My dad's heroes were Tony Galento and Al "Bummy" Davis. He admired them because they were brawlers, guys who proved their superiority through brute strength and endurance, rather than scientific finesse. He never forgave Gene Tunney for beating Jack Dempsey. He would have thought there was something chicken about Mahammad Ali's style of retreating and relying on his rope-a-dope generalship and superb science. He would have liked Mike Tyson's bulldog style of boring in and hammering away doggedly until he or his opponent fell. He would have admired Auturo Gatti's skill and courage. He liked sluggers who fought with gallantry and spirit. Dad was drinking with Bummy in the back room of Dudy's bar the night Bummy died a hero. He reveled me with stories about Bummy Davis. I promised Dad that someday I would write a story about Bummy based on his recollections. Here it is, the most tragic tale that ever gripped the human heart.

You see, Bummy never had much schooling and he had trouble holding an intelligent conversation with a mule. A fighter of mediocre talent, his idea of training was long nights of carousal with his Cowboy Gang cronies. So what did Fritzie Zivic expect him to do when he thumbed Bummy and slashed his eyes with the laces of his gloves? Bummy went crazier than a duck in thunder.

Henry Armstrong told me, "Me, and a few others took Zivic's dirty tactics, or complained to the referee, but not Bummy. It wasn't in him to do that. He snapped."

Zivic had all the better of the milling that November night in 1940. Sighting danger ahead, in the second round, Bummy hit Zivic low some thirty times. When the referee tried to intervene, Bummy gave him a swift kick. Bummy's suspension became the talk of Brownsville, the home of Murder, Inc., which is where he lived. Dad met Bummy in Charley Beecher's poolroom, on the corner of Georgia and Livonia. Bummy used to train ( occasionally) in a gym behind the poolroom. Guys who were raised on the Depression-torn streets of Brownsville were so tough they ate shredded wheat without milk. The cops gave this section of town a wide berth.

"For seventeen years I was in business," Charley said. "They stuck me up seventeen times."

Bummy had two older brothers. Their street names were Little Gangy and Duff the Dip. Gangy's unconscionable behavior landed him in prison. Dad never knew what happened to Duff the Dip. When Bummy was a shaver his father owned a candy store. The boys would stop by for a little nip from his pocketed spirits. One day the cops came, and, as pre-planned, little Bummy grabbed the bottle and scrambled out the back door and down the street. In his haste, Bummy dropped the bottle and it broke. The little fellow watched the precious alky trickle into the gutter. He laid on the sidewalk bawling and pounding his fists on the pavement until they bled. Passerby's looked on in amazement. The word got out that maybe this Davidoff kid wasn't dealing with a full deck. Abraham Davidoff was his real name. In Yiddish they made Abraham into Ahvron and from Ahvron they made Boomy. The neighborhood called him Boomy. Johnny Attell called him Bummy.

The name stuck like a zipper even though Bummy hated it. Johnny Attell promoted the fights at the Ridgewood Grove, a smoke-filled fight joint in Brooklyn. A great majority of the old-time fighters got their start there; Ruby Goldstein, Tony Canzoneri, Johnny Huber, Danny Terris, Kid Rash. Lew Burston took Bummy under his wing.

When Johnny Attell made up the fight card for Bummy's first fight on May 22, 1937 against Frankie Reese, he put in large print: Al "Bummy" Davis. Bummy saw the card in a downtown window and went storming into Attell's office. "Calm down," Attell told him, "You want to make money fighting don't you? People like to come to fights to see bums get their brains knocked out."

For his entire career, people came to see Bummy Davis get his brains knocked out.

Bummy learned to fight on the corner of Blake Avenue where he sold fruit and vegetables from a pushcart at age fifteen. There were dozens of push-cart vendors on Blake Avenue and Bummy had to fight every day to keep his corner.

Bummy seldom bragged about his boxing career, but he seldom passed up an opportunity to say, "I was the best tomato salesman who ever lived."

If the press wasn't dazzled by Bummy's fighting they were by his following. Every time he fought in the Grove he brought along a hundred guys who'd cheer for him and raise the roof when his name was announced. Everybody else would holler for the other guy because Bummy was Jewish and the Grove was in a German section of Ridgewood. This was a time when Adolf Hitler was coming into prominence.

Bummy's first test of actual battle came on July 21, 1938 against Bernie Friedkin. Bummy's victorious march onward was just beginning to catch on at the grove and Friedkin was the pride of the Broadway Arena and they were neighborhood enemies. Friedkin was three years older than Bummy, so much above the intellectual level of his contemporaries that they called him "Schoolboy." It was a perfect neighborhood match.

A few days before the anticipated fight Bummy was hanging out in his dad's candy store when a couple of fellows whispered to him that Schoolboy was bragging around the neighborhood that his kid sister could whip Bummy. They told Schoolboy the same thing about Bummy. The two had to be separated on the street several times after that, with Bummy offering to fight Schoolboy for nothing then and there. But Schoolboy told him to save it for the ring. Bummy never understood guys like that, because he fought simply because he loved to fight, not for money. Lew Burston had his hands full keeping Bummy away from Schoolboy before the outdoor fight at Dexter Park could be staged by Johnny Attell.

Showcards were advertised all over the neighborhood and Bummy's old man and Friedkin's father had to be pulled apart on the corner of Blake Avenue. The fight was on everybody's lips in every pool hall and saloon in town. Bets were heavy. It was so big that when the scrap was rained out six times, Attell sold the card to Mike Jacobs who thought the fight was worthy of Madison Square Garden.

For weeks Lew had trouble keeping Bummy in the gym. "I don't need no training to knock that bastard out," Bummy said. But Lew stayed on him and kept him banging the heavy bag. On the night of the fight, Lew took Bummy aside in the dressing room: "I can tell you exactly how that other corner is thinking. They've got Friedkin eating and sleeping with your left hooks for weeks. I want you to go out there and I don't want you to throw one right until I tell you. If you throw one right before I say so I'll walk right out on you."

Bummy did exactly what Lew told him to do. For the first three rounds he hooked with his left and Schoolboy blocked nearly every punch. The fight was hard-fought throughout, but Schoolboy was clearly ahead on points.

Before the bell rang for the forth round, Lew says, "Okay, go out there and feint with the left, then throw the right and put dynamite behind it." Bummy walked out and feinted his hook. When Schoolboy moved his head, Bummy lanced a right and Friedkin crumbled like yesterday's pastry, amid the aroused cheers of Bummy's followers.

Bummy's knockout of his arch enemy gained him recognition in Brownsville. The top newspaper writers were saying he was the best thing since Charlie White. Bummy had money in his pockets for the first time in his life. He got fourteen hundred clams for bombing out the Schoolboy. When he walked down the street kids followed him and he bought them candy, baseball equipment and ice cream cones.

Bummy was approaching twenty and was sitting on top of the world. One day he and a friend were driving around and his pal wanted to visit a sixteen year old neighborhood girl who was in the Kings County Hospital. When she got out of the hospital the three of them began hanging out together. One day Bummy's friend suggested that Bummy and the girl get married. Why not, said the girl. Okay, said Bummy. And that was Bummy's introduction into the rocky world of romance.

Meanwhile, Bummy beat Al Ragone in 6, kayoed Young Chappie in 3, drew with Jack Sharkey Jr. in 6, then beat Ragone again in 8. He added to his 1938 laurels by knocking out Dom Colon and Jimmy Lancaster. In 1939 he won six straight fights before he was matched with Tony Canzoneri in the Garden. That was the fight that got everybody hating Bummy worse than Hitler.

Canzoneri had gained prominence as a former featherweight and lightweight champion who had fought the best of his time. His fans were violently partisan. On November one the spectators crowded the Garden and partisan feeling ran high. When Bummy knocked Canzoneri out in the third round it was the only time Tony had been kayoed in a hundred eighty fights. Fight fans reacted with bursts of venomous outrage. They took indescribable pleasure booing Bummy every time he fought after that. Bummy was heartbroken. Bummy surprised everybody by knocking out highly-regarded Tippy Larkin in five. He was undefeated when they matched him with Lou Ambers on February 23, 1940, in the Garden.

One day after Bummy started training for the Ambers fight he stopped off at the candy store to see his dad. A guy named Fred Mersky came in and told Bummy that Ambers would make quick work of him because he was a lousy fighter with the brain of a retarded clam. Bummy beat the bejabbers out of him. An ambulance took Mersky to the hospital. A friend of Mersky's was standing by with a camera and took pictures. It was a set-up. The cops were called. With an eight-state alarm out for him, Bummy went on the lam. The newspapers went crazy.

The cops couldn't find Bummy but Attell did. He and Gangy drove out to an abandoned farm house, went in, and there was Bummy, drinking beer and playing cards with four or five guys, including my dad. "Are you crazy?" Attell asked Bummy. "What the hell are you doing?" "Playing poker," Bummy answered coolly. "And I'm winning." "The god-damn cops are looking all over for you," Johnny said, "You'd better come with me." Attell took him downtown, got him spruced up and called Mike Jacobs. Jacobs told Attell to take Bummy to Police Headquarters, that Sol Strauss, Mike's attorney, would meet them there. Sol got an adjournment until after the Ambers fight.

The night Ambers gave Bummy a terrific battering to take the decision, Mersky was sitting at ringside bandaged up like the Invisible Man and wearing sunglasses. A wildly cheering crowd loved watching Bummy take a licking. Even more than the beating Ambers gave him, Bummy chagrined to the jeers and insults the crowd gave him as he walked back to his dressing room, where he cried like a baby.

"I quit," Bummy told Attell in the shower room. "I'm through with this crazy racket." Attell evidently didn't believe him because the next day he met with Jacobs to match Bummy with Tony Martelliano. Bummy refused to train.

Worried, Attell drove out to Bummy's house to have a talk with him. When that proved futile, Lew Burston stopped by for a chat with Bummy. "I don't want to fight no more," Bummy said. "Everybody hates me. I want to be left alone. All I want is my family and to hang around with the Cowboys on the street."

"He'll get over it," Attell told Jacobs, and they proceeded to advertise the fight. When Bummy saw a fight poster in the window of his dad's candy store he stormed into Jacob's office: "Listen you old toothless bastard - I'm not going to fight !"

So Bummy was suspended and Attell was out of the Garden and back in the Ridgewood Grove. When Bummy heard what had happened to Attell he stopped by to see him. "Okay, Johnny," he said. "I'll fight. "But you tell those people to stop booing me." So Bummy was forced to apologize to Jacobs for calling him a "toothless old bastard," and the Marteliano fight took place on September 20, 1940. This time the gods were good to Bummy and he took a hard-fought, ten round decision, thus bringing new life into the career of Al "Bummy" Davis.

After Bummy kayoed Johnny Rinaldi in 3 heaps, he saw Fritzie Zivic beat Henry Armstrong for the welterweight title. He told Attell to get him Zivic. It was a bad match for Bummy because Zivic taught the maw-maws how to fight dirty. Bummy came out of the first clinch with Zivic's thumb prints in his red-swollen eyes. For once, the crowd was with Bummy and they booed Zivic. Zivic elbowed Bummy and thumbed him repeatedly throughout the round. When Bummy returned to his corner he was told his handlers, "That sonofabitch is trying to blind me!"

When Zivic did the same thing in the second round, Bummy lost it. People in the fourth row could hear him: "Okay, you bastard, if you want to fight dirty - let's go!"

He started belting Zivic below the belt. He didn't even try to hide it from the referee -- ten, fifteen, twenty - thirty times! The crowd started throwing chairs and a free-for-all followed. The referee disappeared. The cops tried for twenty minutes to break up the rowdyism of the mob. Bummy was fined $2,500 and suspended from boxing in New York for life.

Outside the ring, Bummy was like a fish out of water. Attell told him, "Why not join the army?" So he did. The photographers had a ball and in December 1940, Ed Van Every wrote the story in the New York Sun. Attell thought maybe the army would teach Bummy some discipline and get him back in shape to fight when everything blew over.

The army's idea of discipline was to ship Bummy to Camp Hulen, Texas, and have him clean latrines with a toothbrush. Bummy wrote Attell: "You better get me outta here before I slug one of these officers!" Attell got Jacobs to pull a few strings and get Bummy a leave to fight Zivic again in the Polo Grounds for Army Emergency Relief Fund. At 147 pounds Bummy was at his best. When he came home on leave he weighed nearly 200. Taking off so much weight so quickly left Bummy as weak as a rained-on bee.

"You look sharp in that uniform, Al," Zivic taunted at the signing of the fight. "Glad you like it," Bummy snapped, "You put me in it." That July 2, 1941, at the Garden, Bummy wanted to whip Zivic more than anything, but he couldn't dodge the battering ram wallops that lumped his eyes until he couldn't see. The referee stopped the slaughter in the tenth. Bummy went AWOL after the fight. The Military Police tracked him down and took him back to camp. Soon afterwards, the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor. The army figured they had enough trouble without Bummy so they sent him packing.

1942 was Bummy's best year fighting. He ran up a streak of seven wins, knocking out guys quicker than chloroform. He fought in places like Holyoke, Philadelphia and Boston. He hated fighting outside of New York but there was nothing he could do because New York City wouldn't give him his license back. When the Republicans regained power in New York, Fritzie Zivic put the word out that it was probably his fault because he egged Bummy on. The newspapers played it up and Bummy got his license back.

After knocking out Buster Beaupre in one round, they matched him with "Bobcat" Bob Montogomery. No one gave Bummy a chance against the Bobcat when they clashed in the Garden on February 18, 1944. The Bobcat was as slick as an eel. He had just knocked out Ike Wiliams in January, and after his fight with Bummy, Montogomery won the New York World Lightweight Title by decisioning Beau Jack in 15.

Bummy was sitting in his dressing room clad in a terrycloth robe and he had his gloves on waiting to go. The sweat was rolling down his face. Suddenly he fell flat on his face. Attell and Freddie Brown rushed over and picked him up. They stretched him on a rubbing table and threw water on him to bring him around. They weren't worried anymore what Montgomery would do to him, they were worried whether they could get him into the ring.

When the bell rang Bummy was so terrified that he walked right out and threw a devastating hook that sent Montogomery down. When he got up, Bummy clobbered him again and it was all over. The Bobcat was ten to one favorite and not even Johnny Attell could believe it. Bummy got fifteen thousand dollars and he had put the touch on Mike Jacobs for fifteen hundred and the following afternoon when Mike paid him off he told Bummy to forget the loan because it was worth it to see him do the impossible.

Bummy threw it back in his face. "You know damn well if Montogomery would have kayoed me like you predicated you would have taken the grand and a half - so take it!"

Agog sportswriters who crammed into Bummy's dressing room didn't want to hear about how great of a tomato salesman Bummy was .. but that's what they got.

"You go over to Jersey and get them yourself," he told them, "then you don't have to pay no middleman. You don't put them in boxes, because it looks like you're getting ready to lam. When you only got a few it looks like you can't get rid of them, so you gotta pile them up and holler, "I gotta get rid of these. I'm gonna give 'em away!" The sports writers didn't want to write about tomatoes, so Bummy's surprising knockout over the Bobcat went virtually unnoticed in the morning edition.

Bummy was living high on the hog and like most fighters, he thought the well would never run dry. He got thirty-four thousand clams for losing a 10-round decision to Beau Jack on March 17th. He won four straight by knockouts before Henry Armstrong stopped him in two rounds. He got fifteen thousand for that fight bringing his total ring earnings to a quarter of a million simoleons. He bought a saloon and placed a gigantic picture of himself standing over Bob Montogomery over the bar. He bought a couple of racehorses and loaned a lot of money to friends who never paid him back. Finally his money-crammed wallet was empty.

Bummy was out of shape and was tired of fighting but he took the fight with Morris Reif because he needed the bucks. He knew he couldn't beat Reif so he didn't train. He was sitting in the backroom of Dudy's bar drinking beer with my dad and a few cronies when he happened to peer through a latticework that gave a view of the bar. He saw four guys brandishing guns.

"What the hell is going on?" he said, and before dad knew it, Bummy was off and running. He stiffened one gunman with a mighty left. When Bummy went after another fellow, the bandit ripped half his neck away with a wild shot. Blood spouted from Bummy's neck. The three hoodlums dragged their pal out the front door. One of the guys present, stuck a handkerchief into the hole in Bummy's neck to stop the flow of blood. Holding the handkerchief with one hand, Bummy raced out the door in pursuit of the robbers. Guns blazed away and Bummy spun in mid-air and dropped to gutter, dead.

People were yelling hysterically. An off-duty cop who had been drinking beer with Bummy ran out the rear exit and blazed away. A bullet pierced the spine of one hoodlum. He died in the hospital. Another robber was hit in the arm. The wounded man carried the slug around for days, afraid to go to a doctor. Finally a street snitch told the cops about a guy who was walking around with a "Bummy Davis bullet in his arm." The guy was picked up. He sang, and his cronies were arrested in Kansas City. They all got lengthy convictions.

Bummy's funeral was the most lavish in the history of Brownsville. Attell and Lew Burston footed the bill. Everybody in Brownsville followed the hearse to the cemetery. The newspapers called Bummy a hero. There were plenty of flowers, and one small wreath among the deluge was labeled, "From Jack Kelly." *****

A Bit About Bill Kelly

From 1965 to present Bill Kelly has written for dozens of magazines and newspapers either as a staff writer or free-lancer. His 15,000 published articles include modern crime and gangsters, celebrity interviews, old West gambling stories, treasure stories, tales of the old West, and boxing. His most memorable interviews were conducted with John Wayne (Wayne's last interview), Henry Fonda, Rocky Marciano, Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson and Ike Williams.

His California tabloid experience includes The Los Angeles Herald Examiner, Orange County Register, Valley Tribune, and Valley Star, where he doubled as Managing Editor and feature writer.

Kelly's magazine experience includes Gambling Scene Magazine, Poker Digest, Treasure Search, Oklahoma State Trooper, California State Trooper, Virginia State Trooper, Boxing Digest, Boxing Illustrated, KO Magazine, Hollywood Studio, Country Review, Sports Illustrated, and too many true crime magazines to list here.

Kelly's true crime stories, and his book, Homicidal Mania, can be viewed on http://www.cybersleuths.com/

For additional true crime by Bill Kelly: editor@crimemagazine.com

His stories on New Mexico History are currently running in the On-Line New Mexico Magazine: http://www.southernnewmexico.com

Autographed copies of Bill Kelly's books, Gamblers of the Old West ( $25 plus $3.50 shipping & handling) and Treasure Trails and Buried Bandit Booty ($14.95 total) can be purchased by contacting the author at: wildbill@cosmoaccess.net

Bill is currently looking for a publisher for his manuscript, Empty Saddles. This book contains interviews with 50 of the 1940 B-cowboy movie stars including Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Bob Steele, Sunset Carson, and many more. This book is the result of 25 years research and writing, and Kelly considers this his finest work to date.

Bill Kelly is a writer for hire. His Kelly's Korner was at one time syndicated and well received. He is especially interested in reviving this column for an interested tabloid.