Brutal_ The Untold Story of My Life Inside Whitey Bulger's Irish Mob - Kevin Weeks [9]
And I always wanted to win. Out of my seventy-eight fights, I only lost two. One was to a kid from New Bedford. I took the fight on a week’s notice and lost. But three weeks later, I fought him again and won. The second loss was at the Boston Club, when I was eighteen and fighting in the New England tournament. I made it to the finals and lost. I wore either purple-and-gold or green-and-white shorts, and the other kid had on white shorts with big red hearts. I didn’t take it seriously when I saw him come into the ring. He caught me with a left hook and dropped me in the second round. I lost by a split decision and never underestimated an opponent again.
Butchie Attardo was my trainer after the Baby Gloves tournament, while Red Corrigan trained me and James “Stretch” Walsh was in my corner during my boxing career. As an amateur, I won a lot of tournaments, including the Golden Gloves at seventeen as a 139-pound lightweight. Like my brothers, I boxed in tournaments all over New England. The only time I remember the three of us fighting in the same ring was in the McDonough Gym for the Golden Gloves in Southie when I was ten. That night we all won in our weight divisions. Other times, Billy and I also won numerous outstanding boxer awards, which we were awarded after winning multiple fights in one night. Between my brothers and me, we must have won a couple of hundred trophies, for boxing, basketball, baseball, and swimming, all of which served as dust collectors on Pilsudski Way. They’re all gone now.
My father went to a few of my bouts, but my mother never did. She didn’t like fighting. I got a little money for my fights, but the most was $200 for an amateur fight. There was so much I liked about boxing: working out and getting in shape, matching my skill against someone else’s, going to the gym, breaking a sweat, and just plain getting out of the house.
I was nervous before every fight, with butterflies in my stomach. But the second I got in the ring, it was just me and my opponent. I never saw or heard the crowd and just focused on the fight. Most of the time we didn’t talk about the matches. You were friends with some of the fighters, so you fought and then shook hands. You might fight the same guy two or three times. I never had my nose broken, but I did end up with two or three black eyes. My hands and thumb were broken a few times, and my fingers never healed correctly.
When I was seventeen, a couple of people wanted me to turn pro. I met Emile Griffith, the one-time middleweight champion of the world, who had come to town to fight Joe DeNucci, who later became Massachusetts Secretary of State. I was at Connolly’s Gym at the time, training to fight, when Griffith’s trainer, Gil Clancy, had Kevin Dorian, Beau Jaynes, and me sparring with Griffith for a week. After the week, Gil Clancy wanted to take me to New York to train and turn pro, but my father wouldn’t let me go. I was a junior at South Boston High and wasn’t really disappointed. The three of us also sparred with Ken Buchanan, three rounds a day for a week, when he was getting ready to fight Roberto Duran, the lightweight champion of the world.
I stopped fighting for a few years, but in 1982, at age twenty-six, I got back in shape and started to fight again. Then I was getting $250 just to show up, but at the end I couldn’t get any fights. People didn’t want to fight me. I weighed 167 pounds but was trying to get back to 156. Johnny Pretzie, who had fought Rocky Marciano, and Tommy MacNeil, who had fought Floyd Patterson for the heavyweight championship of the world, were training and managing me then. Even though I was a super-middleweight, I took fights against heavyweights, giving those guys fifty extra pounds against me, just to get a fight. I ended up getting three Friday-night fights at the IBW Electricians Hall in Dorchester and won all three. Then I stopped fighting and went onto other things.
But back when