Naming Names

Prizefighters, no matter their religion, change their Christian names, the names they had at birth, into something suited to a hands-on profession. Nicknames, sobriquets, ring monikers, are as commonplace, as everyday, as integral to the game as the uppercut and hook off the jab.

Sometimes changing a name seems the most natural thing on earth. Consider, for example, that champion of champions, Cassius Clay, first known as the Louisville Lip, who changed his name to Cassius X, then to Muhammad Ali, before finally settling on The Greatest.

A prefix to a real name sometimes says it all. Savor this quintet of sweetheart pugilists: Sugar Ray (Robinson), Sugar Ray (Leonard), Sugar Shane (Mosley), Sugar Ramos and Sucra Ray (Olivera). My mouth waters at the thought of all that talent.

The epithets used by boxers in Regency and Victorian England set a high historical tone for nicknames with punch. A Young Ruffian fought. So did an Old Ruffian. For fans that hungered for action, Beef a la Mode was a contender, as were Cabbage, Giblet Pie, Young Rump Steak and Catsmeat. Alongside these gents scuffled such well-named notables as No Neck (Duggan), Gallows Dick, Yokel Brute, The Chelsea Snob, Holy Land Pink, Cripplegate and Death.

And let’s not forget the anomalous Fighting Quaker.

Some of the animals who fought in the ring and whose bite was worse than their bark were the Pit Bull, El Terrier, Mad Dog, The Animal, The Cobra, The Old Mongoose (Archie Moore), Bobcat (Bob Foster) and Big Cat (Cleveland Williams). The Wild Bull of the Pampas (Luis Angel Firpo) gave Jack Dempsey all he could handle in 1923. There were those highflying champs The Hawk (Aaron Pryor) and Game Chicken (Hen Pearce). There was Tiger Flowers.

Sometimes noms-de-guerre were an astute summing up of a fighter’s essence. Consider the Napoleon of the Ring (Jem Belcher), Old Master (Joe Gans), Toy Bulldog (Mickey Walker), Mighty Atom (Jimmy Wilde), Homicide Hank (Henry Armstrong) and Human Windmill (Harry Greb). There are Gentleman Jim (Corbett), Gorgeous George (Carpentier), Terrible Terry (McGovern) and Two Ton Tony (Galento). There’s the rags-to-riches Cinderella Man (James Braddock). There’s the Clown Prince of Boxing (Max Baer). There’s the canvas-loving Fainting Phil (Scott).

Our black brothers, especially in the past, were assigned politically incorrect honorifics. There’s no forgetting the phenomenal Brown Bomber (Joe Louis). One of Joe’s contemporaries was Gorilla Jones. The Black Terror (Bill Richmond) fought in Merry Old England. The Black Panther (Harry Wills) fought in the U.S. and Panama. There was a Young Massa. There was a Kid Chocolate, Little Chocolate, Old Chocolate and Chocolito. The Boston Tar Baby (Sam Langford) was an all-time great, as was The Moor (boxing pioneer Tom Molyneaux), also known as Snowball.

Boxing wouldn’t be boxing without the surname Kid. In addition to the aforementioned Kid Chocolate, aka the Cuban Bonbon, there is Kid Gavilan, Kid Broad, Kid Dixie, Kid Francis, Kid Graves, Kid Goodman, Kid Herman, Kid Kaplan, Kid McCoy, Kid McPartland, Kid Murphy and Kid Williams. There’s also George Kid Lavigne, “Billy the Kid” O’Shea, Hogan Kid Bassey, Jack Kid Berg, Ted Kid Lewis, Benny Kid Paret, The Stringbean Kid and Young Zulu Kid.

Where the fighter was born and raised looms large in the history of the fight game. Some hall of fame fighters who put boxing on the map were the Manassa Mauler (Jack Dempsey), Brockton Blockbuster (Rocky Marciano), Bronx Bull (Jake LaMotta), Boston Strong Boy (John L. Sullivan), Galveston Giant (Jack Johnson) and Michigan Assassin (Stanley Ketchel).

As we bob and weave our way across America we come across a Nebraska Wildcat, St. Paul Phantom, Livermore Larruper, Herkeimer Hurricane, Milwaukee Marvel, Kentucky Rosebud, Kansas Rube and Pottawatomie Giant. There was a Brooklyn Bomber and Brooklyn Billygoat, Harlem Spider and Harlem Harlequin, Astoria Assassin, Bronx Beauty and Brownsville Bum. Jersey Joe (Walcott) and Philadelphia Jack (O’Brien) were terrific champs, as were the Pittsburgh Kid (Billy Conn) and Boston Gob (Jack Sharkey).

Fighters representing foreign lands fought here and overseas. There’s the Light of Israel (English champion Daniel Mendoza) and Croat Comet (low-blow artist Fritzie Zivic), as well as the Tipton Slasher, Bristol Unknown, Belfast Spider, Durable Dane, Barbados Demon, Singular Senegalese, Basque Woodchopper, Scotch Wop, Australian Hard Rock and Elongated Panamanian.

Taking a swing at the former jobs of professional pugilists in Regency England, there were pugs who once were The Gasman, The Coachman, The Bargeman, The Waterman, The Collier, The Nailer and The Tinman. There was also a Master of Rolls and Sailor Boy, a Knight of the Cleaver and Bath Butcher.

Closer to home we had ragamuffins on street corners hawking the daily news: Newsboy Brown, The Fighting Newsboy (Mushy Callahan) and Abe the Newsboy (Hollandersky). There was a Georgia Shoeshine Boy (Beau Jack), Boilermaker and Fighting Marine (heavyweight champs Jim Jeffries and Gene Tunney). Men with nerves of steel were the Man of Steel (Tony Zale from Gary, Indiana), the macho Upstate Onion Farmer (Carmen Basilio from Canastota, NY) and The Fighting Dentist (Leech Cross from the Lower East Side), who knocked out teeth at night and replaced them the next day.

When people say “sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never harm me,” they could not be more wrong.

Remembering Da Rock

Former middleweight champion Rocky Graziano personified Nu Yawk. He was born Thomas Rocca Barbella in a Rivington Street tenement in 1922 and came of age on the Lower East Side. Rocky was a rambunctious kid with a rap sheet by the age of ten. Seemingly born to raise hell, he was a truant, punk, thief and hoodlum before he hit adolescence.

In his autobiography Somebody Up There Likes Me, first published in 1954 and turned into a film noir movie about his film noir life two years later, Rocky describes Rocky as only Rocky can: “I was so crooked ya coulda used my arm for a corkscrew. I wasn’t a juvenile delinquent. I was just a kid with an impediment of the reach.”

Rocky wrote about growing up in New York’s slums: “We go from one roach palace to another on Tenth Street and First Avenue. This pad, even though they was supposed to have steam heat, go find it. Here, in the middle of winter, even the janitor banged on the pipes. And if you paid your rent on time, you could be arrested for suspicion of robbery.”

In response to being poor, Barbella hustled reality. “I never stole anything unless it started with ‘A.’ ‘A’ truck. ‘A’ car. ‘A’ payroll.”

Always in and out of trouble, it was Manhattan Island one day/Riker’s Island the next for the recidivist Rocca Barbella. In lieu of a long stretch in the joint, a judge took pity on the repeat offender and forced him into the military. If ever a match was made in hell it was the U.S. Army vs. Da Rock. In no time Rocky was AWOL. In no time Rocky was in the brig.

History was repeating itself and Barbella, as usual, never could do nothing right.

“There was always something I want to say but I never knew how, so I let my fists do the talking for me.”

Rocca Barbella finally saw the light. He loathed following orders and hated khaki and knew the soldier’s life was not for him, so he borrowed another GI’s name — Rocky Graziano — and went absent without leave forever.

“There was still one thing I had to find out for myself. I had to learn that I was only happy when I was fighting.”

Rocky Graziano turned pro on March 31, 1942 in Brooklyn with a second round kayo over Curtis Hightower. Rocky had seven more fights that year, eighteen fights in 1943, and twenty fights in 1944.

“The only time I’m straight about what I’m doing is when I’m in the ring taking punches and giving them.”

Rocky wasn’t a sweet scientist. Nope, not even close. He went for the jugular.

“You can look at my face and you’ll know it’s a tough business.”

Graziano could take a mean punch. He also loved to dish it out. He thought nothing of taking four, five, six shots to land a haymaker of his own.

“I give in to nothing or nobody. Cut me, break my bones, it was all the same.”
Rocky never let his lack of finesse deter him.

“Anybody hurts me gets busted in two and dumped in his own blood.”

Rocky was also, in keeping with a New York tradition, a dirty fighter.

“In a fight it’s the thumb in the eye, the knee in the balls. In pool you cheat on the score. In baseball you rap the base runner sliding in or use your spikes. In poker it’s the marked deck, loaded dice in craps. The important thing is not how you do it,” Graziano wrote. “The important thing is to win.”

His three explosive bouts with Tony Zale — Rocky lost the first in 1946, won the rematch and middleweight title in 1947, and lost the 1948 rubber match — are touchstones in the sweet science of bruising.

“There’s only one way to lick Zale. You gotta kill him.”

Rocky Graziano retired from boxing in 1952 with a 67-10-6 (52 KOs) record and commenced his career in showbiz. He morphed from a granite-chinned pugilist into a solid gold celebrity. He became a TV host and pitchman. He became a bestselling author. He was pals with Presidents and Hollywood stars.

In an amazing turnaround of fortune, Rocky was famous, he was adored, and he was rich.

“You know why I like to hang around millionaires?” he asked. “They never ask you for money.”

Boxing rescued a nowhere man and turned him into something fabulous, and his life, according to Da Rock, was some kinda miracle.

“I once heard a poem with religion in it and there was this line I never forgot: My cup runs over.”