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November 2001
Each month we bring you a selection of articles from the current and past issues of BOXING MONTHLY. To buy the magazine, see our subscription or back issues pages, or use our world distribution map to find a news-stand copy. Why not use our Interactive Forum to express your own boxing comments and opinions!
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A VERY SPECIAL KIND OF FIGHTER When Sandy Saddler died last month in New York, he left us with memories of one of the greatest featherweights ever. NEIL ALLEN reflects on the momentous career of a uniquely talented boxer |
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Sandy Saddler
- Get Big Pic The unforgettable night in Kingston, Jamaica, when big George Foreman knocked Smokin’ Joe Frazier up in the air to win the world heavyweight title, became what the over excited locals called “jump up time” and any thoughts of getting yourself, plus press badge and notebook, through to the champion’s dressing-room seemed out of the question. To my rescue came a pair of long black arms belonging to a skinny, moustached and becoming member of the victorious camp. Hugging me from behind into his protective, long, slim body we jog-trotted through the celebrating 35,000 crowd just ahead of a crackling Don King who had arrived with champion Frazier, but had now swiftly switched to his conqueror. The arms that held me, that torrid Caribbean evening, belonged to Joe Benjamin “Sandy” Saddler and they had, a couple of decades earlier, helped him to the world 9st title and 144 professional victories of which no less than 103 had been accomplished before the final bell. Maybe one of Saddler’s biggest handicaps in securing the right niche in the hall of fame is that he beat, three times out of four, an American sporting icon, Willie “Will of the Wisp” Pep. A second handicap, at least in the eyes of many of the Americans who used to watch fights half a century ago, was the style which was the natural outcome of his elongated, praying mantis physique. The final strike against him, or so Saddler and others believed, was his colour. Way back in 1960, three years after Saddler was forced to retire because of failing sight exacerbated by an accident while riding in a taxi, I lunched in London with the celebrated American journalist Joe Liebling, as outstanding reporter on boxing as he was on war, politics, the press and good food. Liebling’s fistic themes that day, apart from the need for “the sweet science” to be taught properly to the young, was his interest in unusual, seemingly unorthodox technique. Joe’s plump body shook all over as he recalled the New York trainer Freddie Brown wearily explaining to him the problem he was having in trying to teach the raw heavyweight Tommy “Hurricane Jackson”, not to jab with his palms uppermost, which he told us he was doing in case he changed his mind and wanted to uppercut. But Liebling proved to be most appreciative of the style of Saddler whose relentless aggression and powers of leverage he praised in a marvellous New Yorker essay, centred round Saddler’s world title defence against Red Top Davis in February 1955. Briefly seen film of Saddler’s series against Pep underlines the wrestling and rolling and back handing and tripping that was inevitable with Saddler having almost a five-inch advantage in height and much longer reach. But it wasn’t just slugger Sandy against fencer Willie — when Pep defended his world title back in June 1943, he hit hard enough to break Sal Bartelo’s jaw in three places. And Sandy could box smoothly enough to win 41 fights by decision apart from all his knockouts. The label that has lasted on the final Saddler-Pep clash was that it was maybe the dirtiest of all fights in ring history. Certainly the hapless referee, Eddie Miller, does not seem to have been in control and the New York State Athletic Commission subsequently banned winner Saddler for 60 days and loser Pep for about 20 months. But roughest of all time? Well, I remember an old Frenchman rolling his eyes as he told me about the enormities of Frank Klaus beating Billy Papke on a foul in Paris in their 1913 middleweight title brawl. And an American ringside veteran pressing the claim to utter grossness of the slaughter in Philadelphia in 1939 when Two Ton Tony Galento butted and gouged Lou Nova for nearly 14 rounds of such savagery that the ring stools, for a subsequent four rounder, had to be moved three feet inwards to keep clear of the most slippery part of the blood-stained canvas. That said, it was a pleasant case of all forgiven if not forgotten when I talked with Sandy in Jamaica and Willie in London years after their jousting. Saddler, of whom George Forman once said: “I had him in my camp because he was one of the most cold-blooded fighters ever,” reminisced: “Willie Pep and I went a long ways back before we ever got to make so much money together. “According to Willie it was because of a relationship, a help-out thing between his manager Lou Viscusi and my people, the Johnston brothers, that I ended up getting stopped for the only time in my whole career. Bill Johnston asked Lou to fix me up with my first pro opponent and they got me Earl Roys, the New England champ, and I beat him in eight. I was supposed to have a return with Roys but he couldn’t make it. “But I’m on a train going to fight Roys, as I think, and I see this fighter Jock Leslie that I’ve heard about, ask him what he’s doing and he says he’s going to Hartford to fight someone called Saddler. I said: ‘No you ain’t, cos that’s me and I’m fighting Earl.’ But Leslie was right, I found out soon enough. Much too experienced for me, but thank the Lord he didn’t knock me cold, only a TKO in the third when they stopped the fight. And ol’ Willie’s manager just thought he was doing me a favour . . .” Pep, born in 1922, four years earlier than Saddler, recalled “a tall, skinny kid we fixed up with his first fight but after he was stopped by Jock Leslie, guy I defended the title against in about ‘47, incidentally, we forgot all about this Saddler. Even when Sandy became my number one contender I remembered what had happened to him against Leslie, plus Sandy didn’t look too great in a New York main event. After 73 wins in a row I couldn’t imagine this kid was going to beat me. Certainly not by knocking me down twice and then stopping me in the fourth.” “But being with Archie in the same Johnston camp for so long, I get the benefit of sound advice from the Old Mongoose. Plus he came into camp with me specially for the first Pep fight — making me move right, sparring with me, learning how to cover up, get in my shell like a tortoise, kinda. He warned me so often how clever and fast Pep was and never, ever give him any leverage, like maybe I did too much when we went the full 15 and Willie got the title back. Archie even improved my punching by keeping my back foot more on the ball of the foot, ready to roll.” Moore, who was to have more than 230 fights between 1935 and 1963, stopping 165 opponents, rated Saddler as about the best featherweight he ever saw apart from triple world champ Henry Armstrong. But perfectionist that he was, Archie always believed that Saddler could have been an even more remarkable fighter. “Sandy and I had a lot of time together and, like I helped him plan for Pep, he was there cheering me on the night I fought Rocky Marciano for the heavyweight title. But teaching the mystery of boxing can be a life long task. If I had had Sandy right from the start I would have changed his style considerably — making him hard to hit with more use of that fantastic long reach of his. I’ll always rate him as one of the greatest punchers I ever saw, but if we had worked on the defensive as well then we could have become the greatest boxer of them all.” It did not even take good manners to refrain from bringing up with either Archie or Sandy the rumours in 1948 that the first fight with Pep was going to be a “fix” — rumours that apparently caused New York boxing commissioner Eddie Eagan to take the two fighters aside at the weigh-in and say: “I’m making you both responsible to uphold the good name of boxing.” A picture I have of the fourth round knockout of Pep shows him-crashing to the floor, right eye closed, nose bleeding. As Saddler recalled: “I knocked him stoned in that fourth round. Right out so that you could’ve counted 50, my friend.” Mutual regard remained through the years. “The second fight,” said Pep “was the fight of our lives, for Sandy had height and reach on me and he came at me so hard. The fourth and last fight was a real brawl — don’t blame the referee, me and Sandy did it. He started it because he was the tough guy and I was the boxer but I admit I tripped Sandy up later on. Sandy was rough and tough, a great puncher but not basically a ‘dirty’ fighter. I got nothing but respect for the guy.” Saddler’s case was: “When I got on top of Pep and started to punch he would grab my long arm and I would bang him with the other while I was trying to pull away. Was that dirty? Anyway, I never thought I got enough credit as a fighter overall like Willie did. We’re good friends now we retired but, like they say: ‘If you’re white, you’re right. If you’re black get back.’ In my time the black fighter had to work twice as hard to get the recognition and the public’s respect. “Word hard” is right when I see just one almost forgotten fight report from Saddler’s extraordinary record — 17 March, 1952 at the Houston Gardens: “Sandy Saddler encountered plenty of trouble before he put Tommy Collins away in the fifth round. Saddler was dropped in the first round, was cut severely over his right eye and bled profusely from nose and mouth but came on like the proverbial champion to floor his plucky adversary in the fifth round and force the ref to stop the fight.” Sitting in the Jamaican shade, Panama hat tilted over one eye, no wonder that Saddler, the unsung king of the feathers, felt it necessary to point out: “You know I always liked to box for the pleasure of it right from when I was a kid. Later I had pride in my work as a pro and a champion. But I paid my dues, man, I paid my dues.” Neil Allen is the former boxing correspondent of The Times and then the Evening Standard of London, now reports for the New York Times. |
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