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chapter 11 Bloodying the Sport Emile Griffith defeated Gaspar Ortega on a Saturday night. Before regular TV boxing went off the air, a struggling Friday Night Fights limped into the Saturday night slot, then back briefly to Friday before vanishing forever. The reasons for the end read like the ingredients for disaster: some greed, some overexposure, some crime, some death, some changes in audience taste. By the time Indio fought Griffith for the title, the writing was on the wall. Before charting the final lurches into the abyss for both TV boxing and Gaspar’s career, it’s useful to examine some ominous developments. Back in 1955, the Justice Department filed a civil antitrust suit claiming that the International Boxing Club violated the Sherman Antitrust Act. The Octopus rebutted, arguing that boxing was akin to baseball, which had previously won a Supreme Court decision that effectively exempted it from antitrust law. The suit was dismissed. The government appealed, stating forcefully that boxing uniquely used interstate commerce in a manner that required a different ruling. Federal prosecutors focused especially on the IBC’s use of television and radio. This time, the Court ruled that a “cause of action” was warranted. Thus was a door opened for ambitious congressmen to lead public attacks against the IBC.1 Next came the Justice Department’s operation to take down the “underworld commissioner” of boxing, Mr. Gray himself. The Akins-Logart fight indictments of 1958 had started the ball rolling. Explained the assistant to New York district attorney Frank Hogan, the fight had “unequivocally” established Mr. Gray as “the most powerful figure in boxing. Not only did he assert control over both contenders, but he also determined where and under what terms the match was to take place.”2 170 Part III. The Hardest Game In his book Boxing Confidential (2002), Jim Brady argues that in order to truly understand Carbo’s downfall, we must first notice certain events that happened in 1957. On May 2, mob boss Frank “the Uncle” Costello was returning from dinner to his Central Park West apartment when a man in a dark fedora approached him and said, “This is for you Frank,” before firing a shot at his head. The bullet grazed Costello’s forehead and he lived, but so terrified did he become that he relinquished his part of New York’s crime racket to rival Vito Genovese, the man behind the hit. Genovese was not finished. Later that same year, Vito ordered two gunmen to walk into a barbershop in the ritzy Park Sheraton Hotel where Albert Anastasia, “the boss of bosses,” was sitting in a chair for his daily shave and trim. The hoods pumped five rounds into Anastasia’s head and torso, killing him instantly. Lots of people were around, but strangely, nobody saw anything. In the fallout of the murders, Carbo found himself cast adrift. According to the FBI, Carbo had been “protected” by Costello, who had ultimately answered to Anastasia. Now Carbo’s protectors were gone. Without the protective influence of these mob bosses on the justice system, Carbo found that the police suddenly seemed eager to get at him, so he went into hiding.3 The man ultimately responsible for “taking down” Carbo was a former Columbia College welterweight champion named Jack Bonomi. Striking an imposing figure with his six-foot, 175-pound frame and penchant for twenty-five-cent Havana cigars, Bonomi had served in World War II (he had been aboard a B-24 en route to Okinawa when Japan surrendered) and now worked for the Rackets Bureau in New York City. He had already been tracking a “top guy” behind the mob’s fight racket, referred to variously as “the Uncle,” “the Ambassador,” and even “She.” After the Anastasia hit, a wiretap of a discombobulated hood named Hymie “The Mink” Wallman provided Bonomi with evidence that “the Uncle” was indeed Frank Carbo. Bonomi went back over the transcripts and everything fell into place. Carbo’s locations correlated with prior references to the activities of the mysterious fight “Ambassador.” Bonomi toiled alone for months with minimal help, gathering evidence to bust the fight racket wide open. He might have gotten some assistance from the FBI, but that organization was headed by the only man in America who didn’t think that the mob existed—J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover even banned the use of the word “Mafia” in FBI reports and internal memos. There is much speculation as to why. According...

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