Frankie Carbo, the 'Underworld Czar of Boxing'
The sport of baseball has traditionally
been referred to as the national sport of the American nation. Its handsome
uniforms, consisting of embroidered caps, buttoned tops and knickerbockers,
suggested the spirit of civilized competitiveness. Adapted from English
‘rounders’, it was, and perhaps still is, seen as something of an embodiment of
the American way.
“Whoever wants to know the heart and mind
of America,” wrote Jacques Barzun, “had better learn baseball.” It was with
such thinking in mind that in the early 20th Century, the organisers of the
sport heeded progressive-era calls urging the separation of sports from betting
and the sale of alcohol.
But if baseball projected an idealised
vision of how Americans saw themselves, boxing, it can be argued, reflected by
large measure some of the unpalatable realities of the ‘American way’.
Boxing, like baseball an English
invention, was a truer reflection of the American dedication to martial
prowess. Its freewheeling dedication to holding out to the top dollar, an
unavoidable component of a laissez faire system, made it synonymous with a kind
of freebooting capitalism.
And, as Kevin Mitchell’s book reminds, a
large scale plunder of sorts did occur; namely that orchestrated by Mobsters
and their cohorts of the talents and financial entitlements of many of the
fighters who put their lives on the line each time they stepped into the
squared ring.
It is a tale of a colossal shakedown and
of exploitation, where the Jeffersonian quote about the “labours of the many
and the profits of the few” never rang truer.
Boxing, some continue to argue, was a
‘better run’ sport during the period on which Mitchell focuses, that is, during
the 1950s. The Mobsters, they say were ‘men of their word.’
Their grip, facilitated by the
International Boxing Club (I.B.C.), an archetypal legally constituted body
which served as a Cosa Nostra front,
ensured that there were few fractured titles and that the best fighters were
matched with the best.
Yet, much of the evidence presented here
tends to put the lie to an assertion of a well-run sport. Indeed, it shows how
the Mobsters, due in large measure to their machinations, presided over a slow
but inexorable decline of what had been a mass entertainment sport into one
which was fast losing credibility among many fans, and in the greater scheme of
things, was becoming increasingly marginalised.
Central to events was Frankie Carbo, a
Mephistophelian-like figure at the heart of intrigues concocted through the
edicts of the I.B.C. and the restrictive practices of the not very independent
Boxing Managers’ Guild. Carbo schemed; conniving and cheating in equal measure
as he enforced Faustian bargains whilst inspiring fear and dread among the
boxing fraternity.
And there were the fixes, where highly
questionable decisions were made in favour of underdog fighters. Fighters with
very good records would suddenly and inexplicably sustain losses.
The pungent whiff of foul play in the
wake of certain bouts most memorably those involving Jake LaMotta and Billy
Graham caused immeasurable damage to the credibility of the game. LaMotta, the
‘’Raging Bull’ took a dive against the middling Billy Fox in order to secure a
future title challenge, while Graham, a popular, highly skilled competitor, was
decidedly robbed in a third meeting with Cuban legend, Kid Gavilan.
How did this all come about? And how did
it all unravel? The sport itself, largely unregulated and since its earliest
times existing on the margins of the law, had always attracted and made accommodations
with gangsters, shysters and their ilk. That boxing would eventually be
controlled by Mafiosi was something of an inevitability given the course of
American history.
Re-constituted by forward-thinking
criminals such as Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano who had seen off the ‘Old World’
thinking ancien regime of the ‘Moustache Petes’, and enriched by the vast
proceeds of bootlegging garnered during the Prohibition-era, the Mafia were by
the middle of the 20th century a force in American society.
They controlled politicians, judges and
police chiefs. And with the passing of the controlling torch from Mike Jacobs’
Twentieth Century Sporting Club to the I.B.C., they were well-placed to move in
and monopolise the sport.
The I.B.C. entered into agreements with
all the world champions from featherweight to heavyweight, guaranteeing that
each would fight two title fights per year under the promotional banner of the
organisation. Leading contenders were also contracted to fight exclusively for
the I.B.C.
Their stranglehold was completed via
their control of the sale of radio, television and motion picture rights of the
contests and indeed by the interests held by the I.B.C.s head, James Norris in
Madison Square Garden and the Chicago Stadium among many notable arenas which
provided the venue for most of the matches.
The sport remained largely unchecked and
its Mob rulers unchallenged until Senator Estes Kefauver’s crusade,
incorporating televised hearings by the United States Senate, a self-penned
book and magazine articles, began piling on some much needed pressure.
Although, Mitchell recounts the memorable
televised inquisition of the debonair ‘Prime Minister of the Underworld’, Frank
Costello, he does not refer to later disclosures that Kefauver’s apparent
unabashed zeal at lancing the boil of surrounding criminality may have been
tempered by the fact that he was set up and compromised by a Mafia boss who he
failed to subpoena to the hearings. Kefauver, it is said was heavily into drink
and a womaniser.
Mitchell also refers to the Kennedy
administration’s apparent reluctance to tackle the Mobsters in boxing. Robert
Kennedy, the US Attorney-General, apparently refused Kefauver’s recommendation
that a Federal Boxing Commissioner be placed within the Justice Department, a
rebuff that Mitchell implies was grounded in the fact that the Mob had helped
to deliver parts of Chicago to his brother during the 1960 presidential
elections and that striking at the Mob would impact on the Democratic Party
machines connections with local Mob bosses.
But this surely isn’t a watertight
rationale given the close attentions that the F.B.I. was giving to Mob lords
like Chicago’s Sam Giancana and Carlos Marcello of New Orleans. Perhaps, it is
best to conclude that the Kennedy’s did not understand boxing or care too much
about it.
In the end, the I.B.C. was dissolved
under a court order for breaching anti-trust laws and both Carbo and his
Lieutenant, ‘Frankie ‘Blinky’ Parlemo were sent to jail.
It was not a happy ending though, as
Mitchell who details the influence of gangsters prior to the Carbo-I.B.C.-era,
also refers to the Mob’s successors, focusing on the successor-in-chief, Don
King. Along the way, he speaks to old hands Al Certo and Lou Duva, New Jersey
boxing men who offer personal insight; although he is punctilious in correcting
a few inaccurate recollections.
Mitchell, an accomplished writer who is
the chief sports correspondent for The
Observer, is quite a sprightly writer who is adept at interweaving the
critical social and political currents of the times into a fairly comprehensive
narration of how the Mafia almost succeeded in sucking the life out of a sport.
It is true that much of the workings of
the I.B.C. and Carbo’s activities had been covered in a number of biographies
such as those on Sonny Liston, respectively by Rob Steen and Nick Touches, but
whereas the details in those works tended to distract from a more thorough
understanding of their biographical subject, Jacobs Beach dedicates itself to
the phenomenon of crime in the sport bringing out the stories, not only of
icons like Jake La Motta, but also of less-known fighters like Billy Graham and
Joe Micelli.
With fighters of the calibre of Sugar Ray
Robinson, Rocky Marciano, Carmen Basilio, LaMotta, and Gavilan regularly
practising their trade under the glare of television cameras, it is not hard to
understand why the 1950s is often referred to as a ‘golden age’ of boxing.
But what this book does is to remind the
reader of the rotten underbelly of the sport that so thoroughly corrupted the
game and which ultimately left the fight fan cynical and disillusioned.
Alas, a symptom the sport of boxing has
yet to shake off.
(C) Adeyinka Makinde (2010)
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