“RIOT AT MSG” and “WINDY CITY JEW VS. BROADWAY TONY”
#794/#793
794. DICK TIGER VS JOSE TORRES
LIGHT-HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP FIGHT
MAY 16, 1967
MADISON SQUARE GARDEN
QUALITY OF PLAY—6.52
DRAMA—7.27
STAR POWER—7.72
CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—7.85
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—7.03
LOCAL IMPACT—7.42
TOTAL: 43.81
“RIOT AT MSG”
As seen in #808 on the countdown, 36-year old fighter Dick Tiger (aka Richard Ihetu, the Pride of Nigeria), had been stopped by the great Emile Griffith for the middleweight crown, prompting the African prince to move up, belatedly, to light-heavyweight. It worked in Tiger’s favor; no longer operating under a strict diet to make the 160-pound cutoff, he was liberated at 175 pounds. His body, always a physical marvel worthy of sculpture, filled out slightly and added defensive weight to his frame. But as Tiger turned 37, age questions nipped at his heels like a hound pack chasing foxes—he was thought too old to compete for another title, regardless of weight class.
But in December of 1966 Tiger surprised the champ, 1956 Olympic silver medallist and army vet Jose Torres, over 15 decisive rounds, helped in part by Torres suffering from pancreatitis. The win made Tiger champ in his second class, and the middle/light heavy combo had only ever been achieved once before. The win also earned him newfound respect from the media and worship from the middle-aged fight fan.
A return encounter was inevitable, especially once Torres’ friends in the media talked about how affected he was by the stomach ailment. So Tiger and Torres met once again at Madison Square Garden, Tiger’s twelfth brawl at MSG. The Nigerian was by now an adopted favorite son in the City, training at a midtown gym and running his daily laps around the Central Park reservoir.
Torres had a considerable backing as well, swelled by the City’s large Puerto Rican population. Torres was not just a native son of the “51st State” but a classy, verbose, and extremely thoughtful man. The great Japanese avant-garde filmmaker, Hiroshi Teshigahara, was moved to make not one but two documentaries about Torres. Jose also regularly contributed articles about the fight game and would go on to have a column in the Post, co-author a book about Muhammad Ali and write one himself about Mike Tyson. “He prefers literary salons to El Barrio,” wrote Bob Lipsyte in the Times. Torres would also become well-known as the New York State Athletic Commissioner in the 80s, and ran the World Boxing Organization for a time. He even once sang the National Anthem before a fight.
The diehard fight fans of Puerto Rico had been courted by MSG officials since the 50s, but a pair of riots in the crowd after a PR fighter named Frankie Narvaez lost there gave organizers pause. Still, they weren’t going to pass up on this payday, and the crowd of 12,674, while not a sellout, was a good turnout for the era.
Fight night was exactly five months after the first Tiger-Torres go-round, on Tuesday night, May 16, 1967. As it was just a couple of months shy of Tiger’s 38th birthday, while Torres was still a sprightly 31, and the fact Torres outweighed the champ 173-167, the challenger was considered a 9-5 favorite to win back his title, according to City bookmakers. This was to be Tiger’s 75th pro fight in a career that began in Nigeria against the likes of guys named Easy Dynamite, Koko Kid and Lion Ring.
The battle was fought mostly in the vicinity of Torres’ ribcage. The challenger started well, looking much better than he had in the previous loss to Tiger. But as Jim McCulley wrote in the News, Tiger “took a couple of good shots to the head early in the fight just to get inside of Jose’s punches. Dick’s plan worked almost immediately. Jose tried his best to stay away, but Dick kept pressing him.” Torres couldn’t stay out of range, and Tiger banged away at the body with both hands, piling up points and rounds. Torres was often left gasping for breath by the bell, desperately trying to pull air into his swollen and bruised torso.
The champ was thus well ahead by round 12, but Torres was a former champ for a reason, and he came roaring out, seemingly from nowhere, fully restored and with a new approach—all-out attack. He took the fight right at Tiger, brushing aside the bodywork and pounding the away with brutal right hands that sent electric currents throughout the Garden, especially to the Puerto Rican fans, who were going wild with every connection. They raised the roof when Tiger dropped to one knee, only to change the cheers to boos when it was ruled a slip.
Torres’ all-out milling opened a cut along Tiger’s right eye and under his left socket, and the blood stained Jose’s white gloves as he pressed home the opening. He staggered Tiger to end the 12th, and at the start of the 13th the crowd was the loudest it had been all night. Torres dominated the ensuing round with steady combinations; by the end of the 14th it was Tiger who appeared ready to fall. But he found his own mettle deep inside during the final minute on his stool, and came out to blunt Torres’ charge across the ring with a pounding right to the jaw. Torres shook it off and pushed Tiger around the ring, his extra pounds at last fully telling. Tiger held him off until the bell, at which point Torres had clearly won the last four rounds.
Would it be enough? The partisan crowd believed so, serenading Torres as the once and future champ as they awaited the decision. One judge, Joe Eppy, agreed, scoring it 8-7, Torres. But the other, Johnny Dran, had it 8-7 to Tiger. With the judges split, the referee, Harold Valan, cast the deciding vote—8-7, “for the winner…and still light-heavyweight champion, Dick Tigerrrrrrrr….”
Alas, Valan hadn’t got anything out past ‘still’ when the vociferous crowd made its verdict known, courtesy of a thrown bottle of pint wine in the general direction of Valan. In fairness, most people scoring the fight at ringside thought Tiger the clear winner, and it was only Torres’ late rally that made it interesting. Many were surprised at the split decision. But that didn’t settle the folks in the cheap seats, who once prompted began to bombard the ring with chairs, oranges, hats, umbrellas, batteries, lipstick containers, shoes, bags of peanuts—anything they could get their hands on. Torres, of course, was just as endangered as Valan and Tiger. The champ raced for the locker room, while the defeated challenger ducked piteously under a wooden chair for protection.
“At least 11 persons were injured, cut when the bottles smashed on the marble floor of the arena after long, almost lazy flights from the balcony,” reported Lipsyte in the Times.
Garden security told the Times there were about 30 fights going on even as the ring was barraged. There was no definitive evidence the Puerto Rican contingent in the crowd was responsible for the riot, but supposition was strong. That was the attitude taken by the Garden afterwards, when officials there suspended Puerto Rican fighters from being featured in a main event for an indefinite “cooling off period” (it turned out to be brief—the money was too good).
For his part, Torres considered retirement, in order to write full time, citing Norman Mailer’s recommendation. “I fight good, but I don’t win the fights,” Torres told Dave Anderson of the Times. “That’s why I want to quit.”
AFTERMATH:
Torres didn’t quite quit—he fought twice more, both victories, before finally calling it a career in 1969, with a record of 41-3-1.
Tiger defended his title once more before losing it shocking fashion to Bob Foster, who plastered the champ with a stunning one-punch knockout in May, 1968. When Tiger died prematurely in 1972, Torres wrote a lovely obituary for him.
WHAT THEY SAID:
“I thank God I got out safely. From the bottles, I mean.”
—Dick Tiger
FURTHER READING:
Sting Like A Bee by Jose Torres
VIDEO:
793. BARNEY ROSS VS TONY CANZONERI
LIGHTWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP FIGHT
SEPTEMBER 12, 1933
POLO GROUNDS
QUALITY OF PLAY—7.53
DRAMA—8.35
STAR POWER—6.09
CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—7.75
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—6.86
LOCAL IMPACT—7.24
TOTAL: 43.82
“WINDY CITY JEW VS. BROADWAY TONY”
Three all-time great fighters, three ethnicities. Irishman Jimmy McLarnin, Italian Tony Canzoneri, and Jew Barney Ross. They were the Holy Trinity of Depression Era boxing, vying between them not only for the lightweight crown but for ghetto bragging rights among the immigrant crowd they represented. “Tough Tony,” “The Baby-Faced Assassin,” and the “Pride of the Ghetto” played up their backgrounds all the way to the ring apron—McLarnin would enter the squared circle to the strains of an Irish jig, Canzo to a tarantella, and Ross to the weepy “My Yiddishe Momme.” Their eight combined fights with one another thus became not merely ring combat but holy wars, each fight taking on the heightened atmosphere of a crusade.
In June, 1933, Ross and Canzoneri tangled at the Chicago Stadium, in Barney’s hometown. A denizen of the Maxwell Street Slums on the Southside, Ross grew up fist by fist with leather-tough Jewish gangsters like Jacob “Greasy Thumb” Guzik and Sammy “Nails” Morton. Like Ross’ parents, these men had fled the pogroms of the Russian Pale to hack out a living in America, at times literally (Barney’s dad fled the cossacks of Brest-Livotsk only to be murdered in his Windy City grocery). Ross was also well-acquainted with the Italian mob in Chicago—he was said to be a particular favorite of Scarface himself, Al Capone.
Fearless and inhumanly fast, Ross was a natural fighter, and he rose swiftly through the ranks at 135 pounds. The only boxer who could match his ring quickness was Canzoneri, born and raised in Louisiana but a longtime resident of NYC. Tony fought all the time, and unlike many of his cohorts kept mainly to the rings in the five boroughs, earning him an honorary son status among Gotham fight fans. Another facet of his popularity was Canzo’s unorthodox style—he kept his hands down below his waist, in defiance of all boxing tutelage, and maintained a bobbing, almost Jack-in-the-Box manner that frustrated bedazzled opponents. “His tricks will probably die with him,” said Benny Leonard, the great Jewish fighter-turned-referee of the era, as he warned Ross, his protege, not to try and imitate Tough Tony.
Canzoneri was the slight favorite, as the more known quantity, despite Ross’ home ring advantage, and he dominated the early rounds, bloodying Barney’s eyes and mouth and popping away whenever Ross stalked him. But the Chicago ruffian found his inner demon over the last frames of the bitter ten-rounder, and took an extremely close decision, and the belt, from Canzoneri.
Tony complained long and loud about a hometown judgement, and many in the press felt likewise. A rematch in New York was paramount, and soon—it was scheduled for Tuesday night, September 12, 1933, just three months after the first brawl, this time outdoors at the Polo Grounds in Harlem.
The Jew vs Italian motif remained strong in the pre-fight publicity, not that a competition between two closely matched and charismatic athletes like Tony and Barney needed it. But Canzoneri had a Jewish manager, Sammy Goldman; Ross an Italian cutman. There was no personal animosity between the two. So the fight became as much New York vs Chicago, Big Apple vs Second City.
Ross may have been the pride of the Chi-Town Jewry, but NYC was Zion. So it was appropriate that the Polo Grounds looked like a synagogue that night. A large pageant called “The Romance of a People,” a Hebrew bible spectacular, was coincidentally scheduled for the next night (in answer to recent pogroms in Nazi Germany) at Coogans Bluff, and September 14th was officially “Jewish Day” according to NYC Mayor John O’Brien. So when fans from the Lower East Side or Hell’s Kitchen took the 8th Avenue subway uptown and walked to the Grounds (guided by paper arrows affixed to lampposts), their first sights upon entry were enormous panoramas of Masada and the Miracle of Chanukah.
The scene should have made Ross feel welcome, but he was nervy. The immensity of the crowd threw him. Some 50,000 filled the ballpark, including the Sultan himself, Babe Ruth, and Al Jolson, Governor Herbert Lehman, and several members of FDR’s presidential cabinet. The ushers were players for the Giants—the football Giants—dressed in full uniform, though guiding fans in the grandstand must have been tricky with helmets on. It was a big night, on Tough Tony’s turf. Izzy Kline, one of Barney’s seconds in his corner, made a joke about this being a ripe target for Nazi thugs, given the number of Jews in attendance. Not haha funny, but it seemed to relax Ross.
Right away both fighters committed to all-out attack, as though desperate to avoid any potential controversy in decision. It was scheduled for 15 rounds this time, but neither man opted for stamina, despite it being quite warm. Both bulled forward, hit off the break, did whatever took to win now. Ross was warned for cuffing behind Canzo’s head; Tony had three separate deductions for low blows.
The suffering mounted in both corners, but neither could land the decisive blow. Ross was considered the classier fighter, Tony the stronger, but as Paul Gallico noted in the News, as the fight wore on Barney “outslugged Tony, beat him in the rallies and exchanges, made him stop, and came back when stung or hurt, so much so that he offset every advantage Tony could get.” In the final round, Canzo blasted Ross with an overhand right, but Barney just shrugged it off and walloped Tony, screaming Yiddish curses with every blow. Tony swore back, through puffy lips, in Italian. But the invective was forgotten at the bell, when the two bloody fighters embraced.
All agreed it had been a fantastic, even fight—but who would go home with the belt? The decision was very tight, with judge George Kelly awarding the bout to Tony C. Judge Harold Barnes and ref Artie Donovan saw it for the Tough Jew, however, and Ross had retained his title. The feeling in the pro-Canzoneri portion of the sellout crowd was disappointment, but the newsmen ringside felt Ross had clearly won, especially given the points deducted for low blows.
At the decision, a “stout, grizzled little man climbed into the ring in Tony’s corner, picked up the wooden stool and raised it high with the intention of slinging it at an official,” wrote Paul Gallico in the News. This was “Old Man Canzoneri”—Tony’s father, who was looking to brain the judge who said “his son was not the best damn caballeros in the whole world.” Fortunately, a burly policeman swallowed up Signore Canzoneri before he could launch the stool.
Canzo’s trainer, Lou Fink, was just as astounded, if not as violent, as the commendatore. “Why, Tony did all the leading and most of the hitting,” he said. “He was handling Ross like a baby.”
Gallico differed. “The new champion is the better man,” he wrote. He was certainly the better son. The next day Ross took his mother to The Romance of a People, where they sat in Benny Leonard’s box.
AFTERMATH:
As close readers of the NYC1000 will recall, Ross went on to fight a trio of fabled ring wars with Jimmy McLarnin, then was battered into retirement by the immortal Henry Armstrong. Ross then joined the Marines, and fought heroically and was wounded at Guadalcanal during WWII. His injuries led to a morphine addiction that he conquered very publicly and at great cost. He died in 1967.
Canzoneri kept on fighting, with diminishing returns, until at last he was hammered by Al “Bummy” Davis in a disastrous defeat that drove him into retirement. “Davis, by belting him out, did more for Tony than all his friends put together,” wrote Boxing Illustrated. He died crossing the avenue in Manhattan of a heart attack, aged 51, in 1959.
WHAT THEY SAID:
“If you weren’t there you missed a grand scrap, one that started slowly, warmed up in the middle and wound up in a blazing conflagration, with both young men going to town and letting fly with all they had.”
—Paul Gallico, New York Daily News
FURTHER READING:
Barney Ross by Douglas Century
VIDEO: