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06/06/2006 Archived Entry: "Unedited Excerpts from 'The Iceman Diaries'"
Unedited Excerpts from 'The Iceman Diaries'
By John "Iceman" Scully
Photo courtesy of http://www.icemanjohnscully.com
John Scully (right) bounces a right off Michael Nunn's head
Editor's Note: John "Iceman" Scully was a durable, top notch amateur and professional fighter who amassed a professional record of 38-11 and 21 knockouts and fought such luminaries as Michael Nunn, Drake Thadzi, Henry Maske, Graciano Rocchigiani, Tony Thornton, and many others, garnering several attempts at world titles in the process. He also served as sparring partner for such names as James Toney and Roy Jones, Jr. and has gone on to become a very effective trainer.
The following is an excerpt from his upcoming book.
It is no secret that kids from all over the United States (and the world) right now are taking up the sport of basketball in part, at least, because they see LeBron James on TV doing something they think they want to do, too, and they want to be just like that kid. They want to just play like him, sure, but they probably even want to walk like him and talk like him, too. They want to wear his jerseys and his sneakers, of course, but they probably want to even wear the types of clothes they see him in off the court, too. The influence of top athletes are strong and, as a result, I would have to say that it stands to reason that a very high percentage of the young athletes in this country -and even the world- have gotten into their particular sport either as a direct or indirect result of their admiration of one of that sports top pro or amateur stars.
So, like a lot of boxers over the last forty-five years, I got into the sport with my main influence being "The Greatest," Muhammad Ali. Probably more kids have gotten into boxing as a direct or indirect result of the influence of Ali that any other boxer in history. If kids got into basketball because of Lebron or Michael Jordan or soccer because of Pele' and hockey because of Gretsky then they surely got into boxing because of Muhammad Ali. Even as a young kid I knew Ali was a special person because my father was a very big sports fan, and a boxing fan in particular, and he had several books that I read from cover to cover more than once. I read the book by Jim Bouton called "Ball Four" and I read Howard Cosell's book, "Tell it like it is," too. I read Sugar Ray Robinson's autobiography and I also used to read the several books on Ali that he had including his 1975 autobiography called "The Greatest." I was mesmerized and captured by what I read in that book more than any other and also the images that the words put in my head were vivid and strong. I read the book and I wanted to go someday and see the 5th St. Gym in Miami and I wanted to run the mountains at Deer Lake. I pictured myself visiting Central High School to see where he was often caught "shadowboxing in the halls" and I also wanted to see Madison Square Garden where he fought Frazier on that electric night in 1971 when "everybody who was anybody was there to watch." I was probably the only kid in my whole school that ever voluntarily looked up Kinshasa and Manila on a map. I was also one of the few from my town that ever even tried to box. I was always surprised, and continue to be, that more kids from Windsor haven't even attempted to get into the sport. There were some here and there that came to the gym with me but none of them ever lasted. In the history of my town there are only a handful that ever really competed in actual fights, most notably Earl "Terminator" Anderson, John Spehar, Danny Nolan, Tony Judge and both Joe Jones Jr. and his dad (a current member of World Karate Union Hall of Fame) Joe Sr. Other than myself, the one with the greatest success was Anderson, a kid who grew up maybe a quarter mile from me. Earl split two fights with Clay-Bey when Clay was just starting out and in 1992 Earl made it all the way to the National Golden Gloves finals at super heavyweight, losing a hotly disputed decision to Alvin Manley.
When I was twelve years old my father bought me a pair of Everlast gloves that I always thought looked just like the ones Ali and Frazier wore in their first fight. On the weekends I used to wrap my hands with toilet paper and put clear tape over them so they would look like real hand wraps. Then I would get on the bed and impersonate the voice of legendary announcer Chuck Hull as he did the pre-fight introductions and the post fight announcement of the fights winner. I had a score sheet and used an alarm clock as a timer and after every round I would tally it. I would throw punches and I would hit MYSELF in the body and head. I wanted to make it as real as I could, at least as real as a "Rocky" movie. Sometimes I would fight Joe Frazier or Sonny Liston but more often than not, for whatever reason, I ended up fighting Jimmy Young. And, oh yeah. I was Muhammad Ali. Or once in a while I would switch over and be Rocky Balboa himself as I recited lines during my fights from those famous movies. "Ain't gonna' be no rematch." "Don't want one." And, because I loved doing the reading of the score cards, we always went the fifteen round distance. Sometimes I would use that fake blood that kids use at Halloween and I would put it on my lips or eyes after certain tough rounds and let it run down my face. I would do post-fight interviews in the bathroom mirror using a hair brush as a microphone. I was like a one-man play. The best part of the fight would be when it was over and I would read the cards in my best Chuck Hull voice. It would always be a split decision and when I read the last card I always imitated, for effect, that awesome pause that Hull did before he would announce the winner. "Judge Tom Kazmareck has it ONE forty-five (He used to stress the ONE), ONE forty-three... for the winner...... aaaaaand NEW heavyweight champion of the World, MUHAMMAD ALIIIIII!!
Then after celebrating my victory I would go to the bathroom mirror and conduct the post fight interview in my best Muhammad Ali voice. It was in March of 1982, after seeing me beat up poor old Jimmy Young for about the 300th time, that my father finally took me to the little gym on an old elementary school stage in the nearby town of Windsor Locks. "The Windsor Locks Boxing Club" run by Joe Barile, Sr. He had seen a small article in a local newspaper that had a picture of Mr. Barile holding the pads at that gym for some kid that looked to be about my age and when I saw that picture it was a mixture of excitement and nervousness that intrigued me enough as to where I wanted to go check it out and see what kids my age that really boxed look like. My father brought me to that gym where I met a former boxer named Mr. Joe Barile and I watched from up close as guys like Bobby Dowden, Vinny Fusco, and the Cyr brothers, Shane and Mark, worked out. My first day was uneventful in that I didn't get to do actually anything but watch but the aura and atmosphere of a real gym like that had definitely caught my attention. I was hooked well before I even got to hit a bag or skip a rope or do a sit up.
At that point I was fourteen years old and my previous boxing experience consisted of three-hundred or more "bed fights" with Jimmy Young and nine bouts in my own neighborhood boxing league along with sparring under the street lights sometimes. We called our league "The WBC" (Windsor Boxing Council) and it basically consisted of my friend, Chris Provost, and I recruiting kids to box me for our "league championship." My first match up was in May of 1980 with the much smaller Tony Vierra. I was about 135 pounds while he was only about 110 back then. We had no weight classes or anything like that so, basically, it was just a thing where whoever wanted to challenge me was good enough. In Tony's basement I pinned him up against his washing machine and stopped him in two. Next up was the much bigger Greg Szepanski. Greg was heavier than me but he wore glasses and out there in the wide open Provost yard I was able to move around outside of his range of vision so well that he could barely SEE me let alone actually HIT me and it ended up in the books as a TKO-2 for me. That was the first time I boxed against a live opponent that made me try to imitate Ali. I had no formal training yet so I just did what I remembered seeing Ali do on TV against the guys he fought. I learned by imitating the moves and when I got on my toes and danced and jabbed Greg couldn't hit me. Neither could Dave Coleman or Ron Jensen or some kid named Larnell from Hartford that went ten rounds with me on my back porch deck before losing a decision. Larnell's cousin, a kid that lived just two houses away from me named Michael Belcher, was one of the judges that favored me so you know it was no "home yard" decision. I ended up with a 9-0 record in the neighborhood before heading to that gym in Windsor Locks where I met the guy that would be my first trainer, a man named Joe Barile. On the first day there at the Windsor Locks gym I just observed what everybody was doing and met Mr. Barile who said that I could "come back tomorrow with sweat clothes and try it out" and, of course, I did come back and he put me in the ring that very next day with a kid that already had a couple amateur fights worth of experience under his belt, 17 year old Mark Cyr. So I get in the ring with him and I dance and I move (I watched Ali and I thought anybody that was good boxed like him). Made him miss. Imitating Ali, I don't know if I even hit Mark very much that day but I know that I was light on my feet and he hardly hit me at all. Afterwards he was obviously impressed as he asked me "Hey, how long have you been boxing?" I told him the truth. "About forty-five minutes" (I didn't consider our "WBC" to compare to the boxing these guys were doing). I remember that he seemed surprised by my answer and his reaction told me that maybe I had made some sort of impression here. Because of the way I moved he thought I had been trained to do so. Mister Barile said "You move good" and I remember specifically that he told my father "Let me train him for one full one year and he'll win a title" and it may be hard to believe but from that day on I knew that this sport was for me. I knew I would be doing this for a long time to come. And just about five weeks past the one year mark later I won my first championship, the 1983 Connecticut Junior Olympic 156 pound title in Wallingford. The one single thing I distinctly remember about that first day of sparring at the Windsor Locks Gym with Mark Cyr was that everybody seemed to be so impressed with my movement and elusiveness and I was excited about that because it was kind of like the stamp of approval I was looking for. I had grown up watching Ali and reading about him and now here I was getting to imitate him with real live boxers. Back then it was just like going to fantasy camp for me, being there in the gym with those guys giving me the chance to bounce around like I saw Ali do (on tape, of course) against Liston in Miami Beach. Up until that point I thought that was how EVERYBODY boxed. Like Ali. I figured out later on, and was told, that most guys DON'T box like that and it dawned on me much later, after I gained real experienced, that most guys are just not naturally elusive. Or as one guy told me after urging me to stay with the stick and move style "If everybody could box like that, everybody would." Mr. Barile used to train with Willie Pep back in the 40's and every day he would make mention of Willie Pep and how Pep boxed and moved, was elusive and used the jab. He told me that if I continued to use and develop an elusive style I would be OK. Looking back on it I kind of laugh to myself because, in a sense, what I became was what you would call a "runner." (Several years later my father told me how, at the New England Golden Gloves tournament, a guy sitting next to him when I entered the ring for my bout said "Oh, jeez, here comes that Scully kid. He always wins but I hate watching that kid run around the ring") To be honest, another reason why I employed a lot of movement was because after seeing a tape of Tommy Hearns crushing Pipino Cuevas with two brutal right hands to win the welterweight title I thought to myself "If THAT guy got wiped out like THAT then I am going to REALLY get wiped out." It's funny how back then I didn't really know the difference between amateur and professional boxing. I assumed kids my age were getting stretched like that, too. So I proceeded to stick and move every chance I got.
Other boxing experiences around that time came from almost nightly sparring sessions with little Kenny Levy from across the street. When I first started at Mr. Barile's Gym my father went out and bought me the classic "Ali Everlast trunks." The white satin ones Ali always wore with the black waist band and the black stripe down the side. Today you have sequins and so many different designs and colors but back then, if you were a boxer, you recognized the "Ali Everlast trunks" that he wore in almost all his fights as the must have choice when it came to trunks and that's what you got. I used to put those trunks on when I was fifteen years old and go across the street a few nights a week and get on my knees to box ten rounds in his room against the much younger and smaller -but very game- Kenny Levy while we pretended to be Ali and Frazier or Balboa and Creed. Or sometimes I would just stay home and look at myself in the mirror from all different angles while wearing those shiny satin trunks. I loved the way they looked on me and the way they smelled, too (to this day I can still picture the smell of them in my mind). I liked the way they kind of shined when the light hit them just right, too, and I couldn't wait to wear them in a real live fight. I knew from that very first day in the gym that I was going to be in it for the long haul. It was so much fun for me, too, because it was my first time inside an actual boxing ring and it was great. I remember getting in that squared circle and feeling almost like I was on some sort of sacred ground, like not everybody was even supposed to be inside those ropes. It was so great to go to that gym every day and get in there and box with these guys. I came to the gym everyday and I wanted to box anybody and everybody that came to the gym, too. I had done so much boxing in my fathers apartment on that bed in front of that mirror and that was good enough for me at the time but now this was something so much different and better! I had real opposition in front of me and I would literally go in there on sparring days and just pretend that I was Ali (when he was Cassius Clay) as I bounded around the ring up on my toes, dancing and moving laterally, imagining I was in with Folley or Liston or Smokin' Joe. It was like acting out a fantasy, like I was getting to "play boxer" for a couple of hours a day. It was like graduating from picking up baseballs as a kid and throwing them up in the air before hitting them down field and running down and doing the same thing all over again, hitting the ball back in the other direction, before one day all of a sudden getting to have some kid from the neighborhood take the time to actually pitch the balls to you and let you take your swings without having to run forty yards in each direction over and over and over retrieving your long singles and doubles. I was in that gym every single week day and I always wanted to spar. It would be like I was performing a new Ali fight every night, too. I sometimes wore those dark brown and somewhat puffy looking Everlast gloves (the ones my father bought me) that very much resembled the gloves Ali and Frazier wore in their 1971 fight and that made it even more realistic in my mind when I was sparring these guys while pretending they were Smokin' Joe or one of the others. I would make those guys miss punches and when I would duck and dodge those shots coming at my head I felt like I was the greatest boxer in the world. I was in my own little world back then and I didn't wait long before I started incorporating more and more of Ali into my program.
It was also around this time that the boxing bug not only bit me but seemed to consume me just like baseball had when I was in my first years of elementary school. I was so involved in the sport that I literally was there every day that the gym was opened. I honestly do not remember missing even one day of practice back then in the beginning. I was in love with the sport and in a lot of ways it was the only thing that mattered to me. I didn't think of anything as much as I thought of boxing, put it that way. I mean, I was committed enough so quickly that boxing seem to overtake all my thoughts. Everything I did seemed to revolve around the sport. I mean, seriously, I used to eat bowls of raisin bran and would try to eat the flakes without getting a raisin in the spoonful. I would keep track of every bite I took and if a raisin got in the spoonful it was considered a loss. If not, it was a win. At the end of the bowl I would add up the results and whatever the tally was that was my boxing record. I would do the same thing with lucky charms (magically delicious). Then there were the times that I would be in typing class at Windsor High School and, contrary to right now, I couldn't type for beans back then. I just couldn't get the hang of it without looking at the keys and, really, I didn't think anybody but a secretary or a professional writer needed to type, anyway. Considering that this was back in 1984 it was understandable that I had no idea at the time what computers would become. So I would be sitting there next to Carla Green (good typer!) and more often than not I would use class time to type out (slowly) my boxing record at the time so that it would look just like the records did in my father's "Ring Record Book." Like this: 1984:January 7 Hipolito Fuller, Holyoke W 3 There are so many other examples. Probably like hundreds of boxers out here, when I was first starting out in the game, my imagination ran wild. I read in "The Greatest" that Ali used to race the school bus home back in Louisville and it wasn't long after that it became a very common site to see me and my bus driver racing each other home two or three days a week after school let out. It got to be where many of the kids on the bus would be cheering and yelling out the window at me when the race would come down to the wire at the corner of Hayes and Grand. I spent hours at home or in class daydreaming, picturing myself fighting for the world title and imagining every possible ending (except for me getting stopped. I never pictured that). I pictured running through the streets of my town and having neighbors yell out encouragement to me (or throwing me an apple like they did Rocky Balboa in the original "Rocky" when he was running through the outdoor market in Philadelphia) as they beeped their horns. Stuff like that. I didn't just picture fights I would have in the future. I pictured every aspect of the whole show that Ali made boxing seem to be. I stayed with it and soon became the most dedicated guy in that gym and within my first two years I had improved enough where at one point back in 1984 it was becoming a thing where the word was starting to get around my circle of friends that I was pretty serious about the sport and my name was starting to get mentioned in the local paper here and there when they did little blurbs on boxing. The Courant had done a front page (in sports) piece on me when I advanced to the semi finals of January's Golden Gloves tournament in Holyoke in the novice division and then after I won the Connecticut title at 156 pounds in March it resulted in a feature article in the Journal Inquirer by Sherman Cain that detailed my short career up to that point. I had less than ten bouts under my belt and yet these two stories had me feeling like a famous boxer already and I figured if I kept on with it I could make an even bigger name for myself that would surely come with more success in the ring. I had already had my picture in both local papers because of my boxing and it made me feel like a local version of Ali. I didn't get cocky or outwardly different or anything like that but on the inside my confidence was certainly growing with each article and victory and small instance of recognition or pat on the back from friends and strangers alike. So with a little bit of recognition, of course, comes the inevitable challenge and my first official one didn't come from a local middleweight telling me that "this state isn't big enough for the both of us" but, rather, it came from my friend, co-worker on the grill at Mickey D's and fellow Windsor High student, Levey Kardulis, who somehow got it in his head to think he could hang with me in a boxing ring. He was bigger than me and at that age everybody always assumes the bigger man will win but my little bit of boxing experience told me otherwise and after a few days of back and forth ribbing and "discussion" we finally set a date to find out once and for all what the deal was. The rumble was on. I kind of likened the sparring match between the two of us to be like the one that Ali wrote about in his book, "The Greatest," where he described taking on the up and coming heavyweight Jeff "Candy Slim" Merritt at the 5th Street Gym in Miami one day in the late 60's while Ali was in forced exile and "Slim" was on the way up the heavyweight ladder. There was a buzz going around the small Miami Beach boxing community back then about the impending sparring match in 1969 and, to the surprise of some, considering the former champions lack of conditioning at the time, Ali got the better of Candly Slim that day and retained his throne as "the man" in Miami. I aimed to do the same thing there in 1985 at that college gym with Levey. Windsor High wasn't going to be big enough for the two of us and if I got my butt kicked that day by a kid that didn't even box then how could I face the guys in the state that did box??? So a bunch of us from Windsor High drove over one Saturday morning to Central Connecticut State University's boxing gym on that school's campus and went in through the window of the closed gym with the intentions of Levey and I going at it. Now, Levey was bigger than me but had no boxing experience whatsoever. I was only about 160 while he was over 200 pounds. I already knew that size didn't matter that much and it didn't take long for everyone else to figure that point out, too. Levey had pinned me in the corner where he let loose a flurry of punches and that was the first time that I ever actually realized that boxers have a certain type of built-in perception that is really amazing. It was almost like I had radar guiding me as he was throwing the blows at me and when he would throw them it was like I knew exactly where they were going even though they were coming at me fast and hard. I blocked the shots and when he was done throwing and I saw the opening it took what seemed like just the blink of an eye for me to come back with a nice right hand. Levey wisely retired from the fray a few moments later and no more challenges from within the student body of WHS came my way.
Quote: The wait in the dressing room before a professional boxing match -that last hour- could be enough to strip a man that never boxed before of whatever pride, desire and heart he THOUGHT he had
- Iceman John Scully, April 2002
