"The Blue Horizon may be numbered"
Mike
The Blue Horizon is considered 'the guts of boxing,' though its days
may be numbered
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 20, 2009; D01
PHILADELPHIA -- Under a relentless barrage of punches, the shouts of
"C'mon, Philly!" and "Let's Go, Philly!" weren't doing the hometown
favorite any good at Philadelphia's Legendary Blue Horizon on a recent
Friday night.
Dee Culmer had spent all but the first round of his eight-round match
crouching and retreating, laying on the ropes as if they were a
hammock while getting pummeled by his challenger -- a relative unknown
from Fresno, Calif., whom promoters had flown in with the expectation
of further padding Culmer's 16-1 record.
So when the ring announcer declared a draw, with one judge scoring the
bout for the lionhearted Loren Myers and the other two scoring it
even, the place erupted in boos that brought the proceedings to a halt
with the featured match to follow.
To be sure, the fans who flock to the Blue Horizon love their
Philadelphia fighters. But they respect toughness more. And they hate
to see a guy get robbed. So they jeered the judges, shouted down the
ring announcer with chants of "Fresno! Fresno!" and even booed Vernoca
Michael, the venue's widely admired, 64-year-old co-owner, when she
stepped into the ring to ask for calm.
Only after matchmaker Don Elbaum, whose fame in boxing circles rivals
that of the Blue itself, grabbed the microphone and vowed to deliver a
rematch in February did a semblance of order return.
Television sanitizes boxing. Las Vegas glamorizes it. The Legendary
Blue Horizon, which has hosted bouts on Philadelphia's North Broad
Street for nearly half a century, delivers the sport raw -- blood,
spit and sweat flying -- in a setting so intimate you feel as if you
could reach into the ring from nearly any seat in the house.
That's why readers of The Ring magazine voted it the No. 1 place to
see a fight, ahead of Madison Square Garden, the MGM Grand and Caesars
Palace.
"The guts of boxing is the Blue Horizon," says Elbaum, a former boxer
turned impresario who has worked with such greats as Cassius Clay,
Sugar Ray Robinson and Roberto Duran over a lifetime as a promoter,
manager and matchmaker.
But despite its busiest year in memory, hosting a fight roughly every
month, the Blue's days may be numbered.
After 15 years as its co-owner and 11 years as the country's only
female African American boxing promoter, Michael says she is ready to
step aside, weary of the long hours, mounting bills and wrangling over
the $1 million in city funds she says was promised but never delivered
to help refurbish the once-grand venue.
Michael put the Blue -- which was built in 1865 as three adjoining
Empire-style estates for the nouveau riche -- up for sale in 2007. She
says she has entertained a few inquiries since, but none she deems
credible even after dropping the price from $6.5 million to $5.6
million.
For a city that proclaimed itself a cradle of boxing long before the
mythical Rocky Balboa raised triumphant fists atop the steps of the
Philadelphia Museum of Art, the prospect of losing the Blue is a punch
to the throat.
"Aw, history would die," says Gregory Sirb, executive director of the
Pennsylvania Athletic Commission, which licenses and regulates
professional boxing in the state. "That would be a sad day in Philly.
A sad day in boxing, that truly would be."
But the landmarks that defined the city's boxing topography have
disappeared in droves: South Philly's Alhambra, West Philly's
Convention Hall. Even Joe Frazier's Gym farther up Broad in North
Philly closed in 2008. And this spring the Spectrum has a date with
the wrecking ball.
"When the Blue Horizon is sold, it's dead," laments Joe DiSanto, 47,
founder of PhillyBoxingHistory.com, who has dedicated much of his life
to preserving the memory of the city's forgotten fighters. "How is
anybody going to buy it for $5 million and make a profit? Business is
not that big. I could cry thinking about it. . . .
"It's not that the Blue was the greatest place ever, but it's the last
one where you can get a sniff of what it was all about."
A bygone era
There was a time, back when ponies and prize fights ruled the sports
pages, that Philadelphia had hundreds of fighters, and entire
neighborhoods flocked to Convention Hall or the ballpark for
undercards featuring North Philly's toughest vs. South Philly's. In
1926 a throng of 120,000 turned out to see Jack Dempsey lose his title
at what later was known as JFK Stadium.
But the smaller clubs -- venues on the scale of the 1,300-seat Blue
Horizon -- provided the sport's lifeblood by breeding new talent. The
clubs were scattered all over the city. And the Blue, which was
converted to the headquarters of the International Royal Order of
Moose in 1912 (a moose head still adorns the facade), joined their
ranks in 1961, bought for $85,000 by Jimmy Toppi Sr., who renamed it
after the song "Beyond the Blue Horizon" and flung open its imposing
doors for weekly boxing shows.
The 1976 vote to allow casino gambling in New Jersey proved a boon for
Atlantic City, but in the process, siphoned big-time boxing from
Philadelphia. By default, the focus in town shifted to club-level
fights. And before long, the Blue took center stage, becoming the
darling of the USA Network's popular "Tuesday Night Fights" series.
By the time Michael and her two business partners bought the building
in 1994, its venerable name was its most valuable asset.
"It was a real hellhole," says Joey "Eye" Intrieri, Pennsylvania's
eight-time Cutman of the Year. "It was rat-infested, roach-infested
and falling apart. The locker rooms were horrendous."
With $2 million from the state, Michael set to work on the five-story
mansion, replacing windows that had long been boarded up, restoring
the sweeping front steps (and putting the homeless who perched there
to work, too), repairing the grand staircase that leads to the ring
upstairs and upgrading the adjoining ballroom so it was suitable for
wedding receptions, concerts and parties.
Still, all the renovations can't hide the fact that the glorious era
of the Blue, much like boxing itself, is in its past. The arched
doorways and leaded glass are elegant, as is the gong-like chime that
sounds each time the front doorbell is rung. But to save on utility
bills, Michael heats the cavernous building minimally on non-bout
days. And it lacks an elevator and air conditioning, which adds a
cruel twist for fighters and spectators alike in summer months.
"It is like being in hell, but I love it," says Intrieri, 40, who has
traveled the world to stanch the bleeding on some of the most famous
mugs in boxing but always comes home to work bouts at the Blue, where
his father took him to see his first fight at age 8.
Smokin' Joe Frazier, Philadelphia's most famous boxer, offered his
testimony on the wall of the boxers' bathroom next to the green room
where fighters get dressed, taped and prepped for their bouts. In
black magic-marker, the former heavyweight champion wrote, "Great
Place, 'The Blue' Joe Frazier 2003."
Says Sirb, of the state's athletic commission: "She has kept boxing
alive there when she could easily have turned it into something else.
But Ms. Michael, on a shoestring budget, has been able to keep the
Blue in the spotlight."
'A social-services agency'
Central to Michael's vision in buying the Blue was launching a
nonprofit organization, Nia Kuumba, to give local high school and
college students job training. And it remains her point of pride (her
office is adorned floor to ceiling with photos of her former students
alongside autographed pictures of boxers), as well as her biggest
concern if the venue is sold.
"It's a beacon," says Michael, daughter of a Methodist minister who
graduated from Livingstone College and earned a master's in social
work at the University of Pennsylvania. "It is a beacon to the
community that has looked to it not only for boxing but for
entertainment in Philadelphia."
In 1998, after four years of leasing the venue to boxing promoters who
staged the Blue's fights, Michael decided to become a promoter
herself.
"They didn't really want me to sit at the table," she says with a
broad smile, asked how her interest was initially received. "The men
basically said I couldn't do it. But I'm a product of the '60s. And
you don't tell a product of the '60s, who has been through the civil
rights movement, she can't do something. So I read the regulations,
and it didn't say that an African American female who was older could
not enter this game."
She intended to change boxing, she told the commission.
Has she?
"The mere fact that I'm doing it has changed boxing," Michael says.
"You can see I'm an African American. You can see I'm a woman. And you
can see I'm an older woman. And I have no hesitation saying that I am
64 years old and proud of it and look good for it, too!"
Those aren't the only respects in which Michael differs from the
typical boxing promoter. She regards the Blue as her personal ministry
and views the students she shepherds and the boxers she brings in as
her children.
When possible, she reads over contracts with the fighters to make sure
they understand what they're signing. She suggests investment
strategies and coaches them in speaking clearly.
"Mumbling doesn't work for me," she says.
She urges them to prepare for careers outside the ring and talks
frankly about sexuality, the perils of HIV and their responsibilities
as parents, sons and daughters.
"That sounds like a social-services agency more than a boxing-
production company," Michael concedes. "But we are a social services
agency here."
Fight night still an event
The first order of business at the Blue Horizon's recent Holiday
Children's Show -- a night of six professional fights at which fans
were asked to bring a toy for a needy child -- was somber.
It was a benediction in honor of Chicago bantamweight Francisco
Rodriguez, who died from injuries suffered during the main event at
the Blue two weeks earlier. Afterward, the bell was struck 10 times.
It was Philadelphia's first ring-related death since 1978, and state
boxing officials ruled it accidental, according to the Philadelphia
Inquirer, with no penalties or censure resulting.
The 12 boxers on the night's card had filed in earlier, most carrying
their satin trunks on wire hangars fresh from the dry cleaner. Each
fighter and his seconds was frisked, hands straight up, upon entering.
As each name was checked off, fighters collected two bottles of water
apiece and proceeded to the green room upstairs.
Both the floor seats and balcony are nearly full by the time the
feature fight starts at about 11 p.m.. The glitterati sit ringside,
with actor Tony Danza, himself a former boxer, attracting the most
attention. Michael works the room in an elegant pantsuit, a mobile
phone tucked in her ear.
The Blue's 668 floor seats are metal folding chairs with numbers taped
on the backrest, as if the bout were a school play.
The 586-seat balcony is ringed with old wooden movie-theater-style
seats from the Moose Lodge era, with arm rests as smooth as century-
old banisters and a wire fedora holder suspended from the underside of
each seat bottom.
There's no discernable racial line or class division here; mostly men
of varying age who, for the most part, like hot sausage ($3), longneck
beer bottles ($6) and fights.
Contrary to popular belief, boxing is a participatory sport -- at
least at the Blue -- with every ticket purchase ($45-$200) conveying
the right to cheer, berate, cajole and coach.
"PHILLY IN THE HOUSE!" someone screams as a local fighter steps into
the ring.
At the sound of the bell, it's on.
"Let's box!" another man yells.
"Pop that jab! Pop that jab!"
"Double 'round! Double 'round!"
"Body! Body! Body!"
"He's cut!"
Enter Joey Eye Intrieri, who works the corner for out-of-town boxers
who can't afford to bring their own cutman.
It's the rare short Sicilian man who's sufficiently confident in his
manhood to buy tampons and gynecological swabs in bulk. That man is
Joey Eye, who has loved blood since he worked as a mortician's
assistant as a kid. That and his love of boxing make him a natural at
the art of tending to cuts that otherwise would end a fighter's night.
And the half-dozen tampons ("blood-stoppers," he dubs them, to be
stuffed up nostrils) and oversized swabs tucked in his wristbands are
the tools of his trade -- arrayed on his limbs for maximum efficiency
in the ring.
With his red satin jacket with the giant bleeding eye logo on the back
-- plus the bleeding eye tattoo on the back of his neck -- Joey Eye is
easy to spot. And he has his own legion of fans at the Blue, who shout
his name from the balcony.
"There's a fan for everybody!" Intrieri says with a laugh. "I guess
every garbage pail has a lid."
On this night, Intrieri works Myers's corner in the eight-round fight
against Culmer. He's a high-speed blur between rounds, icing his man,
squirting water in his mouth, laying ice-cold strips of aluminum over
his welts to reduce the swelling and smearing his face with Vaseline
so the punches slide off.
For the punishment, most fighters take home less than $1,000.
Four-rounders get $600 to $1,000, win or lose. Eight-rounders get
$1,500 to $2,500, depending on their drawing power and opponent. But
out of that they have to pay a manager, trainer, cutman and sparring
partner. They're lucky to keep 50 percent.
For that, Myers flew in from Fresno that morning, with two layovers en
route (the ticket was arranged by the Blue), and got robbed of a
decision he earned going away.
An hour or so later, he sits on a table in the lobby, his faced hidden
by a hooded sweatshirt, waiting on a ride.
"You fought well," an older African American woman says after peering
at him closely. "You should be proud."
"But ma'am, I lost," he says.
"You fought well."
Myers says he's not bitter over the outcome. That's boxing. He knew
coming in he'd likely have to score a knockout to beat a hometown
favorite.
Still, he's coming back for the rematch Feb. 5. But he's going to do
it differently. He'll ask to fly in a day early. And he'll ask for a
flight with no layovers.
Either way, he's coming back.
"It's the Blue," he says.
