Joey Giardello: The “Comeback Kid.”

Born in 1930 in Flatbush, a section of Brooklyn, he watched his father go to work at the Department of Sanitation. His father supported four boys, the family got by okay on their finances. His father fought under the name Eddie Martin. Even though his father fought,

his father never trained his son, Joey. Carmine or Joey grew up in the Italian neighborhood in an Italian family. He joined the army and got out to fight, and stayed in Philly throughout his life. He weighed in most of his boxing career around 160-pounds, and stayed in shape his entire life.

“Nobody showed me nothing,” Giardello said, “I’d box and then stick around and watch guys box. I’d pick up moves just by watching. I never had any amateur fights.”

In 133 professional bouts, Giardello had 100 victories, thirty-two by knockout, and he lost twenty-five. The tough, gritty Giardello slowly, but steadily, fought his way up the ranks until he won the world middleweight title at the end of his sixteenth year as a professional. Giardello actually started life with the real name Carmine Tilelli. He turned professional in 1948 at age eighteen. He fought primarily in Philadelphia, and built his record, and reputation in the “City of Brotherly Love” and other East Coast towns. In 1951, he entered the world rankings with a ten-round decision win over contender Ernie Durando in Scranton Pennsylvania. With the exception of one year, 1955, Giardello fought and beat at least one ranked contender every year until 1966.

In 1952-53 he waged a thrilling three-fight series with future Hall-of-Famer Billy Graham. Graham took a split-decision win as two New York State athletic commissioners changed one judge’s scorecard and the verdict. Giardello sued and the decision received a reversal. Giardello remained a top middleweight, but never secured a title shot. He received a million dollars of free publicity out of the decision, and this controversy made the fighter. In 1959, he split a pair of ten-round decisions with future champion and future Hall-of-Famer, Dick Tiger.

In 1955, Giardello served a four-month sentence for assault. While he served time, his father died. When his father died, his brother Bob remembers when Joey swore he planned to gain the championship someday. Nothing ever came his way to give this fellow hope. When he fought Fullmer in Montana, he quit his manager of eleven years and fought the hometown favorite. In the bloody match off, Joey lost the decision to Fullmer. Despite a fine record, Giardello missed the chance to win the championship fight on April 20, 1960. He met Gene Fullmer for the middleweight title and Fullmer retained the championship in a fifteen-round draw. Joey looked like a fighter. He carried his shoulders in a shrugging walk. His hair waved in a dark wavy crown. His nose cartilage zigged and zagged. Little puffs of flesh hung down on his eyes where surgery healed the scar tissue.

When he fought the famous “Sugar” Ray Robinson in 1963, he said, “I’ve got the fastest reflexes ever recorded on an IBM machine. They tested us before the Robinson fight and I had the best score they ever had. I had to be a fighter. I liked the glory of it.” He beat Sugar Ray in June of 1963, six months before the Dick Tiger fight, and one of the few to win against the famous “Sugar” Ray.

At age thirty-three, he said before the Tiger fight, “I may not have too many tomorrows left.”

Atlantic City in December was bleak and windy, even the boardwalk creaked. The waves flopped grumpily on the desolate beach. The middleweight championship bout scheduled a comeback for Joey Giardello. In 1963 on the seventh, Dick Tiger gave up the world middleweight crown to Joey. Giardello sacrificed finances to gain the title against Dick Tiger, and any percentage or location looked good to him. The odds by the bookmakers believed that Dick Tiger held the chance to win three to one. When Joey won, he took $10,000 of his $11,000 winnings and bought out his contract from Arman Laurenzi.

He had one successful defense, a unanimous decision over Rubin “Hurricane” Carter in 1964, and then lost the title to Tiger via points in Oct. 1965. He defeated and later befriended fellow middleweight Rubin ”Hurricane” Carter, whose conviction and exoneration for a triple murder showed in the movie, The Hurricane. The movie dealt Giardello what he felt was a low blow. The film with Carter, played by Denzel Washington, shows Joey taking a bloody beating to a pulp during a fight. In the movie, it shows him with a questionable win in a racially tinged decision that leaves a battered and bloodied Giardello the undeserving champion. In reality, Giardello says, he suffered only a small cut in the middle rounds and won a clear decision over a listless Carter. Boxing historian Wallace Matthews says that several writers who were at ringside in Philadelphia that night back up Giardello’s claim, though others believe Carter won. He defended the championship against Rubin Carter in 1964 but lost it to Tiger in a fifteen-round decision on October 21, 1965. Giardello retired two years later.

Giardello sued, even though the law makes it difficult for a living public figure like him to collect. Giardello settled out of court for an undisclosed sum, and for director Norman Jewison’s agreement to make a statement on the DVD version of The Hurricane that there was “no doubt” that Giardello was a great fighter. Giardello says he sought, but did not receive, an additional sanction: He wanted Universal Pictures to append actual footage of his fight with Carter to the DVD version, so that viewers could judge for themselves ”who gave the pounding” to whom. The frailty of truths shaded by perceptions was a theme the former boxer addressed repeatedly during his early December visit to Milwaukee, where he spoke at a criminal justice reform conference. The truth is proving to be extremely elusive in Carter’s case, made more confounding by the inaccuracies in the released film “Hurricane.” The film was hyped as “the triumphant true story” of Carter’s life, and recounts his long fight for justice and his relationship with a youth named Lesra Martin, who befriended him in prison. Carter was convicted twice for the murders and both times the convictions were overturned, finally resulting in Carter’s release in 1985 after he had served nineteen years in prison.

The referee who scored the fight in Giardello’s favor has called the film “ludicrous.” Giardello’s two sons responded by creating a Web site, https://www.joeygiardello.com, in tribute to their father. Included on the site is the complete footage of the fight, a photo gallery and posting of every decision in Giardello’s nineteen-year, 133-fight career. As part of the lawsuit, Giardello has a videotape of Carter admitting that he lost the fight fair and square. “If they can’t get the fight right, how can you believe anything in the movie?” Giardello asks.

In November of 2003, at age seventy-three, Joey recalled in full gratitude the fight with Dick Tiger. With a gravelly and low voice, Joey said, “I was glad that Dick Tiger gave me a shot; I appreciated it very much. I thought I won, but it was okay. I was thirty-seven. I was just happy I had the title…for a guy who had fought for twenty years and didn’t get a title shot…I was very happy for my kids and for my family. I enjoyed boxing very much…I loved to fight. Not that I picked fights, or anything. I never had an amateur fight. I was broke and I was in Philly and asked this friend if he could get me a fight. He did and it went from there.” Joey lives with his wife of fifty-three years and thinks of her as the most beautiful woman ever. His four sons went to work in the area, and made this man proud.

Joseph de Beauchamp can be reached at joedebo@wfnn.info