our departure. I didn’t really care what time we hit the city but he was all about schedules and uniformity and he’d get wacky if we varied from it. He was already getting a little perturbed on the phone.
At five thirty the boardroom door opened and they all started to file out. My desk phone rang and I went to get it to hopefully tell Smitty I’d be on my way soon.
It was Howard.
“Duffy, it’s me.”
“Howard, slow down and talk to me. Tell me where you are and what’s going on.”
“I can’t stay on, Duff. I know they’ll have the phones traced and I don’t blame that on you at all.”
“Howard, look-”
“Duffy, you need to know it wasn’t me. It’s them and they’re afraid of what I know. It’s real big and it will ruin their lives. Don’t believe I did it.”
“How-” He hung up.
Claudia was busy talking to the board members and Monique had gone to the lesbian’s room, so no one heard my conversation. I didn’t want to spend the rest of the night with Morris and Larry Bird’s mustache, nor did I want to listen to Claudia go on and on about, well, anything.
I didn’t say anything. I waited for Claudia to tell us we could go, and then I called Smitty and he picked me and Rudy up at the Blue.
It was fight time.
9
Madison Square Fuckin’ Garden.
The ring that was home to Sugar Ray Robinson, Rocky Marciano, Jack Dempsey, Joe Frazier, Ali, and my idol, Willie Pep, was soon to be home, at least for a short while, to Duffy Dombrowski.
Smitty and I got to the Garden two hours before my bout, and we went in the special entrance on Seventh Avenue for fighters and officials. They checked our IDs and directed us to the fifth-floor dressing rooms. I didn’t quite get how an arena could be on a fifth floor, but that’s New York for you. We went up this industrial elevator and got out in a gray loading area with huge walls filled with dollies and wire. It smelled like old garbage and faintly like urine. The shiny Garden you see on your pay-per-view and touted as the world’s most famous arena has a different feel in its bowels.
We snaked around a couple of corners until we saw a sign that said “Dressing Rooms.” A security guard checked our passes and showed us through a narrow corridor with a dozen rooms. I guess if you’re going to have the Ice Capades every year, you’re going to need a lot of rooms. As I walked through the corridor I passed the framed photos of the Knicks and Rangers and then there were framed photos of some of the performers who had played the Garden. I went past photos of the Grateful Dead, the Rolling Stones, Sinatra, and Paul McCartney.
Smitty had walked ahead and called to me.
“Here it is, Duff. Let’s get wrapped,” he said.
“Hang on, Smitty,” I said.
I kept on down the corridor, looking for it. I couldn’t believe they wouldn’t have it, but then, just past Springsteen, I saw it.
Elvis at the Garden, June 12, 1972. It was a great shot of him wowing the Garden fans. It was cool to see.
Just down the hallway was a fat old security guard, and I walked down to talk with him. Smitty was getting impatient.
“Duff, what the hell are you doin’?” he said.
“Hang on, just a second, Smit,” I said.
I went up to the guard.
“Excuse me, sir.”
“Fighters names are on the doors to their rooms,” he said, barely looking at me.
“Yeah, I know, thanks,” I said. “Can I ask you a question?”
“What?”
“How long have you worked at the Garden?”
“Since ’70, why?”
“Any chance you worked the night Elvis played?”
“Yeah, I did. So?”
“Did you get to talk to him?”
“We all did. He gave us watches.”
“Really?”
“Yeah-I was never a fan, but I’ll tell you something,” he said, looking me in the eye for the first time. “You’ll never hear me say anything bad about Elvis Presley.”
“Do you remember which room he dressed in?”
“I’ll never forget-second one to the end. It’s where we got the watches,” he said.
I looked down the corridor to see a pissed-off Smitty, standing in front of the second dressing room to the end.
“Sir, thank you, thank you very much,” I said.
Special things happened in this place. You could tell.
Smitty wrapped my hands and went through his routine. He didn’t mention anything about how this kid was the best fighter that I had ever been in with by far. He didn’t mention the Garden, he just said all the things he always said and he said them in the exact same way. I don’t think any of that was a coincidence.
I was the fifth bout on a ten-bout card and there was one more bout after mine before the live television started. Mulrooney was the main event and he brought in the Irish, both of the Irish-American and the recent immigrant variety. In Mulrooney, they had something to get behind, an event right here in New York that they could come out to, where they could get drunk and be Irish. Most of them would be in the upper deck, and at $75 a pop you can’t rightfully call them cheap seats.
A guy in a blue blazer with a New York Athletic Commission badge on poked his head in my dressing room and said “Time.” I felt that weird feeling in my throat and a flushing in my face like I do before any bout, but tonight it was a little more intense. My legs felt funny underneath me like I had rented them. It was a little more than a little more intense.
I came out first for my bout because Marquason insisted on it in the contract. It’s customary for the champion to enter the ring last, and that’s kind of been adopted by whoever is the favorite to win. I walked through the hallway leading to the main floor and walked through the tunnel with the small scoreboard on top of it that you see on TV at about midcourt during basketball games. I got my first look at the immensity of the arena, which was now three-quarters filled. It was, in the true sense of the word, awesome. The crowd did their best to be indifferent to my entrance.
Marquason came in to some rap song with an entourage of about eight guys. His corner was worked by two of the game’s most famous cornermen, so you know that his manager thought a lot of him. The one guy was that fat old guy who looked liked Fred Flintsone’s uglier brother. Marquason was decked out in brand-new gear with paid endorsements all over, and when he came through the ropes he ignored me and floated around the ring in a choreographed warm-up. I got the impression that this guy hadn’t fought in a union hall or a high-school gym-at least not in a long time.
Anticipating some Irish folks there for the main event, I wore my green robe and my green, orange, and white shorts with the shamrock in the middle. The ring announcer introduced us and when he said my name a roar went up from an upper-deck section waving Irish flags. I guess they heard “Duffy” and the “Dombrowski” didn’t throw them. I looked up and it was a large section of people in green.
Marquason got applause but it was more subdued, like the crowd was being introduced to some sort of boy prince. The referee called us to the center of the ring for the ceremonial instructions, and then we went back to our corners to get ready for the bell. Smitty slipped in my mouthpiece and the bell rang. I tried to focus on boxing.
