4/17/2024 0 Comments Charles barkley daughter tumblr![]() But like an addict, he couldn’t stop watching. The quitting by Duran shocked my father, and while he still rooted for him (he was in his glory when Duran stopped Davey Moore a couple of years later), it was never the same again.Īfter that my father grew more cynical of the fight game than the average person (in fact, he was more cynical than your average group of people). And while I had a heap of good natured ribbing heaped on me after Leonard’s decision loss to Duran in Montreal, I had more than my share of revenge when Duran pulled his “No Mas” in New Orleans later that year (1980). Unfortunately for him, and probably very disappointing as well, I had developed my own tastes, and my favorite was “Sugar” Ray Leonard. If you said something negative about Duran, you had a problem on your hands. A close second in my father’s hall of fame was “Manos De Piedra” Roberto Duran. ![]() Many a Saturday afternoon in the 80’s was spent in front of the tube, watching the great selection of fights on display on a weekly basis. He shut me up with Ali-Quarry II and Foreman-Frazier I, but the oldies were his favorites. We grabbed Chuck Davey-Rocky Graziano (“Graziano didn’t touch him the whole fight”), and a couple of Kid Gavilan fights. We picked up old newsreels called “Monarchs of the Ring”, which contained tons of fights from the 20’s and 30’s. And while I wanted the modern fights, the “Thrilla in Manila” and Leonard-Duran, that was not going to happen. There were racks of films there, to be used for the old 8mm, and Super 8 cameras. While other kids got takenkid.jpg (9026 bytes) to Toys R Us on weekends, I was brought to Willoughby’s, a camera store near New York’s Madison Square Garden, to buy old fight films. In 1968, he had a son, and there was no question that I was going to be a boxing fan. And while Marciano was his number one guy, a crude, aggressive power brawler, I think his other favorites showed that he was more in tune to the quick and skillful boxers of the day. But some obscure names also dotted his list, guys like Chuck Davey and Walter Cartier. “The Rock” was without a doubt his favorite fighter of all-time. ![]() And when boxing had its golden age on television in the fifties, he couldn’t be pulled away from the tube. He had seen Jack Johnson answering questions in an arcade booth on 42nd Street. He told me of watching Rocky Marciano battle Ezzard Charles in the Yankee Stadium bleachers, where the fighters resembled ants. He never lost his love for the sport though. The next year he was in the Marines, and his boxing career had ended. Unfortunately, the day before his physical, he suffered a severe cut on his hand and had to withdraw from the tournament. He wasn’t going to be Canzoneri, he was going to emulate his hero, Benny Leonard, “The Ghetto Wizard”. Canzoneri, with his ears cauliflowered, and nose spread across his face, put up his dukes and asked the teenager “So, ya wanna fight, kid?” The “kid” was undeterred. In fact, an uncle took him to a store in Brooklyn frequented by all-time great Tony Canzoneri. But don’t think that this decision met with approval from his family. His training consisted of throwing punches at a heavy bag non-stop for every second of a three minute round. At 17, he was in training for the New York Golden Gloves as a lightweight. And like some of them, he wanted to fight. Like many boys born in the late 1930’s, Thomas Gerbasi grew up as a boxing fan. It may be crazy, but the reality of people punching each other in the face brought us all together at vastly different times and has seemingly always been there and probably always will. The second is about I took my seven-year-old to the Boxing Writers Association of America awards dinner in NYC. The first was my “boxing obit” of my father. And it’s not always a bad thing, as you’ll read below in two pieces written four years apart in 19. My daughter, who turns 20 on Saturday, still has her old man around, telling stories, issuing warnings, and letting her know, in the immortal words of Burt Watson, “I know guys that will put a boyfriend in the trunk of a car for two fight tickets.”īut in all seriousness, while most parents will keep their family lives separate from their work ones, in my business, that’s almost impossible. ![]() My father, Thomas Gerbasi, isn’t here anymore, having passed in 1999. On Fathers and Fighting: Not the Typical MixĬall this my version of Throwback Thursday as we approach Father’s Day 2015.
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