Law Unto Himself: Banging 'Em Good with Fritzie Zivic
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
law unto himself: Banging ‘em good with Fritzie Zivic By Mike Casey You have to understand that Fritzie Zivic was always a polite and decent fellow in the ring who never forgot his manners. A dirty fighter? Not Fritzie. That was just the misguided impression of others. Within the tenuous framework of the tough playing field of his era, Zivic was simply protecting himself against the genuine roughs. This he did most ably, with an inventive mix of jolting jabs, vicious uppercuts, superbly manoeuvred head butts, eye thumbing and skilfully executed shots to the testicles. And always, Fritzie would claim, he would say ‘Pardon me’ to his opponents as he systematically chopped them up. Nor was Zivic shy about giving eloquent dissertations on his preferred methods of self- defence against such nasty brutes. “I’d hit guys low, choke ‘em or give ‘em the head. My best punch was a left hook to you-know-where.” As our younger readers will have already determined, a quite unique form of anarchy flourished in the prize ring of Fritzie Zivic’s era. “Get the other guy before he gets you first,” was Fritzie’s simple law of life, and it was a philosophy that certainly stood him in good stead throughout his roller coaster eighteen-year career as a professional. Zivic certainly got a whole bunch of guys before he was through and there is still no telling just how many fights he really had. The count has clicked up to over 230 on most boxing databases, but the likelihood is that there were many more of an official and semi-official nature. Fritzie himself claimed 399. Ring warfare was waged in a wholly different jungle some sixty or seventy years ago, and while Fritzie might have been loose with the truth about his indiscretions, it is certainly true that a great many other savvy ring mechanics fashioned a similarly devilish box of tricks. When Zivic wrested the welterweight championship from Henry Armstrong in 1940, referee Arthur Donovan reached the point of despair in his vain efforts to keep order. Fritzie, of course, figured it was all Homicide Hank’s fault. “He beat hell out of me for the first five rounds. He stepped on my toes, gave me the elbow and hit me low so many times I lost count.” It frustrated Zivic greatly that referee Donovan didn’t do a thing about Hank’s outrageous behaviour. So Fritzie hit Henry low and cut his eye with a head butt, at which point Donovan said to the pair, “If you guys wanna fight that way, it’s OK with me.” Zivic travelled a long and brutal road before getting his shot at glory against Armstrong. Fritzie was notoriously erratic in his early days as a pro, his winning runs being offset by losing streaks. He dropped eight decisions in a row from August 1935 to April 1936. Like the vast majority of his contemporaries, Fritzie had to weave his boxing and training around the less exciting but more important routine of a day job. Boxing was fun and earned some nice pocket money, but Zivic didn’t take it too seriously until he was five years into his career. He had nearly 70 recorded fights on his log when he gave fellow Pittsburgher Billy Conn all kinds of hell in losing a narrow split decision at Pittsburgh’s Duquesne Gardens in December, 1936. Fritzie earned 2,500 dollars for messing up young Billy’s handsome features, a tidy sum in those days. It was enough to commit Zivic to making boxing his profession and giving it everything he had. After the Conn fight, Fritzie knew that he needed to be stronger and tougher, even though Conn would offer the opinion in later years that Zivic was plenty strong and tough already. Fritzie went to work in the steel mills to build up his body, working for 75 cents an hour. Thirty years later in his retirement, after all the wars had been fought and all the blood had been shed, he went back to work as a boilermaker for $5.70 an hour. His biggest purse as a fighter was $25,000. Food for thought! Lawrenceville Fritzie Zivic was born Ferdinand Zivic in the Lawrenceville section of Pittsburgh, the heartland of the city’s steel mills. Croatian by descent, he grew up in a neighbourhood of Jews, Italians and blacks. Two of Fritzie’ five brothers, Pete and Jack, worked in the mills and became Olympic boxers after catching the bug at the local amateur establishment, the Willow Club. Both competed in the 1920 Olympics in Belgium, where Pete went all the way to the final before losing to Fidel La Barba. Fritzie, however, was destined for greater fame once he applied himself to the sport in earnest. After the close defeat to Conn, the man who would become known as the Croat Comet really began to roll. He defeated some very accomplished fighters as he barrelled his way to the top, proving a furious handful even for those who beat him. The many amusing tales about Fritzie should not blind us to the fact that he was a highly effective and dangerous operator who could vary his style according to the examination at hand. He could pressure and hustle clever boxers out of their stride and outbox and out-slug his fellow toughs. He could jab the brawlers silly when he chose not to engage with them, or break them up from close range with his winging hooks and brutal uppercuts. Zivic wasn’t the cleverest of boxers or the hardest of hitters. But he was tough and durable and his punishing style gained him the reputation of a feared warrior. He was the bump in the road that made other contenders think, “Oh my God, not him.” Fritzie also possessed courage and determination in abundance. In 1937, just as his career was on a high after victories over Johnny Jadick, Bobby Pacheco and Chuck Woods, Zivic contracted a near fatal attack of pneumonia and was only saved by the blood of his brother Jack after a transfusion. Fritzie was fighting again that same year. In March 1938, Zivic captured a split decision over the young Charley Burley at the Motor Square Garden in Pittsburgh, lost on points to Charley three months later and was again outscored in their rubber match. Fritzie was now mixing it with some of the greatest fighters of his or any other era. In February 1939, he handed a first professional defeat to the brilliant Texan, Eddie Booker, who would lose just five of his 80 fights and go down in history as one of the great unsung middleweights. Zivic’s form continued to be somewhat inconsistent, but from May 1940 he suddenly clicked and entered a golden phase. Six successive wins catapulted him into a title shot at the already legendary Henry Armstrong. Fritzie knocked out Johnny Rinaldi and Leonard Bennett, outpointed Kenny LaSalle and copped a pair of decisions over Ossie Harris. But the biggest win was a points triumph over the clever and infernally difficult NBA lightweight champion, Sammy ‘The Clutch’ Angott, who would later become the first man to defeat the brilliant young ace, Willie Pep. Sluggin’ with Hank and Lew Jenkins Blood followed Zivic around, just as death follows other men. At his raging best, it seemed that Zivic always left a trail of cuts, bruises and welts. On the night of October 4 1940, Zivic didn’t just beat Henry Armstrong at Madison Square Garden. The Croat Comet gave the fading Homicide Hank the worst beating of his fabled and glittering career. The bell that signalled the end of fifteen rounds of ferocious fighting saved Armstrong from his first knockout defeat as he lay face down on the canvas from punishment and exhaustion. The San Mateo Times reported: “Bloodied is a mild description of Armstrong’s face when he hit the canvas in the final seconds of the last round. His face looked like oozing hamburger.” As Zivic piled on the pressure, Hank suffered gashes above both eyes and bled from his mouth and nose and a cut to his left cheek. He would tell reporters after the fight that he couldn’t see out of his left eye after the third round and was virtually blind in both eyes as the steady flow of blood ran into them. While there was plenty of beef behind Fritzie’s punches, there was also a smart brain at the controls. For all his many fights, the challenger had never gone beyond ten rounds before and he knew the importance of pacing himself. Placing faith in his natural toughness and conditioning, Zivic encouraged Armstrong to come on to him in the early rounds, content to tuck up as Hank pounded away. But Fritzie wasn’t busy doing nothing. He was already employing his damaging uppercut in the form of short and hurtful shots inside. This weapon became more potent and versatile in its delivery as the rounds wore on, and Armstrong just couldn’t seem to avoid it. Nobody had ever matched the prime Hank for pace or beaten him at infighting, but now he was being passed in the fast lane by a prohibitive underdog. Showing the ring intelligence for which he was never really given full credit, Zivic was positioning himself at angles where Armstrong’ vicious hooks had no more than a glancing impact. The challenger was countering with shuddering uppercuts to the head and body from short and long range.