Forty years before Tommy Huff, there was Jimmy Howard.
Huff, the Niagara Falls middleweight who evened his pro record at 2-2 with a fourth-round stoppage of Cassius Martel last month, had the late Lew Ciavaglia to guide his career through the amateur ranks into the world of punching for pay. Howard had longtime manager and promoter Tony Gravanti watching over him when he won the national Amateur Athletic Union title in 1966.
Bob Gravanti, Tony's brother, is staging an amateur boxing show Saturday at the Niagara Arts Center Auditorium, located in the old Niagara Falls High School at Portage and Pine avenues. The 10-fight card, featuring fighters from throughout Western New York, is designed as a tribute to Tony Gravanti, who died in 1998 at 75. Howard, along with many of Gravanti's other former charges, are scheduled to be on hand, along with Huff.
Tony Gravanti was no stranger to business, making a living in vending machines and used cars until moving to Las Vegas in 1968. But when it came to boxing, money didn't enter into it.
"Everything was the amateurs with him," Bob Gravanti said. "He didn't like the pros -- there was too much political stuff going on for him. He loved his fighters -- he'd pay their expenses all out of his own pocket."
Howard, who beat eventual heavyweight titleholder Ken Norton on his way to the AAU crown, was the star of Gravanti's stable. Matt Gulley, Dave Matthews, Buster Bones and Vincent Mameli, all of whom earned Gold Gloves titles under Gravanti's tutelage, are slated to attend Saturday's show.
"I wanted to get all these guys together one more time," Bob Gravanti said.
Howard won nine of his first 10 professional fights, but dropped his last five before retiring in 1971.
Tony Gravanti opened his first gym on Clifton Hill in Niagara Falls, Ont., in the late 1950s, and subsequently ran facilities at Niagara and Second streets, on Main Street, Buffalo Avenue and on Highland Avenue.
After moving to Las Vegas, Tony Gravanti opened a used-car lot, building an outdoor training camp on the grounds. He continued managing amateur fighters, meeting some of the pro game's biggest names along the way.
"Larry Holmes used to train at his gym in Vegas," Bob Gravanti said. "Holmes and Don King made donations to the gym. Earnie Shavers used to go there and Sugar Ray Leonard visited a few times."
Tickets for Saturday's card are $8 and available by calling 283-6011 after 6 p.m., or at the door. In addition to the fights, Bobby Newbury and USA Band are scheduled to perform.
A fight card of a very different sort made headlines throughout the boxing world last week. Promoter Tony Holden's plans for a June 21 promotion featuring Lennox Lewis, Mike Tyson and Joe Mesi at Ralph Wilson Stadium dominated the plethora of boxing Web sites, as well as hitting most major newspapers via the Associated Press.
It's no sure thing that Holden could line up the financing for such an enormous show, which would dwarf anything currently on his promotional resume. Tyson making it into the ring without injury or delay is an even longer shot.
Putting such skepticism aside for a moment, though, there are three basic scenarios for how the top of the card would shake out, ranked from least to most likely.
It's difficult not to think that a Lewis-Mesi matchup is only being bandied about for the sake of publicity and negotiating with whoever actually ends up across the ring from Lennox. Mesi has been steadily moving up the rankings of the myriad boxing organizations for the past year, but has yet to fight anyone near the Top 10.
Lewis may not hold the belt of every sanctioning body, but he remains, without question, the best heavyweight in the world -- big, mobile and a near-flawless technician. He didn't just beat Tyson, he humiliated him.
The only weakness Lewis has shown is an occasional lapse of intensity and subsequent vulnerability to one big punch. Two clearly inferior fighters -- Oliver McCall and Hasim Rahman -- exploited that flaw to hand Lewis his only defeats. But in both cases, he won the title back more decisively than he lost it. While Mesi has shown better all-around skills than McCall or Rahman, he hasn't demonstrated the same kind of one-punch knockout power.
Mesi and his father/manager Jack have taken a conservative course with his career so far, steadily improving the quality of his opponents (with occasional steps back or to the side, like last month's easy blowout against Eric Curry). Lewis would represent not only a huge jump up, but a foolish one.
Michael Grant was 31-0 and the near-undisputed heavyweight champion-in-waiting when he was rushed into a fight against Lewis in April, 2000. Grant had beaten two subsequent Mesi victims, David Izon and Jorge Luis Gonzalez, as well as Lou Savarese and Andrew Golota.
But the Golota fight should have been a hint that Grant wasn't ready -- Golota dropped him twice in the first round and dominated the early action, only to mysteriously quit in the 10th round.
Grant's then-handlers took the Lewis fight, anyway. And five months later, Lennox destroyed him in two rounds. In his next fight, Grant went down when Jameel McCline's first punch landed, injuring his ankle and suffering a 43-second stoppage loss.
Grant has been fighting nobodies in an effort to rebuild his career, winning six straight in the past year. But there's little reason, beyond a $1 million payday, for the Mesis to risk a similar detour.
It doesn't make a lot of sense for Lewis, either. He has two enormous paydays on the horizon with a Tyson rematch and a fight against Vitali Klitschko. Risking those dates to fight Mesi at this point in their respective careers would be a high-risk, no-benefit proposition for the champ.
Either possible main event makes sense. Klitschko represents the one challenge Lewis hasn't met, and his popularity in Europe would create worldwide interest. Johnson has a large Canadian following, helping sell the 70,000 tickets that would be available.
But taking on Tyson doesn't make sense for Mesi, for the same reasons mentioned above. He can keep moving up in the ratings without taking such a big risk. And as much as Tyson has regressed, he's still extremely dangerous.
It wouldn't make much sense for Tyson, either. He had no answer for Lewis' size and jab the first time around, and fighting someone of Mesi's style and stature won't help him come up with one.
A loss would all but kill that rematch, so Tyson's much more likely to face an opponent better than Clifford Etienne, but one unlikely to beat him.
This combination would allow Lewis and Tyson to stay on track for their rematch, as well as preserving Lewis' eventual meeting with Klitschko, while boosting Mesi's career by putting him in the international spotlight.
And most important from a promoter's perspective, it would keep Lewis, Tyson and Mesi moving toward bigger and better things.
Even if the card never comes off, Mesi has already scored one significant victory -- getting his name mentioned in the same sentence as Lewis and Tyson.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | April 8 2003 |