Money's Worth

When Rocky Graziano and Tony Zale meet in the ring, bloodthirsty fight fans get what they pay for. Before knocking out Rocky last fall, Middleweight Champion Zale acquired a cut lip, red welts around both eyes, a buzzing head, a chipped thumb bone and such weak knees that his handlers had to hold him up in the shower. What Tony and Rocky did to each other in last week's return bout, to the loud delight of 18,547 fans, was something to behold.

The barnlike Chicago Stadium felt and smelled like a crowded Turkish bath. A thermometer near the ringside, under the furious glow of the ring lights, read 88DEG. A crowd that paid $422,918 to get in (double the take of any previous indoor fight) was packed shoulder to shoulder. The organ pumped out the National Anthem, Zale stood at attention like everybody else, but Rocky Graziano, the reform-school graduate from Manhattan's Lower East Side, went right on dancing and sparring in his corner.

Red, Not Yellow. By the third round, it seemed as if Graziano was to be spared the unpleasantness of seeing the terrible things that were happening to him. After a flurry of Zale punches had sent him down for no count, his right eye was closed to a slit, his left blinded by blood. Rocky--who well remembered that after last year's fight some sportswriters had called him yellow--kept groping forward, swinging wild punches and dripping blood on Zale. Between rounds, the Illinois Athletic Commission's doctor looked at Rocky Graziano's eyes, decided to let him continue.

Even the Caspar Milquetoasts in the crowd were howling for Zale to make the kill. But the heat and his 33 years (eight more than Rocky) began to tell on ex-Steelworker Tony; he weakened badly in the fifth round. Early in the sixth, one of Graziano's swing-&-a-prayer haymakers landed squarely. Suddenly Tony was helpless; his arms dropped and his head jerked back & forth as Rocky hit him at will. After nearly 40 punches, Steelman Zale had not gone down, but he was lying inertly doubled over the ropes, with Graziano hammering him as if he were trying to decapitate him. Referee Johnny Behr pulled Rocky away and stopped the fight. Whitey Bimstein, Rocky's second, leaped into the center of the ring to congratulate him--and promptly had to dodge a vicious left. Rocky was still fighting, without the faintest idea of what was going on.

The Bad Boy Done It. Led to his corner, Rocky was gently awakened with the news that he had won, but could get only one eye open. Said he: "What? What? Yeah? Yeah? Yeah? It's marvelous ... I can't believe it." Into the mike he yelled, "Mama, the bad boy done it." Later, supporting himself with difficulty against the wall of the shower room, the new champion* remembered about that sixth round: "I wanted to kill him. I had nothin' against the guy. I like the guy, but I wanted to kill him. Ya know what I mean?"

Tony Zale, who took home $140,882.40 for 17 minutes and ten seconds of giving and receiving, knew what Rocky meant. A few unsated fans (and Zale bettors) howled that Referee Behr had become overcautious and stopped the fight too soon, remembering the recent death in Cleveland of Fighter Jimmy Doyle (TIME, July 7). Retorted Behr: "I looked at his eyes and I knew he was through. I wasn't thinking of Doyle. I was just thinking of Zale." Said Rocky Graziano, after a hero's homecoming on Manhattan's Second Avenue: "They trut me right out there."/-

* Except in his own State of New York, where Graziano has been under suspension since last winter for failure to report a $100,000 bribe offer.

/- While Rocky was gone, a Manhattan burglar trut him wrong, making off with twenty $100 suits and twenty $50 sports jackets, leaving behind the only necktie Rocky owns.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.