A Ward and A Rose: A Tribute to Two Gone Champions
By Anton Santiago, Doghouse Boxing (May 16, 2011)
In 2009, boxing lost three of it’s
brightest stars with the deaths within weeks of Alexis Arguello,
Arturo Gatti and Vernon Forrest. This week too, we have lost two
great ones. For the record, Lionel Rose and Alice Ward did not do
much as far as boxing history is concerned. But records barely ever
tell the whole story.
Lionel Rose was an Aboriginal
Australian. Now, if you are a minority in a country, you probably
know what that meant to him. The Aborigines have been historically
treated like the lowest of the human race by the majority of
Australians. Not all White Australians are bad or racist, mind you,
but among Australians, Aborigine people have had the worse for wear,
having survived abusive working conditions, poisoning (by
contamination of their water supply using arsenic and by way of
introducing rum to their villages), hate, massacres and even “The
Lost Generation”, period in which Australian Aborigine children
were being kidnapped by the government so that they would not
influence politics in the future, kind of like what happened in Chile
during General Pinochet’s years and in Argentina during “The
Dirty War” years of 1976 to 1983.
John Howard, former Prime Minister of
Australia, seems to be a good man. In fact, I received an autograph
personally from him a few years ago. But even Howard decided not to
ask the great Aborigine people for forgiveness for all that was done
to them by past members of the White race there. Kevin Ruud, in turn,
made sure to do so when he became Prime Minister. Australians overall
are changing their views and treatment of these well deserving
people, and now laws protect them from any racial discrimination or
attack.
Lionel Rose had a part in the change.
Rose was a great fighter, but more importantly, he was a great human
being who was fiercely proud of himself and his roots. He was the son
of a fighter, born in a very poor area called Jackson’s Track, a
full contrast with rich, modern Melbourne, which is only 50 miles
away. That is the same Melbourne that only eight years after Rose’s
birth in 1948 would host the Summer Olympic Games. Rose chose boxing
to escape the dire conditions of his birthplace and the racism given
towards his people. It seems that destiny and boxing itself also
chose him .
Beginning on a badly set ring where
safety was not a worry because there was none, Rose first put on his
gloves at the age of 14. He was a prodigy. He trained up and
progressed so fast that soon, he was at Jack Rennie’s Melbourne
Gym, after having become the Australian National Amateur Flyweight
champion and marrying Jenny Oakes, daughter of one of his early
trainers.
Raking an impressive number of
victories as a pro, and a couple of losses on the side, Rose became a
prominent figure in Australia, winning the Australian Bantamweight
title and defeating men like Noel Kunde and Rocky Galletari along the
way. On February 27, 1968, Rose met International Boxing Hall of Fame
member Masahiko “Fighting” Harada for the world Bantamweight
title at Nihon Buhokan, Tokyo, Japan. Few outside Australian
Aborigine gave Rose a chance, but he boxed, moved, danced and ducked
on his way to an artistic, if aesthetically boring, 15 round
unanimous decision win. A few days later, Rose arrived at Melbourne’s
Tullamarine International Airport to be welcomed by 250,000 people, a
Champion not just for Aboriginal people, but for the entire cpuntry
of Australia.
He defended the title against excellent
challenges from Tadao Sakurai, future world Champion Jesus “Chucho”
Castillo-a wholly controversial 15 round split decision win in Los
Angeles, California-and Alan Rudkin. All three world class
challengers, and all three defeated on points. Then he returned to
the United States, to take on one of the most fearsome punchers in
history, Mexican bone breaker Ruben “Puas” Olivares. Rose took
one of the most frightening beatings in the history of boxing, and
after the fight, all newspapers and magazines praised Olivares,
highlighting the way in which he stomped over the defending Champion.
Lost in the reports was the way Lionel Rose stood for 5 rounds taking
Hell and more, not wanting to lose his title that night. It was
almost inhuman. Watching the fight recently on Youtube.com, I
actually felt nauseous at such a beating. Yet Rose’s will let him
stand to it, and it took a whole punishing from Olivares for his body
to finally go down. Rose later went on to lose to 8 of his next 16
opponents, but those included Fernando Sotelo, Raul Cruz, Yoshuaki
Numata in a challenge for the WBC world Junior Lightweight title, and
future 2 time WBC world Junior Lightweight Champion Rafael “Bazooka”
Limon. In the meantime, he actually defeated future WBC world
Lightweight Champion “Guts” Itshimatsu Suzuki, by a ten round
decision.
Rose enjoyed a singing career that
yielded him more #1 hits in Australia than Oscar De La Hoya’s did
in the United States, and he enjoyed a life of respect and harmony
among other Australians of all kinds. This remarkable man, in 1996,
donated his world Championship belt to another brave Aboriginal
warrior, T’jandamurra O’Shane, who had been burned over 70
percent of his body as a six year old, in a still unexplained attack
which was allegedly carried by a man named Paul Wade Streeton. Rose
was also the recipient of an MBE, and the subject of an Australian
film, named “Lionel”. In a way, he was like Jack Johnson and Joe
Louis all wrapped into one: being the first Champion of his race, he
managed to be a hero for all.
Alice Ward, meanwhile, was a champion
in her very own style. Ward may have gone unnoticed by many, until
her son Dick Ecklund became a good fighter and reasonably talented
Middleweight challenger. Her other son, Micky Ward, gained wide
celebrity after his three fights with Arturo Gatti, paving the way
for Hollywood to pay him tribute with the movie “The Fighter”.
Ward was one of the secondary characters in the movie but a first
class character in real life. Feisty, intelligent in her own
street-wise way, and never a quitter, Ward fought hard. She fought
hard against the unwritten rule of no women in boxing. She fought the
stereotype of the mother who cannot stand to watch her kids fight,
actually being the manager of both Dick and Micky. In her own way,
and perhaps without herself knowing it, she can be compared to Susan
B. Anthony, WNBA basketball players and Gloria Steinem as women who
would not take no for an answer. Like Jackie Kallen, Alice Ward
survived in a world where being a woman may be seen as a sin, and she
did it by putting her two sons’ best interests ahead of anything
else. Most of the time, the fight behind the fight in boxing pits
promoters against managers, and both of those against boxer him or
herself. The manager calls the promoter an SOB, the promoter calls
the manager an A-hole, the boxer says the manager or promoter stole
from the fighter, the promoter or manager accuses the boxer of having
spilled all the money earned, etc. It’s an un-merry-go-around.
That’s why Alice Ward guided the careers of Dick Ecklund and of
Micky Ward. Nobody like mom to tell you what line you need to take in
life. Nobody like her to tell you when enough is enough.
As we all know now, and as was well
documented back in the day by HBO, Dick Ecklund had hard times
falling on drugs. That in itself was another battle that Alice Ward
had to fight. Her and her son’s courageous fight against the evil
but addicting world of drug usage was as painful to fight as any
beating from Olivares, Mike Tyson or any other boxer in the world.
Yet thanks in part to her love, Dick Ecklund is today an accomplished
boxing trainer who has gained wide respect for beating his demons.
She had to fight the hard times following Micky’s hand injury at
the hands of a boneheaded police officer as Micky had to go through
three years of surgery, hard work as a construction worker, and,
probably, untold hours of dark depression since he possibly thought
he would never again fight. Yet thanks in part to her love, he came
back. He came back to beat Shea O’Nary for the-I have to admit,
widely unrecognized-WBU Junior Welterweight title, as well as
Emmanuel Augustus and Arturo Gatti in their first of three history
making classics. He came back to write a book and become the
inspiration behind the producing of “The Fighter”.
Alice Ward would not let Cancer beat
her. But in the end, Cancer did take life away from the loving and
caring woman. Not before she gave it her very best fight until the
end, though. The Boston Herald later published that she gave up on
her fight against the disease. They were wrong. Alice Ward went down
as a willing fighter herself.
We just hope that with this tribute to
their memories, our article can reflect, if just a bit, the type of
humans that Lionel Rose and Alice Ward were.
May the Ward and the Rose rest in peace.
Please send all Questions and comments to Antonio at TJ69662094@aol.com.
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