Now, It Seems, You Gotta Have Heart <i> and</i> Mouth

Remember the good old days when pugs were big old lovable lugs who hung their heads and were bashful and uncommunicative and mumbled platitudes about their opponents in the best traditions of Gary Cooper and all the guys in the white hats?

Remember when Joe Louis used to say, “Another lucky night,” just after he had knocked somebody senseless in 60 seconds or less? Remember when the worst he would say about an opponent was: “He can run but he can’t hide.”?

Remember when fighters were named Joe and Jack and James J. and John L., and not Milton or Donald or Livingstone Bramble?

No one can be sure when humility went out of fashion. Probably it started with Tony Galento, whose irritability, fueled by flagons of brew in his own tavern, would pour venom on his opponent, even when it was Joe Louis, with, “I’ll moider da bum!”

Muhammad Ali, of course, lifted the art of vilification of an opponent to a high and holy place. But it was done with a twinkle in the eye and a look to the ticket sales. Ali had learned his lessons in plugging the show at the feet of the master, the wrestler Gorgeous George. Muhammad was banging the drum, not knocking opponents.

Nonetheless, when he began his tempo of abuse of the then-heavyweight champion, Sonny Liston, one of the scariest individuals this side of a cage, the writers were fooled into thinking that Ali’s torrents of bravado were to shore up his own sinking esteem and not to lower Liston’s.

“Noise is a classic defense against fear,” one writer observed snootily. “Ali boasts so he won’t wet himself.”

Ali boasted so he could sell tickets. In fact, when well-meaning members of his entourage ridiculed one of his opponents, a European klutz named Jurgen Blin, Ali sternly reprimanded them and reminded them that Blin was the champion of Switzerland, or some place, and as such was entitled to respect.

Nevertheless, name-calling seems to have crept into the fight game to stay, despite the dismay of some purists who find in it elements of wrestling’s hippodrome.

The latest case in point occurred this week at the Las Vegas Hilton Center, where the two fine young fighters who tonight are to settle the welterweight division championship between them got into a mud-throwing contest.

Donald Curry is a handsome, tense Texan who may be the best young talent in the fistic game today. He is a serious, skilled professional who goes about his business with the impersonal perfection of a chief surgeon.

His fights are classics of pugilistic science and savvy. There is no wasted motion in a Curry attack. It is as studiedly efficient as a German general staff invasion. He is as emotionless as a glacier.

Milton McCrory has more of a class cut-up mentality. Milton sees the funny side of things. He, too, is a stylist, although his punches sometimes seem more slaps than blows. He is a dangerous hitter but doesn’t seem to be. He would rather make you dizzy than unconscious.

There is more of a “don’t mess with me” aura to Donald Curry than to Milton McCrory. In his training camp, they show McCrory, who would rather be playing for the Detroit Tigers than fighting for the welterweight championship, getting hit on the head by a fly ball in a sandlot game. And Milton laughs the loudest. The next scene shows him trying to catch a ball behind his back. McCrory plays it loose.

Curry doesn’t. He is a guy who took it hard when his brother got institutionalized for firing a gun--he missed--at his fight manager. And when his sister got killed, almost before his eyes, in a motorcycle accident, he took to his bed for three weeks and rejected the world. “I was paralyzed,” he said. “I thought I’d never come out of it.”

So, when opponent McCrory took it upon himself, for reasons best known to him, to question publicly whether Curry had heart, Curry was not amused. He was outraged. It was no pseudo indignation drummed up to hype a gate. Curry’s voice was almost shaking with rage when he took the podium at a prefight press conference.

“I’m going to take your heart out. I’m going to take your little old string-bean heart out and knock you out in the seventh or eighth round,” he said through set teeth looking at McCrory. Cords stood out in his neck. “They don’t have to worry about whether this is going to be 12 rounds or 15. When I get through with you, it ain’t going to be neither.”

Curry then pointed a wrathful finger at a table full of McCrory’s jeering stablemates in the rear of the room. “You guys ain’t nothing but sparring partners,” he spat. “I’ll settle with you guys, too, when I get rid of your home boy here.”

Hype? Not likely. The new pugilism? It’s as old as schoolyards. “Maybe, it’s a psych job by McCrory and (Manager) Emanuel Steward,” admitted Donald Curry, when his wrath had cooled.

Will it work?

Well, some years ago, before one of his last fights, in San Francisco, I saw Joe Louis sleeping soundly on a rubbing table 10 minutes before he was to go into a ring. I don’t know about today’s fighters, but personally, if I were one, a sight like that would scare me more than all the names a guy could call me.