PART
3
of a 5-part
Series
By Zachary
Levin
ZL: You worked a ton of
fights at the
 old
Madison Square Garden at 50th Street. Was that, in
your opinion, the best boxing venue around?
GC: Yes.
ZL: What were some of your
other favorite venues to work at, as a trainer or as
a boxing analyst?
GC: I liked Ridgewood
Grove (in Brooklyn).
ZL: Blue Horizon?
GC: I only worked there
a couple of times.
ZL: How about St. Nicks?
GC: St. Nicks was good,
too
ZL: How about some of the
places out in Los Angeles?
GC: No, they were just
regular arenas they set up for boxing.
ZL: The decision to be a
trainer as well as a manager, why did you make that
decision?
GC: Well, when I first
got started, you couldn’t be a manager unless you
belonged to the manager’s guild. And to get into the
manager’s guild you had to more or less be a wiseguy.
Then, my first fighter I trained that did anything
was Ralph “Tiger” Jones. He beat five world
champions, including Ray Robinson. Never got a title
shot. Well, I wasn’t the manager. I had to give him
to Bob Melnick, and I took 10%. That’s all I got. So
Melnick paired him with another trainer. But Ralph
would call me, ‘Kid, you’re gonna have to come over,
you gotta help me. They don’t tell me anything, they
don’t show me anything.’ I worked with him on a
couple of fights. Eventually, it loosened up after
the guild got broken up, and I was able to do both,
manage and train.
ZL: And you obviously
preferred to have as much control over your fighter
as possible?
GC: Of course. All the
control.
ZL: When you access your
skills as a trainer and a manager, were you equally
adept at everything?
GC: I think I did
everything pretty good. I took care of my own cuts,
everything. (Like most of the old-time trainers,
Clancy was the cutman in addition to being the chief
second.)
ZL: Isn’t it difficult to
work on a bad cut and give your fighter advice at
the same time?
GC: I did it plenty of
times. It’s not hard at all.
ZL: What qualities or
knowledge does a person need to have in order to be
a good trainer?
GC: First thing they
have to be able to do is come to the gym everyday.
No absenteeism. You can’t say, ‘Well, I’ll come
tomorrow,’ and the fighter’s there waiting for you.
That’s the first thing: Punctuality. That’s number
one. Then you have to have knowledge of boxing.
ZL: You had a tremendous
work ethic. I understand you taught school all day
and would leave at 3 o’clock, be at the gym a few
minutes later, and work with your fighters till 9.
It was the same pattern everyday for years?
GC: Actually, I’d be
out of there by 8 o’clock.
ZL: Oh, you lazy bum! But
seriously, I guess you can’t ask your fighters to be
disciplined if you’re not disciplined yourself?
GC: Well, I always
tried to run the fighters that way, you know. Tell
‘em to be at some place at a certain time, you had
to be there.
 ZL:
Johnny Bos feels that there aren’t any real fight
managers anymore—
GC: (cutting in) There
aren’t! You don’t need a manager anymore. The
fighters all have promotional contracts. And the
promoter is really the manager. Once the promoter
gets the promotional contract, he’s picking your
opponents. What’s there left for a manager to do?
ZL: Promoters today are
notorious for protecting their product.
GC: Well, sure. And the
manager would try to do the same, protect their
product. So they’re (promoters) managers.
ZL: Did you have a
particular philosophy when it came to developing a
fighter?
GC: No, every fighter
is different. Some fighters you could move along
quickly, others you had to really take your time
with. And some guys I’d tell them to retire, cause
they just didn’t have it.
ZL: Do you think moving a
fighter is like a lost art form today?
GC: Again, the
promoters are moving the fighters. You ever here of
a manager moving a fighter in the last five years?
It’s either Don King or Bob Arum or Cedric Kushner
or somebody else—they’re all looking to have their
fighters win.
ZL: And if they’re only
interested in seeing their fighters win, it’s hard
for fighters to truly develop and become brilliant
fighters. Is that fair to say?
GC: Yeah, sure. They
can’t become brilliant fighters because they have
the talent to overcome everything.
ZL: Is there a fighter
you’re most proud of in terms of the way you
developed him?
GC: I guess Emile
(Griffith) was the best. He was the welterweight
champ. And then—there were no junior champions in
those days—he went right from welterweight to become
the middleweight champion when he beat Dick Tiger.
 ZL:
Did you ever have another fighter that was as
dedicated as Griffith?
GC: No, not as
dedicated as he was. No matter what I told him to
do, no question he’d do it. I mean, like for
example, we’d be in Vegas for a fight and I’d tell
him I wanted him to stay out of the sun. And I’d be
sitting by the pool…He wouldn’t put his foot in the
sun. He’d call me, I’d have to go over, and we’d
discuss whatever the heck he wanted to talk to me
about. But if I told him not to go in the sun, that
was it. No sun.
ZL: Was that his nature or
was it just the way he responded to you?
GC: I guess it’s the
way he responded to me. But he was that way and it
was terrific.
ZL: Are there any fighters
that come to mind that could’ve been great but were
moved terribly, and so they never rose to their
potential?
GC: (long pause)
ZL: I’ll give an example.
Some fighters today get a huge signing bonus coming
out of the Olympics, and their promoters, anxious to
recoup on their investment, match them too tough
early on. And they’re broken fighters at the point
when they should just be coming into their own.
GC: Well, one example is
Forest Ward. I…thought he was better than he
was…maybe I should have been a little more cautious
with him. Cause he was a heck of a fighter.
ZL: Did that experience
inform you as you went on to manage and train other
fighters? Was it a hindsight is 20/20 kind of thing?
GC: No, I think about
it. When Teddy Brenner told me to make it an 8
instead of a 6 (versus Chuck Wepner), that was my
mistake. (Forrest Ward ended his two-year pro career
in 1969 with a record of 9-2-2.)
ZL: A difference between
the pro game today versus the old days is that now
the TV networks are in love with fighters with
unblemished records. In the old days, you could have
a ton of losses and still fight for the
championship.
GC: That’s correct.
ZL: If you were able to
change this, would you prefer to see things as they
used to be? Just let fighters fight. If some losses
come their way, it’s not a death sentence.
GC: You try to avoid
losses at all costs. If a fighter progresses after a
loss, maybe he’ll do a little better the next time
out. Gradually he gets up there, and somehow he
winds up in a championship fight.
ZL: How did this come to
be, this system where undefeated records are given
so much value, even when the records were built on
nobodies?
GC: Now television really
controls the fighters. HBO, Showtime, Cedric
(Kushner). And, as you said, a guy that is an
Olympic champ, an undefeated fighter, that’s all
they broadcast on television. They don’t tell you
who he fought, who he beat. ‘Well, he’s 14-0!’ stuff
like that. I’ve been fooling around a little bit
with a kid now, helping him a little bit, Dimitriy
Salita. He’s a Jewish kid. He’s 18-0 now, he’s got a
bout 12 knockouts. He can fight. And he’s being
brought along real slowly, so far. (Bob) Arum has
him, so more or less, Arum will tell him who he’s
gonna fight, and he fights him.
 ZL:
Isn’t Salita coming to the end of his contract with
Arum?
GC: Yeah, I think so. I
think he’ll renew with Arum. He should, because Arum
has done everything well for him.
ZL: And Arum has been
respectful of Salita’s religious inclinations,
allowing him not to fight on the Sabbath.
GC: Yes, he is.
ZL: Does it surprise you to
see a few Jewish fighters doing well, or boxing at
all for that matter?
GC: Well, there are a
couple now who can fight. (Yuri Foreman and Roman
Greenberg are two others.)
Back to
Part II
Continue to Part IV
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