There Really Was One: 1952

[SWC75]

Building a Champion

While trying to recover his health and determine if he really wanted to continue his quest for the title, Carmen met the two guys who would turn everything around for him. Joe Nitro started working for Tommy Ryan, the only Syracuse area fighter whose achievements compare to Carmen Basilio’s. Ryan, a turn of the century middleweight champion, (Bert Sugar rates him the 24th greatest fighter of all time: Carmen is #63), was a boxing promoter in the 1920’s and hired Nitro as a “call boy”, whose job it was to tell fighters when it was time to go in the ring. Eventually, Joe graduated to a sort of talent scout, searching the Italian, Irish, German and Polish neighborhoods for boxing talent. Nitro eventually became a manager. He managed the fighting DeJohn brothers. Ralph DeJohn was a middleweight and light heavyweight who fought from 1936-1947 with a 52-15 record, Mike DeJohn, who went 47-12 as a heavyweight from 1951-63 and Joey DeJohn who went 74-14 as a light heavyweight from 1944-55. Those guys provided plenty of entertainment for Syracuse fight fans for more than a generation.

The one DeJohn brother who didn’t box professionally was probably the one who knew the most about boxing, John DeJohn. He learned about the sport from his older brother, Ralph and was satisfied to teach it to others. His star pupil had been his younger brother Joey, darling of the North Side. But Joey, who hated training, tended to tire in the late rounds, leading some to suspect that John was not a good trainer. Some suggested his fighters would do better with someone more prominent, perhaps a New York City trainer. John DeJohn, like Basilio, had something to prove to people.

When Tony, “Sam”, Amos, the older of the brothers who had been Carmen’s managers, died, they backed out of the sport as his brother, Emile, “Babe” Amos had to file for bankruptcy. Carmen was on his own and, (per Ed Linn), actually managed to arrange a fight for himself with a fighter named Emmett Norris in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. He asked John DeJohn and Joe Nitro to travel there with him to help him out. DeJohn got a feeler about handling Basilio from a manager from out of state and he and Nitro decided to take the job themselves. Carmen needed them. “At the end of the second round Carmen returned to his corner and gasped ‘If I don’t start doing something, he’ll take me out.’” They got him to start going to the body and “by the end of the fight, he had him, (Norris), out on his feet.”

Greg Sorrientino: “Johnny DeJohn was a boxing genius. I worked with and was around guys like Angelo Dundee, Eddie Futch and Emanuel Stuart but nobody taught me any more than Johnny did. He was very wise. He studied the sport. He knew about all the angles and dropping the hook. He would say boxing is like meshing gears. Anybody can make somebody miss by six, eight inches but if you made somebody miss by a half an inch, you are right there to counterpunch.”

Youmans: “Always in great physical shape, Basilio, under DeJohn’s watchful eye sharpened his boxing skills. Each day in the gym, they would work on his footwork, with the emphasis on Basilio keeping his feet balanced, staying on the balls of his feet so that he could better attack his opponent. Basilio would practice moving from side to side, learning to shift and shuffle his feet quickly, keeping them close to the ground so he always had a solid base under him. He worked on improving his punching techniques, learning to deliver better combinations instead of wildly attacking his opponent. He began throwing short punches so that now they became more effective. He increased the power of his left cross by rotating his hips and torso counter-clockwise when the punch was delivered. He learned to throw the punch from his chin, focusing on a straight-line approach to the target. The left shoulder was thrust forward and finished just touching outside the chin, while his right hand was tucked back to protect his face.”

“The Basilio hook that later destroyed Tony DeMarco and Johnny Saxton was a semi-circular punch that Carmen threw with either hand. He worked on bringing his elbow back with a horizontal fist with the knuckles pointing forward. The rear hand was always placed by the jaw to protect the chin. He learned to pivot his lead foot clockwise as the punch was thrown, turning the right heel outward, while again rotating his hips and torso. He worked over and over on refining these important fundamentals. Adding better boxing skills to a fighter with the heart of a lion made him a very dangerous opponent.”

Ed Linn added: “Most of all, he impressed upon him the necessity of staying relaxed. Basilio had always been a stiff, tense fighter, a mental condition which contributed to his awkwardness and drained away his strength. By being relaxed in there, DeJohn told him, he would be able to punch faster and hit harder.”

The one thing DeJohn and Nitro never taught Carmen was dedication. He’d drive into the city through snowstorms to work out at Robbins’ gym. When Robbins went on vacation, Carmen convinced him to give him the keys to the gym so he could continue his year-round workouts. DeJohn said “Nobody deserves any credit for Carmen Basilio, he did it all himself.”

The paper reported the February 4th Norris bout as a unanimous decision that was “never in doubt”, thanks to two knockdowns. Then came two fights not covered in the local papers: an 8 round decision over Jimmy Cousins in Akron on 2/28 and that 10 round win over Jackie O’Brien, also in Wilkes-Barre on 3/31, the fight where Carmen got the head butt that resulted in the ‘U” shaped scar on his left eyebrow. All the paper said about the latter fight was that Carmen would be fighting “either Jackie O’Brien or Tom Bozzano”.

 

[SWC75]

Chuck Davey

I remember my Dad telling me about Chuck Davey. He was a sort of “All-American Boy” in the tough, mean, often corrupt world of professional prizefighting. He was a college welterweight boxing champion at Michigan State who won 93 of 94 amateur bouts. A school teacher when not boxing, he’d won 33 bouts and had a draw in his first 34 professional fights, recording 21 knockouts. Davey looked beautiful until, as Dad told me, “Kid Gavilan took him apart”. But before that he had two memorable fights with Carmen Basilio, which the paper described as “the opportunity of a lifetime” for Carmen. Joe Nitro said that Basilio was tougher than the hyped-up Davey, having spent three years in the Marines and fought a better class of fighters since he turned pro. Davey was a southpaw, which had bothered many of his opponents but Ralph DeJohn was teaching Carmen to throw his right hand punch more directly, rather than in a looping fashion. It was felt this would provide a few surprises for Davey.

The first was on 5/29. Davey had just whipped Chico Vejar on national TV and was being considered for a title fight. He also had some cuts over his eyes that were still healing. It was said that Basilio was “actually the hardest hitter Davey has been called on to face in his pro career.” He was desperate to get out of the Basilio fight and his managers used every legal maneuver to prevent it but the Illinois Athletic Commission ordered him to go through with the fight and he reluctantly made his way to Syracuse to fulfill the requirement, no doubt not in the best of moods. A doctor examined his cuts and declared that even if they were reopened he would not stop the fight because of them. Supposedly Davey had had seven stitches on one cut but neither the doctor nor a newspaper photographer could find any evidence of them. Bill Reddy reported that Basilio had gone into training for the fight when it was first announced in April and had never gone out of it.

Ed Linn: “The fight itself now belongs to the ages. Davey, who was a 4-1 favorite, bounced around, looking classy but he didn’t have a punch hard enough to make Basilio notice it. Carmen chased after him, landed all the solid punches and had him bleeding heavily over both eyes. With one and a half minutes left in the fight, referee Joe Palmer, (officiating his first main event), stopped the fight. The commission doctor, Charles Heck, overruled him. Half a minute later, Palmer stopped it again and raised Basilio’s hand in victory. Dr. Heck once again came into the ring, looked at Davey and ordered the fighters to continue.”

Carmen, using a “tricky bobbing and weaving style”, per the paper, and “never taking a step backwards”, “presented such an inadequate target that the favored Chuck never had the Syracusean in serious trouble once.” But Carmen opened up a large cut at Chuck’s right eye that required three stitches to close. And he had Davey in trouble in the tenth and “he barely escaped suffering a technical knockout in the final round”. Meanwhile, Carmen, in the dressing room, “didn’t have a cut or a bruise”, an unusual circumstance for such an aggressive warrior.

The Post Standard reporter Gerry Ashe wrote that Carmen “took the play away” in the opening round but that Davey “jabbed and stabbed beautifully” to win the second and third rounds. There “was little difference” in the next two rounds but Davey won the 6th. Basilio reopened an old injury over Davey’s left eye in the 7th and the rest of the fight was his, except for the ninth. Carmen opened up a cut over Davey’s other eye in the 10th. The referee stopped the fight twice in that round to have the doctor look at Davey but let it go to a decision, even though the referee appear to signal a technical knockout. The Post Standard had it 4-4-2 in rounds with no knockdowns. But Davey was a mess after the fight and Carmen wasn’t.

The scoring system used was not the 10 point must system. Referee Joe Palmer graded it 3-3-4 but gave Carmen 8 “points” to 6 for Davey. Judge Dick Fazio had it 5-5 in rounds and points. Judge Harvey Smith had it 4-5-1 in rounds but 6-5 for Carmen in points. Through the blood, Davey could be seen crying in the corner as the decision was announced.

But his managers were doing more than crying. They were protesting the decision to the NYS athletic commission. Palmer’s scoresheet didn’t give Davey any points for two rounds Palmer said he won, the second and the 9th. Add in the points and the card- and the bout- was a draw.

The next day, the Herald Journal Sports editor, Frank Woolever, wrote a follow-up story with a completely different view of the fight, calling Basilio’s victory “the most atrocious decision in the history of professional boxing…Basilio had many followers who cheered his supposed triumph wildly but fully half or more of the assemblage were stunned by the gross miscarriage of justice.” Perhaps the local crowd- and the reporter of the original story- were caught up in the late rally of the local hero and discounted Davey’s earlier success. “Davey seemed content to contribute a clever boxing exhibition without unlimbering his heavy artillery. He played a steady tattoo of right-hand jabs to Carmen’s face and flashed the left when openings came.” Woolever credited Baslio for being a hard worker and blameless for the confusion but said “ringside patrons and surely the officials, saw that many of the right hand punches he tossed were picked off by Davey, caught on his gloves or whistled harmlessly around his neck.”
When the ref appeared to stop the bout, the locals stormed the ring, which then had to be cleared by the police to all the fighters to finish it out. “Despite the hectic finish, the men in the audience who know boxing realized the boy who had gone through 33 straight professional fights and numerous college bouts without a defeat had piled up a commanding lead. Not even the most rabid Basilio supporters thought the voting would be close.” That makes it sound as if Davey’s previous record somehow warranted the victory. And I presume that the people who stormed the ring thought their man was the winner. Woolever had scored the bout 7-2-1, which he announced “was in accord with most of the out-of-town newspaper editors.” But not with any of the judges, whose scorecards showed it to be a close fight. Woolever said that “there could be no explanation for the cards of Palmer and Fazio…That decision for Basilio was so far out of the realm of justice that the black eye it will give the sport could end promotion of the game here for several years.” Jeeze. I should note that my search of the local newspaper archives revealed that Mr. Woolever seemed to have something against the promoter of many of Basilio’s fights, Norm Rothschild, whom he constantly referred to as “Dagwood”, for some reason.


Per Ed Linn, Carmen was “burned up” by this account but blamed the ringside support for Davey on, of all people, Roy Simmons, “Syracuse is a college town. Roy Simmons, the Syracuse U boxing coach, swings a lot of weight with the boxing writers and he was a big Davey fan. Davey was a college man with a master’s degree and we were nothing. We were from the wrong side of town. They came to see Davey win and they couldn’t believe what they were seeing.”

The return match was in Chicago on July 16th and was televised nationally. Carmen was very confident. “He couldn’t knock me out in Syracuse and he won’t do it tomorrow night. He can’t punch that hard. I’ll smother his attack and wear him down. I’ll flatten him the first chance I get”. Davey was shown working out with Rocky Graziano, who was “teaching him the best way to cope with Basilio’s hooking and slashing”.

“Undefeated Chuck Davey, Detroit school teacher with the college educated fists, administered a sound thrashing to Carmen Basilio of Canastota, New York, in a blistering 10 round battle at Chicago Stadium….Davey’s clean-cut victory blotted out the controversial draw credited during their first battle in Syracuse last May 29….Tonight Basilio was only credited with winning two rounds, with one even….Davey had Basilio puzzled with his left-hand stance until he tired in the eight round from his own aggressive pace…He speared Basilio with sharp hooks and jabs and ducked under the Canastota lad’s wild swings…At the finish, Davey’s face was smeared with blood from cuts opened in the eighth and ninth rounds. In the eighth, Basilio opened a cut above his left cheekbone and split his right eyebrow with a left hook in the ninth….the battered Davey said in his dressing room, ‘I started too fast and tired too badly in the middle of the fight. I couldn’t see out of my right eye in the ninth because of the blood.’”
“It was a lousy house decision”, proclaimed Carmen Basilio. “And anywhere else they’d have stopped it. It’s nice to be on the right side. The IBC side”. He meant the International Boxing Club, then the sport’s most influential body. Babe Risko, Syracuse’s last world champ, agreed. “I had Carmen ahead by two rounds. He had Davey in pretty bad shape in the 9th and 10th rounds with gashes over both eyes”. Davey was known as IBC president Jim Norris’ “house fighter”. Carmen said “He can’t fight. Fast but no punch. They watched him like a mother hen watching chicks. He couldn’t lose, not here. I want a rematch but I ain’t likely to get one.” The judges saw it differently, giving Davey who had outboxed Carmen for the first 8 rounds, the unanimous decision. The ref had it 54-46 and the two judges 55-45. Since it was a ten round fight I’m not sure what scoring system was used but it sure didn’t suit Carmen. He was credited with winning two rounds with one even. Davey claimed the cuts were from butts.

The second bout is the earliest Basilio bout I have been able to find on U-Tube. Here is the original broadcast from July 16, 1952, (It’s mislabeled as “Carmen Basilio- Chuck Davey I” but it’s rematch.):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzWlR5x6Gks
I graded it under the modern ten point must system and came up with this:
Basilio 9,9,9,10,10,9,10,9,10,10 = 95
Davey 10,10,10,9,10,10,9,10,9,9 = 96
If you are not a believer that a knockdown is necessary for a 10-8 round you could make the 9th round a 10-8 round and call it a draw. It’s a classic example of the scoring dilemma in boxing: do you reward the fighter who landed the most punches, (Davey) or the one who landed the hardest punches, (Basilio). Carmen looks crude in the early rounds, throwing round-house punches and getting peppered by Davey’s jabs. But Chick had no real power and Carmen begins walking through his attack to score inside. He also straightens out his punches and scores more and more as the fight goes along. Davey looks out on his feet in the 9th and is bleeding badly, (it gives you an image of what the ending of the first fight might have been like). But he survives the ninth as Carmen’s energy level seems a little reduced and wins the fight, although not by the absurd margins on the official scorecard. I redid my score using the scoring system described here, (5-5 for a drawn round, 6-4 if you thought it was won by a small margin, 7-3 if it was more decisive, etc.), and came up 49-51 unless you are willing to make #9 a 7-3 round despite the lack of a knockdown, which would make it 50-50. Either way it was another learning experience for the young, (25 years old), Basilio.

Here are some highlights of the fight my father remembered where Davey got “taken apart” by Kid Gavilan:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_Cw8nydLdQ
Davey was undefeated in 39 fights going into that bout, (with 2 draws, including the first bout with Carmen), but lost 5 of his 10 final fights and retired in 1955.

Carmen got a revenge of sorts. He told Bud Poliquin that Davey had to spend so much time in the hospital after the bout that he fell in love and married a nurse there, who wound up giving him ten children. “I fixed him for life”, said Basilio.

 

[SWC75]

The IBC

The IBC was the “International Boxing Club”. It had been formed in 1949 by Chicago millionaire James D. Norris. His namesake father owned the Detroit Red Wings. Young Jim wanted to make a name for himself. He owned several arenas in the Midwest and was worth some $250 million. He got into boxing when, with his partner, real estate tycoon Arthur Wirtz, they promoted the tournament to find a champion to replace Joe Louis when Joe retired in the late 40’s, (Ezzard Charles was the winner). Norris was the dreamer who also had all the business contacts they needed, Wirtz the tough businessman and negotiator. Truman Gibson, a lawyer friend of Joe Louis, put together the tournament package and became the legal brains of the outfit. They made a deal with Mike Jacobs, the top promoter in New York, who was being forced into semi-retirement due to a stroke. They took over the contracts he had and created the IBC, which now virtually controlled boxing in New York and Chicago as well as other cities like St. Louis, Detroit, Indianapolis and Cincinnati, where Norris and Wirtz owned the largest arenas.

Norris was, at first, viewed as someone who would be good for boxing. He had the image of a millionaire sportsman, a welcome change from the sleazy characters who had dominated the history of the sport. The problem is, he was fascinated by gamblers and gangsters and enjoyed their company. They enjoyed his, too as being in his circles made them seem more acceptable. Norris wasn’t satisfied to control arenas and contracts. He felt the IBC needed some muscle to back them up in their demands with tough fighters and managers. And he knew where to get it.

Frankie Carbo had been arrested 17 times, four times for murder. He’d been convicted once and spent two years in Sing Sing for manslaughter in the early 30’s. He’d been part of Murder Inc and was on trial for killing Harry Greenberg, (see the 1991 movie “Bugsy“) with his pal, Bugsy Siegel when the main witness took and unexpected trip out of a hotel window, (See “Murder Inc.” 1960). He’d been involved with boxing for some time, “arranging” the careers of his fighters. If people wanted their fighters to get a big fight, or to win one, Frankie got a cut. His top lieutenant was Frank “Blinky” Palermo, an “arrogant little man with a protruding nose”, who was about 5 feet tall. (Picture Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci). Palermo was the manager of several top fighters until he got blackballed by the New York State Athletic Commission. It was Carbo and Palermo that Norris brought into the IBC to provide his muscle. One of their leading rivals was Ray Arcel, who promoted many TV boxing matches, including most of Basilio’s early appearances. Then one day, he was standing on a Boston street corner and got waylaid by an iron pipe. That put him out of the picture for a while. Carbo controlled his fighters by making challengers to his champions sign personal services contracts with him, so he’d get a cut of any championship fights they might fight in case they somehow beat his man, a procedure Don King would employ decades later.

By the early 50’s, the IBC, which Arthur Daley called “Octopus Incorporated”, was in control of big-time boxing in America. Fighters got ignored or were given opportunities based on what the IBC decided. Strange results seemed to occur all too often, either a favored fighter losing or a formidable opponent performing poorly or, failing that, a strange decision. Carmen Basilio thought he’d been the victim of the latter.

 

[SWC75]

The Uncrowned Champion

　
Bill Graham, “a master boxer” with a bigger punch than Chuck Davey, who had once “soundly whipped” Sugar Ray Robinson in the amateurs, proved too much for Carmen on August 15th in another Chicago bout, having “no trouble outscoring the willing but outclassed Basilio from start to finish. The winner was not in doubt after the second round.” “Basilio’s face was crimson from Graham’s rasping right hand punches and straight lefts.” Graham stepped “under and away from Basilio’s hooks and righthand shots.” Joe Nitro declared himself pleased with Carmen’s performance, saying that it would have been a different fight except for a 3rd round accidental butt that cut Carmen in the mouth, causing him to constantly swallow blood, which eventually nauseated him. The scorecards ranged from 51-49 to 56-44 but they all went to Graham, who, in his next bout, seemingly beat Kid Gavilan but was not given the decision, leading him to be called “the uncrowned champion” for the rest of his career.

Youmans quotes boxing historian Donnie Hamilton as saying “What turned Carmen around was when he fought Billy Graham in Chicago. Graham beat him decisively but he learned from that fight how to get past the jab. If you look at his record after that, he lost very few fights from then on. He just kept improving.” Linn says , “Graham had kept fooling him by feinting with his left, then jabbing. Carmen studied that move so carefully that he not only learned how to protect himself from the feint, he learned how to feint very well himself.”

In the wake of the Graham fight, Carmen was getting offers to fight top contenders. Graham himself promised him a rematch and Carmen had to turn down a date with Chico Vejar due to his injuries in the Graham fight.

U-Tube has a brief clip of some highlights form this bout, narrated by Harry Wismer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WpnoiRf_Gg

 

[SWC75]

A Good Cutman

Carmen ventured to Miami on 9/22 to take on a 19 year old Cuban fighter named “Baby” Williams, who gave him a good tussle, both fighters surviving cuts to finish the fight., which Basilio won by unanimous decision. It was about this time that Carmen began working with a man who would play major role in his career and who become more famous in the next decade for working with a young boxer named Cassius Clay, who became Muhammed Ali. The man was Angelo Dundee, who became a lifelong friend. “It turned out to be a tough fight and Carmen wanted me in his corner from then on.

From the Youmans book: “My brother Chris originally hooked me up with Carmen. He needed a cornerman for his fight against Baby Williams and I got the job. The first time I met him he scared the hell out of me. He said, ‘I just want you to know I cut easily.’ That’s the last thing a cutman wants to hear. Well, he was right. He’d start bleeding at the weigh-in…To be a good boxer, you have to have a mentality that is rare. You could say boxers are rare people and Carmen Basilio is the rarest of boxers. There has never been anyone quite like him. A stand-up guy who would out-work anybody to achieve his goal. He’s number one in my book.” Dundee credits Basilio with launching his career because of all the credit he got for dealing with Carmen’s cuts. Carmen said “I used to bleed so much I made him famous.”

On October 20th, Carmen scored a 3rd round knockout over favored Sammy Giuliani in Syracuse. Giuiliani was perhaps the biggest fighter Carmen had faced to date, coming in at 155 pounds to Carmen’s 150 in this over the weight bout. (Photos show Giuliani with a prominent, Jay Leno type chin- probably not a good thing for a pugilist). He was reported to be “full of pep and ready to fight” but admitted that while he had heard of Carmen, he really didn’t know much about him. He was about to get educated. Carmen “took command in the first round and was never in trouble”. Giuilani “never even saw the left hook Carmen threw 30 seconds into the third canto. It lifted him off the floor an inch and a half and deposited him backwards on the resin-covered canvas. Giuilani got up at nine only to be knocked down again by a sharp combination. Sammy tried to get up again but collapsed to the canvas and was out cold. Giuilani was a protege of Sam Goldman, who had helped turn Rocky Marciano into a world champion, so he must have had an appreciation of knockouts but not this one. Gerry Asche in the Post Standard called this “The finest performance of his career”. Basilio’s managers, John DeJohn and Joe Nitro, had promised that if their man won, Giuliani would get a rematch but it never came off. None was needed.

On 10/28, Bill Reddy reported that two local boxers, Joey DeJohn and Carmen Basilio, who had been developed by promoter Norm Rothschild, had been forced to sign with “The Octopus”, the International Boxing Club, which was in control of the sport. Joey would be fighting Norman Hayes in Detroit and Carmen Tommy Martinez in the Garden, both good opportunities for them. But Rothschild wasn’t able to capitalize on the work he did in making them “name” fighters and was wondering if there was any point in trying to find someone else. I don’t know about the DeJohn-Hayes fight but the Basilio-Martinez fight never came off. Pat Manzi, another local welterweight was scheduled to fight former lightweight champ Ike Williams but cancelled that one to push for a match with Basilio. That never happened, either.

When Ross Virgo, Rochester’s welterweight hope, hurt his hand, Carmen substituted for him in a fight in Buffalo on 11/18. He KO’d Chuck Foster in 5. “The Syracuse slugger repeatedly shook up Foster with left hooks to the head and had him bleeding from the mouth from the third round on. He was pounding the loser with rights and lefts in Foster’s corner when referee Scozza stopped the match.”

Norm Rothschild suggested at this point that there were so many good welterweights in the state of New York that there ought to be a tournament to determine a “state champion”. Basilio, Virgo and Syracuse’s Pat Manzi would be included along with several fighters from downstate, like Billy Graham and Joe Miceli and Johnny Saxton. And Norm Rothschild would have a bunch of big fights to promote.

Once it was determined that the Syracuse football team would be going to the Orange Bowl efforts were made to arrange a match for Carmen in Miami, who had been there in September to beat Baby Williams. With all those people from Syracuse in town, it was a natural. But nothing came of it, (and not much good happened for the football team, either). Carmen was scheduled to end the year with a match against Ike Williams at the War Memorial on 12/15, with the winner to get a national TV date with Chico Vejar but Williams was involved in an auto accident and lucky to escape with his life when the station wagon he was in collided with a truck. He cut his hand and strained a knee, which was enough to postpone the bout until 1953. Williams actually announced his retirement but that didn’t last long.

Carmen ended the year with a record of 31-10-4, with 16 knockouts. More importantly, he was now a “name” fighter.