Sport: Rocky Y. 47 States

“When I travel I get moody,” says Rocky Graziano. Out in Oakland, Calif., far from his Brooklyn haunts, Rocky was training for a fight with Oldtimer Fred Apostoli when a mood struck him. He wired a friend for $300. When the money came, he hopped a plane, unkempt, unshaven and still dressed in his training clothes. A snowstorm that grounded the plane in Chicago didn’t stop him; without bothering to cash the unused part of his plane ticket, he climbed aboard a train for New York.

Rocky Graziano, ex-middleweight champ and boxing’s perennial bad boy, had run out on his contract. The promoter, who had spent $9,000 in advertising the fight, was annoyed, and said so. Rocky’s manager went hunting for his missing boy. When he found him in Brooklyn, he begged him to go back to California and fight. But Rocky said no.

At a press conference called to explain his actions, Rocky gave a convincing demonstration of a man who didn’t know what hit him. Why had he quit training? “I had no ambition to throw punches. I’m boxing a couple of salamis and I don’t give a damn if I get hit … I don’t know what the hell’s the matter with me.” Reporters asked him about a walnut-sized lump on his forehead and he said it was a souvenir of the last Tony Zale fight. Was he punchy? Rocky went on: “Every place I go it’s ‘What’s this bribe story?’ or ‘What’s with the Army?’ It’s as if I was ready to go to jail.” He thought he’d see a doctor. He thought he would go see New York’s Boxing Commissioner Eddie Eagan and try to get Eddie to lift his supension (for failing to report a $100,000 bribe offer two years ago). He was really lonesome fighting anywhere but in Madison Square Garden, which was “just like my own bedroom.” He was pretty proud of one thing: that he didn’t go on with his match with Apostoli and take a dive. “I could have picked up the change [about $18,000] and gone into the water,” said Rocky righteously.

Three days later, the National Boxing Commission suspended Rocky from fighting in 46 states under its jurisdiction. Since he was already banned in New York, that made him taboo everywhere but in Massachusetts.