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Catching Up With . . .
Joey Giardello, Middleweight Champion
May 18, 1964
Posted: Tuesday October 27, 1998 11:22 AM
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Illustration by Robert Weaver |
One thing
needs clarifying before revisiting the turbulent boxing
career of Joey Giardello: "My name is Carmine
Tilelli,"
says the man who slugged his way
through 133 professional bouts over a 19-year span and wore
the world
middleweight belt from 1963 to '65. "Everyone who knows me
calls me Mr.
Tilelli."
The son of a
Brooklyn sanitation
foreman, Tilelli lifted the name Joey Giardello from a friend's
birth certificate in 1946 so he could sneak into the Army
at age 16. At 17 he confessed his identity to the Army and
then shortly afterward went AWOL from the 82nd Airborne to
pursue a career
in the ring. He chose Joey Giardello as his fighting name in
case Uncle Sam, who now knew him as Carmine Tilelli, tried
to track him
down.
Tilelli's knack for finding trouble made the threat of
court-martial the least of
his worries. "To me
the world was a
playground," he says. "I just didn't care." A
title fight
with Bobo Olson in 1954 was scratched
after Tilelli was arrested for helping to rob
a filling
station. He
served
4 1/2 months in jail. In '57 the New York Athletic Commission
stripped Tilelli of his license because he had paid off a
wager on his beloved Brooklyn Dodgers by borrowing $200
from a reputed mobster called Tony
Bananas.
Al Tielemans | |
On Dec. 7, 1963, 15 years after his pro debut, Tilelli
finally earned the world title, at age 33, by upsetting
Dick Tiger in Atlantic City in a 15-round decision. The
championship
didn't change his carefree attitude. His lax training
regimen, said to
consist of
macaroni-and-cheese dinners and beer, drove his handlers
berserk, and his prefight dressing room was often crammed
with chums from
South
Philly. "I was a natural," Tilelli says. "I
wouldn't train. I just fought."
Tilelli lost the title to Tiger on Oct. 21, 1965, and
retired two years later. Today, at 68, he works as an
inspector for the New Jersey State Weights and Measures
Department
and
lives with his wife, Rosalie, in the Philadelphia suburb of
Cherry Hill, N.J. Much to his relief, his four
children—Joseph, 46, Carmine Jr., 44, Paul, 36, and
Steven, 33—have not repeated the mistakes of their
dad's youth. "The only time I worried
about one of them was when Paul boxed when he was 21," says
Tilelli. "He went 8-0. Then I said, 'That's enough.' I
just didn't like it." The name Paul boxed under? Joey
Giardello
Jr.
—Richard
Deutsch
Issue date: October 26, 1998
Past Editions of Catching Up With...
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