Sport: A Night for Carmen

Carmen Basilio is a swaggering young (26) ex-marine with the biceps of a riveter and the combative instincts of a Brahma bull. As a prizefighter, he has won 36 out of 51 professional fights, and out of this indifferent record has won the title of New York State welterweight (147 Ibs.) champion. Boxers respect his clumsy punch, but Basilio cuts easily, and when he earned a shot at the world championship, the experts thought him easy meat for a slashing hitter like Cuba’s Champion Kid Gavilan. Last week, fighting in his home town of Syracuse, Underdog Basilio was nobody’s pigeon.

Gavilan set out to give a boxing lesson, stabbing sharp lefts, waltzing away, rushing in for a ferocious flurry of punches. He got his comeuppance in the second round. Instead of backing away in confusion, Basilio met the champion headon. He shook Gavilan with a right, landed a crushing left hook flush on his jaw. The crowd went wild; for the second time in 112 fights, the great Kid Gavilan was down, flat on his back, eyes glazed, pomaded hair askew. The referee counted to eight before the champion got to his feet and groggily hung on until the bell.

For the next six rounds, Basilio shot in punch after punch. Then the champion went to work at long distance, slicing Basilio with knifelike lefts, belting him under the heart with his famed bolo punch. From the tenth round on, Basilio’s left eye was swollen shut; he fought on half-blind, but when he landed one, the champion’s knees buckled. At the 14th round, the crowd was on its feet cheering; at the 15th, the roar drowned out the bell—both champion and challenger kept slugging away until the referee stepped in. On the officials’ score cards, Gavilan’s masterful boxing overrode both Basilio’s early advantage and his later courage. The decision: Gavilan, by a split vote of 2 to 1. For the records, Cuba’s Kid Gavilan was the winner and still champion.