"He was a tough guy, and he boxed everybody in Europe," Willie said now. "If he thought I was gonna stand there and trade punch for punch, maybe that's the way they do it in Europe, but not over here. He'd get set, and I'd jab him and move."
"I remember that fight," Devlin said. "Great."
"I'll never forget it," I said. "I never saw another fighter who was as frustrated as Famechon was that night. He was punching at air, and a couple of times Willie was actually behind him, tapping him on the shoulder to let him know where he was."
"Yeah," Willie said, "the guy wanted to punch me, and I didn't like to get punched."
"But what Willie probably doesn't know," I said, "is that the fight was supposed to have economic implications in France. Coca-Cola was starting to sell big over there, and the wine growers were up in arms. French kids for centuries had been brought up to drink wine, and now they were drinking Cokes. The agency that had the Coca-Cola account must have figured that Famechon would lick Willie, and they were ready. They had a case of Cokes in Famechon's dressing room, and the idea was that, after he won, there'd be pictures on the front pages of papers all over France of the new world champion celebrating with a Coke."
"I didn't know that," Willie said.
"So in the dressing room later," I said, "there was Famechon sitting with his head down, and saying in French, 'I couldn't hit him because I couldn't find him.' There were the agency guys like mourners at a wake, and there was the case of Cokes over in a corner unopened."
"Is that so?" Willie said. "Well, you know how it was. After the weigh-in, I knew what the guy had in mind, but I didn't have the same idea in my mind."
"That was obvious once the fight started," I said.
"But Willie's greatest was the second Saddler fight," Devlin said. "Great."
Willie's record in The Ring Record Book and Encyclopedia is a gallery of great art, from the meticulous miniatures that went only a few rounds to the masterpieces that went the distance. Of the latter, the second Saddler fight in the Garden was the greatest boxing exhibition I ever saw, for Saddler had knocked him out in their first fight and had the height and reach and punch on him. He hurt him the second time, too, cut him under both eyes and over the right, and rocked him time and again, but it was Willie's fight from the first round on when he jabbed Saddler thirty-seven times in succession without a return. There were times when he had Saddler so befuddled that he could stop the dancing and stand right there and rock him back and, though battered and cut and bruised, he won it big on everybody's card to send the sell-out crowd out into the streets still buzzing, still carrying the electrical charge of it.
"Willie sold a lot of TV sets that night," I was saying now. "In those days, you remember, boxing and Milton Berle sold TVs. Guys who didn't have sets gathered in bars or in the homes of others who had sets to watch the fights, and I'll bet Willie sold a lot that night."
"I'll bet you're right," Devlin said.
"Who knows?" Willie said.
"Another one I remember," I said, "was when you defended against Sal Bartolo. There was a loud-mouth there who was hollering, 'Walk in on him, Sal! He can't punch! Walk in! He can't hurt ya!' After you flattened Bartolo, the guy was hollering, 'Fake! Fake!' Bartolo's jaw was broken in three places."
"I got lucky," Willie said. "I boxed him twice before and never knocked him down, and in the first fight he knocked me down for the first time. He was a good fighter."
"I was thinking of you a couple of months ago," I said. "T was out in Cut and Shoot, Texas, outside of Houston. You remember. You were training in Houston and . . ."
"Yeah, I remember that fighter fought Patterson. What was his name?"
"Roy Harris."
"Yeah," Willie said, and then to Devlin, "He came from out in the woods there. They used to cut and shoot people, and they wanted me to go out there and I said, 'Look, I don't want to go. They're probably nice people, but I'm a city fella and I don't understand that stuff.' I wouldn't go."
"So Willie was training in Houston," I said to Devlin, "and Bill Gore had just attached Willie's speed bag into the overhead socket. Roy Harris has a brother named Tobe, who'd been a fighter, and he walked up and he teed off and hit the bag a smash with his right. . ."
"Yeah," Willie said, nodding. "That's right."
"Well, that was like some country fiddler grabbing Jascha Heifetz's violin. Bill Gore said to this Tobe, 'Don't do that. That's Willie's bag.' And this Tobe, he squared off against Bill."
"That's right," Willie said. "He wanted to belt old Bill Gore. Somebody stepped between them, but I didn't want nothin' to do with that Cut and Shoot place."
"And last fall I went up to see Carmen Basilio in Syracuse," I said. "He also says you were the greatest boxer he ever saw."
"That's nice of him," Willie said. "What's he doin'?"
"He's teaching in a college there."
"He teaching in a college?" Willie said. "How can he be teachin' in a college, when he can't even speak English."
"Come on, Willie," I said, "he speaks as well as we do."
"Yeah, I know," he said, "but, I mean, how can he be teachin' in a college?"
"He teaches physical education."
"Oh," Willie said. "Well, he could do that."
"He told me you wouldn't agree with me."
"He told you what?"
"He told me that you wouldn't agree with me. He says that everything he says, you disagree with."
"He's wrong," Willie said.
"You see?" I said. "That's exactly what he said."
"Every time he sees me," Willie said, "he grabs me in a headlock. Why does he do that?"
"I don't know," I said. "He likes you, I guess."
"That's enough," Devlin said, laughing and standing up. "I could sit around here all afternoon listening to these stories, but I have things to do."
He shook hands with me, and put on his coat and hat and left. Willie was sitting back, his hands clasped behind his head.
"So what do you want to know?" he said.
"How are things with you," I said. "I'm presuming you're presently married."
I had lost track of Willie's marriages. The first was to a girl from around Hartford, the second was to a model, the third to an exotic dancer, the fourth to a hat check girl and part-time actress. That's where some of the money went. Some went into a home for his parents, and some went at the race track, and some into Chilean oil wells, two night clubs, and a tavern.
"This is the fifth time," he said. "I'm happily married nine years to this girl—Geraldine. Her father was an All-American basketball player at Manhattan College—Nat Volpe—and he used to referee games in the Garden. When I first met my wife she didn't know Willie Pep from a hole in the wall. I got a seven-year old daughter—Melissa—a cat, two dogs, and a fenced in yard, and that's it."
"I remember a little kid, a boy about knee-high, who used to be around the gym here with you."
"I got a thirty-three-year-old daughter. I got two boys. One guy is thirty-one and the other is twenty-four. I run away the first time. We were both twenty years old, and she said, 'Willie, we ought to get married.' I said, 'I can't, until I'm champion of the world.' So two months later we got married. My first two are dead now, and the third and fourth—I don't know what happened to them once we got divorced. I did well by them, though."
"I recall somebody telling me," I said, "that a father of one of your wives told you before the marriage, 'Willie, don't marry my daughter. She's no good, and you're too nice a guy.' I thought that was quite a noble act by a father."
"But that's not so," he said. "Why would the guy tell me that? I was champion of the world, and his daughter was gonna live in style. The wives and me, we couldn't get along, and if you can't get along, it's no good."
The door had opened, and a man in a windbreaker had walked in. He was standing in front of Willie's desk.
"How are you Willie?" he said.
"Fine," Willie said, looking up at him.
"I already got a TV set," Willie said.
"How about a 19-inch black and white?"
"I already got a 19-inch black and white," Willie said.
"I know," the other said, "I'm the guy who's fixin' it for you."
"Oh, yeah," Willie said, "I forgot. Where is it?"
"I got it out in the car," the other said. "You want to come out, and I'll put it in your car?"
"Good," Willie said, and then to me, "Excuse me a minute. All right?"
With those quick steps he went over to the coat rack and put on a topcoat and he followed the other out. In about five minutes he was back, hanging up his topcoat and hurrying over to his desk.
"You see," he said, "I give the set to one guy to fix, and he gave it to this guy. That's why I didn't recognize this guy. I got to call my wife."
He dialed, and I could hear the ringing sound at the other end. Then the sound stopped.
"Hey!" he said into the phone. "The guy just brought the TV back. I'll bring it home tonight. What? All I know is what the guy said. He said he fixed it. There may be a few lines in it yet, but he did the best he could. What? What do I know about a TV? I don't know nothin'. All I know is the guy . . . Hey, wait a minute!"
He took the phone away from his head, and held it out from himself. What I heard sounded like a recording tape being run rapidly through the player, and Willie was looking at me and shaking his head and laughing.
"Wait! Wait!" he was saying into the phone now. "Hold it! Listen to me. Oh, boy. Hey, put Missy on. Let me talk to Missy. Please?"
He waited, looking at me and shaking his head and raising his eyes and laughing.
"Hello, Missy?" he said now. "How was school? What? Yeah, I got it. What? Look, how do I know? All I know is the man said he fixed it the best. . . Hey! You sound just like your mother."
He held the phone away from himself again. This time the pitch was higher, as if the tape was being run even more rapidly through the player, perhaps even backward.
"Missy?" he was saying into the phone again now. "Listen. Hey! Never mind. Look. I got it in the car, and I'll be home with it about five o'clock. All right? Good. Good. I'll see you."
He put the phone back on its cradle. He shook his head, and he was still smiling.
"That was my daughter," he said. "I get a couple weeks vacation, and this year I'm thinkin' of taking her to Disney World."
"She'll like that," I said, "so you'll enjoy it, too."
"I live within 120 miles of six race tracks," he said. "We also got dog tracks and jai alai, and I can't go. You lose a hundred, and what are you gonna do?"
"Willie," I said, "I'm going to try something on you again. You were a great artist, and . . ."
"Thank you," he said.
". . . and the rest of us are always yearning to learn how the great artist does it. Can't you recall where you learned this move or that move?"
I had tried it on him many years before, but to no avail. It is what Hans Hofmann, the late abstract expressionist painter and teacher once said, "The painterly instincts are stronger than will. In teaching, it is just the opposite. I must account for every line. One is forced to explain the inexplicable."
"Styles are funny," Willie said. "One's guy's candy is another guy's poison."
"That's why no one else could really box Willie Pep's style."
"I don't know," he said. "My father wasn't athletic. He came from the old country, and he worked on construction in Middletown, but he liked sports. On the East Side I was a little kid, and I used to get whacked around."
"And run," I said.
"Right, and the Old Man said, 'Don't come home cryin', or I'll whack you around, too.' I didn't win any fights on the street, that's for sure. Then one guy, some older kid, said, 'Why don't you go to the gym? You're gettin' beat up, and you can get paid for it.'
"I got $3 in Danbury, Connecticut, in 1937. I got $5 all together, but it was $2 for the license. In Norwich, Connecticut, I weighed 107, and a tall black guy from the Salem AC gets on and he's 126. I said to the guy who was managing me, 'What about this guy?' He said, 'He ain't no good, or he wouldn't be fightin' you.' "
"Ray Robinson."
"Yeah. He boxed me under the name of Ray Roberts."
"And he says that, after he got the decision, they threw him in jail overnight, because they couldn't believe an amateur could beat Willie Pep."
"But he's wrong," Willie said. "I was a nobody then, so why would they throw him in jail for beatin' me?"
"I don't know," I said, "but did you learn anything in that fight, or any fight?"
"I can't say," he said. "You see, with me, guys were always trying to hit me, and I didn't like to get hit. I didn't like to get punched, and I was very fortunate. I think I won thirty or forty straight rounds without losing a round. It just came to me. The other guy was missing, and I was punching. Instinct. I just did it. I jabbed a guy, and then I made him miss, and then I was behind him. I was blessed with a lot of things.
"Then Bill Gore came along," he said, and Bill Gore was his trainer. "I'd come back to the corner, and Bill would be the most relaxed guy. He'd wipe me off, and give me water. He was calm and he made me calm."
"How nervous were you before a fight, say in the dressing room?"
"I was nervous," he said. "I sat. I walked. I wanted to get in there and get it over with. I was scared in every fight in a way, I guess."
"Can you recall anything that Bill Gore taught you?"
"He told me once, 'You jab, and you push your hand out and you step to the side and you leave your hand there.' I fought a guy in Phoenix—you could look it up—and I kept doin' that, and after the fight he was complainin', 'I don't know what's the matter with my neck. It's stiff, and it hurts.'
"Bill Gore," he said, "he told me, 'The way you talk now, you're gonna talk when you quit.' He wouldn't let me get hurt. Against Saddler, the third time, my left eye was shut tight. Bill Gore said to the referee, 'He can't continue.' I said, 'Thank you.' He died in '75 in Tampa, and they buried him in Providence, Rhode Island, and I went to the wake. He was one of the greatest trainers of all time. If he was around New York he woulda been known as the greatest."
"So how did you finally decide, after 241 fights, to finally call it quits?"
"In January of 1966," he said, "in Richmond, Virginia, they told me, 'Come down here and box an exhibition, four rounds.' The day of the fight, Bill Brennan, the commissioner of Virginia, says, 'You're boxing six rounds.' I said, 'It's supposed to be an exhibition.' He told the other guy, Calvin Woodland, 'If you don't fight, I'll suspend you.' He told me, 'I'll have you suspended everywhere.' I stayed at the Admiral Sims, in Richmond, a real nice hotel, and I was there three days and I had a big tab, so I fought the guy, and he licked me in six rounds and I packed it in."
"And then what did you do?"
"I worked for a brewery for a while, and for a car radio company for a while. Rocky Marciano was instrumental in gettin' me that job in Brockton. I was a good-will man, and then I got a job as a Tax Marshal for Connecticut, but I couldn't stand that."
"Why not?"
"I couldn't make any money, and the stories ruined me. Basically, I'm a very soft guy. I'm a sucker for a touch, and a sob story makes me cry. The job was to collect unpaid taxes, and I got paid only if I collected the taxes—six per cent. After the Tax Marshall says, 'No funds.' they leave the guy alone, and I was always saying, 'No funds.' No money for me. This one guy had a gas station outside of town here, and he owed $3,000 in taxes. I knew the guy, but I hadn't seen him in fifteen years. The guy was married, with a kid, and dead broke, and he couldn't pay his bills, so I ended up loaning him ninety bucks. That was no job for me."
"Do you miss the way it used to be, Willie?"
"They told me I grossed close to a million," he said, "but I used to get cut fifty per cent. My father told me, 'Don't ever take anything that don't belong to you.' He couldn't read or write, but he knew
right or wrong. I never hurt anybody. Maybe I did—I don't know—but I didn't mean to."
"But do you miss being in the ring?" I said. "You know, being able to box so beautifully and thrilling people and hearing the cheers and the praise."
"I don't think about it too much," he said, "because I'll never have it to do again. I made a lot of mistakes, but I'm very fortunate. I came out of them."
When it was coming up 4:30, I asked him to call a cab for me, but he said he would drive me to where I could cross the street to the motel. We walked out to the parking space, and the TV set was on the passenger's side of the front seat. I got in the back, and Willie seemed small, peering out over the wheel. City-soiled snow, sand mixed into it, was banked along the curb where a half dozen cars were backed up at the stop light.
"Now don't cross here," he said to me, as I started to get out. "Cross at the corner. I don't want to see you get hurt."
"I never wanted to see you get hurt, either," I said.
Once They Heard the Cheers Page 30