No Doubt, His Presence Was Felt

They used to say of Henry Armstrong that he never threw a jab or took a backward step in his life. He’d be even money against a moving train. He’d charge a rhinoceros.

He made his fight like a guy running for a bus. He walked through people like turnstiles. His manager, Eddie Mead, once summed up his fighting style as “he just kept hitting people till they disappeared.”

Henry came from a long line of people who suffered in this life, and he never expected anything but more of same. He shrugged at defeat and laughed at victory.

He won three championships in a time when you had to be good to win one. There were no hokey “divisions” set up by venal Caribbean commissions to suck additional revenue out of a moribund sport.

Featherweights weren’t even supposed to fight lightweights in those days. Armstrong fought middleweights. He fought one for the title. He got a draw. Most people who saw the fight figured if that was a draw, so was the Civil War.

Usually, Henry didn’t rely on third parties. He packed his own decisions. The record books say he had 174 fights and 98 knockouts but the old-time fight watchers, such as Irving Rudd, report that he had dozens of fights that never made any sheet. For one thing, he used to use the handle Melody Jackson. His official career started off with a “KO by . . . “ Someone named Al Iovino supposedly stopped him in North Braddock, Pa., one night but no one who watched Armstrong wants to know any more about that. Henry Armstrong was in a boxcar so often in those days he couldn’t sleep lying still.

He hoboed out to Los Angeles in the Depression ‘30s and he fought often on a diet of doughnuts and cheap wine. He fought you 3 minutes of every round and he threw punches like confetti. Opponents swore he had three arms. His punches came at you like a rockslide.

He became the darling of the Hollywood crowd and Al Jolson, no less, the biggest star in the talkies, bought his contract.

Henry once knocked out 27 straight opponents and 40 of 43. They took him to New York where he very quickly knocked out the world featherweight champion, Petey Sarron, and everyone else they put in front of him.

He knocked out guys so fast, so often, the fight mob thought he was twins. He knocked out Eddie Brink in New York on Aug. 13, then Johnny Cabello in Washington on Aug. 16 and Orville Drouillard in Detroit on Aug. 21. He knocked out a guy in Pittsburgh on Sept. 9, another in New York on Sept. 16 and one in Youngstown, Ohio, on Sept. 21. He knocked out a pug in Chicago on Feb. 25 and another in Minneapolis on Feb. 28.

He was a physical freak. From the waist up, he was a middleweight. From the waist down, he was a chicken. He had legs like pipe cleaners. He weighed 126 pounds when he fought for the welterweight title. He beat Barney Ross, who weighed 147.

Money was something to throw off balconies. New York loved him. Tabloids had a field day with alliteration--Hammerin’ Hank, Hurricane Henry, Homicide Hank.

Still, he lived in the shadow of Joe Louis. He got the position in history no man should get, the part of the bill where they put bird calls--between the eras of Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson.

Still, he made his own impact. It was a time when it was widely believed that the public would not accept black champions. No champ was more loved than Armstrong. They said the public would never buy a fight between two black champions, but they broke down the doors when Armstrong fought Sugar Ray. The highest gate of 1943 came to see him fight Beau Jack--19,986 paid $104,976. The night he fought Fritzie Zivic, 23,190 turned out.

He never hurt anyone outside the ring. With the possible exception of himself. He became a minister after he left the ring but fell well short of today’s evangelists in revenue and prestige. Henry never told anybody how to vote.

The prize ring never produced anyone quite like him--a picture of fine, furious, nonstop energy. He never seemed to tire or lose his zest for battle.

I saw him only in the curtain-call phases of his career. He was fighting the gifted John Thomas and someone called Slugger White. I don’t think he could see very well. His 3 fights with Fritzie Zivic were such masterpieces of mayhem that they needed a plumber to get Zivic’s thumb out of Henry’s eye.

He was living on Social Security and memories when he died in a hospital over the weekend. He was a symbol of an age when boxing was the king of sport and Henry was at least the crown prince of boxing. In a day when there were thousands of boxers, it was a signal achievement to be the best in your class. To have been the best in 3 classes--and to deserve to have been in 4--is extraordinary.

Henry finally stopped throwing punches. I figure he gave life a 30-pound pull in the weights. And got no worse than a draw, as usual.