The Noble Art

THE NOBLE ART

There may have been better fight managers than Art Noble, but I doubt it. When it came to teaching a boy the tricks of the squared circle and handling him with quiet, authorative, masterful deftness during the course of the fight, Art was the peer of any in the world. His weakness was he loved ‘The Kid’ too much.

Billy (The Kid) Colby was handsome, young and unspoiled. He had everything, - poise, speed, and deadly accuracy. Art taught him to take his time and hit short and hard jabs in the clinches, when an opponent was hanging in, either taking a breather, or tying Billy up to prevent him getting a good one off.

He and Art clicked straight away, Billy’s mentor becoming almost a father figure to him; which was kind or ironic and appropriate too because Billy had lost his real father when still at school, and Art lost his only son to meningitis when his son was just twelve. They kind of filled a void for each other.

The Kid came along a streak. He won the sectional featherweight championship and then moved up in class to lightweight and won a title in that division too. The Kid turned pro soon after.

He and Art went north... not right as far as New York City, but around there some place where it was all happening and they could get amongst it. Art did some clever match-making for The Kid. He picked opponents who could never stop him in a million years, but could teach his boy a heap of stuff – clever, older guys whose best years were behind them but could still box a tidy bit. Old pros who had lost their power and timing, but not their ring craft. The Kid learned fast and good.

The Kid got to thinking he was fighting his own fights, which was kind of funny in a way. You see, Art, as The Kid’s manager, wasn’t allowed to coach from his own corner, so they doped out a series of signals between them, a kind of visual code. Art would do his homework on a prospective opponent, sitting through at least one whole bout before arranging a meet with his own boy. And then while The Kid’s bout was in progress, Art would be studying the other guy, watching him, closer than his own. Maybe The Kid would even be taking a lacing at some point, but then suddenly Art would shoot his signal.

It might work something like this: A sideways nod of the head: “Quit leading, Kid. Make him do the work.” Or Art might stifle a cough with his hand: “Straight left to the head!” Or maybe if he suddenly scratched the back of his head: “Short uppercut as he comes in.”

Art was uncanny that way. He could read a fight like other people read books. He could figure it out within the first couple of rounds (hopefully his own boy hadn’t got too messed up in that time) just what the opponent’s weakness was. He’d signal to The Kid and The Kid would put it together, trustingly and unquestioningly, like a youngster with his pa, and that was what it was like – father and son. But it wasn’t The Kid fighting. All he was doing was propelling his fists. It was Art who was doing the strategy – every time.

By the time the Billy was twenty it was a cinch that he was going to be a money-spinner whether he ever won a title or not. He was drawing down from $10,000 to $20,000 a fight and never getting worse than a draw. He was the real deal all right, flashy sometimes, but always quick to move away from danger, clever with the jab and smart all round. But the brains belonged to Art.

And just when it was looking all good and rosy, The Kid broke with him, out the blue, just like that, like youngsters are sometimes inclined to do. He said Art Noble wasn’t getting him big enough money; said he had other interests; said a heap of things which were unkind and mostly untrue. I guess The Kid was in too much of a hurry. It was a cruel blow for Art who had nurtured him, been like a father to him.

Art took it on the chin like the man he was. “If that’s the way you feel about it, son,” he said. “I won’t stand in your way. If you’ve made up your mind, I guess that’s it. It won’t do either of us any good if you’re unhappy here,” and he tore up the contract that would have made both of them rich within the next three years - tops.

The Barney Miller outfit promptly signed up The Kid. Maybe they’d been waiting in the wings anyway, turning the boy’s head in the meanwhile with unrealistic talk of big bucks. There was a lot of stuff going down about The Kid being nobbled. The Miller stable had that kind of reputation.

For his first fight, Barney matched him up with a boy who would ordinarily have been duck soup for Billy The Kid. It kind of marked the beginning of the end for him. It was the first time he hadn’t had Art in his corner. It was different, he felt kind of exposed and vulnerable and nervous. The Kid seemed inhibited, got sloppy and lost on points.

A series of disasters followed, knockdowns, TKOs, a couple of full counts, all kinds of stuff, and finally at 21 years of age The Kid quit the ring. He lost his spark, his confidence, he was through with the fight game and we all knew it. Art never told anybody how hurt he was about losing The Kid, and seeing The Kid go bad and end up all washed-up like that. It screwed him right up, broke his heart. I guess we were all pretty sore about it – all of us who were close to Art. But that poor guy, I’d never seen anyone so crushed in my life.

The Kid stayed away from the ring almost two years. Then one day he went into training and decided he was going to come back.

It looked at first as if he was really going to make the grade this time. He beat several good ‘second-raters’, pretenders, guys on the way up themselves. Then Barney matched him with this one guy, Joe (The Carrot) Carron. It was already a mismatch in terms of weight. Joe could’ve qualified for the next division up.

I knew all about Joe Carron. I’d written up a fair few of his fights for the Boston Herald. Joe was a tough boy, a carrot-haired (hence the nickname), freckly, fair-skinned Irish immigrant who kicked like a fucking mule, especially once he’d taken one on the old snozz. Then he’d go nuts at the other guy. But he was a crude fighter, not too much ring-craft about him, and if you were careful and patient, used a bit of guile, you could outpoint him. No one had ever actually stopped him or even knocked him down during the whole of his career. He was tougher than an old pair of GI boots. The guy could sure swing a roundhouse of a right, especially when he got mad. But more often than not it was wild and flailing, and off-target. But you got careless, and Joe’d nail you to the fucking mast with it, and there was no coming back.

I was in town that night The Kid came up against Carron. The Herald had sent me up there to cover a bill-topping regional championship fight between two cruiserweights. But I hadn’t realised until I got there that The Kid was on the same bill. He wasn’t such big news anymore, but of course I was still interested in what was going on with the boy.

Well, guess what..? Sitting right alongside me was Art. I couldn’t believe my luck. But it was a sad spectacle. You could see he was still cut-up about losing out on The Kid and yet I couldn’t help watching him. He was sitting forward with his eyes focused on the boy, eager and wistful.

Eventually The Kid looked in our direction and recognized us. He smiled sheepishly, kind of bashful, and nodded - to the both of us I guess, but without distinction or special greeting to Art, his mentor, the fighter of his fights, the brains behind their partnership, the one who’d been like a father to him and loved him like his own son. I felt for him. Art looked kind of old and beat-up sitting there. Yeah, I sure did feel for him all right.

The Kid smiled casually but uncertainly and I saw Art wince. I bet he was thinking what might have been. He knew he should have been in the Kid’s corner. He knew the crude, dynamite danger that lurked in the flailing fists of Joe Carron. He knew that The Kid could beat him, but he needed Art with him to do it, and I bet the feeling was mutual, even if The Kid had been too proud to show it.

The fight started. Art was on the edge of his seat the whole time. You could feel his tension. He was like a compressed spring waiting to jump. Every time Carron landed, which was far more than a fighter of his calibre should have, Art winced like he felt every damned blow. I swear that by the third round there were tears in his eyes seeing The Kid get beat up like that. By midway in the fourth The Kid was throwing nothing back. He didn’t look interested. He was heavy legged, feet like they were set in concrete.

Billy kept circling to the left, always to the left, square into Joe Carron’s punishing right chop, which was a cutting rather than a felling punch. The Kid’s eyes got split up real bad and the referee should’ve stepped in. But the fight went into a fifth round.

“Jesus Christ!” yelled Arty above the furore. “Why don’t The Kid move the other way. All the bad things we worked on and got rid of – they’ve all come back. What the hell’s wrong with him?”

You could see The Kid glancing over our way, never at his own corner. He needed someone to tell him what to do, someone whose judgement he could trust. The Kid was out on his feet. He needed what amounted to a miracle from somewhere. And then, in one incredible moment The Kid’s hopelessly bruised and bloodied face turned our way for the umpteenth time. And in that desperate critical hour of his comeback fight Billy turned piteously to the one man in the world who loved him, loved him like his own son, the only one who could help him.

And Art gave the old signal. He shrugged his right shoulder, which meant: “Keep moving to your right.” He straightened out the forefinger of his left hand and held it under his chin, the sign that meant: “Keep popping a straight left in his face.”

Art signalled, but The Kid looked away and didn’t obey the signal. He kept circling to the left, trying to drop a hopeful right hook in on Joe Carron quicker than Carron could drop one on him. But he kept on walking into a whole load of trouble. Joe was in his prime and fit, not the best boxer, but he had stamina and was durable.

The Kid’s timing was all off, his judgement of distance bad. He telegraphed his punches so early, the Irishman could’ve have lit a cigar waiting for them to arrive.

The Kid looked again, pleadingly, toward me and Art and again Art made a signal. But again The Kid failed to react to it. It looked to me like a bad case of stubbornness. Either that, or there was too much blood going in his eyes to recognise what Art was trying to tell him.

Within the next fifteen seconds or so The Kid had gone, crumbling under the accumulative effect of Carron’s bone-crunching punches. His eyes glazed as a final combination of hooks and chops clubbed the sides and top of his head, a final crushing right hook to the chin putting The Kid on the canvas for a ten count.

But more painful and terrible to watch than the pounding of a decent young fighter was seeing Art’s face. It was full of angst and pain seeing his beloved ‘son’ prone and still in the centre of the ring, his seconds already fanning a towel at his face and holding smelling salts under his nose, while Carron was lording it, lifted in the air by his jubilant corner men.

I saw the arena lights reflected in the tears on poor Art’s cheeks. It broke my heart too, seeing something that needn’t have happened.

“It’s a damn shame, a damned crime,” said Art, putting his head in his hands and shaking it. “The Kid coulda whipped him if he’d circled right and used a straight left. He coulda won almost every round if I’d been in his corner. He wouldna got beat up bad like that, no way.”

Fortunately, the kid sustained no lasting injury, but he was finished as a fighter. He left the ring a few minutes later and was helped back to the dressing room.

Art and I drifted over that way too, working our way through the crowd. I put my arm around his shoulders, but he was just about inconsolable.

When The Kid came out from the showers Art stepped out in front and stopped him.

“Gee, Kid,” Art said, softly, dropping a fatherly arm on the bruised, disconsolate shoulders. “I’m sorry, Kid... so awfully sorry.”

The Kid shrugged. “I guess he was just too good for me, Art. I couldn’t do anything.”

“Too good?” said Art, straightening up to his full height, which was a little under five-six. “Listen, Kid... you could lick that guy anytime you like if you just box him and move the right way. All you needed to do was keep moving to the right and keep popping your straight left in his face. You woulda got a heap of points and he wouldna hit you so much keeping him on his weaker side. Why didn’t you do it, Kid? Remember what I taught you? Didn’t you see me signalling to you?”

The Kid looked up with a strange guilty light in his eyes. “Yeah,” he said slowly, as though confessing to an error. “I saw you doing the signals all right. But shit, Art… it’s been so long... I’ve forgotten what they mean.”

(...dedicated to the memory of Octavus Roy Cohen…)