joe mesi: portrait of a boxer

It was about midway through the first round when the expression on Gonzalez’s face changed. Gonzalez had come out with a sort of amused sneer, a look that suggested that he considered it a joke that Joe Mesi was in the ring with him. He seemed to have good reason for this arrogance, too. At 6-foot-7 and 251 pounds, Jorge Luis Gonzalez had six inches and twenty-five pounds on Mesi. He also had fought twice as many professional fights as Joe–thirty-seven to Mesi’s eighteen. The towering Gonzalez looked at Mesi as if he was a small child, still wet behind the ears. A hard punch, though, can instantly change height or weight or amount of fights into almost meaningless numbers on paper. And that is exactly what happened. Mesi landed a hard left to Gonzalez’s chin and the haughty expression, in the blink of his eyes and the snap of his neck, was no longer haughty, but bewildered and concerned. 

I distrust the term “throwback.” In sports, a “throwback” implies the existence of some gilded past, some magical time when the men all played with broken bones, some lost time when the athletes could drink whiskey all night and then wake up to perform perfectly. 

They were tougher than the athletes of today. They were also more humble, dignified, family-oriented and God-fearing. To an extent, this might be true. The athletes of today do seem to be more prone to megalomania and to sitting games out with bruised quadriceps. But, then again, the “throwback” media of old concerned itself more with highlighting an athlete’s strengths than in exposing every last dark crevice, every misspent extracurricular hour of their lives, as the media now likes to do. Even more, we tend to remember only the Jack Lambert’s of old, playing as hard as they possibly could, through any amount of pain.We forget all the John D. Smiths, who sat out games with aching arches. We forget that for every hero like DiMaggio and Ali–there were two outright scoundrels–and ten thousand everyday athletes, men who were neither scoundrels nor heroes, but rather a happy and human concoction of both contradictory qualities. Mythologizing the past is human nature. But if every age has ruefully longed for the heroes of old, the process goes on ad infinitum, until it is Adam himself, the Original Throwback, who gracefully played even after having all his teeth knocked out. 

When I consider Joe Mesi, however, I don’t think that any other word characterizes him quite as well as “throwback.” Joe looks like he sprang out of some black and white photograph of a heavyweight from the Forties. Compared to the current heavyweights, he does not have a commanding physical presence. When I first saw him in his robe in his dressing room, I mistook him for one of the entourage. Instead of the overtly muscular, weight lifter type physique, Joe’s build is well balanced and lean and solid. He looks more like a large swimmer than a boxer. His chest is thick and toned rather than barreled. His back is wide, his arms veined. Joe’s thighs are the only parts of his build that seem excessively large; he has thighs like a professional running back’s. He does not look like someone who could benchpress 400 pounds, instead he looks like a man who could do push-ups and chin-ups for a continuous hour. His weight is listed at 230 and, for the Gonzalez fight, he weighed in at 226. I guess scales don’t lie, but these numbers seem inflated. Though a man’s weight can be a deceptive thing, it seems to me that Joe would have to have bones with the density of cast iron to weigh 230 pounds. 

The nickname “Baby” suits Joe well, for he has a young, unbroken face that looks like it belongs to a twenty-one year old instead of a man of twenty-seven. With his flat dark eyes, gelled black hair and strong jaw line, Joe could be a model for Armani suits. He is of Italian descent, with “just a touch of Polish” on his mother’s side. Or, he is white. Though I don’t give his skin color either a positive or a negative value, his whiteness is in line with one of the actually tangible characteristics of a “throwback”–in the strictest sense of the word. For “back in the day,” there were many white boxers. Today, for whatever reasons, the amount of white boxers of any con- sequence makes even the NBA look like some type of Nordic Assembly. Recent names like Gerry Cooney and Peter McNeeley are not particularly awe-inspiring, either. Joe has been dubbed by some “The Great White Hope.” Mesi, however, isn’t quite comfortable with the emphasis on his color: “I don’t want to be a white champion. I want to be a champion of all the people.” 

If his physique and skin color, qualities given by God and not determined by Joe, bring to mind boxers of old, Joe’s attitude conjures even more of that shadowy and idealistic term,“throwback.” First of all, Joe is a family man. His father, Jack, is Joe’s manager and, as Joe puts it,“My number one supporter.” Jack, mustached and garrulous, is a great bear of a man. Jack’s father,Thomas, was the 1929 Amateur National Champion, and one of Jack’s brothers was also an amateur champion. When I asked him why he didn’t box, he answered, “Because it hurts like a son of a bitch.” Joe’s older brother,Tommy, is also part of Joe’s team. Much larger than Joe,Tommy was a two-time Golden Glove boxer in the super-heavyweight division. 

I asked Jack why Tommy no longer boxed. “I told him to get out of it. A boxer has got to have what people usually call ‘heart.’ It’s an intangible something, a drive or work ethic that makes a boxer push his body to another level. It’s like no other sport. You have to live with broken lips and bruised knuckles and mashed elbows. It just wasn’t meant for Tommy. That’s no bad reflection on him, because it takes a certain type. You have to give one hundred percent. You have to live boxing twenty-four hours a day.” Jack’s voice sounds like Dennis Franz’s from NYPD Blue, a likeness that is especially coincidental because Jack is a retired policeman. 

“With Joe, it was different. I was neutral to Joe boxing when he first started. I didn’t really think that he had the killer instinct for it. When I first went to see him box, the opponent’s father was there, and he told me that he had his son’s victory party all planned. This got me fired up a little bit, got my blood boiling. Well, the fight starts, and about a minute into it I wanted to stop the whole thing. Joe was absolutely pounding the hell out of the guy. I saw something I hadn’t seen in Joe before. I saw that he had that killer instinct, and I knew then that he could be a helluva boxer.” 

Joe didn’t start boxing until relatively late in life. In grade school and high school (Sweet Home High), Joe had played football and baseball, wrestled, and swam. It was not until he was nineteen and attending D’Youville College, a college that was run by The Nuns of The Sacred Heart and that was previously all women, that he decided to try boxing. 

“It never really crossed my mind to compete at boxing,” Mesi said. “I was taking classes and bartending for work and I needed something to keep me in shape. So, I went to the Police Athletic League gym to box as a workout. Soon I was doing well in amateur competitions,and when I won the NewYork State Golden Glove I knew I had something.” He was also an alternate for the 1996 Olympics. 

As a professional, Joe cruised to 180 with sixteen knockouts. A large part of this success is due to a tremendous work ethic. “Joe is a real hard worker and he never complains. If I can’t make it to one of his workouts, Joe will always do the whole thing himself. He doesn’t skip anything,” said Juan De Leon, Joe’s trainer. “If all the boxers worked as hard as Joe, then boxing would be full of great champions.” 

The most intense period of this hard work is the six weeks before a fight. During this time, Joe will start running at 6:30 in the morning. The run consists of jogging interspersed with wind sprints. At the beginning of the six weeks, the run lasts thirty-five minutes. By the end, after increasing the duration about six minutes a week, he runs for an hour. Following this, he works out his abdominals, and then does strength training with weights for an hour and a half. After the weights, Joe shadow boxes; spars; works the speed bag and heavy bag for intense three minute intervals that match a boxing round; jumps rope; ducks back and forth under a rope to work on head and body movement; works on specific punches like the upper cut; does pylometrics, which involves working the fast twitch muscles with explosive movements such as throwing a medicine ball; and, finally, ends the workout with more work on his abdominals. In all, each session lasts around five hours a day, and he does this six days a week. Joe’s conscientious adherence to such a demanding schedule speaks to his determination, a quality that, once again, can’t help but connote a “throwback.” 

Aside from his hard work, Joe’s success is attributed to his ability to fight with a variety of different styles. “Joe is multidimensional,” said Jack Mesi. “He can box you with finesse like Ali. Or, he can be a puncher. He can brawl with you and slug it out. He’s agile like a middleweight, and I think he’s the fastest heavyweight in the world. He studies the film of the other boxer, and then decides how he has to fight him to win. Juan [De Leon] has taught him a number of ways to fight.” De Leon has trained Joe since 1995. His brother, Carlos “Sugar” De Leon, a four-time cruiserweight champion, also helped in Joe’s training. 

While Joe has all the right makings and seems posed for a great future, he hasn’t exactly had the chance to prove it yet. Detractors note that he hasn’t fought anyone of real credibility. Indeed, Joe has beaten people like Butch Spratt, Art Bayliss, and Rodney McSwain, names that have about as much resonance as the stock opponents to the stars in professional wrestling. But the level of Mesi’s opponents has been part of his father’s calculated management plan, a plan in which he has brought his son through the ranks slowly, rather than having him get beaten by overmatching him. This way Joe could build his experience and confidence, instead of suffering an injury to the body or ego that could ultimately damage his career. 

The speed of Joe’s rise is also the result of Jack’s wariness toward many of the people in boxing. He has refused offers from big promoters in order to protect Joe’s interests. 

“It’s my job as manager,” Jack said,“to see that Joe has the right people around him, people who actually care about him. I’m like a watchdog. I watch his finances and make sure he doesn’t get in a situation where he could get hurt. A lot of people in boxing don’t like this–to see a manager who actually looks out for his boxer. Well, my boxer is my son and I’m always going to look after him.” 

As part of the safeguard against the “vultures” that Jack sees in boxing, he has his niece, Julie Bargnesi, a lawyer from the law firm Damon & Mauri, carefully oversee and, if necessary, modify Joe’s contracts. 

Joe’s bridge fight, his first fight against a boxer with some recognition, was against Jorge Luis Gonzalez on April 28 at The Niagara Falls Convention & Civic Center. Gonzalez was actually more spectacular as an amateur than he is as a pro. Gonzalez, who defected from Cuba, was an eight-time world amateur champion who beat the likes of Lennox Lewis and Riddick Bowe. But he was beaten badly by Bowe in 1995, then went on to lose five of seven fights. He came back after these defeats to string six wins together, but in his last fight he was knocked out in the third round by the less-than-impressive Cliff Couser. Still, despite Gonzalez’s mixed career, if Joe could beat him, Gonzalez’s name power could be Mesi’s key to bigger and better fighters. 

The fight also had a more personal, profound and painful event behind it. It was to be Joe’s first fight since his mother died of lupus on November 17. The loss was devastating to the family. Jack and Barbara had been “childhood sweethearts,” and his normally powerful voice sagged when he spoke of the loss. Joe had to cancel a fight in January, because he could not concentrate on his training. He had to go home and take some time off. 

“My mother could never go to my fights,” Joe said. “She always wanted me to be a lawyer. I’m dedicating my fights one hundred percent to her.” 

Mesi lies on a pallet inside a dressing room in the Niagara Falls Convention & Civic Center. The room has a stained purple rug, purple and white lockers,and a logo on the wall that says,“Home of the Purple Eagles.” Men in red warm-up suits with“Baby Joe Mesi” written on the backs, officially walk out and back into the room, shift chairs, watch Joe. No one talks. Joe listens to a walkman 

on the pallet. His eyes are closed while he listens to the music and there is a smile on his face; he looks as if he were enjoying a pleasant dream. After fifteen minutes, he sits up and throws a battery from the walkman. He reaches into his pocket and puts a new battery into the machine. “I was waiting for that to happen,” he says. Everyone laughs exaggeratedly. He lies back down. While Joe lies on the pallet, the third of the night fight is going on outside. The fight is a super bantamweight between Ablorh Sowah and Marcelo Ackerman.The crowd is thickening with the fans who have arrived with plenty of time to see Mesi, and, in the fight before his, Donovan “Razor” Ruddock, the most well-known boxer of the night. A pleasantly artificial card-girl has come onto the scene. In a sparkling silver dress that doesn’t hide much, she walks around the perimeter of the ring with “1” or “2” or “3” held above her head. Sowah is from North Africa, and in the seats just behind his corner, some of his supporters are playing Congo drums. Security repeatedly tells them to stop, but they do not. 

The sound of the drums has infiltrated Mesi’s dressing room, and he has moved to a different one. His new room is a work-room with a concrete floor and cinder block walls. It is filled with arbitrary objects, the way these rooms often are. There are large industrial desks, a drill press, crowbars, cans of motor oil, a vacuum cleaner, empty coffee cans, an old stereo, a sewing machine, a refrigerator, and a ringing phone. An iron mesh cage, holding tools of an undisclosed nature, covers one wall. The other walls are spotted with pictures of women in swimsuits. There is a dry, factory smell. Joe sits in a chair in the middle of the room and listens to his walkman. 

A young boy walks up to Joe and hands him a piece of paper. Joe looks at the paper for awhile and smiles. On the paper is a crayon drawing of a boxer. Beneath the picture, written in the scrupulous and unsteady hand of a child, is written:“My uncle Joe is a boxer. He is fighting Jorge tomorrow. I am going there too. I hope that he will win because I love him.” 

Joe still smiles after he has put the picture down. No one speaks, but if they do, it is in a hushed tone. All sounds are pronounced: the slide of a chair leg on the cement, ice thrown into a Styrofoam cooler, hands quickly rubbing together. Everyone is focused on Joe who, sitting intently in his chair, is doing essentially nothing. 

An official from the convention center comes into the room and whispers something to Jack Mesi. “They told me we weren’t going on till ten o’clock,” Jack responds loud enough for the room to hear. 

The Ruddock fight had started and he was about to knock out Harold Sconiers, his opponent, in the first round. The fights were not going to be on local cable until the next day, but they were live on Canadian TV. “He’s got to be ready as soon as it’s done,” the official said. 

Amidst muttering from his camp over the sudden rush, Joe begins to dress. He puts on some white, high-topped shoes. The shoes seem strangely sterile and elfin. He places two religious medallions in one of the shoes. They are in memory of his grandmother and his mother. 

He holds out his right hand, and Juan begins to wrap it with gauze and tape. Joe stares intently at his hand and seems to be staring both at it and beyond it. His thumb is broken. It is an injury sustained during a sparring session in Houston. The Mesi camp has kept this conveniently secret. Joe winces often while the hand is taped. 

Outside, Ruddock has not knocked Sconiers down. Instead, it is the eighth round and he is leaning on Sconiers as if he is trying to rest. Next to Ruddock, a wide-shouldered and big-gutted heavyweight, Sconiers looks the size of an average middleweight. He is re- lentless though. He continually strikes Ruddock, and he somehow withstands the wrecking ball uppercuts that Ruddock throws in between his wheezing. 

Joe and his inner circle have shut the doors to the room. In front of the closed doors, a perturbed convention official says to another,“I don’t know.They said they’re having some kind of prayer session. Two minutes with a priest. We can’t go in.” Juan De Leon later told me that they always pray that neither Joe nor the other boxer gets hurt, for Joe’s grandmother, and, sadly for the first time, for Joe’s mother. 

Five minutes later, when they open the door, Joe is lying on the pallet as Juan pushes one of his legs toward his chest to stretch his hamstring. It seems like Juan is pushing the lever of a machine. Joe gets off the table and Juan puts his gloves on. The gloves are small, and because of his thumb, Joe grunts when the right one is put on. 

“You in good, Joe?” Jack Mesi asks.

Joe nods. “Just not comfortable,” he says quietly.

“That’s all right. You’re not gonna be in them long. Three rounds, maybe.”

Juan puts on some hand pads and circles around Joe. Everyone is yelling now.

“Yeah, Joe.”

“Do it, Joe.”

“You got it, Joe.”

Joe hits the pads quickly and precisely. He has good head movement.

“I only got one hand,” Joe says.

“We’re gonna kill him with one hand,” Juan says.

Ruddock has won on a split decision. Joe puts on a Buffalo Sabres jersey with “Mesi” on the back. He and his entourage jog down the hall, and when they are outside, among the crowd and the spotlight, they run. Joe climbs into the ring. Gonzalez is already there. The floor mat in the ring is white, and the spotlights above strong, and the figures of the two boxers are sharp and distinct. Caked with makeup, the announcer looks like he is a figure from some LasVegas wax museum. He announces Gonzalez. Then he introduces “Baby Joe, Buffalo Joe Mesi” and the crowd erupts into cheers and applause. 

To beat the much larger Gonzalez, Mesi, the boxer of many styles, has to fight in a very particular way. First, he needs to keep his head and body moving, to slip Gonzalez’s powerful punches. Gonzalez definitely has a one punch knockout capability. Because his opponent also has a greater reach, Mesi has to get inside. Once inside, he has to work Gonzalez’s body. Gonzalez has a reputation for skimping out on his training (and a rumored penchant for the nightlife). Body blows to a fighter carrying a spare tire are a sure way to sap his strength and wear him down. If Mesi can take him a few rounds into the fight, his better conditioning should prevail. 

The actual fight plays out even more perfectly than the theory of this plan. Gonzalez, despite his initial projected arrogance, looks lethargic. The rumors of a poor work ethic seem to be true. Most of the time, he doesn’t even bother to hold up his guard. Mesi gets inside of him, and often has him against the ropes, where he freely wails on him. With his shaved head and mustache, Gonzalez looks like a perplexed Charles Barkley as Mesi alternates blows to the body with blows to the head. In brief and strange moments of quiet, moments when the crowd seems to have collectively chosen an instant of silence, there is only the slap of leather gloves and the deeper silence of the ring. 

The only time when Gonzalez shows a glimmer of promise is in the third round, when he manages to use his reach and keeps Joe outside with long, heavy jabs. It is short-lived, however. Joe is soon back inside, working on him again. Though it’s not clear, Joe also might have received a head butt during this round, for he has a cut under his right eye. True to form, even the cut looks good on him. With tousled hair and just the right amount of blood under his eye, he has the choreographed look of a boxer in a Hollywood movie. 

In the fourth round, after a quiet beginning from both boxers, Joe has Gonzalez against the ropes again. This is the last time Gonzalez will be on the ropes. Mesi hits him with a hard, left hook to the temple. Gonzalez is held up briefly by the ropes, and briefly by Mesi’s continued punches, but he is soon on his hands and knees on the canvas. Against a man who dwarfed him in height and weight, and with a broken hand, Mesi has won by a TKO. 

How far will Joe Mesi go in heavyweight boxing? The answer is the same from all members of the Mesi corner.

“The way Joe works, he will go all the way without a doubt,” said Juan De Leon.

“We have one goal for Joe–to be the heavyweight champion of the world. We want the whole enchilada. The heavyweight title is the crown jewel of all sports. Joe’s going to be The Man,” said Jack Mesi.

“I want to be heavyweight champion of the world in three years,” said Joe. “I wouldn’t box if I didn’t think this was a real possibility.”

In the intervening years on the way to becoming champion, all three mentioned a bout with Mike Tyson. Though Tyson isn’t the fighter he was in his prime before prison, he is still, through fame and notoriety, the one to beat. A fight with Tyson would mean a large purse and huge public exposure. Jack sees the fight taking place in about a year, when Joe is “a bit more seasoned.” For the immediate future, Joe hopes for a fight with Ruddock, which could possibly take place in July. 

In the process of becoming champion, Joe also wants to change the face of boxing through his image. He wants to be a role model to the people, a clean living and decent person. He is this model already, through his involvement with such organizations as the Make-a-Wish Foundation, Roswell Park, and Western New York United Against Drug and Alcohol Abuse. 

Perhaps I could argue that Jack was too quick to point out that Joe was taught in college by The Nuns of the Sacred Heart. Perhaps the “boxer with the heart of gold” story has a touch of prefabricated spiel. But, I do not think that affectation drives these words, rather I think that it is a genuine desire to express Joe’s good nature. Joe, his father, and Juan are extremely confident, but it is confidence and not braggadocio. 

Joe is hard working, religious, family oriented, polite, assured but humble. He fought with a broken hand, a rough equivalent to a sprinter running with a broken foot; he is tough. Joe has all the qualities of that illusory race of men known as “throwbacks.” The truth is that the word means nothing in actuality; there never was a time when the athletes uniformly possessed these qualities, no matter how much your seventy-year-old barber tries to convince you otherwise. Used in this sense, the word is especially inapplicable to boxing. Even before boxers chewed on other boxers’ ears, and before managers with wild, upright hairdos crossed back and forth over the line of legality, boxing has always been a home to innocuous rapscallions and outright deviants. These character types are probably easier to find than the good men are. But, if you take the word “throwback” loosely, take it to denote those rare, one-in-a-million people, those people who are not from one particular age, but rather, who seem to stand slightly above any age, then the word has real use. Joe has the makings of this latter sense of the word. 

Before you accuse me of exaggerating, of inflating Joe behind recognition, I will add an enormous and crucial caveat. A throwback is recognized not merely for character, but for talent in the given field. In fact, character becomes relevant only once virtuosity has been established. If someone is a third string catcher on a Triple A team, the fact that he regularly gives alms to the poor might make him a good person, but it will not catapult him into public adoration. Mesi still has the largest section of his throwback status to fill. He has to prove himself. Hopefully, the victory over Gonzalez will lead to fights that give him the chance to do so. In itself, the fight with the out-of-shape Gonzalez wasn’t the showcase that Mesi had hoped for. Joe is on the cusp; he is in the right place to ascend to the top, and he is also at the place where he can slide back into anonymity. 

As to whether Joe can become champion, if I were to answer based only on his character and work ethic, I would say “yes.” But, his size makes me stop just short of a definite answer. I’m not sure whether he could beat a Gonzalez sized opponent who arrived at the fight in shape and hungry. 

Joe wants to be a schoolteacher after boxing is over. I hope that he proves my hesitation to declare him the future champion wrong. But, whether he is known as champion or simply as a teacher who was once a good boxer, I can predict one thing, Joe will either be a throwback in the true sense of the word, or, less grandly but not less nobly, simply a good man. 

in print discover issue two