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Authors: Raymond Benson
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expect.
He moved back, an expression of total shock and surprise on his face. We pranced around the ring for another few seconds, and then I took the offensive. I moved in close and delivered a hard right hook and backed it up with a jab. Mack swung at me but I blocked the blow, ducked, and hit him with another uppercut. I followed this with two hard jabs and then a powerful cross.
Mack went down and didn’t get up. It was over before round two.
Everyone in the room applauded and cheered for me. It felt great. Even Freddie gave me a huge grin and patted me on the back.
Mack never came back to the Second Avenue Gym.
Good riddance.
6
Judy’s Diary
1958
I spent the rest of 1954 training, keeping fit, working in the gym, seeing Lucy when I could, and, for the first time in my life, having fun. Life was good. Freddie was a great “foster father” and I loved him. We became very close that year. I learned that he had been an up-and-coming boxer in the late thirties and early forties, but the mob had shut him out when he refused to play by their rules. He told me the Italian Mafia had such control over professional boxing that it was impossible to avoid them. I didn’t know what the Mafia was until Freddie explained it to me. He said there were “families” that had a lot of money and basically ran most of the illegal activities in the city. Gambling houses, prostitution, drugs, protection rackets, bookmaking—that sort of stuff. And they had their hands all over boxing.
It was a good thing I was a girl and didn’t have any aspirations to get involved with those guys. Little did I know, however, I would one day get in bed with them, so to speak.
For the most part, I ignored what was going on in the world. I was well aware of the Communists and how everyone was afraid of them. President Eisenhower made that speech about the dominos. People talked a lot about the atom bomb. I tried not to think about any of that. I was in my own little cocoon; my life took up a small section of a few city blocks of Manhattan. Every now and then Lucy and I would go see a movie. I saw my first AlfredHitchcock picture that year— Rear Window —and it scared the bejesus out of me! I liked listening to the new records on the East Side Diner’s jukebox. I remember playing “Mr. Sandman” by the Chordettes over and over until Lucy wanted to scream, ha ha!
Anyway, I’m skipping ahead to the spring of 1955, when I was seventeen. In February of that year, Freddie allowed a martial arts tournament to be held at the Second Avenue Gym. I didn’t know what martial arts were and neither did anyone else at the gym. When Freddie said a Japanese trainer had organized the event, everyone was suspicious. World War II had ended just ten years earlier, so anything Japanese was still not trusted. Freddie told me the man’s name was Soichiro, but he had recently become an American citizen. He was originally from Japan and had family that had moved to America in the thirties. Supposedly they experienced a lot of hardships during the war years because Americans didn’t like the Japanese—or the Germans and Italians, for that matter.
According to Freddie, in 1953 the Strategic Air Command invited Japanese martial arts instructors to visit American SAC bases for training programs. This opened communication between the U.S. and Japan, instigating a migration of many more instructors who set up shop in Asian neighborhoods around the country. Soichiro was one of these and he opened a small studio in Manhattan that practiced Asian fighting techniques. They had funny names like judo and karate . I had no idea what to expect. None of us had ever seen this stuff before.
On the day of the event, I helped Freddie with all the logistical and administration duties for the tournament. We rented a bunch of folding chairs and set them up, and I was in charge of collecting money and organizing the teams. Nearly everybody who participated in the tournament was
He moved back, an expression of total shock and surprise on his face. We pranced around the ring for another few seconds, and then I took the offensive. I moved in close and delivered a hard right hook and backed it up with a jab. Mack swung at me but I blocked the blow, ducked, and hit him with another uppercut. I followed this with two hard jabs and then a powerful cross.
Mack went down and didn’t get up. It was over before round two.
Everyone in the room applauded and cheered for me. It felt great. Even Freddie gave me a huge grin and patted me on the back.
Mack never came back to the Second Avenue Gym.
Good riddance.
6
Judy’s Diary
1958
I spent the rest of 1954 training, keeping fit, working in the gym, seeing Lucy when I could, and, for the first time in my life, having fun. Life was good. Freddie was a great “foster father” and I loved him. We became very close that year. I learned that he had been an up-and-coming boxer in the late thirties and early forties, but the mob had shut him out when he refused to play by their rules. He told me the Italian Mafia had such control over professional boxing that it was impossible to avoid them. I didn’t know what the Mafia was until Freddie explained it to me. He said there were “families” that had a lot of money and basically ran most of the illegal activities in the city. Gambling houses, prostitution, drugs, protection rackets, bookmaking—that sort of stuff. And they had their hands all over boxing.
It was a good thing I was a girl and didn’t have any aspirations to get involved with those guys. Little did I know, however, I would one day get in bed with them, so to speak.
For the most part, I ignored what was going on in the world. I was well aware of the Communists and how everyone was afraid of them. President Eisenhower made that speech about the dominos. People talked a lot about the atom bomb. I tried not to think about any of that. I was in my own little cocoon; my life took up a small section of a few city blocks of Manhattan. Every now and then Lucy and I would go see a movie. I saw my first AlfredHitchcock picture that year— Rear Window —and it scared the bejesus out of me! I liked listening to the new records on the East Side Diner’s jukebox. I remember playing “Mr. Sandman” by the Chordettes over and over until Lucy wanted to scream, ha ha!
Anyway, I’m skipping ahead to the spring of 1955, when I was seventeen. In February of that year, Freddie allowed a martial arts tournament to be held at the Second Avenue Gym. I didn’t know what martial arts were and neither did anyone else at the gym. When Freddie said a Japanese trainer had organized the event, everyone was suspicious. World War II had ended just ten years earlier, so anything Japanese was still not trusted. Freddie told me the man’s name was Soichiro, but he had recently become an American citizen. He was originally from Japan and had family that had moved to America in the thirties. Supposedly they experienced a lot of hardships during the war years because Americans didn’t like the Japanese—or the Germans and Italians, for that matter.
According to Freddie, in 1953 the Strategic Air Command invited Japanese martial arts instructors to visit American SAC bases for training programs. This opened communication between the U.S. and Japan, instigating a migration of many more instructors who set up shop in Asian neighborhoods around the country. Soichiro was one of these and he opened a small studio in Manhattan that practiced Asian fighting techniques. They had funny names like judo and karate . I had no idea what to expect. None of us had ever seen this stuff before.
On the day of the event, I helped Freddie with all the logistical and administration duties for the tournament. We rented a bunch of folding chairs and set them up, and I was in charge of collecting money and organizing the teams. Nearly everybody who participated in the tournament was
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