I’ll Moide De Bum! Two Ton Tony Galento’s Magic Moment
By Robert Brizel, Real Combat Media Correspondent
He stood 5’9″, and fought his heavyweight boxing career between 183 pounds and 244 pounds. When his weight was on the heavier side, he acquired the nickname ‘Two Ton’, a beer barrel that moved, and it stuck during the sixteen years of his professional boxing career, from 1928 to 1944. He fought 111 bouts, with a career record of at least 80 wins, 26 losses and five draws, with 57 knockouts. Some sources besides BoxRec give Galento a higher win total.
By today’s standards, Two Ton Tony Galento would just be regarded as an average sized heavyweight, though kind of short. Back in the day, Galento probably looked something like a short and fat meatball, a fat sausage beating up on muscular opponents. Galento’s technique was not wild or haphazard with his boxing swings.
Rather, Galento usually fought from a very low crouch stance, and would feign his way into position to landed his trademark left hooks and right crosses quickly. Galento doubled his jabs when he threw them, and had a tremendous power left hook. A win streak propelled Galento into a title shot against Joe Louis. For the bout, Louis was a nine to one odds betting favorite to win.
Joe Louis versus Tony Galento http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVcgD7VlmT8
Nobody gave Galento a chance to defeat Joe Louis. On June 28, 1939, World Heavyweight champion Joe Louis defended his title against Tony Galento, perhaps the strangest looking opponent a heavyweight champion had ever seen. Louis appeared curious but cautious, seemingly unsure of what to do with this low stance, awkward opponent. A number of clinches resulted in the first round confusion, when suddenly Galento landed an amazing big left hook to the head and sent a reeling Louis backwards into a corner, hanging on for dear life. Galento hit Louis in the head again, before getting countered by a Louis left.
Galento got caught standing too stationary in front on Louis early in round two, and got hit with a left right combination which put Galento on his back for a flash knockdown, the first time in his career he had been knocked down. Louis began throwing short punches and hooking on the inside, making trouble for Galento.
As round three began, Galento landed a power left hook to the head of Louis at short range, and dropped the brown bomber right away. Louis got up right away, but both Louis and the fight fans watching the bout were stunned at the revelation of what had happened. Galento’s left hand was powerful enough to knock Louis out early. The development had occurred early in round three, and it came with a much different approach than the one used by The Black Uhlan, Max Schmeling, to beat Louis. Galento’s approach had been more blunt force trauma than scientific boxing or counterpunching. More so, Galento had gotten there first while Louis was not moving. Galento’s mouth was open by this point. The furious pace must have made the short fat man tired.
A study of the slow motion replay of Galento’s magic moment shows before Galento knocked down Louis, Galento had bullied Louis into the ropes, and was holding his neck down with the left hand while mauling him with the right hand. Louis finally managed to spin out of the partial headlock, but may have been momentarily slowed down into a slight numbness when he escaped the arm lock, allowing Galento to time Louis while he was not moving. Muhammad Ali demonstrated this technique adeptly years later as part of his rope-a-dope technique against George Foreman in ‘The Rumble in the Jungle’. While not all of the black and white footage of Louis versus Galento remains in existence, the surviving footage reveals Galento, on Louis getting up, tried to time him with the left hook again, and Louis somehow held onto Galento to somehow survive the round though in desperate trouble.
A totally embarrassed Louis decided to close the show as round four begins, landing a straight right to the head of Galento and then a left right combination. Galento’s face was battered and swollen at this point. Louis began landing uppercuts to the body, followed by head shots. Galento was unable to hold, and has to fight on. Galento, standing straight up at this point instead of in his low crouch stance, got hit by several rights and a left right by Louis, who sharply sent a battered and beaten Galento backwards and beaten into the ropes, where his legs were gone and Galento went down. Galento got up, whereupon referee Arthur Donavan stopped the bout immediately. Galento later admitted he was fighting blind due to excess amount on Monzel’s solution being used on his eye cuts in his corner between rounds.
Louis later remembered Tony Galento’s name calling of him as a bum, and recalled Galento as the only opponent who truly got under Joe’s skin and made him hate him before a bout. After Galento knocked Louis down, an angry and embarrassed Louis got up and emotionally finished ‘Two Ton’. The end of the bout was not pretty. Louis originally had actually wanted to carry Galento for ten rounds, if only to torture him for his name calling and taunting.
On January 29, 1975, television announcer Curt Gowdy and famed boxing announcer Don Dunphy brought Joe Louis and Tony Galento together and review their bout on the television program ‘The Way It Was’. The twenty minute documentary features archival footage of the bout with Don Dunphy’s original call of the knockdown on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TkC16GU8IE
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