Galento died of a heart attack on July 22, 1979, just three months before Wallace Cross was made a fellow inductee of the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame?
?It?ll be just like the good old days, once more.??Tony Galento
According to an Associated Press story of August 25, 1977, ?Tony Galento, once a top contender for the heavyweight championship of the world, is fighting the toughest bout of his life.? Two months before, Galento?s left leg had been amputated below the knee, the only way to deal with the aging (67-year-old) diabetic?s circulatory problems, which had resulted in a massive infection.
?Tony?s been a real inspiration to everyone here [the New Jersey Rehabilitation Hospital in East Orange],? the article quoted Dr. Terry Carle. ?He?s always laughing and joking with the other patients. Visitors often will come up to him for an autograph or to talk about his famous bout with Joe Louis.?
?A lot of money has gone through Galento?s hands since he fought his first professional fight in 1928,? the article continued. ?His tavern is closed and Galento has retired. Although he has some savings left, the hospital bills are heavy and Galento?s friends plan a testimonial dinner in his honor Saturday night [August 27] at Biase?s Restaurant in Newark.?
Good friends on the dais included Jersey Joe Walcott and the legendary Joe Louis, whom Tony managed to put down before getting himself well and truly shellacked in their championship bout 38 years before. Also present was Wallace Cross, a tough 1940s heavyweight who?d been one of Louis? favorite sparring partners. Many a tear was shed when the two old warriors met again at long last that hot August night.
No doubt that Cross was among ?an outstanding group of sparring partners,? as Louis biographer Randy Roberts described them. But was he also the one who liked to dance? When renowned trainer Eddie Futch, who also sparred with Louis (?Even if he didn?t hit you much, just blocking those shots was like being in an automobile accident?), visited the great man?s training camp in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey (?He was regal in his approach to being the heavyweight champion of the world. He was like a king?), he noted that, ?The townspeople there naturally took to him with open arms. But some of his sparring partners liked to dance, especially one guy. Joe was afraid that this fellow and some of the others might abuse the town?s hospitality. So one day Joe told ?em, ?When you fellows go into town, you?re going to act like gentlemen. Or you?ve got me to answer to.??
Born in either Cape Charles, Virginia, or Orange, New Jersey (sources differ), on March 11, 1922, Wally had been a very successful amateur before turning pro on December 2, 1940. His first opponent was game Joe O?Gatty, who got knocked out in the sixth at Newark?s Laurel Garden. Cross fought out of that city (or maybe East Orange) until 1945, winding up with a record of 23 wins, 12 by knockout, 21 losses, nine by knockout, and three draws, an average of about nine or 10 fights a year.
Cross fought some tough lads, including Wild Bill Boyd, stopping him by fifth-round TKO at Laurel Garden on January 20, 1941 (Boyd knocked down four times); Al Delaney (though an early victim of Louis, he later beat Galento), who twice won on points, that March 17 and April 7, before losing the same way, that May 12, all at Laurel Garden; Buddy Knox, who outpointed him at Newark?s Meadowbrook Bowl that June 23; Ted Wint, whom he outpointed at the same venue that July 21 and at Laurel Garden on January 5, 1942, and against whom he drew at Twin City Bowl in Elizabeth, New Jersey, that August 6; Freddie Fiducia, who won by fourth-round TKO at Meadowbrook Bowl on August 18, 1941; Johnny Flynn, who twice stopped him by fifth-round TKO, first at Laurel Garden that December 1, then at Madison Square Garden on May 26, 1944; Lee Savold, who knocked him out in the ninth at Laurel Garden on March 23, 1942; Johnny Shkor, who won on points at the Mechanics Building in Boston that April 10; Larry Lane, who drew against him at Laurel Garden that May 4 and who knocked him out in the eighth at the same venue that November 9 (Lane kayoed power-punching Lem Franklin, who later died as a result); Al Hart, who knocked him out in the second at the Meadowbrook Bowl that June 15 and who won by majority decision at Turner?s Arena in DC on April 5, 1943; never-stopped Adam Spencer, whom he outpointed at Laurel Garden on September 14, 1942, and at the Garden that November 27; ?slam-bang heavyweight? Al Boros, whom he outpointed at Scott Hall in Elizabeth that October 1; war hero Joe Muscato, whom he knocked out in the second at Laurel Garden that October 19; Pat Comiskey, who stopped him by seventh-round TKO at the same venue on February 8, 1943; Tony Musto, whom he outpointed at Dexter Park Arena in Woodhaven, Queens, that June 14; Curtis Sheppard, who won by first-round TKO at the Coliseum in Baltimore that October 4; never-stopped Howard Thompson, who won by split decision at the Mechanics Building that December 10; Lee Oma, who outpointed him at the Garden on February 25, 1944; Willie Reddish, who won on points at the Olympia A.C. in Philly that March 2; and, in his last fight, Clent Conway, who knocked him out in the first at the Casino in Fall River, Massachusetts, on February 22, 1945.
After quitting the ring, Wally, ?a quiet, unassuming gentleman,? hung out at Sam Magee?s Ringside Gym in Orange, teaching young?uns how to toss leather. It was there that a young Ron Lipton (a ref since 1991) made the acquaintance of a middle-aged Tony Galento. Lipton was sparring with Sugar Cliff Ryan, ?whose back was made out of steel cables.?
Smoking a cigar, per uje, ?Two Ton? comes over to the ring. Lipton knew all about him. Elmer ?Shrimp? Palardy, a West Orange police captain and tough amateur champ, told him that ?the two hardest hitters he had ever seen in his life, bar none, was Frankie Zamoris, who stopped Melio Bettina in two, and Tony Galento, whose left hook would actually kill you if he kept landing it solid before the ref could save a man.?
Lipton did indeed find him ?a rough and scary man, an absolute fearless animal, who you would have to kill with an axe to stop on the street. He ruined another local fighter, crippling him for life, a nice man by the name of Don Petrin.?
Wanting to show him a trick or two, Galento, who ?made Fritzie Zivic look like a fairy,? hands his lit cigar to a still-gloved Lipton. Taking off his jacket, ?this old fat man with slits for eyes wallops this heavy, and I do mean hard-as-a-rock, bag hanging there with a left hook, bare knuckles, and it made me shudder.?
?The punch would have killed me dead on the spot,? relates Lipton. ?It was so vicious, fast, and hard that to this day it seemed to me harder than David Tua?s hook, who I refereed twice up close. That bag almost broke in half, it doubled the bag in midair, and we had some mean-hitting heavyweights in that gym that could punch, and they never came close to what this little fat man did while drunk, out of shape, and old, let alone without warming up.?
Sonny Liston? ?Galento?s hooks was harder, trust me.?
Rocky Marciano vs. Tony Galento? ?It would be a bloodbath.?
Boxing tales are, of course, very much like their fish counterparts ? mercifully devoid of anything so antiseptic as facts. There?s no confirmation, for instance, of Galento ?crippling? Petrin, though he did loathe him (Petrin once spat in his face), meting out an ?unmerciful beating? and winning on points in their third encounter (their first two bouts ended in draws). Also, while Zamoris did indeed once kayo Bettina, it was in the sixth, not the second (Bettina outpointed him two weeks later). Still, Lipton?s depiction of Galento is anything but implausible.
The man honored that August evening in 1977 died of a heart attack at St. Barnabas Hospital in Livingston, New Jersey, on July 22, 1979, age 69, shortly after his right leg was amputated, and just three months before Cross was made a fellow inductee of the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame, on October 14 (Galento had been inducted on June 14, 1970). Along with fellow Garden State boxers Mario Centi, Freddie Cochrane, Tippy Larkin, Jack Benito, and Ernie Durando, Wally served as pallbearer. A devastated Jersey Joe escorted Tony?s widow, Mary, into Orange?s Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church. An ailing ?Brown Bomber? wasn?t there. He didn?t know Tony had died. No one had the heart to tell him.
