I n those uncertain years between the Great Depression and World War II, the city of Norwich, Connecticut, was a hotbed for amateur boxing. The city showcased such regional favorites as Pepper Martin, Frenchy Dauzat and perhaps the most revered of all, Spider Hewitt, the All-Navy welterweight champion stationed at the submarine base in nearby New London. Summertime in Norwich meant amateur fights at the Elks fairground, where boxing was featured alongside anything from fireworks to musical acts to a rodeo. Norwich hosted so many amateur bouts that on December 2, 1938, the locals barely noticed an intriguing matchup between a 17-year-old New Yorker and a 16-year-old from Hartford. In more specific terms, that was the day Sugar Ray Robinson fought Willie Pep. Robinson hadn’t quite achieved the form that would, two years later, earn him praise from the New York Daily News as “pound for pound, the best amateur fighting man in America.” At 17, he was all Adam’s apple and elbows. Yet he outpointed Pep, giving him a rare amateur loss. The three-round contest,
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three dollars to 20, depending on the memory of those telling the tale. Young boxers from out of state used aliases, protecting their amateur status while they tried to win cash. The Salem Crescent boxers were an impressive bunch – they were especially known for being great jabbers – but Connecticut fans made more fuss over someone like Spider Hewitt, whose appearances were sometimes announced in bold headlines usually saved for Wall Street disasters and Nazi invasions. To Norwich fans in 1938, Robinson was just another skinny kid from New York. Bill Pedace, the Duwell ring announcer, recalled the three- round fight in 1985 for The New York Times. Tasked with finding an opponent for Pep, he’d called Robinson’s trainer, George Gainford: “George said, ‘I got a boy who could beat him. Do you care if he gets beat?’ I didn’t care, so he brought up this kid who fought that night, as I remember, under the name of Ray Roberts.” Lost in the fight’s mythology is that Robinson was apparently a last-minute replacement. In newspaper
however, remains a shadowy thing. It is doubtful that anyone who witnessed it is still living. This, of course, makes it even more legendary. The meeting of two future titans took place in a converted warehouse on North Main Street that had once served as a car barn for the New Haven railroad. Refurbished in 1935, the building’s first level became the Checkerboard Feed
advertisements for the show, Pep was scheduled to meet Danny Edwards, a New York bantamweight who had fought on a few Norwich programs. There’s no mention of Robinson or “Roberts.” Pep usually laughed about the night he faced Robinson. “I shouldn’t have been in the ring with him,” he told the Hartford Courant in 1999, noting that Robinson was taller and more experienced. In
“I fought him in the attic of a big shed in Norwich. My manager was a bum, and it was the greatest mismatch of my career.”
Company. The Duwell Athletic Club took over the upstairs space and ran amateur bouts every other Friday, with occasional pro bouts mixed in. Some recalled the venue as barely able to hold a boxing ring, though it was also said to fit upwards of 1,000 people. General admission was 75 cents. Reserved seats cost one dollar. Kids got in for 25 cents, and ladies paid nothing if they were “accompanied by an escort.” These amateur affairs were sometimes bolstered by major stars who served as guest referees, including “Cinderella Man” Jim Braddock. On warm nights, the unventilated arena combined with odors from the feedstore to create a unique aroma, but not even that discouraged the city’s loyal fans of amateur fighting. Robinson and Pep were part of a typical Norwich program pitting amateurs from Connecticut against a New York team. Robinson was from the Salem Crescent Athletic Club of Harlem and had fought in Connecticut a few times before as “Ray Roberts.” Connecticut was unusual in that amateurs fought for prize money, the winner getting anywhere from
2002, Pep told the New London Day, “I fought him in the attic of a big shed in Norwich. My manager was a bum, and it was the greatest mismatch of my career.” Pep added that Robinson “almost killed me.” In his heavily ghostwritten 1974 memoir, Friday’s Heroes, Pep wrote that Robinson was “all over me. He’s too good. Too big. He’s punching me and punching me and I’m just trying to hang in there.” On another occasion, Pep claimed Robinson knocked him down early. “I got off the floor and ran like a thief until the last bell sounded,” Pep said. Yet Pedace, supposedly an eyewitness, went on record saying Robinson was cautious against Pep. Pedace recalled, “After the first round, George yelled up at him, ‘Stop fooling around. Get in there and fight.’ Ray won a decision.” Who do we believe? Pep saying Robinson “almost killed me” or Pedace, who described Robinson as cautious? Robinson’s own recollection, taken from his autobiography, was that the fight was “a close one.” A glimmer of what really happened comes from a brief report that appeared in the next day’s Norwich Bulletin. The
coverage claimed Pep hurt “Roberts” in the first round, but that the New Yorker settled down to give “as sweet a boxing exhibition as has ever been
are plentiful. One involved Robinson arriving in Connecticut like some sort of mystery man, his identity a secret. However, Robinson fought
Pep dukes it out with Raymond Famechon at Madison Square Garden.
seen here.” By the end, the fight dissolved into “a bicycle race with Pep peddling for all he was worth.” The visitor even tried to land a bolo punch but missed. (Even at 16, no one was going to hit Willie Pep with a bolo punch, though a teenage Robinson was cheeky enough to try.) While details of the fight are scarce, the legends it spawned
in Norwich just two weeks earlier, winning a decision over Al Brouillard. Prior to that, he’d fought in Thompsonville, losing to a Massachusetts fighter named Charles Baginski and drawing with Baginski in a rematch. Robinson was hardly a mystery figure, even if he used a false name. Still, future journalists would romanticize the story, telling it as if
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