What`s his name?

By James Blears

Our name tells the World just who we are, but some of the most famous boxers who`ve ever lived, have re-invented themselves with punchline identities they built from the surname up.

Anyone who knows about boxing, knows about the most famous example…namely Muhammad Ali.  Christened Cassius Marcellus Clay, The Greatest called this his slave name and after embracing Islam changed it to Muhammad Ali.  It could have been worse. His younger brother was baptized as Rudolph Valentino, As the saying goes: “For the love of Mike!” So…Rudy became Rahman.

The acknowledged all time greatest fighter at any weight, had to change his name PDQ (pretty damn quick) to put milk and eggs on the table.  Walker “Smitty” Smith, wanted to compete in a tournament in which the winner was presented a handsome watch and then sold it back for ten Bucks. In the TV Program The Way it was, Walker who was in his time a consummate dancer, told presenter Curt “The Grandaddy of them all” Gowdy, that he lied by saying his was sixteen when in fact he was fifteen. To which one of the organizers replied: “Son, you have to be eighteen to get an Amateur Athletic Card.

Unabashed, Walker high tailed it to the bar on the corner of the street where he lived and persuaded the barman to lend him his name.  That`s how he became Ray Robinson. The Sugar was added by an appreciative lady fan, several years later, to the appreciation of  his manager George Gainford, and it stuck.

On that same program sitting beside Sugar Ray was Rocky Graziano, who Ray knocked out in the third round, successfully defending his middleweight title in 1952.  But not before Rocky momentarily decked him with a powerful counter right on the ear.  Graziano`s real name was Thomas Rocco Barbella.  But as a turbulent and truculent graduate of New York`s street gangs and juvenile hall,  where he met Jake La Motta, before enlisting in the Army and slugging a captain, and then going AWOL, Rocky not unreasonably thought he might have difficulty applying for a pro licence. So he borrowed the name of a guy, called Rocky Graziano…before finding out his first namesake had an even longer criminal wrap than he did!

If you`re stuck with the name Arnold Raymond Cream, you might even be considered a power puff in the rock cake world of Boxing. So this young man got out of a sticky jam, but adopting  the name of his boyhood idol Joe Walcott, and stuck Jersey in front of it, because that`s where he himself was born.

Jersey Joe Walcott was the second oldest man, after “Big” George Foreman, to win the heavyweight title and was relieved of it, by the hardest title punch concluder ever, courtesy of Rocky Marciano.  Rocky`s surname was actually Marchegiano, but he needed something more punchy and catchy, so the sports writers could get it right.

Joe and Vince Dundee who respectively won the welterweight and middleweight titles were born in Sicily and named Salvatorre and Vincenzo Lazzano, which didn`t have a fighting ring to it. But a residue of origin remained.  Joe was affectionately known as the: “Scotch Wop.”

And the surname extended an even greater reach.  Angelo who managed Muhammad Ali, plus his brothers Joe and Chris adopted it, discarding their original  last name of Miranda.

Remaining with the Italian tradition, Giuseppe Antonio Beradinelli, adopted the name Joey Maxim.  The surname referred to  an early version of a heavy machine gun, delivering regular heavy fire, which kind of matched his bullet like left jab.

Joey became light heavyweight champion.  Another ringer called Sugar Ray Robinson Challenged him in the Yankee Statium on the baking hot day of June 25^th 1952. Ray suffered from heat stroke in temperatures of forty degrees Celsius, wasn’t able to come out for the fourteenth round.  Referee Ruby Goldstein had collapsed in the tenth, even though he wasn`t being hit by Joey, and had to be replaced by Referee Ray Miller.  By the way…Goldstein and Miller were actually their real names!