1. Dominick Anthony Galento was an American heavyweight boxer.
44 Facts About Tony Galento
1. 2.
Tony Galento is best remembered for scoring a third-round knockdown against Joe Louis in a world title stoppage loss in June 1939.
3.
On one occasion, as a result of his ice-lugging commitments, Tony Galento was reportedly upbraided by his cornerman for being late for a bout.
4.
Tony Galento is widely regarded as having been one of boxing's most colorful characters.
5.
Tony Galento was born in Orange, New Jersey on March 12,1910.
6.
Tony Galento grew up in an Irish neighborhood and attended the Park Avenue school in Orange until the fifth or sixth grade.
7.
When he was fifteen, Tony Galento had his own ice wagon and horse.
8.
At age sixteen, encouraged by his friend and future trainer Jimmy Frain, Tony Galento started boxing at the Orange YMCA.
9.
When he was twenty, during prohibition and the Great Depression, Tony Galento was involved in the running of a speakeasy.
10.
Later on, from the mid-1930s onwards, Tony Galento owned and ran a saloon on Day Street in Orange.
11.
Tony Galento was a "slow and undisciplined fighter" with a short reach.
12.
Tony Galento could fight out of a crouch and had a formidable, and unpredictable, leaping left hook.
13.
Tony Galento absorbs them like open buds absorb the dew.
14.
The difference between Tony Galento standing up and Tony Galento lying on his right side is hard to detect with the naked eye, but, when he has a cigar in his mouth, you can tell which is north, and the rest is easy.
15.
Monninger relates that Tony Galento once wagered ten dollars that he could eat fifty hot dogs before taking part in a bout.
16.
Dempsey strolled quietly into the gymnasium and walked up to the balcony while Tony Galento was going through the motions of 'working out.
17.
Tony Galento was wearing a beautifully cut light gray suit, tan and white shoes, and white silk shirt.
18.
When Tony Galento caught sight of him, he gave him a big hello.
19.
Tony Galento [Dempsey] took off his coat and stripped right down to his white silk monogrammed underpants and vaulted into the ring: 'Now, Tony,' he told him.
20.
Tony Galento ripped punches into the pudgy torso from all angles, split his lips with a terrific left, and sent the blood squirting from his nose with a right.
21.
Still breathing easily, Dempsey ducked under the ropes and began to dress while Tony Galento stood shaking his head in a semi-daze and trying to wipe the blood from his face with the backs of his gloves.
22.
Tony Galento told Blonk that he "used to work out two or three hours every day for a fight and run six miles", and then, after his exercise, decamp "across the street" and drink ten or so bottles of beer.
23.
On June 28,1939 in Yankee Stadium in the Bronx in New York City, Tony Galento fought for the heavyweight championship of the world against the 'Brown Bomber' Joe Louis.
24.
Tony Galento opened with his left: twice swatting at Louis, who, stepping to the side, evaded his attack.
25.
Tony Galento persisted and swatted again: stunning Louis with a "full-bore left hook" that drove the champion to the ropes.
26.
Tony Galento tried to capitalize on Louis's discomfort with a "hacking" right cross.
27.
Tony Galento worked off of his jab and hit Galento with multiple combinations.
28.
Tony Galento had never been dropped before in his professional career.
29.
Tony Galento waded through the punches, trying to ignore them, trying to find the punch that had lifted Louis, but the cumulative weight of the Bomber's blows began to sag him.
30.
Louis continued to attack: Tony Galento slumped towards the ropes and fell to his knees.
31.
We had Tony Galento bobbing and weaving in the first two rounds, and he had Louis dizzy.
32.
Nova suffered four knockdowns and Tony Galento won by technical knockout.
33.
Derisively referred to by some newsmen as the "Battle of the Bums", Tony Galento's fight with Max Baer was hosted in Jersey City on July 2,1940.
34.
Tony Galento failed to answer the bell for the start of the eighth round.
35.
The first time I was called upon to take charge of him [Tony Galento], I watched him work out, then we went back to his tavern for dinner.
36.
Nevertheless, the possibility that Tony Galento was in part responsible for Schaaf's demise was again rehearsed in Ring magazine in 1972.
37.
Tony Galento squared off against fellow ex-heavyweight contender Primo Carnera, grappled an octopus in a giant fish tank in Seattle, fought a 550 lb bear in a cage in Newark, and boxed a kangaroo in Atlantic City.
38.
In 1954, James J Venere of Newark, a former tenant in an apartment owned by Galento, brought a suit against the "rotund former prize fighter" that alleged that Galento had illegally impounded "$1,400 worth" of his possessions in lieu of the payment of rent.
39.
Tony Galento was fined $25, and Mary, for "maintaining a gambling house", was fined $125.
40.
Tony Galento reportedly claimed that Louis was a "pushover" whom he would have handily "licked" if he, Tony Galento, who had a battle with pneumonia in the summer of 1938, hadn't been pressured into taking the fight earlier than scheduled.
41.
Young people, if they cared, need only look at the record book to see that, whatever Tony Galento had to say, Joe Louis was no 'bum'.
42.
Tony Galento reportedly offered to coach his fellow Jerseyan Chuck Wepner in the run-up to the latter's 1975 fight against Ali.
43.
All three funds were run by the Fraternal Order of Eagles, a fraternal organization of which Tony Galento was a member and a "travelling ambassador".
44.
Tony Galento's death was adverted to by the Democratic Party politician Joseph Minish in the United States House of Representatives.