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my proposition that Berl had let the animal off the time he got knocked through the ropes. “And the second thing he called a knockdown, that was a push, too,” Whitey said. He appeared calm, not bitter, and acted as if it were a matter of little moment to him if the Commission wanted to take the bread out of its own mouth. “He was just sizing the fellow up,” he said. “And the fellow trips him, and boom, Berl stops the fight.” I began to suspect we hadn’t seen the same fight that evening.

Soirée Intime

While reading the newspaper Froissarts’ stories the day after the first Marciano—Charles fight in the summer of 1954, I noticed that there was to be another bout that evening, at Madison Square Garden. This one had been kept so deep a secret during the days leading up to the big match that my discovery made me feel I was getting in on something like a stag show. Even in Tex Rickard’s palmy days as a promoter at the Garden, he would never have ventured a show on the night following one of his own ball-park promotions. The theory was that the average fight fan, having spent his money for a big ticket, would have nothing left for a little ticket the same week. This card, however, had a television sponsor, the Gillette Razor Blade Company, and so was economically independent. (The I.B.C. had kept the Marciano— Charles bout off television in the metropolitan district, which had undoubtedly helped the gate.)

The Garden card looked fairly promising, on paper. In the main bout, Orlando Zulueta, the lightweight champion of Cuba, was to meet a fellow named Johnny Gonsalves, out of Oakland, California, who, according to the brief press notices, ranked as one of the best lightweights in the United States. (After what I saw, I hoped he wasn’t.) I had never seen Gonsalves, but in 1948 I had seen Zulueta fight in Havana, in the Cuban equivalent of the Garden. That had been for the featherweight championship of Cuba, which has sent out some excellent fighting men in the lighter classes, and his opponent had been an established Havana star named Acevedo, a light-skinned Cuban with a sandy mustache, exceedingly caballero. I remembered Zulueta—a tall, thin, dark young Negro with a beautifully educated left hand. He had been on his way up, and Acevedo at the top of the downgrade. The hall was packed with a noisy crowd, jeering and imploring. It was carnival time, very gay. Zulueta had made a fool of Acevedo for a couple of rounds. Then, affected by the carnival spirit, he had stopped stabbing and started slugging with the older man. This had gone well at first, but then Acevedo had nailed him with a few good punches. Most of the crowd was with the old champion, and Zulueta’s seconds were yelling frantically. Without understanding technical Spanish, I had known what they were saying: “Stay away from him and box!” He had gone back to boxing, survived the round, and given his man a good pasting. At the end, the judges awarded the decision to Acevedo—as rank a miscarriage of justice as I have seen outside of the Dominican Republic. I remembered that Acevedo’s manager carried him around the ring, pickaback, seven times.

Since there was no large sum involved as admission fee, I decided to attend the Garden bout as a customer, a cochon de payant. The first preliminary was, as usual scheduled to go on at eight-thirty. I arrived at the Eighth Avenue entrance to the Garden at a quarter to nine and found the place deserted, except for three men at the orange-drink stand in the lobby and four more talking baseball under the marquee. The marquee at least confirmed the report that a fight was supposed to take place that evening. Scouting around among the ticket windows. I found one that was open. The man behind it was reading the next day’s entries at Aqueduct, but he looked up when I said “Pardon me.” I asked if he had a good ringside seat left, and he looked at me a bit oddly and said. “Second row, right in the center.” I asked him how much, and he said “Eight dollars,” in a tone that implied he expected me to go away. He may have thought I had mistaken