MacDougall - Distinction earned: Cape Bretons boxing legends, 1946-1970

DISTINCTION EARNED

CAPE BRETON'S BOXING LEGENDS 1946-1970

BY PAUL MACDOUGALL

Cape Breton University Press

Sydney, Nova Scotia

DISTINCTION EARNED

CAPE BRETON'S BOXING LEGENDS 1946-1970

BY PAUL MACDOUGALL

Cape Breton University Press

Sydney, Nova Scotia

Copyright 2010, Paul MacDougall

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Cape Breton University Press recognizes fair dealing exceptions under Access Copyright. Responsibility for the research and permissions obtained for this publication rest with the author.

Cape Breton University Press recognizes the support of Canada Council for the Arts and of the Province of Nova Scotia, through the Department of Tourism, Culture and Heritage. We are pleased to work in partnership with these bodies to develop and promote our cultural resources.

Cover design: Cathy MacLean, Pleasant Bay, NS

Cover images: See the following pages for credits:

Front, clockwise from upper right p. 119, p. 76, p. 38, p. 28, p. 140, p. 142.

Back, top to bottom p. 134, p. 139, p. 139, p. 23.

Layout: Mike Hunter, Port Hawkesbury and Sydney, NS

First printed in Canada

eBook: tikaebooks.com

Print ISBN 978-1-897009-48-2

Web-PDF 978-1-927492-18-5

E-pub 978-1-927492-19-2

Mobi 978-1-927492-20-8

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

MacDougall, Paul, 1959-

Distinction earned : Cape Breton's boxing legends, 1946-1970 / Paul

MacDougall.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Print ISBN 978-1-897009-48-2

1. Boxers (Sports)--Nova Scotia--Cape Breton Island--Biography.

2. Boxing--Nova Scotia--Cape Breton Island--History. I. Title.

GV1131.M33 2010 796.83092'27169 C2010-905010-X

Cape Breton University Press

PO Box 5300

Sydney, Nova Scotia B1P 6L2 Canada

www.cbupress.ca

Sales and Distribution:

Nimbus Publishing

3731 MacKintosh St

Halifax, Nova Scotia B3K 5A5 Canada

www.nimbus.ca

DISTINCTION EARNED
CAPE BRETON BOXING LEGENDS1946 TO 1970

This book was written for the Cape Breton Boxing Fraternity, and in memory of Earle Pemberton, sportswriter, and Graham MacKay, sports fan.

PRE FIGHT WARM UP

This is a true story about a time and place that no longer exists. Its peopled with real characters who bore witness to triumph and tragedy. Its a story for and about the people of Cape Breton Island who lived through the devastation of two World Wars and found solace in a mutual brotherhood. Its a tale of strength, heart, courage and resilience, of clean living and hard living, of set backs, injuries and untimely deaths. Its a collective memoir about some of the toughest, yet most humble men you could ever meet. And its a story of victory and its often present companion, loss.

This story begins in 1920, in Whitney Pier, a rough and tough, hardscrabble area of Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. In the Pier, nearly everyone worked at the local steel plant, which was one of the most state-of-the-art facilities in the world at the time. The people of the Pier lived off the food from their neighbourhood gardens, relied on their friends and families when the going got tough, and basically led good, albeit sometimes hard, lives. They were from the West Indies, numerous European countries, and the yet-to-be confederated colony of Newfoundland. Many of the immigrants from Italy, Poland, the Ukraine and other parts of Europe had come to Nova Scotia to escape the carnage and madness of the First World War. Solid, hardworking folk, by the thousands they came and stayed. They were as strong and resilient as the nails, wire and rails produced by the steel plant that so many of them relied on for a living. It was here, in Whitney Pier, in this long lost time that one of Cape Bretons greatest triumphs began. It was in this time, and in this place, that our story begins with a man named Joe Uvanni.

Uvanni was of Italian descent and had grown up in the Bronx area of New York. He came to Sydney around 1920 and began to go around with other Italians emigrants living in the Pier. One place Uvanni could often be found was in a store owned by the Delvecchio family. The Delvecchios also ran a bakery, which was adjacent to their store. Their businesses were located on Tupper Street, just off Victoria Road, the main thoroughfare in the Pier, not far from the coke ovens of the steel plant. As those whove ever visited old buildings like Delvecchios will know, you may often discover theres an out-of-the-way upstairs office, or a series of backrooms, or a long, dingy hallway that may connect two adjacent buildings. As these buildings were often places of business, sometimes theres even a warehouse attached. These features are not uncommon in buildings constructed at the turn of the 20th century along Victoria Road in the Pier. It was in these smoky, dimly lit rooms where real stories unfolded, backroom stories that had little or nothing to do with the actual business of the store. Indeed, if one were to go back in time and peer through a dusty window of Delvecchios warehouse, circa 1921, one might be likely to see two nearly naked men, sweaty and glistening, locked in an embrace. Sounds like a good place to start a story, eh? Perhaps the greatest Cape Breton sports story never told.

One of those two men locked in that embrace in that backroom at Delvecchios was a young man by the name of Johnny Nemis. The other fellow, we dont know; he may have been any one of a dozen or so young men who went around with Joe Uvanni. It doesnt really matter who he was. What matters is that these men were boxing. What matters is that when they broke their clinch and started to throw hard jabs, devastating hooks and jaw-rattling uppercuts, Johnny Nemis was the one left standing. Nemis, barely out of his teens in that backroom, would go on to become one of the most influential figures in Cape Breton boxing history. First as fighter: then, more profoundly, as a trainer. And while the boxers, trainers and promoters you are about to meet follow a sequence of training, amateur fights, pro bouts and ultimately Canadian and British Empire boxing championships, it can all be traced back to the early days of Johnny Nemis, the boy from New Waterford, Cape Breton, who got his start dancing, punching and clinching in that musty warehouse gym with Joe Uvanni from New York.

In 2003, 93-year-old Mike Tortola of Sydney spoke of Joe Uvannis arrival. Joe Uvanni came down to the Pier to train Nicholas Hawkey Delvecchio, who was a well-known up and coming boxer at the time. Delvecchio started boxing in 1921 at the age of twelve on the advice of his father Tony who said, [i]f you want to fight, dont do it for nothing, box in the ring. As a youngster Delvecchio worked at Jake Levitans grocery store and trained upstairs at Martinellos Hall on Tupper Street. According to Tortola: Down there (the Pier) at that time there was prosperity for boxing. There were ten, eleven or twelve boxers that [Uvanni] used to train with. Uvanni was an expert. He was a trainer in the States. He didnt fight here. He just trained whoever wanted to be in his club. There was a police club also but not many people went there. Hawkey Delvecchio liked Uvanni because, as Tortola puts it, [h]e knew a lot of the tricks of the trade. Tortola explained that Uvanni used to go back and forth to the States on a frequent basis but liked Sydney because there was a great interest in boxing here at that time. I bet there was a fight every fifteen days in Sydney back then, said Tortola.