A Stylist Who Made It a Sweet Science

No one ever threw a left jab any better than John Thomas. Not Willie Pep, not Jim Corbett--who practically invented the punch--not Gene Tunney, Jack Johnson or any fighter in the ring today, including Sugar Ray Leonard.

There used to be a fighter named Young Griffo who, it was said, could stand in one place and defy you to hit him. John Thomas never stood in one place but he was as hard to hit as the Pick Six. First, you had to find him.

He was as smooth as a dance act. Watching him fight, someone once said, was like watching syrup poured over a waffle. In his prime, he could have fought in top hat and tails without getting either mussed.

He fought some of the registered tigers of the fight game, and there were a lot in his day, but he never got a title shot because John, Los Angeles born and bred, never wanted to take the act east of the Tehachapis. But he beat Henry Armstrong, Lew Jenkins, Willie Joyce, Aldo Spoldi and a half dozen other champs or near champs when other fighters were ducking them.

He never got a mark on him. John Thomas will be 65 soon and he still has all his teeth and eyes, and his ears are as free of scar tissue as a chorus girl’s. No one who watched him fight wouldwonder why. When John Thomas climbed into the ring for a training bout, the whole gym stopped to watch how it was done.

He scored 20 knockouts almost by accident. He never tried to flatten anybody. John made his fight like a guy on horseback, not a guy with a length of piano wire.

John never mugged anybody. He just made an opponent look like a guy trying to catch a bus. A John Thomas fight was more like Swan Lake than a snuff film. It was art, not mayhem, a recital, not a rumble.

Like a lot of boxers, Billy Conn, among them, John had lost half a step when he came back from World War II. Punchers didn’t lose their punch in the Army, but stylists slowed their style.

He was still too swift for the club fighters, but the good ones were able to figure out where he’d gone and when he got knocked out for the first time in his career by Enrique Bolanos, a guy who might not have been able to hit him prewar, John decided to put the gloves on a nail. He didn’t want to be anybody’s trial horse. He wasn’t into making character for young bulls.

John was as meticulous in his private life as he was in the ring. Scandal never laid a glove on him, either. Booze and babes were not in his game plan. In a police-blotter sport, John never even got a speeding ticket.

He doubtless could have been one of the great champions. He was scheduled to meet Juan Zurita, the lightweight champion in 1944, but when Zurita suffered a training accident, the fight had to be postponed.

Forever, as it turned out.

By the time the champ recovered, John Thomas was in the Army. Zurita fought Ike Williams instead and got knocked out in two rounds. “He should have fought me, I would have let him go 10,” says Thomas, grinning.

John Thomas didn’t quit the ring. He has had more than 2,000 fights since then and, typically, has not lost one. Where he had always been one of the best fighters in the world, he became one of the best referees.

The same qualities that made John Thomas a super boxer make him a super referee--invisibility, efficiency, footwork and anticipation.

Managers, looking for an edge, often object to a referee assigned to their fights. No one ever objected to John Thomas. His reputation for fairness and impartiality is impeccable.

John Thomas is the best advertisement for a cruel sport you could find. He could be its poster boy. After years of trading lefts, slipping punches and, now, breaking clinches, the eyes are still clear. So are the brows. The nose is straight and unbroken, the speech is not clotted and neither are the arteries.

It’s hard to believe Thomas had 62 tough professional fights and 70 amateur ones against competition that isn’t around today. He fought and defeated four world champions--Armstrong, Jenkins, Petey Scalzo and Leo Rodak--and his hair isn’t even gray.

John will be honored for his career in the boxing game and he will be saluted as one of its valued citizens at the lightweight fight between Genaro Hernandez and Kenny Wyatt at the Irvine Marriott Monday night.

He believes there is nothing wrong with his hard sport that better training and extended experience can’t cure.

“The way I fought, you had to be thoroughly prepared,” he says. “You paid your dues, you learned your craft. For instance, when I fought a journeyman, I prepared for a journeyman. When I fought a guy who was ranked No. 1, 2 or 3, I stepped up the process.

“Today, you get the feeling some of these kids are not prepared. You get a title fight after, what, eight, nine fights? There’s no way you can learn your business in eight, nine fights. Or even 20. In my day, you had 20, 30 fights before you even got a main event. Now, you get one in your first, right out of the Olympics.

“If I were running the game, I would make it a condition a young fighter have two dozen fights before he got in there with a registered contender. I noticed just the other day where an Olympic fighter (Mark Breland) got in there over his head with a tough campaigner (Marlon Starling) with predictable results.”

Thomas says that in refereeing, you protect the overmatched. “I’m not sure you can stop a fight ‘too soon,’ ” he adds.

Although Hollywood might be disappointed, Thomas says that he has never been approached, directly or indirectly, to prearrange his decision in a bout.

“I used to see mob guys at ringside or even around the gym and they were not friends of mine, just guys I would see, but, as near as I could tell, they were just fans like anyone else. No one ever made any off-color suggestion to me of any kind.”

If one had, of course, it might have been the one time in his career that John Thomas went for the quick knockout.