High life
Nerves
Taki
When I recently saw a picture of Dave 'boy' Green, the English welterweight boxer, crying after his manager announced his retirement to a sentimental crowd that seconds before had been screaming abuse because his jaw seemed to be made of glass, I thought of another altruist manager, a gent called Al Braverman, whose filly, Chuck Wenner, went under the soubriquet of the Bayonne Bleeder.
The Bayonne Bleeder made up in guts for what he lacked in ability. Al Braverman had a sharp eye for mugs like Wepner — he used to call bleeders and pugs that took more than they handed out crowd pleasers — and had signed him on the spot after seeing him being belted around for six rounds by a classy heavyweight. Braverman soon had Wepner fighting for the title. How did he do that? Easy. Some of his closest friends owned Sonny Liston, the Godzilla-like bully who was to take one of the most graceful of dives against Cassius Clay once the Black Muslims threatened to make him part of the George Washington bridge if he didn't.
The fight was a natural. It was during the height of black consciousness in America, and there was nothing that made blacks more conscious of the fact that they are physically better endowed than whites than to watch a black bully like Liston beating on a white sucker like Wepner. After the third round Wepner was bleeding enough for the crooked judges to demand that the referee award the fight to Liston. When he finally stepped in and put a halt to the slaughter, he had to endure the outraged protests of Al Braverman. 'He was playing possom' was the way nice guy Al put it. Afterwards, however, in the locker room, it was Liston who got it right. When asked if Wepner was the bravest man he had ever fought, he replied: `No, his manager is.'
Another friend of Al's was Eddie CoCo, a mobster who was the undercover manager of Rocky Graziano, Jeff Bernard's new best friend. When CoCo shot a parking lot attendant in Florida once, and was duly tried for it, he asked Al to write a letter attesting to his character. Which Al did. he wrote to the judge: 'I know Eddie CoCo for 25 years, and always found him to be a straight shooter.' Which brings me to the point of my story. Throughout last week I was trying to make myself feel like the Bayonne Bleeder while preparing to go to Manchester and take part in the Karate Championships of Europe. The reason I did that was to convince myself that if the Bayonne Bleeder survived, so would I. After all, karate is not as violent as boxing. It didn't really work, however. On Sunday morning it even made me feel like Jeffrey Bernard, who, incidentally, just happened to be passing by. It was ten in the morning, and I was in the Nelson Mandela lounge of the Salford University's recreation centre. Jeff was suffering from the shakes, and when not looking at his watch for 11 o'clock to roll around, he noticed that I was also. He was quite sympathetic until he realised that I literally was shaking from nerves. The fact that I was surrounded by posters and signs that put Lumumba University to shame as far as anti-capitalist rhetoric was concerned, did not help matters. I had sworn to myself that it was the last time that I competed. The reason I still do is that the Greeks are Doubting Thomases, and will not accept instruction in the martial arts unless the instructor lays it on the line.
In civilised countries instructors stop laying it on the line before they become 30. As I am on the wrong side of 40, one can perhaps understand my. trepidation just before going on. What kept running through my mind was how people like Wepner managed to survive the waiting so many times. Because it's the waiting that kills one, not the actual fight. So Jeff and I just sat there and trembled together.
was waiting for 11 o'clock and a little helP from his about-to-become-friendly publican, and I was hoping against hope that the Welshman I was fighting was more of a poet than a fighter. It was all for nothing. •1 didn't win, nor did I lose. I tied, which is like kissing your sister, and will try it once again next year for positively the last time.
Previous page
