The Art of Manliness - #442： Rocky Marciano's Fight for Perfection in a Crooked World

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00:01:19.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:01:22.760 Rocky Marciano was a slow, stocky kid with short arms and stubby legs.

00:01:26.540 He wasn't the kind of kid you'd pick to one day be an elite boxer.

00:01:29.520 Yet, he went on to become the only undefeated heavyweight champion in boxing history.

00:01:33.460 In the process, Marciano became a cultural icon in 1950s America, rubbing shoulders with presidents, movie stars, and gangsters.

00:01:40.020 How did someone who got a late start in the sport become one of boxing's greatest athletes?

00:01:43.800 And what happens to a man when fame and fortune are suddenly thrust upon him?

00:01:47.180 My guest day explores those questions in his new book,

00:01:49.240 Unbeaten Rocky Marciano's Fight for Perfection in a Crooked World.

00:01:52.400 His name is Mike Stanton, and today on the show, Mike shares how grit, discipline, and fate led Rocky to become the only undefeated heavyweight fighter in boxing history.

00:01:59.620 Mike then shares the challenges Rocky faced with his newfound fame,

00:02:02.340 from balancing work and family to managing a huge influx of money

00:02:05.240 to navigating the crooked world of organized crime that controlled the world of boxing.

00:02:08.780 We end up talking about how Rocky is both an inspiring and tragic figure.

00:02:12.860 After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash Marciano.

00:02:16.920 Mike joins me now via clearcast.io.

00:02:19.120 All right, Mike Stanton, welcome to the show.

00:02:30.820 Hi, Brett. How are you?

00:02:32.320 Doing well.

00:02:33.240 Well, you got a new bio out about one of the greatest heavyweight boxers of all time.

00:02:39.580 Some would say, you know, this is, again, this is up for debate.

00:02:42.720 We'll talk about whether he is the greatest, but one of the greatest heavyweight boxers of all time.

00:02:47.860 That's Rocky Marciano.

00:02:49.760 I'm curious, were there a lot of bios about Rocky, or were you surprised at, like, how little there was written about him when you first started thinking about this project?

00:02:59.520 There were a couple of good bios, but not a lot and not anything real recently, and I thought that Rocky was just such a great story and such an embodiment of so much of American history, as well as boxing in the middle of the 20th century, that I thought his story deserved to be told to a new generation of people who might know who he is, know that he was history's only unbeaten champion, but don't really know anything beyond the broad outlines.

00:03:28.440 And I'm curious, what was your draw to it, personally?

00:03:31.260 Because, I mean, you were, I think you said in the book, you were 11 years old when he died, so that means you were about two years old when he retired, so you probably never saw him fight live.

00:03:42.180 You missed the period when he was, like, the biggest thing in America.

00:03:46.400 So, I mean, without that firsthand experience, what drew you to writing about him?

00:03:50.880 Well, a couple of things.

00:03:52.820 First of all, I always believe that all history is biography, and I love history, and I love telling stories about America and who we are and how we got here, and Rocky seemed like a great embodiment of that.

00:04:05.560 And I discovered his story as a longtime newspaper reporter in Providence, Rhode Island.

00:04:10.400 And I wrote a book, Prince of Providence, about the longtime mayor, Buddy Cianci, who was a very colorful rogue and the mayor in, you know, more recent times.

00:04:19.920 But when he was a boy, I discovered in my research, his father would take him to fight night at the Rhode Island Auditorium in Providence.

00:04:27.800 And this would have been in the late 1940s, early 1950s, and that was when Rocky Marciano was the headliner there.

00:04:34.060 He came from Brockton, Massachusetts, about 35 miles away.

00:04:37.500 And I was just fascinated by that culture.

00:04:40.140 First of all, not just in Providence, but across America and around the world, boxing was one of the biggest sports back in that era.

00:04:48.040 If you were the heavyweight champion of the world, everybody knew who you were, and you walked with presidents and kings and movie stars.

00:04:53.980 And I was also interested in that whole colorful guys and dolls era of, you know, the characters who lurked around boxing, the mafia, you know, the spectacle of a big fight in a smoke-filled arena at Madison Square Garden, and then Toots Shores and the nightclub scene afterwards.

00:05:13.300 How big of a deal was he during the 1950s?

00:05:16.060 I mean, how much of a cultural impact did he have on America?

00:05:18.900 He was huge.

00:05:19.740 I mean, if you want to understand America in the 1940s and 50s, you know, you need to know about Rocky Marciano.

00:05:26.520 He was the heavyweight champion of the world from 1952 to 56.

00:05:32.300 And that was that post-war era in America.

00:05:35.800 After World War II, there was this euphoria.

00:05:37.620 And he kind of embodied the American spirit of anything was possible.

00:05:42.540 Anyone could be a contender.

00:05:44.460 And he was also the poster boy for American might makes right in the Cold War era that we were entered into.

00:05:51.480 In fact, the Speaker of the U.S. Congress actually, you know, held him up as a symbol of American superiority.

00:05:58.060 And his manager said that he punched, like, the atomic bomb.

00:06:02.500 So he was really a reflection of that era.

00:06:05.160 And he was also, this is kind of the darker side of that era, he was viewed by a lot of Americans as the great white hope.

00:06:12.700 And that wasn't a mantle he put on himself.

00:06:14.880 He had a good relationship with black fighters.

00:06:16.740 He respected what they went through.

00:06:18.440 And I get into a lot of that in the book, you know, the racial climate.

00:06:21.860 But that was how he was viewed.

00:06:24.360 And, you know, when he won the championship, he went to the White House.

00:06:27.520 And President Eisenhower measured his fist.

00:06:30.040 And Joe DiMaggio was standing there.

00:06:31.840 And, you know, everybody wanted to meet Rocky.

00:06:34.680 Yeah, he was the first white heavyweight champion in the world for, like, I think, like 15 or 20 years, right?

00:06:40.340 Yeah.

00:06:41.300 Since Joe Louis knocked out James Braddock in 1937 to break the color line that had been, you know,

00:06:48.240 in force in boxing since the early 1900s when the controversial Jack Johnson was the champion.

00:06:55.440 And Joe Louis, of course, you know, he transcended race.

00:06:58.140 He was, you know, the American champion who beat Max Schmeling, Hitler's champion, in the years leading up to World War II. 0.70

00:07:05.680 And then he served in the Army during the war and was an American hero.

00:07:09.940 And he was a hero of Rocky's.

00:07:11.320 Rocky was listening as a boy on the radio at the Brockton Fairgrounds when Louis knocked out Schmeling.

00:07:17.320 And, you know, years later when Rocky has to face Louis and knocks out his boyhood idol to put him on the path to the title, Rocky cried.

00:07:26.700 Yeah.

00:07:27.360 Well, we can talk about that in a bit.

00:07:29.900 So, I mean, let's get to his, like, what led to him becoming the heavyweight champion of the world.

00:07:35.520 Because, I mean, I knew nothing about, like, hardly anything about Rocky before this book.

00:07:40.420 So, what was he like as a boy?

00:07:42.800 I mean, was he, I've read a lot of other biographies of fighters and you would see, you could see signs that they would be a boxer, right?

00:07:50.400 Yeah.

00:07:50.680 Early in life because they'd get in lots of scraps or they just, they found the local gym.

00:07:54.320 They just hung out there all the time.

00:07:56.300 Was Rocky like that?

00:07:57.400 Was, like, you could see from a young age, like, he was destined to become the heavyweight champion of the world?

00:08:02.440 Yes and no.

00:08:03.100 I mean, the first thing he loved hitting was a baseball.

00:08:06.000 I mean, he loved to play baseball, but he loved sports of all kinds.

00:08:09.260 He was, you know, he was a classic, you know, immigrant son. 1.00

00:08:13.180 Father, you know, came over from Italy.

00:08:15.060 Mother came over from Italy.

00:08:16.560 They met in Brockton.

00:08:17.620 The father worked in a shoe factory.

00:08:19.500 Brockton was the shoe factory capital.

00:08:21.800 Sent out 12 million pairs a year around the world.

00:08:24.680 And Rocky, they lived on a big playground.

00:08:27.520 And Rocky was outdoors in all weather playing all sports.

00:08:30.620 The other thing, boxing was a big part of our culture back then.

00:08:34.720 And so, boys fought.

00:08:36.280 Kids would set up rings in the neighborhood in someone's backyard and they would have a fight.

00:08:39.940 They would put on the oversized gloves and go at it.

00:08:42.720 And kids fought over bragging rights, you know, different ethnic groups in Brockton.

00:08:47.340 The Irish kids and the Italian kids would fight it out or friends would settle their differences.

00:08:52.460 But then they would blow over like a summer storm.

00:08:55.340 And so, Rocky was a big, strong, husky kid.

00:08:58.220 Great appetite.

00:08:58.960 As I said, loved sports.

00:09:01.160 Kind of quiet.

00:09:02.020 But he hung out with some friends who were very mischievous and would get into fights.

00:09:05.740 And then they would call on Rocky, the strong, silent one, to kind of, you know, restore order.

00:09:10.840 And so, Rocky had a neighborhood reputation as the strongest kid in the neighborhood.

00:09:14.980 And he did a little, you know, fooling around boxing.

00:09:17.360 But all kids did back then.

00:09:18.840 Yeah.

00:09:19.220 What was his relationship like with his parents?

00:09:21.660 It was very close.

00:09:22.580 He was the eldest son in a family of six.

00:09:25.440 Three boys and three girls.

00:09:26.660 You know, the oldest son in a, you know, first-born, first-generation immigrant family has a special place.

00:09:33.780 You know, he would be the one that would go to the school with his parents who didn't speak English very well, you know, if one of the other siblings was having trouble with a teacher.

00:09:42.140 And he was the one, when he got older, who would get a paper route and other odd jobs to try to make money to help the family make ends meet.

00:09:50.980 I mean, they grew up, they were in the Italian second ward of Brockton.

00:09:53.760 It was a working-class neighborhood.

00:09:55.780 And, you know, they struggled during the Depression.

00:09:57.700 But, you know, his father kept working.

00:09:59.420 And, you know, they made ends meet.

00:10:01.220 And in some ways, it was a very idyllic childhood.

00:10:04.880 And he was very close with his parents.

00:10:07.120 And, you know, through all the twists and turns that his life later took, he always remained close to them.

00:10:11.660 And he always had that pride in being their breadwinner.

00:10:15.160 And you mentioned these friends that he hung out with.

00:10:18.140 I mean, these friendships he made, they weren't just childhood friendships.

00:10:22.060 Like, these lasted throughout his entire life.

00:10:24.180 And some of these guys even had a big role in his career as a boxer.

00:10:28.080 Yeah.

00:10:28.320 And what's interesting about Rocky is that, you know, boxing is a pretty cutthroat business.

00:10:33.280 It was a very cutthroat sport.

00:10:35.360 And Rocky learned to trust the people who had been with him the longest.

00:10:39.900 The people that came along later, for the most part, he knew he couldn't trust them.

00:10:43.880 So he always, Brockton was always his touchstone.

00:10:47.020 You know, his oldest friends were always the ones he trusted the most and who were by his side.

00:10:51.280 You know, one friend in particular who was a few years older, Allie Columbo, you know, lived next door, always organized the baseball games.

00:10:58.900 And Allie was the one who really pushed him when he started out in boxing and really didn't know his way and didn't know, you know, how to go about it.

00:11:06.740 And Allie was there right through his entire career.

00:11:08.760 And other friends would come to his training camps at Grossinger's and, you know, keep his spirits up.

00:11:13.940 And there was that bond he had.

00:11:16.660 And the other thing, this was a gambling culture.

00:11:19.180 Everybody bet on things.

00:11:20.340 And when Rocky went into the ring, he said, I knew I could never fall down.

00:11:24.600 You know, for the people of Brockton, I would always get up because I knew they were counting on me.

00:11:29.180 They were betting their money on me.

00:11:30.900 And I wasn't going to let them down.

00:11:32.820 Yeah.

00:11:33.080 So not much interest in boxing.

00:11:34.800 I mean, he did have an interest in boxing, but he was more of a baseball player as a young boy.

00:11:38.900 And what I love reading biographies about, you know, about famous people or people who did great things, you know, from decades gone by.

00:11:48.240 I think a lot of young people today think this idea or this feeling of listlessness or not knowing what they're supposed to do with their lives is like something new.

00:11:58.200 And, you know, their grandfathers like had it all figured out when they were 22 as well.

00:12:02.920 But when you read these biographies of these guys, like they were just as clueless as a 20-something as today.

00:12:08.600 And it seemed like Rocky was the same way.

00:12:10.560 Like he was in his early 20s and he didn't really have his bearings.

00:12:15.140 He didn't know what he wanted to do with his life.

00:12:17.040 No.

00:12:17.360 Well, you know what?

00:12:18.360 I mean, back then, his ticket, there was a one-way ticket to the shoe factory.

00:12:22.420 And for a, you know, blue-collar Italian kid without a lot of other opportunities, without an education, he dropped out of high school.

00:12:30.100 He, you know, was the first to admit that he wasn't a big lover of books.

00:12:33.520 Sports was his way out.

00:12:35.120 And initially, he thought that would be baseball.

00:12:37.280 He could hit the ball a mile.

00:12:39.200 And he was, you know, short, stout, prototypical catcher.

00:12:43.360 But maybe, you know, life has its twist and maybe it all happened for a reason.

00:12:46.800 But he went down to spring training with the Chicago Cubs in 1947 and he had a tryout with them and he hit the ball pretty well.

00:12:55.440 But the supreme irony is that he couldn't make a strong throw to second base from catcher.

00:13:00.140 And here he is, the greatest, you know, slugger in heavyweight history.

00:13:03.540 He can't make a strong throw to second and that was his undoing in baseball.

00:13:07.880 What do you think held him back, like, from having that strong throw despite being able to throw a really strong punch?

00:13:12.260 Well, he said that he had injured his arm in the Army playing sports.

00:13:17.240 It was never quite clear.

00:13:18.960 But, you know, let's face it.

00:13:20.260 The competition is stiff to make the Major League Baseball rosters, especially back then when there were far fewer teams.

00:13:26.840 Yeah.

00:13:27.260 And, you know, and there were a lot of good ballplayers from Brockton.

00:13:30.400 I mean, he went down with some friends who were good ballplayers and some stuck in the minors for a few years.

00:13:36.320 And one made it to the AAA Dodgers team but then got hurt and stopped playing.

00:13:41.560 And actually they were signed by the scout that signed the Chicago Cubs player who was the inspiration for the movie The Natural.

00:13:50.120 So, you know, a lot of good ballplayers then and that was Rocky's love.

00:13:53.720 And later when he became a successful boxer, he found himself being, you know, friends with Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio and, you know, other great baseball stars like Yogi Berra.

00:14:03.760 Yeah.

00:14:04.260 So, but still at this point, like, he wasn't boxing, like, regularly.

00:14:09.060 Well, not, no.

00:14:10.280 And what's interesting though, when you, like I was saying, everything happens for a reason.

00:14:14.540 When he was, when he became a boxer, his trainer incorporated some of his baseball mannerisms, particularly his catcher's crouch, into his fighting style.

00:14:24.540 Because Rocky was short and he needed, you know, to get up close to his opponents to, you know, be able to hit them.

00:14:31.380 And that opened him up to being hit.

00:14:32.700 So, he had to be, you know, he had to be down low so they couldn't get at him.

00:14:39.880 Yeah.

00:14:40.220 Well, so another thing that added to Marciano's, you know, all-American appeal when he became a celebrity was that he served in the army during World War II.

00:14:50.900 But the thing is, he never really talked about it much.

00:14:53.820 Why is that?

00:14:54.560 Well, one of the things I discovered in my research for this book, I had heard some rumblings that he had some problems in the army.

00:15:01.860 And when I got his army file from the National Archives in St. Louis, I discovered that he had been court-martialed along with another GI for robbing and assaulting two British civilians.

00:15:12.640 Rocky was over in England on the eve of the D-Day invasion.

00:15:17.520 He was in an army combat engineer's unit that was going to deploy to Normandy as part of the invasion.

00:15:22.780 And on the night he got into trouble, he was supposed to be confined to base because the, you know, D-Day was coming.

00:15:28.720 And he and his friends snuck off base.

00:15:30.980 They went to a pub.

00:15:31.820 They met a couple of British civilians who worked for an airplane company.

00:15:35.300 They were back at the civilian's apartment.

00:15:37.580 And they got into a fight and they robbed them and punched them and were later court-martialed.

00:15:44.720 So they never deployed to Normandy.

00:15:47.040 And Rocky wound up being sentenced and wound up serving two years in a military prison back in Indiana.

00:15:53.840 And this was in the spring of 1944 around the time of D-Day.

00:15:59.040 And then he was freed in the spring of 1946, the year after the war ended.

00:16:04.260 And unlike most people who were, you know, drafted into the army for World War II, whose service ended with the war, Rocky stayed in through the end of 1946 so he could come out with an honorable discharge.

00:16:16.460 And that was really a pivotal point when his boxing career really begins in a more formal way because he goes out and serves in Fort Lewis, Washington State.

00:16:25.820 And he boxes on the army boxing team, which is a very good team.

00:16:30.300 And he starts to fight regularly for the first time.

00:16:33.900 And he gets himself into shape.

00:16:35.780 He had fought an amateur fight back in Brockton before he went out to Fort Lewis, but he was totally out of shape.

00:16:42.620 He went over to his uncle's house and he had a big dish of macaroni before the fight.

00:16:46.300 And he ran out of gas in the second round.

00:16:48.320 And he kneed his opponent in the groin and was disqualified.

00:16:52.320 So after that, he said, I'm not going to embarrass myself anymore.

00:16:55.560 He got himself into shape in the army and he boxed pretty well out there.

00:16:59.380 And he went to the National AAU Championships in Portland, Oregon, where he reached the finals.

00:17:05.980 And another fateful turn happened in his career at this point.

00:17:09.540 In the semis, because he was so clumsy, he could hit hard, but he was very clumsy.

00:17:13.640 He hit his opponent on the head and he fractured his knuckle very severely.

00:17:19.740 And it could have been a career-ending injury.

00:17:22.360 And fatefully, there was a Japanese-American army surgeon at Fort Lewis, Thomas Takeda, who performed an experimental operation and saved Rocky's knuckle.

00:17:32.160 And it allowed him to be able to fight.

00:17:34.700 And interestingly, Dr. Takeda's family had been interned in the Japanese-American prison camps during World War II.

00:17:40.940 But Dr. Takeda was in medical school and was spared that.

00:17:44.520 And he was in the right place at the right time as far as Rocky's career was concerned.

00:17:48.380 So when he started boxing on the army team, did he have any formal boxing training?

00:17:54.360 Or did he just kind of get in there and sort of like going back, falling back into those schoolyard scraps he had?

00:18:00.860 Like, that's how he boxed?

00:18:02.380 Yeah, he boxed like, yeah, that's how he boxed.

00:18:05.560 I mean, they had coaches on the army team and they started to give him advice.

00:18:08.960 And, you know, he was training so he could, you know, have the energy to go, you know, the distance in the fights he had unless he knocked his opponent out as he often did.

00:18:19.700 But he was still very rude.

00:18:20.960 He was very rude and crude and well into his career as a professional he was as well.

00:18:26.040 But this was the beginning of the formal education of Rocky Marciano in the ring.

00:18:31.380 And at what point in this, you know, and how old was he at this point?

00:18:34.620 Let's kind of get some context there.

00:18:36.600 He would have been about 22, 23 years old at this point.

00:18:40.480 22 years old.

00:18:41.120 I mean, it's kind of a late start to get into the boxing game.

00:18:44.120 Yeah.

00:18:44.260 His trainer, Charlie Goldman, once said, you know, he started way too late.

00:18:48.540 I got a guy who's got two left feet.

00:18:50.620 He's stoop-shouldered.

00:18:51.620 He's balding.

00:18:52.320 He don't look so good with the moves in the ring, but his opponents don't look so good on the canvas either.

00:18:57.900 Right.

00:18:58.760 And so what point did Rocky think, like, I could turn this, like, boxing is going to be my ticket out of the shoe factory?

00:19:05.440 Like, when did he think that that was going to be reality?

00:19:07.900 Well, after he got out of the Army at the beginning of 1947, he carried on his boxing experience.

00:19:13.860 He fought some amateur fights and gold gloves fights in New England.

00:19:18.180 But then he had his baseball tryout with the Cubs that spring.

00:19:21.520 And he really wasn't so enamored with boxing.

00:19:24.140 It was just a way to, you know, make a paycheck while he waited for the baseball career to take off.

00:19:29.720 And once that didn't take off, he came back in the spring of 47.

00:19:35.400 And that was when he started boxing in earnest.

00:19:38.560 And his friend, Ali Colombo, was the first one to really see that, you know, he thought Rocky could go all the way,

00:19:44.440 which seems pretty ridiculous to think about back then.

00:19:46.920 But that was the dream that Ali had.

00:19:49.280 And Rocky didn't really have any alternatives.

00:19:51.480 And the interesting thing, you asked about his relationship with his parents, you know, the first son of an Italian mother.

00:19:57.220 She hated the idea of him fighting, didn't want to see him fight, would be upset about it.

00:20:01.640 So he used to sneak out of the house to train.

00:20:04.740 And, you know, in the spring of 47, he went, he snuck out to Holyoke, Massachusetts, and he fought his first professional fight.

00:20:11.360 And he fought it under an assumed name, Rocky Mack, an Irish name on St. Patrick's Day in an Irish working class city.

00:20:17.800 And he won his first fight.

00:20:19.600 And then, you know, he kind of crept back to Brockton without letting his mother know.

00:20:23.360 And later, when she did find out he was fighting, she always made him promise that he would stop if he ever got hurt.

00:20:29.160 And she'd always make him lift up his shirt and inspect his body for marks to see if he could keep fighting.

00:20:35.160 Well, didn't he, like, that affected his fighting style because he would stand in a certain way so he wouldn't get hit in the face.

00:20:40.500 Because when he later got a seasoned manager and trainer, and they looked at him and said,

00:20:46.540 why are you, you know, holding your hands up like that and letting people hit you in the stomach?

00:20:51.140 He goes, well, I just figured I'd let them punch themselves out.

00:20:53.520 I don't want to get hit in the face because that would leave a mark and then my mom would see it.

00:20:57.840 And his mother was this indomitable woman, Pasqualina, or Lena.

00:21:02.400 And that's where she got, that's where he got his strength from.

00:21:05.160 She was a big, you know, powerful woman, very gregarious, vivacious, the heart and soul of that family.

00:21:11.100 And, you know, his friends would say that she was the one person that people feared in his house.

00:21:16.600 So Rocky starts boxing semi-professionally.

00:21:20.460 He's, I mean, he's trying to maintain an amateur status so he can be eligible for the AAU Golden Gloves.

00:21:27.040 Right.

00:21:27.440 But, you know, like, those rules got flouted all the time.

00:21:30.520 People would fight like he did, fight under his different names.

00:21:33.420 Yeah.

00:21:33.560 When did he get connected with, like, a legit manager and trainer that would lead him and train him to actually hit, you know, turn pro?

00:21:44.520 Well, that would be in the summer of 1948.

00:21:47.980 He'd been boxing some amateur fights.

00:21:50.380 He'd won the New England Golden Gloves in Lowell, Massachusetts.

00:21:54.340 And he went down to New York where he lost to Coley Wallace, who was kind of a young, upcoming black fighter who was hailed as the next Joe Lewis.

00:22:02.220 The only way he was the next Joe Lewis was he played him in a movie.

00:22:05.980 But Wallace won a controversial decision in New York that a lot of people felt should have gone to Rocky.

00:22:11.240 And that probably cost Rocky a shot at the Olympics, the Olympic team.

00:22:15.440 But at that point, the local manager in Brockton that Rocky had for amateur fights, you know, they weren't really getting along.

00:22:24.460 And Rocky's had some family advisors who'd been in the fight game.

00:22:27.660 And they said, you've got to go to New York.

00:22:29.340 You've got to get a connect manager.

00:22:30.880 And New York is the center of the boxing universe.

00:22:33.460 And boxing is such a treacherous sport.

00:22:35.500 You've got to have a guy with connections who's going to look out for you, get you the proper training, and get you, you know, the fights to put you on the path to the top.

00:22:45.080 So he went to New York.

00:22:47.000 And he got a meeting with the premier manager at the time, a guy named Al Weil, who was a great character.

00:22:54.800 And Weil was the matchmaker for the International Boxing Club, which controlled boxing, or he would be.

00:22:59.900 And he was very influential.

00:23:00.880 He'd had three champions and other weight classes, and, you know, so he got hooked up with Al Weil.

00:23:06.360 And Al Weil brought along his trainer, Charlie Goldman, who was a, you know, walking encyclopedia of boxing knowledge earned in 400, you know, bantamweight fights of his own in the early 1900s.

00:23:17.600 And so with those two guys in his corner, Rocky started a more formal education in the ring that would later put him on the path to the title.

00:23:26.420 But initially, these guys didn't think much of Rocky.

00:23:28.920 No, they didn't.

00:23:29.680 And, you know, he was a guy who was very clumsy.

00:23:33.980 He was very awkward.

00:23:35.140 He was slow.

00:23:36.160 He was short.

00:23:37.520 He was old for a fighter starting out.

00:23:40.660 And they actually brought him down to the gym down in Lower Manhattan, a CYO gym, and just had him spar a few rounds with a guy.

00:23:48.340 And they're looking at each other, Goldman and Weil and some of the other guys in the gym, and they're shaking their heads.

00:23:53.500 And then suddenly, out of nowhere, Rocky floors the guy with this thunderous, you know, looping right.

00:23:59.320 And then they started to take notice.

00:24:02.580 And, you know, later, Charlie Goldman would nickname that punch the Susie Q. 1.00

00:24:06.860 And it was that punch that convinced them.

00:24:10.620 And also, Rocky's dedication.

00:24:12.280 They could tell that he really wanted it.

00:24:13.780 He wasn't going to run around and fool around with girls and party.

00:24:16.800 And, you know, he was going to train.

00:24:18.580 And he was a monk about it.

00:24:20.040 And so, they took a chance on him.

00:24:22.440 And, you know, it didn't cost them anything.

00:24:24.260 You know, they just told him to train.

00:24:25.840 And they weren't putting any money into him at the beginning.

00:24:28.960 And because Rocky didn't really have a lot of money, he was digging ditches back in Brockton, they wanted him to move to New York and train.

00:24:37.200 But they didn't want to pay his expenses.

00:24:38.580 And he said, well, I can't afford that.

00:24:40.420 So, Weil, who's connected all over the place, sent him to Providence, Rhode Island, which was the fight capital of New England back then, as well as the mob capital.

00:24:48.280 And that's where Rocky started to fight because he could, you know, live at home in Brockton.

00:24:53.900 And he could go over to Providence for fights.

00:24:56.060 And then he would hitch a ride on overnight produce trucks down from Brockton to New York to train with Goldman.

00:25:02.900 And he lived at the YMCA for a dollar a night.

00:25:05.920 Right.

00:25:06.100 So, yeah, this is like the prototypical boxing story.

00:25:10.460 Like he was living it fully.

00:25:12.320 Yeah.

00:25:12.800 I mean, I love the images I found of him and his friend Ali, who was by his side for all of this.

00:25:18.120 And they would roll off the produce truck at like four in the morning in lower Manhattan.

00:25:23.000 And the song would be coming up and they didn't have much money in their pockets.

00:25:26.180 And they would just walk the streets.

00:25:28.700 And at night for entertainment, they would walk up and down Broadway watching the people in their fine clothes and, you know, dream of that life.

00:25:36.220 And one time he saw, you know, the great fighter, Willie Pepp, who was a champion.

00:25:41.300 And he saw him walking up Broadway with a beautiful woman on his arm.

00:25:45.160 And they were both well-dressed.

00:25:46.560 And he bought her a flower and pinned it to her lapel.

00:25:49.300 And they went into a fancy theater.

00:25:51.060 And Rocky dreamed of having that life.

00:25:53.460 So in Providence, he's doing some fights, doing the work.

00:25:57.960 At what point, what was the fight that brought Rocky to the national stage?

00:26:02.380 Like, yeah, he was a contender.

00:26:04.380 Yeah.

00:26:04.720 Well, he built his record up in Providence.

00:26:06.660 And he became a real crowd favorite there.

00:26:09.260 First of all, Providence is a big Italian-American town.

00:26:12.700 And so they loved him.

00:26:14.400 And everybody loved his knockout punch.

00:26:16.460 There came a tradition in Providence that whenever, you know, Rocky would be ready to knock out one of his opponents, you know, he would hit him with his punch, his Suzy Q.

00:26:27.460 And the guy would kind of stand there and topple for a minute.

00:26:30.020 And then he would crash to the canvas.

00:26:31.660 And the crowd would yell, Timber!

00:26:34.500 And so Rocky started to develop a reputation.

00:26:37.480 And after a few fights, the local promoter was initially, you know, angry with Al Weil.

00:26:42.320 Because Al Weil would always, you know, betray these other managers and cut deals that would screw them.

00:26:47.760 And so they kept trying to put guys in the ring that would beat Rocky and shut Weil up. 0.99

00:26:52.780 But Rocky kept knocking them out.

00:26:54.620 And finally, Weil said, you know, the local promoter said, Al, you better lock this guy up.

00:26:59.480 He's, you know, starting to get a following.

00:27:01.100 So Weil signed him to a contract.

00:27:03.260 And that's when he started to come down to New York and train.

00:27:06.060 So he kept winning all these fights.

00:27:07.820 And then he finally gets to the point where he has his first big feature fight in Madison Square Garden a few nights before New Year's Eve in 1949.

00:27:18.220 And he fights a guy named Carmine Vingo, who is also an unbeaten, up-and-coming, but younger Italian fighter from the Bronx, who has a big following there.

00:27:27.820 His name is Bingo Vingo.

00:27:29.560 And they have one of these great unknown fights that really puts Rocky on the map.

00:27:33.880 And in some ways, it puts him on the map for the wrong reasons, because they start wailing away on each other.

00:27:39.800 And it's like two heavyweights fighting at the speed and intensity of lightweights.

00:27:43.380 And they're landing thunderous punches on each other.

00:27:46.640 And the New York Times writer wrote that it seemed like more than human endurance could stand.

00:27:53.160 And finally, in the third or fourth round, Vingo hit Rocky, a tremendous shot to the chest.

00:27:59.500 And Rocky later said he blacked out, but he stayed on his feet and just went into a clinch until he could regain his senses.

00:28:06.120 And in the sixth round, with Vingo tiring, Rocky hit him with a thunderous right, put him on the canvas. 0.57

00:28:12.100 Then his head kind of thumped up and hit the canvas again.

00:28:15.520 And while Rocky was celebrating, Vingo slipped into a coma.

00:28:19.100 And later, the ring doctor tried to revive him, was unsuccessful.

00:28:23.180 They called an ambulance.

00:28:25.080 They couldn't get an ambulance to come, so they piled blankets and coats on him and carried him through the streets of Manhattan to a nearby hospital.

00:28:34.420 And then Rocky heard about it and went over there and stood vigil as Vingo's family and fiancé came.

00:28:40.960 And he basically fought to see if he would live or die.

00:28:43.680 And a few days later, he pulls out of the coma and he eventually recovers, but never will fight again.

00:28:51.500 He's blinded in one eye.

00:28:53.000 He has a permanent limp.

00:28:54.820 And for the rest of his life, Vingo never remembered that fight.

00:28:57.600 The last thing he remembered was the six steps leading up from the floor of Madison Square Garden to the ring.

00:29:03.080 And then the next thing he remembers was lying in the hospital bed and seeing his mother.

00:29:06.940 We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.

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00:31:27.960 And now back to the show.

00:31:29.400 How did that affect the rest of Rocky's career?

00:31:31.500 Because I'm sure knowing that you almost killed a guy would, I don't know, make you a bit timid next time you go into the ring?

00:31:39.900 Absolutely.

00:31:40.860 And it did.

00:31:41.780 But the longer-term effect would have been had Vingo died.

00:31:45.440 You know, Rocky said that he's not sure he could have continued had Vingo died.

00:31:50.400 I'm not sure that's true.

00:31:52.140 And Rocky's friends think he would have continued.

00:31:54.380 But still, you wonder how the effect it's going to have on you.

00:31:57.400 And that's the specter of boxing, isn't it?

00:31:59.280 That's the death in the ring that lurks.

00:32:02.000 And it's interesting.

00:32:03.160 You know, in researching this period, I found that as popular as boxing was, it was kind of like the NFL of its day.

00:32:09.940 And people loved it, but they also had this love-hate relationship with it.

00:32:14.000 And they realized that they were like, you know, lusting for blood and lusting for the thrill of seeing another man potentially killed or maimed.

00:32:22.360 And there was a lot of hand-wringing publicly about whether boxing had a role in society.

00:32:27.860 And interestingly, you know, Rocky later came around to some of those views later in life.

00:32:31.680 But at the time, there was a lot of talk about what kind of reforms can we put into boxing to make it safer?

00:32:36.940 Can you make it safer?

00:32:38.540 But it did bother Rocky.

00:32:40.080 He was very on edge about what had happened.

00:32:43.000 And other great fighters, you know, his trainer had seen other great fighters lose their killer instinct.

00:32:47.440 And his next fight was his next big fight in the garden against Roland Lestarza.

00:32:52.980 Who was another unbeaten, young, darling heavyweight of the New York press.

00:32:57.940 He was very stylistic.

00:32:59.400 He had gone to local college.

00:33:01.360 But he was a guy that lacked the killer instinct.

00:33:03.220 And they kind of compared it to a Dempsey versus Tunney fight.

00:33:07.600 You know, Dempsey being Rocky, the hard hitter, and Tunney being the more thoughtful, strategic, defensive fighter.

00:33:13.860 And Rocky won that fight in a very narrow, controversial 10-round decision in Madison Square Garden.

00:33:20.340 And that really put him on a path to being a contender.

00:33:23.620 And from then on, his fights were headliner fights.

00:33:26.320 He wasn't on the, you know, undercard after that fight in 1950 against Lestarza.

00:33:31.640 Right.

00:33:32.280 And then he eventually fights Joe Louis.

00:33:35.540 This wasn't for the title, though, correct?

00:33:37.380 There was another guy who held the title.

00:33:39.520 Joe Louis.

00:33:40.000 Jersey Joe Walcott and Ezra Charles were champions in reverse order after Louis stepped down.

00:33:48.200 And then what happened was, you know, the tragedy of Joe Louis' life was he had a lot of debts.

00:33:53.100 And he needed to come back into the ring to try to make money, even though he was past his prime.

00:33:57.740 But he was still the Brown Bomber.

00:33:59.180 He was still Joe Louis.

00:34:00.180 And so when Rocky was rising to contender status, Louis was suddenly the match that was made for them to face each other.

00:34:10.060 And when Rocky won that fight in October of 1951, he was kind of declared the champion in waiting.

00:34:16.160 And again, some of this goes to racial overtones of the era that after Joe Louis, the black champions were kind of unsung and really didn't, never really connected with the public.

00:34:25.060 And Rocky was seen as the fresh face, the white face, the great white hope, if you will.

00:34:30.540 And once he beat Joe Louis, his idol, he was the top contender to the crown.

00:34:37.220 I wonder if Rocky, you know, Rocky seeing Joe Louis had an influence on how Rocky decided to end his career.

00:34:46.140 Because that's like, you know, Joe Louis' story is super sad, but like that was the story of a lot of heavyweight, a lot of boxers in that time.

00:34:51.260 And they would go and they'd make a lot of money and they retire and they would need more money.

00:34:56.160 So they'd come out of retirement and they're past their prime and they're still trying to, you know, win one more fight.

00:35:02.420 And it's sad, right?

00:35:04.040 And it's just, it's really tragic.

00:35:05.660 And I wonder if Rocky saw that and was like, I'm not going to do that.

00:35:08.160 So that's why he just decided, I'm going to walk away.

00:35:10.720 I'm going to walk away completely from boxing.

00:35:13.140 Yeah, he was 49 and 0.

00:35:15.040 He was, you know, in his early 30s, he still had some fights left in him.

00:35:19.200 And 50 and 0 would have been a nice round number.

00:35:22.560 But he, you know, there were two things that Rocky was afraid of.

00:35:25.960 He was afraid of not having money.

00:35:28.240 You know, he grew up in the Depression.

00:35:30.020 He also saw a lot of fighters who got fleeced and left with nothing.

00:35:33.620 You know, they lived a good life while it was there and then it was gone.

00:35:36.840 He also saw a lot of, you know, broken down fighters who, you know, are sitting alone mumbling in bars and, you know, their wits aren't all about them.

00:35:45.880 And he feared that.

00:35:46.760 Those are the two things he feared.

00:35:48.040 And he was really kind of a, he was a real assassin in the ring, but he was a pretty gentle man out of it.

00:35:54.240 And he didn't really hold grudges against fighters.

00:35:56.600 The one time he really got mad at a fighter, though, was when he was champion and he fought Roland Lestarza in a rematch.

00:36:03.400 And he was angry that before the fight, Lestarza was quoted making some comments about the way Rocky fights.

00:36:08.580 He takes so many punches, he's going to become punch drunk.

00:36:11.060 And that really struck a nerve with Rocky because he feared that and he didn't want that.

00:36:16.480 And he knew when to walk away.

00:36:18.900 And there were some other reasons we can get into about his manager stealing from him.

00:36:23.200 But again, goes back to his, you know, fear of not having enough money.

00:36:27.300 But that was, he had the presence of mind.

00:36:30.600 And later in life, he helped Joe Louis.

00:36:32.380 He helped Joe Louis get jobs.

00:36:34.520 And when he met Muhammad Ali late in his life, Ali's wife pulled Rocky aside one day and said,

00:36:40.360 do you think I can get, you know, Muhammad to retire? 1.00

00:36:43.080 And Rocky looked at her and said, no, darling, he's got the, he's got the lust in his eye and he's just going to have to, he's too big an ego.

00:36:51.220 He's not going to stop.

00:36:52.680 Yeah.

00:36:53.480 So you mentioned once Rocky decided he was going to do boxing, he became pretty much a monk.

00:36:59.420 Like he quit smoking, he quit drinking.

00:37:01.940 And then you go into his training camps and he become even more monk light.

00:37:07.160 So walk us through his training regimens to get ready for a fight and like the extremes he'd go to, to make sure he was in tip top shape for a fight.

00:37:16.480 Rocky realized that his body was his temple.

00:37:19.480 And, uh, you know, he would train for months.

00:37:22.500 He would do, he would run relentlessly even, and he would box like several hundred rounds to prepare for a 10 or 15 round fight.

00:37:31.780 And the other thing about him is even when he wasn't formally in training, he would always be working out.

00:37:36.500 You know, his brother talked about waking up in the middle of the night, you know, and there's Rocky, you know, on the floor doing pushup, you know, pushups with a chair or, you know, some exercise, you know, squeezing a ball with his hand to strengthen.

00:37:49.480 And, you know, the knuckles that he had broken.

00:37:51.880 So he was always training and he liked the heat.

00:37:55.620 He said, oh, this reminds me of digging ditches in Brockton.

00:37:58.280 You know, he liked enduring punishment.

00:38:00.080 Sometimes he would go up to Grossinger's in the Catskill mountains of New York in the winter.

00:38:04.500 And he said that the cold wind would toughen his skin.

00:38:08.320 So he was, he was a rough, tough guy.

00:38:10.900 Yeah, yeah.

00:38:11.360 And not only was it like the physical training was hard, like he would, he would sort of, I don't know, spiritually, psychologically prepare himself for this fight.

00:38:18.400 Like he would have no distractions whatsoever.

00:38:20.080 He wouldn't see his family.

00:38:21.640 He would cut off mail.

00:38:23.560 It was just thinking about fighting all the time.

00:38:26.020 Yeah.

00:38:26.400 He wouldn't read stories about his opponents and he would just paint mental pictures.

00:38:31.220 In some ways, he was a good model for athletes today about how to train.

00:38:34.980 And he was ahead of his time in terms of, you know, avoiding fried foods and eating green vegetables and, you know, things like that.

00:38:42.700 He also, somewhere early on, somebody told him, don't lift weights and get yourself all bulked up.

00:38:48.260 He was more about flexibility.

00:38:49.960 And even though he was not, you know, the most graceful of fighters, you know, he kind of incorporated that into his training.

00:38:55.720 One of the things he did when he was young, he would go to the Brockton YMCA and get in the swimming pool and he would throw punches underwater.

00:39:02.840 And he would go like mock three rounds and, you know, people would come into the pool area and see the water sloshing up over the sides from the force of his underwater punching.

00:39:12.560 Right.

00:39:12.720 So, he had a lot of discipline.

00:39:14.420 He knew how to just discipline himself.

00:39:16.280 Incredible discipline.

00:39:17.440 There's a great story I found.

00:39:19.360 There was a Hollywood bombshell actress named Jane Mansfield, kind of like a Marilyn Monroe type. 0.99

00:39:24.780 And she goes, she's at the Grossinger's.

00:39:28.220 His training camp was also, you know, a big entertainment mecca.

00:39:31.480 A lot of Hollywood stars would go and entertain the people at the resort down the hill from where Rocky trained.

00:39:37.260 So, there were always stars around.

00:39:39.320 And Jane Mansfield was at Grossinger's once when Rocky was training.

00:39:43.380 And some friends thought it would be kind of a funny joke to send her into his cabin to see if she could seduce him.

00:39:48.480 And she went in and, you know, not many men would say no to Jane Mansfield back then.

00:39:54.120 But he said no and she left his cabin in a huff, you know, frustrated that he had rejected her, which she wasn't accustomed to.

00:40:02.660 But that was Rocky.

00:40:03.460 He said there would be plenty of time for living the good life later.

00:40:07.120 But, again, it was, I think, that fear that drove him and that pride.

00:40:11.400 You know, even if he got knocked down while he was sparring, he would want to spar more or say, I just slipped and fell.

00:40:18.540 There was that fierce pride.

00:40:20.560 Well, yeah, you mentioned earlier that when he fought, like, he felt like the weight of the world on his shoulders.

00:40:26.380 He wasn't just fighting for him and his family.

00:40:28.780 We can talk about his family life here in a bit.

00:40:30.500 But he was also fighting for the people in Brockton because he knew people were probably betting enormous amounts of money on him and he couldn't let them down.

00:40:38.640 Yeah, they were.

00:40:39.240 I mean, it was part of the culture then.

00:40:40.940 People gambled.

00:40:42.520 And, you know, when he was a kid, he would go to these illegal dice games in the woods behind the ball field where there was a one-legged gambler from Providence named Peg Leg Pete would run him.

00:40:54.200 And so gambling was ingrained in the culture.

00:40:56.140 And it was interesting.

00:40:57.580 I found that when Rocky started his rise in boxing, you know, started getting the bigger fights, the people in Brockton, you know, little old Italian ladies and men would, you know, 0.99

00:41:07.840 take the money that the dollar bill stashed in their coffee tins and they would bet it on Rocky.

00:41:12.960 And then he'd win and they'd take the winnings and they'd roll it over and bet on the next fight and the next fight.

00:41:17.480 And then you'd hear stories about people in Brockton would be buying, you know, refrigerators and stoves and cars and even new houses.

00:41:24.480 And there was one taxi driver after Rocky became champion.

00:41:28.600 He told a visitor that, you know, before every fight, he takes this elderly Italian couple to the local loan company so they can borrow money.

00:41:36.140 And he said, heaven help Brockton if Rocky ever loses.

00:41:39.180 But he never did.

00:41:39.920 And he said, you know, I knew that these people were counting on me and for them I would always get up.

00:41:45.220 Yeah.

00:41:45.760 Rocky is Italian-American.

00:41:47.720 Family, obviously very important.

00:41:49.840 And he gets married, took him a while because his manager didn't want him to get married because it would distract from boxing.

00:41:56.660 But he finally does get married to his wife, Barbara, right?

00:42:00.300 Is that her name?

00:42:01.740 Yeah.

00:42:02.540 He gets married to Barbara Cousins.

00:42:04.280 Yeah.

00:42:04.680 But I mean, so he was gone all the time.

00:42:06.540 So how did his boxing career, how did he balance boxing or family or did he?

00:42:12.280 Well, that was a real tension.

00:42:14.660 Not so much in his marriage at the time.

00:42:17.240 It was more of a tension within himself because, you know, his wife, Barbara, she was a good natural athlete and she accepted what he was doing and she was willing to make the sacrifice.

00:42:28.620 But it was hard on Rocky.

00:42:30.280 You know, he'd talk about, you know, I've just gotten married or I'm engaged and I can't see my wife or my fiance.

00:42:36.880 And then when they had a daughter, after he became champion, he would bemoan, you know, I miss my family.

00:42:43.120 I haven't seen my daughter in eight months.

00:42:44.740 I go home and she doesn't even know me.

00:42:46.660 She's scared of me and runs away. 0.76

00:42:49.100 And, you know, this is a guy that grew up with strong family bonds.

00:42:53.540 So that was hard.

00:42:54.860 But he also loved boxing.

00:42:56.840 He loved training.

00:42:58.460 And, you know, he was willing to make the sacrifice and he didn't regret doing it.

00:43:03.260 So what I found interesting about Rocky's career is even though he was winning every match he was in and knocking people out, the journalist and the boxing critics weren't, I mean, they still, like, they weren't that impressed.

00:43:17.940 Like, they were always criticizing him and saying he wasn't that, he wasn't actually that great of a boxer.

00:43:22.320 I mean, what was their critique against Rocky despite him winning every single round that he, every single match he was put in?

00:43:29.380 Well, he was slow.

00:43:31.260 He was awkward.

00:43:32.120 He was clumsy.

00:43:32.940 He wasn't a great stylist.

00:43:35.140 You know, people were used to the stylists like Joe Lewis who were very graceful and, you know, good counter punchers and good strategists and were quick and could move in and out.

00:43:45.160 And he was like a bulldozer.

00:43:46.940 And, you know, he was like a working class guy.

00:43:48.920 You know, he'd come in with his pickaxe and he'd just keep banging on the brick wall and seemingly futility until suddenly the wall crumbled.

00:43:56.800 And, you know, finally, again, the Cold War America started to embrace that, you know, heavy puncher.

00:44:04.740 And they started to like that about him.

00:44:07.500 But, you know, he was a guy who could never win on dial points.

00:44:10.740 And, you know, even as he advanced in his career, you know, he and his trainer would admit that, you know, he's not the most graceful guy, but there's more than one way to win a fight.

00:44:20.400 And Rocky had the punch. 0.89

00:44:21.880 And he also had the ability to take a punch and take incredible punishment and keep going, you know, when he was knocked down, when he was bloody, when his nose was hanging and, you know, tatters and bleeding like a faucet.

00:44:34.240 But he just kept coming.

00:44:36.000 Yeah, the dedication or the determination, the grit that he had, that seemed, that surprised opponents.

00:44:41.020 They'd be like, I gave him a really good, you know, wallop, but like he just, he didn't go down.

00:44:45.420 He just kept coming at me.

00:44:46.640 Yeah.

00:44:46.820 One opponent said it was like hitting the side of a rhino.

00:44:49.900 Archie Moore said it was like wading into a moving airplane propeller.

00:44:54.160 And another opponent early on said that every time Rocky hit you, you saw a flash of light.

00:44:59.980 Right.

00:45:01.320 So let's talk about his manager because his manager, as you said, he was a character.

00:45:06.780 Someone, I think, described him as Hitler and Mussolini rolled into one or something like that.

00:45:12.360 Had connections to the mob.

00:45:15.000 What was Rocky's, you know, obviously he's Italian-American.

00:45:19.460 He's a boxer.

00:45:21.240 So he must have rubbed shoulder.

00:45:22.760 And since, you know, an early day, since he was a kid, he was also going into this gambling.

00:45:26.880 You know, so he probably saw it, encountered it.

00:45:30.220 What did he think about it?

00:45:31.300 Was it one of those things where he was both, there was a tension there?

00:45:34.320 Like he was both appalled and sort of drawn to it at the same time?

00:45:37.160 Very much a tension.

00:45:38.600 And that would manifest itself more after he retired from the ring and he needed a new outlet for, you know, the adrenaline rush of boxing.

00:45:47.000 And he would hang around these dangerous mobsters who all adored him.

00:45:51.280 And they adored him because he was one of them.

00:45:53.520 He was a countryman.

00:45:54.880 But also because he did them proud.

00:45:57.980 And he resented that, you know, anti-Italian prejudice and stereotype that mobsters brought onto his race.

00:46:05.640 And he resented, you know, the corruption in boxing and the mob control permeated it.

00:46:11.580 And it didn't matter whether you were black, Italian, Latino, Irish.

00:46:16.780 I mean, if you were a boxer and you were, you know, in the mix, you had to deal with the mob in some way, shape or form because they were in the background behind all of it.

00:46:25.480 And so, of course, you know, the flip side of the coin, Rocky gets one of the most politically connected managers in boxing, Al Weil.

00:46:34.060 And that means that Al Weil is also answers to Frankie Carbo, who's a notorious mobster known as the underworld commissioner of boxing, as well as a hitman for Murder, Inc., implicated in five murders, including his former partner, Bugsy Siegel.

00:46:49.100 And Al Weil, though, was a real character.

00:46:52.440 And there was real tension between Rocky and Weil throughout his career.

00:46:57.120 First of all, he hitches in a star to this, you know, big time manager. 0.98

00:47:01.280 And he's happy about that because he's going to get him the shot at the title.

00:47:04.880 Al Weil was an interesting character.

00:47:06.420 You know, he and Charlie Goldman came of age, you know, both poor immigrants, Jewish immigrants from New York, from Europe in the early 1900s.

00:47:14.260 They come to New York.

00:47:15.700 They battle their way up.

00:47:17.260 And while, interestingly, he started dancing in dance halls and winning $5 in these dance competitions.

00:47:25.520 And that's how he survived.

00:47:26.820 And one of his rivals was a young up-and-coming future star actor named George Raft.

00:47:32.240 This is in Manhattan.

00:47:33.900 And later he gravitates into the boxing game.

00:47:36.140 And it turns out he's got a real gift for matching fighters.

00:47:39.680 And so he gets into that.

00:47:41.500 But he's still hustling odd jobs.

00:47:43.160 Boxing is still illegal a lot of the years in the early 1900s.

00:47:48.600 And so he's working at the Golden City Amusement Park on the waterfront in Brooklyn in Canarsie.

00:47:54.260 And he's running the high striker, you know, getting guys to impress their girls by, you know, taking the mallet and hitting the bell and, you know, winning a prize.

00:48:02.480 And nearby, he meets this guy, this old, you know, broken down boxer named Charlie Goldman, who's running the Wheel of Fortune.

00:48:10.680 And they wind up striking up this great partnership that produces three world champions, you know, a lightweight Lou Ambers, a featherweight Joey Archibald, and a welterweight in Marty Servo.

00:48:23.720 But they've never, you know, the one crown that's eluded them is the heavyweight crown, the most glamorous of all.

00:48:29.200 And so when they take Rocky on, Rocky's eager, because now he's got the best management.

00:48:36.180 But Weil is very domineering.

00:48:38.480 You know, there's one profile that compares him to Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and Simon Legree rolled into one.

00:48:45.000 And this is a favorable profile.

00:48:47.180 But Weil was the master manipulator.

00:48:49.620 He was a control freak.

00:48:50.580 And he would tell his fighters, you know, when to eat, when to sleep, where to go, you know, whether they could date, when they could marry.

00:48:57.520 And he was very domineering.

00:48:59.000 He was very crude and abrasive and, you know, didn't always treat Rocky well.

00:49:03.540 And Rocky bristled at that.

00:49:05.080 But he had enough, you know, restraint that he knew he had to, you know, put up with that to get to the title.

00:49:11.580 And so, you know, that was the uneasy marriage that lasted throughout his career and eventually broke up and was a big reason that Rocky retired when he did.

00:49:22.800 Well, yeah, let's talk about his retirement.

00:49:24.520 So he, you mentioned that he loved boxing.

00:49:27.440 He loved training.

00:49:29.240 But when he was getting to, like, you know, win 48, 47, he even started talking to people.

00:49:35.580 He's like, I just, it just doesn't do it for me anymore.

00:49:38.940 Like, there's, I've climbed all the mountains.

00:49:40.760 What else am I supposed to do?

00:49:43.120 So there was that.

00:49:44.340 And what else about his relationship with Wile that made him want to retire as well?

00:49:49.980 Well, as I said, Wile was connected to the mob.

00:49:52.860 And the mob would skim the money from a lot of these fights.

00:49:56.660 Because it became a very, you know, we always know.

00:49:59.420 I mean, Damon Runyon, Guys and Dolls.

00:50:01.460 I mean, that's Rocky's life and that's the world of boxing.

00:50:04.220 And so we know the mob has always been around the fight game and all these characters.

00:50:08.380 But what people don't realize, I discovered in researching this book, was that after World War II, boxing becomes bigger time because of all the new TV money.

00:50:17.800 TV is suddenly in every American's home.

00:50:21.300 And the two biggest early forms of entertainment were boxing and I Love Lucy.

00:50:26.300 And so there's a lot of money now to be made.

00:50:28.260 And so Wile is taking half of Rocky's earnings, even for public appearances outside of the ring, which is a lucrative side business for champions.

00:50:38.560 And on top of that, Rocky's starting to hear rumblings that Wile is selling tickets, you know, under the table.

00:50:47.660 That he's not sharing any of the proceeds with Rocky, you know, to his big fights.

00:50:51.740 That he's skimming money off the top of his purses before he divvies it up.

00:50:55.700 And then he's fighting in San Francisco against Don Cackel in the spring of 1955, his second to last fight.

00:51:03.280 And there's a boxing investigation of the corruption out there that later uncovers a $10,000 check that was cashed and went to Wile that was skimmed off the top of Rocky's purses.

00:51:14.240 So this was all starting to build up in Rocky.

00:51:17.580 And now he's the champion.

00:51:18.760 He's got some independence.

00:51:21.100 And he's just had it.

00:51:23.420 And he's also burned out from, you know, when you train as hard and as long as he did, even though his career was relatively short, he had had it.

00:51:31.280 And he was starting to have some, you know, back trouble.

00:51:34.220 And he did see what happened to Joe Lewis.

00:51:35.960 And he did see what happened to some of these other broken down fighters.

00:51:38.640 And he didn't want to follow in their path.

00:51:40.360 And so he decided after he fought Archie Moore in Yankee Stadium in the fall of 1955, that that was it.

00:51:49.800 He was done.

00:51:51.060 And he walked away.

00:51:53.060 So he retires.

00:51:54.140 I mean, this guy, you know, for the past, was it 10 years?

00:51:58.740 Just constantly moving, constantly training, always going after something.

00:52:03.480 I mean, what does a guy like that do when there's nothing to go after, like no set goal to go after?

00:52:10.360 Yeah, he kind of drifts.

00:52:12.000 At first, he enjoys it.

00:52:13.400 And he's the most famous man in the world.

00:52:15.940 He can command all kinds of money from business deals, speaking fees.

00:52:21.780 People want to throw money at him.

00:52:23.260 They want to give him, you know, land.

00:52:25.640 They want to give him suits, restaurants, hotels, plane flights.

00:52:30.220 And so he's living the good life.

00:52:33.180 And he's enjoying all the things he deprived himself of when he trained.

00:52:36.760 He's gorging himself on rich food and beer.

00:52:39.580 And, you know, he's gaining a lot of weight. 0.97

00:52:41.980 And he's also starting to become, you know, pretty notorious womanizer. 0.72

00:52:46.000 And he also starts hanging out with mob guys. 0.72

00:52:49.080 You know, again, they love him.

00:52:50.720 And he's kind of drawn to the, you know, the danger and the excitement and the action.

00:52:56.080 And so this becomes his life.

00:52:58.100 And I pictured, you know, and meanwhile, the country is changing.

00:53:01.260 You know, he retires in 1956.

00:53:03.600 You know, boxing.

00:53:04.700 This is kind of the last golden age of boxing.

00:53:07.960 And it starts to decline in popularity.

00:53:11.180 People wish he would come back.

00:53:13.420 You know, Muhammad Ali comes along to kind of breathe new life into it, you know, for his career.

00:53:17.700 And the 1960s comes along.

00:53:19.980 And the country is changing.

00:53:21.600 And he, you know, in the late 50s, he goes down to Cuba.

00:53:25.240 And there's some talk about him getting involved in a mob-run casino down there.

00:53:30.000 And then shortly after he's supposed to, he leaves, he's supposed to come back.

00:53:33.840 The, you know, some of Fidel Castro's guerrillas shoot up the casino.

00:53:38.320 And then Fidel Castro overthrows the government down there.

00:53:41.460 And the casinos all have to shut down.

00:53:43.020 So that deal goes away.

00:53:44.380 You know, he meets with a notorious mobster, Johnny Rosselli, about taking a stake in a

00:53:49.560 Las Vegas casino.

00:53:50.900 And that deal falls through.

00:53:52.360 But he has a lot of other things going on.

00:53:54.220 And he actually does get involved with a Cleveland loan shark named Peter DeGravio.

00:53:59.220 And, you know, winds up putting some money into DeGravio's business.

00:54:02.800 And then the IRS is sniffing around.

00:54:05.320 One of the real eccentric things about Rocky in retirement, this goes back to his depression

00:54:10.000 childhood, I suppose, is he loves cash, doesn't trust banks.

00:54:14.380 He hides cash in all sorts of bizarre places, you know, toilet bowls, curtain rods.

00:54:19.900 He's got a friend who has an estate in Florida.

00:54:22.480 He hides it in his bomb shelter.

00:54:24.780 And so this is Rocky's life.

00:54:26.400 And he's traveling around.

00:54:27.600 And, you know, the IRS is asking this Cleveland loan shark, well, where's all this cash coming

00:54:32.520 from?

00:54:32.880 And he said, it's from Rocky Marciano.

00:54:34.680 And the IRS wants to talk to the loan shark about it.

00:54:38.700 And they want Rocky to, you know, answer some questions.

00:54:41.820 And Rocky's heading out to Cleveland when the loan shark is out golfing.

00:54:45.620 And he gets shot dead on the course because he'd been having a feud with some local mob

00:54:50.160 bosses about his loan sharking business.

00:54:53.620 Yeah, that was, yeah, his financial stuff was really interesting.

00:54:57.100 He loved cash.

00:54:58.020 And like, I think one of his friends, you know, like rummaged through one of his pants

00:55:02.400 pockets and he found these crumpled up checks for $50,000, $100,000, not cashed.

00:55:08.680 And he's like, Rocky, why don't you cash them?

00:55:10.380 It's $100,000.

00:55:11.680 He's like, I don't like, I don't like checks.

00:55:13.780 I only like cash.

00:55:15.080 Yeah, there was one time his nephew told me a story that Rocky goes to a dinner to give

00:55:20.920 a speech and he walks into the ballroom and he sees a heavy bag hanging from the ceiling.

00:55:26.120 He says, what's that for?

00:55:28.000 And the guy says, well, we thought you'd like, you could hit the bag a few times for

00:55:31.400 the crowd.

00:55:32.100 And Rocky basically looks at the guy and cusses him out and says, what do you think I am?

00:55:36.180 A trained monkey?

00:55:38.140 And he goes, I'll tell you what, if you want me to hit the bag, you take up a collection

00:55:41.820 and like a hundred bucks a pop.

00:55:43.800 And they look at him like, well, where are we going to get the money?

00:55:46.080 And he looks out at this well-dressed crowd and he says, from them.

00:55:49.040 And apparently they raised it and he hit the bag.

00:55:52.380 But there was a sadness about his existence.

00:55:55.300 Like a well-trained monkey.

00:55:56.640 It's the 1960s.

00:55:57.420 The world is changing.

00:55:58.780 Yeah.

00:55:59.020 I kind of picture that mythical character, Don Draper in the TV series Mad Men.

00:56:03.700 You know, he's kind of wandering through this changing country, wondering what his place

00:56:07.180 is.

00:56:08.140 And, you know, he's kind of unmoored from his family.

00:56:12.760 You know, he doesn't go back to Brockton much.

00:56:14.940 His mother laments that he doesn't see his family, you know, often enough.

00:56:19.300 And he still cares about them.

00:56:20.540 And he feels almost like a hamster on a wheel that he has to keep doing this, you know, this

00:56:27.060 thing so he can bring in money to support the family and fly him to Florida and fly him on

00:56:31.440 vacations and, you know, he takes his nieces down with his daughter to see, you know, chubby

00:56:37.720 checker and little Eva and, you know, to live this lifestyle.

00:56:41.660 And he kind of, you know, he's kind of wistful.

00:56:43.540 He looks at his married brothers and sisters and he says, you know, you have a good, you

00:56:48.020 have a normal life and everybody doesn't call your name when you walk down the street and

00:56:51.980 you know, you know where you're going to be sleeping tonight.

00:56:54.560 Well, I mean, he, and he also, he dies tragically in a plane crash.

00:56:59.180 And the way he kept his finances, hiding cash all over the place, that put his, that actually

00:57:03.980 ended up putting his family in financial, you know, straights because they didn't know

00:57:09.600 where the money was at.

00:57:10.900 Yeah, it was terrible.

00:57:11.700 I mean, he, and it was this kind of cheapness that did him in because often he would get,

00:57:19.380 you know, these airline tickets to go fly somewhere to do an appearance and he would cash

00:57:24.260 in the ticket and he'd find some, you know, rich businessman with his own private plane to fly

00:57:28.720 him for free because everybody adored the, the ex champ.

00:57:32.080 And so he's in Chicago and he's supposed to fly home to Florida where he's living at that

00:57:37.680 time to, you know, celebrate his birthday the next day.

00:57:40.940 This is in 1969 at the end of August.

00:57:44.460 And he gets a last minute proposition from a mobster pal in Chicago, fly out to Des Moines.

00:57:50.040 My nephew has a steakhouse there, put in an appearance and then you can go back home tomorrow.

00:57:53.860 So he agrees and he gets on a little Cessna airplane at Midway Airport.

00:57:58.720 in Chicago with the mobster's nephew and this inexperienced pilot.

00:58:02.800 And they fly out toward Des Moines and they fly into a massive Midwest thunderstorm and

00:58:08.640 the pilot loses visibility and he crashes in a cornfield outside of Des Moines.

00:58:14.180 And Jim Murray from the Los Angeles Times the next day wrote, you know, stop the count.

00:58:19.480 He'll get up.

00:58:20.260 We're all wishing today that there was an honest referee in a cornfield in Iowa.

00:58:24.000 But he dies and now his family doesn't know where his money is.

00:58:28.720 You know, his daughter later talked about how they hired detectives and they searched

00:58:32.280 for it.

00:58:32.760 They went to some of his friends where he, they believed he had stashed cash and suddenly

00:58:37.520 the friends didn't know nothing.

00:58:39.800 And so they struggled.

00:58:41.220 Yeah.

00:58:41.340 I'm, I mean, I love reading biographies of boxers because their stories are both like

00:58:48.880 inspiring, right?

00:58:50.180 Like the discipline that Rocky showed during his career, his dedication, his determination,

00:58:55.360 his grit, but they're also tragic.

00:58:57.760 And I don't know, I don't know why that combination of inspiring and tragic is appealing to me.

00:59:03.320 And maybe it's just, it makes for a good story, right?

00:59:06.440 I'm curious.

00:59:07.140 Definitely makes for a good story.

00:59:08.120 Yeah.

00:59:08.360 I'm curious as you, as you researched and wrote about Rocky Marciano, like what life lessons

00:59:13.460 did you take from him?

00:59:14.780 Both like, you know, positive ones, like I want to be like that.

00:59:17.600 And also like sort of as a warning, like don't, don't emulate that.

00:59:22.340 Well, I mean, Rocky was true to himself until he wasn't.

00:59:26.660 And those are both positive and negative life lessons, you know, be true to yourself and don't

00:59:31.620 lose who you are.

00:59:32.560 And, you know, for most of his remarkable career, he never lost sight of who he was and

00:59:38.060 he never lost sight of his goal.

00:59:39.560 And he put all distractions and obstacles aside in his pursuit of perfection.

00:59:44.820 But he lived, as my subtitle of the book says, in a crooked world.

00:59:48.480 And that tension was what really drew me to this story and really transcends boxing.

00:59:53.600 It's, you know, surviving in a world that's changing, where there's all kinds of hidden

00:59:58.560 intrigue and corruption and you have to make sacrifices to, to get where you want to go

01:00:03.740 and try to preserve your humanity in the process.

01:00:07.100 And the fact that Rocky kind of walked this tightrope was what really drew me to his story.

01:00:12.340 In some ways he came out triumphant.

01:00:14.740 And in other ways, of course, you know, his, his life had a tragic ending.

01:00:18.340 Well, Mike, is there someplace people can go to learn more about the book?

01:00:21.060 Well, it's available online and it stores everywhere.

01:00:24.220 It's called Unbeaten, Rocky Marciano's Fight for Perfection in a Crooked World.

01:00:28.860 And the publisher is Henry Holt.

01:00:30.880 Well, Mike Stanton, thanks so much for coming on.

01:00:32.500 This has been, uh, been a great conversation.

01:00:34.620 Well, thank you, Brad.

01:00:35.460 I appreciate it.

01:00:36.400 My guest here is Mike Stanton.

01:00:37.380 He's the author of the book Unbeaten, Rocky Marciano's Fight for Perfection in a Crooked

01:00:41.140 World.

01:00:41.680 It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere.

01:00:43.660 If you like to find out more notes and delve deeper into this topic, go to our show notes

01:00:47.240 at aom.is slash Marciano.

01:00:50.640 Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

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01:01:19.860 Until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay handling.

The Art of Manliness - September 19, 2018

#442： Rocky Marciano's Fight for Perfection in a Crooked World

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