Two Ton: One Fight, One Night: Tony Galento V. Joe Louis

Tony Galento never became world champion. He was a ridiculous long shot who became the first man to put Joe Louis on the canvas after Louis had become champion. As Life Magazine put it, he was "the clown who fought like a hero." The moment defined his entire life, made him remembered to this day, and his story makes for an unusual, deeply compelling sports book. An"exceptional"accountof underdog boxer Tony Galento's surprising 1939 showdown with renowned heavyweight champion Joe Louis (The Boston Globe) Beetle-browed, nearly bald, a head that rode his collarbones like a bowling ball returning on rails, his waist size more than half his five-foot-eight height, Two Ton Tony Galento resembled "a taxi driving away with its top down." By all measures he stood no chance when he stepped into the ring against the Brown Bomber, Joe Louis, the finest heavyweight of his generation. But in Yankee Stadium on a June night in 1939, he entered the record books as one of the few men to put the great Louis down. For two splendid seconds he stood on the mat as the Joe Louis lay before him, champ of the world, the toughest man alive-the mythical hero of a nation little more than a year away from war. "I'll moida da bum," he had predicted. And though Louis was no bum, Galento was almost as good as his word. Joe Monninger's spellbinding portrait of a man, a moment, and an era reminds us that sometimes it is through effort-and not the end result-that people most enduringly define themselves.

About the Author :
Joseph Monninger is the author of eight novels and two memoirs. He has written for Sports Illustrated, American Heritage, Scientific American, and the Boston Globe. He is a two-time recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in New Hampshire.

Review :
“[The] strength of this exceptional book is in the thoughts the author is brave enough to attribute to the fighters who were involved in that unlikely bout, and to the crowd that witnessed it, and to the much larger crowd that listened to the fight on the radio. It takes a writer with flair and courage to extract from the shocking knockdown early in that fight the unstated reason so many people passionately paid attention to the event . . . the promise, however brief and fragile, of a crazy surprise that changes everything.” —Bill Littlefield, The Boston Globe   “Joseph Monninger’ s Two Ton provides a highly detailed and exciting description of the 1939 heavyweight title fight between Joe Louis and Orange, New Jersey native “Two Ton” Tony Galento. Monninger’s real achievement is not the tale of the fight itself, but rather of the circumstances that lead up to it, and its explanation of how one chunky, heavyset bartender with a far-from-average left hook could rise to fight for the world championship.” —BrickCityBoxing.com   “A championship match-up between Italian-American boxer Tony Galento and legend Joe Louis is the focus here, but also the lens through which this brisk and entertaining history looks at the state of the nation in the 1930s . . . Most compelling throughout, however, is Monninger's presentation of the gluttonous, fun-loving Galento . . . Monninger artfully revives ‘Two Ton Tony’.” —Kirkus Reviews