Robinson, who had a total of 202 fights, fought in Chicago 13 times, including the famed St. Valentine`s Day Massacre in Chicago Stadium on Feb. 14, 1951, when he stopped Jake LaMotta in 13 rounds to win the middleweight title. LaMotta won only one of his six fights with Robinson and once observed, ”I fought Sugar Ray so many times it`s a wonder I didn`t get diabetes.”
IN 1941, HIS FIRST YEAR AS A pro, LaMotta lost a 10-round decision to Chicago`s Nate Bolden at Marigold Gardens. A skillful fighter, Bolden never came close to winning a title and never made much money.
”Today,” Bentley says, ”he`d be one of the top fighters in the world. He`d be a million-dollar fighter, that`s how good Nate Bolden was.”
Robinson compiled one of the most incredible boxing records in any era and is generally recognized as the best of his time. Amazingly, Robinson was fighting main events from 1940 until 1965. In this period he won the welterweight title once, the middleweight crown five times and appeared in Chicago in 14 bouts.
”Sugar Ray Robinson would have beaten Marvin Hagler, Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran and Thomas Hearns on successive nights,” Bentley says. ”Sugar Ray Leonard wouldn`t even make a good sparring partner for Ray Robinson at his peak.”
A man of great talent and limited humility, Robinson inspired one sportswriter to describe him as the ”only man I ever saw who could strut while sitting down.” In one of his many comebacks, Sugar Ray knocked out a balding Bobo Olson in Chicago Stadium in 1955 to regain the middleweight crown and then said: ”The Lord was with me. I`m a great Christian.”
Distinguished by so many tattoos that Ring Lardner`s son John once called him ”a profusely illustrated Hawaiian,” Olson had a wife and six children, which painted a beautiful picture of domesticity. That was until it turned out he had another six children by a woman who was not his wife. At that point Red Smith dubbed him ”The Father of the Year,” Sugar Ray knocked him silly and he soon gave up boxing to be a bartender.
The ageless Sugar Ray, on the other hand, continued battling for another 10 years and finally, after 15 fights in 1965, quit for good at the age of 45. When he was nearly 40 years old he was decisively whipping such top campaigners as Gene Fullmer and Carmen Basilio, who were in grammar school when Robinson turned pro in 1940. Sugar Ray knocked out Fullmer in Chicago Stadium in 1957. He beat Basilio to a pulp in the Stadium in 1958. At the time of Robinson`s first retirement in 1952, he had lost only three bouts out of 137. In a career that ultimately lasted 25 years and included 202 fights, he was stopped only once. That was by Joey Maxim, who outweighed him by 18 pounds when Robinson went after Maxim`s light-heavyweight crown. They fought in 96-degree heat in New York on June 25, 1952. With Robinson leading on all scorecards after 13 rounds, he succumbed to heat prostration and couldn`t come out for the next round.
Maxim was a courageous, tough-chinned boxer with a gentle punch. His punch was so weak that when a sportswriter asked him about his wife`s suit for divorce charging cruelty, Maxim replied: ”You know that can`t be true. I can`t hit hard enough to hurt her.” A Clevelander, Maxim fought in Chicago 25 times. Under the guidance of Doc Kearns, Maxim boxed a raft of top contenders and champions while ducking the challenges of the ever-youthful Archie Moore. Kearns, whose managerial career spanned five decades, was unsurpassed in his unique talent for quickly scooping up large amounts of cash and spending it just as fast.
One of Kearns` tigers, Mickey Walker, lost only once in 12 Chicago bouts, a fight with Tommy Loughran for the light-heavyweight title on March 28, 1929. It was the first fight card ever held in the Stadium. Walker scored a 10-round decision over King Levinsky among those dozen fights. Walker retired in 1939 after 163 bouts and became an artist. Kearns became broke until he could find another battler.
To nobody`s surprise, when Archie Moore finally won Maxim`s light-heavyweight title in 1952, Kearns emerged as the new champ`s manager after the bout. Seasoned through years of campaigning all over the world, Moore was a remarkable example of ageless durability in a business ordinarily limited to the young. Probably 39 years old when he won the title from Maxim, Moore continued boxing until 1963. According to his mother, he was born in 1913, making him 50 years old at his retirement.
MOORE ALWAYS SPOKE fondly of Kearns and his skill in attracting bountiful quantities of money. ”Give him 200 pounds of steel wool,” Moore said with a smile, ”and he`ll knit you a stove.”
Doggedly persistent, Moore whipped a collection of tough brawlers at an age when most boxers had long since retired to leaf through their yellowing press clippings. Like many top boxers, he described Chicago`s Bob Satterfield as one of the hardest hitters he ever faced.
Possessor of a thundering punch, Satterfield had a jaw seemingly constructed of purest Dresden China and frequently fell into a coma when an opponent massaged his chin too vigorously. This was no reflection on his courage. He`d fight just as long as he was conscious, but often that was only a moment or two. It made for interesting evenings for fans who preferred short bouts, but it was extremely frustrating for the oddsmakers.
Satterfield`s manager, Ike Bernstein, was unhampered by any concern for his tiger`s welfare and would have matched him with a B-52 if he could have found a way to get the boxing commission to sanction it. In all, Satterfield was stopped something like 13 times during his professional career but, because of his heavy artillery, he was always dangerous. He commanded extreme respect from opponents, who included many of the world`s top heavyweights and light heavyweights.
Despite Satterfield`s spotty record, Ike kept him busy during the `50s. Fight fans would often look up from a swallow of beer to see their hero bouncing off the canvas. Between counting his money and dragging Satterfield to his corner, Bernstein stayed in top condition with only the slightest trace of muscle-boundness.
And then there was Fritzie Zivic.
”Fritzie Zivic was an entertaining fighter who boxed in Chicago nine times,” Bentley says. ”He fought Milt Aron at the Coliseum in 1939 and knocked Milt down seven times but couldn`t keep him on the floor. Aron finally knocked out Zivic, who claimed the count was so fast it should have been put to a boogie-woogie beat. That was a year before Zivic won the welterweight title. Aron was a rabbi`s son from Dubuque. He was very quiet and shy (but) an excellent fighter.”
A master of unsportsmanlike conduct, Zivic could thread a needle with his thumb. Opponents complained that he should have worn a boxing glove on top of his head. He appeared in 230 fights during an 18-year career.
Zivic was a good friend of another superb fighter, Billy Conn, who almost won the heavyweight title from Joe Louis in 1941. Conn`s battle plan was to keep moving and outbox the champ, causing Louis to utter his oft-quoted line: ”He can run, but he can`t hide.”
Conn followed the strategy so successfully that he was leading the Brown Bomber after 12 rounds. But he got careless in the 13th and was knocked out. Louis watched the fight pictures a few days later, and when a reporter asked how he enjoyed them, Louis replied: ”They had a real nice ending.”
In November 1948 Louis and Conn boxed a six-round exhibition in the Amphitheatre. Conn was 31, short on money and thinking of a comeback. Always generous, Louis asked the promoter how much Conn was getting. When he heard the amount, Louis said, ”Take 5 percent off my end and give it to Billy.”
Although he was a Detroit native, Louis fought his first bout in Chicago in 1934 and 10 of his first 12 professional fights here. He never fought a preliminary. His first fight was a one-round knockout over Jack Kracken on July 4, 1934. He was paid $52. He went up to $60 for his next fight, again in Chicago, against Willy Davis. In his seventh fight he beat Adolph Wiater here and finally made $200.
Louis won the heavyweight title in Comiskey Park, June 22, 1937, with an 8th-round knockout over Jimmy Braddock. Tony Galento fought Arturo Godoy,
”the Mild Bull of the Pampas,” on the undercard that night. As with all of Galento`s fights, it was very rough. Both combatants were equally unsportsmanlike, but Godoy was more effective. Tony even hit the referee with a wild left in the first round and accused the official of deciding against him for that reason. He happily admitted his rough tactics.
A colorful character who trained on beer and ravioli, Galento battled his way to a shot at Louis` heavyweight title in 1939. He got knocked out, but only after he had Louis on the floor.
After the bout, Galento complained that he lost because he got something in his eye. That moved one writer to report that that was undoubtedly a 6-ounce glove that Louis wore as part of his evening`s ensemble.
”CHICAGO HAS PRODUCED countless top fighters-champions and near champions,” Bentley says. ”Barney Ross would be my first choice for the best Chicago fighter I ever saw. Jackie Fields would be second and Johnny Bratton would be third. One of the greatest fights I ever saw in Chicago was between Bratton and Charley Fusari in the Stadium in 1951.
”Boxing in the old days was totally different,” Bentley muses. ”It was an event to go to Chicago Stadium to the fights. The women wore gorgeous little fur jackets, and the men wore Italian silk suits. It was Fritzel`s for dinner before and the Chez Paree afterward for a gala evening. I can`t watch fights today because with the five different organizations they have, everybody`s a world champion. There are 17 different weight divisions now, so we have 85 so-called `world champions.` Years ago, under the National Boxing Association, there were eight divisions with one champion in each.”
”Ironically, the money is the greatest in boxing history,” Bentley adds. ”However, I don`t see any fighers today who could hold their own with Joe Louis, Tony Zale, Willie Pep, Henry Armstrong, Johnny Bratton and many other stars of years past. Joe Louis would have whipped Mike Tyson quickly and easily. He would have done the same with Buster Douglas or Evander Holyfield. In those years, Larry Holmes would have been a preliminary fighter. Today many semi-skilled boxers make more in one night than many boxing greats made in an entire career.”
