could deny that the Mob had anything to do with boxing, but when Ted Williams had trouble with Red Sox brass, he didn't consult the local Mafia boss. Consider the way Valenti and DeMarco once dealt with a problem.
Near the end of his career, DeMarco wanted to break from Valenti and manage himself. Since Phil Buccola was no longer in the city, DeMarco sought out advice from Raymond Patriarca, the ruthless crime boss who had replaced Buccola as New England's Mafia kingpin. Like characters from The Godfather, DeMarco and Valenti journeyed to Patriarca's Providence office bearing tributes—Cuban cigars, North End cannoli—and explained their cases. Patriarca, who probably had more pressing issues to consider, squinted at the pair through a cloud of Cuban cigar smoke. He politely told DeMarco to stay with Valenti for three more fights. DeMarco claimed to be happy with the edict, but it's not as if he would argue with Patriarca. It's safe to say Valenti probably benefited from his old Mob ties to get DeMarco for three more bouts. But according to Valenti, the Mob had nothing to do with boxing. (And according to DeMarco, Patriarca was just a businessman.)
Boston's run as a successful boxing market continued until the establishment of the International Boxing Club in 1949. The IBC, headed by James Norris with Carbo as his unofficial matchmaker and “convincer,” quickly grabbed the contracts of the day's top fighters, tied up television coverage, and brought fights to New York, or to cities where the wealthy Norris owned pieces of venues. Boston was out of the IBC loop. (That a few marquee names fought DeMarco in Boston has been attributed to Valenti's connection to Carbo.) In 1957, Silverman cited an illegal restraint of trade and sued the IBC for nine million dollars. The out-of-court settlement—for much less than nine million dollars—made Silverman look like a tough businessman but didn't help Boston in terms of hosting important fights.
The courts eventually dissolved the IBC, but former IBC president Truman Gibson told Senate investigators in 1960 that the Boston trio of Silverman, Valenti, and Johnny Buckley had been under Carbo's control all along. The stunned trio insisted their interaction with the former Mob killer was minimal, but Gibson's bombshell had made their reputations wobble. They recovered, but despite the dismantling of the IBC, Boston continued to struggle. By the late 1960s, Boston had dried up as a major fight town.
One thing that didn't change was the continuous melding of boxers and wise guys. You could tell where fighters stood in the Mob's pecking order by the jobs they were given: driver, bodyguard, doorman at a Mob restaurant. What brought so many of Boston's fighters into the criminal life? Was it because boxing itself requires a certain cold-bloodedness, which translates well to gangland activities? Was it unavoidable in a compact city such as Boston? When asked how it was so easy for these fighters to get involved with criminals, retired New England welterweight Eddie Grenke said simply, “neighborhood friends.”
Eddie Spence, a popular Boston fighter of the 1960s, recalled a rather dark element that hovered around the boxing scene: “I would see semi-literate criminal types around the gyms,” he said. “I remember a fellow who claimed to be Silverman's friend. Out of the blue he tells me that he has a beef with some guys. Then he shows me a handgun. He says, ‘I plan to get them before they get me.’ My manager told me to relax, but I was looking for the escape hatch.”
In those secretive Boston enclaves, it grew increasingly difficult to tell the fighters from the felons. Sometimes you didn't know about a fighter's secret life until he got killed. That was the case in 1953 when old-time featherweight Morris “Whitey” Hurwitz was murdered outside his house in Brookline. Hurwitz, who had been a bodyguard for underworld figures, had his hand in everything from bookmaking to crooked dice games.
Then there was the savage 1955 murder of Fall River welterweight Al Frias. A rarity among New England's murdered fighters, twenty-six-year-old Frias was actually killed in New York. His body was found in a ditch beside Route 210. A fighter of minor talents—he'd lost several fights in a row and was in trouble with the Massachusetts commission for competing with an expired license—he'd been staying at a Manhattan hotel, frantically writing notes to his family back home that he'd come into some money. It was later learned that Frias was in New York on a mission to acquire $20,000 in counterfeit bills. Working for a “New England syndicate,” Frias was to pay a couple of creeps $6,000 for the $20,000. His contacts changed their minds, robbed him, and shot him in the head.
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