The oldest piece likely to make into the Profilia anthology was written in 1988. It's a profile of a deaf boxer named Kevin Tallon, who, when I met him, was fighting in unsanctionted Meanest Man contests. He went on to an undistinguished pro career. I watched him train one day.
When he can, Tallon trains at the Covington Youth Center in Kentucky. He walks down an alley beside a Goodyear dealer on Madison Avenue and up a steep flight of stairs to a room dominated by a boxing ring with sagging ropes. Fight posters and yellowing newspaper clippings cover the walls, along with eight-by-ten glossy prints of local heroes such as heavyweight Tony Tubbs, who trained here. A radio in a corner blares music from a black station in Cincinnati. There are holes in the ceiling and the walls could use some paint, but this room has the basics: a ring, three heavy bags, two speed bags, Lou George and Henry Ward.
Lou manages the place. Henry is the trainer. Lou’s wife, Karen, put up the money for the gym after Lou had to retire from his job with a car dealer. He charges each kid $20 a month to train here. He admits that he and Henry are strapped for funds, but if a boy does not have the money, he can come anyway and they will teach him to box. Lou loves to talk about boxing. He looks gray and worn until he describes a fighter. Then he jabs the air and circles an imaginary ring, light as a cat burglar who has just stolen another 20 years of youth.
He opens the gym each afternoon at 4:30. First to wander in on this day are two pale white kids with serious eyes, a shy black kid who has just started at the gym, and Tallon, in gray shorts and white thermal undershirt. Lou George likes him. “Kevin’s one helluva boy, when you can sit him down.” He complains that Tallon does not train enough. “I don’t care when these guys say they got a heavy bag in the basement, or a speed bag. It ain’t like being in the gym. The smell, the odor, watching the other fighters. At home, there’s no Ward. There’s no me. Now, that Houser, he’s training.”
Houser is Ron Houser, a 20-year-old heavyweight who is Tallon’s bane. Tallon has won more than 50 tough-guy bouts, by his own tally. At the Tough Man World Championships in Dayton, Ohio last year—sanctioned as a world championship by lord only knows—he placed second. When Tallon counts his defeats on one large hand, Houser gets three fingers. The fighters are well matched from a storyteller’s standpoint. Kevin is flashy, good looking, expressive, the ladies’ choice. Houser is silent, expressionless, menacing.
Lou knows how much Tallon wants to beat Houser and tries to help, but he scoffs at tough-guy fights. He thinks Tallon is wasting his talent. But he cannot convince him to commit to a genuine pro career. Tallon, he says, could be “a helluva thing.” The helluva thing he has in mind is a good white heavyweight. One of boxing’s shames is the constant hunt for white fighters to beat the African Americans and Hispanics who dominate the sport. Lou George cares as much for the black kids in his gym as for the white ones. His best fighter is black. But he knows the realities of the fight business.
... Kevin would need work just to fight the top amateurs. George puts him in the practice ring to spar with the current pride of the gym, a 139-pounder felicitously named George Little. Tallon fights better than 95 percent of the men on the street, but George Little is part of that other 5 percent. Before he has them spar, George tells Tallon to work hard. He tells Little, “Don’t hurt him.” Little is fast as a cobra. He ducks or slips Tallon’s punches. He stays upright, quick on the balls of his feet, eyes sharp and intent. It is obvious he could land punches on Tallon’s face almost at will if George allowed it. After four rounds, a sweat-drenched Tallon climbs out of the ring with disgusted look.
... A fight man like Lou George has reason to jeer at a Meanest Man Contest. But for Tallon, it is a means to an end. He pulls out a scrapbook and shows off photos of some of his fights. In one corner of the living room are 15 trophies, each with a small gold-plated boxer on top. And whenever someone asks his son, Matt, what his daddy does, the little boy puffs out his chest and says, “My dad’s a boxer.”
