Atlantic City Weekly

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What a difference a month makes.

On June 28, 1939, Two Ton Tony Galento, a boxer as colorful and controversial as his nickname, stepped into the ring at Yankee Stadium in New York City to face heavyweight champion Joe Louis before an estimated crowd of 40,000. A national radio audience tuned in to see if the Orange, N.J., native could pull off an upset. The odds against the 5-foot 8-inch, 240-pound Galento were bigger than his protruding waistline and an appetite for food.

Galento, who reportedly ate 50 hot dogs in one sitting, fought valiantly in his quest for the title. His powerful left hooks staggered Louis in the first round and briefly knocked him down in the third. With a devastating combination of punches, Louis took command of the fight, defeating Galento in a fourth-round technical knockout. Twenty-five days later, on July 23, Galento laced up his gloves again at Million Dollar Pier in Atlantic City.

His opposition was not the standard pugilist. Instead, Galento would take on Peter the Great and Battering Buckaroe, a pair of 175-pound kangaroos. For Galento, it was a transition from main event to sideshow. “I’ll fight anyone — and anything,”

Galento vowed in boosting the hype for the unusual matchup. Boxing historian Tony Triem of Las Vegas said there was an underlying reason for the match of man versus marsupials.

“Galento was not liked as a prizefighter by his peers, so he set up stunts to draw attention to himself,” Triem says.

Galento was known for skirting the rules in boxing with his gouging and other fouls, and directing racial and ethnic slurs at his opponents. He taunted Lewis in a series of phone calls leading up to their title fight. “I’ll moider de bum,” Galento said of Lewis. It was a comment that ultimately would be included in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. At heart, Galento was rough around the edges but a showman who knew the value of publicity in attracting paying customers. After fighting the kangaroos, Galento said he intended to work his way through the rest of the animal kingdom, including the panda, panther and tiger before taking on the ultimate challenger — the lion. “Who has that lion ever licked?” Galento demanded in a New York press conference. “What right has that big bum to go popping off that he is king of the jungle?”

Given the chance, he vowed that he would “punch his mane off.” Galento’s manager Joe Jacobs wasn’t looking ahead or taking the kangaroos’ opposition lightly. He wanted the New Jersey Boxing Commission to give him the right to examine the pouches of the marsupials before the first round.

“I have found that kangaroos often conceal gimmicks in their pouches and that is why they win so many bouts by knockout,” he said with a seemingly straight face. “I’ll check that pouch inside out or I won’t let Galento get in there.”

Galento had a simple strategy for handling the kangaroos.

“I’ll just clip him a couple in the pouch and flatten him. They can’t take it downstairs, those kangaroos.”

The bout did not go the way Galento planned. He opened with a hard left to the middle of Peter the Great. The kangaroo responded with a right, then fell and kicked Galento in the groin, giving new meaning to the term “low blow” as the crowd roared at the Million Dollar Pier.

“They oughta had the New York Boxing Commission down here to read the riot act about fouling to those kangaroos,”

Galento complained after the bout. When Galento stuck out his left hand, the kangaroo would jump in with his gloved forepaws, balance himself on his tail and pump his ungloved rear feet to the human’s shins and legs. The kangaroos proved to be agile enough to avoid Galento’s famed left hook. One wire service account reported that Galento took a pretty good “kicking around” from the kangaroos. The referee ruled the three-round bouts a draw. For his efforts, Galento received $1,000, a sharp pay cut compared to the $42,141 he received for the Louis fight. Galento had one stipulation for a rematch.

“Put boxing gloves on the bum’s rear legs and I’ll fight him again,” he said of Peter the Great.

No rematch was held. A planned match between Galento and an elephant on the same night in Atlantic City was rejected by Jacobs. “After all, we’re signed to fight Lou Nova in September,” Jacobs said. “What if that elephant stumbled and fell on Tony? Where would we be then? You got to draw the line somewhere.”

(Research assistance for this article provided by Tony Triem.)