Sweet Thunder Read online

  1960–1962

  battling

  SUGAR RAY LOATHED CARMEN BASILIO, and Carmen Basilio loathed Sugar Ray. The profound mutual dislike bewildered many in their respective camps. No one could quite figure out the roots of the near-hatred. There was, however, a partial explanation: Time had passed, but the old ethnic furies of Robinson-LaMotta couldn’t be totally dismissed by the boxing analysts. Also feeding emotions was the fact that both fighters had let it be known what they thought of the other: Robinson deemed Basilio a bully with no style; Basilio believed Robinson more dancer than fighter.

  The siren song to come out of retirement snared Robinson. There were still flashes of the indomitable will and brilliance.

  Fighting styles aside, most fighters had one thing in common that linked them beyond the ring—hard backgrounds. Despite the story lines spun by fight managers and publicity mavens, most fighters either sprang from a humble beginning, like Basilio, or a desperate one, like Robinson. In many circumstances, the fighters were also sons of their father’s dreams.

  Joseph Basilio was an onion farmer in upstate New York. He enjoyed listening to boxing on the radio and later reading the vivid narratives in the newspapers about the nuances and fighting styles of individual champions. He felt compelled to pass these great storylines of loss and redemption on to his son Carmen. Young Carmen soon caught the fever.

  Carmen Basilio—who had helped his father for years on the farm—amassed a distinguished amateur career in the ring before turning pro in 1948. Basilio won the welterweight crown on June 10, 1955, against Tony DeMarco in Syracuse. On March 14, 1956, he lost it to Johnny Saxton in Chicago. But six months later, back in Syracuse, he yanked it back in a match called in his favor after the ninth round. It was all enough to convince Basilio and his manager he was ready to move into middleweight territory and take on Sugar Ray Robinson—the dancer.

  Their bout was announced for September 23, 1957, at Yankee Stadium. The air was laden with mutual disrespect. As they stepped toward one another at center ring for the fight’s beginning, they cursed each other in low tones—“a muttered exchange of insults,” as it was delicately described.

  Basilio landed left and right jabs to Sugar Ray’s face in the opening round, accompanied by body blows. Robinson answered with punches so rapid they seemed to flicker. By round two Basilio’s strategy was obvious: He aimed to play the aggressor. He fired a heavy right into Robinson’s head midway through the round, then repeated the blow as the bell rang. Basilio bullied Robinson into the ropes in the third but paid a price: Robinson landed an uppercut to Basilio’s chin and a right to his jaw. Blood spurted from Basilio’s nose and the crowd—more than thirty-eight thousand in attendance—grunted and shifted. In the fourth Sugar Ray smacked Basilio with another facial punch, this one resulting in a cut over Basilio’s left eye. But the onion picker’s son, showing a clearly bruised face, seemed impervious to Robinson’s blows. “That didn’t hurt,” he howled at one point, “but just try it again.” Gainford had instructed Sugar Ray to conserve his energy against the young fighter and fire away toward the last seconds of each round. (All of Robinson’s foes now seemed to be younger—Basilio by six years—as if he himself had emerged from a time machine.) Robinson couldn’t escape Basilio’s strength and was constantly pulled closer, as Basilio positioned himself to unload punches to Robinson’s head. Robinson sensed danger going into round twelve; he had lost the previous three rounds on the judges’ cards. Now Basilio was snarling; his grunts could be heard beyond the ring. Sugar Ray stunned Basilio early in round twelve with a right fist to the head, then a torrent of left blows delivered like “machine gun bullets,” as Arthur Daley described them. The effectiveness of the blows seemed to energize Robinson. He suddenly looked beautiful: The charcoaled body weaving in and out of the ring lights, reminding one and all who he was, taking them back in time. In rounds thirteen and fourteen Sugar Ray slithered around Basilio and greeted him with a volley of unanswered blows; Basilio shuffled to his corner after round thirteen, like a man willing himself to stand upright. But in the fifteenth—the fans were mesmerized by the grueling evening, and the faces of both fighters were puffy and discolored—Basilio rallied and offered stiff blows to Sugar Ray’s midsection. The evening, coming to a close, had showcased two primary emotions within each fighter: contempt and pride. Few could ignore that it had been a close fight. In the excruciating seconds before the announcement of the winner, there was a noticeable hush over Yankee Stadium—“a strange and questioning silence,” as one journalist would put it. The victory, in a split decision, went to Basilio. There was immediate outrage among Robinson partisans. Gainford and Wiley cursed into the open air. “Look at what they did to me out there,” Sugar Ray cried in the fight’s aftermath. “I thought I was ahead.” In Basilio’s mind, it had all gone perfectly: “I figured my aggressiveness gave me the edge,” he allowed. “That’s the way I had planned it—to make the fight.”

  Life magazine called the fifteen-rounder “the grudge fight of the decade.” They were not exaggerating. There was immediate talk of a rematch. There was also, from many corners, a sense of marvel at Robinson’s showing. “Sugar Ray Robinson tried to fight Carmen Basilio from memory at Yankee Stadium last night and he came perilously close to getting away with it,” Arthur Daley of the Times reported.

  What went unnoticed in the aftermath of the bout, however, was Robinson’s great victory against Jim Norris and the International Boxing Club—the organization that had monopolized the promotion of major fights. In the days leading up to the fight, Sugar Ray had made a personal appearance before the New York State Athletic Commission. Robinson had prepared for his appearance with help from attorney Truman Gibson. Robinson holed up in his office poring over law books, particularly sections on antitrust law. He complained that the IBC monopolized bouts all over the country; that they siphoned off monies that should go to fighters; and that they had long impeded him in his attempt to reap TV revenue from his fights. A dozen New York boxing officials sat at a long heavy table while Sugar Ray stood, gesturing with his hands, giving a lecture that clearly caught the gentlemen off guard. One eyewitness at the proceedings would remark that Robinson had displayed a “fluency and aggressiveness” in stating his case that fighters were often deprived of their just financial rewards when it came to outside revenues. Sugar Ray was well aware of Joe Louis’s effort to enter fight promotions. Louis had signed heavyweights Ezzard Charles, Lee Savold, and Jersey Joe Walcott to contracts. But Louis could never get big bouts for his fighters and Norris eventually bought him out for $150,000 and IBC stock. Then Sugar Ray shocked the officials by unloading an ultimatum: Concede to his demands for TV revenue or he would cancel the Basilio fight. The fight had been widely promoted; the boxing officials knew it would be a calamity to cancel the fight. Robinson’s public appearance and his charges against the IBC were enough to draw the attention of New York congressman Kenneth Keating, who said boxing needed federal intervention and oversight. Boxing officials all across the country—supported by Nat Fleischer of Ring magazine—assailed Keating and Robinson, crying that any oversight of local boxing matters was akin to tampering with states’ rights. But those who believed in Robinson’s cause immediately began a series of challenges to the IBC in federal court. In 1958 Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee began hearings on boxing, which exposed many of the unsavory aspects of the sport. (In 1959 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that obliged the IBC to dissolve its operations in New York and Illinois, as well as limiting the number of fights that could take place under IBC auspices. In a way, Sugar Ray Robinson had retaliated against all the promoters and managers and mobsters who had, through the years, taken advantage of the likes of Charley Burley, Henry Armstrong—and Joe Louis.

  For his fight against Basilio, Robinson had received $225,000 for TV rights—the largest such payment in his career—as well as nearly half of the gate. It was a grand victory for Sugar Ray and fighters everywhere. Robinson ha
d done what newspaper reporters had been unwilling to do: He had exposed the New York IBC to New York officials in the glare of public scrutiny, which led to government antitrust lawsuits and wide exposure of corruption. The move, tantamount to a kind of emancipation for professional fighters, would continue to bear fruit in later years as fighters negotiated lucrative deals with TV networks such as HBO. Of course Sugar Ray further alienated himself from the business hierarchy of boxing, but he had never been a welcome member of that establishment anyway.

  On the very day the bell rang inside Yankee Stadium, sending Robinson and Basilio crashing toward each other, another autumnal set of bells rang hundreds of miles to the west, inside Little Rock’s Central High School in Arkansas, summoning nine Negro students to take their seats in the classroom. “The niggers are in our school!” a girl screamed upon sight of the Negro students. Immediately, the white students—their faces contorted into fits of fury that mim icked their mothers and fathers—stalked out. They sang a ditty: “Two, four, six, eight, we ain’t gonna integrate.” A crowd of about a thousand white protesters—described by one national publication as “white supremacists”—gathered in front of the school. The white supremacists were actually a mix of PTA members, chain-smoking mechanics, goons, soda jerks, Arkansas backwoodsmen, and jobless men in jeans and white T-shirts who simply had nowhere else to be. Once the black children were ferried to safety, the goons—in goose-stepping chorus—began attacking newspapermen, drawing blood. A grim-faced President Eisenhower finally directed federal troops into Little Rock, where they would remain for months.

  In a sense, the events in Little Rock seemed to encompass all the past and present: Joe Louis swinging his fists; songstress Lena Horne using her voice during World War II; Langston Hughes giving his verse to freedom rallies; Miles Davis blowing his freedom trumpet; Sugar Ray Robinson battling for the economic rights of pugilists.

  It is no fault of Basilio’s that his victory against Robinson, won ten hours after the Little Rock clash, resounded rather quietly. In the following days and weeks, the spotlight shone on the Negro schoolchildren, and they were the mightiest warriors.

  Decades after that first clash, there remained an enmity between the two fighters. “I went the whole fifteen rounds and kicked his ass,” Basilio would say. “But I had to stay up on him, had to keep moving into him.” It was the Robinson demeanor, as much as anything, that rankled Basilio: “He was a showboat. Always liked to go first class. He was an egotistical son of a bitch. So I never got close to him. There was no love there at all. It was all business.”

  Sugar Ray’s pronouncements that he might retire yet again after the Basilio defeat were just emotional ruminations of a disappointed prizefighter. He actually couldn’t wait to get to Chicago for the March 25 rematch.

  A contingent arrived from the West Coast to witness the second meeting—planes swooping into Midway Airport—and among them was Frank Sinatra. Frank was as enamored of certain prizefighters as he was of fellow jazz musicians. In Frank’s mind, champion fighters were of the same cultural landscape as himself: lonely and brave artists. (For years rumors had circulated in and out of gossip columns that Sinatra was contemplating entering boxing as a manager. Eventually the rumors died.)

  Panic struck the Robinson camp in the hours before the bout—Sugar Ray had come down with a fever. Injections did little to lower it and there was fear the fight might be postponed. Robinson nagged doctors to allow him to fight and followed that with more pleading. Since that 1947 death of Jimmy Doyle—and there had of course been other fatalities as Robinson well knew—boxing commissions had adopted more stringent rules regarding the fitness of a fighter; in the event of a catastrophic injury, it was promised that quick investigations would be carried out. But Sugar Ray Robinson did not figure on being grievously injured by Carmen Basilio. His temperature got down to 101 degrees. There was still reason to worry, but he pleaded with doctors until they assured the local commission he was fit to fight.

  By dusk on the evening of the fight, upward of seventeen thousand were making their way into Chicago Stadium. There were movie screens around the country preparing to show the match; seven thousand people had crowded into the fairgrounds in Syracuse, New York, not far from Basilio’s hometown. Basilio was a 2–1 favorite. They were the kind of odds he might well have appreciated: In his previous three fights at Chicago Stadium, Basilio had come out the loser. Basilio and his managers had discussed their ring strategy, and it would not veer much from that first meeting: attack, attack, attack.

  Stepping into the ring, Sugar Ray’s cornermen were worried; not only was their fighter feverish, but he hadn’t touched food in twenty hours—the penalty he had to endure to make weight.

  The enmity each fighter had for the other was evident as the bell ending the first round sounded and they were still throwing blows. Attack as he might, Basilio could not avoid the fourth-round blow from Robinson’s right fist that came like an exclamation point laid in flames. Basilio’s head snapped. At the end of the round his left eye was puffed a tomato red and nearly closed. Sugar Ray honed in on the eye, alternating lefts and rights in succeeding rounds. In the eleventh, he “jabbed a string of lefts” to Basilio’s face yet again, followed by piercing body punches. When Basilio doubled up as if he wished to scoot into a waiting automobile, it was in an effort to protect himself. But Robinson pelted away. Basilio could not escape his reach. In the stands, a little-known comedian by the name of Redd Foxx—who had often regaled patrons with bawdy one-liners while loitering in Robinson’s nightclub and hoping for free food or drink for the impromptu show—was seen gyrating like a puppet. (Foxx was so enamored of Robinson that he had shaved his head, leaving the hair that remained carved into an “S” for Sugar, an act of homage that caused his seatmates to look at him with utter bewilderment.) In the fourteenth, Robinson drove a right, then another right—the red gloves swooping about like robins—then a right uppercut into Basilio. Basilio wobbled but did not fall. In the final round Basilo’s frustration showed as he was given a warning for head-butting. Sugar Ray completed the round with two blows into Basilio’s mid-section as the crowd began to rise, and the comic Foxx started hopping up and down, and the reporters gabbed and flicked ash from their cigars, and the camera flashes went off—because there was no doubt, as there had been at the end of their first meeting, as to the victor. The two combatants embraced, a look of exhaustion upon both. But it was Sugar Ray Robinson with the raised arms. He had avenged defeat. Gainford and Wiley pushed their way to the locker room, having formed a circle with others around Robinson. Edna Mae was close behind, filled with worry. A police officer kept the press from barging into the locker room, but the reporters pounded their fists on the door anyway. Edna Mae got in and emerged after some time, announcing that her husband was “just fine.” When he finally showed—in a cream-colored long coat and a porkpie hat—Sugar Ray was whisked to a nearby hotel. “Trying to stop him was like trying to stop a freight train,” he told some reporters who had scooted up to his hotel room. “I feel like 10 guys jumped me.” It was worse, however, for Basilio. He had been admitted to a nearby hospital for observation so that doctors could attend to his closed eye.

  Many were left wordless at Robinson’s accomplishment. He had been referred to as an old man, as just a dancer. Daley of The New York Times had been one of many columnists who had believed Robinson’s heyday had long passed. Now he had to offer another summation: “He’s too incredible, too colossal to be true,” he said of Robinson.

  In and around taking down the onion farmer’s son, Sugar Ray Robinson had fight dates with Gene Fullmer, the copper miner’s son.

  It seems Gene Fullmer’s father’s dreams for his son were made plain at his birth. Young Fullmer had been named after the fighter Gene Tunney. By age eleven Gene Fullmer, along with his brothers, was already fighting in the amateur ranks in his native Utah, amassing an enviable record. Their father, Lawrence, known as a ferocious street fighter, had a nickname: �
��Tuff.” The Fullmers hailed from a line of copper miners; Gene himself worked in the very same mine as his dad Tuff before turning to professional boxing in 1951. “This boxing is men’s business and I don’t care too much for it,” Gene Fullmer’s mother, Dolores, once said. “But our boys have always liked violent exercise and they seem to thrive on it.” Fullmer’s style as a fighter was rough and hard-charging. His first bout with Sugar Ray Robinson—it would be one of four—was announced for January 2, 1957, at Madison Square Garden. George Gainford worried about Fullmer’s rough tactics and sought to deliver a preemptive strike by pleading with the New York State Athletic Commission to make sure the no-head-butting rule was strictly enforced.

  In the hours before the contest, Fullmer received a thirty-six-foot-long, two-inch-high telegram from Western Union. It came from well-wishers back in Utah. Madison Square Garden officials would later say it was the longest telegram ever received at the Garden. More than eighteen thousand fans showed at the Garden and arena officials were overjoyed at the turnout: More and more fans were choosing to watch big fights on television and in-person attendance had been steadily declining.

  In the early rounds, as Fullmer relentlessly charged, Sugar Ray tried holding him as much as possible. It was an attempt to prevent Fullmer from backing away and charging with raised fists again. The fans did not like Robinson’s strategy. “This ain’t no Olson, Sugar,” someone bellowed. “This one is alive.” The early pounding Robinson was taking caused worry in his corner. In the fourth and fifth, Robinson showed savvy, firing short punches to Fullmer that he couldn’t thwart. Fullmer had the stoicism of a robot; his facial expression—stony and cold—never altered. Sugar Ray couldn’t tell if his punches were having the desired effect. He struck one New York reporter as “the picture book fighter with the beautiful style.” But it was a style that the Mormon from Utah treated dismissively: He took the fight into even darker corners.