Before there was an airport in Philadelphia, planes used to land in Central Airport across the Delaware River in Camden, New Jersey. Weber’s Hof Brau restaurant was at the airport. They had outdoor fights there, too.
My father loved to tell about how he was at the fights at the airport one night and every time this one dude got hit with a good shot, his cup would fly out and the ref would call a halt while his corner men retrieved the reluctant cup and gathered around their warrior to reinstall it.
My one experience as a ring announcer took place at outdoor fights, too, and there was an “incident,” shall we say, at that show, too.
The back story here is that some years ago the Wildwood Boxing Club – since deceased – put on a couple outdoor events. Wildwood, New Jersey, is a true blue collar Jersey shore town a smidge north of upmarket Cape May, the last stop on the Garden State Parkway. So it made sense that Wildwood had a boxing club, and I used to hang there then, listening to the endless boxing stories from Al Mussachio, an ex Philly detective and amateur boxer who ran the place with his son, Chuck, an active pro light heavy then; Richie Bennett, another Philly guy whose son Richie “The Bandit” Bennett, had been a standout middleweight who actually beat Philly idol Bennie Briscoe until drugs killed the Bandit at 32; and Mickey DeFeo, who fought as a lightweight and was a cut buddy with Joey Giardello, another Brooklyn guy who later fought out of Philadelphia.
For the first outdoor show, I recruited a friend of mine to be the ring announcer and he turned out to be a dud. His standard intro – endlessly repeated – was “Put your hands together for …” and it got so bad that Ernie Troiano, then as now the Wildwood mayor and a big fight fan, finally turned to me and pleaded, “Bobby, go up there and take over … this guy’s killing us.”
I told him I couldn’t do that because the guy was a friend and I didn’t want to insult him. But a seed had been planted.
The next outdoor show was in Fox Park across from the Wildwoods Convention Center on a brilliant sunny Saturday afernoon. The Wildwood Boxing Club team would take on a pickup squad from two or three South Jersey boxing clubs. I had volunteered to be ring announcer. Hell, I couldn’t be worse than my dud pal. I was probably the only ring announcer in history in cargo shorts, a tank top, bucket hat, and sunglasses, but it was a hot one.
I was doing okay as the show wore on. I’d done a nice intro to the card (I thought) and was jazzing up my intros to the fighters and keeping a very high energy level which I hoped would transmit to the “crowd” of a couple hundred who’d paid ten bucks a head to see the kids go at it. I was actually getting cocky – the poor man’s Johnny Addie.
Then, about halfway through the show, two middleweights were in the ring. The kid from Wildwood would throw a roundhouse right hand, all arm and no body, and then fall in and grab the other kid and hold on until the ref separated them. The crowd started booing. The ref told the kid to stop holding. The kid still did nothing but hold and the other kid was getting frustrated and pissed. He plainly wanted to fight. Finally he had enough.
“Fuck this shit,” he said, and spit out his mouthpiece, climbed out of the ring and had somebody start to unlace his gloves. The crowd loved it. Not me. I didn’t know what to do.
I climbed into the ring, mic in hand, and turned to the ref and shrugged, my eyebrows raised in a question.
“DQ,” he mouthed.
I caught on. I announced the remaining kid the winner by disqualification and added, “The disqualification is for leaving the ring without permission.”
The crowd broke up.
The ref winked at me and nodded.
And the show went on. As it always does.