Too Sharp to Let Size Stop Him

You ever heard of Jack Dempsey, Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, Mike Tyson, Muhammad Ali, George Foreman? John L. Sullivan? Of course, you have! Heavyweight champions of the world, right? Boxing titleholders.

You ever heard of Fidel La Barba, Benny Lynch, Corporal Izzy Schwartz, Speedy Dado? How about Midget Wolgast, Small Montana?

No? Why not? They were all boxing champions too.

Ever heard of Panama Al Brown, Jimmy Wilde, Bushy Graham? How about Pancho Villa--the fist-fighter, not the revolutionary?

Of course not! They were the little guys. Dempsey and Tunney fought for million-dollar gates. Tyson fights for $20 million. These other guys won their titles in club fights in the days before television. Before radio, even.

They are pugilism’s forgotten legion--great practitioners of their craft. Great artists, even.

Mostly, they were flyweight champions of the world. The designation is infelicitous, demeaning. Who wants to see a couple of flies go at it?

In the old days, plenty of people. They filled arenas from Holyoke to Perth Amboy and points west. They filled Madison Square Garden the night Frankie Genaro fought Pancho Villa. They had to move the rematch to the Polo Grounds.

“Bantamweights” wasn’t too much of an improvement. After all, 118-pounders aren’t much bigger than 112-pounders.

The American sports fan turned to size. He wanted 7-foot basketball players, 300-pound football players. He liked his cleanup hitters rangy.

But it is a matter of record that some of the great fights in the history of the game were between guys who could fit comfortably in a phone booth. Heavyweights had Dempsey-Firpo and one or two others. The little guys had Dempsey-Firpo every fight.

Some of the biggest fights in pugilism pitted sub-heavyweights. Old-timers hanging around the gyms used to get rhapsodic over an Ad Wolgast-Battling Nelson fight that drew a gate as big as Johnson-Jeffries.

Don’t they punch as hard? Oh, my, yes. Bud Taylor was a bantamweight when he killed Frankie Jerome in the ring in 1924. Eddie Martin’s nickname was “Cannonball.” Taylor’s was the “Terre Haute Terror.”

Much attention was paid to the lighter divisions in those days. It was not only a Manassa Mauler who got a nom de ring.

But, as time went on, the featherweight division, 126 pounds, seemed to be the cutoff. Maybe even the lightweight, 135. Below that, interest lagged.

It wasn’t always that way. Although small in stature, the little guys were giants in their day. Young Griffo not only defied you to beat him, he defied you to even hit him. He became a carnival fighter, going around to the venues where he would agree to stand in one place and give you the money if you even laid a glove on him.

Archie Moore, often a heavyweight, had 231 fights but Kid Williams (nee Guyenko), a Dane, had 204. The little guys were admirable. They fought you three minutes of every round. Seldom did one ever quit in his corner.

Mark Johnson hopes to restore the pageantry of the past, to put the flyweight division back on Page 1.

Johnson is a throwback. He’s a flyweight champion so good they have put him in contention for the ever-lovin’ “best fighter, pound-for-pound,” a classification designed for the late, great Sugar Ray Robinson.

Growing up in Washington, Johnson knew he was a great athlete. He had all the moves. Trouble was, he got no help from God. When you’re 5 feet 3, 110 pounds, even a 29-inch reach isn’t going to put you in the Bulls’ backcourt--or even the Mets’ outfield.

“What was I gonna do?” he asks, his arms spread. “Basketball? Too small. Baseball? Too small. Football? Forget it!

“Then, I found there was this sport where the other guys weighed the same as I did. I could match my skills on a level playing field. I said, ‘Where do I sign up?’ ”

It was the fight game’s gain.

“Our fights are exciting,” says Johnson. “It’s not two fat guys pushing each other around the ring. It’s war out there.”

Johnson, who answers to the nickname “Too Sharp,” is a pocket-sized Ali. He’ll outspeed you for a couple of rounds. Then, when you get desperate and reckless and think he is all jabs and counters, he moves in to knock you out. He has won his last 12 fights by knockout.

“Once he misses, you make him pay,” he sums up.

He won the International Boxing Federation flyweight title in his 30th fight, after having been avoided by the reigning champions in the interim. You could see why when he flattened the defending champion, Francisco Tejedor of Colombia, in the first round.

Johnson, who defends his title at the Forum Monday night, is a breath of fresh air to the sweet science. In an era of putting down your opponent, of name-calling press conferences and boastful weigh-ins, Mark Johnson, who has defeated 18 Mexican fighters and never lost to one, is careful not to gloat.

“I have heart for them,” he says quietly. “I thought that, culturally speaking, I was light years different from them. But I see them through me. They have had to struggle. They come from a hard place, and they’re struggling to make a better life for themselves and their families. They risk their bodies for it. What’s so different between them and me?”

Johnson--whose real handle is Marcellus--is something of a kitchen philosopher.

“I love this sport,” he says. “I love to be able to show my skills in public, it’s very satisfying. You know the saying, ‘Pick a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.’ ”

When he took a fight with Ancie Gideon, he treated it so lightly he barely won a 10-round decision.

“When you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail,” he philosophizes.

He defends his title against yet another Mexican challenger, Alejandro Montiel, Monday night. He disdains to crow.

“He’s good. He’s motivated. He deserves respect,” Johnson says. “I prefer to look at a fight from the negative aspect. Get ready for 12 hard rounds, not just a dance.”

Can he restore the division to the stature of its prestigious past?

“I look on this fight as defining my career,” he says. “A champion is a champion of his peers. You have no size advantage. What other sport can say that?”

A bantamweight is as much a champion as a heavyweight, he holds.

His idol is the ultimate little man. Henry Armstrong was a featherweight champion (126 pounds) who moved up and became lightweight champion (130), then welterweight champ (147), and fought for the middleweight championship (160) without ever putting on appreciable poundage.

But even little guys make mistakes. Mark Johnson has lost one fight, his second pro match. He fought an Irishman in Ireland. On St. Patrick’s Day. Not surprisingly, he lost the decision. He may be lucky that’s all he lost.

If he wants the boxing world to think small again, he may want to make sure he doesn’t schedule a rematch, if any, for Culiacan. On Cinco De Mayo.