Rocky Graziano
Fists, Fame, and Fortune
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- 39,99 €
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- 39,99 €
Publisher Description
Rocky Graziano, juvenile delinquent, middleweight boxing champion, and comedic actor, was the last great fighter from the golden age of boxing, the era of Joe Louis, Jake LaMotta, and Sugar Ray Robinson.
In Rocky Graziano: Fists, Fame, and Fortune, Jeffrey Sussman tells the rags-to-riches story of Tommy Rocco Barbella, who came to be known as Rocky Graziano. Raised by an abusive father, Graziano took to the streets and soon found himself in reformatories and prison cells. Drafted into the U.S. Army, Graziano went AWOL but was eventually caught, tried, and sent to prison for a year. After his release, Rocky went on to have one successful boxing match after another and quickly ascended up the pyramid of professional boxing. In one of the bloodiest battles in the history of the middleweight division, Rocky beat Tony Zale and became the middleweight champion of the world. Rocky retired from boxing after he lost his crown to Sugar Ray Robinson and went on to have a successful acting career in two acclaimed television series. Rich and famous, he was no longer the angry young man he once was. In his post-boxing life, Rocky became known for his good humor, witty remarks, and kindness and generosity to those in need.
Rocky Graziano’s life is not only inspiring, it is also a story of redemption, of how boxing became the vehicle for saving a young man from a life of anger and crime and leading him into a life of happiness and honesty. The first biography of Graziano in over 60 years, this book will bring his story to a new generation of boxing fans and sports historians.
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Prolific boxing writer Sussman (Max Baer and Barnie Ross: Jewish Heroes of Boxing) relates in overwrought prose the rags-to-riches saga of a delinquent who slugged his way from the slums of Manhattan into America's heart. Thomas Rocco "Rocky" Barbella was born in 1919 to a mentally ill mother and abusive, alcoholic father. He had to fight for everything: by the time he was three, his six-year-old brother was regularly thrashing him in sparring sessions ordered by their father, a failed boxer. Violent and hyperactive, Rocky took to gang life and street crime, a course that landed him in reform school and then prison. He joined the military but went AWOL after punching a captain (to elude the MPs, he took the name Graziano and fought four boxing matches until he was discovered). Fortunately for Rocky, boxing's popularity turned his powerful right hand into a valuable commodity. A brutal trilogy of fights with Tony Zale made him a sports-page fixture; an unexpected talent for performing made him a sitcom star and pitchman for everything from Post Raisin Bran to Off-Track Betting. He wrote a bestselling memoir in 1955 called Somebody Up There Likes Me; Paul Newman played the boxer in the movie version. Graziano's story scarcely requires exaggeration, yet Sussman inflates the account into melodrama, with cookie-cutter morality and a redemptive arc. That said, his more thoughtful sketches of the long-forgotten men who faced Graziano provide a moving reminder that a career in boxing is not a fairy tale for most.