A Nationwide Look At Boxing's Straw Bosses

Taylor's old friend Blinky, a business associate also of Norris and Frank Carbo, is a very wicked, very ugly, squat little man with such a good eye for fighters that at one time he could boast, "I got 'em surrounded. I got the merchandise and Norris has got to buy." This was 1952, when Blinky's "merchandise" included former Lightweight Champion Ike Williams, Coley Wallace, Clarence Henry, Dan Bucceroni and Johnny Saxton, all prominent main-eventers. Williams and Henry are used up now but in Johnny Saxton he has the current welterweight champion.

Blinky, however, is a man of parts. Boxing is only one interest, another being the numbers racket. We first get a look at his methods as a numbers operator in 1946, when a misguided young rival racketeer named Sherman Lucas—according to Lucas' later testimony before a Philadelphia grand jury—was taken for a "ride" for cutting in on Blinky's territory. Lucas was driving home one evening, accompanied by two friends, when two strange cars trailed him and blocked his escape. Three men jumped out of one car, according to Columnist Earl Selby's Philadelphia Bulletin account, and "...His two friends were pulled out, backed up against a house wall and, with guns jammed in their midriffs, told to shut up...Lucas was shoved away from the driver's seat and one of the three got behind the wheel...Lucas once grabbed the wheel and tried to wreck the car. Shouting, 'You dirty_____We'll get you for that,' the man in the back clipped Lucas on the head with a blackjack...'Get out of the car,' he was told. He waited for the driver to step out, then followed. But as he did, Lucas suddenly swung a roundhouse punch to the man's stomach. The man's pistol dropped to the pavement; so did he. Lucas jumped over the writhing abductor and ran off into the flat-lands; the darkness which the thugs had expected to cover their work now turned to his advantage. He remembers hearing two or three shots and abruptly dropped to the cold ground. For several minutes he didn't dare to move; then there was a sudden roar of fire behind him and he heard a car speed away. He turned to see his car in flames. The assailants had fled in one of the other cars...."

Lucas, according to his testimony, did not know the men, but through the underworld found out that they were Blinky and two associates named Jimmy Singleton and Joe Coffey. A "peace" meeting was arranged. Selby's story continues: "On the designated night, Lucas recalled, a Packard coupe drew up in front, Singleton and Palermo 'got out, and came into the apartment...Blinky, says Lucas, opened the conversation by saying they were 'sorry' for the violence. He explained, according to Lucas, that the boys had only intended to 'frighten' him so he wouldn't continue pulling numbers bets from their territory."

Lucas later ended in the state penitentiary for burglary. Blinky went on to become (local police believe) one of the city's biggest numbers operators. In 1950 we find him charged with disciplining a smalltime operator named Nicholas Marcus, who had objected when Blinky failed to pay off on a winning number. According to a United Press report, "Marcus said he was taken in Palermo's car and was beaten and warned to 'keep his mouth shut.' Another meeting was arranged...A car arrived, bearing Palermo, Singleton and Joseph Coffey. Coffey shouted, 'Come on boys, get in.' " Realizing they were to be taken for a "ride," Marcus and a friend who was with him jumped into their own car and tore away at high speed, with Palermo's car in pursuit. There was a running gun battle. Then the Marcus car crashed into another car, and Palermo and his pals sped away. Marcus identified them to the police, and Blinky was charged with reckless use of firearms, violating the Uniform Firearms Act, assault with intent to kill, and aiding and abetting an illegal lottery. However, Marcus and his friend refused to testify, and so the case had to be dropped.

Blinky has been arrested many times on many charges, but never has been convicted of a felony. In 1947 the Pennsylvania State Board of Pardons granted him a full pardon "for the good work he had done for the community in general." In 1952 he appeared before the Illinois Athletic Commission for permission to second his fighter, Ike Williams, in a Williams-Chuck Davey fight in Chicago. Truman Gibson Jr., who was there on behalf of the IBC, agreed to act as his counsel. Waving his pardon and a letter from a lawyer, Blinky cried out for justice. "I am a married man with five children any father should be proud of," he said. "I raised them myself. I've never been arrested for the last 17 years and don't know why a man can't live it down." The Illinois Commission did not allow him to second Williams, but later it sympathetically gave him an Illinois manager's license.

Some idea of what the Taylor-Palermo Norris-Carbo palship can achieve by way of mutual accommodation can be had from the most recent "International Boxing Club, James D. Norris, president, and Herman Taylor" presentation. This was the Kid Gavilan- Johnny Saxton fight in Philadelphia on Oct. 20th for the welterweight championship, which Saxton "won" under circumstances so obviously peculiar that even Taylor was embarrassed. It is a tangled story but briefly, as reported by SI's correspondents, it comes down to this:

Back in 1946 Fernando (Fino) Balido, onetime proprietor of a Havana newspaper stand, brought his young protege, Gavilan, to New York, hopeful of getting into big-time boxing. Soon afterward at Stillman's Gym he ran into Angel Lopez, a night-club operator. Lopez was a friend of Frank Carbo, who was not then the power in boxing that he was to become, but who already had much influence. The upshot of their conversations was that Lopez cut in for half of Balido's contract and the Kid began to get fights.

Later on Carbo left New York for a while and business was slow. Balido and Lopez brought in George Gainford, manager of Sugar Ray Robinson, for 10%: thereupon Gavilan received two fights with Robinson which returned him much money and prestige. (Gainford was cheated out of most of his 10%, he says.) In due time, after Robinson had retired, Gavilan fought his way to the welterweight championship. Balido soon grew tired (or so he told friends) of taking Carbo's orders through Lopez. After the Gavilan-Gil Turner fight in July, 1952 he took the Kid back to Cuba without bothering to give Lopez his share of the purse. Naturally this made for hard feelings.

Then Balido made a worse error. Fulgencio Batista had recently strong-armed his way back to power in Cuba and wanted something to take the public's mind off politics. Balido suggested a Gavilan title defense in Havana against Billy Graham, the top challenger. Batista was delighted—but then Balido found himself unable to make good. Carbo and Lopez let it be known that Gavilan would not fight Graham unless Balido stepped aside as his co-manager; moreover, that unless he did fight Graham, they would see to it that he fought no one else. Gavilan concurred: he would not fight Graham in Cuba, he told Balido, unless the latter released him. Balido, fearful of Batista's displeasure, finally gave in. A settlement was arranged by the IBC, signed on its behalf by James D. Norris, and the fight came off on schedule. Among the visiting celebrities, arriving on Oct. 3, 1952 and occupying suite 402-3 ($42 a day) at the Hotel Nacional, was Frank Carbo.

A Little Caesar touch was added when, one day shortly before the fight, Carbo and some fellow boxing authorities were sitting in the hotel bar drinking champagne. Carbo, although usually well mannered, can be mean when the drink is in him and that day he was in a celebrating mood. After a while he noticed across the room a New York boxing writer whose paper had printed some unfriendly comments about him. Carbo walked over, stuck a forefinger in the middle of the man's forehead and growled, "If you was your boss and this was a gun, I'd put a bullet into you right there. And after that," he went on, "I'd spin the chamber and I'd put some more bullets in the same place in your head." The reporter fled. Then Carbo turned to the room of bug-eyed boxing buffs and proposed a toast to Gavilan's new sole manager, Angel Lopez. Obediently they lifted their glasses—but Carbo was not pleased. "Higher! Higher! he shouted, "God damn it, higher!" as he walked around hoisting elbows to what he deemed a respectful height. They drank the toast and hurriedly cheered.