Shrewd and worldly, Lou Viscusi was also a very active promoter in boxing and wrestling circles and also staged circuses and other events?
It?s funny how things work out, how even the most attentive of us can nod off and forget about a little seed we planted way back. Fine if the seed grows into a pretty flower. Terrifying if the result is a marauding beast with tentacles that wants to strangle us.
Sandy Saddler grew plenty of tentacles after being planted by Willie Pep?s manager, Lou Viscusi, as an indirect favor to Charley Johnston. Viscusi was a very able manager and promoter with good foresight. So was Charley Johnston, who learned well from his older brother Jimmy. The two siblings were among the greatest and wisest managers the game has ever seen and they had a solid back-up team too. Two other Johnston brothers, Bill and Ned, also knew the game well and how to get things done.
In January, 1944, world featherweight champion Willie Pep had just been discharged from the Navy and needed a couple of months to get back into top fighting trim. Lou Viscusi, not as busy as he normally was in Hartford, took a call from Bill Johnston in New York. The call regarded a gangling young black kid who had some fistic talent but needed a good start.
Shrewd and worldly, Viscusi knew talent when he saw it. As well as Pep, Lou would go on to manage lightweight champion Joe (Old Bones) Brown, light heavyweight king Bob Foster and top contenders Manuel Gonzalez, Cleveland Williams, Del Flanagan and Tony Licata. Viscusi was also a very active promoter in boxing and wrestling circles and also staged circuses and other events.
Lou liked what he was hearing from Bill Johnston in New York. Recalling the phone conversation, Lou said, ?It?s really funny when you think of it. I?ve known the Johnstons for years and Bill says he?s got some kid he?d like to get started and he wants to know if we can put him in for a four-rounder for his first professional fight.
?So I said it?s all right and the kid comes up. He?s a tall, skinny Negro kid and he wins his fight and I forget about him. A couple of weeks later I get another call and it?s Bill, and he wants to know if we can?t use the kid in a six. So we put him in with Jock Leslie and in the third round Leslie knocks him out.
?Now that?s all we know about the kid around here. His name is Sandy Saddler and we forget him. Willie Pep is the champion of the world and, as far as they know, around here, he?s the only fighter there is. The next thing I know about Saddler is that Charley Johnston is managing him and he?s starting to move him.?
Lou Viscusi had every good reason to be worried. Charley Johnston knew how to move fighters and he didn?t move them up unless he knew they were worth moving. Saddler, the scrawny kid who got knocked out by Jock Leslie, was climbing the featherweight ladder and suddenly looking a menace. After Bill Johnston handed Sandy over to Charley, the two brothers took a trip up to the Saddler home in Harlem to have a chat with Sandy?s father.
The old man agreed to give his consent to his son?s boxing career on three strict conditions: no smoking, no drinking and straight to bed at ten o?clock each night. Sandy nodded and said, ?All right.?
The touch paper had been lit and Charley Johnston went to work on getting his hard hitting prospect as much work experience as possible. It was the golden age of boxing and there was plenty of work to be had throughout the sport?s heartland of America as well as overseas. Johnston not only moved Saddler up, he moved him around in order to make him tougher and worldlier. Sandy fought in New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Detroit, New Orleans and Honolulu. He traveled abroad to Venezuela, Cuba, Mexico and Panama. Saddler?s mushrooming record stood at an intimidating 85-6-2 by the time he took direct aim at Willie Pep. The scrawny kid had become more than a tad useful.
Back in Hartford, Lou Viscusi must have felt like a man who had nodded off on the train and missed his station. Saddler?s meteoric progress had seemed to happen in the blink of an eye. ?Now I look at the listings and he?s the number one contender,? said Viscusi. ?How do you like that? Nobody around here will believe it because ? well, he fights Humberto Sierra in Minneapolis and Sierra knocks him down and wins a split decision.
?Not long before that Willie had fought Sierra here in Hartford over the weight and he has handled him like a baby So now Charley gets hold of me and he says, ?Can?t you put Saddler in there on top? Give him a chance to show them he can fight.?
?So we put him in on top here with Bobby Timpson. Saddler wins but he doesn?t impress and as a matter of fact they write in the papers, Willie Pep doesn?t have to lose any sleep worrying about Sandy Saddler.
?Now what are you going to do? He?s the number one contender and we make the match. Willie is around here, of course, and everybody is saying, ?Easy fight. You?ll have no trouble. Easy fight.? We also make the mistake of having Sierra work with him and he keeps telling Willie, ?You?re a cinch, you?ll knock him out.?
?There?s a fella around here who takes movies of all of Willie?s fights. They?re nice to have, to patch together and to look at in year to come, because it has been quite a career. But this fella sends me the tickets back. He isn?t even going to the fight, and many times I?ve wished we had the pictures to look at because ? well, I don?t have to tell you what happened in that fight.?
Sensational
What happened was sensational and my eighty-four-year-old father still tells me of the disbelief he felt when he heard the result here in the UK during his National Service with the Royal Air Force. Saddler had knocked out Pep in the fourth round. ?Nobody knocks out Willie Pep,? said my father, ?and that?s what everybody else in our squadron kept saying ? nobody knocks out Willie Pep.?
Tall, rangy, tough and a devastating hitter with either hand, Saddler caught Pep cold as he ignored the boxing master?s feints and negated his science by tearing straight into him with both fists flying. It was Route 1 stuff from Saddler and Pep just wasn?t expecting the furious onslaught. Willie was knocked down twice in the third round and once more in the fourth for the full count.
A year or so later, that fine writer W.C. Heinz spoke of how the perception of Saddler changed dramatically in his native New York after the remarkable first fight with Pep. In the run-up to the return match, a lot of lazy ?big town? writers started doing their homework more assiduously. ?Sandy Saddler is a New York guy, but even around New York they couldn?t believe it,? wrote Heinz.
?Most of those who write about boxing in the big towns had seen him only in the Garden and they had tabbed him only as an awkward kid who could hit some. Now, four months later, when he was matched to defend his title against Willie, they went up to Stillman?s gym to look at him.
?They saw that this was a better fighter than they had thought. Sandy?s flat-footedness had misled them and they noticed that he could move and that he knew the tricks and that he could bang with either hand, especially with an inside body hook.?
We don?t know if Charley Johnston called Lou Viscusi after that first fight and asked him how things were going in Hartford.
