Sport: Rocky’s Road

Roughneck Rocky Graziano is an accomplished shadow-boxer, who has hitherto been able to outpoint the shadows of his own past. This time he dropped his guard and caught one on the chin. Exiled from New York rings eight months ago for not reporting a $100,000 bribe offer, Rocky went off limits to Chicago and won the world’s middleweight championship. In 58 fights, he had become the biggest drawing card in boxing, after Joe Louis. Last week, he faced exile from practically all U.S. boxing rings.

Rocky’s past had come back to haunt him. The Department of National Defense confirmed the fact that the champ had been AWOL from the Army for four months during the war. During that time, he picked up cigaret money—sometimes as little as $25—fighting in preliminary bouts. It took the Army a while to catch up with Rocky, perhaps because it was looking for a man named Rocco Barbella (his real name). Caught and court-martialed, Rocky was sentenced to twelve months’ hard labor at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and dishonorably discharged. His manager insists that the dishonorable discharge was “suspended” because Rocky behaved so well in jail.

When they heard about Rocky’s war record last week, Illinois, Minnesota and Pennsylvania banned him from their rings. The National Boxing Association had not yet taken action, but declared itself in favor of “rejecting any participant in boxing who has not fulfilled his trust to his country.” Rocky would have a tough time finding a place to defend his crown.

And the crown was jolted further askew by Hearstling Westbrook Pegler, who dug up more ancient scandal. It was common knowledge that Rocky was a reform-school graduate, but his defenders argued that Rocky had gone right since then, and why pick on the kid? Pegler said he was later accused of: armed robbery in 1939, an assault on a 15-year-old girl in 1941. (Both charges were later dismissed.)

Rocky had in fact never made a secret of his imprisonment at Fort Leavenworth. He said darkly: “There were a lot of other fighters in there you’d know.”