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It's lunch with Carmen Basilio, boxing champ of the planet, circa 1950s. I didn't know I was expected to wear the cup; not drink out of one.
He is 79 years old, going on adolescence, quick with a quip and even quicker with his hands as he goes from a handshake, a thump on the shoulder, a chin slap and ... well, when you come from Basilio's era it wasn't unusual to go below the belt.
"It was brutal," he says, "in the ring there is no love."
Outside? Now that's different. Basilio is anything but the stereotypical brooding pug that depicts boxing's golden era.
He chats with bemused restaurant patrons. He leaves smiles in his wake. He flirts with the waitress when she tells him there are no eggs. Not here. Not over easy. Not ever.
Exhibition
Basilio is in town for The Sport Gallery, which this week unveiled its exhibition The Italian Stallions on Mill St. in the Distillery District. It features some of the 225,000 photos that gallery owners Wayne Parrish and Jim O'Leary purchased from the defunct Sport Magazine.
There's Jake LaMotta taking his dive against Billy Fox. There's LaMotta peering, menacingly, into a camera lens. "There's Willie. He looks just like me," Basilio says. Willie Pep gives the thumbs up. A black, bloody ooze sits where an eye should be. Triumph amid the gore.
Then there is Basilio in 1958, his face upturned into the camera, lips curled in pain, one eye battered shut after losing the welterweight championship by decision in a rematch with Sugar Ray Robinson. "I fought him twice and beat him twice. That's why he wouldn't fight me a third time."
He still enjoys boxing. Just not much impressed. "I fought 17, 18 times a year. Today, guys get the big money. They don't fight that often so they don't learn anything."
He is a 5-foot-6 gnarled gnome, a relic stepping from the mists of time. "I fought 11 world champions. Best I ever faced was Billy Graham (a win, a loss and a draw) and he never won a world title.
"George Chuvalo? Trained with him. One of the good guys," he says. "If he had stayed in shape he would have won more."
"Nobody knows Jake LaMotta. He was a mean son of a (bleep) then. And, he's mean now. But he was one tough fighter you had to give him that," Basilio says.
His toughest fight?
"My wife," he says. He's still sweet-talking that waitress, but now in Italian. She's checking about those eggs.
Biggest payday? $100,000 US for beating Robinson.
Not bad for the son of an onion farmer from Canastota, N.Y., population 4,000. "People tell me boxing was a tough way to make a living. I can tell you being an onion farmer was a lot tougher." He talks about waking up at 5 a.m. as a teenager to run, put in a full shift at the local factory making generators, then heading to the gym. Every night. "I'd fight and go six rounds and get forty bucks. Once I got $10. I'd show up more than once at work with a puffy eye and the boss would say: 'Why don't you give up that crummy game?' I said, 'I'm going to become world champion.' I showed him."
June 10, 1955, he knocked out Tony DeMarco for the middleweight world title. He gives Parrish a playful tap.
The waitress is back; says they've never served eggs in four years. Basilio takes her hand and his Calabrian whisper earns him a giggle. "You've got to know how to bull----," he says. The eyes twinkle. Eyes that in 1957 bled but still took Robinson's middleweight crown. They had a parade in Canastota, the home he never left. "Average people knew and celebrated the exploits of these guys more than any other boxers over the past 30 years, except Muhammad Ali," Parrish says. "The characters were larger than life."
The waitress arrives with a huge plate. Two eggs. Over easy. Even now, nobody beats Carmen Basilio.