Two Ton
One Night, One Fight -Tony Galento v. Joe Louis
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
An “exceptional” account of underdog boxer Tony Galento’s surprising 1939 victory against renowned heavyweight champion Joe Louis (The Boston Globe)
Beetle-browed, nearly bald, a head that rode his collarbones like a bowling ball returning on rails, his waist size more than half his five-foot-eight height, Two Ton Tony Galento resembled “a taxi driving away with its top down.” By all measures he stood no chance when he stepped into the ring against the Brown Bomber, Joe Louis, the finest heavyweight of his generation. But in Yankee Stadium on a June night in 1939, he entered the record books as one of the few men to put the great Louis down. For two splendid seconds he stood on the mat as the Joe Louis lay before him, champ of the world, the toughest man alive—the mythical hero of a nation little more than a year away from war. “I’ll moida da bum,” he had predicted. And though Louis was no bum, Galento was almost as good as his word.
Joe Monninger’s spellbinding portrait of a man, a moment, and an era reminds us that sometimes it is through effort—and not the end result—that people most enduringly define themselves.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
On June 28, 1939, in a heavyweight title fight, a very fat man knocked down the champion Joe Louis in the third round; Louis jumped to his feet and soon dispatched his opponent. From this slender thread, freelance writer Monninger hangs the story of Tony "Two Ton" Galento, a journeyman boxer and spectacular character whose lucky punch made him a celebrity. The child of poor immigrants and a professional "ice man," Galento, in his oversized way, embodied the forces that made boxing a realistic career choice for the poor and the most popular sport in pre-WWII America. As far as underdogs go, Galento is no bout-winning "Cinderella Man" or even a Chuck Wepner (the real-life model for Rocky), but his is an entertaining story. At times, Monninger's digressions range too widely, and he has an unfortunate tendency to impart what he thinks the average guy on the street is thinking. Yet he displays a sure feeling for the eccentricities and color of the era, and he has a novelist's ability to put the reader in the moment. In Monninger's hands, all "two tons" of Tony come alive.
