Category: Albert Archinaco

My father loved boxing as much as me; it was one of our shared vices.  Over the years, we watched a lot of fights – none more exciting than Mike Tyson.  Yet, in the twilight of his life, my father decided to tell me that his favorite fights were the ones I staged and simulated through an Avalon Hill Board Game named Titlebout – (he couldn’t remember the name and called it “that game with the little yellow cards and the bios on the back.”).  Titlebout was created by two Pittsburgh brothers named Jim and Tom Trunzo, lifelong boxing historians and fans.  And it remains the gold standard in boxing simulators, producing historically accurate results.

Before computers came along, the simulations were all by hand – flipping cards and checking numbers.  So fighters in my simulated world fought less than they do in real life – and a top fighter in my universe of boxers would maybe fight twenty five times before they retired.  I didn’t bother with time periods, so a slew of champions were mixed together – guys like Jack Dempsey, Muhammad Ali, Sonny Liston and Rocky Marciano – populated the ranks – along with Sam Langford, a man whose name is largely unknown outside boxing historians because racism kept him from a shot at the title.

In order to run the win loss records up though guys couldn’t regularly be fighting the likes of Langford or Liston, there needed to be “powder puff” bouts – guys with glass jaws – or guys that were good, but not good enough – that would always fail in the end.  The goal I set out was for Muhammad Ali and Rocky Marciano to meet undefeated, so all the bouts were building towards that climax.

My belief was that Muhammad Ali was statistically the greatest boxer of all time, and was first at getting into his opponent’s head, with a close second to Tyson and third to Dempsey.  No one could touch Ali overall (despite my respect for the talents of sluggers like Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano and Mike Tyson).  And so I thought it was a foregone conclusion that he would be undefeated when he faced Marciano, because no matter how tough the opponent, Ali’s style was always dominant, particularly against sluggers.  The only guy that could match him on style was Jack Johnson, but I had Ali ducking that bout before he faced Marciano – just like both Ali and Marciano ducked Langford, a tough match up for either of them.  I wasn’t leaving anything to chance for the Ali versus Marciano undefeated show down.

As I mentioned before, in the mix of all of this were the so called “powder puffs” – the walkovers on the way to the big fight my father and I both wanted to see – Ali and Marciano.

My father loved Rocky Marciano, who was an Italian hero.  He liked to laugh at how Marciano hid money in his toilet, and in curtain rods.  “All Italians were like that back then, hiding money in the craziest places,” he said.  “We were all afraid we were going to get robbed.”  It made him laugh that even the heavy weight champion had that fear, and it made him relatable.  “Marciano proved you could beat the odds,” my father liked to say.  “And I wanted to believe that for myself.”

As for the fight itself, he said: “Ali was probably the greatest and had the style edge, but Marciano’s heart gave him a chance to win.  He could never be counted out.”  So my father chose not to predict the outcome.  “You know who I want to win,” he said. “So no cheating.  Or it will ruin it.”

So with no do-overs (or cheating as my father called it (they are now called save files)), along the way to that fight Marciano and Ali were both going to have to face perennial “powder puff” Primo Carnera.  The description on the back of his Titlebout fighter card read as follows: “Da Preem was the biggest heavyweight champion ever!  He was over 6’ 5” and weighed 260 lbs.  He was also a fine person and courageous fighter.  He only had one drawback.  He couldn’t fight!  Carnera’s climb to the top was littered with dives and set-ups (unknown to Primo).  The gangsters that ran Carnera used him and discarded him when he no longer had value.  In spite of all this, Carnera never gave anything than his best in the right and could take punishment downstairs.  However, a hard shot to the chin and down he’d go.  It was unfortunate that a good man like Carnera got mixed up with such unscrupulous men.”

Knowing that background as told to him by Grandpa, my father made Carnera a must fight for Ali and Marciano.  If I was the play-by-play commentator, my father was the color guy – helping to flesh out my imaginary world by telling me everything he could remember about the boxers and what Grandpa had told him – and always adding the seedy corruption and drama that has been inherent in the sport of boxing.  Imaginary gangsters made the fights more interesting.

Carnera had statistically virtually zero chance of beating Ali or Marciano, especially since the game didn’t have any “fixed” fight settings.  With all his flaws, however, there was one thing on his Titlebout card that gave him a shot, his punching power.  While not great, it was respectable, a seven on a scale to ten.  In real life, he had 66 Kos in 84 bouts.  And while I had given him no chance of landing a blow like Ali had on Liston, in the first round I pulled a series of cards from the playing deck that simulated exactly that.  Ali was not only knocked down, but out cold.  I stared at the game board, a hard cardboard playing surface with a 3d ring.

It was just an incredible turn of events that left me perplexed and questioning the integrity of the game.  I wanted to cry, but didn’t.  Instead, I went through the scenario again, over and over, flipping the cards, making sure I had not flipped them incorrectly.  I had flipped them correctly.  Other than the game being inherently broken, I could not find the answer.

So I asked my father to explain it, if he could.  I wanted to still believe in the game, to simulate that big Ali versus Marciano fight.  But the Carnera / Ali result had me questioning my faith in the game.  What he told me was that in real life, Ali could never have lost to Carnera – unless the fight was fixed.

I reminded him that Ali got knocked out, and in the first round.  It was the type of knockout some fighter’s egos never recover from.

“That’s because,” my father said as cool as could be.  “Carnera’s gloves were loaded with lead.”  He explained that Carnera’s hitting power reflected all the dives and fixed fights, and so the hitting power statistic on his card was inflated.  In reality, the 66 ko wins in 84 fights were a sham with many the result of dives.  “Grandpa said he hit like he had pillow cases on his hands,” he said.  So, the card was in error, Carnera hit with less power than his card said.  So, he explained, if the result with less power was different, then the result could be chalked up to the fix being in – and Carnera’s gloves being loaded with lead.

If I wanted, he explained, I could go back and redo the fight, this time with Carnera’s hitting power a 6, not a 7.  That small change, he said, would make a huge difference – and “eliminate” the fix.

So I went back to the card deck that I had intact, and replayed this time with a 6 hitting power.  Instead of the knockout, the fight had continued – and Ali had won easily.

Even though I could have erased that loss, I decided against it (although I have erased many loses to the ai over the years in videogames).  I chose to continue in that imperfect world, the one where Ali lost.  After all, he did lose – and the card did say Carnera’s hitting power was a seven.

I constructed a fiction that Carnera was an innocent bystander in the whole thing, to make my world consistent with his card.  After all, he was described as a good guy who had just gotten mixed up with some gangsters.

Years later, my father, brother and I watched the real life equivalent of my Carnera / Ali Titlebout fight, when Antonio Margacheeto ran his mouth off before the fight against an undefeated Miguel Cotto so much that it was a certainty that Cotto was going to shut it for him.  But the result turned out differently, with Cotto taking a beating before succumbing in the late rounds.

It later was discovered through investigation that Margacheeto had loaded his gloves.  Cotto confronted him with the evidence that everyone saw, and he still denied it.  But, in the end, the evidence was there.  And ultimately there would be a rematch.

My father never lived to see the rematch of that fight.  If he had, he would have said that was the best revenge a fighter ever got on an opponent that had cheated to beat him.  I watched that fight with my brother, who I love.  It was the greatest fight I ever saw, and he would agree.  He would also agree that the Cotto versus Torres fight we saw live ranks second – (the greatest mini Rocky fight of all time, so great that it almost seemed scripted).  And, as a footnote in history, my brother’s statistical ingenuity landed us tickets on the camera side – so we can be seen throughout the entire bout.

And as for Ali and Carnera, I told my father I decided to stick with the original result, fix or no fix, it was a loss.  But, Ali would come back better the second time – that all the stars would be in attendance, even his favorite, Frank Sinatra.  And Ali would make sure he took no chances, no matter how long it would take.

When that fight did happen, it was the virtual equivalent of the real life Cotto versus Margacheeto rematch, a brutal display that sent a message to the imaginary gangsters who had backed Carnera – that if they ever tried to affect the results of another bout in his career again, they would be the ones on the receiving end of the punishment.

Ali’s dismantling of Carnera was less about Carnera, a man oblivious to his own limitations (relying on my constructed fiction that he did not know the gloves were loaded), than it was about the gangsters that backed him.  I described those three round blow by blow to my father from the notebook that I kept tracking the action, and how Carnera couldn’t answer the bell for the fourth round.  Ali was triumphant in the end, his pride restored – and the villains defeated.

And, as for Ali versus Marciano, that’s best saved for another day.

Thanks old man.

-11/28/14