Plug Ugly's Boxing Blog

A Boxer Named "Kitten"

2012-02-01T07:40:00.000-08:00

by Wilson Pitts

In Philly the old guys would sit around and talk boxing and occasionally the name of a fighter nick-named “Kitten” would come up. I had never heard of this guy and it seemed like they were talking about someone from a long time ago, I did not realize at the time that he was still active. It turned out Quenzell McCall had trained him and always felt he had more potential than he showed.

They talked about how great “Kitten” was but that he never won a title. They said he didn’t train and therefore lost big fights, it was always “ woulda,coulda ,shuolda, if only” he had trained harder and taken the whole thing more seriously. He was famous for, as he put it “running all night and sleeping all day.”

The old guys said he was the archetype of the “Philly Fighter” style that became famous with fighters like Bennie Briscoe and Joe Frazier. At his best he didn’t use his hands for defense at all. He would “slip and bang” using pressure to keep his opponent from setting. He had a wicked two fisted body attack. He ignored their jab in his face and punched them like a heavy bag. He was at the peak of his powers when he KO’d Curtis Cokes at The Blue Horizon in 1964.

Stanley Hayward started boxing professionally as a welterweight in 1959. Early in his career he was managed by George Katz who also managed Gil Turner. Katz was very conservative and never over matched Hayward and only signed him to fight 2 -5 times per year. This is why Kitten’s career lasted from 1959 until 1977! Before 1968 he had lost only 3 times and drawn three times and he had almost all of his fights in Philadelphia. He won split decision victories over Bennie Briscoe and Emile Griffiths. After that he was managed by Dan Bucceroni and was matched more out of town.

Bucceroni with Stanley Hayward on their way to France in 1970.

In 1969, after fighting for ten years, with a record of 23-3-3 Hayward got his shot at the combined WBA WBC light middleweight title [154lbs. limit] against Freddie Little in Vegas. He lost a unanimous decision over 15 rounds. His very next fight was a 12 round decision loss to Emile Griffith in Madison Square Garden. After this loss in the Garden Hayward would go on to lose nine times in his last fourteen fights from 1970-77. He was KO’d by the likes of other Philly legends Willlie Monroe and Eugene Hart and lost a ten round decision to Bennie Briscoe. All of these later fights were at 160 lbs. when Hayward was really a junior middleweight.

Stanley Hayward in 2004

The good news is that Stanley “Kitten” Hayward retained his health and still attends boxing reunions. Part of this is the luck of the draw but careful management and natural ability saw him through an eighteen year professional career which ended with a record of 32-12-4 = 48 total bouts. He boxed 339 professional rounds and had a KO% of 37.5.

Bobby "The Schoolboy"

2012-01-12T07:47:00.000-08:00

by Wilson Pitts

Bobby Chacon probably sums up my conflicted feelings about professional boxing more than any other single fighter. More than Sugar Ray Robinson or the sad fate of Joe Louis, Bobby “the Schoolboy” Chacon’s story brings to mind the joy I get from watching a pure boxer perform at the height of his abilities and the pain of watching a tragedy of thoroughly theatrical proportions played out over a period of years in real life.

Chacon really needs to be studied by the trainers and teachers of today. He literally was the school boy. When he turned pro in 1972, at the urging of his wife, he had been attending classes at California State University at Northridge. He had no excess muscular development in his upper body but at 5’ 5 1/2” and 126-130 lbs. he was one of the truly great natural punchers of all time. He won his first 17 professional fights inside the assigned distance, most in one round KO’s. Chacon had an 70.15 KO percentage in a career that went on too long.

The reason he needs to be studied today is because of what he was able to achieve in the ring by relaxing, moving his head and making the opponent miss, and generating snap on his punches. These are rapidly becoming lost arts as each new generation of fighters seems to be tenser and “muscle it” more than the last.

Also, he should be studied because of his great command of the basics and his ability, time after time, to overcome adversity by using those fundamentals. His balance, his shot placement and selection, his ability to find the critical distance, his foot work and angulation, his uncanny ability to hide on the inside, I could go on and on.

That being said, he should be studied by young fighters as an example of what not to do in so many areas outside the ring. I hate to start talking about it because he was such a hero to so many, but formal classes could be taught to prospective professional boxers using much of Bobby Chacon’s life as an example of what not to do. I don’t want to focus on the sordid details of his story when there is so much boxing knowledge to be learned from watching the films of his fights.

Chacon, a known street fighter, was initially denied an amateur boxing license because of an investigation into his use of narcotics. He came up in the same amateur program that produced featherweight Champion Danny “Little Red” Lopez. At one point they were sparring partners. Chacon went on to have a successful amateur career winning a Diamond Belt Championship in December 1971 and again in 1972. He competed at the National Golden Gloves Tournament in New Orleans in 1971 and in Minneapolis in 1972. His amateur record was 20-3-1.

As a professional Chacon had won 16 fights in a row by KO or TKO and had quickly become a contender for the honor of being “The Prince of Century Boulevard.” He had stiff competition for this unofficial honor from the likes of former Bantamweight greats Chucho Castillo and Ruben Olivares and his buddies, karate/kickboxing fighters “Blinky” Rodriguez and Blinky’s brother in law Bennie Urquidez. In the beginning perhaps this was fan adulation but it eventually led to excessive partying on a level that only that sleazy side of LA, which to this day is Inglewood, could understand. For more on this part of Bobby The School Boy’s story watch this video:

On May 24 1974 Bobby Chacon had one of his greatest performances as a professional fighter. He fought his old training partner Danny Lopez who was 20-0-0 and would go on to be a dominate World Featherweight Champion. On this night Lopez was ranked number four in the world and Chacon was ranked number six, but the line was 10-8 Chacon in the days leading up to the fight. In this fight Chacon was at the peak of his powers as a boxer/puncher. I have watched this fight 1000 times if I have watched it once. It is worthy of study because of the way Chacon displays a mastery of the critical distance and how he successfully deals with a larger man with his use of the jab, just enough movement, and power punching. True artistry in the ring is rare and the crowd was thrilled by the performance that Chacon gave. Chacon was a natural for TV with his boyish good looks and that ability to turn a fight around with one punch at any time.

In his next fight Chacon won the World Featherweight title from Alfredo Marcano, the date was September 7, 1974. The fight was held at the Olympic Auditorium in LA. Marcano was 43-9-5 and this fight was the Venezuelan’s 13th defense of the title that he had won from H. Kobayashi in July of 1971. Chacon was 24-1-0 and won the title with a 9th round TKO. He would fight on until 1988, turning in many memorable performances, including Fight of the Year in 1982 for his last fight with Rafael “Bazooka” Limon.

We can talk about the second half of Chacon’s career some other time. This is just the introduction to a series I am going to do over the next year analyzing Chacon and his boxing technique and tactics. Let’s focus on the positive aspects of this great fighter.

R.I.P. Joe Frazier

2011-11-18T18:29:00.000-08:00

by Wilson Pitts

I met Joe Frazier on several occasions many years ago. Smokin Joe, with the heart of ten lions, was a true gentleman outside of the ring. Joe showed all of the fighters at the Cloverlay Gym what it was to have class.

Eddie Fuch had retired to California and gone to work for the Post Office in the mid sixties. It was 1969 when Yank Durham sent him a new prospect to work with for six weeks in California. Joe impressed Eddie with his desire and his natural power. At this point Joe was 22-0-0 and was ready to step up in competition. Even though he was small for a heavyweight at 5’11” and 205 pounds Eddie agreed to come out of retirement in order to take Joe to the title. They made each other rich over the next few years.

In one of his first fights under Eddie Fuch Joe fought Gerry Quarry for the first of two fights they had together. It was June 23 1969 when they stood pretty much toe to toe and exchanged left hooks. Joe over powered him but Fuch felt that Frazier got hit too much. After that fight Fuch began to change Joe's style, making him fight out of a crouch more and move his head with broken rhythm as he came in. This was the “Smokin Joe” the world came to know.

The genius of Eddie Fuch was to be able to change Joe's style while not affecting his punching power. To make a run on the title Fuch knew that Joe would have to fight the biggest heavies out there, standing up and trading with them would not work. Joe needed to get under their power shots and close on them, driving them into the ropes or a corner to limit their mobility and rush their delivery, keeping them from setting.

He came across the gap "smokin" moving his head and closing under their power shots to left hook range where he could put that big power on their body. The man could fight, he had heart but more importantly he had class, does anyone in the game even know what that is anymore?

At the Cloverlay Gym in North Philly they had a little piece of velvet rope and a row of folding chairs and this is where visitors had to stay. This is where I met Al Bernstein once, many years ago when he was writing an article for TV Guide, it is also where I met and interviewed many old fighters.

One day in 1978 when I was there Joe Frazier arrived with his entourage, four Lincolns pulled up on the sidewalk and ten guys got out. Joe Frazier had on a full length mink coat as he strode into the gym and surveyed his domain. He spied me over by the velvet rope, the only white teenager anywhere around, and walked over and shook my hand. Joe said, "Are they treatin you right? Because we’re gentlemen here and if anyone don't treat you right I wanna know." I never forgot that; "We are gentlemen" said the former Champ of the World. Joe Frazier had class. In my mind I always see him on his stool after the 14th round in Manila telling Eddie Fuch, "I want him boss."

Rest in Peace boss, they don't make em like you anymore.

Young Griffo

2011-10-28T10:49:00.000-07:00

Jem Mace was the greatest London Prize Ring, LPR, heavyweight champion. He was a student of the sweet science one hundred and fifty years ago, and a scientific boxer in his own right. Today Mace is known as the “Father of Modern Boxing”. He probably had the greatest influence upon boxing during the pre-1900 era.

After retiring in 1873 Jem Mace became a teacher of boxing and opened his first school inEngland. He taught using gloves, which was an innovation. Mace stressed science in attack and defense. Mace also taught “clean, sharpe, hitting” and scientific punch selection and targeting. In particular, he developed striking under the heart with a “half arm punch” that would later be known as a left hook to the solar plexus.

Mace traveled all overNorth America teaching and demonstrating boxing with gloves. He taught “Gentleman” Jim Corbett, who was a bank clerk at the time, the finer points while staying in San Francisco before he immigrated to Australia. There he was responsible for the great champions who came roaring out of Australia in the 1890’s through his student Larry Foley. Foley trained Bob Fitzsimmons, the man who defeated Corbett with a left hook to the body, to be the next heavyweight champion. He taught Peter Jackson, the great black fighter Sullivan refused to fight, and Frank Slavin, the man Sullivan did fight and defeat.

But Foley’s very first champion was a featherweight named Albert Griffiths, better known as Young Griffo. He was the size of a modern super-bantamweight, 5’4”, 121 lbs., but he fought at every weight class from 122-145. Young Griffo’s is an extraordinary boxing tale from the era of the birth of the modern sport.

In 1928 Nat Fleisher of The Ring magazine wrote a book titled “Young Griffo: the will o’wisp of the roped square”. Fleisher considered Griffo one of the greatest he ever saw in over fifty years of watching fights and fighters. His abilities to feint, move his head, and not get hit were unparalleled. When Willie Pep came along in the 1940′s with his amazing bag of tricks, Nat Fleisher said he reminded him of Young Griffo and he named him “Will O the Wisp.” The original, Albert Griffiths, has always fascinated me at least as much as Gugliermo Papaleo.

Albert Griffiths won the world featherweight title September 2, 1890 in Sydney Australia by defeating “Torpedo” Billy Murphy over 15 rounds. This 122-126lbs title was recognized in Britain and Australia. He was the first Australian to win a world title. At the time of that fight Griffithswas 38-0-15 and he weighed 121.

Like Billy Murphy, New Zealand Lightweight Champ [pre 1905 rules], before him and the other great fighters to come out of Australia and New Zealand after him, Griffiths came to America in 1893 to pursue his boxing career. At this point Griffiths’ record in Australia was 46-0-18 and he was just getting started.

Before he finally stopped fighting in 1904 Albert Griffiths had 236 fights and boxed 1665 professional rounds! Griffo won 70, lost 9 [KO 4] and had 44 draws in fights of record. As he got older he got hit more often and the four KO’s came in the last four years that he fought. Wild partying and exuberant risk-taking became hallmarks of Griffo’s behavior; sometimes he mixed the two. He was disqualified twice for turning up drunk on fight night and was just a general raconteur.

Meanwhile Griffo went 20 rounds or more with Hall of Fame bantam and featherweight world champion George Dixon on more than one occasion. These fights must have been something to see for the knowledgeable fight fan, at 20 to 25 rounds, over an hour each time watching two masters of defense, angulation, tactics. He also had several fights with another all time great lightweight, Joe Gans, the “old master.”

On August 27, 1894, while weighing in at 133 pounds,Griffiths went 10 rounds at the Seaside A.C. in Brooklyn with former lightweight champion Jack McAuliffe who weighed 145 that night. There is no substitute for experience in boxing and Griffo gained tremendous experience with the greats of his time. This was a time when all around skill was more appreciated by fight fans and displayed by fighters than it is today.

Young Griffo was a spoiler, like Harry Greb twenty five years later, on good nights he made superior punchers look bad. He was phenomenal with his head movement, slipping punches, feinting, blocking and returning rapid combinations. With a 14.18 % KO ratio he was in company with other fighters who were very difficult to hit but had little knock out power, like Memphis “Pal” Moore or Willie Pep.

“Young Griffo was not known as much of a puncher, but his skill was uncanny. He had wonderful headwork, almost impenetrable defense, dazzling feints, and rapid two-handed methods of attack. The cleverest boxers and hardest punchers were made to look ridiculous when exchanging swats with him.”
March 6, 1916 Tacoma Daily News

He fought many more exhibitions and no decision fights than his record indicates, but it is what he did as a vaudeville act after his fight career was finished that got him into trouble. Young Griffo’s act consisted of this; he used to take a handkerchief, put it on the ground, and put his left foot on it. Then holding his hands at his side he would bet you that you could not hit him though his foot would never leave that handkerchief. He traveled across the country doing this night after night at fairs and in vaudeville halls. At his peak no one could touch him up, but as he got older he got hit more and more often. But Young Griffo’s defensive talents were never forgotten by the old timers who continued to talk and write about him more than twenty years after he retired from boxing, largely because of his demonstrations of skill on stage.

In the later years of his life Griffiths sat on the steps of the Rialto Theatre in Times Square and begged for money. He had become the archetypal “punchy” alcoholic ex-fighter. But not just any fighter, he had been one of the greatest of his era. The Morning Bulletin December 9, 1927 of Rockhampton Australia noted his passing in New York City at age 56, adding that he was destitute. Young Griffo was hailed as a hero by then mayor Jimmy Walker, and he was buried in a plot contributed by boxing promoter Tex Rickard. Many old boxers attended the funeral.

Sam Langford

2011-10-12T08:47:00.000-07:00

By Wilson Pitts

In the gym I grew up around I often heard the stories of the injustices done to black fighters of the past, and especially stories of Holly Mims, who several of the old fighters in the gym had known personally, and Charley Burley. As a result of those stories, I have a long standing interest in fighters with outstanding records who were never given a title shot. Many of these men were black and discriminated against in America and egregious examples can be found through the 1970’s.

The prototype for Charley Burley, among other lost legends we will talk about some other time,in the 1930’s and 40's right on through Georgie Benton and Holly Mims in the 1960’s was from the turn of the century, the other century, 1900. His name was Sam Langford and he might have been the best all around boxer of all time.

Sam Langford

Sam Langford was born March 4, 1883 in Nova Scotia. At age ten he ran away and worked at a logging camp. When he was a teenager he landed a job as a laborer at a brickyard in Cambridge Mass. In this way, through hard work, his amazing physique was developed early.

While still a kid he defeated the “Champion of Cambridge Street.” Eventually he got a job as a janitor at a boxing gym owned by Joe Woodman. Woodman let Langford join his amateur program and Sam learned to be a good amateur boxer. Woodman began to realize Langford’s potential and turned him pro in April of 1902 at the Lenox AC in Boston where he won via KO in 5 rounds.

This was the beginning of an amazing twentyfive year career in which Langford fought successfully in every weight category from welterweight to heavyweight. He fought an astounding 2,548 professional rounds over a 316 fight career. He had severe eye injuries that later caused blindness and he fought any number of fights and exhibitions after he had been injured and was greatly diminished.

Because of racial discrimination against black fighters, especially ones that were great athletes, or tended to win, Langford was forced to fight men who weighed 30 and 40 pounds more than he did, to fight 61 no decision fights and to take fixed fights. He was denied a shot at any recognized title, however, it was a black man, Jack Johnson, who refused to meet him for the heavyweight title.That was because of a fight they had four years before Jack Johnson won the title in 1910.

In 1906 Langford was 5' 61/2” and weighed 156 pounds with a reach of 72 inches. He had a record of 32-4-15. He could also be compared to Mike Tyson and Dwight Braxton from 80 years later! Short, hard to hit, big power with the upper body of a much larger man. On April 26 of that year, in a unscheduled fight on a night when Johnson had planned to fight two three round exhibitions with whoever showed up, two of the greatest athletes of the early 1900’s met by chance and went 15 rounds for a non existent title.

Jack Johnson, known as "Lil Aurthur," was 6' 1 ½” and weighed 185 and had a 74 inch reach. His record was 25-5-5. He declared himself world “colored” heavyweight champion after beating Denver Ed Martin in 1903. The white heavyweight champions had refused to meet black challengers since John L. Sullivan twenty five years earlier. On several occasions, largely because there were so few heavyweights willing to meet him, Johnson had fought 3 round bouts against two different opponents in one night.

This was supposed to be one of those exhibitions in Chelsea that night, but the only fighter who showed up willing to go with Johnson was middleweight Sam Langford. Johnson stipulated that Langford had to bet $250 to Johnson’s $500 in a side bet that Langford could not stay the distance. Langford got backing from locals who clearly believed in him despite the huge size difference between the men. That $250 would be like a $10,000 dollar side bet today.

These men had amazing physiques for that era. They were much more muscular with lower body fat than heavyweights would be for another thirty years, until Joe Louis and Jersey Joe Walcott came along in the mid-thirties. You really have to look to the post war era black fighters in the 1950’s and 60’s to next see the morphology and conditioning that Jack Johnson and Sam Langford displayed in the early 1900’s.

As the fight started Langford fought cautiously but was knocked down in the 6^th round. For most of those early rounds Johnson had a hard time finding Langford. Johnson was content to use his defense and smothering tactics to keep the smaller man from getting off. He was playing a waiting game.

In the 10^th round Johnson started clinching and leaning on Langford and tried to rough him up. He used his size and upper body strength and slung him around the ring. The referee broke it up. Langford was heard to exclaim “Boy, that has got to stop!”

When the referee broke them for the third time Johnson reached out to grab Langford again and Langford rolled under Johnson’s right and threw the best punch of the fight. He hit Johnson on the chin with a short left hook and Johnson’s knees sagged, he landed two more shots before Johnson clinched him and held on until the end of the round. Johnson, great champion that he was, sucked it up and continued to fight.

In rounds 11 and 12 Johnson continued holding, hitting and leaning his weight on Langford, tiring the smaller man. Johnson opened up after he thought he had tired him out and tried to KO Langford in the last 3 rounds but he could not get to the smaller man. He won the decision over 15 rounds but he ducked Langford for the rest of his career. At the time Johnson told the press that Langford would never beat him, because he would never fight him again!

At different times Jack Johnson told people that the toughest fight he ever had was with Sam Langford and the hardest he ever got hit in his entire heavyweight career was that left hook from a man 30 pounds lighter than him! Later in his career Langford bulked up to 198 pounds and fought many heavyweights, but not Jack Johnson.

Sam Langford died “blind and penniless,” as they say all too often about old fighters, in 1956 at age 72. Langford was considered the greatest heavyweight of all times by Nat Fleisher and later the 1968 Ring Record Book.

The tragic tale of Jerome Artis

2011-09-12T07:20:00.000-07:00

by Wilson Pitts

Jerome Artis was a boxer I used to love to watch spar in Joe Frazier’s gym in Philadelphia. I also saw him train at Ali’s facility at Deer Lake in the Poconos once. He was a creative genius in the ring, combining unorthodox footwork with amazing head movement. Watching him spar was like being at a jam session with Art Tatum in the 1930’s, it made you look at things in a different way. At his best no one could lay a glove on him. He had tricks and he was working variations off of them and creating on the fly. I t took tremendous concentration and focus to do this, not behind a piano, but in the ring.

He did things in there that I have never seen done by anyone else. He could usually only get these things to work in the gym but it was amazing to watch. He would shift by putting his right foot forward in the gap and then roll his head under an in coming punch, punch off the wrong foot, and then spin out or go back under the next punch and come up on the other side. He took risks, he experimented, not everything worked, he was frequently off balance and could not punch with power. He could make people miss but he could not make them pay and eventually some of them would catch him.

He was so unorthodox, and had such an attitude, that he rubbed the trainers in the gym the wrong way. That is especially bad when they are your management and are picking opponents for you. If they decide they can’t save you from yourself then it can be disastrous.

The cruel logic of the professional fight game, hit and don’t be hit, land with effective aggression while not taking punishment, worked against Artis. The more he got hit the less he was able to generate that much needed mental energy and so Jerome Artis became a text book example of a fighter on a tragic downward spiral that no one would, or could, save him from.

Jerome Artis started boxing with much promise as a teenager. He had a successful amateur career and was 1972 National AAU Featherweight champion. Artis was the first fighter to beat Ray Leonard in the amateurs. After turning professional in 1972 Artis frustrated experienced fighters like Sammy Goss with his unusual tactics and beat them over ten rounds. Fights he didn’t win ended in draws. After losing his forth professional fight Jerome won 14 fights in a row on his way to a title shot. However, over 412 rounds boxed in 58 pro fights he had a career KO % of only 15.52, in other words he “couldn’t crack an egg” in boxing terms.

Before that title shot he was fed to one of the greatest punchers of the modern era, Alexis Arguello, in Madison Square Garden on Sept 29, 1977. Artis was 16-1- 4 and weighed 130. Arguello was 50-4-0 and weighed 134 ¾ and was much bigger and stronger at the weight. Artis had stage fright and never got going and was knocked down twice in the second round and the fight was stopped. I’m sure he was hurt because Arguello was such a big hitter, but the lasting damage was psychological. A fighter’s psyche is a fragile thing and being over matched in Madison Square Garden in your twenty second fight against a killer, a career ender, a one punch knockout artist at the height of his powers, can, and in this case did, lasting damage.

Artis fell apart as a boxer. He lost seven of his next ten fights as he continued to fight quality opponents. He went ten rounds with Antonio Cervantes and Livingstone Bramble and lost decisions and took punishment. After winning a ten round decision off of Al Carter in Atlantic City in April of 1982 he lost 17 of his next 18 fights while he continued to be fed to the likes of Terrence Alli and a young Frankie Randall both of whom KO’d him in two rounds. Jerome developed a drinking and drug problem pretty early on and this is an extremely toxic mix when pared with being hit in the head excessively. And he was hit excessively as he continued to take fights he didn’t train for and was KO’d in five of his last six fights, while being DQ’d in the other one!

My hometown of Richmond Virginia has always been known as a tank town, "where old fighters go to die." Or at least have their last fight when no one else will even give them a license, or worse, take a dive. Willie Pep had his last “fight,” which he didn’t train for, here in 1966. Pep claimed he was told it was going to be a four round exhibition but when he got here they said it was a six round fight. He lost over six rounds to a kid who could not have held his water bucket ten years before.

So, on a cold night in January of 1987, two years after his last fight which ended in his being KO’d by a 6-1-1 fighter in one round, Jerome Artis showed up in Richmond to fight journeyman welterweight/middleweight Vincent Pettway because he needed the money. He spoke like he had marbles in his mouth and was very sullen, he was 34 years old. He was showing clear signs of brain damage but somehow he passed a physical and was licensed to fight.

Pettway was 24-1-0 and he weighed 146 and by this time Artis’ record was a dismal 27-26-4 and he was a bloated 147 untrained pounds. Artis was KO’d in one round and this was his last fight. His heart breaking downward spiral didn’t stop there though, he passed away in July of 1999 at only 45 years old.

I try to remember Jerome Artis as he was in the mid 70’s, the most creative gym fighter I ever saw, probably the most creative fighter since Willie Pep. Jerome Artis worked in an unorthodox, and in the 1970's an unknown, territory of the boxing outback that has since been exploited by Pernell Whitaker, and later Zab Judah and Manny Pacquiao of this current generation of unorthodox fighters. If he could have been coached he might have had more success as a pro but he would not have broken new ground and expressed himself through boxing as he did. I'm convinced he was a creative genius and they are not coached, they are born. Boxing just had no place for his genius and instead fed him to the meat grinder and used him up. Instead of playing jam sessions for 30 years he flamed out quickly in the brutal world of professional boxing.

George Benton's corner advice part 2

2011-07-22T12:17:00.000-07:00

Bare knuckle boxing training

2011-06-30T07:14:00.000-07:00

by Wilson Pitts

John L. Sullivan hailed from Roxbury, Massachusetts and became known as “The Boston Strong Boy.” His career lasted from 1879 to 1892. He came up in the last of the bare knuckle days fighting under the London Prize Rules [LPR] in which any time a knee went down time was called and 30 seconds rest given. Most fights were fought outdoors, often on the bare ground, and were usually to the finish. A round could last 30 seconds or it could go on for many minutes. A take down or push counted as a knock down and there was a lot of grappling during the fights. Bare knuckle fights fought under London Prize Ring Rules LPR lasted anywhere from a few minutes to over two hours and so were fought at a walking pace.

John L. Sullivan had fights that lasted 10 minutes or less, but with LPR rules he never knew when he might have to sustain effort. Once he went 75 rounds with Charley Mitchell in a fight that lasted three hours in the pouring rain. In the bare knuckle era Sully had to be ready for anything. Knees, elbows, finger jabs, throttling [grabbing the throat] while technically illegal, were common place. Stand up wrestling was within the rules such as they were.

The match might go on for hours if the opponent in Sullivan’s words "started flopping" or "hugging the ground". This is why Sullivan wanted a rules change, and did countless demonstrations and fights using the new rules and with gloves on. His influence as heavyweight champion was why they eventually went to gloves and the Marquis of Queensbury rules with timed three minute rounds.

Sullivan was the last London Prize Ring Champion, a title he carried to his grave. His record was 38-1 which was a lot of mostly bare knuckle fights. He had an astounding 78% knockout ratio and was deemed one of the truly great hitters of all times by none other than Nat Fleisher of The Ring Magazine. Many men could not withstand more than a hand full of fights using these primitive rules. Indeed, many men were maimed or killed in these contests. Inside the ring it was a very hazardous environment that had it roots in the boxing booths in London and links to Catch Wrestling in Ireland. Sullivan represented the end of a two hundred year long era of bare knuckle boxing.

Training Methods of the Old School

I n Hazlett’s 1822 account of attending an bare knuckle fight outside of London he recounts his favorite’s training regime.

“The whole art of training …consists in two things, exercise and abstinence, abstinence and exercise, repeated alternately without end. A yolk of an egg with a spoonful of rum in it is the first thing in a morning, and then a walk of six miles till breakfast. Then another six or seven miles till dinner-time”
Of the fight itself he reports- “There was little cautious sparring - no half-hits - no tapping and trifling, none of the petit-maîtreship of the art - they were almost all knock-down blows: - the fight was a good stand-up fight.”

There are pictures of Sullivan from a later period that are somewhat misleading. For example this picture is from 1890, well after his fighting days were over. When you examine the pictures of Sullivan in his prime you can see that, like Farmer Burns in wrestling, he was the prototype for the modern conditioned athlete before 1900. By the time he lost to “Gentleman” Jim Corbett in 1892 fighting for the new Heavyweight Title under Marquis of Queensberry Rules, the first gloved heavyweight title fight, he was clearly past his prime. He went into heavy training, meaning he lost forty pounds, in preparation for this last bout of his career and stayed with the younger man for an hour, over twenty rounds with five ounce gloves, before being knocked out.

In Sullivan’s day a training camp usually lasted eight weeks, the first week was spent sweating the alcohol out of his system! The rest of the training centered on taking unwanted fat off of his body in preparation for contest. “Exercise and abstinence” indeed! There was a lot of time spent sweating under blankets and getting rub downs during training.

Reading Sullivan’s autobiography “I Can Lick Any Son of a Bitch in the House” was very interesting for what could be learned about his training methods. Here are a few examples that I found interesting in this regard: He never sparred in preparation for fights- too hard on the hands. He had the same sparring partner who worked with him for years, his name was George Bush. They would walk through the fight over and over working out what was going to happen at each stage and what tactics where going to be used when. Then Bush would hold a rugby ball and move around and Sullivan would throw body shoots at it while working on his timing and footwork.

John L. shaved the sides of his head in preparation for a fight to prevent hair pulling. He worked on takedown defense in training camp because being thrown down counted just as much as a knock down. He used to wrestle with William Muldoon, the great strong man and conditioning expert of his era, to get ready for big fights. Muldoon trained him for his greatest contest, a bout against Jake Kilrain that lasted two hours in the mid day heat in Mississippi.

Sullivan’s primary training method was what Ernst van Aaken termed the Long Slow Distance method of roadwork. He walked 12-14 miles each morning, running the last two miles “at a dead run.” He then cross trained with swimming by treading water for 15 minutes. He went to the gym and worked out in the afternoon with light dumb bells and did a traditional boxing/wrestling workout in which he found rope skipping to be “the perfect exercise. “

Here is my challenge to you, dear reader, take a Saturday off and try John L. Sullivan’s workout sometime! Get up early and start walking for six or seven hours,then run, then swim, then wrestle and then do a boxing workout! Walking that far in and of itself is deeply exhausting, now go to the gym! Report back to me with your findings…

The Mental Game

2011-04-26T04:41:00.000-07:00

by Wilson Pitts

The most basic necessity is that a fighter relax. He needs to relax during training and he needs to relax during the fight. True mental focus can not be achieved if he is too tense. Pacing, shot selection, power generation, and strategic decisions are all affected by being tense.

One aspect of this is the same as stage fright for performers; it takes repeated exposure to being on stage and performing in front of an audience to get over it. Some kids can never get over this and so they do not progress beyond the novice stage. However, boxing is full of stories of experienced fighters tensing up and blowing big fights. What we are really talking about is ways to manage adrenalin released due to stress.

In the mental game there are these different ego games and they can affect a fighter’s performance. They have to do with the fighter’s internal dialogue, or what’s going on inside his head during the fight. There is positive ego, “I am the greatest” but this usually only carries them so far and if the build up is too big it makes losing more painful than it needs to be. There is negative ego “I can’t do anything right” and this often leads to tentative, low energy performances. There is a third state, a neutral state, where the fighter “gets out of his own way” mentally and stops placing his ego between himself and what he is doing. This is “the zone” where all of the fighter’s training can come out, his reflexes are at their best, and he is able to stay relaxed and give his best performance.

The key to relaxing during training is to have a “happy camp” where the mammalian politics are held to a minimum and the day to day environment is relaxed. If the atmosphere is tense it uses up a lot of energy unnecessarily. Fighters tend to be high strung and they don’t need anyone at camp making this worse, especially handlers, sparring partners or management. In this rap star age many of today’s fighters are very prickly about feeling like they are being disrespected and so this has to be taken into account.

There has to be a level of trust among professionals so that open dialogue can exist between the trainer and the fighter. The trainer needs to be able to make corrections in a way that does not offend the fighter, and the fighter needs to be able to communicate to his trainer what is going on in his body, especially if he is hurt. If there is no trust in this crucial relationship it can lead to disaster.

When I watched trainers like Georgie Benton work with fighters in Joe Frazier's Gym back in the day the instructions were always positive. “Do this,” they never discussed strategy or tactics during sparring and there was never any criticism. It was a public gym and the press and gamblers were watching the big names. Working in the gym was like a show and they never scolded fighters out loud there. A fighter can’t learn like that, it is all happening too fast.

I found out that they had a small gym, a room really, with mirrors and bags and this is where they worked on specific moves at slower speeds, if need be, in preparation. This work was done in the mornings after roadwork and breakfast, they didn't start going to the big gym until the afternoon. Everything that needed to be said between fighter and trainer had been said earlier in private, everyone was on the same page, it was just work in the gym. This is how professionals like Benton handled themselves and their fighters with class and at the same time gave the fighter time to learn new skills without the pressure or any lose of self esteem.

The old time trainers were psychologists as well as conditioning experts and boxing coaches. They spent a lot of time with their fighters beyond the hours in the gym. Many of the fighters became dependant upon certain trainers to keep them calm as well as get them in shape. Anxiety decreases wind and so staying calm is an important part of peaking. They talked to them about boxing and played cards with them at night in the age before TV and video games. Even in the 1980’s Larry Holmes hired Ray Arcell, then in his eighties, to come to camp just talk to him about boxing!

Throughout history there have been many attempts to find a method for getting a fighter into the “neutral zone” mentally. Attempts were made in ancient China by melding meditation practices taken from Buddhism and Taoism with martial arts. Today we know that calm repetitive action increases Serotonin levels in the brain while reducing Cortisol levels which reduces stress. Cortisol inhibits memory retrieval of already stored information and is an important aspect of the brain chemistry of stage fright. If you are pushed beyond the level of your conditioning, “taken where you havn’t been before” your anxiety will increase as your energy level goes down. However, there are many examples of fighters who have done the work, are in the best shape they can get in, and still have poor performances because of stress. This is because their stress level has risen until it effects their brain chemistry negatively and they are unable to control their breathing.

Sugar Ray Robinson preferred ping pong for this mental training. It was a way to daily practice getting into that flow, to stop talking to himself and just react, in a context that was fun and had nothing to do with boxing. I recommend it to fighters today but they usually prefer video games. Great champions like Robinson tended to make this level of concentration, “mental energy” as Arcell called it, look easy but it requires daily training for many years to be able to do it under the duress of a fight.

Many fighters have been able to focus and stay calm in fight after fight against ordinary competition, only to “blow it” when they stepped up to a higher level of competition or got a title shot. This effect is especially noticeable when they step up to fight a great champion for the first time. These are the fights that haunt them in their old age, the ones where they know they didn’t give their best performance.

One of the best examples of this sad aspect of the mental game is Ernie Lopez, older brother of featherweight champion Danny “Little Red “Lopez. He was a very good welterweight who fought from 1963 to 1974 and had the misfortune to come along in the era of Jose Napoles, one of the greatest welters ever. At the time of their first meeting in 1970 Lopez was 36 6 1. Ernie was very smooth counter puncher without much power. The hype, the pressure of meeting a great champion, really got to him and he came in “tight”. You can really see this on the film of the fight. The tension is visible in Lopez from the beginning and so his punches fall short and seem to have nothing on them. He was knocked down in the first, the ninth, and KO’d in the fifteenth round. Lopez came back with ten wins in his next twelve fights and got another shot at Napoles’ title in 1973 but it was worse this time and he was KO’d in the seventh round.

For years at the Englewood Coliseum they talked about the night the real “Indian Red” Lopez didn’t show up. He ended his career with a record of 48 13 1 with 465 professional rounds boxed and a KO percentage of 38.71. Lopez passed away in 2009 at the age of 64.

George Benton's advice for shot placement for the jab

2011-03-11T17:06:00.000-08:00

boxing with Wilson Pitts- breaking ground

2011-03-11T17:04:00.000-08:00

Hit and Don't Get Hit

2010-12-21T13:03:00.000-08:00

You teach a youngster to box by teaching a set of principles and a set of fundamentals that support those principles. You give them the tools and you let them develop an instinct for fighting. They need to find their own way, hit and don't get hit that is the game, give them the tools let them find their own process. Ultimately boxing is an art and each fighter must find a way to express himself in the course of a fight. No two fighters will do it in exactly same way.
You do not teach a cookie cutter offense and defense and have them "do " them at each other. “Do a 1-2-3” no! A teacher shows them how to develop a flow, “don't think feel!” The young fighter has to get out of their own way in order to enter into "boxing mode" flowing seamlessly from defense to offense and back.

A fight is like a symphony it has beginning, a middle section, and an ending. It is being written and played at the same time. A fighter must develop a sense of fight progression, have contingencies planned for each stage, and be able to change pace or tactics as the story unfolds. This requires mental focus, concentration, during the entire contest.

Inexperienced fighters don't have this sense of the big picture, they can't create on the fly, it is all happening too fast. It takes a lot of rounds to be able to write and conduct the symphony while it is happening and then change with the flow of the fight. This is called "ring generalship" and it really can't be taught, it must be an instinct in a fighter. I recommend that you study early Sugar Ray Robinson fights to learn about dictating pace, rhythm, and control of the center of the ring against a skilled opponent.

An important part of ring generalship is an awareness of what the other fighter is experiencing, is he tired? Does the pace suit him? Is he hurt? Is he frustrated? or is he in his comfort zone? what is his perception of how things are progressing? All of this must be taken into account in real time while the fight is ongoing. While this is where a good corner helps, the personal experience of the fighter is the key.

Trainers at Stillman's Gym in NYC in the 30's and 40's developed the concept of the "defensive fighter" stressing balance, foot work, head movement, and angles as well as punching. The “dean” of those old trainers Ray Arcel said that the key to this idea of the defensive fighter was the coordination of head and foot movement that he called "slide and roll." He taught fighters like Barney Ross to bend from the waist, roll under a punch, and slide over to a punching position where you can not be readily hit while you get off with both hands. Reduce the amount you get hit while increasing your offensive output, this was the defensive fighter.

Charlie Goldman had an entire chapter in the book, Boy’s Book of Boxing and Body Building, co-written with Rocky Marciano, on the defensive fighter. He even used some of the same terms that Arcel used.

In the book Goldman said,” A skilled defensive fighter is usually the product of long and intensive training. Too many of the offensive boxers you see today are green, untried youngsters who do little more than throw a barrage of reckless punches. The skilled, careful boy knows that slipping punches is also part of the skill of self-defense.”

In Chapter 6, "How to Begin", after the section on how to make your own heavy bag, Rocky Marciano says;
“When everything that can be said about boxing has been said, one fact will stand out above all the rest: the best boxers hit more and get hit the least. This refers not only to the number of punches, but also to the strength behind them.”

It is this simple fact that a beginner needs to grasp first before going on to learn the art of self defense.

Wayne McCullough's charity: IHOW

2010-12-21T09:23:00.000-08:00

Former WBC bantamweight champ Wayne McCullough has set a charity up to give back. IHOW aims to get autistic and disadvantaged kids, veterans and those in rehab into boxing, MMA and dance, giving advice on nutrition, training and maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

"It's an excellent charity it just needs a lift to get it running, so we are asking celebrities and sports personalities to donate an autograph or other material that we can sell at auction to create funds. If you have memorabilia you want to donate to I Helped Wayne Out- IHOW it will be auctioned off and proceeds will be used for charity.thank you!" IHOW spokesperson @Hughesihow in England (via: twitter

I’m contributing some memorabilia to be auctioned
Go to the #IHOW facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/IHOW-I-Helped-Out-Wayne/162961953728311 and click like.

Boogaloo Watts

2010-11-29T12:16:00.000-08:00

by Wilson Pitts

I used to watch Bobby "Boogaloo" Watts work out at Joe Frazier's Gym. He showed up everyday, parking his Lincoln Mark IV on the sidewalk out front. He had a tremendous work ethic. Even when he didn’t have a fight scheduled he still went to the gym and worked out, shadow boxed and did abs. He was a class act all the way. He won 13 fights in a row from 1973 to 1976 as he marched to the top of the division. Watts was tall and thin, he was never a true middleweight, fighting most effectively at 156 to 158 lbs. In January of 1976 Watts won a controversial 10 round decision against Marvin Hagler in Philly.

See it here

Watts’ style was to draw and counter and he was very successful. However, because of his calculated risk taking it became more and more that he either won by KO or was KO’d. As his career progressed he had trouble with larger men coming down to 160 and lost to David Love, Mustafa Hamsho, and Hagler later in his career.

This was about 1977 when I was watching him in the gym and I learned a lot about how to fight left hookers fighting from a crouch by watching Bobby Watts. He was a stand up boxer/ puncher in a gym full of crouching left hookers. He had this way of sucking them in with false leads and timing them when they bobbed down and meeting them with a wicked left uppercut called a “can opener.” When you fight someone who is bobbing and weaving you don’t use a hard jab. You just want to touch them and keep them off balance. Watts had this jab that just touched them, convincing them they could bob under and slide in. When he combined it with a little slide back with his left foot and that timed upper cut it set up his right hand. He was a joy to watch shadow boxing; poise, balance, and precision, like watching a great artist at work.

Watts is heavyweight Jimmy Young's cousin and it was Young who got Bobby into the gym in the 1960’s. As an amateur Watts was the Delaware Valley welterweight Golden Gloves Champion of 1968 and the AAU Mid-Atlantic Champion the same year. In the Olympic trials Watts ran into Armando Muniz and was beaten. He turned pro in 1969 and grew into a junior middleweight. He finished his professional boxing career with a record of 38 wins (20 KOs), 7 losses and 1 draw. His career lingered until 1983 but was effectively over after Marvin Hagler, who Watts had worked for as a sparring partner, gave him a title shot in 1980 and knocked him out in the second round of their fight in Portland Maine.

Today Bobby Watts trains Rogers Mtagwa for manager Joe Parella.

"If I knew then what I know now, I would've been middleweight champion."-Bobby Watts

Watts record was 46 total bouts with 283 professional rounds boxed and a KO% 43.48

steps workout

2010-11-22T14:44:00.000-08:00

McLarnin-Petrolle

2010-11-15T10:47:00.000-08:00

How two mythical trainers- Jack Hurley and Pop Foster – generated

“The Greatest Fight Seen in the Garden”
by Wilson Pitts

On a night 80 years ago an epic fight took place in Madison Square Garden. Many ringside observers and sports writers considered this to be the greatest fight they ever saw in the Garden.

Nat Fleisher of The Ring Magazine wrote that “No one who saw that mill in the Garden in 1930 will ever forget it.”

On November 21, 1930 the first Billy Petrolle- Jimmy McLarnin fight took place in New York City at Madison Square Garden. Also on that night two of the great characters of depression era boxing faced each other as well. Petrolle was managed and trained by Jack Hurley and McLarnin by “Pop” Foster.

In those days there weren’t so many different players in a fighter’s camp. Today the manager is liable to be a promoter who just picks the opponents and negotiates the contracts. Different people will be brought in to do conditioning and day to day gym work and someone else may be looking at video of the opponents and devising strategy, if that is even happening. These guys from the 1920’s and 30’s were different, they did it all, and without video. Both Hurley and Foster were great students of the art, and they both had only one fighter that went to the highest levels. They were Billy Petrolle and Jimmy McLarnin respectively and they had brought them up from very early in their boxing careers. Both fighters fought a lot and were big draws even in the Great Depression.

Both Hurley and Foster taught their fighters their unique styles of boxing and trained and coached them through long careers against top notch opponents. Each of these men had their own fight psychology as well. They taught their fighters to remain calm and relaxed in the ring so that they could maintain snap on their punches and stay within themselves aerobically for the duration of the fight.

It all came together on that night in the Garden, both fighters at the peak of their abilities. If styles make fights then these two unique styles matched up to make one of the most exciting fights of the 1930’s. Almost all of McLarnin’s fights were at catch weights negotiated by Pop Foster, and they were almost all against smaller men. He ended several contenders’ careers with crushing early round knockouts.

This famous KO of Al Singer 1930-09-11 was McLarnin's last fight before the fight with Petrolle.

When McLarnin and Petrolle met in 1930 it was a catch weight of 141 pounds. McLarnin’s record at this time was 46-6-3 and he weighed 141. Petrolle had a record of 74-14-8 and he weighed 138.

Jack Hurley, Billy Petrolle’s manager trainer, taught his fighters to turn away from a right hand and throw the counter right hand back. You can see Hurley’s last contender Harry “Kid” Mathews

Jack Hurley and Billy Petrolle

doing it in the first round of his fight with Rocky Marciano.

Before the McLarnin fight in the Garden that night Hurley told Petrolle that McLarnin would be expecting him to do that move so they had to change tactics. McLarnin was taller and had a very sharp straight right hand so Hurley told Petrolle to drop his left hand and draw the right from McLarnin and then go under it and counter with the left hook. Petrolle dropped McLarnin with this move twice in the early part of the fight. After the second round Hurley told Petrolle that he wouldn’t be able to land that counter any more and to change tactics again.

In the forth round he had Petrolle jab short and miss on purpose and when McLarnin tried to swarm in he floored him with a right hand and had him in trouble. McLarnin made it through the ten rounds even though the referee asked him twice if he wanted to stop.
Nat Fleisher reported that McLarnin “took a licking that might have spelled finis to the career of a less courageous, stout hearted battler.”

“ McLarnin was down twice in the 4th round for nine counts. His manager later claimed McLarnin injured his right hand in the 2nd round and "it was noted that he used his right hand seldom after the 4th session." (James P. Dawson, New York Times).
He had a history of hand problems and indeed broke his right hand early in this Petrolle fight. McLarnin’s version of what happened was that he went after Petrolle too soon, broke his hand, and went into shock and took a beating.

Jimmy McLarnin didn’t fight again until he fought the rematch with Petrolle on May 27, 1931 at Madison Square Garden which he won via decision. The rubber match was held on August 20, 1931 at Yankee Stadium where McLarnin gave Petrolle a bad beating and won another decision victory. The mark of a great cornerman is the ability to watch the opponent and learn what he does. Petrolle jumped on McLarnin and surprised him in this first fight but Pop Foster got to study him for 10 rounds. McLarnin had Petrolle figured out in their subsequent two fights.

Scripts Howard editor and writer Joe Williams wrote that in twenty five years of watching fights at Madison Square Garden the greatest he ever saw was the first Petrolle- McLarnin fight.
On the morning after the fight James P. Dawson, writing in the New York Times, said; "The greatest welterweight in America and believed heretofore to be the uncrowned world ruler of the class was knocked from his lofty perch last night in Madison Square Garden and supplanted by an overgrown lightweight…Billy Petrolle, an ironman of the ring and a hitter of no mean ability himself, carried off the decision and did everything but knock-out McLarnin. He missed that climax to a wonderful effort because of the Irish lad's recuperative powers."

Jack Hurley was a veteran of World War I and claimed to have been inspired to devise his own boxing style by a bayonet instructor in England. He taught his fighters to stand in a crouch with their hands down and draw leads and counter and he did teach a few distinctive footwork maneuvers that were some what his trademark. He was such a raconteur that it is hard to tell if any of it really derived from bayonet drills. Hurly was immortalized in the book “Once They Heard the Cheers” by W.C. Heinz.

Charles “Pop” Foster was born in Leeds England and had been a professional fighter before serving in World War I. By the early 1920s, when he was in his 50s, Foster was living in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, where he discovered and managed Jimmy McLarnin and Mickey Gill. Later he also managed Lee Ramage.

Jimmy McLarin and Pop Foster

Foster was known as “The man with the one way pockets.” “He never overmatched his fighter for mere money. He never "cut" his fighter with another manager. And there wasn't a promoter in the world who dared suggest a fixed match to the team of Pop Foster and McLarnin.” Sports Illustrated

Foster was an out of work longshoreman when he began training Jimmy “Babyface” McLarnin in the basement of McLarnin’s father’s store when Jimmy was 14 years old. Foster sanded the floor and spread the saw dust on the smooth surface. He had Jimmy practice footwork, responding to the opponent with his feet on the slippery surface. Foster became like a father to the boy and he taught McLarnin a distinctive stand up style, chin tucked, hands blazing. He worked with him for two years on speed, of feet and hands, before allowing him to turn pro at age 16. McLarnin was known for his snappy left jab and a straight right hand and his ability to stand in the gap and get off. Foster campaigned McLarnin in every weight division from flyweight to welterweight.

Foster’s methods were somewhat unique. He discouraged muscular development, especially in the arms and shoulders, because he felt that is decreased speed. He forbid McLarnin to punch with weights in his hands and had him fast for a week after a long fight. He crossed trained Jimmy during summer-long lay offs with hauling in fishing nets, rowing a boat, and running. He had him do everything with his left hand, throw darts, row a boat, bounce a ball.

When McLarnin was an established and very successful pro Foster was criticized in the press for not hiring professional sparring partners and for not following convention and making McLarnin do long workouts. Actually he was adamant about not over training McLarnin and tried to rein him in and teach him to be patient and not go for the knockout immediately. He only had McLarnin do three rounds of sparring per day, three rounds of heavy bag work, and three rounds of light bag work. Foster cooked all of McLarnin’s meals and stayed with him constantly when he was training.

Jimmy McLarnin said,” Pop was an old-timer from the old school. He knew boxing from A to Z. He developed speed. The important part of boxing is not to get hit. If they can’t hit you they can’t beat you, and can’t hurt you. This is, of course, the great science of boxing. Because of Pop I had a lot of fights and was never hit, never hurt...”
That being said, McLarnin took bad beatings twice in his career. This first Petrolle fight was pretty bad, he did not fight for six months afterward mostly because of his hand injury. The second time was at the hands of Tony Canzoneri May 8, 1936 in their first fight.

McLarnin failed in his first title fight, losing a unanimous decision to Sammy Mandell May 21, 1928 for the lightweight crown.

He fought big money fights at catch weights for five years before challenging for the welterweight title against Young Corbett III May 29, 1933. McLarnin upset Corbett by knocking him out in the first round of their fight in Wrigley Field in LA. He won the welterweight title twice but had a better knockout ratio fighting as a lightweight. I don’t have any video of this fight with Petrolle but I do have some footage of Billy Petrolle fighting Barney Ross in 1934

and of McLarnin’s last of three fights with Ross in 1935.

Petrolle also fought a ten round no decision bout with then lightweight champion Sammy Mandell in 1928 and lost a newspaper decision. He never did get a title shot. He is on that short list of fighters such as Charlie Burley with great records who never got a title fight. After the Mandell fight Petrolle fought much more often, for less money, than McLarnin did. Billy Petrolle was born on 10 -01-1905. It was said “The Fargo Express” retired in 1934 with $200,000 and an iron foundry in Duluth Minnesota. He later owned a religious goods and gift shop in Duluth, and was the chairman of the Board of Directors of the Pioneer National Bank. He passed away in 1983. According to Boxrec.com Petrolle’s lifetime record was 86 (KO 64) + lost 20 (KO 3) + drawn 9 = 117 bouts Rounds boxed = 709 Newspaper decisions won 34 lost 6 drawn 5 Rounds boxed= 406 Total Bouts: 162 a true journeyman fighter. KO% 39.5
Petrolle had an amazing total of 1115 rounds boxed.

Jimmy McLarnin retired in 1936 after defeating Lou Ambers, a great lightweight champion, over ten rounds in a non title bout. He retired to Glendale California and opened a machine shop. He appeared as himself in several films, including The Big City (1937), The Crowd Roars (1938), Swing with Bing (1940) and Joe Palooka (1946). He played golf with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby and did some lecturing in later life. Charles Foster bought a house in the same street, and used to drop by daily to relive past glories over coffee. When Foster passed away in 1956 he left McLarnin $200, 000. McLarnin died on October 28, 2004 at age 96. He is the subject of the book “Babyface Goes to Hollywood” by Andrew Gallimore
According to Boxrec.com McLarnin’s lifetime record was: won 54 (KO 21) + lost 11 (KO 1) + drawn 3 = 68 rounds boxed 452 KO% 30.88

Remembering Holly Mims

2010-10-01T12:21:00.000-07:00

I was in DC yesterday; I can't go there with out thinking about Holly Mims. Who? you ask. He was one of the best boxers to ever come from Washington DC. I grew up hearing stories about this man. Mims had a record of 66 27 6 He went 10rds with Sugar Ray Robinson and lost a decision. He beat Georgie Benton and Spider Webb but lost return bouts to each of them and he never got a title shot.

He always seemed to lose close decisions to top level fighters like Joey Archer SD in MSG, and Joey Giardello SD in DC. Mims once fought Hurricane Carter as a substitute for Gomeo Brennan on 1962-12-22 MSG on No days notice and went 10 rds!

Mims'record does not really indicate what a great boxer he was though, he could really move, smooth, great jab and lateral movement. The only video I have of him is the televised Carter fight but I found this on youtube-
Mims'1961-11-29 points win over a young Jimmy Ellis in his 6th professional fight. In DC they used to call him "the uncrowned Champ."he continued to box until 1967 having 100 fights total. I knew none of you ever heard of Holly Mims that's why I brought him up,tragically he died from kidney failure in 1970.

Old school cross training for fighters

2010-09-30T09:37:00.000-07:00

In the old days the perfect cross training for boxers was considered to be sawing wood and splitting wood with an ax. There was wisdom in how they cross trained fighters in the past. Boxers were put to work clearing land and building fences when they were not training. General construction work such as lifting, digging, sawing, hammering was done by fighters laying off from boxing training because it kept them in shape. Outdoor work kept them in shape while not doing the repetitive movements of boxing training. It kept their weight down during off periods but didn't over train their arms and shoulders.

Now a days? No fighter wants to work at all, and almost none of them have done hard work, physical labor, before they begin over training in the gym. They do not have that foundation built by doing daily hard work outdoors. During World War II Rocky Marciano served as a combat engineer. "We were the Army's ditch diggers." Rocky declared in an interview in Sport Magazine. This was his conditioning base when he turned pro after getting out of the Army.

Charlie Goldman once trained Marciano for a fight for six months. Three months of heavy lifting, farm work and walking. Rocky Marciano wanted to walk/run five miles out and five miles back after EVERY MEAL! Then they did three months of regular boxing camp. Goldman did not have him lift at the same time he boxed, he didn't punch anything for the first 3 months while he lifted stones and split wood. In the famous book Training for Boxing by Nat Fleisher there is a pic of Marciano down in a pit throwing 40lbs stones up out of it. That work provided a deep training base for the boxing training which was much more aerobic, consisting of running and punching but no lifting. This creates deep reserves to fall back on during the hard training to come. Rocky never seemed to get tired in fights that was because he trained hard but did not leave it in the gym.

Goldman had strict discipline in camp, Rocky only spoke to his wife and reporters through a chain link fence, lights out at 9pm, no food between meals or after dinner. Charlie Goldman said that the only trouble he ever had with Rocky in camp was that he wanted to do too much roadwork. He had to reign him in to prevent him from over training.

Now fighters go to camp for only a few weeks and they routinely lift and then go the gym and try to spar when they can hardly use their arms right. The type of strength training that a boxer needs is not the same as bodybuilding at all.The legs and core of a fighter have to be trained to perfection. The desired result is a lightness and quickness on his feet.

Pop Foster was an old school trainer who managed and trained welterweight champion Jimmy McLarnin through his entire career, from age 16 fighting in five weight divisions. In boxing training he had McLarnin train speed of hands and feet,and there was an emphasis on not over doing it. Though he was criticized for his methods in the New York press of the time, Pop brought McLarnin in on weight and in peak condition time after time.

Foster had McLarnin row a boat and pull fishing nets during planned lay offs from boxing training. He used to have McLarnin fast on juice for a week after big fights and take off six months at a time after several fights in a row. This was to prevent him from muscling up from too much repetitive training. Too many of the same workouts would have caused him to go up in weight and lose his snap. Foster had him row a boat and run and not do any boxing at all when they would go back to Vancouver during the summers.

Wilson teaches MMA boxing tactics

2010-07-27T21:06:00.000-07:00

Boxing is a flow system

2010-05-16T05:07:00.000-07:00

by Wilson Pitts

Boxing is a flow system, you have to integrate offense and defense into one flow, too many of today's fighters throw one punch and stop. The most basic principle is to “move your hands, your feet, and your head” in a coordinated way. This is called "boxing mode" by some trainers. It takes a lot of practice to do it under stress.

A fighter’s sense of rhythm is so important, not "1 and stop" "2 and stop." This is easily countered because the rhythm, or lack there of, is so predictable. He has got to have a smooth continuous rhythm for attack and defense and be able to change up, or break the rhythm at will. Shadow boxing is how you develop different fight rhythms.Bruce Lee called it "doing your homework." Nat Fleisher stressed its importance in "How to Box.”

First there is flow with the hands, combinations have to flow with speed and accuracy. Feints and change ups break the rhythm. When a fighter gets tired or he is “tight” i.e. having stage fright, he will throw one punch at a time. A lot of time has to be spent training the fighter to “throw punches in bunches” so that he automatically gets off with combinations under duress. He has to learn to relax while he moves around the ring and throws snappy combinations. If he practices tightening up, “tries too hard,” he will tire quickly and under pressure he will automatically tighten up and his punches will have nothing on them.The more he can relax in the ring the more power he can command.

Along with combination punching and footwork distance appreciation must be developed. The classic mistake of green fighters is to throw wild punches from the wrong range. They are not moving their feet in coordination with their punching thus throwing off their balance and leaving them wide open without even connecting with their opponent.

In the old days boxing footwork was related to tap dancing and practiced on saw dust covered floors to jazz music. It is a lot like playing percussion in a jazz or reggae band, syncopation and counter rhythm are used with the hands while the feet do the down beat. To confuse an opponent in boxing you need to be able to change it, like high hat with your feet and down beat and fills with your hands for example. When you take an opponent out of his rhythm and make him miss he gets tired. You have to be able to change with the other guy without gassing out. It takes a lot of “mental energy” as Ray Arcel called it.

Not telegraphing punches in boxing is done by punching from the guard position without adjusting, dropping your hands or pausing before you get off. This requires proper hand positions, something that is not taught anymore. The straight counter punch needs to be straight from the shoulder, not looping. The counter hook needs to be short and snappy, not a wild open arm swing. If you move some other part of your body before you punch it is a tell, like in poker. A smart fighter will exploit this. It is also a mental thing, if the opponent can hear your intention to punch he can anticipate it, this connects to pausing, which happens when you think. Focus and concentration is not the same as thinking and getting in your own way mentally.

When I read Barney Ross’s1942 book on how to box recently he talked about changing styles every round so the opponent can't solve you. Fighters today? Ha! They don't change styles more than once a career, they make the same mistakes that cost them before, they don't learn, they are not students of the game, and they have not developed individual skill sets for every possible style of opponent they may face. They have no finish, no polish, to their style which is only obtained through hard work & actual fights against different styles of fighters. The fighter and his corner men have to have experience solving different styles of attack and defense using the skill sets at the fighter’s command. No sense asking him to do something he hasn’t learned in the gym and practiced over and over. Specific techniques need to be learned and improved on to be able to execute different fight plans for different opponents. These plans might have to be changed during a fight and the fighter needs to be able to change with the situation.

Combining offense and defense in one flow, knowing when to lead, when to counter, executing a fight plan, maintaining your rhythm and pace, these are the elements of ring generalship. All of this requires a humble attitude on the fighter’s part so that he can practice the “Two P’s” patiences and passion, both the hall marks of champions.

Having a fight plan for each style of opponent gives you the psychological ability to impose your will on another trained fighter. This requires “intelligent training” of specific skills and execution of fight plans. Rocky Marciano used to spend hours of his own time, after full workouts, practicing in front of a mirror correcting mistakes Charlie Goldman had pointed out to him in sparring earlier that day. Patiences and passion.

It is like football practice with no pads, the fighter has to “walk through” execution of the plan, change to another one, and another, while shadow boxing and punching bags and mitts. Just standing there mindlessly hitting the equipment like a robot is of little use. When the fighter can stay relaxed and maintain his mental focus with no pressure then he is ready to begin executing the plan in sparring.

The quality of sparring partners and their ability to “Do “ various styles like runner, comer, or counter puncher, so the fighter can work against them was considered of prime importance in the old days. Chappy Blackburn trained Joe Louis but before the fight with Tommy Farr in 1937 Mannie Seamon, Bennie Leonard's old trainer,was hired just to train Joe's sparring partners.

Counter a Counter Puncher

2010-05-08T19:01:00.000-07:00

by Wilson Pitts

Many MMA fighters come straight in, swinging, and get countered. Because of the way they stand up & charge in they eat the counter punch. When you take a punch as you move forward it multiplies the impact.This is not a good idea.

Let’s talk about how to fight a counter puncher. Most but not all counter punches are hooks, if you walk in standing straight up and miss a punch or a combination you put yourself in range for the hook. So, the rule is you "counter a counter puncher." You make them go first but mess up their timing and make them miss. When you feint you freeze them and then you control the distance with your feet. Eddy Fuch said at the longer range "a right hand counters a left hook every time."

Take a look at the 15th round of the first Hedgemon Lewis/Jose Napoles [12-14 -1971 Forum, Inglewood, California] fight to see a clinic on all the ways Fuch taught to counter a left hook counter puncher.

Hedgemon Lewis was a very good boxer who lacked punching power. He was trained by Eddie Fuch after a successful amateur career. He never quite cracked the top of the professional game because of his lack of power. This was his first attempt to win the title and he executed the fight plan that Fuch designed for him that consisted of jabbing and moving side to side, then turning Napoles when he tried to charge forward and neutralizing Napoles'left hook every way possible. He came closer to winning it in this fight than in his two other shots at the welterweight title.

Napoles was one of the greatest counter punchers of all time. Lewis was physically inferior to Napoles and if he had stood in front of him and fed him leads Napoles would have knocked him out. This is a good fight to study because Lewis has a fight plan devised by Fuch and he sticks to it and applies the tactics and successfully neutralizes Napoles superior punching power through much of the fight. If you are only going to watch one round, watch the last one.

The boxing sayings that apply are "Make em miss, make em pay" and “turn them and keep them from setting.” Head movement and broken rhythm throws off the counter puncher's timing making them alternately swing and miss or hold back the shot. The great ones could control the opponent’s punches with feints and movement, thus making the opponent look like he wasn’t trying because he could never get set and throw his punches the way he had practiced.

How do you fight a counter puncher?

1. Don't feed them a lead & walk in
2. Use a counter jab wisely
3. Use feints and head movement
4. Control the distance with your feet
5. Turn them because ”A bull can’t charge in a circle”

In this video I am teaching a drill used to develop counter punching.

Love of the Game

2010-02-24T08:21:00.000-08:00

I have been collecting books on boxing since I was a teenager. I particularly like instructional books even though they are harder to find. Some books like Nat Fleisher’s How to Box were reprinted in soft cover editions many times while others in my collection, like the 1888 book Art of Boxing by Billy Edwards are somewhat hard to find. Some books are novelties like the 1921 book How to Punch the Bag by Spaulding which has every conceivable pattern for hitting the speed bag.

Yesterday I received a copy of the 1942 book Boxing Fundamentals by Barney Ross. He was a lightweight and then welterweight world champion in the pre World War II era. I would rate this book’s instruction right up there with the Rocky Marciano and Charlie Goldman’s Boys Book of Boxing and Bodybuilding. Neither of those books, in my opinion, are as good as Jack Dempsey’s book for instruction in power development and the mechanics of punching. I believe Dempsey’s book has been reprinted after years of obscurity.

Ross’s book has a lot of good information on defense, counterpunching and solving difficult opponents. He was trained by the "dean" of trainer's at Stillman's gym in NYC- Ray Arcel.

However it was the frontispiece and the last page of the book that impressed me the most.
It says:

“To the youth of America in the hope that his book may in some part aid them in an understanding of the art of self defense as a medium for the development of self reliance and physical well being.”

This not only speaks to the character of the man but it succinctly expresses what I find useful about boxing for the average young person.

The last page says:
“Only a small part of a champion’s greatness lies in his ability. Far more important is his eagerness to learn, his flair for adding finesse and polish to his style.
Most important of all is the love of the game. Every great fighter was once a beginner. Without this essential love of the sport, he would always remain a beginner.
How well you succeed is up to you alone. This book can help you; trainers and coaches can help you. But you- the individual- supply the final answer.”

This is an important lesson for the youth of any generation but seems to me to particularly lacking in today’s discussions of fistic arts. Love of the game and the willingness to remain a student and continue to learn are important aspects of the mental game in boxing that are not much in evidence in today’s fight world. Fight after fight you don’t see growth or change in fighters today. They come out and make the same mistakes they made in the fight before.

Joe Louis used to win a fight and go back to the dressing room with out cracking a smile. He didn’t want to hear a bunch of praise for how great he was. He only wanted to know from his trainer Chappy Blackburn, “What did I do wrong?” He wanted to learn and improve from the experience, not inflate his ego and take nothing useful away from the fight. In the heat of the moment a fighter can’t effectively use more than 20% of what he practices in the gym. This is why he needs to study himself and other fighters and continue learning throughout his career.

Former undefeated light heavyweight world champion Tommy Loughran spent his spare time at the gym studying other fighters, learning new moves. He had a gym in the basement of his house and studied himself in the mirror so that he knew what he looked like to the other guy when he was in the ring. He was able to feint and draw the opponent into leading so that he could counter. He is considered to be one of the greatest boxers ever.

In Peter Heller’s 1973 book “In This Corner..!” Loughran explains his self study training method this way:
” I was so meticulous about everything that I did insofar as my training was concerned., my movements, my balance, my sense of coordination, and my footwork was tied in with all the movements.”

This is love of the game. He was a student of the art who fought 227 fights and was only knocked out twice, both times fighting as a heavyweight. He went on to be a successful businessman and one of the original color commentators when boxing was televised in the 1950’s.

Barney Ross went on to be a decorated hero in WWII and then struggle with morphine addiction after being wounded.

Boxing for MMA

2010-02-18T07:53:00.000-08:00

Roberto Sharpe interviews Wilson Pitts part 1

Roberto- What modifications are you employing when teaching boxing for MMA. As I understand it MMA likes to enter from long range with leg attacks, then switch from leg kicks to punches to single leg takedowns.

Wilson- First I work with the fundamentals of stance, balance and hand positions. These basics are missing in a lot of MMA fighters. I won’t let them even spar if they drop their hands, flinch, or have not developed snap on their punches. They must master these basics in the gym for their own protection. Also, a lot of emphasis has to be put on speed of hands and feet from the beginning. A lot of grappling based MMA fighters are too slow in their stand up.

The boxing stance has to be modified for MMA, front foot kept light. We work on moving laterally, stepping over off of the jab and in response to the forward pressure of the opponent. Pass the elbow and let your hands go. See Wilson and Roberto discuss this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghLiz0qz9ac

I'm teaching my students to use a jab and broken rhythm footwork to negate the straight leg shoot. We spend a fair amount of time with beginners in front of a mirror practicing feints and stepping to angles off of the jab. The jab stops the opponent’s forward momentum. It has to be delivered with snap and no telegraphing.

The jab is aimed at the chest so that as they drop down they move into it. I teach fighters to use timing and “meet the head.” Punch to where it is moving to, as opposed to punching at where it was. This is something I learned from Georgie Benton. Make contact with their chest and then you can find the range for their chin. It can be hard to find the range when they are throwing a lot of wild punches so you dip and punch straight to the chest.

When facing a fighter who constantly ducks down under your hook Eddie Fuch emphasized using the rear uppercut, normally a fighter’s most powerful punch. You do not lead with this punch, it follows your hook and “meets them” as they go down. The body is a much larger target and better for this punch, but it can be aimed at the chin as well. This is important for MMA.

Watch a MMA grappler and they walk forward and lunge to shoot for the single leg. In boxing parlance they would be termed a “two stepper” and the stutter step and the jab throw them off and set them up. They have to have that momentum to effectively shoot. When they shoot from a close gap and don't get a step they are not nearly as effective. So they must not be allowed to waltz across the gap unmolested. When they are coming across the gap is when they can be timed with punches.

If you study Thai boxing, they counter the rear leg round kick with the straight right hand. They both are applied at about the same range with the kick having the reach at initiation but because of the rotation of their body they fall into the range of the right hand. Thai boxing is also very good at using simple foot work to make knees and kicks miss. They step over, away from the rotation of the opponent’s body, and it makes a lot of straight kicks and knees miss and it takes the power off of the rear leg round house. This lateral movement gives them angles for punching without eating the opponent’s power kick.

Wilson- OK I’m through giving away trade secrets for today!

Roberto- Now that is an answer! Thank you. Anderson Silva is a great example for use of the jab and broken rhythm. Machida also seems to know not to allow "waltzing" into his gap without pain being inflicted.

Basics of conditioning for boxing

2010-02-09T08:35:00.000-08:00

Boxing uses interval training. You do an exercise and raise the heart rate and then you stop or slow down and let it return to normal, then repeat. The trainer adjusts the number of intervals, the duration of each, and the intensity, and also the amount of recovery. It is a dieing art and science that has been applied to the training of race horses, greyhound dogs, and fighting dogs, as well as boxers and wrestlers.

Boxing training also uses rope skipping and shadow boxing in what today would be called plyo-metrics training. These exercises, often done on a sprung wooden floor, developed a light, bouncy step, and improved lateral movement and agility. They provide another type of interval at the same time they improve your fighter's quickness and balance. The conditioning and the agility program work together. These basic training methods are used with the beginner along with core development through abdominal training and later bag punching.

Over training is a very real problem for fighters and the effects are just as bad as not training enough. The old trainers were able to adjust rest and recovery intervals to bring a fighter in at peak condition on a specific date. Many of today’s fighters “leave it in the gym” by over training. Overtraining is brought on by doing the same workout too many times, this is called “staleness.” The fighter does a high intensity interval and doesn’t even breath hard, he has done it too much. Make him do something he is not used to and he will gasp for breath like he didn’t train at all. When a fighter is stale he acts listless in sparring, bored in camp or the gym, and often does not sleep well. This is very similar to the effects of under training.

The old guys could detect overtraining by a change in the fighter’s body odor or by a lack of sweat when they were doing a workout. Today we look for elevated at rest heart rate, as well as irritability and the other signs, as an early warning sign of overtraining.

Not resting enough when undergoing heavy training is another cause of overtraining. Boxers need a lot of sleep, in bed by 9 at night and at least an hour nap during the day. Over eating can also bring on many of these symptoms because of too much stress put on the body from training and eating too much. The body does not get to rest between workouts because it is digesting. Often fighters try to compensate for feeling stale or bored by eating more. This is a mistake even in heavyweights who don’t have a weight limit and think they can eat anything they want. No snacking between meals, no meal replacements, and no eating after dinner. Charlie Goldman used to search Rocky Marciano's room for food The Rock would stash and eat in the middle of the night.

My love hate relationship with The Sweet Science

2010-01-24T18:40:00.000-08:00

I have been a boxing fan since I was a kid, I'm 53 now. I have studied films of the greats for over thirty years. I used to go to Joe Fraiser's Cloverlay Gym in North Philly in the 1970's and watch the great trainers like Eddie Futch, Georgie Benton, and Wesley Mouzon work with all the great fighters they handled. I also watched Sam Solomon work with Saad Muhammad in South Philly. I went to Muhammed Ali's training camp in the Poconos and watched Ali train as well as a number of other fighters who used the facility. After seeing how damaged Ali was even back then, as well as several others like Bennie Briscoe and Jerome Artis, I decided not to have anything to do with the sport on a professional level.

That is all ancient history now. What those trainers knew about conditioning fighters and the various skill sets needed to be a professional fighter are largely gone. The sport has declined incredibly in the intervening thirty-five years while continuing to chew up and spit out the young men who participate in it. While I can not stand the criminal aspects of the sport and boxing's ugly little secret, which is brain damage, I still love the art and science of boxing, and feel I have something to share in that regard. In coming posts I am going to evaluate current fighters in light of the greats from boxing history and talk about the skills and training methods that have disappeared in my life time.

I don't intend to just bash fighters or trainers because anyone who has the guts to get in the ring is due a certain amount of respect right off the bat. However, I see no reason not to "call em as I see em " and there is no reason to keep any secrets as far as methods and techniques are concerned because the sport I once loved is dieing while we all watch. If we can agree on what the fundamentals are then it is only accurate and fair to call a mistake a mistake and this I will do.

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