Hillbilly Boxing

They do boxing a little differently out in West “By God” Virginia.

Ask Chuck “The Professor” Mussachio, the Wildwood light heavyweight who traveled out to Morgantown in late August to take on local fighter Tommy Karpency.

Morgantown is a pleasant, hilly semi-city that seems to be kept going by the University of West Virginia. There is even a monorail for the students to get around on. And the Waterfront Place Hotel where the fight was held was pretty spiffy and well-run.

Well, almost well-run. Before the fight, Al Mussachio, Chuck’s father and trainer/manager, happened to go out to the lobby and when he looked outside, there sat his red Dodge truck. Puzzled, Al searched his pockets for his valet ticket and came up empty. He went outside and asked what his truck was doing there and was told that a young man had presented the valet ticket - which he’d evidently found - and asked for the vehicle. Al said it was his truck in rather forceful tones, and without even asking for ID or asking any questions, he was given a new valet ticket and the truck was returned to the parking garage.

That pretty much set the tone for the whole night: Half-assed and strange.

It actually started the previous day. At the weigh-in, Chuckie had to help the so-called West Virginia Boxing Commissioner, a Phil Silvers stand-in, operate the scales.

Now I’ve been to a lot of boxing shows in my time, but the events leading up to the fight and the fight itself were right out of a “Cheech and Chong Take Up Boxing” movie.

There were five bouts on the card, and the first was what amounted to a tough man contest. Mixing this kind of bar-room entertainment with legitimate professional boxing is like showing an Abbott and Costello movie before a performance of “Hamlet.”

I went into Chuck Mussachio’s dressing room before the tough men went on, and there was one of the referees wrapping the hands of one of the tough man contestants. When somebody remarked that they’d never seen a ref wrapping a fighter’s hands, the ref answered that he was the fighter’s manager, like it was the most natural thing in the world. Evidently, the notion of conflict hasn’t reached West Virginia yet.

Then it was time for pep talks. First, the two refs told the assembled fighters that they wanted clean fights and that they’d both been fighters themselves and knew “every trick in the book.” They sure didn’t look like fighters. More like a carpet installer and a repo man.

Then the commissioner took the floor and said that there would be no favoritism shown that night and that everyone was equal in the eyes of the West Virginia Boxing Commission. Then some dude in a summer suit who they said was from the WBA said that he didn’t want any embarrassments out there. These guys seemed to have guilty consciences even before the show went on.

Chuck Mussachio versus Tommy Karpency was the main event and the West Virginian immediately crowded Chuckie against the ropes until a hard straight right hand backed him off and then he backpedaled the rest of the of the evening with Mussachio in pursuit.

In the fifth round, a head butt opened an ugly cut over Chuckie’s left eye, and there was another one in the seventh that added a smaller cut higher on his forehead. He said afterwards that he couldn’t see for a couple rounds until cutman Joey Eye got the situation under control. At one point, the fair-and-square ref actually stopped the action in the midst of a Mussachio flurry to wipe some Vaseline off Karpency’s face. It was a stone momentumkiller. Later, Mussachio had the kid cornered up and was banging away when the ref stepped in to send Karpency to his corner to get a little bit of loose tape cut off one of his gloves. That is supposed to be done during a break in the action and I saw Chuckie shake his head in disbelief.

Guess what? Chuckie lost a unanimous decision. One judge had it 100 points to 90, or 10 rounds to zero. He must have been cut over both eyes or thinking about the tough man contest. The others had it 98-92 (8 rounds to 2) and 96-94 (6 rounds to 4). So ended Chuck “The Professor” Mussachio’s unbeaten record as he dropped to 13-1-2 with 5 knockouts. Karpency is now 18-1-1 with 11 KOs, mostly against tomato cans from the sticks.

In his hotel room after the fight, while Joey Eye tended to his cuts, Mussachio was gracious in defeat. “His power was decent, but nothing dangerous,” he said of Karpency. “He was a lot better than I thought. I’ll give him that. I thought I pressed the action. I definitely didn’t think it was 100 to 90. Ninety-six to 94 I thought was fair. I think things would have gone a lot different without the cuts.”

On the brighter side for the Wildwood warrior, the day before the fight he accepted a position as guidance counselor at Middle Township High School.

On a final note, “Country Roads” was Tommy Karpency’s ring entrance song and the boozed-up crowd went ear-splitting nuts when John Denver got to the “West Virginia, mountain momma” part. I guess they knew Tommy was on a hometown country road.

Chuck “The Professor” Mussachio lays the leather on Tommy Karpency in the boxing wasteland of Morgantown, W. Va.