By Mitch Abramson
Photo © Ed Mulholland/FightWireImages.com
They no longer sneak into the boxing gym, ducking past security to find a quiet place in the back to train, hoping no one pesters them for gym dues, "suffering in silence," as Joe Greene Sr. described it.
When the silence was interrupted and they were forced to leave, Greene Sr. wrapped a tiny mattress around a pole at the local park in Queens and poof! A heavy bag was erected for his son, Joe Greene Jr. to whale away on.
If money was tight, their imagination wasn’t.
"Times were rough," said Greene Sr., who wouldn’t divulge the identity of the gym that came to symbolize his financial struggles back then, “which makes what’s happening now so rewarding.”
Today, that little boy who first learned to box to deal with pesky neighborhood bullies is a pro boxer, 16-0 with 12 knockouts. Greene Sr. no longer works as a security guard and a process server. He trains and advises his son, a middleweight who has emerged as an intriguing prospect.
In his last fight on August 8, he knocked out Darryl Salmon at 2:59 of the first round in the main event on ESPN2. The fight was notable because Greene, a southpaw, was knocked down with a high left hand to his forehead. He got up with a bemused look, motioned to referee Frank Santore Jr. that it was a slip, took the eight-count, and jumped on Salmon immediately, landing a series of lefts that sent Salmon (16-2) sprawling on the canvas.
“We knew he was a boxer, so the plan was not to let him get too comfortable,” said Greene, who is 21. “I wanted to go straight at him before he could set up.”
Of the knockdown, his first as a professional, he said: “I guess he hit me with a punch. I wasn’t hurt or anything. I wanted to keep on fighting. It was the first time I was ever down. I just wanted to keep fighting. I was excited being in a main event. ”
A connoisseur of New York boxing might have had a case of deja vu seeing Greene go down.
A number of highly-touted young fighters from the Big Apple have stumbled recently when they stepped up. Jaidon Codrington was regarded as a super prospect until he was knocked out by Allan Green in 18 seconds in 2005. Curtis Stevens was a pint sized Mike Tyson until he lost a terribly boring fight to June to Andre Dirrell. And Gary Stark Jr., who showed so much promise early on, displaying nice boxing chops, was knocked out in May, his second straight loss. Many times, Greene was in the audience to watch them fight, taking mental notes.
When Greene went down, it seemed he might suffer the same fate as all the others, but his father knew better.
"When it was ruled a knockdown, that got Joe upset," Greene Sr. said. "That kind of put him in overdrive and he wanted to get the guy out of there. I was never worried for him. I don’t think it was a knockout. If you watch the replay, it was more of a slip, He was trying to work on a technique in the gym, called, ‘punching off the block,’ where you block a shot and then you and then punch, and he kind of got twisted with his footing and slipped."
It’s easy to dismiss what a fighter did before he turned pro as trivial, but Greene was perhaps the city’s top amateur of his time. He won the New York Golden Gloves twice at 165 pounds, earning the Sugar Ray Robinson Award as the tournament’s outstanding boxer in 2004. He won the 2004 National Golden Gloves, becoming the first New York fighter since Mike Tyson to be named Golden Boy of the tournament, according to a bio provided by Jack Stanton.
He lost in the 2004 Olympic trials to the eventual bronze medal winner, Andre Dirrell 16-13, and he turned pro March of 2005, leaving behind an amateur record of 165-5.
“Joe Greene is one of the last guys in the amateurs that could knock guys out,” said Joe Higgins, president of USA Boxing-Metro, who spoke from a cell-phone in Houston where he was at the USA Boxing Olympic trials. “He’s one of the most awesome kids I ever saw in the amateurs. He was so much fun to watch. He would dominate guys when he won a decision and he would dominate when he stopped them. Joe is going to be a champion some day. It’s just a matter of time.”
As the architect of his son’s career, Greene Sr. has a vision for what he wants to see in the years ahead.
"I want him to be as close to Sesame Street as possible in terms of his image," he said. "When Joe fights, we want there to be lots of kids at the arena. That’s the attitude that we want to have, that we’re role models, trying to do something positive. He doesn’t want to be associated with any of this gangster stuff. He’s not that type of kid."
An exception was discussed in a story that appeared on this website recently, linking Greene to a near-brawl at Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn a week before his fight.
According to Gleason’s owner, Bruce Silverglade, who spoke to several witnesses to the event, the ruckus started when Greene dropped Josiah Judah in the first round of a sparring session. Josiah, an 8-0-1 super middleweight, was replaced in the ring by Joseph Judah, a talented amateur, who was promptly “manhandled” by Greene. The sparring soon depreciated into a foul-fest, according to Silverglade. Then Daniel Judah, another brother, who is 21-2-3 as a cruiserweight, jumped in the ring, ungloved, and punched Greene “three to four times,” Silverglade said. Greene’s mother and father were in attendance. Daniel was pulled away by a number of onlookers, including his father, Yoel. There were rumors that Greene might pull out of his fight with Salmon because of minor “bruises on his face.”
“There was a small lump on his nose,” Jack Stanton, Greene’s manager said. “He was punched with an ungloved hand, but it was never an issue for Joe in his mind. He wanted to go ahead and fight. My whole thing is that I want my guy to come in the best shape possible, so I wouldn’t have hesitated to pull him out of the fight, but Joe wanted to go.”
Daniel has since been barred from Gleason’s Gym, Silverglade said.
"It’s not really anything I want to talk about," Greene said. "It’s just something that happened, and I want to put it behind me."
The Judahs could not be reached for comment.
For a while, it seemed Greene was reluctant to fight in New York. He fought most of his early bouts in North Carolina and Georgia, a kid from Queens in the Deep South, a sight as unlikely as a tornado in Brooklyn.
He has embraced fighting in the Sunshine State under the guidance of Seminole Warriors Boxing, a promotional outfit in Florida whose owner, the Seminole Tribe, also owns the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood Florida, where Greene has fought twice.
Leon Margules, Executive Director of Warriors Boxing, anticipates a potential winter fight in New York, possibly at the Hard Rock in New York City for Greene.
“He’s one of the most exciting fighters in boxing,” Margules said.
Greene has embraced fighting in Florida, and the community has hugged him back, splashing his picture across a full page story in the Sun-Sentinel and in a piece in the Miami Herald, and displaying his image on a marquee before his last fight.
"We would have never gotten that in New York," Greene Sr. said. "It was a whole different atmosphere fighting in Florida, kind of like a fantasy land. The fans really appreciated him. We would never been on a billboard like that, gotten a whole page in the newspaper. After the fight, it took my son an hour to get out of the arena because of all the fans. The tickets were affordable, so you had a lot of kids, underprivileged kids in the audience. When my son was young, we couldn’t afford to see a fight because the tickets were too expensive. It’s been great fighting down there."
As a result of winning the NABA title, Greene will be ranked in the top-10 of the WBA, Stanton said.
To prepare for his last fight, Greene went to Hollywood, California to work with Bernard Hopkins, who needed a southpaw to get ready for Winky Wright.
Time, and good sparring, it appears, is on Greene’s side.
“We’re in no rush,” Stanton said. “Look, he turned pro when he was 18. He’s 21 right now. He’s so young. The plan is for him to be ready in the long-term so that he doesn’t just win a title, but he holds on to a title. That’s the goal, to get him ready to be a world champion and for him to be a world champion for a long time.”
Mitch Abramson has covered boxing for The New York Times and the Village Voice and is currently a staff writer at Newsday.
