Above a bookshelf in my living room hangs a cheap reproduction of the George Bellows painting, “Dempsey and Firpo.” On September 14, 1923, in front of more than 80,000 spectators, Dempsey and Firpo pummeled each other in the first round of their fight. In the second round Dempsey knocked Firpo out for the count, and the crowd just went wild, especially when Dempsey helped his battered opponent to his feet. Some critics have called the Bellows painting the greatest piece in American sports art. A lithograph of the painting sold three years ago for $108,000.00
I bought the Bellows piece for a couple of bucks at a used book sale in the Asheville public library not for the art but from my lifelong affection for boxing. Some friends have scolded me for this passion—one woman told me she didn’t see how anyone could reconcile his religious faith with a sport so dependent on violence—and I’m not sure I can explain it myself. In An Education For Our Time, Josiah Bunting gives several reasons for taking up boxing. He accurately writes: “Here is a sport, boxing, in which a competitor must make a conscious decision to put himself at risk…and in no sport is it more consequential that a cold intelligence superintend performance….” I liked boxing because I knew that I had to keep my cool and that no matter what, win or lose, I had to be able to take some hits. To me, boxing was a lot like life.
I’ve rummaged through the attic, but whatever initially attracted to boxing has disappeared. Most likely I read about it—books were the great passion of my boyhood and have remained so—or else I saw matches on television back when the networks offered the Friday night fights.
But the man who first taught me boxing I will never forget. His name was Bill Bianco, a New Yorker who moved from New York City to Boonville when two of his nephews bought the town’s textile plant and remade it into a braid factory manufacturing decorative silky cords, mostly for uniforms. The Biancos, Stammettis, and Lamantos all bought houses within a block of my family’s house. They were the only Catholics in town and the only Italians, and they threw loud, gregarious parties and considerably livened up the lives of the local folk.
At some point I discovered that Bill—he was Mr. Bianco to me, of course—had fought in the Golden Gloves in his youth and that he had boxed professionally for a time. He was a thin, short, swarthy man, with the smile of a pirate and a stomach as hard as concrete. I was ten or eleven years old when I asked him to show me some moves. On several occasions he instructed me in some of the arts of pugilism, teaching me how to hold my hands and arms to protect my face and abdomen, to glide when I moved my feet, to throw a jab and a straight right.
Mr. Bianco had one night of fame I remember from those days. The school auditorium doubled as the place for events like talent contests, plays, and other performances. I don’t remember the event of this one particular evening, but I will never forget Mr. Bianco. He came from the back of the room down the main aisle in a hot red dress, probably given him by his wife, and he wired himself with a battery and small light bulbs where a brassiere would normally serve a woman. So here he came, lights blinking on his faux breasts, and the place just exploded with laughter and applause. As I say, the Italian clan sparked—in this case, literally—some new life into our community of Baptists and Methodists.
At the United States Military Academy, which I entered in 1969, plebes were required to take four different physical fitness courses: swimming, gymnastics, wrestling, and boxing. I was a strong swimmer, though I never cared for it as a sport. Gymnastics always made me feel clumsy, and wrestling I despised because I disliked ending up with my nose stuck in some guy’s armpit.
But boxing sucked me right in. I loved the training and the sparring in those classes, and that winter I joined our company boxing team. Every company at the Academy had teams that practiced and competed after classes had ended for the day, and G-4, my company, was no different. We had a good, tough coach, an upperclassman named Mike Zolidis, who drilled us and saw that we made weight for our bouts. That first year we made the brigade playoffs, and if memory serves we came in fourth of the thirty-six companies.
I remember two of my opponents vividly. The first was an upperclassman. During Beast Barracks the previous summer, he had seemed to take a sadistic pleasure in hazing and humiliating some of my classmates. Though I could tell he didn’t recognize me, being pitted against him in the ring terrified me. But like so many things in life, once you throw and absorb a few punches, the fear runs away and you just focus on what you’re doing.
This cadet, I quickly realized, was a by-the-book boxer. Without variation, he fought exactly as his instructors had taught him during his own plebe year: left jab, straight right, retreat with another jab. He followed this pattern all three rounds, and within thirty seconds of the first round I was popping punches into his face after each straight right. When I won, I was delighted to hear him say to his corner man, “I can’t believe I lost to a plebe.”
My other memorable opponent was Sonny Bargala, a Puerto Rican who was also my classmate. Sonny and I were well acquainted, and got along. I loved boxing him for his name alone because Sonny Bargala is a great boxing name compared to Jeff Minick. During our match, we both fought hard and I won, but what I remember is getting hit by Sonny with a roundhouse right and seeing stars just the way they are shown in cartoons. I shook my head and the stars went away, but I saw stars.
When we were making our run toward the championship, we had to fight three matches in six or seven days. I won my first bout, but my face and nose took a pounding, and in the next two matches Mike Zolidas stuffed cotton into my nostrils to prevent the flow of blood. “Judges don’t like blood,” he said. Those cotton balls prevented the bleeding, but they sure made breathing difficult. I won my next bout, but lost the last one.
For the rest of my life, until I turned sixty and damaged my rotor cuff punching a heavy bag too hard, I’d throw on a pair of gloves and do some bag work whenever I lived near a gym. In Charlottesville, I trained a friend to punch in a little room in the old university gymnasium, and later I found a club downtown and worked out there, though by then I wasn’t sparring anymore.
Asheville brought me to George’s Gym, and I collected some of my homeschool students, including my two oldest sons, and we trained with George. George was a burly black man who had fought while he was in the Army, and though he now worked for the postal service, he worked with fighters at night. He was terrible at collecting fees and lost money on his gym, but he was generous with his time and talent. Once he wangled some tickets to a Tough Man contest and gave them to my students, and we watched some fights in the Agricultural Center. The promoters were using Hooters waitresses to carry the signs announcing the number of the round, which cracked me up because here were all my innocent homeschool students, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old, watching scantily-dressed women traipsing around the ring.
Most Tough Man contests involve less boxing and more flailing, with lots of windmill punching, but that evening there was one exception. A man in a bathrobe walked toward the ring. He was tall, and dark-haired, and carried himself like a soldier. Accompanying him were a young woman and a friend carrying a bag. When the announcer called his name, this man shucked off his robe, slipped through the ropes, and faced his opponent, a husky, shorter country boy. At the bell, the country boy rushed out and began flailing, but the other man boxed. He threw flurries of punches, slipped past his opponent, and moved around the ring like some great cat. Pop, pop, pop: one jab right after another straight to the face. After he had won the fight, looking as fresh as when he had stepped into the ring, he joined the girl and his friend outside the ring. The friend reached into the bag, pulled out three glasses and a bottle of champagne, and poured drinks. That was a class act from start to finish.
I still own a gym bag containing mouth gear, hand wraps, jump rope, and bag gloves, but as I say, I’m too old now to use them. The shoulder couldn’t take the punishment, and the knees are gone. But I’m not one of those guys who wish for the old days. Those days are past, but I’m here and have my memories, and in this case the pleasures of memory bring me a smile.
I’ve rummaged through the attic, but whatever initially attracted to boxing has disappeared. Most likely I read about it—books were the great passion of my boyhood and have remained so—or else I saw matches on television back when the networks offered the Friday night fights.
But the man who first taught me boxing I will never forget. His name was Bill Bianco, a New Yorker who moved from New York City to Boonville when two of his nephews bought the town’s textile plant and remade it into a braid factory manufacturing decorative silky cords, mostly for uniforms. The Biancos, Stammettis, and Lamantos all bought houses within a block of my family’s house. They were the only Catholics in town and the only Italians, and they threw loud, gregarious parties and considerably livened up the lives of the local folk.
At some point I discovered that Bill—he was Mr. Bianco to me, of course—had fought in the Golden Gloves in his youth and that he had boxed professionally for a time. He was a thin, short, swarthy man, with the smile of a pirate and a stomach as hard as concrete. I was ten or eleven years old when I asked him to show me some moves. On several occasions he instructed me in some of the arts of pugilism, teaching me how to hold my hands and arms to protect my face and abdomen, to glide when I moved my feet, to throw a jab and a straight right.
Mr. Bianco had one night of fame I remember from those days. The school auditorium doubled as the place for events like talent contests, plays, and other performances. I don’t remember the event of this one particular evening, but I will never forget Mr. Bianco. He came from the back of the room down the main aisle in a hot red dress, probably given him by his wife, and he wired himself with a battery and small light bulbs where a brassiere would normally serve a woman. So here he came, lights blinking on his faux breasts, and the place just exploded with laughter and applause. As I say, the Italian clan sparked—in this case, literally—some new life into our community of Baptists and Methodists.
At the United States Military Academy, which I entered in 1969, plebes were required to take four different physical fitness courses: swimming, gymnastics, wrestling, and boxing. I was a strong swimmer, though I never cared for it as a sport. Gymnastics always made me feel clumsy, and wrestling I despised because I disliked ending up with my nose stuck in some guy’s armpit.
But boxing sucked me right in. I loved the training and the sparring in those classes, and that winter I joined our company boxing team. Every company at the Academy had teams that practiced and competed after classes had ended for the day, and G-4, my company, was no different. We had a good, tough coach, an upperclassman named Mike Zolidis, who drilled us and saw that we made weight for our bouts. That first year we made the brigade playoffs, and if memory serves we came in fourth of the thirty-six companies.
I remember two of my opponents vividly. The first was an upperclassman. During Beast Barracks the previous summer, he had seemed to take a sadistic pleasure in hazing and humiliating some of my classmates. Though I could tell he didn’t recognize me, being pitted against him in the ring terrified me. But like so many things in life, once you throw and absorb a few punches, the fear runs away and you just focus on what you’re doing.
This cadet, I quickly realized, was a by-the-book boxer. Without variation, he fought exactly as his instructors had taught him during his own plebe year: left jab, straight right, retreat with another jab. He followed this pattern all three rounds, and within thirty seconds of the first round I was popping punches into his face after each straight right. When I won, I was delighted to hear him say to his corner man, “I can’t believe I lost to a plebe.”
My other memorable opponent was Sonny Bargala, a Puerto Rican who was also my classmate. Sonny and I were well acquainted, and got along. I loved boxing him for his name alone because Sonny Bargala is a great boxing name compared to Jeff Minick. During our match, we both fought hard and I won, but what I remember is getting hit by Sonny with a roundhouse right and seeing stars just the way they are shown in cartoons. I shook my head and the stars went away, but I saw stars.
When we were making our run toward the championship, we had to fight three matches in six or seven days. I won my first bout, but my face and nose took a pounding, and in the next two matches Mike Zolidas stuffed cotton into my nostrils to prevent the flow of blood. “Judges don’t like blood,” he said. Those cotton balls prevented the bleeding, but they sure made breathing difficult. I won my next bout, but lost the last one.
For the rest of my life, until I turned sixty and damaged my rotor cuff punching a heavy bag too hard, I’d throw on a pair of gloves and do some bag work whenever I lived near a gym. In Charlottesville, I trained a friend to punch in a little room in the old university gymnasium, and later I found a club downtown and worked out there, though by then I wasn’t sparring anymore.
Asheville brought me to George’s Gym, and I collected some of my homeschool students, including my two oldest sons, and we trained with George. George was a burly black man who had fought while he was in the Army, and though he now worked for the postal service, he worked with fighters at night. He was terrible at collecting fees and lost money on his gym, but he was generous with his time and talent. Once he wangled some tickets to a Tough Man contest and gave them to my students, and we watched some fights in the Agricultural Center. The promoters were using Hooters waitresses to carry the signs announcing the number of the round, which cracked me up because here were all my innocent homeschool students, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old, watching scantily-dressed women traipsing around the ring.
Most Tough Man contests involve less boxing and more flailing, with lots of windmill punching, but that evening there was one exception. A man in a bathrobe walked toward the ring. He was tall, and dark-haired, and carried himself like a soldier. Accompanying him were a young woman and a friend carrying a bag. When the announcer called his name, this man shucked off his robe, slipped through the ropes, and faced his opponent, a husky, shorter country boy. At the bell, the country boy rushed out and began flailing, but the other man boxed. He threw flurries of punches, slipped past his opponent, and moved around the ring like some great cat. Pop, pop, pop: one jab right after another straight to the face. After he had won the fight, looking as fresh as when he had stepped into the ring, he joined the girl and his friend outside the ring. The friend reached into the bag, pulled out three glasses and a bottle of champagne, and poured drinks. That was a class act from start to finish.
I still own a gym bag containing mouth gear, hand wraps, jump rope, and bag gloves, but as I say, I’m too old now to use them. The shoulder couldn’t take the punishment, and the knees are gone. But I’m not one of those guys who wish for the old days. Those days are past, but I’m here and have my memories, and in this case the pleasures of memory bring me a smile.
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