Boxing has been turned over to self-important, know-nothing technocrats. Did the guys who worked out at Stillman?s have underwater treadmills?
?Oh, the humanity!??Herbert Morrison
In what was more of a foregone conclusion than a boxing match, Floyd Mayweather Jr. decisioned Andre Berto this past Saturday, September 12. His last hurrah, supposedly. All I ask in return for my heartiest congratulations is that Mayweather stand not upon the order of his going but go already. But I?m used to disappointment. Not that that?s a comment on the fight itself. I have no such comment. I didn?t see it. I wouldn?t pay to see it. You couldn?t pay me to see it.
I did, however, see the lead-up. I saw Berto working out on an underwater treadmill. That was my cue to switch over to my disc of Saturday morning cartoons of the 1960s. Ah, Top Cat. A favorite of mine, what with that nifty pork pie hat and vest and a persona that combined the best of Slip Mahoney and Sgt. Bilko. But however much I enjoyed T.C.?s jousts with Officer Dibble (he of the ?dreamy azure? eyes), I couldn?t stop thinking of Andre Berto and his confounded underwater treadmill.
Like everything else, boxing has been turned over to self-important, know-nothing technocrats. Did the guys who worked out at Stillman?s have underwater treadmills? As Joe Rein writes, ?The shower for the entire gym was a single open stall, with a concrete floor and drain and a rusted-solid shower head.? Does that sound like an underwater treadmill to you? Me neither. But despite that deprivation, ?Upstairs in the heavy-bag area,? Rein continues, ?you could watch Jimmy Bivins, Johnny Bratton, Jimmy Carter, Jersey Joe Walcott, Ike Williams, Bob Murphy, Rocky Graziano and Bob Montgomery all whacking the big bags, doing floor exercises, or studying their moves in the wall-length mirror next to undercard fighters and promising amateurs.? Rein also mentions Sugar Ray Robinson skipping rope, hitting the speed bag, and throwing combinations that ?were the envy of everybody.?
Rein trained at Stillman?s, garnering goodies from Willie Pep, Billy Conn, and Jimmy Bratton, not to mention words of encouragement from Tony Janiro, Bobo Olson, Gil Turner, and ?The Brown Bomber? himself, who apologized to the kid for backing into him while he was hitting the heavy bag (?My mouth dropped open?). Sandy Saddler and Paddy DeMarco would pretend fight him, Bob Montgomery let him unlace his gloves, Beau Jack would kid him with a feint. Willie Pep and Terry Young told jokes ?about horses that were too slow or women that were too fast.? Hurricane Jackson had his stock answer to any and all questions, ?Wanna shoot rats?? Bobby Bartels from Queens got all pissed because of a news story that said he looked Anglo-Saxon. ?Who the fuck is Angelo Saxon? I?ll break his ass!?
Giants all. But nobody, and I mean not Joe Louis himself, got in without paying doorman Jack Curley the 15-cent entrance fee. ?Pay up, ya bum!? Lou Stillman would yell out.
No underwater treadmill, but, Rein tells us, ?Everybody smoked and spit on the floor, including the fighters when they took a break. Graziano would take a drag on a cigarette between rounds of sparring, or any other time you?d see him. The main floor was a dull haze of cigarette and cigar smoke.?
And the time a journeyman light heavy got arrested there, wearing nothing but a towel, wanted for murder.
As Glenway Wescott might have observed, Stillman?s wasn?t much on preserving ?ordinary parlor decorum.? But as Hart Crane retorted, ?Parlor, hell, parlor.?
The trainers were there, the cornermen. Guys like Charley Goldman and Whitey Bimstein. Ray Arcel, too, and Chickie Ferrara. Al Silvani and Freddie Brown. Yeah, and Jimmy August. Go on, mention the words ?underwater treadmill? in Jimmy August?s august presence. See what it gets you. I dare you. I double dare you. Tell Stillman all about it, why don?t you? Dollars to doughnuts his .38 would be out from beneath his tweed jacket before you got to ?mill.? Holly Golightly, the man refused to so much as crack a window for Gene Tunney, never mind all this talk of underwater treadmills!
No, no codswallopy, colorless, kewpie doll underwater treadmill at Stillman?s. And yet the men who trained at ?the center of the boxing universe? somehow (as if by an act of God) managed to make it through 15 leather-larruping rounds. Go figure.
And don?t get me started on John L. Sullivan and Jake Kilrain, men who trained on brine and beef blood and beer, who went at it bare-knuckled for 75 rounds under a sun that literally blistered them. It was in the 44th that Sullivan started vomiting, but ultimately Mike Donovan, Kilrain?s manager, threw in the sponge, saying how he wouldn?t be ?a party to manslaughter.?
They, too, didn?t have a fancy-schmancy, cutie-patootie ?underwater treadmill.?
Oh, the humanity.
