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Howling on a Blue Horizon
It wasn't a terrific fight but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to witness a home town boy (Irwin's from Niagara Falls, Ont, so am I) exchange leather in what many call the greatest fight venue in the world today. The Blue Horizon, Philadelphia, PA, was voted the best place in the world to watch a fight by the readers of Ring magazine. It beat out places like the Madison Square Gardens, the MGM Grand and Caesars Palace. Quite a feat for a grungy, run down, little place. No flash, just sweat, blood and back seat intimacy. And there I was, wide-eyed and awestruck by it all, wondering how such a small place could roar so loudly with wild, untamed emotion.
"If you can make it in Philly, you can make it anywhere," Billy Irwin told me before his fight with Jose Ramos.
Philly is a fighters town and the Blue Horizon is the vibrating core of the city's pug culture. It's a tough place, filled with tough looking characters with mashed noses, who talk tough and accept nothing but courageous displays of toughness from their fighters.
"Don't be surprised if you see a rat or two scurrying across the floor," Irwin warned me.
I didn't see any rats but I got a sense of what was to come when a cabbie picked me up on the side of a busy downtown road.
"Can you take me to the Blue Horizon?" I asked from my foothold on a steamy sewer.
"Ah, the Blue Horizon," he responded with a curious voice. Then he laughed, "You goin to the geto."
He seemed to know his way around and he told me stories about locals Joe and Marvis Frazier along the way. But when he dropped me off in front of an old, decrepit looking building in a rough neighborhood, I thought he made a mistake. There were no external clues, hinting that I was in the right place. No fight posters, nothing. Just a crowd of rough looking individuals convening near the entrance. A plain white sign read, "Ballroom Auditorium". Two ambulance attendants were hauling a stretcher through the narrow doorway.
I made my way in and lo and behold I had found the Blue Horizon. I flashed my all-access pass, compliments of promoter Russell Peltz via Billy Irwin and I made my way through a growing, buzzing crowd. I quickly found myself in the thick of the action, posing for pics with Tex Cobb, looking at his mashed face and recalling the beatings he was famous for absorbing. Cobb caught one of the worst beatings in boxing history from Larry Holmes. It was such a terrible beating that color commentator Howard Cosell, who called the action that night, vowed to never cover a boxing match again. And he didn't. Cosell might have been KO'd but Cobb wasn't and his will to fight on and remain upright when victory was out of reach, was perceived by many as a great display of stupidity. In Philly, however, he's a hero.
Besides Cobb, I found myself rubbing shoulders with Ivan Robinson, Lou Duva, and Teddy Atlas to name a few. Not all the shoulders were warm, however. At some point, while scanning the rowdy crowd, I noticed Ike 'Bazooka" Quartey. I approached him. Introduced myself. Tried to make small talk.
"Hey Ike, getting ready for Vargas? I think Winky Wright beat him don't you? Tough fight with De La Hoya." He hardly took the time to look me over before I realized he was ignoring me and he started dialing his cell phone, fingers flashing gaudy gold rings. I was left to stand, looking rather foolish. A goofy grin later I walked back up to the balcony. I had ringside seats but for most of the fights I choose to penetrate the core of the Blue Horizon's intensity. The balcony is where the locals watch the fights. A reporter from the Philadelphia Inquirer told me stories about great brawls that would erupt from the balcony section. Yes, the so called "cheap seats" are where the real action is. So, instead of taking my seat with the higher class, the journalists and the promoters, I howled with a rowdy, drunken crowd in the city of brotherly love. And by night's end I understood a lot about what makes the Blue Horizon the number one venue in the boxing world. It's the same thing that makes a talented fighter, a great one, and a punch drunk journeyman like Tex Cobb a hero. Heart.
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