| |
To many boxing fans my age, and that means those who saw Floyd Patterson
fight an eight-round main event in Brooklyn's Eastern Parkway Arena
because he wasn't old enough to be licensed to fight ten rounds, "the
Garden"
can mean only one thing. Its the arena that was on 50th Street and 8th
Avenue in New York City and it was the Mecca of boxing in the forties and
fifties. This, of course, was decades before it was ever conceived that
"big fights" would be held in casino parking lots or ballrooms and most
people thought Zaire was a bakery in the Bronx that had bagels "to die
for".
Friday night was fight night at the Garden, not once a month or every
other week, but every Friday, most weeks of the year. The main event
started at ten o'clock, since it was televised as part of the "Gillette
Cavalcade of Sports" on the NBC network. The "prelims" started at 7:30,
and for the most part, these bouts were attended by large neighborhood
contingents, rooting for a local fighter from one of the five boroughs of
the city who had "come up through the Gloves" and the local fight clubs
and had finally "made it" to the Garden. In addition to Brooklyn's Eastern
Parkway, there was Sunnyside Gardens in Queens, St Nicks Arena in
Manhattan and just to the north of the city, the Westchester County Center
in White Plains. These clubs had at least one boxing show a month and, in
turn, funneled all of their best fighters to the hallowed ground of "the
Garden".
The bulk of the crowd on Friday night was late arriving inside the arena,
usually timing it so they made it for the "semi-windup", the bout before
the main event. This was an eight or ten rounder and usually featured two
experienced fighters, maybe a local boxer, maybe two out-of-towners, who
were literally and figuratively, one step away from a main event in
Madison Square Garden. Before going inside the arena, most of the crowd
would congregate in one of two places, Mickey Walker's "joint" (I never,
in all my years going to the Garden, heard it called anything but "joint";
never a bar, a saloon or a gin mill, always "I'll meetcha in Mickey
Walker's joint"), across 50th St. The "Toy Bulldog", the former
welterweight champion, was a "hands on" owner and was usually at the bar
on fight night, meeting and greeting the fans who packed the place to
overflow. The non-imbiding groups, mainly the gamblers, ticket scalpers
and all manner of characters of the city would hover inside the lobby of
the Garden, just in front of the turnstiles that led to the main arena.
Out front of the Garden there was a theater marquee, similar to the movie
theaters of the day, on which the night's attraction was detailed in
movable, black block letters "TONITE: GIARDELLO vs DURANDO 10 RDs,
PRELIMS 7:30.
These two venues, Walkers "joint" and the Garden lobby both had their
enticements. In Mickey Walkers, the drink prices were scaled for the
average fight fan, that is the "working stiff", whose choice of libation
tended towards a shot of liquor, a draught beer or both (a combination
known as a "boilermaker" and usually summoned with a cigarette tinged,
raspy voice requesting "gimme a shot of Bushmills, beer back"). A
bartender in Mickey Walkers really didn't need the recipe for a Manhattan
or Daquari nearby. The shots of liquor were fifty cents and the draught
beer fifteen cents and like many of the favorite fighters across 50th
street, they were "honest" drinks.
The Garden lobby, on fight night, on the other hand, was akin to being
inside a Damon Runyon short story. Con men, cops, politicians, ex-pugs,
every kind of "hanger on", ticket scalpers, mobsters, "molls" and every
manner of New York fight fan imaginable stood elbow to elbow, talking,
dealing, wagering and generally passing time while the "preliminary bouts
went on inside the area. Every square inch of the lobby, it seemed, was
occupied by some sort of deal-making transaction, some sort of bet, some
sort of boxing conversation. Two guys negotiating the "scalp" price for
tickets "right up front, so close, you'll be wiping the blood off"; in
another corner, an argument about whether the odds on the night's "main
go" was 6-5 or 7-5; against another wall, two "old time" regulars telling
"first hand" Joe Louis stories as they did every Friday night for as long
as anyone could remember. Same wall, same "old timers", same stories. To a
kid from Brooklyn, it was thrilling, enchanting and educational all at the
same time.
Not that I got to the Garden every Friday or even most Fridays. I usually
went with my dad and only when someone gave him tickets. His benefactor
was usually a shop steward in the subway union, part of the MTA, the
Metropolitan Transportation Authority, a working destination for many of
the Irish immigrants who had arrived on Ellis Island in the harbor and
never got past New York City. The tickets were usually up, and I mean up,
in the mezzanine. The seats were a long way from the ring. However, given
the way the Garden was transformed on fight night, sitting in the
mezzanine, you still had a pretty good view of action, since when once the
fight started all the house lights went out and only the lights around the
ring stayed on, accentuating the action in the ring. The mezzanine seats,
however, were desirable since it was up there, in the cheap seats, where
the "real" fight fans sat. The fans up in that section were loud,
opinionated, but knowledgable; they knew boxing, and they were more than
willing to share that knowledge with the guy in the next seat or the next
row, whether he asked for those opinions, shared those opinions or cared
to listen. It was a bit like "talk radio" is today, only "live and loud".
It was great.
I saw Rex Layne, Billy Graham (the Greenwich Village fighter not the
preacher who was known as the "uncrowned welterweight champ" the result of
what was universally agreed, at least in the mezzanine, was a "hometown"
loss to Kid Gavilan in Havana in 1952), Johnny Bratton, Gil Turner, Roland
LaStarza and I remember a great fight between Joey Giardello and Ernie
Durando, two very tough guys from Pennsylvania, that I can still "see"
being advertised on the Garden marquee. But the fight I remember, like no
other in the Garden, or for that matter, anywhere else, was the one my dad
and I saw the night we "moved down front.".
It was October 21, 1953, four days before my birthday and my dad came home
from work and announced that he had tickets to that night's fight at the
Garden. That, of course, was great news on any Friday, but this Friday was
special, the main event was a fifteen rounder between Bobo Olsen and
Randy Turpin for the middleweight title that Sugar Ray had recently
vacated. And the best part was that, this time, it wasn't the shop steward
who had provided the free tickets, but, according to my dad, these came
from one of the "big shots" in the union (in a later era such a person who
would be known as a "suit"). Thus, my father explained, our seats for that
Friday weren't "up in the nosebleed section", they were "right up front".
We didn't realize until we got to the Garden how true that was.
Usually, when we went to our seats in the Garden, we went through the
lobby, through the turnstiles and turned right once we got inside and went
up a series of ramps to the upper reaches of the arena. This night, we
went through the turnstiles and went straight ahead to the main floor of
the Garden. It was a whole new world. Everyone on the main floor wore a
coat and tie. There were women in what I thought of, at the time, as
evening gowns. Naturally, several of the ushers asked to see our tickets.
The ushers checked the cardboards scrupulously and then, surprisingly
convinced we were in the right section, pointed towards the ring. We
belonged on the main floor of the Garden on that particular Friday night.
And what seats they were; ten rows from the ring (several friends told me
that they had seen me on TV, but since in those days, there was no such
thing as replays or video tape, I never confirmed that fact, but we were
so close, I don't doubt it). What seats, and what a fight.
Of course, the first thing you noticed, sitting ten rows from the ring,
was that everything, the colors, the punches, the sounds, everything was
magnified. You heard the punches land, you saw the sweat fly, you heard
the fighters react when they were hit and you heard a grunt of exertion
when they threw a punch. And Olsen and Turpin threw punches, for fifteen
rounds, in what seemed to be a non-stop, no clinching brawl. It was
amazingly simple, both fighters going for the middleweight championship
and fully realizing to get it they needed to incapacitate the other, threw
devasting body blows and destructive hooks to the head and amazingly kept
coming at each other for the full 45 minutes, fifteen three minute rounds,
each one, bell to bell action. The crowd, a sellout, seemed only to sit
and catch their breath during the one minute between rounds, even the
"swells" (as my dad later labelled the people sitting around us at
ringside in formal evening wear). It may have been the proximity to the
action, but I think the real reason that the absolute, brutal savagery of
this bout has stayed with me over the years, is simply the fact that it
was just non-stop, unrelenting fighting by two of the toughest fighters I
have ever seen in the ring. It was the sport of boxing at its best; two
great athletes, two very tough guys, engaged in sanctioned mayhem. It was
savage and beautiful at the same time. It was boxing at its most brutal
and at its best. The appreciative applause of the crowd started about a
minute before the fight ended and continued at least thirty seconds after
the final bell. Olsen, of course, won and became the new middleweight
champ. But, Turpin didn't lose, or at least it wouldn't have been proper
to call him a loser on this night; he had simply come in a very close
second.
Years later, I read a story about Albert Einstein, who shortly after the
second World War, was asked by a reporter what weapons would be used to
fight World War III. The professor thought for a moment and then said he
didn't know, but World War IV would be fought with sticks and stones. Now,
I doubt that Albert Einstein had ever been to the Friday Night fights at
the Garden and I'm fairly certain he was not a huge boxing fan or that he
had ever heard of Bobo Olsen or Randy Turpin. But when I read that story,
my first thought was of October 21, 1953, sitting ten rows from the ring
in the Garden and remembering the way Bobo Olsen and Randy Turpin fought
that night and I knew exactly what the professor was talking about. Bernie McCoy
Other Articles by
McCoy:
|
|
The One and Only...
By Bernie McCoy -May 7, 2003 Link |
|
|
Drama Without a Script...
By Bernie McCoy -April 23, 2003 Link |
|
|
Heavyweight Memories...
By Bernie McCoy -April 6, 2003
Link |
|
|
So Long, Kid -By Bernie McCoy
March 22, 2003
Link |
|
|
