The Telephone Booth Indian - Abbott Joseph Liebling [41]
Weill practices a kind of pugilistic crop rotation. He has under his management fighters who are valuable properties now and others he thinks will be profitable in from one to four years. Fight people speak of a boy as being one or two or three years “away.” Weill even has one towering youngster who hasn't yet had a professional bout but is living at Mrs. Braune's while he learns his trade. A manager gets from thirtythree and a third to fifty per cent of a fighter's purses, which, in the case of Ambers or Arturo Godoy, another Weill property, runs into considerable money. Often, however, a fighter on the way up doesn't earn his keep, and then Weill has to carry him. Weill pays Mrs. Braune the fighter's room rent and gives him a weekly fivedollar meal ticket. The ticket is good for five dollars and fifty cents in trade at a Greek lunchroom on Columbus Avenue. This arrangement keeps the boy from overeating, Weill explains. He makes his bookings in an office in the Strand Building, on Duffy Square. Usually he keeps a fighter working in towns like New Haven, Utica, and Bridgeport until he seems ripe for a metropolitan career. The boys come back to the house on Ninetysecond Street after each bout.
“I prefer fighters than any other kind of lodgers,” Mrs. Braune said to me. “They got such interesting careers, like opera singers, but they are not so mean.”
“She is just like a mother to them boys,” Goldman said admiringly. “She presses their trunks for them, so they will look nice going into the ring, and sometimes when I tell a boy he is getting too fine, she fixes him a chicken dinner. They don't board here regularly, but she likes to cook for them now and then. A fighter can't stay down to weight all the time or he will work himself into t.b. Now and then he has got to slop in. Mrs. Braune is a restraining influence on them kids. They got too much energy.”
A boy walked down the hall past the open door, and Goldman called him in to show me a sample of the student body. “This is Carl Dell, a welterweight,” Goldman said. “He spends all his time writing long letters to dolls.” “Charlie is always worrying about maybe I would have a good time,” Dell said before acknowledging the introduction. “He is always beefing.” Dell has a strong, rectangular head with the small eyes and closeset ears of a faun. Goldman, perhaps affected by some remote sculptural association, said, “Look at him. He has a head like an old Roman.” He said Dell had been a good amateur and had won thirtyseven straight fights after turning professional. He had lost a couple of decisions in recent months, but that was natural, as he had begun to meet good men. “It is a lot in how you match a fellow,” Goldman said, “but anyway, he is a great prospect.” “I beat a fellow out on the coast that they said was the champion of Mexico,” Dell said, “and when I was down in Cuba, I beat the champion of Cuba. That is two countries I am champion of already.” Dell is twentythree years old and is at least a year “away.” He told me he came from Oneonta, New York, and had spent three years in the CCC, a government enterprise which develops fine arms and shoulders. Then he had won a lot of prizes in amateur tournaments and finally turned professional. He said he had never had any kind of job except boxing.
Goldman began talking to me about the importance of concentration in shadowboxing. Dell looked embarrassed, seeming to know that the little trainer was talking at him. Mrs. Braune just sat quietly, as if used to such seminars.
“One of the most important things in training is shadowboxing,” Goldman said, getting into the middle of the floor and assuming a guard. “Most boys, now, when they are shadowboxing they are just going through the motions and thinking of some broad, maybe. Shadowboxing is like when the teacher gives you a word to take home and write out ten times, so you will know it. In the examination