Joey Giardello, Middleweight Champion

May 18, 1964

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� 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.

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 tide 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.