Nobody complained as cigar smoke drifted through the upstairs room at Gallagher’s steakhouse. After all, who knows that aroma better than prize fighters? And who was going to tell Jake LaMotta, even an 81-year-old Jake LaMotta, that he couldn’t indulge a cheroot?
The one-time ”raging bull,” mellowed by age and sporting a black cowboy hat, was among the retired ring figures present on Tuesday as FIST., an organization that seeks to help ex-boxers find their way in the ”real world,” became affiliated with an AFL-CIO union.
FIST — the Fighters’ Initiative for Support and Training — became a professional Boxers Guild within Local 153, Office of Professional Employees International Union. The group has about 200 members.
”This means that our organisation will be able to reach more fighters and provide even more services and benefits,” said former heavyweight contender Gerry Cooney, who founded the non-profit FIST four years ago.
Cooney said that although boxing may be the oldest sports profession, it was the only one that did not have a support system for its participants after they retire.
Few active fighters think about the future, and ”when the careers are over, those great managers are working with the younger guys, and the fighters are forgotten about,” he said. ”They don’t know where to turn” for help in job training and placement, health problems and other needs.
”We are a voice for the fighter who has no one, who has no place to go,” Cooney said.
He said FIST. also hoped to expand its activities to assist present-day fighters to obtain ”fair and equitable contracts.”
”We’re proud of our record and that OPEIU has joined our corner. Now we’re ready to do even more,” Cooney said. Michael Goodwin, international president of OPEIU, said he hoped the affiliation ”will someday achieve for fighters fair and equitable treatment and a future to cherish.”
Cooney said many fighters continue beyond the time that they should hang up the gloves — and they suffer as a result. ”The fact is that those days end, and the roar of the crowd goes away, and that’s a really tough thing for any athlete, but specially for a fighter,” he said. ”He’s in there by himself, and the roar of the crowd is what keeps you alive, keeps you coming back when you haven’t got any money in your pocket.
”You really know you shouldn’t be fighting any more, but what else are you going to do?”
LaMotta, famed as the ”Bronx Bull” who fought six epic bouts with Sugar Ray Robinson in the 1940s and won the middleweight crown with a TKO of Marcel Cerdan in 1949, showed his sense of humor remained intact 49 years after retirement.
He and Cooney are such close friends that ”there’s nothin’ I won’t do for him, and nothin’ he won’t do for me,” he deadpanned. ”So we go through life doin’ nothin’ for each other.”
LaMotta also parodied a punch-drunk boxer repeatedly telling his manager, ”I want to fight Gerry Cooney, I want to fight Gerry Cooney,” until the exasperated manager finally says, ”Look, if I told you once, I told you a thousand times. You are Gerry Cooney.”
Others present included former world lightweight champion Carlos Ortiz; former middleweight champion Vito Antuofermo; former heavyweight contender Randy Neumann, now a referee; former middleweight contender ”Irish” Bobby Cassidy; and Jackie Tonawanda, sometimes called the ”female Joe Louis.” – Sapa-AP