Introducing Lolly Ruggiero, the hitter

            Ten years back, Ruggiero had moved to Norfolk from Baltimore to break into the fight game.

            He had saved enough money to last him eight or ten months, but he had to have a living.  Club fighting was still big in Norfolk, and Ruggiero believed that he could beat most of the prizefighting talent he had seen on Pay-per-view.

            Once he got set up in Norfolk, he asked Movesabout Jones, a retired black fighter who worked out in the same gym, to teach him to box for fifty dollars an hour.

            Jones had his doubts in the beginning because of Ruggiero’s extra weight, but he needed the fifty dollars an hour that Ruggiero agreed to pay him.

            Weight had always been a problem for Ruggiero.  He had been teased about it in grade school until one day a he’d had enough and put a loudmouth in the infirmary with a concussion.  There had been no teasing after that.

            In the beginning, they worked on timing and reflexes.  Jones had insisted that Ruggiero learn to jump rope, and after two weeks of tripping on the rope, he started to catch on some.  In six weeks, he was good; not the best by a wide margin, but good.

The smile of approval on Jones’s scarred face warmed Ruggiero and made him want to try harder.  But Jones had tricked Ruggiero.  The rope was about timing, true, but it was also about conditioning.  As he skipped away, Ruggiero lost weight and his wind increased dramatically.

            He learned the speed bag while he was learning to skip rope.  As the weeks went by, Ruggiero would hustle to have his rope work and speed bag finished early, and then he and Jones would get down to the business of developing a punch on the big bag.

Jones had been surprised at how much natural power Ruggiero had.  Now he would teach him how to channel all that power into a punch that would knock a mule off its feet.

            A few months into his training, Jones announced: “Okay Lolly, today we’re going to spar in the ring.”

            Ruggiero was thrilled.  When he first started, Jones had told him that eventually they would get in the ring, but only after he’d learned the rudiments.  This was a milestone.

            “Keep ‘em up and tuck your chin like I . . .  That’s it . . . you got it.”

            Jones hit him with a blizzard of light taps, and Ruggiero laughed.  Then Jones went on the defense so that Ruggiero could throw a few.  By the time he had thrown a dozen punches, which Jones easily pushed aside or sidestepped, he was out of gas and soaked with sweat.

            “That’s enough for today.  You done good.”

            Ruggiero couldn’t help noticing that Jones was breathing regularly, and there wasn’t so much as sheen on his forehead.

            When the weather cleared, Ruggiero jogged in the early morning on a nearby high school track.  In the beginning, anything beyond a mile was agony.  By July, a mile had become a mile and a half, then two.  As the trees began to show some fall color, he was breezing three miles, and finally when the tree limbs were bare, he ran five miles daily in a little over a half hour.

            Jones was having second thoughts about his student.  Maybe he really could get this Dago kid ready for the ring.  If he got hurt, well, not so good, but he could live with it.  Anyway, it was all the kid’s idea.  On the other hand, Jones calculated, if the kid survived he might be a source of income if Jones could just keep him under-matched and then bet on him.  It wouldn’t last, of course.  Other managers and agents would demand the kid move up in class after every win.  Jones would fight them off as long as possible, but eventually they would win out and gravy train would be derailed. 

            As it happened, Ruggiero won ten straight, and was promptly approached by a mobster who offered him five grand to straighten a guy out.

            All he had to do was bruise the guy’s ribs, black his eyes, and deliver a message:  “Pay off the fifty large you owe, or next time will be a lot worse.”  The guy paid, and Ruggiero quit the ring.

            Over the years, Ruggiero acquired serious money.  He lived frugally, and invested most of the lump sums he was paid.

            He also acquired another nickname.  Behind his back—never to his face—guys called him “Last Rites.”  The guys on the corner said that if Ruggiero ever came for you, better call a priest and ask him to administer the last rites, because you were as good as gone.