Al And Kingpetch Of Siam

Back around the time of the American Civil War, a king of Siam sent to England for a governess for his children, a gentlewoman named Anna Leonowens whose story has been celebrated in the book Anna and the King of Siam and the Broadway and Hollywood musical The King and I.

In 1955 the king of Siam , now Thailand , sent to America—to Lou Still-man's Eighth Avenue boxing gym, to be exact—for an instructor of another sort, a prizefight trainer to indoctrinate the youth of his country in the arts and mysteries of the prize ring, Western style.

It is unlikely that the romance of Al Silvani 's trip to Thailand will ever inspire any Broadway musicals, although he did write a book, a manual on the virtues of the left jab and the body punch as keys to victory. For all that, Al, a dough-handed, broad-backed ex-pug, who learned his trade by training brawlers Tami Mauriello, Rocky Graziano and Jake La Motta , lacks the grace and elegance and general background of the gentle Anna. Al, in plain truth, did not even know where Thailand was when the summons came, or, for that matter, who was king.

But Al's trip and his tenure in the stately monarchy were not without their own sort of success, a success dramatically underscored last week in the half-filled Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles . There one of the beneficiaries of the Silvani system of modern mayhem, a sleek Thai youth with the jawbreaking name of Mana Seadoagbob and a ring nom de plume, equally hard to lay a glove on, of Pone Kingpetch, consolidated his claim to be Thailand 's first bona fide, undisputed boxing champion of the world. Kingpetch (the name is derived from a camp where he trained in his native land, and the surname of Pone signifies the flight of an eagle) scored a technical knockout over former champion Pascual Perez , a venerable slugger from the province of Mendoza in Argentina .

Kingpetch had lifted the title from Perez in April. But that was in Bangkok , and on a split decision. The Thai judge involved had voted for Kingpetch. The Argentine judge, naturally, had voted for Perez . It was boxing's Boswell, the ubiquitous Nat Fleischer , editor of The Ring magazine, who cast the deciding ballot—for Kingpetch. Since Nat was, in effect, the guest of Thailand at the time, the supposition could be pardoned that the vote was at least in part simple good manners. At any rate, the issue of Kingpetch's superiority was still in doubt.

There was no doubt after seven rounds of action at the Olympic. The fight was as one-sided as a Castro rally. Referee Mushy Callahan's action in stopping it was that of a man who flags down a train a mile before it gets to a broken bridge. Callahan stopped it not so much because Perez was badly beaten but because he was going to be.

Perez , a sallow, blue-jowled little man, both of whose parents emigrated from Spain to Argentina , had had high hopes of regaining his title. It was his insistence alone which had located the fight in "neutral" Los Angeles . Los Angeles was neutral almost to the point of being blas�, and barely 5,000 straggled into the arena to see a bout which would have drawn upward of 30,000 in either Bangkok or Buenos Aires . Perez explained he was willing to suffer financial sacrifice to get unbiased officiating.

But when the match started Perez came out of his corner in the manner of a man who intends to make both judges and referees superfluous. He clearly aimed to score a quick knockout. Shorter than his Thai opponent by seven inches ( Perez is less than five feet tall, and Kingpetch, at 5 feet 6� inches, is the tallest flyweight champion in history), Perez tried to leap over the outthrust left jabs of the champion to score with roundhouse hooks and crosses.

Al's way

Tutor Silvani, who never directly taught Kingpetch but who inculcated a belief in the left hand as the ultimate weapon ("They were right-hand-crazy down there, you know what I mean? And they couldn't hit with it, even") and who taught the men who taught Kingpetch how to move, how to slip a punch, how to press an opponent and the other skills of a tough trade, was not satisfied with Kingpetch's early strategy. "He should keep Perez pressed," he growled from time to time. "Them old guys you got to press. The legs give out on them first, and they give out worse going back."