A HOT LITTLE GYM : The Top Boxers Find Their Way to Tocco’s

It doesn’t look like much.

The little gym is on a busy Las Vegas street intersection, the corner of Charleston and Main, a block off Interstate 15. It isn’t the Las Vegas you see on post cards or in those glamorous nighttime aerial views shown during televised fights.

A sign across the street proclaims: “Morgan Termite & Pest Control.” Another reads: “Nevada Radiator.” Next door is a muffler shop with no name. And on the roof of the gym is a billboard. A sign on the gym window reads: “Private Gym--Not Open to Public.”

“I used to be open to the public,” Johnny Tocco said, looking through the iron bars at the front door to the street. “But it’s a small place, and too many people were wandering in off the street, taking up space. Now the place is for serious fighters only.”

To boxing people, Johnny Tocco’s Ringside Gym is special. In recent decades, probably more champions and world-class boxers have worked out at Tocco’s place than any other gym in the world. To many of them, working out at Tocco’s is “going to jail.” The outside double doors to the place, front and alley entrances, are barred.

“When Marvin (Hagler) comes to train, he stands outside that back door, shaking the bars, and yelling to me: “Warden! Warden! Let me in, warden!”

Tocco, who is 76, laughed.

“The hotel people in town don’t like it when the fighters train here. They want them working out at the hotels, where people can watch them and where they can sell tickets.

“But what they don’t understand is that all those big hotel rooms are air-conditioned. No fighter in his right mind would work out in an air-conditioned room. Air-conditioning is murder. That’s how you catch colds. Fighters want to sweat.

“Besides, practically every fighter from a big city learned to box in a gym like this, a little hot gym, somewhere. They feel at home here.”

Once, Tocco’s Ringside Gym was known as the Zebra Room.

“This was a bar I had in the 1950s,” he said. “But I got so tired of breaking up fights all the time, I figured I might as well be running a gym.”

You can start with Sonny Liston, an old friend of Tocco--it rhymes with loco--and name every world champion or top contender in nearly every weight division who has fought in Las Vegas since the mid-1960s, and chances are he worked out at Tocco’s. Once, Stillman’s Gym in New York and Los Angeles’ Main Street Gym were the sport’s best-known gyms. Now, it’s “Johnny’s jail.”

Or, you could call it Johnny’s furnace.

Starting in late May or early June, hot isn’t the word for Tocco’s gym. It’s a blast furnace. According to one fanciful story, a boxer put a chicken on a dinner plate once when the outside temperature was way over 100, and it was cooked by the time Tocco closed.

To the casual fan, Caesars Palace and the Las Vegas Hilton represent boxing’s glitter, where the beautiful people assemble to watch the fights. But no one has ever seen any beautiful people at Tocco’s. Only boxers, trainers and, occasionally, sweat-soaked sportswriters. This is boxing’s torture chamber, its hell hole. “Hey, close that window, a breeze just got in.”

The theory is that if you’re tough enough to survive a workout at Tocco’s . . . well, you get the idea.

Take a walk around Johnny Tocco’s Ringside Gym. Everywhere, dusty fight posters look down--lean, glaring faces from decades past. Ali-Holmes. Hagler-Duran. Holmes-Norton. A dusty, hand-printed, 1983 announcement tacked to a wall board reads: “Attention all boxers--Nevada State Athletic Commission meets city hall Feb. 18. Subject: BRAIN SCAMS.”

Good spelling is not a requirement.

And what’s a hot little boxing gym without its own aromas, right? At Tocco’s, depending on where you’re standing and how hot it is, the unmistakable ones are sweat, dirty socks, sweat, stale coffee grounds and sweat. And when it’s busy, when half a dozen or more boxers are working out, the rock music bows the walls.

Among the champions who have worked out at Tocco’s is Mike Tyson, the World Boxing Council and World Boxing Assn. heavyweight champion. Said Tyson’s cut man, Matt Baranski: “A fighter just gets more quality work done here. See, Johnny knows everyone in town. He can get on the phone and get you all kinds of quality sparring partners. This is the place to be.”

Tocco also trains a few fighters. In his tiny, cluttered office, the phone rang. An exasperated expression came over his face as he listened.

“Look, Rene, I don’t have time for stories like this,” he said. “I don’t want you taking any days off now. I’m working on a fight for you. You just get to the gym, Rene. . . . Hey, don’t tell me your ride didn’t show up--if you have a problem getting to the gym, buy a bicycle!”

Tocco hung up.

“Kids today,” he muttered. “It’s not like I go out on the street and grab them, twist their arms, and drag them in here. They come to me.

“Kids show up here all the time. ‘Hey, teach me to box,’ they say. Ninety-nine percent of them, I send them across town, to the Golden Gloves Gym. But if a kid really looks like a prospect, I’ll work with him.

“Kids show up here wanting to learn to box, and all they know about the sport is the million-dollar paydays people like Hagler get. But they don’t know of all the sacrifice and hard work Marvin Hagler went through to get to that level. I’ll tell you something about Marvin Hagler’s dedication.

“When his first child was born, he was in training camp. He told his people he didn’t want to know anything about it, when the baby came. He didn’t want anything interrupting his concentration.”

Sometimes, Tocco plays diplomat.

“When Hagler works out here, I close the gym to everyone else,” he said. “Even writers, if Marvin wants it that way. Marvin rents the entire gym for a couple hours, in other words.

“Before the Hagler-Leonard fight, Marvin rented the gym from 6 to 8 p.m. every night. So Angelo Dundee came up to me and wanted the gym for Leonard from 4:30 to 6.

“Well, I figured he wanted Leonard and Hagler to cross paths, so they could create some kind of incident, to get Marvin upset. I said, ‘Angelo, you and Ray can have the gym to yourselves anytime in the morning, or mid-afternoon, but not near the time when Marvin’s here.’

“He wouldn’t take the gym at any other time. They worked out at the Golden Gloves Gym.”

Most of his income from the gym comes from rentals by boxers who want the entire gym before major Las Vegas fights, Tocco said. The advertising company with the billboard on his roof pays him $5,000 a year.

“The young kids just starting out, I don’t charge them much, maybe $20 or $25 a month,” he said. “I make out OK when guys like Hagler, (Thomas) Hearns or Tyson rent the whole gym.”

Tocco pointed outside the office door, to where the sounds of a heavyweight punching a heavy bag were coming from.

“That kid’s a good prospect,” he said. “Look at him, 6 foot 7. His name is Scott Scarborough. He’s a former basketball player. He came in here one day, asking for my help. I watched him chin himself 25 times. He weighs 227 pounds.

“I had him sparring with James Broad (once a ranked heavyweight) here the other day and he backed Broad into a corner and got him with six or seven body shots you wouldn’t believe.

“Jose Torres (former world light-heavyweight champion) was standing right there watching and he told me, ‘Hey, Johnny, you can do something with that kid. He can hit.’ ”

One entire wall of Tocco’s gym is decorated with about three dozen black and white photographs of Liston, a favorite of Tocco.

“I worked in Sonny’s corner for his last half dozen fights,” he said.

“They found Sonny dead in his house, with needle marks on his arm, and he was supposed to be at my New Year’s party that night. To me, it never figured. I knew Sonny well enough to know two things about him--two things he hated in this life were riding in airplanes and needles.

“To this day, I’m sure he was not on drugs. And he wasn’t a big gambler or a big spender. As far as I knew, he didn’t owe anyone any money.

“Gee, what a nice guy. He’s portrayed as a big, bad wolf, but you should’ve seen him around kids, here in town. Kids loved him. He never turned down an autograph in a restaurant.

“Sonny and I were both originally from St. Louis. One time, seven cops cornered Sonny in an alley and he beat up every one of them, and he got put in jail. It slowed down his career, no question.

“Sonny hit harder than anyone I ever saw. Yes, harder than Tyson, (Earnie) Shavers . . . anyone. When Sonny got you, you were outta there.”

And speaking of . . .

“Earnie!” Johnny said, at the unexpected sight of 42-year-old Earnie Shavers standing in front of him. Shavers, trim of waistline and still as clean-shaven on top as Marvin Hagler, is attempting a comeback. He had just arrived for a workout.

A visitor commented on the huge right hand Shavers knocked down Larry Holmes with in a 1978 title fight.

“Man, he broke my heart when he got up from that one,” Shavers said, laughing.

“I took out a lot of guys with my right, but I never got anybody as good as I got Larry that night. When I saw he was getting up, I started looking around for a loose ring post. He could really take a shot.”

Tocco was asked to evaluate Tyson.

“I think Mike has advanced farther at his age than maybe anyone,” he said. “In just his last two fights, I’ve seen enormous improvement with his jab and overhand right. And remember, this kid isn’t fighting hand-picked opponents. He’s only 20 and he’s fighting everybody. To beat Tyson, it’ll take a guy in great condition, who has great lateral movement and a great jab.”

Of today’s boxing scene, he’s not a “Back in my day . . . “ kind of guy.

“In the middle and lighter weight classes, there are more good fighters around than there ever were,” he said. “The divisions are very deep in talent today. There were some superstars in those classes back in the ‘30s and ‘40s, but there were a lot of bums, too.”

To Tocco, there are gym fighters and “real” fighters.

“I’ve seen it ever since I’ve been around boxing,” he said. “Some guys as sparring partners look great in the gym. You watch them beat up on some champion and you figure one day he’ll be a champ, too. But you put him on a real card, in an arena with a crowd watching him, and he’ll look like a dog. And the reason is this . . . “

With thumb and index finger, Tocco made a small circle, his way of indicating the circumference of a small heart.

“There’s a heavyweight--I don’t want to mention his name--who’s sparred here with Tyson. Gave Mike all he wanted. And I mean, a couple times, he hurt Mike. You figure, ‘Hey! All this kid needs is a break.’ Well, I’ve seen him fight on a real card. He’s a dog.

“A very few fighters, the champions, can rise to the occasion. But most can’t. It’s all heart.”