Recently, while sitting at home and listening to music, my auditory memory cracked open as I drifted off, and found myself on a worn leather banquette alongside a crew of characters from Lansdowne Boxing Club. It was 1966 and we were in a dimly lit, dismal looking bar-restaurant in Buffalo, New York, most likely built in the 1950s. Our attention was fixed on a red-felted pool table, where a couple of our crew, Johnny Dee and Oochy, were engaged in a low-stakes game of billiards. The table, illuminated by an overhead shaded lamp, served both as the centerpiece of the place, and it’s the main source of light—aside from a vintage jukebox, which constantly played, fed by the dimes supplied by the bartender.
Our group comprised two carloads from Toronto, including three fighters—myself, a middleweight, Clyde Gray (soon to be a world welterweight contender), and a bogus heavyweight but a genuine character, Tiger Red Milne. The others—my trainer, Bev, and manager, Bertie; Clyde’s trainer, Teddy McWorter, Oochy and Bertie’s right hand guy Johnny Dario, completed the crew.
We, the fighters, were in Buffalo to compete in the Eastern United States Golden Gloves, an elimination tournament spanning eight weeks with fights every two weeks. The tournament's structure theoretically meant, the further a boxer advanced, the tougher the competition. In reality, with matchups drawn from a hat, one could face the best of the group in the first fight. In my case, being a middleweight, the best of our group was Willie Monroe, a Philly fighter who had been scoring knockouts up and down the East Coast and served as the main sparring partner for Bennie Briscoe, a top Philly professional on the brink of stardom.
Fortunate not to face Willy in my first two fights, I won my first two fights and gained a bye in the semi-final as my opponent had a cut eye. It was here on the afternoon prior to my final fight—against Willie—I found myself trying to relax by listening to "When a Man Loves a Woman" by Percy Sledge, one of the premier rhythm and blues singers of the period, released only months before the tournament in the spring of 1966.
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