I’d been a boxing fan since I was a kid in Philadelphia. I remember going to Old Man Willard’s house. He lived a few doors down from us, and was one of the first people on the block to have a television set. It was black and white, of course, with a magnifying bowl placed over the screen to make the picture larger. One of my earliest memories is watching a boxing match on that TV. I remember this because it was also the first time I ever had a Coca-Cola. Old Man Willard mixed me the drink. He took some seltzer water and added syrup of coca-cola, which was great. I sat there watching Jersey Joe Walcott battle Rocky Marciano. It was a classic fight, and I enjoyed the soda as much as I did watching the bout.
My dad got me interested in boxing. He used to take me to Lew Tendler’s, a famous restaurant on Broad Street. They featured steaks and chops, but the real draw for me were the pictures on the walls. Boxers were everywhere. And the thing I remember—and this is probably why my dad took me there—was that the boxers were Jewish.
Lew Tendler had been a pretty good boxer himself. They called him “Lefty Lew” since he was a southpaw, and he and some of the other guys in his restaurant loved to tell stories about their experiences and about the great fighters they had seen. I was in awe. I loved hearing about guys like Barney Ross, the lightweight champion. He was never knocked out in eighty-one fights, and he defeated some of the best boxers in his division, including Tough Tony Canzoneri.
Ross was not only a great boxer, but a great American. That was part of the story they told me. He had been a Marine and fought on Guadalcanal in the South Pacific, one of the bloodiest battles of World War II. Ross was awarded a Silver Star, one of the highest commendations. He and three of his fellow Marines came under attack from a larger group of Japanese soldiers. Ross and his three buddies were all wounded. He was the only one who could still fire a weapon, and he fought off the Japanese during a battle that lasted all night. He ended up killing two dozen enemy soldiers. Two of his Marine buddies died during the night, but he carried the third one to safety. Ross weighed about 140 pounds, and the guy he carried was 230 pounds.
After hearing that kind of story about the great Jewish boxers, I guess it was only natural that I developed an interest in the sport. And then, after I became a lawyer, I got a chance to represent some of boxing’s more interesting characters. One of the first was the promoter Don King. He hired me to fight an injunction that would have barred a match between Roberto Duran and Esteban DeJesus. King was promoting the match, and at the eleventh hour I was able to get the injunction lifted. From that point on, I was his guy.
King was everything he appeared to be: outspoken, flamboyant, just a force of nature. It wasn’t an act; it was who he was. He had a lot of connections in the boxing world and started to send me business. He also introduced me to Muhammad Ali, the greatest heavyweight ever, and we’ve remained friends. Every year I could count on earning about $100,000 from the action Don King sent my way. He had faith in me and never hesitated to call.
One night he called around two in the morning. I was asleep, but when I picked up the phone, I knew right away who it was.
“Oscar,” he said. “I need to see you. It’s urgent.”
“What time is it?” I said.
“Don’t matter,” he replied. “We’re at the Riviera. Can you get down here right away?”
I got dressed and drove over to the casino-hotel. When I walked into the lounge, I saw him sitting in a booth with Larry Holmes, the great heavyweight champion. King and Holmes had a contractual relationship that they wanted severed. It was all amicable, but they wanted it done right away. I drew up an agreement on a napkin and had them sign it. I was never really clear on why it was so urgent and why it couldn’t have waited until morning, but that was Don King; one-of-a-kind. After they signed the napkin, I went home to bed.
A few months after that, Larry Holmes was subpoenaed to appear in front of a federal grand jury in the Southern District of New York. Rudy Giuliani was the U.S. Attorney for the district at the time. The feds were investigating Don King for fraud, and they wanted Larry to testify. Larry was a standup guy. There was no way he was going to testify against King or anybody else.
Larry wouldn’t budge. I made it clear that my client had nothing to say. Giuliani was frustrated, but there was nothing he could do about it.
Larry Holmes was a fascinating guy and one of my favorite people. I had a case once in Easton, Pennsylvania, his hometown, and a got a chance to spend some time with him while I was there. It’s one thing to say that someone is a celebrity in his hometown, but Larry Holmes was more than that. He was revered. When we drove around town, it was like I was with the king. Everyone knew him; everyone called out to him. He owned that town, and I don’t just mean that figuratively. He was a major property owner in Easton. The federal courthouse where my case was being tried was one of his properties; the government leased the building from him.
Later, I had another case, this time in New York, that led me to the great Joe Louis.
My client was a guy named Izzy Marion. Izzy was a charming guy. He was a hairdresser and had a business in Las Vegas. But he had been picked up on a federal wiretap talking about an unregistered gun. He was subpoenaed and went back to New York, where he appeared in front of a grand jury. I wasn’t his lawyer at the time.
He was testifying under oath and was asked by a federal prosecutor why an unregistered handgun had been transported from New York to Las Vegas and ended up in his hands. It was a pretty straightforward question, but Izzy didn’t give a straightforward answer. The simplest thing would have been for him to say that he needed the gun for protection. That might have been the end of it. Instead, Izzy offered about thirteen different explanations, several of which made no sense and which were contradictory. As a result, he got indicted for making inconsistent statements to a grand jury. The assumption was that some of them were false, and he was charged with perjury.
He hired me to represent him at the trial, and a few months later we flew back to New York. We stayed at the Park Lane Hotel. Izzy knew everybody. Two of his close friends were Joe Louis, the Brown Bomber, and Louis’s wife Martha. Joe was going to be a character witness for Izzy, and as we were preparing for trial, I could see there was a problem.
We couldn’t get Joe to enunciate; everything he said was garbled and incoherent. Izzy’s daughter and Martha tried to help get the champ focused on what he was going to say. All we needed was for him to stand up, say who he was, and vouch for Izzy’s good character and reputation for honesty. It was brutal; we couldn’t get Joe to make sense. So we decided to use Martha instead, and have Joe walk into the courtroom with her. Joe didn’t have any mental problems. It wasn’t like he was punch-drunk or had been hit in the head too many times. He just swallowed his words when he spoke, and I didn’t think he would be an effective advocate. If you couldn’t understand him, what was the point of having him speak? But his presence turned out to be enough.
We went to court early that Friday morning. The prosecutor was a real jerk. He thought he had a guaranteed winner, and he finished his case by noon. We were to go on right after lunch. When we got back to court, Izzy’s daughter came running up to me in a panic.
“Mister Louis ate fish in the cafeteria for lunch,” she said.
I didn’t see how that could be a problem.
“He ate everything, bones and all!” she said, nearly screaming.
But the champ was fine. He came walking up to us, and we were ready to go. We all went into the courtroom together. Judge Richard Owen was already on the bench, but he nearly fell off of it when he saw us.
“Mister Goodman, would you please come up here,” he said.
Prior to that, everything had been pretty formal. When I got up to the bench, he said, “Is that who I think it is?”
“Yes,” I said, figuring no other explanation was needed.
“Can you get me his autograph?” the judge asked.
At that point, I liked our chances with the perj
ury case. I knew Izzy would be found guilty. His statements to the grand jury were what they were; there was no way to fight that. The evidence made it a slam-dunk conviction. But the key was sentencing. Would he get hammered by the judge, or would he catch a break? I think the champ being in Izzy’s corner turned the odds in our favor. The prosecutor had bragged about “doing a war dance on Izzy’s grave” at sentencing, but the judge wasn’t buying any of it.
He was a Joe Louis fan, and Joe Louis was Izzy’s friend.
“Guilty,” the judge said. Then, he added, “Probation.”
We couldn’t have asked for more.
Joe Louis wasn’t my only heavyweight. I once represented Frans Botha, the South African boxer known as “The White Buffalo.” Botha had defeated Axel Schulz in New Jersey to win the International Boxing Federation heavyweight title. But after the match, he had tested positive for a steroid. I represented Botha in a hearing before the New Jersey Boxing Commission, which planned to strip him of his title. Everyone thought we were going to concede and plead for mercy, but I put on a defense. We argued that the drug had been prescribed by a doctor for an arm injury, and that Frans had no idea it was a banned substance or that it was still in his system when he fought Schulz. Frans wasn’t stripped of his title, and he went on to fight several other memorable matches. He was beating Mike Tyson, according to all three judges, when Tyson knocked him out in the fifth round of their match.
Tyson was another heavyweight whom I represented. You may have heard about the incident; Tyson bit off a piece of Evander Holyfield’s ear during their heavyweight fight. I can’t begin to offer an explanation for why he did that; “heat of the battle” doesn’t come anywhere close to justifying it.
But from my perspective, after the fact, that wasn’t the issue. Tyson had bitten off a piece of Holyfield’s ear. That wasn’t in dispute. What I was trying to do was save Tyson’s career.
My good friend Mills Lane had been the referee at that fight. Mills and I went back a long way, trying cases against one another. He had been a prosecutor in the district attorney’s office up in Reno, and then became a district court judge. He also had a part-time job as a fight referee. The fight was at the MGM Grand Arena. Many people might not remember this, but Tyson bit Holyfield twice. The first time, Mills stopped the fight temporarily and issued a warning. The second time, after a piece of Holyfield’s right ear fell onto the canvas, Mills stopped the fight and awarded Holyfield the victory.
The Nevada Athletic Commission withheld $3 million from Tyson’s $30 million purse, which was the most they could withhold. And then the commission scheduled a hearing to consider banning Tyson from the sport. Don King hired me to represent Iron Mike.
Dr. Elias Ghanem, another friend of mine, was the chairman of the Athletic Commission. I had successfully represented him in an IRS case many years before, and we had remained friends. He was also my doctor; he was the only one who could get my gout under control.
Everyone knew about our friendship, but everyone also knew that he was a straight-shooter who would call the issues as he saw them. This was another case where the evidence was not in dispute. Holyfield’s ear—at least a piece of it—had been bitten off by Tyson. The state’s attorney wanted Tyson’s license suspended. This would have resulted in an indefinite suspension before he could box again, if ever.
The media, as you can imagine, was all over this case, and everyone was waiting to see what was going to happen. Tyson, who was considered one of the greatest heavyweights of all time, was now vilified as an animal.
Dr. Ghanem called me aside before the hearing started. He said that the best we could hope for, with all the heat this case had attracted, was license revocation and a fine of $3 million, which is what the commission had already withheld. Then he whispered to me, “With revocation, he can reapply in a year.”
That sounded great to me, since I knew Tyson’s entire life revolved around his ability to box. Without boxing, I don’t know what he would have done. Say what you will about the incident, Mike Tyson was one of the faces of boxing. The bout with Holyfield had grossed $100 million. Boxing was a major event in Las Vegas, the “Fight Capital of the World,” and Tyson, like it or not, was a big part of the sport. Events like heavyweight title bouts filled hotel rooms, brought thousands of people to the city, and drove the economy. Those were the kinds of things I was thinking of.
So we went for the revocation rather than the suspension. The revocation took effect on July 9, 1997. Tyson reapplied for a license, and the revocation was lifted on October 18, 1998. He was out of boxing for a little over a year. If his license had been suspended, we might still be appealing for its restoration.
Mike Tyson was a great boxer, but you could get into a serious debate about the other parts of his life. However, Barney Ross was a great man who happened to be a great boxer.
I love the sport, but I never lose sight of the difference.
CHAPTER 7
A NINETEEN-MINUTE DEFENSE
Many people in law enforcement tried to say that I was more than just the legal representative of the mobsters who were my clients. They wanted to make me out as a criminal “consigliere,” a guy who counseled gangsters on illegal activities.
That’s never who I was, but I have to admit there was one time when I did provide counsel that helped avoid a major underworld confrontation between two of the most dynamic and dangerous clients I ever represented.
Tony Spilotro used to hang out at a club on Paradise Road called Jubilation. It was a fancy bar-restaurant owned by the singer Paul Anka, and lots of important people would go there. Tony was a creature of habit and always sat in the same booth. It was toward the back of the room and up against a wall. If you sat there you could see the rest of the restaurant and everyone else in the room. Guys like Tony always had their own booth, usually up against a wall. There was no need to look over your shoulder.
One night, around midnight, Tony went into the club. Jimmy Chagra, another of my clients, was sitting in Tony’s booth along with his entourage, including the usual sycophants and beautiful women. Tony told him to get out of the booth. Chagra had no idea who Tony was, and he refused. They had words. I think Jimmy called Tony “a midget” and said, “Get lost.”
Tony left the place steaming. He had been embarrassed. If this had taken place in Chicago or Philadelphia, Chagra probably would have left the place in pieces. As it was, he was in more danger than he knew. But this was Las Vegas, and if anything was going to happen, it wasn’t going to be in a public place.
Chagra was an interesting guy. The feds alleged he made his millions dealing drugs, but Jimmy liked to represent himself as a professional gambler, which explained his frequent visits to Las Vegas.
Chagra was the son of Lebanese immigrants, and growing up he had worked in his father’s carpet store in El Paso, Texas. He looked like a handsome Saddam Hussein with soulful dark eyes that could be piercing when he looked at you. He was always personable, but I found him to be moody, and at times it seemed like he was depressed. He had an older and a younger brother, both of whom became lawyers. Jimmy was apparently the only non-student in the family. But he was entrepreneurial, and he liked being center stage and having a good time. He could also be aggressive and would sometimes shoot from the hip, which was at the heart of his confrontation with Spilotro. If Jimmy had known who he was dealing with, I doubt that he would have called Tony a “midget.”
The next day Tony came to my law office. He stopped by most days, because so many things were going on that there was always some legal issue that had to be discussed. But all he could talk about that day was “this jerk who was sitting in my booth.” As he was talking and describing the guy, I realized it was Jimmy Chagra. This was bad; I immediately got on the phone and called Chagra.
“Get down to my office now,” I said. “It’s very important.”
“What’s going on?” he said.
“Don’t worry about it. Just get over here.”
Chagra arrived, and before they could get into it, I made introductions and told them to resolve the problem right there, shake hands, and forget about it.
“You’re both good guys,” I said. “Let’s not have any problems.”
Some people think I saved Jimmy’s life that day. If I did, it would have been the first, but not the last time.
I met Jimmy’s brother Lee about a year before I met Jimmy. Lee was a prominent defense attorney in El Paso. He represented a lot of drug dealers and was involved in high-profile cases. He wasn’t quite as flamboyant as Jimmy, but he lived the good life.
He was a regular at the Kentucky Derby, where he moved in the best circles. He placed his bets in the Colonel Winn Room, which was an exclusive dining area on the third floor of the clubhouse with its own betting windows. The minimum bet was $100. He’d be there dressed in a white suit, a cowboy hat, boots, and a fancy cane. When he bet, he’d go up to the window and tell the clerk to keep his hand on the button, running up bets in the thousands. Sometimes his actions alone would change the odds on a race.
I was familiar with the set-up because I had been there as a guest of the Chandler family. Happy Chandler, the patriarch of the family, had been the governor of Kentucky at one time, and later was the Commissioner of Major League Baseball.
The Chandlers had hired me to represent a family member who had been charged—and this was unbelievable—with possession of a small cannon that had been stolen from a military base in California. My client was Brad Bryant, a Chandler cousin. The cannon was in a storage locker leased by Bryant. The combination to the locker was Bryant’s birth date, and Bryant’s prints had been found on the cannon.
The case looked insurmountable, but somehow we got a jury to come back with a “Not guilty.” I attacked the credibility of some witnesses and made a strong closing argument about reasonable doubt. You never know with a jury.
Being Oscar: From Mob Lawyer to Mayor of Las Vegas Page 9