A Nationwide Look At Boxing's Straw Bosses

But McCoy was acquitted; and afterward the state athletic commission did not seem to take it amiss that by his own admission he had been living and consorting with convicted bank robbers, fur thieves and holdup men. Nor did the commission seem to mind when, in later years, he was a friend and companion of Mickey Cohen, Los Angeles' leading gangster—who, incidentally, was the killer of Maxie Shaman, youngest brother of Izzy. (Izzy and Maxie had called on Cohen to protest a terrible beating Cohen had given to Joe, a third Shaman brother. Cohen held them covered with a gun, ordered Izzy from the room, shot and killed Maxie. Izzy, waiting outside, heard the shots, flung his own gun into some bushes and fled. Cohen was acquitted on grounds of "self-defense.") On at least one occasion known to the police, Cohen held a business meeting at McCoy's apartment.

The Babe's nominal superior is Alvah (Cal) Eaton, leaseholder and promoter at the Olympic Auditorium and a man, these days, of considerable social polish. SI's correspondent reports: "Eaton was not always one of California's first citizens. In fact, his first wife testified in her divorce hearing that he was a smalltime gym hanger-outer who eked out less than a living selling tickets to wrestling matches...He and his bride lived with his parents and his grandparents. He went to night law school but spent as much nighttime playing pool, his wife said. In the early forties Eaton became an inspector for the boxing commission, which is to say he would serve on a per diem basis, counting the house, checking the dressing room for health regulations or verifying the eligibility of fighters. And in the middle of the war something occurred to Cal: even bad fights were doing bonanza business." He took a lease on the Olympic, made an arrangement with McCoy as matchmaker and has been prospering ever since. His son married the daughter of Governor Goodwin Knight, a tie to the State-house which Eaton finds both socially and professionally gratifying.

He is on the friendliest terms too with Anthony P. Entenza, chairman of the state athletic commission, and with some of Los Angeles County's leading law enforcement officials. The law has been notably tolerant toward boxers in Los Angeles. A few months ago Ramon Fuentes, the California welterweight champion, was accused by a friend of breaking his nose in a saloon fight—a serious charge, since under California law it is an automatic felony (assault with a deadly weapon) for a prize fighter to strike anyone with his fist. Fuentes was arrested; but then the district attorney's office discovered that the slugger had not been Fuentes after all, but another man who was present. Earlier, Fuentes had been arrested for drunk driving, but was let off—in time to keep his date to fight Johnny Saxton—when it developed that he had been merely overtired, not drunk at all. The same good fortune attended Art Aragon, star of the McCoy-Eaton stable, when he too was charged with hitting a man in a barroom brawl—a policeman at that. The next week the policeman withdrew the charge, so Aragon was not prosecuted.

As for the Entenza friendship, some suspicious Angelenos believe it played a part in what happened to Clayton Frye. Frye is the athletic commission's secretary. He is a career man in the state public service, and takes his job seriously. One of his duties is to supervise the inspections which are supposed to ensure that matchmakers and promoters conduct their business by the commission's rules. At the Olympic Auditorium he came across eight separate violations. One was that McCoy had matched a fighter named Mario Trigo who had an undiagnosed eye injury—possibly a detached retina. Other violations involved ineligible fighters, some of whom had not had a physical examination or who had fought too short a time before. Frye dutifully filed his objections. At the request of Babe McCoy and Cal Eaton, the California State Athletic Commission (Anthony P. Entenza, chairman) thereupon barred its own secretary from the Olympic's dressing rooms.

It is perhaps needless to add to all the foregoing that IBC fights in Los Angeles are staged in partnership with the Eaton-McCoy local combine.

Our coast-to-coast tour can be summarized in a sentence: Boxing today is a national scandal.