OLD COACH WISDOM
THEY don’t make old boxing coaches like they used to. The world knows them as Cus D’Amato, Angelo Dundee, or Burgess Meredith in Rocky. They’re an obsolete breed; an American archetype of the 20th century. It’s a role I just stepped into, at the age of 66, at the Maple Avenue Boxing club in Dallas. But I’m not nearly as wizened and grizzled as the coaches of yore.
The very definition of “old school” was my first boxing coach. I was 27 and finally decided to learn how to throw a punch correctly. I had been attacked by the cocaine-crazed art director of High Times, where I was managing editor in 1983. He was an ex-Marine, but didn’t know how to fight. My defence was less than steller. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and I signed up for boxing at the West Side YMCA on 63rd Street in New York. The building is a medieval Italian-styled cathedral of exercise near Central Park. I was both humbled and elevated by its boxing programme.
The coach was an 80-year-old sage named Bob Ciocher (pronounced “chocker”). Ciocher had been a boxing coach for the US military during World War II. He said he’d been a cornerman on some Joe Louis fights. At the Y he taught a class of two dozen new recruits a programme covering the very basics of boxing positions. It began with proper stance and footwork. Then, we learned one
