Boxing legend Joey DeJohn, the “Golden Boy”

• Author: admin
• Filed under: Joey DeJohn
• Date: May 13,2008

By Joe Masterleo

Boxing legend Joey DeJohn, the “Golden Boy,” whose fights regularly sold out venues including New York City’s Madison Square Garden, died last week. He was 81. A hard hitter and devastating puncher who started his career in the Golden Gloves competition, DeJohn packed a powerful left hook. His trademark was the KO, or getting KO’d himself, as 10 of his 14 losses came by knockout. Born Joey Di Gianni, DeJohn came from a Syracuse boxing family, as brothers Ralph, Carman, Mike and John were all fighters.

Inducted into Boxing’s Hall of Fame in 1997, DeJohn fought 90 bouts, with a career record of 74-14-2, including 52 wins by KO. Largely responsible for making Syracuse, NY a nationally known fight town, he fought fiercely, often and with great energy. In 1947 he fought and incredible 30 fights, more than most boxers fight in a lifetime. Amazingly, at the end of 1948 he had a two year record of 45-2. In 1949 he fought middleweight champion Jake Lamotta in a donnybrook at the New York State Fairgrounds, roughing up the champion before the “Raging Bull” stopped him in the 8th round. Having had enough of DeJohn in that bout, Lamotta later declared, emphatically, that he was not interested in a rematch.

While in the ring DeJohn’s greatest vulnerability was his glass jaw, outside of it his greatest downfall was a fateful aversion for the gym and the rigors of training, as Joey never met a nightclub, a smoke, a drink or a woman that he never liked. Opponents knew that if they could manage surviving past the 5th round, and few of them did, that the flagging, unconditioned DeJohn could be had.

DeJohn’s misgiving was not that he “coulda been a contenda.” He was a bona fide one, and then some. Ironically, with Brando-like regret, he “shoulda been champeen,” as in ‘of the world,’ instead of being the pugilistic embodiment of the phrase “so close, yet so far,” which he was. A living clinic on looking gift horses in the mouth, Joey DeJohn may have been the greatest middleweight – no – make that the greatest boxer, who never became champion.

Unlike today, where boxing news is barely a speck in the newspapers, DeJohn fought in the days when a championship bout was the most anticipated sporting event, outside the World Series. At that time, long before its freefall, boxing had a steady place in the American psyche, when it champions were heroes, not just fly-by-night celebrities – upper-tier athletes as well as upper-tier men.

If the story of a life entails the search for meaning, then DeJohn’s lot was not unlike the unexamined life of Everyman, an out-picturing of what might have been, for better or worse, given a turn here or a twist there. While DeJohn may soon be forgotten, make no mistake, he was truly one of boxing’s uncrowned Golden Boys during the last years of its Golden Age.