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STAN ISAACS Out of Left Field |
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...One More Time |
 Challenger Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter |
 Champion Joey Giardello |
That 1964 championship fight keeps coming back to haunt us
By
STAN ISAACS
of TheColumnists.com
THROUGH
the magic of video rental I finally saw "The Hurricane."
It was as bad as I suspected, not quite in the class of Oliver
Stone for distorting history, but bad enough. I writhed more
than I might have at the inaccuracies because I have my own small
history involving Rubin "Hurricane" Carter.
In a roundabout way it involves my covering the Rubin Carter-Joey
Giardello fight for the middleweight championship in Philadelphia
on Dec. 14, 1964; and the A.J. Liebling Award given by the Boxing
Writers Association; and a suit filed by Giardello against the
movie.
The A.J. Liebling Award of the boxing people honors the man who
wrote eloquently about boxing. It goes to people who wrote about
boxing in the past, when Liebling was still around the boxing
precincts.
I was given the Liebling Award in 1997. It was a huge thrill
because of my admiration for Liebling, a hero to me and many
who grew up reading his pieces in the New Yorker Magazine during
and after World War II. He was the first significant critic of
the press. He also wrote splendidly about food, World War II,
Paris, horse racing, New York lowlife--and boxing. His collection
of essays on boxing, "The Sweet Science," is one of
the seminal works about the business. It is frequently reissued
in paperback, and it is there for the asking for anyone who wants
to read great writing.
Liebling once said, "I can write better than anybody who
can write faster than me, and I can write faster than anybody
who can write better than me." Well, I like to think my
work was influenced by Liebling, so it was with some reverence
I acepted the award. And I said what a pleasure it was to receive
an award from the boxing writers because I have always admired
boxers so much.
That brought me to Rubin Carter. I told about the fight he lost
to Giardello. I said that I thought Carter won the fight. The
column I wrote about the fight included these two paragraphs:
·
I thought Carter won the fight because he pressed Giardello.
If he didn't land as often as he could have, he landed more than
Giardello did and his punches had more power. The crowd, which
shouted for its hometown man, Giardello, any time he flurried,
went through many stretches when it did not yell at all. This
is usually a danger sign for a hometown fighter.
· I picked a random round to count punches, the 11th.
Counting punches that landed, I had 12 for Carter, four with
some crispness. Giardello had eight punches, most of them jabs,
none with authority. That earned the round for Carter on my card,
yet two of the officials gave the round to Giardello.
AFTER
THE FIGHT I had more than a little trepidation as I made my way
down to the dressing room to talk first to the loser. Carter,
with his Fu Manchu mustache and bald head (rare for that time)
was a menacing figure. He had had a checkered career, having
been in and out of penal institutions. He was a militant figure
in defense of black rights, and I had an ominous feeling that
an injustice like this could have terrible repercussions. It
could turn his career around if he responded by acting irrationally
against what he viewed as a hostile society.
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I was no stranger to tense confrontations with athletes after defeats, so I and a few others approached Carter with deference, preparing for the worst.
That didn't happen.
Carter took the defeat graciously. He didn't strike out at those of us asking him about the fight. He actually was wry about it. He praised Giardello as "a good fighter-and a damn good man." Of the judges' hometown decision he said, "They have to live here." He said he could have averted that decision by knocking Giardello out. He made little jokes at his own expense.
I was relieved. I came away with admiration for Carter. Not only that, it influenced me in future confrontations with athletes after losses. I would have little sympathy for pouting peacocks who couldn't face up to a loss in a baseball or football game when I had seen how gallantly Carter had faced up to an unfair, crushing defeat that night.
He later became a marked man with the Paterson, N.J. police, was convicted and jailed for a murder. His case became a cause celebre attracting many celebrities. After a decade his conviction was overturned and he won his release from jail in 1985. His own autobiography written in jail and two books by sympathizers led to the movie in 1999.
After
I spoke about Carter at the dinner, I was thanked for my comments
by a man who said he had been a lawyer for Rubin in one of his
many appeals. And a few days later I got a call from Ron Lipton,
a referee of championship bouts who also had heard me. He said
he was delighted because he said Carter was such a good guy and
deserved such recognition.
And a few days later the phone rang and the voice on the other
end was that of Rubin Carter. His friend Ron Lipton had told
him about my speech, and he wanted to thank me. He was 60 then
and living in Toronto where he worked to help free people who
were wrongfully convicted.
I
was, naturally, pleased to hear from him. I was pleased as well
that a movie was being made about him. But I then heard about
the distortions in the story and I somehow dallied in seeing
it.
Before I saw it I got a call one day from a lawyer in Washington.
He said he was representing the movie makers who were being sued
by Giardello. The fighter claimed the movie degraded him because
it distorted the actual events in the fight.
The
lawyer noted I had written that I thought Carter won the fight.
Would I be willing, he asked, to testify to what I had written.
I said I would. The lawyer never called back. I learned a while
later that the movie people had settled the case. The lawyer
would not reveal how much Giardello was paid to call off the
suit.
When I finally saw the movie, I agreed that it distorted what
had been a close fight into an overwhelming thumping of Giardello.
There were also inaccuracies about who had helped Carter overturn
his conviction and overdramatic appeals to emotion. That is how
Hollywood often does it.
If I were Giardello I would have sued for associating him with
a bad movie.
© 2001 by Stan Isaacs.
You can contact Stan Isaacs with an email to: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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