AIR DATE:
EPISODE: Episode 1
Transcribed
[ Music, ] foreign [, Music, ] writer, boxing historian, I should say boxing writer Bob Timmy story and please respond to welcome a real magic to our show.
Today, Christian Christopher leforce, who wrote this fantastic book.
The kowinsky Chronicles, which to me was more than a book, became a friend and I was saddened when it ended it’s a big book, but it’s a wonderful book.
It’S got great photos, it’s got kowinski’s whole story, it’s really evocative of the era in which coinsky fought, and it’s got brilliant sketches that Chris did himself and Chris um is currently working on a book about the Magnificent Tommy Ryan former Undisputed welterweight middleweight champion, and it’s Just a real real real pleasure to have someone on board have on for a long time.
Please help me welcome Mr Chris leforce here to our our humble show, Welcome Chris.
Thank you, sir.
I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you having me on today and I look forward to it.
Oh thank you me too, and so does everyone else.
I love the book.
My first question is: why kowinski, what got you interested in koinsky and how many times have you had to listen to people say Joe choinski and roll your eyes? I think he has the most mispronounced name of any.
You know significant fighter in history.
In my opinion, right and um for a lot of reasons, but uh and I can go, I can go into that.
How many times I’ve heard it mispronounced misspelled it’s it’s ridiculous, but uh to to answer quickly.
Your first question um I got into boxing.
I would say around 1973 when I was in I think third grade.
I saw an issue open in school for some reason on on a coffee table open to um pre-flight interviews and such on in a Sports Illustrated issue and uh.
It was dealing with the Ali Frazier impending flight of um March 8, 1974, the fight and it showed it said how Frazier had gone to Upstate New York to train in a coal camp and he had the hood on and everything and you know, Frost all over And Ali was in Florida training and just the the disparity between the two camps and everything and um I really got into it.
But although I love all the Visions, I love boxing in general history, obviously uh the heavyweights have specialized in so with Joe kowinski.
Even though he wasn’t a true heavyweight and my stance is, he was the first light heavyweight champion of the world.
Not given enough credit for that um I looked at his career and I saw that at only like 165 to 168 pounds.
He took on the best.
The most legendary fighters of that first golden age of the heavyweights he took on guys, like you, know, uh Jim Jefferies, Peter Maher Buffett, Simmons uh, you know yada yada yada, you can go on and on and he did not only did he fight him because any Journeyman can fight them all right, but he did extremely well basically fought him all to a standstill um.
He had great results against her yeah.
He did and Jeffrey’s was a monster.
I mean he was gigantic, even exactly especially for his day, but even today he was big.
His height was exaggerated by the way they call the Stadium at 6-2 um a uh, a prominent anthrop anthropometrist had um Dr Dudley Allen sergeant had measured him in Fitzsimmons and most of these guys, so he was only six feet.
One half inch, but he would.
He would go up to 225 pounds: um, not even walking around a weight, he’d be in shape and condition back then, at 225.
wow.
He could take a punch to the body in the head, like you wouldn’t believe, but you would because you know, but um he took some shots.
I would knock out most Fighters and he just came back and kept coming.
Yeah, I’m glad you mentioned about the height, because that’s one thing you read about uh, it’s it.
You know.
I have a friend in in Halifax art hafey and he was a rated above the featherweight champion in the 70s, so Arts, five, two and people that won’t say I know – are he’s at least six feet and I’ll say no he’s not six feet.
He’S five.
Two he’s shorter than me and I’m short so boxers tend to project really big, so you, you know and know our guys, like Foreman or Ali.
That word really huge.
It’S 3864 yeah yeah, but when you look at it Tyson Fury is not six nine.
By the way, Tyson Fury is six seven and a half or six eight okay, and this is judged by standing beside you know: um basketball players and people whose Heights are widely have been widely measured.
So right because I’ve seen Jeffries listed as six three six three and a half and then six one or six inch, six and a half, but with kolinsky I’ve seen it from 510 to 6-1.
How tall was golinski so Joe generally is? His height was measured at five ten and a half, but – and I was just reviewing this again, his um – you know in the tail of the tape for various fights like the Jeffries fight the 20 rounder uh.
He was measured at five eleven and a half, so my thing is in that era: a lot of them were measured in their shoes right, okay, so they would add an add, an inch or three quarters of an inch or half an inch.
I would put him at basically five eleven five, ten and a half.
You know he was no giant even Ben, but of course knew there was John L Sullivan at 5, 10 and a half right, for instance, so yeah.
It’S amazing that when he that he fought a guy’s overwhelmingly strong, I mean when I spoke to Chris Dundee, the promoter Angelo’s brother, you said you had to see he said: Jeffrey’s physically may have not been the tallest but wide.
He was just built like a brick house yeah, so I have photos of him.
You know, and a lot of this is thanks to my friend Tracy kalis, who is a great great historian.
He did the record on.
You know kowinsky and Ryan, and I mean I’m adding to it, but but drawing heavily from it.
It’S an awesome base, put a lot of work into it.
He and I got I – I got um basically Jeffrey’s – highlights and video from him um it’s out there now, but I guess but um uh, you know unbelievable.
He was such an athlete.
He could run the uh.
What was it the 10-yard dash in like 10 seconds? Essentially, yeah yeah he could do he could do backflips um, there’s video of him just dancing around.
He was incredibly quick for his size, um, which helped a lot, but he was sort of in a lot of ways.
He was like an early Sonny Liston.
He uh and I think it’s too recently it’s come out that Sonny liston’s reach might have been exaggerated at 84 inches.
It probably was, but you know he was another.
He was a monster, I mean both men.
Could they had different styles? Really, you know Jeffries wasn’t as aggressive.
He would come at you in a Crouch and kind of wait for you to lead and punch to the body with his hellacious left and another tangent I’ll go on real quickly.
Is that Jeffries, along with Joe Frazier, were converted? Southpaws I have video yeah, a video of Joe Frazier as an amateur who you know like me.
It’S right, jab first left held back yeah.
I know stranger, I didn’t know Jeffrey though yeah Jeffries was absolutely a converted South pod.
Now a lot of people think Liston was too because liston’s left was better than his right, like the two I just mentioned in his case, they say that that that’s just not true that he developed his left uh when he was young.
Unfortunately, he um he worked in the the cotton fields and things like that and he held a very heavy Basket in his left hand, while he picked with the right and they claim you know, I have a lot of books on on listing all the ones out There I think and um he that he hauling the heavy basket constantly build up his left and uh Willie reddish’s trainer, among others, I’m sure, had a lot to do with the development, but his left was stronger than his right.
Jeffrey’S left was stronger and so was frasers.
Obviously yeah with the legendary Philly left hook.
Yeah and listen destroyed, listen, knock people out with his jab and knock their teeth out.
I know uh Chris and I wasn’t going to argue with Chris.
I mean who might argue with Dundee.
You know I mean he’s been around since the 20s and and he there’s sailor boy, Sonny Liston from 1937-38 fighting.
So he said to me: he didn’t learn in prison.
He learned long before prison and um uh, but I I mean I I don’t know I I wasn’t I I luckily was young enough and and not smart, but smart enough.
No, not to talk back and say the question sure you know experience.
Experience is not always spot on memory, you know the vagaries of memory.
It certainly isn’t in my case, but yeah um.
I don’t have early footage of Sunny.
I have very early, very early amateur footage of, like you know, Mike Tyson, a lot of it.
Um uh.
Some of the ones I mentioned, um, George Foreman, by the way – uh.
You probably know this, but a lot of people might not George Foreman when he was still an amateur got to spar with Sonny Liston a lot oh yeah, and he said he said that man, you know I can punch like the blazes.
I could not back that man up, I, I could barely make him blink with my best punches, so listen is underrated.
Today I I got to tell you.
I watched the owner’s chapula’s fight from the Olympics and I I shouldn’t be laughing, but I because I watched a George Foreman movie the other night and and I liked it but um, you know when you fight chapulas, it was, you know, like all the Russians back Then were professional amateurs right, the guy had been fighting for 14 years, absolutely yeah yeah.
Absolutely they should have been Pros: yeah yeah, they were Pros yeah and so there’s Foreman who’s been fighting for, maybe 16 to 18 months to poulis who’s.
Looking nice and confident and the third or fourth jab forming lands, you know knocks out 10 of his teeth and then a couple seconds later.
This is less.
Christmas is less than a minute into the fight and the guy’s gushing blood.
And it’s like a horror movie where you go, that’s not believable and this guy did look on his face.
He comes back to his corner and he’s like and years later, shapula said you know, um years after the fight, he was in a traffic accident crossing a street and he got hit head on by a car he survived, but he said it was like being tickled Compared to getting hit by George Foreman, I mean he said he never been hit like that before no one had ever done that and he never had a power jab for sure, oh yeah, he didn’t use it enough.
Unfortunately, right.
Thank you right earlier, um yeah, when you’re looking at kowinsky the fight that really people talk about their Barbados, Joe Walcott, but I think the more interesting fights when he knocked out um Jack Johnson and you detailed this so brilliantly in your book because he used to Trick and I’m wondering if he invented it – that’s used today where he exaggerated his his his hands a closed guard, a tight guard and he brought them up deliberately to expose his midsections.
So Johnson would lean forward with a jab and expose his jaw, and he just switched dances hit him with a left and Johnson was out.
I mean he was out for a while.
You have a good memory um.
He he did that in that fight.
He uh, of course, this was later than the Jeffrey’s fight.
He did it in the Jeffrey’s fight too, and he did it in other fights too, he was kowinsky, as you know, was a very highly intelligent boxer.
He was well read.
He was very smart outside the ring intellectual um, but he was.
He was equally so in the ring he he had brilliant tactics uh.
He would absolutely do that.
He would raise his guard, he would invite a body punch and he had the hand, speed and the timing and the anticipation to to counter him and now, In fairness to Johnson and Jeffries.
In both cases it was fairly early in their respective careers, so they weren’t.
You know nearly as as experienced as he was, but um yeah he he nailed them both with with one hellacious punch.
It took Johnson out whose chin was Never As Good As Jeffries in Jeffrey’s case.
It sent him spinning and staggering back into the middle of the Ring um.
So and of course, what what you hear later like when they talk later in later years in their Memoirs, Johnson Jeffries kowinsky, all of them Tommy Ryan, all of them they’re um Recollections, of course, are not spot on.
Usually, there’s exaggerations, there’s so um for one thing from all of the Contemporary um primary source accounts, uh kowinsky probably took out Johnson with one right to the head and yeah and some some of them said it didn’t look like much, but that’s the kind of numbing Power he had and it caught him around the temple area and Johnson was just he.
He tried to move a little bit, but he couldn’t come close to beating the count and then, as you know, all hell broke loose um the uh, the Texas Rangers stormed in they had been Incognito dressed in.
You know civilian clothing and put them in jail, which is a story in itself.
That’S a wonderful story right because that he exactly now they say you know they were in for 30 days, 24, 16 days, whatever they were actually in for 24 full days parts of two other days, so they were in for in prison together 26 days um they And there are, of course there are discrepancies about exactly what happened.
Joe was taken out apparently by um Sheriff Thomas and some others to dinner at night, champagne, dinners and then brought back at night and people complain so that stopped but and they they say that Johnson was in his own cell in the basement.
You know treated like crap, of course, bigotry, but then I mean it shows them together in the same cell and Joe eludes in one of his Memoirs that they were in the same cell and he says they weren’t so, but what they.
But what is true is that um Sheriff Thomas and everyone else involved, um Schreiber and everyone else and of course, they’re in that famous photo right right where Joe and Jack are behind bars and they’re.
Looking like really forlorn and all the others have their rifles in front for posing for posterity yeah.
Well, they got them a pair uh, two pairs of gloves from uh the local gym, and they let them out into the courtyard during the day, and they let them go at it.
They let them Spar and of course, they all loved it.
They invited people civilians in to watch um Joe, showed uh Jack, all kinds of uh pointers, so mostly defensive and he told him he says you’re you’re too fast to be taking punches.
You should just get out of the way of them and, as I detail in the book or mentioned in the book, I said well, he only you know if this is all exactly true.
He only took part of his advice because, of course, Johnson became arguably the greatest Blocker of punches that ever lived greatest defense, or he was right up there on the short list.
I would put Wilfred Benitez and maybe Willie Pap and a few other guys up there with them.
But Johnson was awesome in that respect.
Yeah yeah there’s this story, I’m not sure if I read this in your book about um might have been Jeffrey Ward’s book Unforgivable.
Blackness, where, at the end after his career, is over Johnson, who was always dressed in the nines walks into a gym and you’ve heard this, I’m sure in Los Angeles and says to the owner who whom he knows uh bring me your best fighter and the fighter Comes and he says, stand a foot and a half over here and Johnson has his arms by his side and said: I’m not going to move my arms.
But when I say go you try to hit me and he did and the guy couldn’t hit him and just by moving his hips and his shoulders and rolling with his head, he was able to avoid punches.
So it’s it’s an amazing skill and and the reason I bring that up there was a fight last night, I’m sure if you saw Adam kanaski, probably his last fight.
Hopefully okay, I knew he was fighting.
I missed it, yeah fighting a guy named kuzamano and he had Sugar Hill, whose relative of Emmanuel Stewart and – and I know sugar, because he because I, when I work for his Len, is promoted a fight with Adana Stevenson who sugar was training and he kept saying To Adam before the fight he had his hands on his face and he said look at me.
Just look at me.
Just listen to me right now.
He said in this fight.
You have to move your head.
You can’t move in a straight line.
You got to be moving back and forth.
If you keep your head, there you’re going to get hurt and of course, kanaski couldn’t do it.
He got dropped awkwardly in the first round and then got a pummeling after for seven rounds and finally um this corner just said: I’m going to stop it, he went out for one more round and took he got hit three or four good shots.
He was out and and sugar levels up and he’s waving the towel and the other trainers.
Yelling and the doctors are yelling and and Harvey dock LED 17 more punches land on him.
Oh no, where do they get some of these referees? I I don’t know, and, and you look at it and the announcers, how does this happen? It’S life and death at that point, yeah, the guy standing in front of hearty dog, stop the fight it’s over and still he’s pounding.
Kusumano is pounding away on on and asking nobody should have done.
He should have pulled the Victor Valley at that point and jumped in like he did with with uh Cooney you’ve got it.
You’Ve got to go in the ring, wrap yourself around him and say get out of here to the ref.
I mean it’s ridiculous yeah.
This has happened before there’s a famous clip of Ike Williams.
Beating up Bo Jack right Williams, turns to the rap and says Jesus Christ.
Do I have to kill the man? I’Ve hit him 20 times in a row.
Stop it exactly.
Gene Tony was like that.
He they say he lacked the Killer Instinct, but it’s Humanity time where a guy could hit a guy.
A lot like that, and you know people think death in boxing is the Rarity.
It isn’t it’s the norm, it just it.
Unfortunately, but it has happened all through history now I want to ask you with um kowinski: we have that brief film of him and Jim Jeffrey sparring um is it? Was there any film were any of his fights filmed Quincy, or is that the only film of them? No, unfortunately, that’s the only extant footage of him in any kind of anything resembling ring action, in fact, in fact now they they show him like.
Very briefly, I think yeah yeah you’ll see him very briefly in the video like in the ring before the Jack Johnson fight, because he was a second you know, and so he you’ll see him standing there and there are stills of it.
But that’s the only actual video of him in action and he was almost 42 and I want to mention yeah as you as you saw Joe kowinski at 42, could dance around and move around.
He was still so mobile.
He looks like a gene.
Tony, I’m not going to say an alley because Ali had the the greatest foot speed of any heavyweight who ever lived in my opinion, but um like a gene.
Tony a Jim Corbett, guys like that you know probably faster on his feet than the Larry Holmes.
Even in my opinion, but yeah he could move and – and you can see him fainting constantly and uh.
He just looks really good at almost 42 years old.
So why why rather yeah? He was friends with Johnson.
He was um.
He wasn’t like really close friends.
He they were friends, you know they were.
They were on friendly speaking terms, um Johnson.
Unfortunately, in some cases he was inconsistent too.
Sometimes he would deny that Kaminsky actually knocked him out.
He would say I’ve never been knocked out in my life.
The hardest punch, though, was by Joe kulinsky and it rattled my brain for a few seconds, and but then he admits that, yes, I was knocked out, and sometimes he at least once he didn’t even give credit for teaching him.
But most of the time and later he said yeah, he said that month in prison with Joe, he said, taught me how to be a champion it gave me.
It gave me enough information now.
Obviously he picked up a lot after that, but he said he gave me the Baseline to become a champion so yeah he was a real scoundrel Johnson, because although he was not guilty of violating the man act because the woman he brought across state lines was his Wife, although she was a prostitute Johnson, was well known, as you know, for he would skip out in hotel bills.
He would skip out in restaurant bills, guys in England or in states with book him for Vaudeville to her for eight weeks and give him.
You know two grand a week, so he gets 16 Grand and then after a week, he’d just leave and keep the money yeah, and so he was Notorious in a lot of ways.
Unfortunately, yeah so um yeah and you can argue that he um set back the cause of black boxers a lot too, because I mean let’s face it when he was up there.
He drew the color line against Sam McVeigh, who was the best man at one of his many weddings, uh Joe Jeanette, Joe Jeanette, Sam Langford.
Of course, all the great black boxers of the day and boy there were.
They were great, The Fierce and forcible he fought them all in beaten, yeah.
He said well, of course, he famously said you know two, two black boys won’t draw flies and then in Paris of course, he fought battling Jim Johnson.
A black second-rate heavyweight Jack Johnson broke his arm and probably should have been disqualified in that fight and lost his title ironically, but it just goes to show that he was.
He was somewhat of a hypocrite too um now the other ones we mentioned, especially Joe Jeanette.
What a gentleman, what a great man that guy was awesome: dude, yeah, yes and and also um Canadian there’s a myth which I’m sure, you’re well aware of that people said you know he did so well against Johnson Johnson didn’t want to fight him again, but that Wasn’T true, Johnson fought Johnson had 60 70 fights.
This was only langford’s 20th fight.
This was in Boston and and Johnson gave him a hell of a beating, knocked him down five or six times and Joe Woodman langford’s trainer said after that years later said.
Manager.
Excuse me said that uh all the stories about Langford scoring a couple knockdowns and Langford winning couple rounds.
He said it was all false.
I planted that so to help Sam out, so his confidence wouldn’t be completely destroyed.
Now be fair, of course, um at the time.
Lankford was not only less experienced, but he was.
It was basically a Walter weight against a heavyweight or uh.
Today, a Walter wait against a you know, a cruiserweight, so it wasn’t at all fair in that sense, um, but yeah Langford never knocked him down.
Lankford even admitted he said, the only real beating I got was against Jack Johnson.
But that said after, like after Sam had packed on like 30 pounds of muscle and experience Johnson wanted no part of him anymore and it would have been a really good fight and they had a deal from National Sports uh National sporting NSC in Britain that if He beat Tommy Burns, he would come back and defend it against Langford and he never lived up to that, but Johnson rarely lived up um to any deals.
To me.
What’S fascinating, of course, is with Langford.
Langford was trained by by uh George budge Byers, who was from Prince Edward Island Canada’s smallest prophets and buyers was trained by by um the original George Godfrey from Canada, who Jack who John O’Sullivan refused to fight exactly exactly and Langford was a very funny guy.
There’S a very funny story: he was fighting someone.
I thought it was iron Hague in Britain, but it wasn’t because that fight ended early, but it was.
He was fighting someone in Britain and at the seventh or eighth round he comes out and he touches gloves tiger Smith.
I believe right tiger Smith, yeah.
Yes, you know the story right, so the guy says what are you doing? Sam? You only touch gloves in the last one he says yeah.
This is the last round exactly yeah.
Why are you touching gloves? This isn’t isn’t the last round? No, it is for you and I told that the year Lennox Lewis got inducted into the Hall of Fame at Lennox.
It’S great to see him laugh, but he laughed for a long long time over that one he said I wish I would have thought of that when I was fighting.
You know that would have been great to say to somebody because you know with Langford.
There were so many stories where one reporter said he had a yellow streak and then he knocks the guy out into the reporter’s lap and then one guy’s cutting oranges and he said from the fighters on between rounds.
And why are you cutting all those oranges? Oh yeah, it’s from a guy to suck between rounds all you’re wasting your time.
He’S not gon na need those oranges yeah.
He took him out in the first.
I think yeah yeah, it was the last round – was the one where they come in and discuss within the British officials.
We point the referee and I bring my own referee and they said no, no, that’s not.
We bring our own, we have foreign.
He holds up his right hand goes.
That’S my referee, that’s my referee, exactly exactly well, he was he was funny.
He was witty, he had the mother wit yeah um, and he and he took it very stoically in such good humor.
You know when he went blind.
Of course you know he was going blind, the last several years of his career and had to getting close just so we could feel where the guy was so we could clock him in that or whatever yeah he’s just sad.
There’S a video of him, though, which I’m sure you’ve seen of him after the operations where he could, where you could hear him talking and it’s rather um.
It’S interesting Dempsey right admitted that he wouldn’t fight him.
He said because someone said to Dempsey: no one scared! You, and he said, that’s not true.
I was supposed to fight Langford.
I wouldn’t fight him.
He would have killed me and at the time when he was under John, the barber riesler yeah notorious.
I was early in Dempsey’s career and that’s when riesler, you know really kept insisting on putting him in with Langford, because he didn’t care, Dempsey lost or not.
He just wanted the money from the payday um and – and there are some things people say that are a little bit hyperbolic.
You know they.
They say it because they for, for various reasons they want to give the guy a lot of credit.
They want to be humble, they understate things about themselves, so in my book he may or may not actually have been afraid of Sam.
But I’ll tell you what, in my opinion, it would be pretty much pick him as to who would have won Prime to prime.
It would have been an awesome battle.
You know the interesting thing.
Is they talk about how Dempsey avoided Harry Wills? But if you look at Dempsey’s career, he feasted on tall guys like Harry, was guys like that he just annihilated so for what I think he would have beaten Harry.
It would have been a good fight and Harry Wills obviously was was a great fighter yeah.
I think he was a little overrated in in terms of his boxing skill you’ll hear about his boxing skill, and I can only judge by the few you know Snippets of fights that remain yeah yeah.
Well, of course he was that was really late in his career.
When he and he was knocked out by Oscar didn’t so I I don’t even really Gauge by that I’ve seen it but um him against, like Louise ferpo and people like that, and he looks really crude.
I I scarcely seen him throw anything like a jab in that fight.
He’Ll he’ll he’ll swing, he’ll clutch swing, clutch and um, so I think he was a little overrated that way, but as long as he could hold you with one hand and hit with the other and um just mix them up to the body and head and use Some strategy and things you know he was a really formidable guy to fight and obviously his record against the other of the Fearsome four and guys like um, yeah, Fred Fulton.
You know he he looked really good.
I mean he had a great record against guys like that, of course Lankford was aging and going blind yeah, but you know I mean I think he probably would have dominated him anyway only because he was so large yeah I mean Dempsey went through Fulton in what 18 seconds and it went through Carl Morrison, disguised and Willard was easy and for him and those most of those big guys back then had no balance same as got a lot of God, big guys today, just no balance exactly and and Dempsey didn’t have a problem With him, but koinsky fought guys like Frank Childs, it was a great fighter and beat him and Jack Johnson.
Why was kulinsky? Do you have a theorist? Why Quincy wasn’t infected with the disease of racism that other Fighters were like James, J, Corbett and other guys back then yeah yeah? So I I, in my opinion, um now go.
This goes back to his childhood, where his father, Isidore Nathan, kowinski Ian kowinski as he went by, was one of the he’s considered generally the most important Jewish writer of the old west and um.
They go by how life was back then in the Jewish community, at least by his writings, now his famous antiquarian bookstore, which he opened on Geary Street um and at their house.
I think this predated the Golden Gate.
You know Avenue, house um.
In fact, I know it does uh, they would have what they would call back.
Then, a salon, a grouping of the that some of the best literary minds of the time you had, of course, Samuel L, Clemens um.
You had uh Bret, Hart um.
You had uh Bob Ingersoll, you had a lot of these guys and they would.
They would chat and Joe said that you know he would sit in and listen as as a youth and then he said he knew them all.
Well, I don’t know, I don’t think he knew Mark Twain well at that time because, as it turns out – and I have Ron Powers book Twain awesome book uh, he said that Twain was actually out of the West just before Kaminsky was born, so I think he Met him later, but memory but um he.
So he knew these guys and there was an Eclectic Bunch there were.
You know there were um Christians and um agnostics, atheists and and Jews and just all different kinds of people.
And, of course, he also grew up in San Francisco, which, in its own way, was a completely different world from the gold rush on you had people that would come in of all groups and they all started on an even footing.
You know um the Jews weren’t um.
There wasn’t some nearly so much bigotry against Jewish people, for instance, and in Blacks.
They all came in.
They all did their part in the community and they were all they were all accepted, not completely, but accepted to a much higher level than probably anywhere else in the country.
And I think that environment um and things like that in the fact that he was was there was jubating going on in his case too.
He had to put up with that.
So I think you know he was more sympathetic for that reason, but there was just a lot more of an Eclectic environment where he was exposed to that right and he was just a good person anyway.
He was just a very good person.
So I think, when you combine all that that explains it yeah and and would you agree that you know racism obviously stems from fear and ignorance and he was not an ignorant person.
As you said, he was very, very smart and very well read so it you know that may have been another way that he could almost like a um uh when you get a uh when you get a needle.
I can’t remember the word I’m looking for now, but inoculation Against Racism in the sense that he he his intelligence.
You know in that respect was stood him, a good stead that he realized.
Everyone was equal to everyone else yeah.
I would agree with that.
Obviously he was very well read.
Uh he um was into uh, I mean he.
He was very well very well read.
I have some examples in my book of some of the books that he read and uh some of the playwrights he followed and um.
He was just a very, very intelligent person.
He was friends later um a good friend and influenced somewhat by a man named Albert Hubbard, who started a uh, an arson Community um in Upstate New York near Buffalo, um yeah, and not to be confused with L Ron.
Hubbard, who was an adopted nephew, not related by blood, and they only met.
I think briefly, when L Ron Hubbard was five years old, so they they are not really to be Associated.
Albert Hubbard was an interesting man.
He ended up dying on the Lusitania.
After famously writing he wrote this is this.
Is I need to mention this? For the human interest part, he wrote in his writings Albert Hubbard, uh, that how Noble of Isidore is Isador um, oh boy, I’m I’m forgetting his name.
Is there a Strauss, visitor Strauss and his wife Ava, who who uh owned Macy’s in New York City? They were millionaires right.
They were on the Titanic in 1912.
, when she was offered a place on the boat he said uh or when he was offered placed on the boat.
He said, no, I’m not going.
I want someone younger to take my place.
His wife said I’m not going either.
I’M not my husband’s here or not and we’re going to die together and they did.
They went in an upper birth and died.
Well, so they went down with the Titanic and um a year or two later shortly after Hubbard wrote that how Noble and if I ever get the chance that would be the way I would like to go, not knowing that he would get the chance.
So on the Lusitania, which of course was you know bombayahubo off the shore of Ireland? Yes, it happened and he said you know he’s saying to someone they’re like what are you going to do and you know the boats had already departed and some people are getting ready to jump off the edge when it when it’s going under and there was no Hope and Isidore and his wife said I don’t um something.
No I’m sorry Albert Hubbard and his wife said something to the effect of uh.
It doesn’t look like there’s anything anything to do very calmly and said we’re just going to stay together here and they walked up to their room in an upper birth and just went in and essentially that’s the last.
That was seen to them too so wow yeah.
That’S that’s courage.
I remember reading uh uh an autobiography of my favorite comedian Groucho Marx, and he said today after Lusitania was struck and sunk that in the United States there was no such thing as German, fried potatoes or sauerkraut or German chocolate cake or anything like that.
It all disappeared and um yeah, I mean that’s a great slice of of world history.
That’S one of the reasons why I really loved your book, because it’s more than just a book about a fantastic fighter, jokowinsky, it’s a slice of American History, which is also a slice of world history, and I want to ask you why uh you know I, for Some reason like recently I thought well, he must have had a lot of fights and then gone to Australia.
But when I checked your book again he went to Australia after eight or nine Pro fights.
I mean.
Why would he go to Australia that early in his career, just because he was young and want an adventure yeah that was part of it? He said that there were people in in San Francisco friends of his who told who had been there and told him that it’s just it it.
Basically, it’s a if not a life-changing experience.
It’S a uh just a really good place to visit and a lot going on there and just something that you wouldn’t want to miss out on.
If you get a chance so yeah in 1890, he did his Australian tour and knocked out guys, like you know, Jim jawbreaker, Fogerty um.
Of course he had the two fights with Goddard, Joe Goddard, who was winning short Prime.
What’S that was a very dirty fighter, though very tough, very dirty um and I’m actually friends with a descendant of his a good guy but um, very yeah, very tough, very dirty and um Joe was was only 21 at the time they fought twice there, both both Times he was stopped in the fourth round, but he was beating the living heck out of Goddard.
He would he was pummeling him.
He had him a bloody wreck and the referee you know this is this is Joe’s side.
It’S the referee like in England a long time ago, would referee from outside the ring.
Well, he said, like I I’d floor Goddard, the referee on the outside of the Ring.
Would run all the way around the ring before he started Counting and Goddard used this tactic where he would rush, because he was much heavier than Joe and um.
Of course, most of them were, and Goddard was a pretty big heavyweight at the time six feet.
But you know he was over 200 pounds and he would rush Joe against the ropes and double him over almost backward trying to crush it.
His spine basically, and it took its toll, so um Joe, would be beating the PA yeah.
You know out of him and um, and then he would he would run out of gas because he would just be.
He was being pummeled and leaned on and rammed against the ropes and any number of things and the referee would count he’s.
You know he claimed counts, counted slow when he had uh Joe down Joe Goddard down so yeah.
He uh he didn’t escape with a couple of losses on his record there.
So I finished colosto eventually in the United States, including that one right can you avenge that one he Avenged his loss to Peter Marr when uh Mar took him out in six rounds again after Joe was dominating rounds five and six and by most accounts had Mar And the verge of a knockout and then he just walked into a right hand and as we all know, as you know, I’m sure uh about the only thing Mark could really do was punch and he could punch.
He was kind of.
I liken him in a way to like in Ernie Shavers of the 1970s, not a lot of stamina, not a lot of ability to take it, but boy Kitty punch, so it you know.
It reminds me kowinsky of a story Angela told me, and the fight that you can see on video um Angela’s favorite fighter of his own fighters was Louis little Louis Rodriguez from Cuba and he was fighting Nino benvenuti and after 10 Rounds Louie’s ahead, and he looks Up an angel and said, I’m going to knock him out and the Angela said no you’re not going to knock him out.
He’S six one you’re five, seven, five, eight you’re beating him You’ve Won every round on speed, just jab and run.
The idea is not to fight it’s the Box and Louis said I’ll knock him out, and he said you won’t.
If you stand still he’ll knock you out for an hour and a half and Louis goes out the next round and they trade punches and benvenut.
He hits him and Rodriguez is out and on the way back to the dressing room he says to Angelo.
I want to get him again and Angela just says just be happy: I’m not going to kill you because [ Laughter ], I told yourself in front of you for 11 rounds and you couldn’t listen.
What would you do different? I told you for five rounds.
Five rounds – and that seems like you know, kowinsky, had all those tremendous skills and great skill of anticipation, ring geography and speed and mobility and foot speed, educated feet.
And it’s just that.
What can you do against a guy like Goddard, who’s, bigger who physically grabs you and just treats you like a tackling dummy and if the referee’s not on your side, there’s not much you can do, and that brings up another Point um one of the things Joe Said about that that kowinsky said was that the referee explained all these rules that were completely foreign To America, that he wasn’t ready for, like you can’t use your like you can’t.
If the guy’s charging you, you can’t bring your shoulder down, like Jim Corbett, did a lot you couldn’t you couldn’t do that you couldn’t do this.
You couldn’t do that.
You know you couldn’t and um it handicapped him a lot so not not to make excuses, but he didn’t have the referee on his side.
I mean.
Obviously he didn’t have the crowd on his side, but he didn’t have the ref on his side.
He didn’t have the the their interpretation of the rules on his side.
He didn’t have just a lot of things going for him, so when, coupled together, all of it, you know it, it wasn’t a fight.
He was probably going to win unless he, unless he took Goddard out in one shot and a prime Goddard was.
It was particularly tough to stop later.
I was going to say later, like like most swarmers or most guys, like you know Joe Frazier Rocky Marciano Tom Sharkey, guys like this.
They would have Shore primes because they’re so fire and they’re all flame and in intense action, and they wear themselves out over the course of time, so God or later was stopped by a lot of guys.
But in his prime he was a really tough fighter.
Yeah, a lot of guys, Arturo, Gotti and and guys like that short shelf life, great exciting Fighters, but you can’t fight that way forever because it just takes it out of you.
I wanted to ask you how how big would you think the Rings were in Australia or even in the states? Would this be a 20-foot ring or 18 or 15 foot ring? So you know originally, of course, Queensbury rules.
They were supposed to be 24 and they evolved a lot since then.
I’M trying to remember.
I think that one might have been a 16 foot which of course is the minimum the minimum normally and that would have heavily favored Goddard, because kowinsky couldn’t dance around and avoid him.
He would be cornered and cut along the ropes a lot, which of course was the point I think and uh they they geared everything in his favor in that fight and that’s why, when Joe, when koinsky got Goddard back in America, he told him before the fight.
He said you don’t have things your way this time he said it’s here.
Basically, he says I’m gon na kick your and he did he.
He pounded him pretty good um.
He he event like.
I say he Avenged a lot of losses like that, like against Peter Marr, once he got you the second time, I guess maybe not to the extent of a Joe Lewis, but once he got you in the ring, the second time you were in for it now, You thought Joe Lewis, the second time you’re a dead man, yeah yeah um.
You know when I, when I was with Angelo canistotle one time they had the ring that Ali and Frasier fought in in 1971.
and Angela says, Get in the ring and I said, you’re not allowed in there.
It’S a sign, and he said: let’s go in here – take your shoes off so get in the ring I mean so just moved to the center from the corner count the steps.
It took me three steps and he said right.
If you imagine Muhammad had to deal with that for 15 rounds, Frazier took two three steps at the most and he was already on top of them and it was a small ring, huh, yeah and – and he said when, when uh Leonard fought Hagler, he was surprised Because he went in with two things: he wanted a 12 round fight, not a 15.
, and he won a larger ring and hagler’s handlers.
Depechameli said we’ll give you a 50-foot ring, Marvin’s gon na knock him out in under 60 seconds, anyways and Angelo said, as you mentioned before hubris, it was Hubris that took uh Hagler down, because you know his Corner gave in to all that, and they shouldn’t have Done that um, I want to ask you with Corbett: did: did kowinsky ever really become friends with Corbett? Were they good friends were they able to get over their earlier animosity? Yes, they were very good friends late in their life.
Now, of course, they had an off again on-again off-agan relationship, um and, coincidentally, one of their their rather famous meetings.
Reunions was in Spartanburg South Carolina where my in-laws live and where we visit a lot in just a little short distance from here it was Hub City.
So Corbett stopped in a train down um on his way to New Orleans, to fight John L Sullivan and when he did, it was all set up that Joe kowinsky hadn’t spoken to him in years and of course, as a childhood, there was quite a bit of Animosity from the bark, the battle on the barge and everything else, and so he got on the train and they had some words because um kowinsky had said something about punching him in the nose and vice versa.
But when when it came down to it, they shook hands, they had a few brief words like.
I can’t believe you said this about me and you said you know it was taken out of context or I’m sorry that sort of thing shook hands made up and had a nice conversation for a while until uh.
You know Corbett had to go on his way, but um so late in their career.
Uh Corbett would stop by in Walnut Walnut Hills, uh community of Cincinnati Ohio where kowinsky lived toward the end.
I have a picture of his.
I actually had several pictures of his final up abode and uh Court would get with him and they would have dinner them and their spouses would have dinner and they were really good friends in the last multiplicity of years.
I would say it’s good to hear because there’s a great picture, you have a wonderful picture in your book of kowinsky just before he passed away sitting on his couch without his shirt, but you also have pictures of him with Tom Sharkey and I guess kowinsky was Friends with Sharky most people don’t realize that boxing for the most part, most fans, don’t realize I mean you do but most fans don’t that it’s not personal.
For the most part, it’s business, but obviously there are exceptions.
Um right, you know Wilder and fury.
Maybe there are exceptions where there’s animosity, unfortunately, and that of course, is because there’s a gamut of personalities and individuals, but yeah um, as you know, boxing usually foments or it uh.
It builds respect mutual respect.
You share an experience in there.
That is just highly emotional one-on-one, there’s no one there, but your corner in between rounds, it’s you and it’s potentially, potentially life and death.
So you exchange a lot of.
I mean Joyce Carol.
Oats.
You know put it very well in her book on boxing but um.
There’S just so much you share in there that is gon na, usually build it’s, not a lifetime of mutual friendship.
You know respect, certainly so yeah you like that wonderful, Sharky and and koinsky at the racetracks yeah.
They were friends at the end yeah yeah.
They were um.
I I have to say that Tom Sharkey in a lot of ways was a sketchy individual.
As far as like the national club, for instance, in San Francisco, uh, groom and Gibbs the owners – and it looks like they were all in collusion of not choosing a referee.
For um, I think it was for for the kowinsky fight right and until they, because the rule said, if you can’t agree on a referee by a certain time, the club will appoint the referee and it turned out that that Tom well apparently anyway, was a member Of that club, so we had a vested interest in it.
So there were there were things like that: um Sharky wasn’t always the nicest person he was a very tough guy, but of course he developed a lifelong.
You know for close friend, very close friendship with Jim Jefferies and he did um kowinski was forgiving and, and Tom changed somewhat as he as he matured uh.
So with all that said, they they did end up becoming good friends.
In the last several years I read when I was researching something on my for my sub stack Once Upon a Time.
The prize rang about how uh, when Sharky fought for Simmons and Simmons Wyatt Earp was giraffe Sharky.
If it claim Fitzsimmons hit him low, which he didn’t right, no, it was a body shot, it was a legitimate knockout.
I have dumato’s book that is on nothing, but that fight and it it’s an awesome book and I have of course, a lot of stuff on that whole thing.
Um and I can go off on all kinds of tangents on this.
So keep maybe keep me on point but uh Wyatt, Earp um.
It’S basically been proven that that was a crooked decision and Wyatt Earp going into the fight knew he was going to award it to Tom Sharkey at the first opportunity right.
So Simmons was robbed six ways from Sunday in that fight and and Sharky’s doctor admitted it years later and told them what to do and yeah now was now.
You know, um the great radar cell had a comment once someone asked him.
Is it true that Benny Leonard’s fights were fixed, you know, apparently the only time they saw him get angry because he trained ourselves or he trained Leonard, and he he said yes, but not in the way you believe fights are fixed, in other words, guys like Jack Johnson and Sam lineford and and Leonard a lot of great Fighters had to agree a lot of Black Friday jokans George Dixon’s, that they wouldn’t destroy their opponent, that they let the fight last seven or eight rounds before they could actually get the metaphorical, handcuffs off and Started to fight, I was just gon na say handcuffs on yes, yeah yeah, they were handcuffed and how about kowinsky did he have to agree to that before any of his fights um? He he alludes to it that in a few of them you know he he that he did have to.
But I don’t.
I don’t think there was much of that going on with him um.
Because again I don’t think I don’t think the anti-Semitism was too strong against him uh.
There are instances like he mentions in a letter he said uh at one point he says, and he doesn’t allude to the exact like uh incident that brought that up, but he does say in one of his ladders at least oh, and why do they? Why do they keep using the term Jew boy? Why do they keep calling me Jew boy? You know, and so we there are a few things and of course, uh kowinsky also made light of it and humorously said something about going into politics, but I can’t be found in Europe next to a pork barrel.
Things like that.
So that’s very funny.
Now he he said he got a license as a chiropractor.
He went to Canada.
Well, did he actually practice as a chiropractor? He did a little bit uh.
They said you know where he had his shingle uh.
You know, hung um and I you know and um.
I I did again.
I only found this out kind of by accident uh on a on a hunch, I uh emailed one of the Chiropractic um institutions and James winterstein or winterstein.
The president ends up saying yeah, you know, that’s not ours, but we absorbed uh.
We’Re now a repository of all the records of all these other ones.
We’Ve swallowed up, and one of those was the Pittsburgh Chiropractic College that Joe graduated from, and I believe it was in 1918.
um yeah.
Yes, around November 5, 1918 Joe began chiropractic school in Pittsburgh.
That year, the universal Chiropractic College, the UCC of Davenport Iowa merged, with the Pittsburgh College of Chiropractic becoming the UCC of Pittsburgh.
He graduated um May 5th 1920 from the universal Chiropractic College of Pittsburgh and uh so yeah James winterstein.
I gave him a copy of the book after uh.
He was you know forthcoming and all of that.
So that was fortuitous because you can’t find that anywhere else.
In fact, he he had no idea who he was he’s like wow.
I had no idea that one of our graduates, you know, was a Hall of Fame legendary boxer, so he thought it was really cool and uh.
So I gave him a copy, and that was that was really interesting.
Did go ahead, sir, as far as in practicing um there’s, there’s not really any record like of his clients or anything, but that’s kind of esoteric.
So I’m not surprised and and it he wasn’t, he wasn’t successful in it for very long.
He ended up going into things like he was a felt salesman, um, a Salesman of different source and obviously, for the most part, he was a boxing instructor at at least apparently three different places, including in Chicago um and uh in Illinois, so yeah he he was A boxing instructor under a lot of different um in a lot of different institutions.
Well, did he manage to save any of the money from his career uh? He that you know so.
They said that he was.
He was a rather Frugal person.
He wasn’t ostentatious.
He wasn’t somebody who, who spent a lot of money.
He wasn’t a cheapskate either but um.
He had money until apparently uh the stock market crash of 1929 when I think he lost most of it, but it’s not something he ever ever talked about right in his career.
There were things that that alluded uh, you know they and they had um few collections taken up for him here and there and they asked him, but he was not the kind of person he just wouldn’t talk about it.
He was very private and that’s part of the reason.
No one ever wrote a biography about him is because he was just so so reticent and just he just didn’t talk about himself.
He was a very private person.
His wife was and um so yeah.
He he was not.
He didn’t self-promote a lot very humble guy.
You think he regretted not having kids, probably and again, there’s nothing and that’s one of the things.
I’Ve always wondered about um.
Why? I don’t know, there’s a whole, there’s a whole different and very interesting story about Tommy Ryan in that respect that I won’t really touch on here, because I’m saving it but unexpected.
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