An hour later, with Lynne safely ensconced in the maternity ward at Humber Memorial, I was feeling high as a kite. Driving home, I pulled up at the light at Keele Street and Rogers Road. When I looked over at the driver in the cab stopped beside me, it was none other than Gus Rubicini, the ex-middleweight who defeated Joey Giardello back in 1951. I rolled down the window and spat out about 1,000 words in 30 seconds, babbling like a maniac about my son being born in a speeding car on the way to the hospital. Gus looked at me like I was nuts before driving away.
Back at the hospital, the baby was placed in isolation because of concerns that he’d been exposed to germs during his unique debut, and it was a full week before he was circumcised. I remember thinking the wait was almost like a religious experience.
As for a name for son number four, we’d run out of possibilities as far as Lynne was concerned. Back at the house, I was going through a list of names in the back of our family bible, running them past my mother. We were speaking Croatian, and as I read out names, she shook her head no. When I came to “Jesse,” who was the father of King David of Israel—and which loosely translates to “Where are you?” in Croatian—my mother replied, “Oh, I like that!” So the little guy was named Jesse Miles. Lynne wasn’t crazy about it, but back then it was unique.
A few weeks after Jesse’s birth, I got a call out of the blue from Rocky Marciano. He’d seen me fight in New York and Miami, and he wanted to discuss becoming my manager. I’d previously had a similar conversation with George Gainford, who managed Sugar Ray Robinson, so I was a little wary. I also knew that Rocky had a reputation for being notoriously cheap, so I wasn’t very hopeful.
Marciano cut right to the chase. “Listen to me, George,” he said in that thick New England accent. “I can move you like nobody else can. I’ve got the connections.”
When I asked what he had in mind, he said, “We’ll go 40 per cent for you, 60 per cent for management. A four-year deal, and management pays all the expenses.” I was stunned—and insulted. “Are you nuts?” I said. “Would you sign a deal like that, Rocky? I’d have to be out of my bloody mind.” He sounded surprised. “No, it’s very fair. Nobody can move you like I can, you know that.” I told him where he could stick his 60 per cent.
A couple of weeks later I was relaxing at home when there was a knock at the door. It was our mailman. “Some schmuck sent you a postcard from Florida with a Canadian stamp on it,” he said. “You owe me eight cents.”
The “schmuck” who sent that card was Marciano. Scrawled on the back was a single line: “Hope you’ll reconsider.” Fat chance.
By the early summer of ‘64 I was once again dead broke and out of options, so I phoned Ungerman. I proposed a contract based on a 50–50 split, with him paying all expenses. I didn’t want to have to worry about training camps, sparring partners or anything else—those would be his responsibilities. I also wanted to make sure McWhorter got a percentage and that Irving would foot the bill to set Teddy up in a hotel across the street from the gym.
To my great relief, Irving agreed to a four-year deal. He gave me some peanut money up front and then put together a syndicate of investors under the name of Apollo Promotions, which set up an account I could draw on. The syndicate was made up of Irving, his brother Karl and a guy named Moe Wasser—all of whom were in the poultry business—along with Mel Newman, who owned a furniture factory, and Aaron Sokolsky, a restauranteur.
It was a good deal all around, although I was never happy about the way it turned out for Teddy. McWhorter was always worried that Ungerman would let him go as my trainer, even though I controlled that part of the agreement and repeatedly assured Teddy there was nothing to worry about. I never looked at my trainer in the same light after seeing how easily he let Irving dictate the terms of his contract, which, I’m ashamed to say, I signed as a witness.
Although I appreciated Ungerman’s enthusiasm, almost from the moment we signed he began acting like an egomaniac. Once or twice a week he’d make a point of summoning Teddy and me to his office, where we’d find him holding court with cops or politicians. Perched behind his big desk, framed in a cloud of cigar smoke, Toronto’s potentate of poultry would schmooze for a few minutes before sending his cronies on their merry way with a couple of frozen turkeys or a box of chicken legs.
While I was still getting used to my new manager, things were heating up in the heavyweight division.
On June 19, the World Boxing Association stripped its championship from Ali because of his association with the Nation of Islam and declared that Ernie Terrell, the WBA’s No. 1–ranked contender, would fight Eddie Machen for the vacant title the following March. Meanwhile, the rival World Boxing Council and The Ring continued to recognize Ali as champ.
My first fight with Ungerman on board was on July 27 against “Chief” Don Prout at a baseball park in New Bedford, Massachusetts. The card was put together by Sad Sam Silverman, who promoted some of Rocky Marciano’s early fights. He was an old-school promoter with a reputation for dreaming up ridiculous scenarios to bump ticket sales. My purse was a whopping $600.
With a respectable record of 21–4, Prout was the New England heavyweight champ. A fringe top-10 contender, he fought out of Providence, Rhode Island, and had only been stopped once in 25 fights. A couple of years earlier he’d split a pair of fights with Tom McNeeley, the guy who challenged Floyd Patterson for the world championship in Toronto in 1961.
Prout was nicknamed “Chief” because he was supposed to be Mohican, but when he climbed into the ring I realized he was a light-skinned black guy, not an Indian. No problem. Silverman had solemnly informed the press that this was a “revenge” match, with me cast as an avenging “French-Canadian” looking to settle old scores with Prout’s treacherous tribe. On fight night, Silverman had poor Don enter the ring wearing a headdress of eagle feathers, accompanied by “warriors” beating on tom-toms. I laughed like hell when I saw that.
Late in the opening round, Prout nailed me with a good uppercut right on the point of the chin, opening up a nice, clean cut. A slice of any kind always gets a trainer’s attention, and in the corner McWhorter pleaded with me not to fool around. Thirty seconds into Round 2 I threw a left hook that dumped the Chief on his ass. He got up at five, so I threw another left and down he went again.
The third round was an instant replay. Prout came charging out at the bell, but before he took three steps I whacked him with the left hook to the chops and he dropped in a heap. He staggered to his feet just as referee Bill Connolly counted six, but instead of turning to face me Prout walked over to the ropes and started to climb out of the ring. Everybody was booing and throwing stuff, so Connolly grabbed his arm and said, “Hey Don, where you going?” Without missing a beat, Prout glared at him and replied, “Fuck you; you fight him!”
Don never fought again. It wasn’t the most honorable way for the New England heavyweight champ to wrap up a pretty good career, but what the hell. At least it was a memorable exit. Afterward, I went to the hospital to get my chin stitched up. It was sliced right to the bone, and when the doc held up a mirror I was shocked to see just how white that bone looked. Left a nice scar, too.
Oh, by the way, Irving got stiffed on my $600 purse. Sad Sam came up with some lame excuse about not being able to pay us right after the fight, but Ungerman kept hounding him until we got the dough a couple of months later.
ROUND 5
THE DELAYED PAYMENT FOR BEATING PROUT INTO retirement didn’t detract from it being a good win, and I wasn’t about to squander the sense of momentum that was starting to build for us. Teddy was adjusting comfortably to the new arrangement and Irving had proven capable of lining up solid sparring partners.
When we got back to Toronto, I told Ungerman to get me a top-10 guy for my next fight. I figured we were only one or two wins away from a shot at the world title, and I was anxious to get them as quickly as possible. When Irving asked if I had anyone in mind, I suggested No. 4-ranked Doug Jones. Madison Squar
e Garden matchmaker Teddy Brenner had made some overtures about me fighting Jones a few months earlier, but nothing had come of it.
“Forget it, George,” Ungerman sniffed. “You can’t beat that guy. For Christ’s sake, he nearly knocked out Cassius Clay last year!”
Hearing my neophyte manager tell me I couldn’t win really got my dander up. “Listen, Irving,” I told him. “If you don’t make the call, I will. And if that happens, you’ll be on the outside looking in.” Reluctantly, Ungerman made the call, and Brenner quickly agreed to make the match.
The fight was signed for October 2 at Madison Square Garden, so in early August we set up training camp just outside of Bolton, a sleepy little town about half an hour north of Toronto.
The scene was like something out of Body and Soul, the old John Garfield movie. We had the ring set up near the bank of the winding Humber River, a couple of heavy bags hanging from tree branches and a beat-up trailer to accommodate me, Teddy and four sparring partners. Just down the road was a little diner, which Irving supplied with steaks and chickens for our meals—although we later found out that the old gal who ran the joint kept the good steaks for herself and served us the “seconds.”
The Bolton camp was the most productive of my career to that point. All the sparring partners gave me real good work, and they were fun guys to have around. Cody Jones was a big, strong heavyweight from Detroit. Greatest Crawford and Jimmy Christopher were light heavyweights, but both could punch and they were slick and elusive. Lucky Little, from Steubenville, Ohio, was a quick, powerful middleweight who could mimic the lateral movement Jones had employed so effectively in going the 10-round distance against Clay the previous year. A pretty talented amateur painter, he also loved to debate me about the relative merits of the U.S. versus Canada.
From day one of camp, Teddy had me working on a combination he called “The Doug”: a right uppercut, followed by a hook and a right to the head. Recalling the effectiveness of the spin trick I’d worked on with King George Moore when I was still with Jack Allen, I discovered “The Doug” was even better when I planted my left foot on top of the other guy’s left foot, which prevented him from backing out of range. It worked like a charm. By the time we broke camp I could stomp on the foot and fire those three punches faster than Teddy could shout, “Do the Doug!”
Despite the fact Jones was a 3–1 betting favorite, we were brimming with confidence when we arrived in New York a few days ahead of the fight. It was my first bout back at the Garden since the loss to Pat McMurtry in ‘58, and with my parents and my sister coming down for it, I was anxious to put on a good show.
At the weigh-in, my buddy Dave McCauley overheard Jones say to one of his trainers that “Chuvalo can’t fight”—a logical assumption on Doug’s part since he KO’d Zora Folley and Pete Rademacher, two guys I’d lost to, but it still surprised me that he’d shoot off his mouth like that. I didn’t know the guy personally, but in interviews he struck me as kind of shy and quiet. His comment surprised me a little bit but I figured I’d respond to it in the ring.
Jones wasn’t big, but he was solid … and very slick. We were the same age, but he’d turned pro in 1958, two years after I did, and had run off 18 consecutive wins before dropping a decision to Eddie Machen. By the time we met he was 24–5–1 and had never been stopped. Jones also had never fought a 12-rounder before, and our bout was scheduled to be the Garden’s first non-televised Friday-night main event.
I was able to set a good pace from the opening bell, muscling Doug on the inside and landing short, hard hooks. He tried to use every inch of the 20-foot ring to keep the fight at long range, but every time I trapped him against the ropes, I hurt him. His best weapon was a double jab, and he occasionally tried to feint a right in order to double up the left hook, but there wasn’t a lot of snap on his punches. Meanwhile, every time Teddy exhorted me to “do the Doug” in close, I stepped on Jones’s left foot and fired the three shots, just like we’d worked on in Bolton.
After 10 rounds, two of the three judges had me comfortably ahead on points, while the third had Jones leading by one. When I sat down on the stool between rounds, for the first—and only—time during a fight, I suddenly felt the urge to pee. It’s a good thing that Teddy doused my head with water, because as it ran down my body and legs, I just let go and let it flow, so to speak. Fortunately, nobody noticed—I hope!
I felt a lot less sluggish going out for Round 11, and a little over a minute later I saw a golden opportunity when Jones momentarily dropped his hands while we were trading punches in my corner. And this time I didn’t have to step on his foot.
I ripped a short left hook to the body and followed up with a big right hand to his chin. As Jones reeled back against the ropes, I shot four more punches up the middle that sent him tumbling to his knees. He rolled over into a sitting position near the middle of the ring but managed to stagger to his feet as referee Arthur Mercante’s count reached five.
Mercante signaled for us to continue, but after I pounded four more unanswered rights to Jones’s head, he waved me off and stopped the fight at 1:28.
If you watch the film, you’ll see that I was so happy to be the first guy to stop Jones that I even gave Irving a kiss on the cheek. Why not? My end of the $2,560 purse was only $1,280, but I knew the win would put me back in the top 10 for the first time in more than two years—and I could taste a title shot just around the corner.
Before the fight, Irving had ordered a big cake with “It’s Only the Beginning” written in icing, and he brought it into the dressing room afterward. When we finally finished celebrating and got back to the hotel, I was totally exhausted—so tired, in fact, that I reluctantly turned down an invitation from entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. to join him at another party. Sammy was playing the lead role of a fighter in a Broadway musical called The Golden Boy, and he’d been at ringside to watch the bout. He called my room at four in the morning to say how much he enjoyed it and that he hoped we could “paint the town” together some time. What a guy!
In the aftermath of the win, nobody wrote about me stepping on Jones’s foot, but some New York reporters (as well as Doug himself) complained about what they called my “dirty tactics” of punching below the belt.
For the record, I never intentionally punched low—either in that fight or any other—but because my style was built on maintaining inside pressure and going to the body, it’s only natural that some punches would land south of the border. Any time you get close to a guy and start winging with both hands, you’re not real concerned about where the punches end up. With slick guys like Jones who liked to move backwards, I threw so many body shots that the number of low blows probably seemed a little disproportionate.
I didn’t realize what an impression those punches made until I ran into Jones again more than 30 years later—but first, a little background.
When I was inducted into the World Boxing Hall of Fame in Los Angeles in 1997, another of the fighters being honored was Cleveland Williams, the former No. 2 contender whom I defeated on the undercard of the Ali–Buster Mathis bout in Houston in 1972. I hadn’t seen or spoken to Williams since that night, so I walked up to him, extended my hand and asked if he remembered me. With little more than a dismissive glance, big Cleve just nodded and said, “Yup.”
That was it. I felt kind of bad … but I suppose some guys don’t get too excited about renewing acquaintances with a victorious adversary, even if the bout took place some 26 years ago. I vowed that the next time I ran into a guy I’d defeated, the first thing out of my mouth would be a compliment.
A year or so later, at a function in New York, I went to use the restroom and lo and behold, who’s relieving himself at the next urinal? None other than Doug Jones. This was a delicate situation: two guys who had fought each other all those years ago now standing side by side, taking a whiz.
As was the case with Williams, I hadn’t seen or talked to Jones since the night I knocked him out, but I was determined to say someth
ing nice to him.
As we kind of looked sideways at each other, I sensed that he recognized me, so I broke the ice by saying, “You were a hell of a fighter, Doug. I had a bit of a weight advantage on you, but you had a hell of a sharp right hand on the inside.” He sighed and nodded before softly replying, “Yeah … and you had a great left hook to the balls.” Then he zipped up and was gone.
So much for pleasant memories.
THE last two months of 1964 were very eventful, both for me and for the heavyweight division.
I kept busy by knocking out former AAU champ Calvin Butler in three rounds at Hull, Quebec, on November 10. Butler was a last-minute replacement for Philadelphia’s Don Walker, who failed to show up at the weigh-in. That improved my record to 29–8–2 with 20 KOs and, combined with the win over Jones, vaulted me into the No. 5 spot in the world rankings, just behind the towering Texan, Cleveland Williams. Williams was 65–5, but he’d been KO’d twice by Liston and once by Bob Satterfield. WBA champ Ernie Terrell, who beat Williams on a split decision in ‘63, was ranked No. 3, with Floyd Patterson at No. 2 and Liston ranked the No. 1 contender for Ali’s crown.
Ali was signed to make his first title defense in a rematch with Liston on November 16 in Boston, but four days before the fight he was stricken with a hernia attack that required an emergency operation. There was some speculation that the “emergency” was just an excuse to postpone the fight because of poor ticket sales, but the attending doctors told the Associated Press that if Ali had suffered the attack during the fight he might have died in the ring.
On November 29, two weeks after the Ali–Liston postponement, Williams was shot by a Texas highway patrolman on the outskirts of Tomball, just north of Houston.
According to the newspaper reports, Williams and three friends—two of them female—were pulled over and arrested for drunk driving. Cleve, who claimed to have only consumed a couple of beers, pleaded with the cop to let them go because an arrest would wipe out his upcoming WBA title fight against Terrell. A scuffle ensued, and Williams ended up taking a .38 magnum bullet in the abdomen.
Chuvalo Page 11