This Guy Floats Like an Anvil

Bill “Don’t Call Me Bozo” Caplan, the demon plugger for pugilism, the spokesman of sock, was on the phone.

“I’ve got a four-round fighter for you.”

“I don’t do four-round fighters,” I told him. “Call me when he’s a main-eventer.”

“He never will be,” Caplan said. “He’ll always be a four-rounder.”

“Look,” I told him coldly. “Who’s gonna read about a four-rounder? I might as well do a guy who’s always going to be on the Nike tour or a guy who hits .230 in the Sally League. We’re looking for the big time here, not obscurity.”

“This guy’s as famous as Mike Tyson,” Caplan persisted. “He’s been on the Jay Leno show five times. Sharon Stone should get his ratings.”

“Wait a minute!” I said. “Leno had a four-rounder? Doesn’t he understand boxers?”

“Sure. I think he used to be one himself. This guy is the most popular since Dempsey.”

“Gidouddahere!” I scoffed. “What is he, a flyweight?”

“He weighs between 300 and 400 pounds,” Caplan said.

“Between 300 and 400 pounds! How do they get him in the ring, by crane?”

“You’d be surprised how agile he is. He wants to fight Tyson.”

“Tyson!” I screamed. “Why doesn’t he just step in front of a truck? Call Dr. Kevorkian?”

“In a four-rounder,” explained Caplan. “He thinks he has a chance in a four-rounder. Tyson’s not used to it.”

“Tyson has had 20 one-round knockouts, six two-round knockouts. His specialty is the sub-four-round fight!”

“Why don’t you have lunch with Butterbean and let him tell you,” Caplan suggested.

“With whom?” I asked suspiciously. “Sounded like you said ‘Butterbean.’ ”

“I did,” soothed Caplan. “That’s his nickname. His real handle is Eric Esch. But who’s gonna go see someone named Eric Esch fight?”

I sighed. I gave in. I knew Caplan wouldn’t go away.

Which is how I found myself dining with a round, hairless, surprisingly gentle man who looked like the bad guy out of a James Bond movie or the guard at the gangster’s hide-out cabin. He was so white you could read by him. He looks about as athletic as a monk. In fact, he speaks in the soft tones of a priest hearing confessions.

On the other hand, he has had many fights but there’s not a mark of his profession on him. He has all his ears and eyes and they’re not covered by scar tissue or cauliflowered.

You would be surprised to find him playing offensive guard for the Miami Dolphins. He looks a little bit like a bowl of whipped cream with an American flag wrapped around the middle.

But, when I tell you he commands 25 grand for a four-round bout, does almost as many commercials as Michael Jordan, is a movie actor and has become a worldwide celebrity winning prizefights on undercards, you realize you’re in the presence of a pugilistic original.

I thought I had better mend some fences in case he was temperamental.

“Well, after all,” I told him, ingratiatingly, “fat men have made it in the fight game. Tony Galento--they used to call him ‘Two-Ton Tony’ because he was as round as he was tall--knocked Joe Louis down and got Lou Nova to quit the ring and got Freddie Blassie to give up boxing for wrestling. And then, of course, there’s George Foreman.

“How did you get to be a boxer?” I asked.

“I got in the Tough Man competitions,” he said.

These were kind of lodge-night free-for-alls where guys would climb down from a truck and have at each other, winner take all and hang the Marquess of Queensberry rules.

“I was working in a mobile-home factory and the guys working with me entered me in the Tough Man cards.”

The co-workers apparently thought that anyone who could lift the back of a trailer as if it were a napkin deserved to show off his strength.

“You got $1,000 if you were the last man left standing. That was all the money in the world to me. I was making $9 an hour in the shop at the time. The tournaments were in neighboring states around my home in Jasper, Ala. I kind of moonlighted in the ring. I fought five guys a night.”

How did he do?

“Got so none of the other Tough Man guys would fight me,” he says softly. “They said I was ruining the game. So I turned pro boxer.”

He got his nickname early in the game when he had to go on a butterbean diet to get his weight below the 400-pound limit. He realized early in the game he was never going to be a Muhammad Ali or get nicknamed “Sugar.” He didn’t float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. He just waded in like a runaway truck.

“I throw a hundred, two hundred punches a round,” he says. “I don’t box. I think boxing is boring. Twelve-round fights are boring. If you want a dance, go to the Butterfly Ballroom. If you want a fight, go to the Butterbean Ballroom!”

Some nights, it’s like fighting a snowman. Butter has very little lateral movement. But, for lots of reasons, the public related to him. He was a welcome relief from all those flat-bellied, washboard-tummied Greek gods and matinee idols. He looked like your favorite uncle, a guy who answered to “Fats.”

But can this Alabama Fats fight? And will the game ever sanction a four-round title fight?

Caplan, the sultan of sock, shrugs.

“Who cares?” he says. “But look, in racing, a quarter horse frequently beats the thoroughbred in a quarter-mile, right? In the Olympics, a sprinter could beat a miler at 100 meters.”

He had a point. Also, the most memorable fights in history--Dempsey-Firpo, Louis-Schmeling II, Hagler-Hearns--were short and violent. No one remembers the long ones.

“I throw more punches in one round than some guys throw in 12,” says Butterbean, who is now out indefinitely after he tore a biceps muscle Wednesday night while defeating William Harris. “I threw only 150 fewer punches once in a two-round fight than the headliner threw in 12.”

His other edge over Tyson, he claims, would be that he is fearless.

“Those other guys are scared to death of him,” he says of Tyson’s opponents. “Frank Bruno was scared, I think Riddick Bowe is scared. I wouldn’t be. Intimidation would not be a factor.”

Maybe so. But the first thing any sanctioning of Butterbean-Mike Tyson would need is a state commission with a strong stomach. Come to think of it, Butterbean would need one too.