SWC75
Bored Historian
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Five years ago I posted a series on the boxing career of Carmen Basilio. On the occassion of his death I have decided to re-post in chapters, (I did 83 pages).
PREFACE
Prior to SU’s 2003 NCAA basketball championship, the three greatest things that ever happened in Central New York Sports happened within a four year period in the late 1950’s. In 1955, the Syracuse Nationals won the NBA basketball championship. In 1957 Carmen Basilio defeated the great Sugar Ray Robinson for the middleweight boxing championship. And in 1959, Ben Schwartzwalder’s SU football team won the national championship. These events did not take place in a vacuum. When the Nats won their title, one of their players said in the locker room, “That’s one title, now let’s root for Basilio”. Carmen was scheduled to face Tony DeMarco for the welterweight title in the same building two months later. And Carmen is quoted in Maury and Gary Youman’s book “’59” as saying how much he loved watching Ben’s teams play, (he once left training camp to attend the Cotton Bowl).”I had season tickets on the 50 yard line. That was one of the greatest teams of all time. They reminded me of myself when I boxed. They were always going forward and they didn’t know how to back up.” So the events are all linked and sports fans from this area in those days were watching a golden era unfold.
This prompted me to decide to write up a history of Carmen’s career as it was described in the local newspapers, (which can be viewed through the Post Standard’s on-line archive). I was going to try to get this done by the 50ieth anniversary of Carmen’s winning the title, which was last September 23rd. It proved to be more involved than I thought and I decided to make it the 50th anniversary of his legendary defense of the title against Robinson, the famous fight where his eye was closed early in the bout and Carmen had to fight the last ten rounds with one eye open against the greatest fighter of all time- and lost by a split decision.
My primary intent was to present Carmen’s career as it was described in the newspapers of the time. I have just recently discovered that Gary Youmans wrote a book on Carmen and his rivalry with Robinson called “The Onion Picker”. I’ve read through it and will rely on it for some biographical detail and a few other points but the Post Standard archive is my main source. I also used some other books, including the Ring Record Book, “The 100 greatest Boxers of All Time” and “The Great Fights”, by Bert Randolph Sugar, “A Pictorial History of Boxing” by Sam Andre and Nat Fleischer, “The Encyclopedia of World Boxing Champions” by John D McCallum, “The Italian Stallions: Heroes of Boxing’s Glory Days”, by Thomas Hauser and Stephen Brunt, (which has reprints of three SPORT Magazine articles: a 1957 article by Ed Linn, a 1958 article on the second Robinson fight by “the editors” and a 1960 article by Barney Nagler.) I also re-read several articles from some old boxing publications from Ring Magazine and Boxing Digest. I double checked some information at Boxrec.com. I also looked at some tapes I’ve made of vintage boxing films and some clips of Carmen’s fights that are available on U-Tube. Finally I re-watched my tape of an ESPN special on Carmen Basilio called “Fighting the Mob”. But my main source is the Post Standard archives.
(I can’t link you to these books and the Post Standard archive requires a membership fee so I will be quoting freely from these sources. I highly recommend purchasing these sources for yourself if you want to read about the glory days in boxing and the Post Standard archive is a must for anyone interested in the history of anything in Central New York.)
INTRODUCTION
John McCallum wrote: “The first thing to establish about Carmen Basilio is that there really was one. Gnarled and craggy-faced, he stood 5-6 ½, weighed 156, had two arms and two legs, both eyes, a flat nose, most of his hair and teeth and he was good to his mother. In other words, he was mortal except when he got paid to crack heads and bust bones on fight nights.”
Bert Sugar put it this way: “it has been said that ‘honest labor bears a lovely face’. But, in the case of Carmen Basilio, honest labor bore a face that made him a prime prospect for selling pencils on a street corner. The result of his honest efforts was a face that bore more stitches than a baseball, an eyebrow that carried a scar worthy of a graduate of a Heidelberg dueling academy, and occasional lumps and bumps the size of Goodyear blimps. And yet all of those welts and marks gave meaning and insight into the warrior known as Carmen Basilio, one of the most fearless and ferocious fighters of his day, or any day. Basilio fought with the soul of a warrior, not so much fighting his opponents as warring against them. He would walk through mine fields to get at his foes with dogged, indomitable courage and then, once inside, would throw every round of ammunition in his bandillero, sparing no bullet in his short-armed arsenal as he tried to break off his opponents like sticks of sealing wax. In the proud cliché of the manly trade, he ate leather, his face a magnet for every punch thrown as he prowled at close quarters ready to do his damage. His style, if he had any, was a combination bob and weave that gave him a crab-like look. But while his fights were no place for those whose sensitivity came out like hair on a comb, the fight fans loved them. And they loved Carmen Basilio.”
There are a lot of things written by sportswriters about Carmen Basilio that sound like a tribute to the sport as much as to Carmen. Maybe that’s a reason why the boxing Hall of Fame is in his home town. For many, he seems to be a symbol of the sport. Boxing has always been two sports: the “Manly Art of Self Defense”, superbly coordinated athletes using their speed and reflexes to make themselves tough to hit and make it easy for them to hit their opponents and a demolition derby, with fighters taking punches to deliver them and may the toughest and most courageous man win. Carmen Basilio was more a practioner of the second sport, (although like most such fighters, the skill with which he pursued his goals was underrated). His greatest opponent, Sugar Ray Robinson was the epitome of the first version of the sport. When they met, it was a boxing summit.
Carmen Basilio was actually 5-5 ½ with a 68 ½ inch reach, somewhat long for his height. Usually, reach and height are about equal and 5-5 ½ is 65 ½ inches. He was never much more than welterweight, never weighting more than 154, (not 156), pounds for a fight. He could hit but was not a one-punch knockout guy, getting only 27 of them in 79 career fights. He learned how to fight from a crouch and bob and weave to protect himself but he was no “boxer”. He kept coming forward and was willing to take punches to land them. He was hardly invincible, losing 16 fights in his career. He always requested to wear black trunks to hide the blood dropping from his face, (there are some prominent fights, however, that show him wearing white).
But most fighters lost a lot of fights in those days. These days, if a fighter has potential, his managers “protect him” by lining up opponents he can easily beat. That’s because in the crowded sports season we have now the undefeated record is a major marketing tool and a fighter who has lost is treated like damaged goods, his aura of invincibility shattered forever. In fact, an undefeated fighter is just a fighter who doesn’t know how he could be beaten. In the old days, fighters- all of them- started out in fight clubs, learning their profession the hard way. Before a fighter ever got well known, much less got a shot at the championship, he might lose a dozen fights or more. But he learned from those losses, or else he quit. Carmen didn’t quit, not until he had reached the heights of his profession and made enough money for his family to live comfortably for years to come.
The two things he excelled all others at were conditioning and toughness. Nobody ever worked harder to prepare himself for an athletic contest. And nobody who ever stepped into a ring was physically or mentally tougher than Carmen Basilio. He was proud of being a better boxer than people gave him credit for and claimed that his face, which some claimed had a scar from every fight he’d ever fought, wasn’t nearly as marked up as people thought. Photographs, (unless they were taken just after fights), reveal a fairly handsome, sharp-featured man. When a Ring Magazine writer claimed he’s had 100 stitches on his face, the factoid picked up all over the country. Carmen wrote a letter to the editor saying “The worst cutting up I ever got was from you guys.”
Carmen had little use for most writers because they depicted him as being crude and dumb. He was neither. “There are some writers I can’t really blame, though. They have me talking the same way they talk.” When they finally began to give him some credit, acknowledging that he had improved, he said “Sure I improved. I improved because I got a chance to fight better fighters. I was underrated for a long time, though. I always fooled them and they always went back to saying the same things about me. Even after I beat some good men, my style made them think I was nothing but a club fighter.”
He told Ed Linn, “I have to try and go inside and when you’re in close and heads are moving back and forth, they’re going to bump sooner or later. Most cuts don’t come from punches, they come from butts. It isn’t intentional. It’s closer to inevitable.” The large, circular scar in his right eyebrow, the one “that carried a scar worthy of a Heidelberg dueling academy”, was due to a butt suffered in a 1952 fight with one Jackie O’Brien and what Linn called “a botched stitching job”, that became infected and required a reopening and cleaning that built up “a mass of scar tissue” that was reopened in fight after fight.
Carmen never lost his combative attitude toward life’s challenges. Linn wrote, “He has a habit, too of ending discussions about the difficulties of the moment by holding up his two fists and saying “These are all I need.”
PREFACE
Prior to SU’s 2003 NCAA basketball championship, the three greatest things that ever happened in Central New York Sports happened within a four year period in the late 1950’s. In 1955, the Syracuse Nationals won the NBA basketball championship. In 1957 Carmen Basilio defeated the great Sugar Ray Robinson for the middleweight boxing championship. And in 1959, Ben Schwartzwalder’s SU football team won the national championship. These events did not take place in a vacuum. When the Nats won their title, one of their players said in the locker room, “That’s one title, now let’s root for Basilio”. Carmen was scheduled to face Tony DeMarco for the welterweight title in the same building two months later. And Carmen is quoted in Maury and Gary Youman’s book “’59” as saying how much he loved watching Ben’s teams play, (he once left training camp to attend the Cotton Bowl).”I had season tickets on the 50 yard line. That was one of the greatest teams of all time. They reminded me of myself when I boxed. They were always going forward and they didn’t know how to back up.” So the events are all linked and sports fans from this area in those days were watching a golden era unfold.
This prompted me to decide to write up a history of Carmen’s career as it was described in the local newspapers, (which can be viewed through the Post Standard’s on-line archive). I was going to try to get this done by the 50ieth anniversary of Carmen’s winning the title, which was last September 23rd. It proved to be more involved than I thought and I decided to make it the 50th anniversary of his legendary defense of the title against Robinson, the famous fight where his eye was closed early in the bout and Carmen had to fight the last ten rounds with one eye open against the greatest fighter of all time- and lost by a split decision.
My primary intent was to present Carmen’s career as it was described in the newspapers of the time. I have just recently discovered that Gary Youmans wrote a book on Carmen and his rivalry with Robinson called “The Onion Picker”. I’ve read through it and will rely on it for some biographical detail and a few other points but the Post Standard archive is my main source. I also used some other books, including the Ring Record Book, “The 100 greatest Boxers of All Time” and “The Great Fights”, by Bert Randolph Sugar, “A Pictorial History of Boxing” by Sam Andre and Nat Fleischer, “The Encyclopedia of World Boxing Champions” by John D McCallum, “The Italian Stallions: Heroes of Boxing’s Glory Days”, by Thomas Hauser and Stephen Brunt, (which has reprints of three SPORT Magazine articles: a 1957 article by Ed Linn, a 1958 article on the second Robinson fight by “the editors” and a 1960 article by Barney Nagler.) I also re-read several articles from some old boxing publications from Ring Magazine and Boxing Digest. I double checked some information at Boxrec.com. I also looked at some tapes I’ve made of vintage boxing films and some clips of Carmen’s fights that are available on U-Tube. Finally I re-watched my tape of an ESPN special on Carmen Basilio called “Fighting the Mob”. But my main source is the Post Standard archives.
(I can’t link you to these books and the Post Standard archive requires a membership fee so I will be quoting freely from these sources. I highly recommend purchasing these sources for yourself if you want to read about the glory days in boxing and the Post Standard archive is a must for anyone interested in the history of anything in Central New York.)
INTRODUCTION
John McCallum wrote: “The first thing to establish about Carmen Basilio is that there really was one. Gnarled and craggy-faced, he stood 5-6 ½, weighed 156, had two arms and two legs, both eyes, a flat nose, most of his hair and teeth and he was good to his mother. In other words, he was mortal except when he got paid to crack heads and bust bones on fight nights.”
Bert Sugar put it this way: “it has been said that ‘honest labor bears a lovely face’. But, in the case of Carmen Basilio, honest labor bore a face that made him a prime prospect for selling pencils on a street corner. The result of his honest efforts was a face that bore more stitches than a baseball, an eyebrow that carried a scar worthy of a graduate of a Heidelberg dueling academy, and occasional lumps and bumps the size of Goodyear blimps. And yet all of those welts and marks gave meaning and insight into the warrior known as Carmen Basilio, one of the most fearless and ferocious fighters of his day, or any day. Basilio fought with the soul of a warrior, not so much fighting his opponents as warring against them. He would walk through mine fields to get at his foes with dogged, indomitable courage and then, once inside, would throw every round of ammunition in his bandillero, sparing no bullet in his short-armed arsenal as he tried to break off his opponents like sticks of sealing wax. In the proud cliché of the manly trade, he ate leather, his face a magnet for every punch thrown as he prowled at close quarters ready to do his damage. His style, if he had any, was a combination bob and weave that gave him a crab-like look. But while his fights were no place for those whose sensitivity came out like hair on a comb, the fight fans loved them. And they loved Carmen Basilio.”
There are a lot of things written by sportswriters about Carmen Basilio that sound like a tribute to the sport as much as to Carmen. Maybe that’s a reason why the boxing Hall of Fame is in his home town. For many, he seems to be a symbol of the sport. Boxing has always been two sports: the “Manly Art of Self Defense”, superbly coordinated athletes using their speed and reflexes to make themselves tough to hit and make it easy for them to hit their opponents and a demolition derby, with fighters taking punches to deliver them and may the toughest and most courageous man win. Carmen Basilio was more a practioner of the second sport, (although like most such fighters, the skill with which he pursued his goals was underrated). His greatest opponent, Sugar Ray Robinson was the epitome of the first version of the sport. When they met, it was a boxing summit.
Carmen Basilio was actually 5-5 ½ with a 68 ½ inch reach, somewhat long for his height. Usually, reach and height are about equal and 5-5 ½ is 65 ½ inches. He was never much more than welterweight, never weighting more than 154, (not 156), pounds for a fight. He could hit but was not a one-punch knockout guy, getting only 27 of them in 79 career fights. He learned how to fight from a crouch and bob and weave to protect himself but he was no “boxer”. He kept coming forward and was willing to take punches to land them. He was hardly invincible, losing 16 fights in his career. He always requested to wear black trunks to hide the blood dropping from his face, (there are some prominent fights, however, that show him wearing white).
But most fighters lost a lot of fights in those days. These days, if a fighter has potential, his managers “protect him” by lining up opponents he can easily beat. That’s because in the crowded sports season we have now the undefeated record is a major marketing tool and a fighter who has lost is treated like damaged goods, his aura of invincibility shattered forever. In fact, an undefeated fighter is just a fighter who doesn’t know how he could be beaten. In the old days, fighters- all of them- started out in fight clubs, learning their profession the hard way. Before a fighter ever got well known, much less got a shot at the championship, he might lose a dozen fights or more. But he learned from those losses, or else he quit. Carmen didn’t quit, not until he had reached the heights of his profession and made enough money for his family to live comfortably for years to come.
The two things he excelled all others at were conditioning and toughness. Nobody ever worked harder to prepare himself for an athletic contest. And nobody who ever stepped into a ring was physically or mentally tougher than Carmen Basilio. He was proud of being a better boxer than people gave him credit for and claimed that his face, which some claimed had a scar from every fight he’d ever fought, wasn’t nearly as marked up as people thought. Photographs, (unless they were taken just after fights), reveal a fairly handsome, sharp-featured man. When a Ring Magazine writer claimed he’s had 100 stitches on his face, the factoid picked up all over the country. Carmen wrote a letter to the editor saying “The worst cutting up I ever got was from you guys.”
Carmen had little use for most writers because they depicted him as being crude and dumb. He was neither. “There are some writers I can’t really blame, though. They have me talking the same way they talk.” When they finally began to give him some credit, acknowledging that he had improved, he said “Sure I improved. I improved because I got a chance to fight better fighters. I was underrated for a long time, though. I always fooled them and they always went back to saying the same things about me. Even after I beat some good men, my style made them think I was nothing but a club fighter.”
He told Ed Linn, “I have to try and go inside and when you’re in close and heads are moving back and forth, they’re going to bump sooner or later. Most cuts don’t come from punches, they come from butts. It isn’t intentional. It’s closer to inevitable.” The large, circular scar in his right eyebrow, the one “that carried a scar worthy of a Heidelberg dueling academy”, was due to a butt suffered in a 1952 fight with one Jackie O’Brien and what Linn called “a botched stitching job”, that became infected and required a reopening and cleaning that built up “a mass of scar tissue” that was reopened in fight after fight.
Carmen never lost his combative attitude toward life’s challenges. Linn wrote, “He has a habit, too of ending discussions about the difficulties of the moment by holding up his two fists and saying “These are all I need.”
