the Ibos spread throughout all Nigeria, and their spirit of enterprise often aroused envy or hostility. The Ibos, moreover, are largely English-speaking Christians. Tiger, his wife and their seven children are Anglicans. By contrast, the Hausas of northern Nigeria, the rivals of the Ibos, are Arabic-speaking Moslems who have little truck with newfangled ways. As a result, the short, unhappy history of independent Nigeria has been mostly a struggle between Ibo and Hausa.
In the spring and fall of 1966 the Hausas turned on the Ibos who had settled in the north. The massacres were appalling. "They killed both soldiers and civilians," Tiger says. "About 30,000. They chased everybody from the east. All of them run home." In between massacres the Hausas also overthrew and shot General Aguiyi-Ironsi, an Ibo who was the Nigerian chief of state. (Six months previously, General Ironsi had overthrown the Hausa-oriented regime of Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa.) In May 1967 the Ibos decided that they had had enough of Nigeria. Eastern Nigeria, the Ibo homeland, set itself up as the independent republic of Biafra, so named after a bay on the coast.
Ever since then the Nigerian government, dominated by northerners, has been warring against Biafra in an attempt to end the secession. Biafra has managed to hold out, but the fighting has been vicious, heightened by religious animosities. The Biafrans accuse the Nigerians of conducting a jihad, or Moslem holy war, against them. "They believe that killing me as a Christian will make them go to heaven," says Tiger. "The whole northerners feel that way."
Tiger had to leave Biafra last fall for his fight with Roger Rouse, but when he returned home in December he promptly joined the Biafran army. "I volunteered," he says, "because everybody there have to do something." Though he has not been called upon to fight, he has helped to condition troops. Most of Tiger's money from past fights is tied up in real-estate holdings in Lagos, the Hausa-held Nigerian capital. He does not know if he will ever get his investments back, but Biafran independence comes first. "What I am doing now is to box," he says, "and whatever little money I get I try to donate to the war effort." In addition, Tiger has helped care for the wounded after bombing raids on Aba, his home town, and Ogui. "One day they killed about 100 in Ogui because over there they have an open market," he says. "In that open market the Nigerian bombers come and throw bombs about three times, and they killed over 100 persons that very day. I wasn't there, but as soon as it was announced we went there with the car to try to help and carry the bodies." According to Tiger, the Nigerians are using Egyptian pilots to fly British planes against Biafra. The Russians, who were said to be helping Nigeria, are supposed to have left, Tiger says. Presumably Nigeria did not look like a winner. So far only two countries, Tanzania and Gabon, have recognized Biafra, but Tiger believes others would if Biafra's story were known.
Tiger is a constant but unhappy reader of The New York Times. "The agent they have is in Lagos, and he writes what the Lagos people tell him," Tiger says. "He doesn't even come to Biafra. He doesn't know what is happening. When the [Nigerian] soldiers from the front go back, whatever they tell him is sent over here. He say, 'Nigeria did this.' But this is nothing. He didn't even see it himself." To Tiger, Nigerian victory claims are ridiculous. "Even now our troops are over into Nigeria," he says. "We are fighting them back with ammunition we got from them. Whatever happens, Biafra will never give up. This is a war of survival. If they left only one person, that person must fight until he dies. That is our country. They can't make me run away from my country. It's better that I die there than to carry my children and start running."
When the war began, Nigeria cut off communications to Biafra and imposed a naval blockade. In order to get to New York, Tiger flies out by an undisclosed route. "When we leave Biafra," he says, "I just go straight on until they drop me. When the plane is in the air and I'm flying, I don't know anything except that I'm going to New York." Since arriving in New York this time, he has written several letters to his wife, but he has yet to receive an answer. He is especially concerned because he has heard that the Nigerians bombed St. Michael's Church in Aba on a Sunday. When Tiger is at home, he and his wife attend St. Michael's.
With the war at home preying on Tiger's mind, the question arises whether he will be able to bring the necessary concentration to bear in his fight with Foster. Tiger believes he can. "Every man has worry of his own," he says. "If I carry my worry into the ring, that's no good. That might result bad. So now I'm worried, but when I step into the ring I forget about everything and mind what is in front of me. Then after that I come out of the ring." Neither does his age seem a problem to him in the encounter with Foster. "I feel fine," he says. "I want to fight until I'm 45, to be the champion until the age of 45. I'm serious."
Of Foster, he shrugs and says, "He's one of the fighters. When I go into the ring I say, 'another payday.' I just go in, and I just throw punches. People who watch me fight, they know my style. I keep going. I have fought those who can jab, so it's no news to me. I'll fight him my way. I have to go in to fight him underneath. That is my style of fighting. He'll try to keep me outside, but I won't let him. I don't care how tall or how big a fighter is. When I get a good punch, I say that's nothing. No matter how hard they punch, I punch better. Nervous? Years ago, yes, but not now. I'm too old."
Foster is scarcely just another fighter. Besides having the height and reach on Tiger, he will have weight, a well-muscled 174 or 175. By comparison, Tiger is expected to come in at around 168, and Foster's manager, Mushky Salow, rates Tiger as only a heavy middleweight. In the trade, Foster has such a reputation as a deadly puncher that he is treated as an opponent to be avoided. Last year, Salow says, Jimmy Ellis, now the World Boxing Association heavyweight champion, turned down an offer to fight him. Indeed, Tiger's camp agreed to make the match for the light heavyweight title only after getting a $100,000 guarantee.
If it had not been for Salow's handling, Foster would still be getting the runaround and working in York, Pa. "This guy's a lifesaver," Foster says of his manager. "He took me out of the bomb factory."
Foster has had 33 professional fights and has won 29, 23 by knockouts, mostly in the early rounds. "The minute I see an opening I just let the punch go," he says. Raised in Albuquerque, he turned down a football scholarship at the University of New Mexico to enlist in the Air Force. As a youngster, Foster had won the local Golden Gloves featherweight title, and in the service he resumed boxing. He had 101 fights, winning 89 by knockouts. After five years in the Air Force he turned pro, won his first nine and then stepped out of his class in both weight and experience to fight Doug Jones on short notice. "I needed the money," Foster says. Jones, then the No. 2 heavyweight contender, won by a KO in the eighth. (Previously, in the Air Force, Foster had beaten Jones by a decision.) Foster knocked out his next two opponents and then began getting the runaround. He had to go to Lima, Peru to take on Mauro Mina. He clobbered Mina, so much so that Mina suffered a detached retina, but the Peruvians gave Mina the decision. Back in the States, Foster won three more (KO 3, KO 1, KO 1). Then he overreached again against Ernie Terrell, who scored a seventh-round technical. After seven straight victories (six of them KOs), he lost a 10-round decision to Zora Folley.
By this time Foster decided he was going nowhere. He took a job at the American Machine & Foundry factory in York. "I was bringing home $150 a week," he says. "My wife was working as a cook in a hospital, and she was bringing home $162. I forgot all about fighting. I didn't see where I needed fighting if I wasn't going anyplace. So I just forgot about it and set my mind to working and taking care of my four kids."
Enter Mushky Salow of Hartford, Conn. Now 49, Mushky may be described as a sportsman or, as he succinctly puts it, a "former vending-machine magnate." Without benefit of rehearsal, he probably could replace Stubby Kaye in Guys and Dolls. Mushky has been in and out of boxing since he managed Willie Pep as an amateur. His last fighter was Red Top Davis, a featherweight contender of a dozen years ago. Mushky had first heard of Foster when Al Weill raved about him as the next heavyweight champion. Weill did not sign Foster—another manager did—but Mushky stayed at a discreet distance because, as he says, "Who's gonna interfere with anything that Weill started out to do?"
Mushky followed Foster's career, and, when Foster went to work at the bomb factory, Mushky stepped in. He knew about Foster's defeats, but he blamed them on bad managing. "Do you t'row a guy with nine professional fights in with a top contender?" Mushky asks. "Do you t'row him in with Ernie Terrell, to boot, who had maybe 30 pounds on him, in his 17th fight?"
Mushky bought Foster's contract from a lawyer for $4,000 in October 1966 and began a training program. A German promoter offered $5,000 for a fight in Berlin, but Mushky turned it down. Mushky says, "I told Bob, 'You'll be fighting for the title if you listen to me.' So now I put him in Norfolk, Va. with Leroy Green, and he got $300 or something. He came over to me after the fight and he says, 'Jesus, I think you know what you're doin'.' I say, 'Why do you say that?' He says, 'You know when I entered the ring,' he says, I wasn't quite sure of myself,' he says, 'but you get anybody for me now. I can fight again.' "
Mushky matched Foster with Slim Jim Robinson, who went out in one after "a short bomb," and then Andres Selpa, the South American light heavyweight champ, who disappeared in two. Foster hit Selpa with, in Mushky's joyous words, "a left hook in the belly. The guy screeched—you could hear him—like a guy shot." Eddie Cotton was next. Foster had Cotton down in the first, but then Eddie covered up for the second and part of the third. Frustrated at being unable to find a conventional opening, Foster struck Cotton on the top of the skull with a left hook, and Cotton sank like a clubbed ox. "After that," says Mushky, "we were waiting for the one shot with Tiger."
To hear Mushky and Foster talk, Foster will take the light heavyweight title and then the heavyweight championship as well. "Ain't nothin' out there," Foster says. He admits Tiger is a good fighter ("I give the old man a lot of respect"), but he is not about to be pressed by him. "I don't back up for nobody," Foster says. "Somebody is going to go. I say within six or seven rounds." For Dick Tiger, there appear to be two wars of survival, one back home in Biafra, the other in the Garden next week.
So, in 1968, Dick Tiger stepped up to challenge Bob Foster aka "The Deputy Sheriff." I profiled Bob Foster earlier in the thread, he is the hardest punching light heavyweight in the sports history, and one of the hardest punchers period in the sports history, he's ranked number 17 on Ring magazine's 100 hardest punchers list for a reason, Dick Tiger had a lot of balls stepping up to him. There's really not much to say about it, the fight was going along and they were exchanging at center ring, and then it happened, Bob Foster caught Tiger with one of his murderous left hooks, the same left hook that had taken out many fighters. It was hard to watch the great Dick Tiger get knocked out like that, but he was in with a guy that had every advantage against him, height, weight, reach, and it didn't help matters that Bob Foster was an apocalyptic puncher, and I'm not kidding when I say that, Bob Foster's knockouts were often terrifying, his number 17 ranking on that list is a joke, he should be ranked in the top 5 in my opinion.
Bob Foster catches Dick Tiger with a left hook, the only time in Dick Tiger's career that he was knocked out.
Dick Tiger vs Nino Benvenuti, this would be Tiger's curtain call. After losing to Bob Foster, Tiger's career looked to be just about over, but he gave us one more good performance, before he went. I'm sorry for spending so much time on Tiger, just love this guy and believe that in his prime he could go toe to toe with just about any middleweight in history, drop him in any era and he raises hell with them. Nino Benvenuti is an all-time great fighter that had a brutal uppercut punch, he once had a record of 65-0. This was a great win for the past prime Tiger. To be fair to Benvenuti, he broke his finger in round One and it's nearly impossible to win once that happens, especially against a guy like Dick Tiger, but it was still a good performance from Tiger considering he was sick during this time and would pass away from Liver cancer two years later.
Dick Tiger and Nino Benvenuti in their 1969 fight.
Benvenuti Breaks Hand, Loses Decision to Tiger
NEW YORK - There's still a lot of fight left in old soldier Dick Tiger, and Nino Benvenuti, broken finger and all, can attest to the firepower carried by the 39-year-old Biafran. Tiger, the former middleweight and one-time light heavyweight king, vaulted right back into the 175-pound championship contention Monday night by hammering out a unanimous 10-round decision over Benvenuti in a light heavyweight contest at Madison Square Garden. A crowd of 14,305, many of whom thought they were coming to see Tiger’s farewell as a title contender, cheered in delight as the likeable Biafran showed skills and strength belying his years to spoil the Italian’s debut in the heavier division. Heaviest Weight Benvenuti weighed 164, heaviest in his career, and Tiger was 166. Benvenuti, suffering only his third defeat in 82 bouts, broke the index finger on his right hand in the first round and made a valiant effort to make a fight of it. But Tiger, a relentless plodder who keeps boring in, was the aggressor and it was a matter of conjecture whether a physically fit Benvenuti could nave taken the gentleman from Biafra. Benvenuti, an aspiring actor, did a terrific job of concealing the injury and it wasn’t until the post-fight interview that newmen and Tiger learned of the broken finger. “I hurt my hand in the first round when I threw a punch to his head,” said the mop-haired 160-pound champion. “After I threw the punch I had pain and I knew something was wrong. With one hand it’s not possible to make a good fight.’ Tiger, an 18-year ring veteran who was registering his 60th win and 12th in 16 Garden outings (old and new Garden), probably put it best when he said: “he (Benvenuti) was beaten by a good pro.” Tiger, gracious in victory, added: “I hope this doesn’t discourage Benvenuti. He’s a good fighter.” Tiger said he planned to return to Biafra in a week or two to be reunited with his wife and eight children. Asked if he had hopes of a title bout with Bob Foster, the man who dethroned him as light heavyweight king, Tiger replied, “I wouldn’t mind Foster but he wants $lOO,OOO and I haven’t got it." The broken finger could put a , crimp in Benvenuti’s next title defense this summer. He must sign by June to defend the 160pound title. Nino went to a hospital after the fight to have the finger X-rayed. Tiger’s plan was to keep throwing punches and it worked to near perfection as he . managed to get on the inside and scored heavily to the body, The Biafran piled up an early lead by dominating the first three rounds, coasted through the middle rounds and fought on fairly even terms through the final rounds as he showed I signs of tiring. There were no knockdowns but Benvenuti suffered a slight cut above the left eye. Tiger’s best round was the seventh when he drove his opponent into the ropes with lefts and rights to the body.
In 1970, Dick Tiger challenged Emile Griffith for the middleweight crown, When they met in 1966, Griffith won Tiger's world middleweight crown on a unanimous but disputed decision. Tiger had waited four years for a chance to get even, but it was too late. This would be the last fight of Dick Tiger's legendary career.
Griffth breezes past Tiger
Associated Press | July 16, 1970
Emile Griffith breezed past slow, ring-rusty 40-year-old Dick Tiger last night and won a unanimous decision in a 10-round match at Madison Square Garden.
Tiger, who weighed 167, had a 10-pound edge on Griffith, 157.
There were no knockdowns or anything close to it although Tiger did slip down briefly in the fifth round of the fight, witnessed by a crowd of 8,071 paying $46,976 and special network television audience.
Tiger, plainly showing his age and the effects of an eight-month layoff, was unable to cope with Griffith's constant moves and quick hands.
Although Griffith, 32, was a few notches below his old form when he held the welter and middleweight crowns, he was an easy winner in this rematch of a disputed fight of four year ago.
The fans cheered Tiger and booed Griffith when he bounced into the ring wearing a purple velvet jacket with yellow trim. They booed during the fight when he showboated and did the old Kid Gavilan or Ali shuffle and stuck out his head as though daring Tiger to hit him.
The Tiger was unable to put together combinations. When he did get close enough to Griffith to cut loose he only threw them one at a time. Too often missing. Only in the final seconds of the last round did he break through with any effectiveness.
Referee Della stepped between the two men in the 10th round and warned them for talking to one another. Tiger gestured that Griffith had started it, as, indeed he had. Griffith appeared to be taunting Tiger throughout the fight.
Emile, spurred by the shrill magpie chirps of his mother and cousin Bernard in ringside seats, bobbed his head, bounced on his toes, flicked jabs and threw few solid punches.
This was the final fight of Tiger's career. He died 17 months later of liver cancer.
Before I forget, I do want to talk about Dick Tiger losing his middleweight crown to the great Emile Griffith in a controversial bout which led to Tiger moving up to light heavyweight. They fought two times, the first fight was in 1966 and the second fight was in 1970 and would be the last fight of Tiger's career. At the time of their first fight, Emile Griffith was a welterweight and had moved up to middleweight to challenge Tiger for his crown. If you're not familiar with Griffith, he is an all-time great in the sport, he was built like a damn tree trunk from the waste up, he had this huge and powerful upper body and shoulders, he was strong as hell and could box and punch. Back in 1962, Emile Griffith had tragically killed another fighter in the ring, the fighter's name was Benny "Kid" Paret and Griffith really struggled with Paret's death. What happened was, Emile Griffith was a homosexual man and Benny Paret had made some remarks about Griffith in that manner before a couple of their fights. This upset Griffith tremendously and when they fought for the last time, Griffith remembered those remarks and fought angry. He gave Paret a pretty good beating, in hindsight the referee Ruby Goldstein should have jumped in earlier to stop the fight, but as a result of the beating, Paret died from his injuries and it really ate away at Griffith for the rest of his life, I'll get more into that later in in the thread. But in 1966, Dick Tiger and Emile Griffith fought, Griffith came in giving away 10 pounds to Tiger, it was a good back and forth fight with momentum swings, a tough fight to judge, and Dick Tiger would be knocked down for the first time in his career in this fight when he went down to one knee in the 9th round.
Dick Tiger goes down to one knee in the 9th round. It was the first time in Tiger's career that he had been down.
SHRINKING POPPY'S NONBOUT WITH A RELUCTANT TIGER
THE MIDDLEWEIGHT TITLE CHANGED HANDS, BUT IT WAS HARD TO PICK A WINNER AS EMILE GRIFFITH PEDALED BACKWARD AND DICK TIGER PUNCHED MOSTLY AIR
Three miles from Grossinger's, that monument to conspicuous consumption, and in a setting that had all the economy and soft emptiness of an Andrew Wyeth painting, sat Candy MacFarlane—a quick, slick sparring partner—tapping out a bongo beat on a produce can. Pausing and pointing up to a room inside a farmhouse where Tiger was sleeping. Candy said: "He can move now, yeah. When he do move, you got to be out there. Way out, or...." Candy walloped the can with a right hand. Chickie Ferrara, Tiger's trainer, nodded and then said, smiling: "For what it's worth. A fighter must do two things. Be good to his mother and keep his tail off the floor. Who does them better than Tiger?"
What Ferrara appeared to be saying was what most of the prefight expertise eventually would decide: Dick Tiger, a dedicated (the mother bit) professional who had never been knocked down in 70 bouts, could not lose his middleweight title to Welterweight Champion Emile Griffith. Griffith—though just as decent to his mother and 13 other relatives besides—was considerably lighter than the Nigerian, and reputedly less indestructible. Yet last week in Madison Square Garden, Tiger did the opposite of what was expected of him. He lost his title to Griffith in a soporific fight that produced only two good rounds, and in so doing gave Griffith a chance to contest the legality of a preposterous New York State Athletic Commission law that declares "one man, one title." Afterward, a dejected Tiger said in his dressing room, "I am a stranger in this country. Once more they steal my title."
Tiger was not alone in his indignation. The press, which ruled (17-5) for Tiger in a poll prior to the official decision, relied on an old, unwritten boxing canon that the challenger must clearly take his title from the champion. This, obviously, Griffith did not do, but Tiger's defense was singularly spiritless. He looked devastating, but he was not; the savagery and intimidation of the old Tiger were not there. Unlike the Giardello fight, when he regained his title by using a sharp jab on the inside, Tiger did nothing positive; he merely reacted for 15 rounds, most of the time ineffectively, and did not "make" his fight. He proved, this time conclusively, that he cannot adjust to a boxer and that he still had not learned to "move," as Candy MacFarlane thought he had.
If the fight, which drew 14,934 spectators who were looking forward to a classic evening, was simply a nonfight, it did illustrate graphically that Griffith is not a limited fighter. When he cares, he can be very good. Three days before the fight Griffith turned to his cousin Bernard, who is also a handler, and said: "Bun-ard, I am a racehorse." He was. But most of all, Griffith, who has used his strength to manhandle the welterweight division, showed against Tiger that he alone—the subterranean Griffith which he never expresses—is responsible for his failure to approach the kind of greatness that he flashed in the eighth and ninth rounds.
Despite the pleading caterwaul of his mother, whom he calls Chubby Checkers, and Cousin Bun-ard at ringside, in the first seven rounds Griffith was doing as little as, if not less than, Tiger. He simply kept circling to his left, minimizing the power of Tiger's deadly left hook. The hook did catch Griffith in the fourth round, but it did no damage.
Then, in the eighth round, Griffith began to enliven the bass drum beat of the fight set by the plodding Tiger. He opened the action with a hook to the head and followed quickly with a right to the jaw. Tiger, a trifle wobbly, shook his head, then blinked his eyes as Emile scored another hard hook. Later Tiger caught a left-right combination and a solid right to the jaw. Tiger, it seemed, was dropping his guard and pulling his head away when Griffith threw his hook; the left side of his head was there.
Griffith continued the aggression in the ninth round. He began with a straight left, then pivoted back and chopped a right high on Tiger's left cheek. Tiger, for the first time in his career, dropped to one knee; although up immediately—and with his record still intact of never having had his posterior on the floor—lie was visibly stunned. A left-right-left combination almost sent Tiger down a second time, but he recovered before his knee touched the canvas.
It appeared now that it was just a matter of time, but in the 10th round Griffith seemed to become lost in that private world of his. A prizefight (theorizes Griffith's trainer and Co-Manager Gil Clancy) is a test of wills, and Emile had imposed his will on Tiger in the eighth and ninth rounds, but now, inexplicably, he was backing off and handing control of the fight back to Tiger.
Howie Albert, Griffith's other manager, suggested that Clancy slap Griffith in the face, as he had done in the first Benny Paret fight. "I rejected that, but I tried everything else," Clancy said later. "After the ninth I told him not to go wild but to keep up the pressure. I told him to throw not one hard punch, but combinations. Finally, in the 12th, I told Emile the fight was close, maybe even. I was screaming at him."
Griffith responded in the 13th, but by this time the 36-year-old Tiger was a whole man again and very much back in the fight. Tiger scored with a good hook in the 14th, and Griffith became cautious once again. The 15th was like most of the other rounds. Put a question mark by it.
The crowd response to Griffith's victory was not negative, but one doubts whether it would have been negative if Tiger had won. Said one spectator who had a large bet on Tiger: "I had Tiger winning 10-4-1, but I'm not upset. It was that kind of fight."
The same could not be said for Tiger, who, though hurt and bewildered, desperately clung to his poised, austere manner, even as a tear rolled down his cheek. "I am glad you were here to see this awful thing." Tiger said in his dressing room as Chickie Ferrara's trembling hand held an ice pack to his left cheekbone. "The winner should have the decision, but tonight the winner was the loser," he said slowly, smacking each word. "In Nigeria, where I come from, it takes two fighters to make a fight. But here in America I see that the man who runs wins the fight." One of his handlers interrupted, saying: "Yeah, the house fighter has the title now. But I guess that's not unexpected." He was referring to the opinion in boxing circles that Griffith is a Garden fighter.
"Still," continued Tiger, "when I go home the people will not stop calling me onyeizi [champion]. The officials should give the privilege to the champion. He cannot lose the title, the challenger must come and take it away. But Griffith—he is a nice boy, and I am not angry at him—he ran. If I were to throw a lot of punches, then I would be hitting nothing but air. He did not want to fight. Yes, he hurt me, but I did not get hurt bad. My pride is the only hurt in me." Quietly, and in disbelief, he concluded his sad monologue: "They took my title away from me."
Later, when the room was nearly empty, Tiger, bending over one of his countrymen in a wheelchair, felt the real pain of his defeat.
"I lose everything," the man said. "I have nothing."
"I tried my best," said Tiger. "I know, but I have nothing," said the man. "Give me something, my friend."
Tiger just shook his head sadly and turned to walk away.
"You must have something for me," said the man. Tiger turned to the man and made a motion as though he were cutting his wrist with a razor blade, indicating that the man could take his blood.
"No," said the man.
"Here," said Tiger, picking up his pale-blue boxing trunks. Then, hesitating, he said, "No, I promised these to my tailor." He then gave him his boxing gloves, and the man wheeled out of the room.
"He lost everything?" said Tiger. "I have nothing, either." Spoken like a true landlord.
Tiger, to be certain, has considerably more than nothing. Though he often looks even less than pedestrian in his battered hat and long, fly-front coat, he is a sort of prosperous Rotarian in Nigeria. There he owns a cosmetics shop, which his wife runs, and a 2,000-seat theater, and he has the respect that a leading real estate man and landlord would have in such a country. He is a penurious, unemotional man, who trained for the Griffith fight in an atmosphere that reflected his personality. He could never understand why Griffith, who is fond of flamboyant frippery and dancing, trained amid the gaudiness and action of the Concord Hotel. Doubtless he would find it even more difficult to understand why Griffith has nothing more to show for his eight years of punishment than 14 well-housed, well-fed relatives.
"How many relatives are there really?" Griffith's mother was asked in the dressing room.
"Let's see," she said, pausing to count them on her fingers. "Foeteen! Poppy has foeteen relatives."
"Why do you call him Poppy?"
"Because, next to me, he is the head of the house, the house's poppy," she said.
At this point, Griffith, breaking away from reporters, jumped off the table and charged over to his mother and began stomping his feet and screaming. "This is my night, my night!" he yelled, and then he asked a friend to escort his mother out.
The night did belong to Griffith, but despite his words he was not certain of it. He knew he had once again failed to produce a sensational fight, failed to be the kind of Griffith boxing keeps expecting him to be but has not seen since he killed Paret in their third fight.
"I really wanted a sensational fight," said Emile. "I needed it to win the Hickok belt [the award for the best athlete of the year] and I want that beautiful belt so badly. I kept thinking about it and all those beautiful, shining stones before my eyes. Then I thought, 'I don't want to lose that belt because I was careless,' so I boxed him."
"It made me sick," said Gil Clancy, talking of how Emile let Tiger get away. "He just would not believe what he saw. I have almost, but not quite, captured Emile's mind. When I am able to do this completely, then he will believe the obvious—he is a great fighter."
True, Griffith admitted, Tiger's reputation, the stories of his enervating punch and his strength, eventually had an effect. Griffith did not believe them, but more and more they intruded upon his thinking. Even after he knocked Tiger down, even after he proved that he was the stronger of the two on the inside, Griffith refused to believe in himself. "I just wasn't sure," said Griffith.
"Do you think you ran from Tiger?" he was asked.
"I run from no man, how you like that!" he said, angrily walking away from the circle of reporters.
"Emile Griffith," pondered Howie Albert, "will always be 16 years old."
"If Howie say that, that's right," said Griffith, when the crowd had faded. "I have done nothing but fight. I have never had time to grow up. Hey! Where's my mommy? Where's Bun-ard?"
"You sent her out," someone said.
"Oh, that's right," he remembered.
Outside, his exiled mother, wearing a pink hat and a pink flower as big as an apple on a black dress, stood along with Bun-ard and 12 other beaming people—waiting for their Poppy, who has yet to blossom.
I've really enjoyed talking about Richard Ihetu, aka Dick Tiger, I guess it's about time to wrap it up and get to the next fighter. My final thoughts on the great Dick Tiger, as far as being a fighter is concerned, in his prime he could go toe to toe with any middleweight in history in my opinion, the guy was always in phenomenal shape, he looked like he was chiseled out of granite, he was probably the strongest middleweight in history, and Dick Tiger didn't know the meaning of the word "retreat." I forget which fight it was, but a referee in one of Tiger's fights was quoted as saying that when he went to separate Tiger and his opponent, he was in shock because he could feel Tiger's power, his strength, as he separated them, that was how strong Tiger was. He could be outboxed, but no middleweight in history wins a straight up shootout with Tiger, if you chose to exchange with him, you were going to take a beating or be sat down. He was involved in some real man fights, fights that took years off of your career, see his wars with Henry Hank, Joey Giardello, and Gene Fullmer. Those were infernos, not fights, and what I mean by that is, fights where you and your opponent were going to take some serious damage, you were probably going to be pissing up blood afterwards, you were probably going to be scarred for life, I would compare fights like that to being inside an inferno for 12 rounds. You don't play boxing, you take serious beatings in this sport, beatings that make you wonder later on in life how the hell you survived them. You walk through fire in this sport. Nobody in the history of boxing was tougher than Dick Tiger, he didn't walk through fire, he lived in it, he thrived in it.
Some photos of the legendary Dick Tiger.
Dick Tiger and Henry Hank, My goodness that fight was a firestorm, both guys went scorched Earth on each other.
Dick Tiger was famous for his smile, he was as nice as can be outside the ring, but once he stepped through those ropes, there was nothing nice about him, he was focused on nothing but your destruction.
Dick Tiger vs Ace Armstrong.
Tiger tapes his hands.
Tiger vs Jose Torre.
Dick Tiger hits the speed bag, notice the intensity in his eyes.
Tiger vs Benvenuti.
Tiger shows off his strength with a young fan.
Tiger vs Griffith.
Tiger (left) walks the streets.
Dick Tiger has his way with Rubin Carter.
Tiger at Madison Square Garden, he fought a lot at MSG and was a fan favorite there.
Tiger vs Foster.
Tiger on the cover of Boxing Illustrated with Gene Fullmer.
Aaron Rodgers watching two Dolphins get it on.
Tiger in training.
Tiger focuses before his fight against Roger Rouse.
Tiger vs DePaula.
Notice the eyes of Tiger.
The great Dick Tiger.
Dick Tiger in his prime.
Rocky Graziano. One of the most exciting fighters in the history of the sport. A devastating puncher, he's ranked number 23 on Ring magazine's hardest punchers list, the fans loved him because he was an action packed fighter and this made him a big-time gate attraction. But he's most famous for his three fight series with Tony Zale "The Man of Steel", those were three of the biggest bloodbaths in the sports history, all three fights lasted a total of 15 rounds, had 7 knockdowns and ended with a brutal knockout. One thing about Rocky Graziano, he was balls to the wall, he was going to take you out or go out on his shield trying.
Rocky Graziano: Inarguably The Most Exciting Fighter Of All Time
Debates rage regarding the greatest boxer ever (Joe Louis, Ali, Armstrong, Kid Chocolate, Sugar Ray Robinson etc.). However, there’s no argument concerning the most exciting fighter of all-time: Rocky Graziano who won the Middleweight championship in 1947. A Graziano bout ensured fans would be rising from their chairs to witness a titanic battle – reminiscent of what those blood-soaked-gladiators endured in Roman times. There was no quit in the Brooklyn-born Thomas Rocco Barbella; he didn’t know the meaning of the word. His grit, determination and charisma is testified from his jaw-dropping record. Fifty-two of his sixty-seven victories during an eleven-year career (1942-1952) were accomplished via knockouts – an astounding 78% clip. This is just 10% below what the great Rocky Marciano tallied. Graziano’s career can be divided into three distinct phases. The first one consisted of 44 contest: starting with his March 1942 pro debut against Curtis Hightower and ending Oct 1944 versus Bernie Miller. Both bouts were held at Brooklyn’s Broadway Arena and finished with a 2nd round TKO. Only four points losses and three draws detracted from Rocky’s victory count, with twenty-six of his wins being knockout victories. With rare exceptions, the opposition was rather mediocre (27 of Rocky’s 44 opponents had a losing record). The second phase got off to an inauspicious start. Graziano dropped a unanimous decision to Harold Green (39-5-1) November 1944 at MSG, although Green was down for a “9” count with 15 seconds left in the final tenth round. Green also won via majority decision in their return set-to 6 weeks later. One year later, Graziano left nothing to chance in their third tilt. He closed the show with a third round KO. However, the action wasn’t yet finished, as the AP clearly noticed: “As referee Ruby Goldstein completed the count of ten, Green jumped to his feet, yelling that Rocky had hit him illegally on the break, and tore after Rocky. Goldstein threw his arms around Green and led him to his corner. There, Green eluded Goldstein and tore across the ring to Rocky’s corner. Irving Cohen and Whitey Bimstein, Rocky’s co-manager and trainer saw him coming and threw themselves before Rocky. By this time Sol Gold, Freddie Brown and Charles Duke, Green’s corner, had followed Green across the ring and joined in the shoving and pushing. Graziano threw his robe away and the two struggled to reach each other. It was not until the police entered the ring that order was restored.” Two 1945 TKO victories against the highly-ranked duo of Billy Arnold (29-1) and Al “Bummy” Davis (64-9-4) set the table for a Middleweight title elimination bout March 29, 1946 against the highly regarded Marty Servo (46-2-2) whose only two defeats were decision losses to Ray Robinson. Servo was the prohibitive favorite but got totally dominated during the two-round hammering, going down three times before referee Arthur Donovan ordered a halt. The showdown with champion Zale was held September 27, 1946 before a 40,000 crowd at Yankee stadium. It set the template for all three memorable fights: non-stop action, draining drama, constant offense and savage fury. Graziano was down for a five-count in the first round, but he came back and dropped Zale at the end of the second round for a three-count. By round five, Zale looked like a thoroughly beaten fighter. In as gutsy display of courage as ever witnessed, Zale showed the heart of a true champion and gathered the strength to fire a right to Graziano’s solar plexus while following it up with a perfectly-timed left hook to the chin. Graziano went down and didn’t rise until just after referee Ruby Goldstein had completed the ten count in the 6th round. Ring Magazine ranked it #5 in its 100 Fights of the Century. The rematch got delayed when the New York State Athletic Commission revoked Graziano’s boxing license on February 1947 and threatened to bar him for life for failure to report two $100, 000 bribe offers. The NBA, which controlled boxing virtually everywhere in the U.S. outside of New York, did not recognize NYSAC’s decision and ordered the rematch be held in Chicago later that year. A sell-out crowd of 20,000 at Chicago Stadium witnessed another -blood-drenched struggle – with the roles being reversed. Zale dominated the first round. By its end, the challenger’s right eye was swollen and closing rapidly. In the second round the pace picked up dramatically, as Zale attempted to capitalize on the injury, although “The Rock” stunned Zale at the end of the round. RG barely escaped round three. He suffered a knockdown and brutal assault along the ropes. The end seemed in sight. The ref could’ve stopped it after round four, as the wounds were severely affecting Graziano’s vision. Then a miracle happened. A coin pressed around Rocky’s right eye by his corner caused incredible pain, but prompted a marked improvement in his eyesight. Graziano underwent a primal reawakening, raining bomb after bomb down on the plucky champion in round five. Zale attempted a comeback in round six, but was fading fast as three flush rights sent him down and he barely climbed back to his feet. When the ref saw Zale draped helplessly over the middle strand of the ropes facing backwards, he halted the onslaught. Bleeding and exhausted “The Rock” told the sportswriters: “Hey mum, your bad boy done good. Somebody up there likes me.” The 1948 rubber match was another brutal affair. A leaping right by Zale put Rocky down for an “8” count in round one. Both warriors were looking to blast one another straight out of the ring. Graziano rallied in the second, evening things up with his aggressiveness. In the third, Zale’s relentless pummeling left Graziano staggering, propped up only by the ropes. As the action moved toward the ring center, fifteen unanswered body and chin shots put Rocky down for an “8”count. He arose, barely aware of his surroundings. The fight should’ve been stopped at this point as RG could barely stand on his feet. Then, a crunching right to the body and pulverizing left hook to the chin knocked Rocky unconscious: the same combination that had felled him in their first bout, Graziano always said of Zale: “He was the toughest fighter I ever met.” The final phase features 29-year old “The Rock” clawing his way back to another title shot. Four 1949 KO victories embellished off by a last minute TKO win over Charlie Fusari (60-4-1) on September 1949 at the Polo Grounds in a bout he was losing, demonstrated the fire still burned in Rocky’s gut. A reinvigorated Graziano tore through the division like a man possessed. He was victorious in 19 outings over 2 ½ years, while defeating his opponents with knockouts on thirteen occasions. Three victories in 1950 and 1951 over top-ranked Tony Janiro would snatch Rocky another title shot. The Graziano/Janiro trilogy was capped September 1951 at Detroit’s Olympia Stadium. On the brink of a decision loss, RG pulled off another adrenalin-drenched display of last minute heroics, grabbing a TKO with only 15 seconds remaining in the final round. Rocky was a massive underdog against the legendary Middleweight champ Sugar Ray Robinson on April 1952, but still managed to floor Robinson in the third round before getting whipped. When the definitive history of boxing is finally written, a separate chapter should be devoted to the massively crowd pleasing Rocky Graziano who gave the sport its most exciting moments.
Rocky Graziano grew up a troubled youth in the streets of East Manhattan, boxing probably saved his life. As a fighter, Graziano wasn’t in the business of backing down, as he set out to destroy the opposition with explosive, sledgehammer punches, he is considered one of boxing's greatest knockout artists. A crude puncher and true street fighter, Graziano mauled his opponents with a tireless attack and potent right hand. His ability to take a punch was legendary; opponents ultimately withered as they tried to stop a man who appeared made of rock.
Rocky Graziano was a champ...and a character
"Pound-for-pound, punch-for-punch, violence-for-violence, Graziano-Zale was by far the greatest rivalry in boxing history," says Steve Farhood, former editor-in-chief of Ring magazine, on ESPN Classic's SportsCentury series.
Today, for many, the name Rocky conjures up memories of the Sylvester Stallone movies. Rocky I tells the tale of a fighter that rises from obscurity to fight a seemingly invincible champion. In numerous sequels, Rocky fights war after war in the ring, winning some and losing some but always promoting the image of the struggling underdog.
Flash back to the forties and early fifties, some three decades before these movies' release, and we find the original Rocky. Graziano.
Graziano went 67-10-6 as a middleweight. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1991.
He too fought some wars in the ring, not always observing the rules as set down by the Marquis of Queensbury. The cinematic Rocky came from the tough streets of South Philadelphia and frequently had trouble mastering the nuances of English grammar. The real-life Rocky was a Noo Yawker through and through and not only had similar difficulties with the language but at times seemed to have created an entirely new dialect.
Rocky Graziano was the middleweight champion for 11 months during the late forties, but his three wars with Tony Zale plus his winning personality have contributed to making the Rock a ring legend.
Born Rocco Barbella on the Lower East Side of New York on Jan. 1, 1919, Rocky was the son of a third-rate former boxer named Fighting Nick Bob, who worked as a longshoreman. Because he was unmanageable to his parents, Rocky was sent to live with his grandparents as a kid before moving back home.
Rocky grew up on Manhattan streets stealing things that began with, in his words, " 'a' -- a piece of fruit, a radio, a car, anything that wasn't nailed down."
At 12, Rocky and his pals were caught jimmying a gum machine and it was off to the first of several stints in reform school. As his boyhood pal, former middleweight champion Jake LaMotta, said, "We were the first juvenile delinquents."
Dropping out of school in the sixth grade, young Barbella began running with a juvenile gang that specialized in petty theft and street fighting with rival gangs. By his own estimate, he spent at least half of his time before his twenty-first birthday in reform schools or jail cells.
In 1939, a friend took Rocky to Stillman's Gym in New York to see if he could turn Rocky's natural aggressions into more useful pursuits. After Rocky got his head handed to him by a more seasoned pugilist, he put the gloves aside temporarily. However, he soon put them back on and won the Metropolitan AAU welterweight title.
"I got a medal which I hocked for $15 and thought this can't be too bad a racket," he said. A budding professional was born.
After spending much of his adolescence in reform schools, protectories and the city jail, Rocky was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1942. After going AWOL several times and punching out a captain, he spent seven months in the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kans., and then was discharged dishonorably on April 29, 1943.
While in the Army, Rocky had become a professional fighter, taking the last name of his sister's boyfriend, Graziano, in order to avoid detection by the Army. He went 35-6-5 with 25 kayos from 1942-44. His career took off in 1945 when he knocked out top-rated middleweight Billy Arnold in the third round after being whipped over the first two.
He followed this spectacular victory with kayos over Al "Bummy" Davis and welterweight champ Freddie "Red" Cochrane twice in nontitle bouts. He knocked out Harold Green, who had defeated Rocky twice by decision at the end of the previous year, in the third round. After Rocky knocked out welterweight champ Marty Servo in the second round in a nontitle bout on March 29, 1946 -- sending Servo into retirement -- he was set for his first title fight.
It was against Zale on Sept. 27, 1946. Zale had spent the last four years in the service and his title had been frozen during that time. A crowd of 37,827 came to Yankee Stadium to see if the local hero could dethrone the Man of Steel from Gary, Ind.
Zale's manager, Sol Gold, was apprehensive going into the fight, citing Graziano's propensity for stretching the rules. Gold said Graziano had choked Cochrane with his left hand while clubbing him with his right, hit Davis while he was down and failed to go to a neutral corner against Servo.
Graziano, an 11-5 favorite, was floored in the opening round by a left hook. In the second round, he decked Zale with a series of rights, and only the bell saved the champ. Graziano continued to punish Zale for the next three rounds.
The sixth round began with Graziano landing more fierce rights. Suddenly, Zale, who thought he had broken his right thumb in the fourth round, unleashed a vicious right to the solar plexus that paralyzed Graziano. A left hook then sent the challenger to the canvas. By the time Graziano had regained his wind, referee Ruby Goldstein had counted 10. When Graziano rose, he was ready for more while Zale, although still the champion, had the look of the beaten fighter.
Soon after the fight, Graziano was suspended by New York State Athletic Commisioner Edward Egan for allegedly failing to report a $100,00 bribe to throw a bout against Cowboy Ruben Shanks. Graziano, though, was allowed to fight in other states and on July 16, 1947, he had his rematch with Zale in Chicago Stadium.
Zale took the fight to Rocky from the outset, swelling Graziano's right eye in the first round and decking him in the third. But again Graziano showed the heart that made him a crowd favorite as he rallied in the fifth round, taking some of the starch out of Zale.
Midway through the sixth, Rocky uncorked a series of rights that knocked down the champion. After Zale got up, Graziano drove him to the ropes with a stinging flurry of punches that caused the ref to stop the fight. The kid from the Lower East Side was the middleweight champion of the world.
The rubber match, on June 10, 1948 at Roosevelt Stadium in Newark, N. J., had little of the drama of the previous two fights. Zale, a 12-5 underdog, floored Graziano in the first round before knocking him cold with a left hook at 1:08 of the third to regain his crown.
Graziano's suffered a third round KO in his title bout against Sugar Ray Robinson on April 16, 1952.
After staying away from the ring for a year, Rocky returned and went 20-0-1 (with 17 knockouts) over the next three years. This earned Graziano another title shot, this time against Sugar Ray Robinson, considered by many to be the greatest fighter ever pound for pound.
On April 16, 1952 in Chicago Stadium, Rocky consistently connected in the first two rounds and scored a flash knockdown at the start of the third. The trip to the canvas served as Sugar Ray's wakeup call. Midway through the round he exploded with two hooks and a right to knock out Graziano.
"I've met many tough fighters in my long career," Robinson said, "but no one ever stung me more than Rocky did."
Graziano fought once more, losing a decision to Chuck Davey in September 1952, before retiring with a 67-10-6 record with 52 knockouts. He turned to show business and in 1953 got a job on the "Martha Raye Show" as a foil for the comedienne, becoming famous for his new take on the English language. Rocky remained in the public eye for the next three decades doing guest appearances on variety shows, as a spokesperson for the Claridge Casino and appearing in television commercials.
After Rocky wrote his autobiography, "Somebody Up There Likes Me" in 1956, it was turned into a popular movie starring Paul Newman.
Graziano's health began to decline in the late eighties. He suffered a stroke in April 1990 and a month later he died at 71 on May 22. At his funeral, former middleweight champ Vito Antuofermo said Rocky was "what a fighter should be. He was tough, could hit like a mule and had all the guts in the world."
Let's get down to it, Rocky Graziano is most famous for his three fights with Tony Zale, these three fights are some of the best fights in boxing history that are still talked about to this day. When these two stepped in the ring with each other, it was damn the torpedoes.
Graziano vs Zale I
Best of A Century:
Fight of The Decade: 1940-1949
Tony Zale Vs. Rocky Graziano 1 Sept. 27, 1946
It was Rock vs. Steel. The fiery, aggressive Rocky Graziano with the devastating right hand against Tony Zale, the "Man of Steel", with the Iron chin and will to match.
Rocky Graziano, the popular slugger from Manhattan's Lower East Side, was a big favorite to take the Middleweight Championship from the older, rustier, Tony Zale.
After all Zale had not fought in five years due to a stint in the Navy during the 2nd World War. Zale had won the NBA Middlweight title by kayoing Al Hostak in 13 rounds in 1940. He unified the title by decisioning George Abrams, the NY title claimant, the following year. Then came Pearl Harbor and a long period of inactivity. Meanwhile, the 9 years young challenger had been a busy fighter with recent kayo's over Al "Bummy" Davis, Freddie Cochrane, and Marty Servo.
A throng of some 40,000 screaming fans came into Yankee Stadium expecting a new champion to be crowned. Instead they were proud witnesses to one of the greatest fights of all time. Zale demonstrated early that he was a champion who came to win. A classical left hook landed flush and dropped Rocky for a four count in the first round. One of the most brutal slugfests in history was on.
Rocky came storming back with the whirlwind rage of a mighty thunderstorm. Rocky pressed the attack, firing a volley of lefts and rights that had the champion reeling around the ring by the end of the first exciting round.
Graziano caught Zale in the 2nd with a flurry of power punches that had Tony on the brink of defeat. Zale's lip was spit, his face badly swollen. In the third, a series of puninshing right hands drove Zale into the ropes. He was literally pounded into the canvas by Rocky's piston-like right hand blows. He was hammered like a piece of steel being forged at one of the steel mills from Zale's hometown of Gary, IN. Zale, amazingly pulled himself up at three. He was in serious trouble and had to be dragged to the corner by his seconds as the bell ended the third round.
It takes fire to make steel. Graziano had the fire and Zale was molded into a "man of steel" that night. The two warriors continued to pound away in the fourth and fifth. At the end of five rounds it looked like Zale was finished. The younger man had finally wore him down. He was ready to be taken. In fact many of the fans were calling for the fight to be stopped.
Then suddenly in the sixth, Zale, with Iron fists, took the fight right out of Rocky with a killer right to the heart. Graziano went down. He got up but was still hurt. Zale then shot a perfect left hook to the chin that dropped Graziano, well, like a rock. Graziano later wrote in his autobiography, "That jolt shot from my head to my feet. The feeling went out of my feet and I went whang on the canvas like I didn't have any feet at all." Referee Ruby Goldstein counted him out.
The Ring Magazine International Ratings panel named this fight the fourth greatest fight of all time.
It was the beginning of a great rivalry, for Rocky would come back to win the title in the rematch the following year, in another thriller, that also ended in 6 rounds. Then Zale would regain the title in the rubbermatch in 1948.
The headlines after Graziano-Zale I
The first Graziano-Zale fight was a was a battle for the ages, the sequel was a blood soaked inferno.
Rocky Graziano and Tony Zale during their rematch, both spattered in blood.
July 16, 1947: Zale vs Graziano II
In 1945 Rocky Graziano stood at the precipice of ruin. Just 26-years-old, with a record of 35-6-5, he had lost two matches in a row, two high profile defeats at Madison Square Garden, against fellow New Yorker Harold Green. But instead of regrouping and taking on some soft touches, the decision was made to gamble Rocky’s entire career on a single fight, another main event at the Garden, this time against impressive young power puncher Billy Arnold. If Rocky suffered a third consecutive defeat it meant the end of his days as a headliner; everything was riding on this one match. A showdown between two heavy hitters, it was a big draw for the Garden, but Rocky was a six-to-one underdog.
And as early as the second round it appeared the odds-makers called it right. Only 18-years-old, Arnold was a sensation thanks to his crushing power, scoring 27 stoppage wins in his first 28 fights. In round two he had Rocky teetering on the edge, seemingly one punch away from disaster, but Graziano survived and then in the third, out of nowhere, he slammed home his big right hand. Arnold crashed to the canvas; he rose but went down two more times before the referee decided enough was enough. The gamble had paid off; Rocky had restored his reputation as one of the fight game’s most explosive and exciting performers. Later that same year, after scoring back-to-back wins over Freddie Cochrane, he got revenge on Green with a one-punch, third round KO and it was official: Graziano had earned a shot at the world title.
Fortune had a way of smiling on the bad boy from Brooklyn with the whiplash right whose real name was Thomas Barbella. No one will ever argue a case for “The Rock” being a brilliant boxer or one of the sport’s great middleweights. But he was a tremendous competitor and one of boxing’s best “catchers,” constantly attacking and happy to absorb five or six punches to land one of his own. Plus, Rocky had an excellent manager in Irving Cohen who, according to scribe Lester Bromberg, always looked for matches against smaller men, some pundits at the time referring to Graziano as “the best middleweight in the welterweight division.”
Time and again Rocky snatched victory from the jaws of defeat with that potent right hand and now he had put together a streak of big wins over Arnold, Green, Cochrane, Al “Bummy” Davis, and Marty Servo, Graziano enjoying a weight advantage in most of these tilts, and all of them attracting crowds to Madison Square Garden. And it was Rocky’s good luck to have waiting for him at the top of the middleweight division one Tony Zale who, as it turned out, was a match made in heaven for the Brooklyn battler, in part because the champion was 35-years-old and a long time removed from serious competition. A little incident called World War II had interrupted Tony’s reign; his match against Rocky was the champion’s first title defense in almost five years.
And so it proved to be the kind of fight Graziano needed, an all-out, toe-to-toe shootout, and even in defeat the fight only boosted Rocky’s profile and marketability. It was, and is, regarded as one of the greatest slugfests in boxing history. High excitement charged the huge Yankee Stadium crowd from the opening bell as the two tough middleweights wasted no time in throwing their hardest shots. Zale floored Rocky with a wild left hook in the opening frame but the challenger scrambled to his feet and tore back in for more. It was non-stop, fast-paced, toe-to-toe brawling with Graziano dominating the second round, splitting open Zale’s lip and decking him at its end, the bell saving the champion from what looked like certain defeat.
The younger and fresher challenger continued to attack in the third, chasing Zale all over the ring and landing heavy punches, but to everyone’s astonishment “The Man Of Steel” came back in round four. Digging both fists to Rocky’s belly and backing his man up, Tony rode the momentum into the fifth before the tables suddenly turned again and it was Graziano’s turn to unleash a two-fisted attack, the champion now hurt and seemingly one punch away from oblivion.
When the bell rang to end round five, Zale, who initially staggered towards the wrong corner, appeared finished. Dazed and bleeding copiously from the nose, he blankly stared at his cornerman, Art Winch, who, likely thinking the next round might be Zale’s last, told his fighter, “He’s more tired than you are, Tony. He’s starting to wing ’em. Take a chance with him this round.”
Tony did and thus saved his title. Graziano, looking to end it, attacked, throwing a long fusillade of blows, and when he stopped to take a breather, Zale, one of boxing’s all-time best body punchers, stepped in and sunk home a booming right hand to the challenger’s belly. The punch froze Rocky and he never saw the left hook that exploded on his jaw and sent him to the floor where he was counted out for the first time in his career.
It had been an all-time great slugfest and a miraculous win for Zale, who at the end appeared as surprised as anyone with the result. Rocky credited that right hand to the body with “[knocking] the wind out of me. It straightened me up, tightened me all over, so it even clogged up my ears. Then I heard ‘eight, nine, ten’ … it all came so fast.”
That electrifying first Zale vs Graziano clash was of course The Fight Of The Year for 1946, and no time was wasted in putting together a rematch, initially scheduled for March at Madison Square Garden. But the New York State Athletic Commission suspended Graziano’s license for his failure to report a bribe attempt, a charge later thrown out for lack of evidence. Zale vs Graziano II was rescheduled for July in Chicago and Tony’s hometown fans from nearby Gary, Indiana helped Chicago Stadium set a new indoor gate record, with some nineteen thousand filling the stands. And if the fans of “The Man Of Steel” didn’t leave happy that night, they still got more than their money’s worth as Zale and Graziano once again put on a spectacular slugfest.
This time it was Graziano who appeared to have too much to overcome as the first round saw Zale take charge and land a series of punishing blows to both body and head and by the end of the round the challenger’s right eye was swollen and closing fast. The champion only picked up the pace in the second as he sought to capitalize on the injury, but then Rocky got home his right hand, the punch stunning Zale and at the bell Tony went to the wrong corner.
Reflecting the ferocity of the Chicago rematch, Rocky and Zale are spattered in crimson.
But round three was all Zale; he inflicted a nasty cut over Graziano’s left eye, scored a knockdown, and then pinned Rocky to the ropes with a fearsome assault. At the bell, the challenger’s face was a mask of blood and the referee told Rocky he would stop the fight if he continued to take such punishment. Despite this, round four was more of the same as the breakneck pace continued and Zale looked to end it, while Graziano was clearly bothered by his wounds and having trouble with his vision.
Before round five Graziano’s corner took drastic action to restore their man’s sight, breaking the swelling around his right eye and pressing it with a coin. Perhaps the pain of these procedures awakened something primal in Rocky, or maybe his improved sight gave him newfound energy, for the challenger tore out of his corner and attacked with abandon in round five, and indeed his accuracy was much improved as he dramatically reversed the momentum and found the range for his bombs, bringing loud exclamations from the crowd as he landed one huge punch after another. To everyone’s astonishment, the fighter who had appeared finished just minutes before was now in charge and inflicting serious damage.
Zale attempted to rebound at the start of round six, but he was fading and Rocky knew it. The challenger kept charging forward behind his cannon of a right, battering Tony from one side of the ring to the other. Three flush right hands sent Zale down, and though he gamely climbed to his feet, he was almost driven out of the ring by the fury of Rocky’s follow-up attack. Draped over the middle strand of the ropes, his back turned to Graziano, Zale was defenseless and the referee halted the match at 2:10 of the round.
It was another shocking and thrilling come-from-behind victory, not to mention another Fight Of The Year, but this time it was Graziano saving a huge win from the fire. Fortune had once again smiled on “The Rock,” the new middleweight champion of the world. Bleeding and exhausted he then uttered what would become his immortal tagline: “Hey, mum, your bad boy done good. Somebody up there likes me.”
The end of the great battle.
A third and final Zale vs Graziano clash took place the following year in Newark, New Jersey, and while it too was a terrific war, with Zale winning by a clean and decisive third round knockout, all agreed it did not equal the first two torrid battles for sheer excitement. However, of the three legendary clashes in this all-time great rivalry, it was the only one to be filmed. Tragically, we have no footage of the first great war, and of the second we have only some poor quality film shot from the stands which omits the fight’s conclusion. And so we must rely on the written testaments from the sportwriters of the day, who unanimously hailed the first two Zale vs Graziano battles as among the most action-packed and exciting in all of boxing history.