From The Vault: A Night To Remember - The Kenner Star 2000

            A lot of people in the New Orleans area know about Willie Pastrano, the light heavyweight boxing champ who died in 1997. I had a chance to meet Willie when I did my radio show on WWL-AM.  One of the best conversations I ever had.  I remember another boxer named Willie, and knowing him led me to one of the most memorable nights of my life.

            His name was Willie Pep. He was a featherweight out of Hartford, Connecticut  and he won more professional boxing matches than anyone before or since: 230 out of 241 fights.  He might have won more if a chartered plane crash hadn’t almost killed him. It merely slowed him down. There was no more exciting boxer than Willie Pep. His fights with Sandy Saddler are regarded by many as the wildest ever held.

            I first met Willie in 1966 when he was on my late night talk show on WPOP in Hartford. Willie had retired in 1959, but came back six years later and fought all of 1965,  winning every one of his fights.   On the show he told me, “I had three wives and three million dollars.  They each took a million.” Willie always had trouble with women and money. His friends were always throwing testimonial dinners for him so he could pay his bills.

            There was one dinner, however, that was not just to pay the bills. It was Willie’s induction into the Connecticut Boxing Guild Hall of Fame. I was invited to attend, and it turned into a night to remember for me. All of my boxing heroes were there.

            ( I have to take a minute here to digress. Since you have read every column I ever wrote in the Kenner Star, you will recall that my big thrills included getting to meet - all on the same night -  my baseball heroes  Ernie Banks, Hank Aaron, Enos Slaughter, Bobby Thompson, Warren Spahn and Joe DiMaggio.  And you, no doubt, will remember my being seated on the same couch next to and chatting with my country music heroes Charlie Pride, Jessie Colter, Waylon Jennings, and Merle Haggard. Johnny Cash stiffed us but I saw him on stage in the Superdome later that night ).

            Now, as I was saying when I interrupted myself... all my boxing heroes were there to speak at Willie Pep’s dinner. And I got to shake hands with and interview each one of them: Sandy Saddler, Rocky Graziano, Jake LaMotta (The “Raging Bull”), and the man himself, Rocky Marciano. It was nirvana for any fight fan.  I don’t remember much about that long ago evening, except for seeing the faces of these boxing gods up close as they spoke into my microphone.

            What I do remember is the irony of that night. Here was, perhaps, the greatest assemblage of professional boxing superstars ever gathered before or since and it was in a state where boxing was illegal. Connecticut had banned the sport following the deaths in the ring of Benny ‘Kid’ Peret and Davey Moore.

            Years later, here in New Orleans, I had the chance to meet Muhammed Ali. For some reason I never considered Ali “the greatest.”  To me the “greatest” was Marciano. And Graziano. And LaMotta. And, oh yeah, Guiglermo Papaleo - the man they called Willie Pep. 
               (P.S. Willie died in November of 2006 at the age of 84).