My View from the Corner Read online

  It was during one of those push-me-pull-you attempts to get inside in the fourth round that Willie came away with a cut. I don't know if it was from a clash of heads, an elbow, or a punch, but what I did know was that Willie had a nasty gash over his left eye. I had my work cut out for me as I tried to stop the flow of blood around the cut and applied a coagulant and then carefully covered the cut with a thick layer of Vaseline. As the bell rang for the fifth round, the referee, John Hart, came over to the corner and said, "Remove the Vaseline so I can see the cut." "What are you talkin' about?" I screamed. "If I remove the Vaseline I may open the cut again." Unmoved, Hart repeated the request: "I want to examine the cut." Adamant, I hollered back, "Well go ahead and examine the cut, but I ain't removing the Vaseline." That did it. The next thing I knew Hart was waving his hands in the air to signal that the fight was over, the first time in his fifty-nine-bout career that Willie had been stopped. As they said on "The Sopranos," "Whaddya gonna do?"

  Ask any fight fan how long the period between rounds is and they'll tell you sixty seconds. Ask any trainer and he'll tell you it's more like forty, forty-five seconds by the time he gets in and out of the ring—that is, unless you have a fighter like former light-heavyweight great Tommy Loughran, who always managed to wind up in his own corner at the end of a round, saving at least ten seconds. Take away the time placing the stool down, wiping your fighter's face off, washing his mouthpiece out, and tending to his cuts and bruises, and it's somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty to twenty-five seconds. Maybe less.

  The cornerman is no mere spectator. As I've said many times, when I see things, I see things, and in those twenty to twenty-five seconds I've got to communicate details that caught my eye and try to implement everything I've seen, providing quick recaps of what's going on and projections of what needs to be done in the form of instructions—not just armchair chatter or feel-good-isms, but solid guidance. It's no time for panic or bile-inducing moments. That's not what my fighter is looking for. He's looking for me as the ring general to calmly and quickly deliver instructions that will help him win the fight.

  But any trainer is only as good as the guy on the stool. It's a twosome, a blend, and the fighter must pay attention and heed the instructions given. Or, at least, attempt to. I can't abide eye-blinking boredom or disinterest or inattentiveness. Too many times a fighter lets his attention wander and doesn't focus on what the cornerman is saying. I've seen fighters looking away from their cornermen, almost as if they were counting the house or trying to find a friend in the audience—and I even saw one fighter, Jorgé Paez, blowing kisses to the round-card girls. Such inattention is enough to drive cornermen nuts. One who went "boxinglistic" every time his fighter seemed not to be paying attention was Al Braverman, whose solution was "to rip his chin off till he looked you straight in the eye ... then you know he's listening."

  (Talk about listening to your corner and no one else, Al Weill, who was known in fight circles as "the Westkit" because he always wore a vest—which, most times, served as a menu of what he had eaten that day, splotched as it was with food stains—used to tell the story of having a good prospect named Marty Fox who was fighting Unknown Winston in Hartford. For eight or so rounds Fox was stabbing Winston to death with his jab. But the referee, hearing the boos of the crowd and sensing that the two were stinking out the joint, waved for him to go in and fight. And wouldn't you know it, as Weill said, "The damned fool did what the ref told him and was knocked out." Another time, Chickie Ferrara, who in the words of the crowd, "knew what's all about it," was in the corner of a fighter who was going against an opponent Ferrara had once trained. Ferrera's fighter scored a knockdown, and the opponent, so used to looking to Chickie for advice, heeded his motion to stay down, and stay down he did, for the full ten-count.)

  Sometimes the help given by the corner is so simple it goes unnoticed. Take, for example, Ray Arcel's little trick of cleaning off his fighter, wiping his gloves, greasing him nice and smooth, and putting his hair back in place before sending him out of the corner for the next round. Now the opponent figures, "What the hell's going on? I thought I was beating this guy, and he looks like he's stepping out of the pages of GQ magazine." It was a subtle bit of applied psychology.

  Or that help from the corner can come in the form of between-round advice, although some of what is said in the corner sounds as though it came straight out of an old B movie script, such as the advice Charlie Goldman said he got back in his fighting days from his trainer, Jack "Three-Fingered" Dougherty. According to Charlie, Dougherty's advice before every round went something like this: "G'wan, quit fiddlin' around ... go in there and knock the bum out." Similar boilerplate advice was given by Jack Dempsey's manager-trainer, Doc Kearns, who always exhorted Dempsey before every round to "Pull up your socks and go in there and slap that guy down," even though Dempsey never wore socks. And then there are those cornermen who always seem to be using the same stock line to their well-beaten fighters: "He ain't hitting you ..." almost as if they were reenacting that old joke where the trainer tells his fighter that the opponent isn't hitting him and the fighter looks back through swollen eyes to say, "Well then, you'd better keep your eye on the referee 'cause somebody is."

  More times than not the cornerman has to resort to something more to motivate his fighter. Not a talk-'em-off-the-ledge plea, but something that motivates them to reach beyond their limits—whatever is necessary to make them respond, to energize them. I once trained a heavyweight named Johnny Holman out of Chicago whose manager had given up on him and sent him down to me in Miami Beach to see if I could do something with his reluctant dragon. It was amazing how little Holman expected of himself. Slowly I was able to get him to the point where he began to believe in his abilities. It was then, because of the efforts of my brother Chris, that we were able to line up a match with former heavyweight champion Ezzard Charles, who had had two tough title fights with Rocky Marciano only the year before. Now Big John had three speeds: slow, stop, and wait-a-minute, and all three were on display in the early rounds as Charles continued to dig to his body, causing him to pick up his leg every time he was hit. It began to look as if he was going to take a walk, his spirit wilting along with his efforts. After one particularly disappointing round I decided to resort to mind games, trying some psychology.

  Remembering that Holman had told me that his dream was to buy a house with shutters and a television set, I got in his face and shouted, "What the hell are you doing in there, Johnny? What's the matter with you? Don't you want your new home? You hear me, Johnny ... this guy's taking away your house from you ... he's taking away those shutters from you ... he's taking away that television set from you." And with that Big John finally began fighting—not against Charles so much as for his house, shutters, and television set. And ended up winning.

  Then there are those times when short of tendering up burnt offerings the trainer has to resort to something more dramatic to motivate his fighter, even resorting to theatrics. And nobody did it better than Teddy Atlas, Michael Moorer's trainer. To rouse his battler out of his impersonation of a sleepwalker, Teddy resorted to such tactics as sitting on the stool between rounds of Moorer's fight with Evander Holyfield and shouting, "Ya wanna trade places?" Another time, between rounds against Franz Botha, Atlas went over to the referee Mills Lane and asked Lane to come to the corner with him. When the two arrived back in the corner Teddy said to Moorer, "See, here's the referee, and I told him that if you didn't start to do something I'm gonna stop the fight." And in Moorer's fight against Vaughn Bean, Teddy produced a cell phone out of nowhere and, trying to build some giddyup in the reluctant warrior, told him, "I've got your son on the other end, and he wants to talk to his daddy." (Meanwhile, down at the bottom of the steps, assistant trainer Lou Duva was successfully blocking the way, preventing a Nevada State Athletic Commission official from coming up the stairs to warn Atlas that such goings-on were taboo, telling the official that Teddy was "just calling out for pizza.")
And, not incidentally, all three calls to arms worked; Moorer responding to each and every ruse to make him come on and win.

  When verbal exhortations fail, sometimes physical ones are needed. Like the time Willie was defending his newly won light-heavyweight title against Terry Downes and after seven rounds began shaking his head and moaning about something or other he had done the night before that I could only guess at. Coming back to the corner he let out one giant sigh and lamented, "Why has God forsaken me?" Knowing full well it wasn't God who had directed his activities the night before, I answered, "God ain't gonna help you tonight; you've got to do it on your own," and mushed him in the puss and slapped him on the rump to propel him out of his corner at the bell. With that Willie lunged at me in an effort to hit me in retaliation, and I hollered, "Don't get mad at me ... I ain't takin' your title.... There's the chump over there you should be mad at.... He's takin' your title, sucker...." And wouldn't you know it, it worked; Willie came back to knock Downes down and out. (Carmen Basilio might have had the best answer for those who seek the help of God. When he was asked why he crossed himself after a fight but not before, he said, "God ain't gonna help you if you can't fight!")

  In a similar manner to my almost to-do with Willie, Gil Clancy once slapped Emile Griffith to waken him from one of his sleep-induced trances, and Emile turned on Gil, threatening to hit him. Seeing Emile draw back his glove, Clancy cried out, "Not me ... him!" pointing across the ring at Emile's opponent, an order Emile fulfilled to the fullest, hitting and beating the party of the second part. And one of the best stories I ever heard in this vein was from Whitey Bimstein, who had Fred Apostoli in a 1940 match with Melio Bettina. Apostoli returned to the corner after taking a beating and asked Whitey, "What's the matter with me? I can't fight!" Bimstein didn't say a thing; he just hauled off and hit Apostoli in the puss and hollered, "Now get out of there and do your stuff." Apostoli went out in the next round and beat the bejabbers out of Bettina. When he returned to his corner he said to Bimstein, "That's what I needed. Sock me again ... but hard! Get me mad!" P.S.: Apostoli won the fight.

  Then there are times more drastic action must be taken, as when your fighter comes back to the corner plumb tired out, weary in mind and body, and unable to muster up the energy for another round. Or worse, in a daze and unsure of where he is. One method of reviving him is to drop ice down his pants. Another, massage his legs. Then there's the tactic Bimstein used to use of twisting his fighter's ears till the fighter came around. And there were always smelling salts—or there were till state athletic commissions began banning their use. However, such a ban didn't stop trainers Ray Arcel and Freddie Brown in Larry Holmes's corner during his title fight against Gerry Cooney. When Holmes, exhausted from the heat and the effort, plopped down on the stool after the eighth round, the two veterans, using some fancy sleight of hand, administered smelling salts to Holmes. Brown furiously waved an oversized towel in front of Holmes while Arcel, under cover of the towel, deftly waved the smelling salts under Holmes's nose behind the flapping towel and—voilà!—Holmes was reenergized and went back into battle to wear down his challenger.

  A cornerman will go to any extreme to help his fighter, from stretching his ass to keep the referee or doctor from getting too close to look at a cut to handing his fighter schnapps, as Panama Lewis did to Aaron Pryor between rounds of his fight against Alexis Arguello. But perhaps the most drastic measure I ever heard of for reviving a fighter was one I heard from trainer Whitey Bimstein. There once was a fight back in the '20s at the old Commonwealth Club in Harlem between one of the top lightweights of the era, Willie Jackson, and a hard-hitting Brit by the name of Sid Marks. Seconds into the fight Marks landed a thunderous right to Jackson's chin and Jackson went down, the first of five times Jackson was hammered to the canvas in the opening round. And five times Jackson arose, more rubbery-legged and glassy-eyed than the time before. At the end of the round, according to Whitey, Jackson's trainer, Doc Bagley, collected his fighter, half dragging, half carrying his groggy charge back to the corner. Bagley tried everything he could to bring his fighter back to some sort of fighting life, but nothing worked. In desperation, Bagley took a book of matches out of his pocket, lit them, and, moving the flame up and down Jackson's back, awakened him from his stupor. And wouldn't you know it, Jackson came back in dramatic fashion to fight to a draw.

  It just goes to show you, trainers will do anything to help their fighters. Well, almost anything ...

  Even before the fight with Brian London, it was becoming obvious that Willie was fighting at the wrong weight. Granted, his style made great demands of his opponents, but his lack of pop also made great demands of Willie in the heavyweight division. In short, he was out of his depth, a feather duster in amongst howitzers. And with Willie constantly complaining, "I'm not gonna make it ... not making any bread," we decided to bring him down to the light-heavyweight level where the talent was sparser and his chances for money and a title shot better. But that would require Willie having to make 175 pounds. And keep it.

  Going back to John L. Sullivan, who had to boil off several pounds of bloat before every fight, weight has always been a problem for fighters. Or, as trainer Whitey Bimstein put it, "Some of them lunatics put on a pound every time they take a breath."

  It's a take on the old saying, "You are what you eat." Old-time trainer Jimmy August used to say that "if your fighter is a little fellow you may have to watch the amount he puts away closely. If your fighter is a heavyweight you can turn him loose at the table and let him go to town." Then he added, "Give him as much steak as he can hold, but be sure to surround it with plenty of green stuff ... salads, vegetables, they give him the roughage which helps him digest proteins easier."

  All those guidelines sound wonderful, but fighters can still overeat and gain weight—which might be somewhat like saying the biggest cause of divorce is marriage. Take Rocky Marciano, for example. A champion in the ring, he was one of the champion eaters outside. His trainer, Charlie Goldman, would make it a ritual to eat at the same table as Rocky, getting the same small portions of meat and greens as his fighter. And more than occasionally, to ensure that the Rock didn't overindulge, Charlie would reach over and take some of Marciano's portion off his plate for himself. Marciano was also, according to Goldman, the champion between-meals snacker. As Charlie told me, "The only arguments me and Rocky ever had was over his eating between meals. I'd go up to his room and under his pillow I'd find a bunch of bananas he was hiding from me."

  However, it's not just food that can cause a problem; it can also be what they drink. Trainer Whitey Bimstein, watching his charge Tommy "Hurricane" Jackson take on the look of someone going down in quicksand for the last time, found that Jackson had had five Coca-Colas right before the fight. And he found that Jackson was also a serial snacker, downing candies, cookies, and cakes in the dressing room. Lou Duva, upon first taking over the reins of Evander Holyfield, found Holyfield's room cluttered with all the junk food money could buy and threw it all away, telling him to go out and buy vegetables and meats. And Willie can also be added to this list of those who would eat or drink anything they could swim with—and sometimes not swim with. In fact, I never understood why, when we returned to New Orleans for a fight, Willie would all of a sudden get homesick and have to visit his mother. Little did I know that she hid bottles of Barq's root beer, Willie's favorite, in the toilet tank for her "starving" son.

  Water can also be a problem, as 60 percent of all body weight consists of fluids. Harry Wills, the great heavyweight of the early twentieth century, used to go on a monthlong diet, what he called a "waterfast," losing fifty-five to sixty-five pounds. But that was nothing compared to what trainer Ray Arcel had to do with Charley Phil Rosenberg, a robust little bantamweight who ballooned up to as much as 155 pounds between fights. Arcel would have to trim thirty-seven pounds off his fighter in just two months to bring him down to the 118 limit for bantams. And short of amputation of a limb, the only way for Arcel
to do so was to boil him in a spa and deprive him of water. Whenever Rosenberg would plead with Arcel for just a gargle to wet his lips, Arcel would momentarily gratify him but would watch his Adam's apple closely to make sure nary a drop of drink had gone down. Others have monitored their fighters' intake of water by having them sip it through a straw, squeezing the straw if necessary to make sure they didn't drink too much.

  And then there's the problem of eating when out of town. One of the reasons a fighter will lose a fight he should have won in a strange city is because he can't find a restaurant that serves the same kind of food and cooking he's been getting at home. Maybe that's the reason trainer Emanuel Steward always cooks for his fighters, both at home and on the road.

  Willie experienced all of these problems in keeping his weight at 175. On the road I'd have to constantly remind him of the difference between "light and heavy spaghetti," making sure he watched what he ate. I mean, Willie would gain weight just walking past a bowl of pasta. However, it was less the food than the water and other liquids he drank; Willie never met a water fountain he didn't stop at. He also, I found to my surprise, liked milk, lots of it. One day, watching him swill down his milk, I became suspicious of just what it was with Willie and milk. I asked him for a sip, and he pulled the glass back, saying, "You won't like it, it's warm." "But I like warm milk," I lied as I grabbed the glass. And wouldn't you know it, Willie had laced the milk with Dewar's Scotch. That was his mother's milk!

  To ensure that Willie stayed close to 175, I took on Lou Gross to monitor Willie when I wasn't around. And although Lou had cards printed up that read "Trainer," he was really a caretaker, a male nanny for Willie. He would watch what Willie ate, when he ate, and how much he ate. Lou took to pasting little Mary Poppins–esque Post-its on the refrigerator and everywhere, reading: "A word to the wide is sufficient" and "Don't live beyond your seams." Anything he could do to make sure Willie didn't overdo it.