BIG MOE “THE GOLDEN GLOVES”
My mother had no
idea I was boxing in a gym across town and running around with Al Capone’s son,
Brian. He lived in this big house with all these tough looking guys in suits
hanging around. They were very nice to us and you’d never know they were
gangsters shooting people. The most important thing I learned at the gym was
how to throw a left hook. Short and crisp. Torquing my hips and shoulder and
planting one in the ribs where you can tear cartilage or paralyze a guy with a
shot to the liver, or to the side of the jaw so you can snap a guy’s neck. When
you hit somebody on the side of the jaw all the gray matter slides over to the
other side of the brain and the lights go out. I was blessed to be light on my
feet and moved well laterally, side to side, and had good footwork. I had quick
hands and developed a pretty good jab. I found that the right hand was not that
important, especially in the streets where kids were always trying to sucker
punch you with a big right hand. Nobody looked for the left. I pumped that hook
into the heavy bag over and over and learned how to set up the left hook and
straight right with my left jab, and later I set up opponents for a
counter-punch by teasing him into a punch I anticipated. I liked the
cat-and-mouse aspect of boxing, where you looked for a weakness and capitalized
and were always competing, trying to out-smart the other guy.
Everybody at the
gym told me I had a natural punch, what we called “the heavy hands.” They urged
me to get into the Golden Gloves, so I took an Irish name and started my
amateur career. I had a killer instinct and started beating people up pretty
good. I liked it. I had a lot of anger. I had a shock-absorbing neck, long arms
and a knack for moving my head and slipping punches. And my balance kept me
from lunging and getting nailed in the kisser coming in, like a hitter lunging
off his front foot instead of staying back After I won a few fights I decided
to make up for all the beatings I’d taken from the Polocks and Germans. I
wanted the older kids who’d run in packs and bullied and tortured me and spit
on my sisters a few years back, before I got used to fighting. They’d
forgotten, but not me. I hung in the park, and when I caught those bastards
alone I beat the living hell out of them, broke their noses, knocked out their
teeth. The Gorski brothers were the worst sadists. I got one of them in the
lavatory at the high school and when I got through beating him bloody I shoved
his face in the urinal and told him if any of his brothers and Polock friends
wanted to mess with me or my sisters I’d make them eat shit the next time. I
ended up getting all the Gorski brothers. Word got around. I had a reputation.
Not everybody can
fight, has the heart or attitude or the physical tools for it, but I did. My
parents had no idea I was boxing in the ring and never would have allowed it. I
made up lies during bouts. Told them I was visiting friends, doing homework at
the library. The more I boxed, the more I learned, the more I appreciated the
art of it, the strategy. The great Barney Ross worked out in our gym, and just
watching him you could learn all there was to know—how to neutralize power, cut
off the ring, set a guy up for a punch, make a guy miss. He was a master. You
couldn’t hit him, yet he could hit you all day. He was somebody to admire, a
fighting Jew. Those were different times than today. You had to do what you had
to do, to survive. Survival of the fittest. I found out one thing: everybody
looks up to a guy who can and will fight to the end. The guy in the street can
smell it a mile away.
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