THE WRESTLER AND THE BOXER

Following in the footsteps of Joe Biden this week I‘m borrowing my material from an outside source, the late Dan Parker, sports editor of the late New York Daily Mirror. Dan found the sports world to be a reliable source of characters ready to contribute to the public’s amusement and instruction. Off-beat people were Dan’s meat and today I’ve reprinted part of his stories about some outstanding ones. Two of his targets, though, Blinky and “Mr. Grey“. were serious fellows out to corner the fight racket, as it was known to them, which didn’t stop Dan from kidding them to death and eventually getting them sent to jail and out of business for fixing fights and cheating fighters. But first, let’s meet a less sinister character who made his scores without using muscle, although he had almost too much of that.

This is the story of a 300-pound wrestler named Haystack Muldoon, arrested while fishing in Belmar, New Jersey, for hanging out bum checks in Florida, Canada and South Dakota, among other places. “In fact Muldoon’s checks had converted large sections of the United States into a tennis court as they ricocheted all over the map.”

But he had a redeeming feature. He worried that his arrest would cast a shadow on the great game to which he had dedicated his life, professional wrestling. Dan was touched by this because in his opinion it was impossible to bring disrepute on wrestling, since it had no repute to start with. He wrote:

“Muldoon’s tender concern about damaging the game merits at the very least a benefit wrestling show to help him square the rap in the Sunshine City where he passed a number of bounceroos. He vacationed at the beach in March and before leaving he wrote checks of pure latex consistency for the following trinkets and necessities: Two diamond rings for $10,000 and $3,170 respectively; $124 for an imported wrist watch; $1,000 for a gold coin collection with $55 legitimate moolah returned to him as change; checks for $970 and $350 cashed in the restaurant where he ate and a $1,000 number he gave the restaurateur when he heard the poor fellow was short on hard money after emptying his strong box to cash the other two checks; $225 for a hotel bill and $300 for an advance payment on a motel room for next winter. ( Note. All 1963 figures; 50% of today’s.)

The odor of fish that arose when Muldoon started sobbing about the damage he had done to the Game he loved didn’t come from this but from the boatload of fish he had caught. The miracle of the loafer and the fishes in this case was that among the 70-odd specimens in the boat there wasn’t a single sucker. Haystack apparently had caught all he wanted of that species in Florida.”

Now we pass on to the story of Blinky Palermo, consigliere of Frankie Carbo, aka “Mr. Grey”, in his time considered to be the kingpin of the boxing game in America, owning a piece of most of the major fighters in the country, making their matches for them and dictating the outcomes, always collecting his commission before they ever saw any of their money.


“Out on $100,000 bail since then, Palermo carried his case to the Federal Court of Appeals, which ruled that there were no grounds for a new trial. The Supreme Court of the United States, to which Frankie Carbo, Blink’s boss, carried his case, turned him down some months ago and Carbo was transferred at his own request to the “Rock”, Alcatraz. Since then Carbo, along with the other inmates of Alcatraz, which has been abandoned, was moved up the road to McNeil Island Penitentiary, Washington.

When Palermo lost out in the Court Of Appeals in California the assumption was that he had been sent to join his padrone Frankie on the island up Puget Sound way, particularly after the trouble he’d managed to get in while free on bail. This was the matter of offering a boxer named Cortez Stewart $50 per day to act as Sonny Liston’s sparring partner while he was training for a fight in Chicago last September, according to Stewart’s testimony before the New York State Senate’s “investigation” of boxing. What made this testimony significant was that it seemed to bear out the charge that Blinky was still Liston’s behind the scenes manager, which if true would make perjurers out of a lot of fight racket notables including (sakes alive!) Sonny himself, who swore on a Ring Record Book that the Blink was no longer associated with him.

Then Palermo’s appeal in the Los Angeles case involving his attempt, with Carbo and strong arm hoodlums, to steal fighter Don Jordan from his rightful owners, two West Coast promoters, was denied by the higher federal Court and boxing men thought the jig was up for Blinky. But they reckoned not with his attorney, Jacob Kosman, a Philadelphia lawyer’s Philadelphia lawyer. He had Palermo’s $100,000 bail continued while he prepared a petition asking the Supreme Court to review Palermo’s case, which he filed Friday. Now comes the most disgraceful thing of all. Blink has gone to work! Those lily-white hands always so nicely manicured to set off the gold toothpicks with which he was wont to chisel from the crevices of his 18-carat dentistry the fragments of veal scallopini or garlic wedged there, are now being soiled by manual labor -- selling used cars. They are much harder to sell than Blinky’s usual line -- gold bricks -- but Palermo has connections as well as persuasive ways. You never can tell when Ike Williams, his onetime lightweight champ, will mortgage the old homestead to buy a Blinky Scored Cylinder Special at only a slight markup, in memory of the days when Palermo took two $30,000 purses Ike earned, tossed them in the air and let the champ keep all the loot that remained aloft.”

Dan concluded this tribute to a remarkable character by referring reverentially to lawyer Kosman as a “learned Blackstoneite” and suggesting Palermo’s female supporters knit him some pig’s bristle pajamas to tickle him silly while in jail.

I haven’t forgotten the election, whatever you may think. I keep thinking of Obama’s campaign as an obamination and himself as obaminable. The name of his pals the ACLU is really code for All Criminals Love Us and as for ACORN, that obviously stands for Associated Criminals Out to Rob the Nation.