?I don?t agree with those who say that clever boxing is no longer popular. People today are simply not familiar with it??
In the summer of 1950, the still lively and lucid former world lightweight champion Frank Erne was boxing?s oldest living champion. Such a distinction always brings a rush of new attention to an old hero, especially one who did what he did very well but never possessed the aura or magnetism that makes a media darling. It is somewhat akin to a very good actor getting a lifetime achievement award after being overlooked for most of his life.
Born in Switzerland but a native of Buffalo, New York, Frank Erne was never as gifted as Joe Gans and never as charismatic as Kid Lavigne. Nor could Frank get drunk and still outbox any man alive like Young Griffo. Yet such was Erne?s cleverness, he never got badly hurt in his 54-fight career against these and other titans of an unforgettable era. He won, drew and lost in three fights with George Dixon, drew with Griffo and defeated the dangerous and confoundedly awkward George (Elbows) McFadden over 25 rounds.
Frank won the championship from Kid Lavigne in 1899 at the Hawthorne Athletic Club in Buffalo and defended successfully against Joe Gans before losing the title to Joe on a first round knockout in 1902.
Seventy-five years old in 1950, Erne didn?t look like a man who had spent more than 16 years as a professional pugilist.
Why? Because he was thoroughly schooled in defense, applied himself totally to his profession and trained diligently. ?In my day we worked on defense a great deal more than the lads do today,? said Erne. ?Nowadays the fighter come into the gym around noon, does his work on the pulleys, exercises a bit, punches the bag, boxes a few rounds and is out of the gym and off to a movie by three o?clock.
?Most of them don?t give a thought to boxing until it?s time to go to the gym again. In my day things were different. After the exercising and boxing was over, you?d spend hours practicing moves, feints, sequences of blows and all that sort of thing.?
Roadwork, Frank said, was a major factor too. ?Roadwork was the big thing in those days. Ten miles or so every morning was the schedule. It had to be like that with those finish fights. When you became a champion, you toured, usually with a burlesque show, meeting all comers in four-round bouts. This kept a man sharp all the time. John L. Sullivan toured for years and was never beaten.?
It was the great Sullivan who convinced Erne that great fighters are born rather than manufactured and that education only serves to hone what they already have. Teaching might improve them and training will certainly enhance their fitness. But the talent itself is already there.
?Old John L. was a great friend of mine. We used to get together at the New Manhattan Hotel. John L. had some great ideas. He always insisted that fighters are born and never can be made. ?Instinct, that?s the thing,? he?d holler. I still agree with him. Boxers remind me a lot of artists. A good artist can make a good painting naturally, a person without that instinct just makes dibs and dabs. You notice they always call a real good boxer an artist.?
Innate
Greatness is so often married to the individual and innate qualities of instinct, touch and feel, which can never be taught. Great talents can always spot those qualities in others. Legendary New York Yankee Whitey Ford saw at once the special glow that embraced his lifelong pal Mickey Mantle: ?I caught my first glimpse of his great batting power in Washington when he hit that tremendous home run against Chuck Stobbs. The ball sailed clear out of the stadium and traveled almost six hundred feet. I think that was when I first became convinced that I was in the company of greatness.?
Frank Erne saw perhaps only a handful of fighters whose special talent was embedded from the time of their birth. ?The most instinctive fighter I ever saw was Stanley Ketchel. I don?t think anyone ever showed him anything. It all came naturally. Ray Robinson today is the same way. I?ll bet the first time he put on a pair of gloves he did things well.?
Damon Runyon, the great boxing scribe of New York, never ceased to be amazed at how Ketchel could retain his balance in the most frantic of circumstances: ?Ketchel had a curious style as his own. He fought from a widespread stance. He was a slam-bang type of fighter, driving in with desperate courage, and he had a peculiar shift, so that if he fired with one hand and missed, he could let go with the other hand without losing his balance. Ketchel didn?t bother much with the fine scientific points of boxing. He just tore in and let both hands rip.?
Of the brilliantly natural Ray Robinson, fight manager Jimmy DeAngelo said: ?That?s the only guy I ever saw who?s got class even on the floor. He even looks good getting knocked down.?
Yet it was Young Griffo who amazed Frank Erne the most. Frank had trouble believing that the incredible Griffo was real. ?I was boxing Griffo up in Buffalo once. He was a wonderfully clever man. I was considered quite smart myself, but every slick move I made, Griffo was right in front of me. Every way I sidestepped or turned, he was there. He did it so well that after the fight I asked him how it was done. ?I don?t know how to tell yer,? he said, ?but put on the gloves and I?ll show yer.?
?He could explain it, but he couldn?t demonstrate it. Pure instinct.?
Writer W. Buchanan Taylor said of Griffo: ?I have heard it vouched for that, in his sense of co-ordination of mind and action, he was practically simultaneous in what he did. Hugh D. McIntosh told me he had seen Griffo seated at an open air caf? picking flies out of the air with finger and thumb. This was corroborated by Tommy Burns and it was confirmed by three other patrons of the ring who knew Young Griffo.
?It is true, and well proven, in regard to Griffo?s feats, that he used to bet against anybody hitting him as he stood and remained standing on a handkerchief laid out on the ground.?
Billy Madden, John L. Sullivan?s former manager, cited Griffo as a classic contradiction of Jim Corbett?s theory that flat-footed fighters were disadvantaged: ?Griffo is considered by many to be one of the fastest and cleverest boxers who ever donned a glove. He hit when flat-footed. I saw him fight twenty rounds to a draw with Kid Lavigne when the Kid was good and Griffo was in poor shape. Griffo scarcely moved out of a six foot circle during the battle, until the close when he began to tire.?
Locche
Possibly Griffo?s nearest modern day equivalent was the marvelous wizard from Argentina, Nicolino Locche. His was a lazy, languid, impudent style that was all his own. He was genuinely unique among the great magicians of the ring. He was a master of all the essential technical skills and invented his own little eclectic collection into the bargain. Locche would stick his head forward and gently tilt it one way or another to avoid incoming fire.
Locche wasn?t a runner and was a master at conserving his energy. Just as well since he was a chain smoker. Such was his confidence in his breathtaking ability, he would often position himself squarely in the line of fire and trust his physical and mental instincts. Like a cuddly bear on castors, he would slide forward, jig sideways or move back with a casual yet oddly comical grace. Sometimes he would look like an old man with a bad back as he stepped and shuffled in and out of his appointed circle, before suddenly shooting out a jab or winging a hook to the body with lightning athleticism. He could box at range or box in close, fight off the ropes or rush an opponent without looking at all awkward.
One point that Frank Erne was keen to stress is that he was no ?professional old timer? who praised the old and berated the new. His admiration of Robinson, who had yet to win the middleweight championship, surely proved that point. Yet he was certainly in agreement that the values of good balance, a correct stance and a proper defense were not as widely taught as they once were.
?A great training and conditioning spot for fighters in the old days was Joe Little?s Roadhouse at Oceanic, New Jersey. Back around 1895, Frank Slavin, the Australian champion, was down there, along with Tom Tracy, Dan Creedon and Tommy Ryan. There was a great fighter, that Ryan. He made Jeffries champion. He taught him everything.
?I trained a lot with Kid McCoy, who beat Ryan. Those fellows all believed that balance was everything. Never get caught out of position ? they worked on it constantly.
?I don?t agree with those who say that clever boxing is no longer popular. People today are simply not familiar with it. A fighter today with the same kind of skill that Mike Gibbons had would be a sensation, I?m sure. Like all the other good men, Gibbons was a natural when I first saw him. I became interested in him and when I was invited by a wealthy student whom I had taught boxing up at Yale University to spend some time down at his place in Bordentown, New Jersey, I brought Mike along.
?He came along fast and fought some wonderful fights later on. I?m convinced the public would love a style like his today.?
Classy
Frank Erne was a classy man who moved in classy circles, thanks in part to coming from a well off family. He would take trips to Europe every summer and is often credited as the man who popularized boxing in France. ?I got the idea that the French, who are scrappy people, would go for boxing.
?I finally found a Frenchman with a Ferris wheel in an amusement park who got interested. I rounded up some kids, trained them myself and put them on in tournaments with a thousand francs going to the tournament winner. Well, out of these tournaments came Charles Ledoux and Louis DePonthieu, among others. DePonthieu came over here (America) and beat Battling Nelson. He was a good fighter.?
Erne had a great liking and respect for the man he dethroned to win the lightweight championship, the formidable George (Kid) Lavigne. ?Lavigne was a great man. My manager almost had a fit when I suggested boxing him.?
Kid Lavigne could take it as well as he could give it and took a practical and almost surgical view of the punishment he received. Pointing to his classic cauliflower left ear, he explained: ?Look at this ear that I?m carrying. It is a memory of one fight. My old pal Joe Walcott gave it to me in our first fight and almost at the start of it. Some people think that Walcott can hit. It got past the imagination place with me before we boxed one round.
?I knew it was true the first time he landed. And the first time he put one fair on this left ear, he sent me back to my corner wondering if I?d ever forget that poke. That was where I got my ear. In a round or two it puffed up and filled with blood so that it looked like a raw tomato. It felt worse than it looked. There was a whole comic opera chorus in my head, singing songs that sounded like the music you hear in the dentist?s chair just before they wake you up
?What would have happened if Walcott hadn?t played surgeon for me, no one can tell. But along in the fourth or fifth round, he brought his glove over on the bad ear, pulled the heel across it and burst the ear. The songs stopped, the pain went, the ear shrank and Mr. Walcott was stopped in round fifteen.?
This was the man Frank Erne wanted to fight. Frank?s manager Big Jim Kennedy spluttered: ?What, that terrible puncher? Look what he did to Joe Walcott and those other big fellows! He?ll kill a little guy like you.?
But Erne?s mind was made up and he battled Lavigne to a 20-round draw in their first title match in Brooklyn in 1898. Ten months later, Frank captured the Kid?s crown in the Buffalo return. ?In the second fight,? Erne recalled, ?he hit me in the body so hard that I had to let out some kind of a yell. I backed off and tried to make it sound like a laugh. ?You?re not fooling me,? said Lavigne, ?that?s not a real laugh.?
?It wasn?t either.?
