In There Fighting
WELFARE workers, club organisers and the police will testify that if more boys could be coaxed into the boxing ring there would be far less juvenile crime; in fact, if the young toughs in our big towns were induced to pull on the gloves and work off their teenage vigour in swapping punches with one another, they would develop into better citizens and make life more enjoyable for themselves and everyone else. From Rocky Graziano's life story, I have come to the conclusion that had he taken up boxing earlier than he did, he would have been saved a lot of pain and suffering, both mental and physical, and escaped having a criminal record. This book, with its fanciful title, deals largely with his early life on New York's East Side, where vice, racketeering and crime of every kind were part and parcel of his existence. Graziano became a street fighter from boyhood, and instead of his natural aptitude for using his fists being developed into a lucrative profession, ha preferred to fight law and order, and consequently spent most of his youth in corrective institutions and prisons.
My own first contest was at the age of 12+ and the joy of train- ing and building up a strong physique, plus the pleasure derived from learning the intricacies of the noble art, kept me fully occupied until, when I left school, there was no question in my mind that boxing was to be my life. And I came' from Plymouth, which in parts was as tough as anywhere in the world. Rocky was over twenty-one when he first made use of his talents and became a professional fighter. At that age I had already fought my first championship bout and was the outstanding contender for the middleweight championship, which I won at twenty-two. By that time I had taken part in over ninety contests. Graziano won his way to a title in far different fashion. He had a mighty right-hand punch, a granite-like chin and a complete disregard for defence. He never studied boxing technique or ringcraft, he just battered away and eventually won the world's middleweight title. He kept it for precisely eleven months! His three championship fights with Tony Zale were probably the *most unscientific and brutal affairs ever fought in a roped arena under so-called Marquis of Queens- berry Rules. They virtually brought down the curtain on Graziano's career. When he gave up boxing he was only thirty.
In contrast, my methods enabled me to win a Lord Lonsdale
Belt outright and gain notches on three others. I became in turn middle, light-heavy and heavyweight champion and, but for the war, might have achieved even more. When retirement came in 1942, there were twenty-two years of fighting behind me; I was thirty-five and came out of all this without a mark to show for so much ring activity. My motto has always been that it is a far greater blessing to give than to receive and had Rocky adopted this principle he might have been champion today. For all that he was a great fighter, who gave his all in the ring and frankly admits that boxing was his salvation.
LEN HARVEY
Previous page
