RIP Carmen Basilio

Basilio drops Tony DeMarco at Boston Garden in December 1955. (PHOTO: Bettman/Corbis)

Carmen Basilio (56-16-7, 27 KOs), one of the toughest fighters to ever lace up a pair of gloves, died yesterday at 85. He lived in Irondequoit, just outside of Rochester

Basilio was the welterweight and middleweight champ in the 1950s, long before people gave much thought to how frequently you fought, or with what kind of soreness from the last time. Even in those days, there was nobody quite as savagely rugged as this guy.

They called him the “Upstate Onion Farmer.” You know how boxing nicknames go. His father came from Italy and worked the onion farms around Syracuse, and that was enough.

Basilio was my introduction to boxing. I’ve been trying to remember which fight it was, I think Johnny Saxon in 1957 but I can’t be sure. All I remember is being curled up on the couch with my father, watching something I’d never be able to entirely separate from.

In 2008, while I was working on a piece for Ring Magazine on boxing and race, I had gotten hold of Angelo Dundee to get his thoughts, given his vantage point as Ali’s trainer in the turbulent 60s. Within a few minutes the conversation shifted to Carmen Basilio. He brought it up. “He was my first champion,” Dundee said, and then proceeded to talk affectionately and for the longest time about somebody he said was one of the toughest people he’d ever known. I don’t have the exact words, but I know the phrase “fight anybody, anywhere, anytime” was in there more than once.

Basilio is perhaps best known for two brutal bouts with Sugar Ray Robinson. He won his middleweight title from Ray on September 23, 1957, then lost it the following March. In the re-match his left eye was closed from the 7th round on. Both fights were given Ring Magazine Fight of the Year honors.

Basilio was one of the International Boxing Hall of Fame’s first inductees in 1990. The Hall was basically built in his honor.

Although he never finished high school, Basilio taught physical education at Le Moyne College in Syracuse when he retired from the ring. “As a physical education instructor,” the website says, “Carmen drew students to classes with the magnet of a worldwide reputation, and earned their respect as a hard taskmaster who could be counted on to insist they constantly demand more of themselves.” I was friends with a guy who went to LeMoyne back then. He used to verify that last part all the time.

Toward the end of his career, Basilio told Sports Illustrated: “I don’t enjoy getting hurt, waking up with a puffed eye and pain, stiff all over. But you have to take the bitter with the sweet. The sweet is when guys recognize you on the street, say, ‘Hello, champ,’ know who you are. It will always be sweet for me.”

Carmen Basilio. It’s hard to believe he’s gone, but what a legacy.