So now you know who won when the Rock and Two Ton went at it in some bucket of blood down by the docks 54 years ago?
?Now you?re gonna?and that?s the last I remember.??Jackie Gleason
Me and the boys sit around sometimes wondering what would have happened if Eyeties?I beg your pardon, Italian-Americans?Rocky Marciano and Tony Galento would have gone at it in the ring. Me, I don?t know. But I can tell you what, and who, went down when they had themselves a barroom brawl down by the docks an April evening back in ?60. I know, because I was there, spending clams from Madison Avenue types using my mahogany mane for a Vitalis print ad.
Rocky?s out of the ring for only five years, but he?s already all plump with prosperity, while Tony hasn?t set foot in the squared circle since ?44. He?s fat, like he was always fat. Out of shape? When was he in shape? Training? Let me tell you about training. This is what Two Ton had to say about training: ?Oh, it was about a 15-foot walk from the booth where I sat to the bar.? But, hey, he also popped beer-bottle caps with his thumbs. Or was it his teeth? Anyways, you get the picture?you?re talking about two fat guys over here.
So they?re sitting at this rickety table, see, what with a cold glass of Grade A mixed with cream in front of the Rock and a bottle of what made Milwaukee famous disappeared in Tony?s right paw, and the former heavyweight champ is making a fuss and all about the way the champ that never was treated his pal Jackie Gleason some years back at the Miami Club in Newark. There was this fat guy in the audience who was heckling the honeymooner, if you get what I?m saying, so he gets asked outside. What happens is that Gleason wakes up in the basement of the club, ?cause the guy what gets asked to the dance in none other than Two Ton Tony Galento. It?s like what Marciano told Gleason, that he went to the ball with the ?roughest, toughest street fighter in the fight game.? Yeah, but so did the Rock.
So they get up to go outside, Galento falling back. He grabs hold of Marciano?s chocolate-milk sports coat buttoned at the center, pulling the jacket down around the champ?s biceps. He spins him around and anchors a heel on an instep, throwing a left from a crouch that sends Rocky to the salt-warped rough-wood wall, shattering the glass of a framed and faded Little Hebrew. The wall goes trembly like a girl looking at movie magazines. The Rock hunches his jacket back on his shoulders, hitting the fat man, the fatter man, right below the left eye. The Suzie Q goes thwock! like when Robin Hood split the first arrow with the second arrow. He throws a left, but Two Ton?s already buried a Christmas-ham fist deep in Rocky?s gut. The champ bows at the waist like he?s meeting a king or something and up comes Tony?s knee. Crunch! goes the nose like a kid jumping on a box of rigatoni. It looks bad, worse than what Ezzard did to him at the Stadium. His nose, it?s all over his face like a kid, maybe the same kid who jumped on the rigatoni, had a field day with an eggful of Silly Putty. But there ain?t nobody stronger than Rocky. It?s like what Joe Louis said, how you hurt yourself just by bumping into him. He wraps his arms around the Galento waist and bulls him into the bar. He throws up a right, hooks with a left. He grabs Tony by that sauce-stained tie of his and with a right sends him to the wall to the side of the bar. He looks all crucified, what with his arms like Our Lord on Good Friday. But Two Ton ain?t out. Hell, he ain?t even down. With a shit-eating grin, he reaches for an empty beer mug at the end of the bar. But there?s the bartender, see. And that?s Lee Oma. He got the gig while making On the Waterfront. He liked it so well he stayed on. He takes a sawed-off pool stick with the butt-end wrapped in white tape gone all gray and frayed and with specks of old blood from beneath the bar and introduces it to just south of Tony?s nose. The cue breaks, but there?s enough left to make an impression to the side of Rocky?s neck. So what you got over here is Tony crumpled up against the wall like a bad case of laundry and the Rock kinda on all fours like he?s praying to some heathen god or something.
So now you know who won when the Rock and Two Ton went at it in some bucket of blood down by the docks 54 years ago. Hell, maybe to the day, for all I remember. You know how they say it was the butler who done it? Well, it was Lee Oma who done it. It was Lee Oma all the time.
