Straight Writes and Jabs: An Inside Look at Another Year in Boxing

Ray Mancini for Real

Deconstructing a hero and putting him back together again. Ray Mancini for Real I started reading The Good Son:The Life of Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini by Mark Kriegel with a jaundiced eye.There are a lot of mediocre books about fighters who were embraced by the media and whose fame outweighed their ring accomplishments. But from the prologue on, it’s clear that The Good Son is far more than a “golly gee” biography. Ray Mancini was marketed to the American public as the AllAmerican boy. Or as Top Rank publicist Irving Rudd proclaimed,“the All-American boy with a touch of mozzarella.” He representedYoungstown , Ohio, to the United States the way Manny Pacquiao represents the Philippines to the world. Mancini received what Kriegel calls “the highest blessing in American sports, that consecrating kiss of network television.” In 1984, Sport magazine ranked him as the second-highest paid athlete on the planet in terms of performance income, ahead of superstars like Mike Schmidt and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. But Ray paid a heavy price before, during, and after his glory years. The Good Son begins with the story of Ray’s father. Lenny Mancini turned pro in 1937 and was a promising lightweight.“He gave the fans what they wanted,” Bill Gallo of the NewYork Daily News told Kriegel. “Kept throwing punches, never quit. He took a shellacking even when he won.” Describing a post-fight photograph of Lenny at age twenty-one, Kriegel observes,“His face is undergoing the inevitable inexorable trans- figuration from puckish to pugilistic.Its supple features have begun to flatten and purple. His lips are bruised and split.A cut sack of swollen tissue hangs over his left eye.The right eye is completely closed, clenched like the seam of a mussel shell.” Lenny went into the Army after Pearl Harbor. He came out a physically broken man, who fought for four more years as a ticket-selling club fighter and, when the money was right, as an opponent.“He might have 182 THOMAS HAUSER become the lightweight champion if he hadn’t gone into the Army,” legendary trainer Ray Arcel said in 1945.As Kriegel notes,“That was just another way of saying Lenny Mancini would never be a champion. He had the stink of ‘what if?’ about him.” The younger Mancini idolized his father. Looking at photographs in old scrapbooks, Kriegel recounts,“Raymond didn’t see a club fighter with a busted eye and dried blood on his lips. He saw a hero. It might as well have been Christ on the cross.” Ray Mancini’s career was in significant measure a tribute to his father. His journey through the sweet science was guided by two of the smartest men in boxing. Manager DaveWolf was knowledgeable, tenacious, a pain in the ass to deal with, and devoted to the best interests of his fighter. Promoter Bob Arum was well-connected and built stars better than anyone else in the business.With their help, Mancini (who was already a matchmaker’s dream) became, in Kriegel’s words,“The LastWhite Ethnic, more valiant than violent, a redemptive fable produced by CBS Sports.” Ray turned pro in 1979 at age eighteen. On October 3, 1981, he challenged Alexis Arguello for the WBC lightweight crown.Asked by a reporter if he was ready to fight an opponent of Arguello’s caliber, Ray answered,“Why don’t you ask my father how many title shots you get?” In private, he was more to the point:“How the fuck can you call yourself a fighter and say ‘no’ to a world title? How is anyone going to believe in me if I don’t believe in myself?” Arguello broke Mancini down round by round en route to a fourteenth -round stoppage. Seven months later, Ray got a crack at WBA beltholder Arturo Frias. “It’s bullshit that I control theWBA,”Arum said after Mancini kayoed Frias in the first round.“When I want something done, I have to pay off [Pepe] Cordero.Anytime you want a fix in theWBA, you bribe Cordero and he takes care of it. Cordero took me to the cleaners. Half a million bucks [in various inducements to make Frias-Mancini].” On November 13, 1982, at age twenty-one, Mancini defended his WBA title against Deuk-Koo Kim. It was a brutal back-and-forth slugfest. Kim collapsed in the fourteenth round and died four days later. Kriegel explores the fight and its emotional...