Induction will finally serve as payback to boxing’s Tocco

Steve Addy

Wednesday, May 31, 2000 | 10:43 a.m.

Johnny Tocco's heart belonged to boxing for most of his 87 years, but the sport rarely returned his affection in equal measure.

As the owner and trainer at Ringside Gym, the Las Vegas boxing landmark on East Charleston near Main, Tocco lived more than half of his life here, all in unyielding service to the fight game.

He was a top-notch trainer, working closely with the likes of Sonny Liston, Larry Holmes and an all-star cast of fighters who dropped by Ringside for a dose of hardboiled boxing instruction.

He was one of the best cut men to ever work a corner. He knew how to stop the bleeding and send his man back into battle with a stern command and a reassuring pat on the backside.

And he was a friend and benefactor to countless down-on-their-luck fighters, often letting them sleep in the back room until they could scrounge up a few bucks to get back on their feet.

Simply put, Johnny Tocco was a throwback long before we called them that. His joint reeked from sweat, cigars and the wobbly morals of some of its inhabitants, but for more than four decades, Ringside was the place to be for boxers, bettors, wise guys and garden-variety hangers-on.

However, for all of Tocco's devotion, he rarely got as good as he gave.

Money was always tight. He made spare change by peddling Ringside T-shirts and hats bearing his likeness, but others sold them illegally and never bothered to give Tocco his cut of the dough. He could've sued the pirates, but that would've cost him more than it was worth.

Other times, Tocco wasn't properly compensated for his time, services and use of his facilities after a big fight. Somehow, the money never trickled down to the lovable curmudgeon who gave so much. He finally had to sell his gym in 1997 for $100,000 to pay his escalating medical bills.

"There were a lot of promises made to Johnny over the years, but he hardly got a thing," said Lem Banker, noted local sports bettor and boxing aficionado. "A lot of people owed Johnny, but he never collected. He deserved better."

Now, three years after Tocco's death, some symbolic payback is beginning to roll in. On Friday, he will be inducted into the Southern Nevada Sports Hall of Fame along with Randall Cunningham, Lionel Hollins, Jim Colbert and Tom Wiesner.

It's too late for Tocco to enjoy it, of course, and since he was estranged from his family long ago, Friday's induction will go largely unappreciated. But to those who knew and loved Tocco in Las Vegas, they hope it's the first step of a journey that will end with his induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, N.Y.

"Johnny certainly ought to be in the Hall of Fame in the special category," said Marc Ratner, executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission. "I would love to see him get in."

Banker said, "There are a lot of people who hope Johnny will get that honor. He was a terrific guy and an honorable man. He spent 75 years in boxing. Just look at all the guys who trained in his gym -- Sonny Liston, Mike Tyson, Larry Holmes, (Julio Cesar) Chavez. Everybody was welcome, even if they didn't have the money. So many fighters were broke and couldn't pay."

Ratner viewed Tocco as a tremendous resource, often asking his advice on technical matters, and also enjoyed hanging out at Ringside, listening to stories about the great, doomed Liston.

"I was a big fan of Sonny Liston, and it was fun to go to the gym and see the posters and hear about Sonny and Joe Louis," Ratner said. "Johnny was very important to me and the commission. He helped teach my inspectors about some of the tricks used by unscrupulous trainers -- illegal cut solutions, illegal gloves, illegal hand wraps. Johnny had an unbelievable grasp of that."

Tocco was born in 1910 in St. Louis, where he fell in love with boxing by age 8. He gained work sweeping floors and fetching water in a local gym, and spent the rest of his life in boxing. He came to Las Vegas in 1952 for the Nino Valdez-Archie Moore title fight and never left. By 1954, he had converted an old bar into Ringside Gym, then he gained acclaim for working with Liston.

Eventually, the fight game cost him his family and his health. He suffered three heart attacks, had a pacemaker implanted in 1989 and had his left leg amputated two months before his death on Aug. 2, 1997.

"I went all out for boxing," Tocco told the Sun's Dean Juipe in 1997. "Not that I regret it, but I gave more to boxing than I did to my home life. It is all I ever talked about, every day, as soon as I got out of bed.

"I am lucky to have done something I loved all my life, even if I didn't make much money."

That was Johnny Tocco.

But maybe he wasn't such a throwback after all. He was a keeper.