Kid Chocolate’s hands bore the legacy
of his profession: the knuckles grotesquely
callused, the curling fingernails locked in
the position of a semi-cocked fist, to the
extent that they resembled more the
talons of a bird of prey than human
possessions.
I was alerted to the possibility that Kid Chocolate might still
be alive by Nigel Collins, then editor of The Ring
magazine. I was trying to hustle him stories at the time. I was
23. This would probably have been the early part of 1988. I had
heard about the Kid Chocolate legend through the Jackie ‘Kid’
Berg story. Berg, a Londoner, had been the first to beat him, in
1930. Previously the dashing Chocolate, whose real name was
Eligio Sardinias-Montalbo, had been thought unbeatable. He was
also known by American sportswriters as the “Cuban Bon Bon” and
the “Kandy Kid.”
Here is a flavour of that time, not admirable,
though to be understood in the context of pervading prejudice.
It does show, however, the impact that the long-forgotten
Chocolate, born in a Havana slum in January 1910, had on
American fight circles. It comes from the New York Journal
in summer 1930, in the run-up to the Berg fight:
‘There’ll be a hot Chocolate around the old Berg
tonight, my lady. I mean the Keed hisself. The sliver of ebony
with the ivory smile known in the trade as Kid Chocolate came
down from Orangeburg yesterday grinning and chattering away in
his hybrid Spanish and ready to fight Jack Berg for who dropped
the watermelon. The Keed also has between 100-150 suits
depending on the state of his wardrobe at the time of the count;
a brown-skinned sweetheart waiting for him beneath the
sweltering palms, money in the bank and a good left hand.
Practically the world in a paper sack, you might say.”
Ludicrous and hackneyed, maybe, but others in
America took more constructive attention. Among them was the
adolescent Sugar Ray Robinson, who went on record later as
saying that he had never seen anyone box like Kid Chocolate
before. It was a slick, moving style backed up by a big right
hand and deterrent left hooks when necessary. Not jab-and-move,
exactly, but something different. Perhaps like the advent of
jazz. Workaday now, but revolutionary then. Robinson began
studying the Chocolate style immediately and the two later
became firm friends until Fidel Castro’s revolution of 1959,
which replaced the despised Battista regime and was soon to
leave Cuba cut adrift from professional boxing and boxers – if
not, of course, amateur ones – not to mention many other things
to this day.
Though Chocolate had a reputation as a dandy
womaniser – who was also fond of rum and cigarettes – by all
accounts he had a self-deprecating charm and stated that the
real pioneer of his style of boxing was his older stablemate,
Black Bill (real name Eladio Valdes), a top-notch flyweight who
fought and normally beat the best flyweights America had to
offer, in perhaps the golden age of that division. Black Bill is
said to have been among the first inventors of the art of
fighting off the ropes, earning him the sobriquet of “The Man Of
Rubber”.
Black Bill was born in 1905, five years before
Chocolate. Both were managed by Luis “Pincho” Guttierez and
trained by Moe Fleischer for most of their careers. In turn both
Black Bill and Chocolate would have been inspired by Kid Charol,
a middleweight from Sagna La Grande born in 1901 who fought from
1922-29. The Cuban public had been mesmerized by the spectacle
of the Jack Johnson-Jess Willard fight, and in Charol they had
their first home-grown hero. His fights were followed feverishly
in Cuba, even though Charol based himself mainly in Argentina
and would become known as “el gran rey sin corona” – the great
king without a crown.
Chocolate turned pro at the tail end of Charol’s career, in
December 1927, decisioning the previously unbeaten Johnny Cruz
over six rounds in Havana. Black Bill had already established
himself in the United States, and after a string of victories,
Chocolate followed him over and was an instant sensation. He
fought often, sometimes within days. No one could live with him
in his natural home of the featherweight division and he was
forced to take matches against heavier men. As previously
described here, his first defeat was against Berg at the Polo
Grounds in Harlem in August 1930 before a sold-out crowd. Berg
was 81-4-5 going in, Chocolate an advertised 162-0, although the
record books show his unbeaten record to be somewhat less
swollen. Berg was a natural light-welter, but had to come down a
few pounds to the contracted weight. His trainer, Ray Arcel,
attested that Berg had some trouble doing so.
It was a split decision, and there is a
photograph of the pair embracing after it was announced. I once
asked Berg, who became an improbable friend, what was said. Berg
replied: “I went over to him but he couldn’t talk. He was
weeping, see. So I just said, ‘Good fight, but unfortunately you
got licked’. I wanted to talk to him but I don’t think he liked
me much.”
Chocolate won versions of the world featherweight
and junior lightweight titles and was generally thought to have
been robbed when losing to Battling Battalino for the
featherweight crown. He lost to Berg again by split decision in
1932. As with Berg, his nemesis was Tony Canzonieri, who knocked
him out in two rounds in 1933, having earlier outpointed him by
split decision at Madison Square Garden in an event described in
the New York Times as “one of the noisiest and most disorderly
demonstrations this arena has ever witnessed, after one of the
greatest lightweight championship battles in ring annals.”
Again, Chocolate was giving away lumps of natural weight. Even
so, the more one pores over the reports, Canzoneri emerges as
one of the great pound-for-pound fighters of all time, and
clearly a real puncher. No one else did to Berg (whom Canzonieri
knocked out in three) or Chocolate what Canzoneri did to them.
It is measure of those times that Chocolate boxed again less
than two weeks after his knockout defeat by Canzoneri, beating
the highly regarded Frankie Klick inside seven rounds in
Philadelphia.
Chocolate boxed on until 1938 but did not go down
the usual route of decline. Indeed he was unbeaten in his last
30 fights. In his penultimate bout, back in Havana, he eked out
all his remaining genius to outpoint Filli Echevarria, a highly
talented young Basque fighter whom the Cubans had adopted as
their own. It was a fitting homecoming for Chocolate and a huge
event in Havana. He finished with an outstanding record of 135
wins (51 inside the distance), 10 losses and 6 draws, most
against top opposition.
What is remarkable about the latter stages of Chocolate’s record
is that in 1933 he had been diagnosed with syphilis – then an
incurable condition that could cause blindness at the least.
That he battled on so successfully in the ring suggests – for
all the louche baggage – that here was a man for whom the
discipline of boxing training was his crucible, a theatre in
which he could not let himself down.
Thereafter Chocolate opened a gym at his villa in
the exclusive Mirimar district of Havana, playing host to both
Robinson and Joe Louis among others. At first – it is often
forgotten – Castro’s regime was welcomed by the United States
administration. When things changed, why Chocolate did not join
the exodus from Cuba, which boxing-wise included Jose Napoles,
Luis Rodriguez, Jose Legra et al, is not clear. It was certainly
a decision he would live to regret.
Once I reached Havana I seconded two street kids, Emilio and
Miguel, to help me in my search among the ruined villas and
effluent gutters of this still beautiful but mournful place. One
day Miguel, an intentional Eddie Murphy look-alike who had just
got out of jail after trying to swim to Florida on an inner
tube, said he had found him. When, later, I returned home,
London seemed like a metropolis of spoiled children who did not
know how lucky they were. I could not get the smell of Havana –
rum and effluence – out of my nostrils. I sat down and wrote
this account of my meeting with Kid Chocolate. It seems
pointless to rewrite something written when memory was still
fresh:
‘The house stood at the corner of the square. We approached the
square on a wide, rutted avenue which was bordered by large
ornate villas like the house. Most of the houses appeared empty
and dilapidated, though their grand porches were evidence of a
salubrious past. There was a brisk, hot breeze from the coast,
and the silent streets now smelled faintly of fish.
The house, its shutters drawn and flaking, also appeared
unoccupied, but next door a woman was preparing lunch for her
children outside. She said no one had lived in the house for
years. She was afraid we’d wasted our journey.
But upon production of Kid Berg’s biography,
The Whitechapel Windmill, and a picture of Kid Chocolate,
she paused, then ordered us to wait and disappeared into the
house. When she returned, she said she was sorry but she had to
be careful. His last visitors had come about two years ago, from
the government. They were researching a book and took away all
his press cuttings. He was very fond of the cuttings. They
hadn’t returned them, and he was bitter. But he would see me if
I bought him a bottle of rum.
This having been obtained by Emilio, I found
myself some 10 minutes later standing before the big wooden door
of the house. The lock showed signs of having been forced and
the lower part of the door was clearly rotten, but there were
signs of activity within, and presently the door inched open to
reveal a barefooted, elderly man wearing a torn cotton shirt and
a pair of trousers held up by a piece of string. He was so
slight in build that at first his form was almost imperceptible
in the shadows of the hallway. Behind him were two framed
photographs, both nudes, of a beautiful young athlete. They were
dated 1931 and signed ‘Kid Chocolate’.
Kid Chocolate took the bottle of rum and gestured
to be given a cigarette. Grinning, he took us into a big room
furnished only with two chairs. The walls were dotted with
boxing mementoes, but some had fallen down and lay on the floor.
With the shutters drawn, the light was dim and the air was thick
and sour.
Rum was poured and cigarettes issued. Kid
Chocolate sat down on one of the chairs and opened his mouth to
speak. But rum trickled out instead through his cracked lips
stained with tobacco, like lava suddenly spewed from a long
extinct volcano. His voice, when it emerged, was a hoarse
whisper, each syllable accompanied by the widening of his eyes
and a grin, as if greeting each tortured sound like a
long-forgotten friend.
But the words did not make sense, even to Emilio.
And Kid Chocolate proffered his glass for more rum, groping with
his fingers at a cigarette which, an inch past its normal life
expectancy, still glowed between his teeth. Taking Berg’s book,
he ran his hands across its cover in slow, affectionate strokes.
The picture of Berg on the cover seemed to have a soothing
effect. Then he turned to the photographs in the book, of the
fight at the Polo Grounds, and a fleeting looked of surprising
composure and concentration crossed Kid Chocolate’s face, like
the shadow of a younger man.
I looked at Kid Chocolate’s hands. Like Jack’s,
they bore the legacy of his profession: the knuckles grotesquely
callused, the curling fingernails locked in the position of a
semi-cocked fist, to the extent that they resembled more the
talons of a bird of prey than human possessions.
“Ah…Jack…Kid…Berg,” Kid Chocolate said. “He was
the first one to beat me. We fought two times, and the judges
gave the decision to him both times.”
“You were unbeaten in 162 fights the first time,”
I ventured.
“Three hundred,” Kid Chocolate said. “Fidel
LaBarba was the best I fought, but Jack Kid Berg was the
bravest.”
“Who was the best boxer who ever lived?” I asked.
“Kid Charol,” he said, without hesitation.
There was more rum and the words began to slur
and stick in Kid Chocolate’s throat.
“I had many friends. Pincho, my manager…Jack Kid
Berg. He is a good friend. Every year Jack Kid Berg comes on the
boat from Miami just to see me…”
Then an extraordinary thing happened. Without
warning, Kid Chocolate began to clutch his stomach and howl like
a small boy.
“I’m hungry!” he shrieked. “I need my lunch!”
His pleas brought the woman running in from next
door, and also a gaunt man in middle age who said he was Kid
Chocolate’s son.
“I’m so hungry I could die!” cried Kid Chocolate,
convulsing with sobs.
But his son, if such he was, seemed more
interested in saving some rum for himself, and the woman, after
extracting two cigarettes from Kid Chocolate’s shirt pocket,
left with an assurance that she would fetch some food.
“You like the house?” said the son, grinning.
“Now he lives here alone, but it used to be a fine house. There
was a gymnasium on the first floor, and a ring in the yard.”
As Kid Chocolate sat slumped in his chair, a pool
of saliva forming on the cover of Kid Berg’s biography and a
huddle of cigarette butts collecting in the folds of his shirt,
the son led the way to other rooms: to Kid Chocolate’s bedroom
with its urine-stained mattress, half covered by a dirty sheet,
and a pile of human faeces on the floor; to the kitchen, where
an old fridge stood open and empty, by a table strewn with bones
and rusting tins of sardines being picked over by cockroaches;
to further rooms, shrouded in cobwebs, which had not been used,
perhaps even entered, for years.
From one such room the son emerged, beaming
proudly, with a brown bundle under his arm. “Feel it,” he said.
“Pure silk.” He unravelled it gingerly, as if in the presence of
a religious artefact, and laid it on the floor. It could have
been a moth-eaten old dressing-gown, but of course it wasn’t:
etched in white letters, transported without blemish, it seemed,
across the years, were the words CHOCOLATE KID.
More shrieks came from the front of the house,
but by the time we reached him Kid Chocolate had been sedated
with more rum and now sat with his head flopped forward, beside
the empty bottle and beneath the photographs of himself and Jack
Kid Berg, watched by the woman from next door and two youths
drawn in from the street by the commotion.
Through this small gathering marched the son,
who, gathering Kid Chocolate’s passive body in one arm, began to
squeeze it into the old boxing robe with the other. And everyone
else in the room suddenly felt the need to avert their eyes, for
the impression was that of someone dressing a corpse.’
Now, thinking back to that encounter, I don’t
believe Kid Chocolate could have been living like that for very
long. I don’t think it would have been humanly possible. He had
finally weakened. It was the last waltz. Indeed, some six weeks
later, he was dead. He is buried in Havana’s ‘cemetery for
significant Cubans’ – somewhat rich, given how insignificant he
was deemed during his post-retirement lifetime. Having said
that, maybe he was given help, but just drank it away, and there
was no more to give.
There is indeed something mournful about Cuba’s
obsession with boxing – along with baseball and chess, national
pastimes that seem somehow to be disguised expressions of
defiance against the straightjacket of dictatorship.
At least Kid Chocolate lived till the age of 78.
Kid Charol and Black Bill lived only until 28 and 27
respectively. Kid Charol died of tuberculosis, prompting his
manager to kill himself a few months later. A year before Black
Bill’s death, Chocolate fought a benefit bout for him at St
Nick’s arena. The New York Times reported that it was
“for Black Bill, who is now sightless.” Syphilis again. Black
Bill had become alcoholic, and took his life by his own hand in
a New York tenement.
The national poet of Cuba, Nicolas Guillen, wrote
a poem about them all, ‘Ode To a Boxer’:
But above all, I think
About Kid Charol, the great crownless king
And about Kid Chocolate, the great crowned king
And about Black Bill, with his ‘rubber’ nerve
No doubt it reads better in the original Spanish.
But “nerve” does seem central for a post-revolutionary Cuban to
survive. Upon his retirement from his garlanded career, Kid
Chocolate could not have known that his greatest challenge –
survival – was still to come. But, as usual, he more than went
the distance.
