ANTUOFERMO COUNTS OUT A ROCKY BOXING CAREER
By Michael Katz
Dec. 8, 1981
Credit...The New York Times Archives
See the article in its original context from
December 8, 1981, Section D, Page 27
He never learned how to duck an opponent or a punch, and yesterday, during an eight-day period in which Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali were attempting pathetic comebacks, Vito Antuofermo, at the age of 28, announced his retirement from boxing with the same straightforwardness that marked his ring style.
''Knowing when to leave the party is something all of us find hard to do,'' Antuofermo, the former middleweight champion, said at a luncheon thrown for him by Bob Arum, the promoter of his five world title fights.
Few recent fighters have had fewer basic skills than Antuofermo and few have earned more respect. ''We're honoring a man who's given so much to boxing,'' Arum said. ''He gave his all in every fight he had.''
He leaves with a record of 46-6-2, ring earnings of roughly a million dollars, according to Ray Skarika, one of his co-managers; ample savings and a comfortable home in the Howard Beach section of Queens, a good job with the Coca-Cola Bottling Company of New York and only one regret, his last fight, a June 13 title shot against Marvelous Marvin Hagler that ended in a fifth-round technical knockout, the result of cuts.
''I was gypped, he butted me,'' Antuofermo said. ''My daughter's dancing teacher was down in the islands recently and ran into Tommy Hearns,'' said Joan Antuofermo, Vito's wife for nearly eight years. ''He gave her his phone number and told her to tell Vito he wants to fight him.''
But Antuofermo said that not Hearns, not even Sugar Ray Leonard and the rich paydays either would mean, could get him to change his mind. ''Hagler? That's different,'' he said. ''A Hagler fight is open all the time. I'm in shape now and I'll be in shape whenever. When I'm 85 or 90, I'd fight him. I still dream about him.''
Antuofermo had fought Hagler once before. He had upset Hugo Corro of Argentina June 30, 1979, to win the undisputed middleweight title, and five months later defended it as a 4-1 underdog against Hagler and got a draw. He was forced to defend next against another topranked contender, Alan Minter of England, and on March 16, 1980, lost a decision and the title. Minter stopped Antuofermo on cuts in a rematch later that year, then lost the title to Hagler.
After the second loss to Minter, Antuofermo talked of retiring. Instead, he underwent an operation to shave the bones beneath his eyebrows, to prevent them from cutting easily during a fight.
But the rest of his face continued to spring leaks. He was going to continue fighting, even after the second Hagler fight, and he even had a $7,500 bout scheduled last Wednesday in Atlantic City against a journeyman named Ralph Mifka. But in training last month he was cut on the chin and realized the hopelessness of it. The chin. How ironic.
''His best weapon is his chin,'' once said Richie Giachetti, the former trainer of Larry Holmes. Teddy Brenner, the former matchmaker at Madison Square Garden, where Antuofermo began fighting in the Golden Gloves 12 years ago, told how he first heard of this Italian immigrant who learned to fight on the streets of Flatbush.
''My gardener told me,'' Brenner said yesterday. ''My gardener was Vito's father. Best gardener in Brooklyn. Still is.'' 'Blood, Sweat and Cheers'
''Old Blood, Sweat and Tears,'' Brenner called Antuofermo. But it was more blood, sweat and cheers. Antuofermo bled. He couldn't remember how many stitches have been sewn into a face originally hardened and dried by the southern Italian sun. A hundred? Two hundred? ''A lot more than that,'' he said.
And he worked. From the time he was able to pull on short pants, he would ride two hours by horse and wagon to the fields where he would stand behind a plowhorse all day. After coming to this country in 1968, he drove trucks and fixed them, pulled weeds and stuffed sausages.
''Even when I was champion,'' he said, ''I never used my boxing money to live on. I always had a job.'' He worked hardest of all in the ring where, at 5 feet 8 inches, he was shorter than most other middleweights, not as quick and not as hard-punching. His talent, indeed, was his chin, but it was more than just taking a punch, which he had to do, he said, ''because it's easy to hit me.''
''Heart, more than anything else, makes you a champion,'' Freddie Brown, his old trainer, once said of him. That and toughness. Brown said Antuofermo reminded him of another former middleweight champion, Tony Zale. ''Zale took punches and punched back,'' said Brown. ''That's why he's like Zale. He takes punishment and fights back and makes you break ground. See, if Zale wasn't able to take punishment, he'd be nothing. Same way with Vito.'' Praise and More Praise
The former middleweight champion of the world sat at the dais, playing with a salt shaker to amuse his 2-year-old son, Vito Jr., while the praise was heaped higher than the spaghetti. Howard Golden, the Brooklyn Borough President, was there to proclaim ''Vito Antuofermo Retirement Day.'' Antuofermo began to look uncomfortable in his three-piece suit. Maybe, he thought to himself, this is a mistake.
''He'll probably change his mind again tomorrow,'' his wife said. ''Especially after today,'' Antufermo said. But three Fridays ago, after suffering the cut chin, he told Skarika, ''I've had enough.'' ''Listen, if you feel like that, it's O.K. with me,'' said Skarika, and Tony Carione, the other co-manager, agreed. ''If we were a different kind of breed, we could've strung him along and gotten another title fight after a couple of tuneups,'' Skarika said. ''But we're proud of Vito. He's a champ. And I didn't like the way he looked in the gym.'' A Change in Attitude
Antuofermo didn't feel right, either. ''Physically,'' he said, ''I'm as good as I've ever been, stronger than ever in fact. But mentally, I lost interest. Too many things have happened to me.''
Joan Antuofermo said she ''knew it was coming'' by the way her husband remained calm watching the fights on television or reading the sports pages.
''He used to get mad, everything used to bother him,'' she said. ''But he stopped. He's always calm. I knew it was coming, I just waited for him to say it. He's still not sure. It's the hardest thing he's ever had to do. Up to yesterday, we were still talking about it. When you wave money in somebody's face, it's hard to resist. But we've got to use our brains instead of our feelings.''
Joan Antuofermo has mixed feelings about the retirement. She knows she will miss the excitement. She started going out with Vito when she was 14 - ''I never had another boyfriend'' - and he was a 16-year-old amateur fighter. The fights never really scared her because she knew her husband could take a punch. Well, there was this one time. She was watching a tape of Antuofermo's fight against Eugene (Cyclone) Hart, a hard-hitting Philadelphia contender, four years ago.
''I think that's why I had the baby that night,'' she said of the birth of their daughter, Lauren. ''She was two weeks early.''
A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 8, 1981, Section D, Page 27 of the National edition with the headline: ANTUOFERMO COUNTS OUT A ROCKY BOXING CAREER.
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