A Nationwide Look At Boxing's Straw Bosses

The IBC of Illinois and the IBC of New York run on parallel tracks. We have been on that ride; and what has been reported about it in earlier installments applies equally, with a few changes in names and geography, to the situation of boxing in Chicago.

SAN FRANCISCO

In cities like Cleveland, Cincinnati and Indianapolis, SI's local correspondents found that boxing was relatively free of criminal influences; and the reason commonly given, with all respect for these smaller promoters who may well be men of unassailable virtue, was that in the TV era there is so little boxing in these places that there really is no incentive for the syndicate to cut in.

San Francisco, certainly, is one of the most active boxing centers in the U.S. The report of SI's correspondent there is all the more astonishing: "The ring activities in the Bay area ( San Francisco, Oakland and Richmond) are free from any Eastern or Los Angeles ties when the term is applied to pay-offs and control. Only when the International Boxing Club of New York and Illinois comes in with a Wednesday or a Friday night television show or when Ray Arcel lands an occasional Saturday night TV show does the East make deals. Those deals are strictly matchmaking details and percentage arrangements...Strange as it may seem to New York, Chicago and Philadelphia, the controlling power in San Francisco boxing is not vested in a single undercover operator. Instead it is run by an apparently legitimate manager, Sid Flaherty. Flaherty, through the simple machination of holding the contract of World Middleweight Champion Bobo Olson, calls the tune for the IBC, and they dance. It's that simple."

If Flaherty is not quite the answer to Diogenes' search, he is the closest thing to it that one is likely to find in boxing anywhere in the U.S. His local monopoly is as tight as the IBC's in the latter's own centers of power. Local promoters, such as Benny Ford—a nonentity until Flaherty sponsored him—exist by his sufferance, and their actions must meet with his tacit approval. Nevertheless, as readers of SI's recent article about him (Dec. 27) know, Flaherty is a true anomaly: an almost ascetic man who genuinely cares about the health and welfare of his fighters, and who has been so shrewd in choosing and developing them that he has acquired the largest stable of first-rate boxers in the country, with Olson as its star. Nervously watching his rise, the IBC tried time and again during the past few years to compromise him. Flaherty simply refused to be drawn into the Norris apparatus, until at last, only a month ago, he finally signed a three-year contract whereby he will co-promote IBC fights in the West and the IBC will in turn handle promotions for him in the Midwest and the East. This move reflected Flaherty's realistic opinion of what was best for himself and his fighters—not best for Norris and his underworld friends. It was not a surrender, but rather a hard-bitten piece of Realpolitik.

In one aspect, this outcome shows how inexorably the IBC sooner or later gets what it wants, even if this requires the use of fair means. But in another it shows that a talented and stubborn man can still buck the IBC and finally bring it to terms; and by doing so, Flaherty has become a symbol of hope to many managers. It remains to be seen, of course, whether Flaherty's trafficking with his former enemy may yet end in his being slowly compromised and absorbed.

LOS ANGELES

We are on familiar ground again in Southern California, the territory of the candid Babe McCoy, whose testimony was cited at the beginning of this survey. McCoy is matchmaker at the Los Angeles Olympic Auditorium where, as SI's correspondent reports, "A fight mob...still looks like Victor Hugo's congress of thieves about to crown the Black Pope and if there is an honest man in the business no one knows who he is." McCoy, an immensely fat (285 pounds), toad-shaped, vicious and vindictive man, not only arranges the matches at this leading auditorium, "the Madison Square Garden of Los Angeles," but is generally believed to have "pieces" of many of the best local fighters. The rest are mostly under the control of his nephew, Sparky Rudolph, matchmaker at the smaller Ocean Park Arena.

McCoy is not the real McCoy in more ways than one. His real name is Harry Rudolph and he has a police record dating back to 1920 in New York, where he was arrested and given suspended sentences twice for receiving stolen goods, pleaded guilty to petit larceny and received another suspended sentence. By 1940 McCoy had established himself in California for good and had become matchmaker at Ocean Park. But he had not changed his habits or his friends. In that year an old friend named Cecil Imes, a recently paroled bank robber, looked him up and borrowed money to go to San Francisco, where he robbed the Clift Hotel. But easy come, easy go; Imes soon was broke again, so McCoy took him in as a house guest. Around that same period other guests were Izzy Shaman (alias Shannon) and his wife, and Shaman's criminal record was almost as impressive as Imes's, so this made a cozy den of thieves.

Imes left after a year, but he continued to visit at the McCoy house. One night, as he testified later, he told McCoy that he and some friends were planning to rob a home of jewels and fur. They did so on the night of Feb. 16, 1942 and—Imes testified—brought the loot to McCoy, who drove to downtown Los Angeles and fenced the jewels for $1,400. There was corroborative testimony to this from other witnesses.