Never Say Never: Ray Mancini's Last Fight

NEVER SAY NEVER: RAY MANCINI'S LAST FIGHT / Bill Barich ON A COLD WINTER MORNING in Youngstown, Ohio, Ray (Boom Boom) Mancini, who had once been the lightweight champion of the World Boxing Association, said goodbye to his mother and father and left home for Nevada to begin training for the most important fight of his career. His final training camp was at the El Dorado Hotel, in downtown Reno, and when he arrived there he found large cardboard cutouts of himself propped against slot machines in the casino. There were banners that said "Welcome, Boom Boom!" and "The El Dorado Welcomes Ray Mancini!," and several gamblers in polyester gathered around to wish him luck. Mancini was used to such treatment. In boxing circles, he had always been a big star, and he knew how to smile and make small talk, and also how to accept a handshake without doing any damage to the instruments that had helped him to earn almost six million dollars in purse money. Mancini had an executive suite of rooms in the El Dorado, closed off from public view. Like most veteran boxers, he despised the discipline and routine of getting into shape, so he was glad to be meeting a boxer for whom he had a genuine dislike—Livingstone Bramble, a complex and worldly-wise Rastafarian from the Virgin Islands. Bramble had taken Mancini's title away in Buffalo, New York, in June of 1984. Mancini had not been himself that night. He'd felt sick and out of sorts, as if he were coming down with the flu. He thought that Bramble had proved to be an unworthy champion. This had less to do with Bramble's talent than with his comportment. He had insulted the Mancini family and had done stupid things, like messing around with voodoo and boxing with a chicken. These antics had grated against Mancini's own love of the fight game, his respect for its rituals and institutions, and has increased his desire for revenge. He did his roadwork in the high desert country, running along paths that skirted the base of snowcapped mountains. He skipped rope, tossed around a medicine ball, and kept tabs on his weight. Almost every afternoon, he sparred with his sparring partners in a full-sized ring at the El Dorado. He was a compactly built man, thickly muscled. He had a broken nose and a scarred face, but he still dreamed of becoming an actor someday. Among his friends he counted Playboy bunnies and movie stars. He knew Mickey Rourke and Sly Stallone. He knew Frankie Avalon well, and Avalon had told him that whenever you The Missouri Review · 49 do a film you leave a chunk of your life behind. That made sense to Mancini. He was twenty-three years old, and his brief and sometimes tragic time in the ring was drawing to a close. Mancini started his career as a pro by fighting in and around Youngstown. He told local reporters that he was dedicating himself to winning a lightweight title in honor of his father, Lenny, the original Boom Boom, who had been a contender himself until he was wounded on a French battlefield during the Second World War. This made for good copy, and Mancini soon picked up a canny, ambitious manager, David Wolf, a former sportswriter who knew the value of a property. With Wolf guiding him, steering him away from potentially dangerous opponents, Mancini followed a cautious path to the top, and in. May, 1982, after a vicious loss to Alexis Arguello, he beat a shopworn fighter, Arturo Frias, to become the WB.A. champ. Mancini was still handsome and relatively unmarked when he knocked out Frias, and his good-natured personality had made him very popular with fans. He was white, Italian, and eminently marketable. The television networks loved him because he had crossover appeal and attracted both men and women. Mancini had never been a stylish boxer; there was little art to his hooks or jabs. He had won twenty-three of his twenty-four pro bouts simply by giving better than he got, by being more courageous and intense than his opponents...