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Robinson sauntered into Norwich like a pool hustler, looking to fleece the rubes. Judging by his struggles with Baginski, the 17-year-old Robinson was not vastly superior to other good amateurs. He was talented, but he had to fight hard against these New Englanders.
natural talent that he whipped the more experienced Pep. This is also false. In fact, Robinson was already a Golden Gloves winner and had roughly the same amount of experience as Pep. The bout’s greatest legend concerns the aftermath, when
fans raised a riot after the fight. They were sure Ray was a pro, and they hauled us off to the jail. We were lucky to get out of there alive.” Robinson offered a less dramatic version of events in his autobiography, Sugar Ray, ghostwritten by Dave Anderson. Robinson described getting dressed after the fight when a policeman and a state boxing official approached him with questions. Within seconds, Robinson and Gainford were taken away and locked up. Robinson and Gainford told the story a few times over the years. Though the gist was that Robinson spent a night in jail waiting for his amateur status to be verified, they never told it the same way twice. Biographers liked the story, though, and regurgitated it often. Still, it sounds dodgy. In fight-frenzied eastern Connecticut, a “riot” and the jailing of a fighter would’ve been news. Yet there was not one line of newspaper coverage. Besides, the Duwell organizers had a longstanding relationship with the Harlem club and had booked Robinson just two weeks earlier. The claim that fans rioted, or that police stepped in, is hard to fathom.
man’s career, there may have been a reason for them to lie. During the 1940s and early ’50s, when Robinson and Pep were at their zenith, a small but persistent segment of boxing fans and insiders argued Pep was the greater fighter. Could it be that Robinson and Gainford concocted their story to quiet Pep’s fans? Robinson always praised Pep’s skill, but was his claim of beating him so soundly that he landed in jail a rebuttal to those who dared to rate Pep higher? And was Pep’s story of being grossly outweighed a way to disregard the bout’s importance and, in effect, disregard Robinson? And did each party repeat their stories so often that they started to believe them? The irony of this legendary matchup is that apparently it made no impression on the people who were there. Aside from a couple of lines in the Norwich Bulletin, firsthand accounts were practically nonexistent. Of course, Norwich hosted more than 300 amateur bouts that year, so it is no surprise that Pep and Robinson failed to stick in anyone’s memory. What’s more, the fight was on the undercard. Customers may have been filing in, not yet seated. Pep was not a Norwich regular.
an angry Norwich crowd supposedly accused Robinson of being a ringer, a pro from New York. Gainford told the Associated Press in 1952, “The
Conversely, some Robinson biographers have upheld a myth that he was a raw beginner, yet so full of
In his European debut, Robinson battered Jean Stock in Paris.
Even Pep called Robinson a liar. In the 1970s, Pep explained to author W.C. Heinz that Robinson’s story was bogus. “I was a nobody then,” Pep said. “So why would they throw him in jail for beatin’ me?” But Pep lied, too. In his portrayal of the fight as an unwinnable farce, Pep always noted Robinson’s weight advantage. As far
He fought out of Hartford, 40 miles away, and rarely fought in the Duwell arena. The Norwich customers were probably not racing to see him. It is possible that Pep and Robinson fought in front of a lot of empty seats. Years later in 1965, on a special Christmas boxing show at Boston Garden, Robinson and Pep fought an exhibition of four abbreviated rounds. Now in their 40s,
“I was a nobody then. So why would they throw him in jail for beatin’ me?”
back as a 1943 Esquire profile on Pep, Robinson is said to have outweighed Pep by nine pounds. As he retold the story over the years, Pep increased the poundage. By 2002, Pep told the Courant, “I think I weighed in at 105 or 115, and he was at 140.” Unfortunately for Pep, the results printed after the fight list “Ray Roberts” at 123 and Pep at 122. Pep may have remembered himself as a flyweight, but old reports show he was already fighting at 120 or more. Robinson, meanwhile, would still be competing in the 126-pound class for the next several months. Maybe Pep was only joking about the weight difference, or maybe Robinson seemed heavier to him, but the difference in weight was untrue. Pep also convinced a lot of reporters that this was his only loss as an amateur. That’s also false, but Pep was likable, and people believed him. Robinson and Pep were pound-for-pound greats. But were they also pound-for-pound bullshitters? Whatever the truth, each wanted the fight remembered as a disaster. It is very likely that both were being deceptive. Yet in the context of each
they met for a lark and a purported $1,000 apiece. The Globe called the event “more burlesque than fight.” Strangely, in all of the press they did before the bout, neither mentioned their initial meeting above the feedstore. For many years, even in Connecticut, the fight was an unsubstantiated rumor. It could be that Robinson and Pep’s 1938 encounter wasn’t as great as we’d imagine. We like to envision Pep darting around, quick as a hummingbird, and Robinson throwing his perfect combinations. But they were teenagers, and it was an early piece of work. In the years to come, when veteran sportswriters recalled the glory days of Norwich boxing, it wasn’t Pep and Robinson they remembered. It was the venue; it was the hubbub on North Main; it was running up the stairs to catch a glimpse of Snooks Lacy or Unknown Morgan, the gallant local figures. Even when Robinson returned to Norwich as a major star in 1941, invited to referee an amateur show, the fanfare was minimal. A much bigger story was that Spider Hewitt had quit boxing and was returning to the U.S. Navy. The war was coming, Robinson and Pep had turned pro, but the headlines still belonged to Spider.
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