The Kid Was Pretty Good

He came into the gym the first time with his old man and he never showed up after that without him. After awhile, I got the feeling that the father was keeping an eye on what he thought was going to be his meal ticket.

He was a good looking Spanish kid, about nineteen, already a welterweight, although he probably wasn’t done growing yet. The father did most of the talking that first time – all the time really – and got the paperwork from Al to get the kid signed up. This was at the Wildwood Boxing Club on Park Boulevard, an old transmission shop that’s as funky as any gym in North Philly. Virgil Hill, the exlight heavy weight champ, had helped start it up with a donation of a thousand dollars and back then, when he was still fighting, he’d come down from Atlantic City to spar with Chuckie Mussachio, the Wildwood light heavy who’d founded the club with his father, Al, Ronnie G. and a few other guys who were out of the picture by the time I started hanging there. Virgil said that he liked the club because it reminded him of some of the gyms when he was coming up in North Dakota.

Anyhow, at this time there were mostly Spanish kids from the neighborhood using the club. This was before they built the new community center and most of the kids were just getting off the winter streets; maybe a few of them were really into training; the others were mostly yakking with each other or into their ubiquitous cell phones. For a while they even had their girlfriends in there, pretending they were going to be female fighters, until Al put his foot down and ran them off.

So this kid made sort of a big splash. He had athletic ability, fast hands, was in good shape, and learned real fast from Al, Richie, and Mickey, who were the trainers then. Al’s an ex-Philly cop who had a good amateur career. Richie had fought some pro and his son, Richie “the Bandit” Bennett, had a good pro career in Philly. I remember seeing him fight at the old Spectrum back when Russell Peltz was putting on some good shows there. My guy was Mickey, though. He was from Brooklyn and had fought 24 times as a lightweight in the old Garden in New York. He never fought a main event there because the guy who managed him was connected and his people thought they could do better with Mickey on the undercards. That was all he would say about it. Mickey was in his early seventies and could still rattle the heavy bag. He had a hard up-jab that was a thing of beauty, and he told me that he did nothing but practice it for six months until he had it down. It never left him. He and Joey Giardello were running buddies for about five years when they were both training at the old Stillman’s Gym, two blocks from the Garden. Mickey had boxing pedigree.

The kid was pretty good. He was coming along. And because he was the only amateur in the gym with any potential, Al, Richie, and Mickey made a big fuss over him and began telling him he had a real future. Plus he was beating up regularly on any of the neighborhood kids they could get to spar with him.

His father, who usually came in eating a burrito from a bodega on Pacific Avenue, was getting more mouthy the better the kid got. He was a pretty big dude who wore a finger-tip leather coat and a turned around Jeff cap. He was always vague about his life before he came to Wildwood, and most of us thought he’d gotten out of town about an hour ahead of the posse. He thought he knew more about boxing and boxing history than the rest of us put together, and tried to talk over anybody who didn’t agree with him. He was a conversational bully, just as his kid was beginning to be a bully in the ring, whacking the local kids all around and then sneering at them when they couldn’t keep up with him. He bloodied a few noses and it looked like it was only a matter of time before he did some serious damage. He was getting real cocky. You could tell.

Then one evening, after he’d been hitting the heavy bag, the kid passed by Kenny, who was lacing up his ring shoes. Kenny was a prison guard in his early forties who’d had eleven or twelve pro fights, winning only a couple. He was just an opponent at this point, but he loved the game, and trained regularly and religiously. He was a light heavy weight who was as efficient and comfortable in the ring as a guy his age could be, and he had heavy hands. When he and Chuckie sparred, Chuckie would wince at some of Kenny’s body shots.

This night, the kid was feeling his oats, and leaned down and rubbed the top of Kenny’s head and said, “Want to go a couple, old man?”

Kenny looked up and wrinkled his brow, sort of puzzled at the kid’s rudeness. Then he looked over at Al, who nodded.

“Okay,” Kenny said.

They got their hands wrapped and taped on the heavy sparring gloves, and then everybody in the place trooped into the adjoining room where the ring is. Sparring was always a show that everybody watched.

The kid’s father was in his corner and Al was Kenny’s second. They put the mouthpieces in, and the buzzer on the clock sounded for the start of the three-minute round. They touched gloves and the kid hit Kenny on the break with a stiff jab. Kenny cocked his head a little, and gave the kid another puzzled look.

For the first two minutes, the kid put on a good display, on his toes and moving well, then darting in to throw two and three-punch combinations. Kenny stayed mostly in one place, pivoting to meet the kid’s attacks, blocking some, slipping others, but the kid was getting to him.

The kid backed up a little and rasped through his mouthpiece, “Is this all you got, pops?”

He came in again and Kenny hit him with a body punch that sounded like a firecracker.

The kid went down like he’d been shot, writhing on his back, his legs giving little involuntary kicks. Kenny looked down at him. “He’ll be all right in a few minutes,” he said to the kid’s father, who had vaulted into the ring and was kneeling helplessly by his son.

The kid was still woozy when he and his father left the gym after those few minutes.

We never saw them again.