Famous fighters associated with the underworld?

[JAB5239]

Name as many famous fighters as you can and the underworld crime figures they were associated either before, during, or after their careers.

I'll start with....

Abe Attell = Arnold Rothstein
Barney Ross = Al Capone and Jack Ruby

What are some others?

[1SILVA]

Name as many famous fighters as you can and the underworld crime figures they were associated either before, during, or after their careers.

I'll start with....

Abe Attell = Arnold Rothstein
Barney Ross = Al Capone and Jack Ruby

What are some others?

Sonny Liston(he was controlled by the mob, but I don't know what family he was connected to)

[CarlosG815]

Rocky Marciano would give a percentage of his purse to the mob. I also read that before a fighter could get a shot at Marciano's title you had to fight an unofficial match with a guy that was apparently much better than Marciano, but never fought in official fights.

[JAB5239]

Rocky Marciano would give a percentage of his purse to the mob. I also read that before a fighter could get a shot at Marciano's title you had to fight an unofficial match with a guy that was apparently much better than Marciano, but never fought in official fights.

Marciano gave a percentage to the mob? I've never heard this either. This is interesting to me since my father was friends with Raymond Patriarca who ran the New England family AND saw Marciano fight several times at the old Rhode Island auditorium. Do have any sources on this or which family he supposedly kicked back to?

[StarshipTrooper]

Sonny Liston(he was controlled by the mob, but I don't know what family he was connected to)

Originally Blinky Palermo and Franky Carbo. Carbo controlled all of boxing through his front man Jim Norris at the IBC.

Poet

[The Hate Giver]

basically everybody in the so called boxing's golden era.

Old timers go on & on about how bad the state of boxing is these days yet in the golden era black people didnt even have equal rights as human beings & citizens. How much more in the sport of boxing?

how many fighters threw fights? How many black fighters got robbed of wins, how many black fighters didnt get title shots?

Golden Era = Tainted Era.

[JAB5239]

Rocky Marciano would give a percentage of his purse to the mob. I also read that before a fighter could get a shot at Marciano's title you had to fight an unofficial match with a guy that was apparently much better than Marciano, but never fought in official fights.

Page 290 of the book "Rocky Marciano: The rock of his time" refutes all of this.

[CarlosG815]

Page 290 of the book "Rocky Marciano: The rock of his time" refutes all of this.

Is it rumor? I've read it from a few different sources. Not sure if it was fact or rumor.

What does the book say?

[mickey malone]

Originally Blinky Palermo and Franky Carbo. Carbo controlled all of boxing through his front man Jim Norris at the IBC.

Poet

Carbo was the man who pulled the trigger on Bugsy Siegal..
Fighters I know he either contolled or had dealings with included Primo Carnera, Marty Servo, Ike Williams, Jack Sharkey, Corey Wallace, Jimmy Bivins, Tony Janiro and Corey Wallace who beat Marciano as an amateur..
He tried to muscle in on SRR too, but Robinson always resisted his offers..

[CarlosG815]

Page 290 of the book "Rocky Marciano: The rock of his time" refutes all of this.

According to Johnny Arthur...

“There was one guy,” he recalled. “Everybody feared him. If you wanted to challenge Marciano for his title, you first had to fight him. I’m not just talking about official matches either. If they wanted to keep it quiet you had to fight him in the gym. He was brutal. He’d either beat you so badly that you’d pull out of the fight with Marciano, or just hurt you real bad so that when you climbed into the ring for the fight you were still hurting. He was better than Marciano, but they never let him fight him. He was just the guy you had to go through to get a title shot.”