Things didn't end well for mob-connected Billy Fox. From a 1960 Sports Illustrated article, excerpts of an interview conducted with Fox in 1956, link to full article below. In 1960 he ended up in a mental institution, he died in 1986 at the age of 59:
In recent years it has been hard to find Billy. Investigators for the Kefauver Committee searched for several months before learning that he is now a patient in a Long Island mental hospital. Fox, his doctors say, "is seriously ill," but the exact nature of his psychosis has not been determined. He is aware of the developments in Washington. He is "discouraged." He has no visitors.
I found Billy Fox in 1956 when he was living on the edges, desolate, vagrant, despairing. His only possessions, besides the soiled clothes he wore, were a pipe and a scrapbook. One rainy summer morning he told me the story of his life. We couldn't publish it then, without corroboration. Now that La Motta has spoken, we can.
"I was 17 when I turned pro. The way it happened was that Jimmy Reed says nobody wanted to fight me in the amateurs anymore. I said, 'Don't you think I'm going a little too fast?' He told me, 'Don't worry. I'll match you with guys in your own class. Just leave it to me.'
"I had about six or seven fights when they told me that Blinky Palermo was going to come around to the gym and watch me. I'd heard about Blinky, of course. I knew he had good connections. He could get you the fights because he knew the right people.
"Now, I'll tell you, looking backward, the fights I think where they might have laid down for me. First, there was the second Ossie Harris fight. I threw some punches in there, but I wasn't in the best condition. I remember I was behind on points. Blinky was in my corner. In the 10th he said, 'Throw a lot of punches. Throw a lot of punches.' It was then I thought it might be a fix. It's funny, I think I remember, I think I remember Blinky in the other guy's corner, in Harris' corner, before the 10th round started. I threw a lot, but I didn't think I had any power in my punches. I was surprised when he went down. 'Blinky,' I said afterwards, 'did you fix that fight?' 'No,' he said, 'don't pay those guys no mind who tells you things like that.' I believed him then. I mean I was slightly doubtful, if you know what I mean, but I believed him.
"Then there was Nate Bolden. Him I knocked out in two. That's another one I feel funny about. Now you knew, I can't be sure. It's just the way I feel. Sometimes you can tell. Bolden, I was a little su****ious of him. He was too elusive, dodging, ducking all the time, to get caught like I caught him. But I can't be sure. Then there was Joe Red****. He was tough in the gym, but I don't know. I don't think he was as serious as I was. He might have been dissipated. And, of course, that Larry Kellum. He couldn't beat me anyhow anyway. He was just fighting for money. He drank whisky all the time.
"Now about those 49 knockouts I was supposed to have had before the La Motta fight. Blinky made up six of them. Asked him why he did it. Blinky, he told me he was doing it for publicity. Said it would look better that way. He told me, 'You do the fighting, I'll do the managing.' That was his line, and I accepted it. Now, here are the fights I don't think I ever had. There was Jimmy Davenport. I don't remember him. Billy Smith, he's in there twice. I don't remember him, either. Who's this Kid Wolf? Johnny Furia, Wesley Hayes, I never heard of those guys.
"Before I went to camp Blinky tells me he's going to give the referee $1,000. He said he was going to beat La Motta to the punch and get the referee first. I said, 'Blinky, either get yourself a neutral referee or one you don't have to pay.' He said that was the way he was going to do it and that the $1,000 would come out of my share. I'm thinking how maybe he put the $1,000 in his pocket, that's what I'm thinking, because it looked like the referee was giving us equal breaks during the fight.
"Now, that La Motta was strong, but he was a little slow. I mean, if I had rassled him I couldn't have beat him. I had to keep him moving. To me it looked as though he was trying to knock me out. I couldn't budge the guy. Throwing fast jabs into his eyes and nose five at a time. Then he started protecting his face, and I started giving him shots to the body hard as I could. Felt the bone in there on one shot. Think I might have broken his rib. I knew it hurt by the expression on his face. It could be he wasn't trying. I don't know. I kept throwing all the time, though. I couldn't afford to get punched. My punching's my defense. I thought he was out to get me. I remember one time, though, that was kind of funny. He kind of caught me off balance, started to throw a punch, then he held back. Oh, there were boos from ringside. Somebody said 'boo,' just like that. I didn't know what La Motta was trying to do."
The cops on the corners
"Oh, they booed after the fight. On my way to Philly I stopped off at the corner and bought the papers. 'Fix, Fix,' said the headlines. I showed them to Jimmy Reed. Jimmy didn't say anything but 'Yeah, I see that.' He was a little disappointed but not as disappointed as I was. I was really brokenhearted. I asked Blinky. Blinky said no. He swore on his wife and children. He said, 'No, he didn't take no dive.' But I'd keep hearing guys talking about it in boarding houses where I lived and bowling alleys and places where I worked. If you keep hearing something over and over again, it must be right. Got where I used to go up to cops on corners on the street. I didn't tell them my name. I'd say, 'Say, officer, I want to ask you a question. Do you remember the La Motta-Fox fight?' They'd say yeah, they remember it. I'd say, 'Did La Motta take a dive?' The cops'd say, 'Yeah, La Motta took a dive in that fight.' And then I believed it.
"I still feel hurt. It affected my whole life. Made me feel despondent, downhearted, disgusted. I had such good intentions. I have a conscience, and it works on my mind. Why did he have to do it to me? Why couldn't he have done it to a guy who didn't give a damn?
"I used to brush my teeth twice a day, not only in the morning but in the night, too. Was a time there, I think it was three weeks, I didn't brush my teeth at all. Just didn't feel like doing anything, the way I felt. Didn't start back smoking until I read in the papers my fights were fixed. I mean, what's the use of my going through all that sacrifice when guys take advantage of you? So I started smoking. Might as well get some enjoyment out of life. You know how serious I'd been. First thing in the morning I'd get up, shadow-box. I'd shadow-box last thing at night. I wasn't no jitterbug ever. I was always very serious.
"I couldn't pull myself together after the La Motta fight. Thought I'd just wasted my time. For the second Gus [Lesnevich] fight I couldn't train right. Everything I did was halfhearted. I felt lonely and disgusted. I was stopped in the first round and that was it."
"I was living high then, buying expensive clothes, buying cars, selling them like a fool, riding around town having a ball. I married a girl from Pittsburgh in 1947. Bought a house in Philly and sold it back at a loss. I had two houses at one time. Most of my money was lost in cars and houses. Taxes I didn't figure, and Blinky, he had a big IOU list on me. When I broke up with him and went back to New York I was broke.
"Hymie Caplin had a lot of fights lined up but I didn't have time to train. Matches were too close together. I didn't know that Hymie had sickness and was looking to die. Greenberg was just trying to make him happy doing what he liked best before he died. Caplin had come out of prison. He was in there for swindling.
"Now, Jimmy Reed always let me have my way. He would help me, but he didn't rule my training. I read that certain book by Nat Fleischer, and I lived by it. Hymie, though, trained me different. He wanted me to be a boxer. Had me jumping up and down all the time, moving around. That hurt me. Instead of me moving in punching, I was waiting to block a punch. Way I fight, I never imagined the other guy hitting me. It was always me hitting the other guy.
"Had me eating different then, too. He had me eating lobsters, which I thought were awful, but I didn't want to hurt the guy's feelings. I think I had about 12 fights with Caplin and lost four or five of them. Got so I lost so many times I thought I'd rest and lay up a while. Then Caplin and I had an argument about training. I told him he was acting like he wanted me to lose. Right there I think I walked out on him. Greenberg said if I didn't fight for Caplin I didn't fight for nobody. I said, 'Give me my release.' Greenberg said, 'Meet me in the Pennsylvania commission office.' I think Greenberg called Ox DaGrosa [Pennsylvania boxing commissioner] before I came down, because when I got there they suspended me right there. Wouldn't let me fight, they said, because I might get hurt, which I think was something they cooked up between themselves. That was in 1950.
"While I was in the money my wife and I tried to have a baby, but she had two miscarriages. Now when I was broke and the payments on the house due, my money from the fights gone, out pops the baby. I tried to get my license back, to get someone interested in me. People said yeah, but I could see they weren't interested. I couldn't come back. If I only had some money, I could have gone out of town and fought under a different name or something, but I didn't have any money.
"I got a job in a factory. I was a porter in a restaurant. Then I couldn't find no jobs, and I had to set pins like I did when I was a kid back in Richmond. I couldn't contact Palermo or Greenberg to help me because I thought they were still mad at me. I didn't know that Caplin had died in a hospital or that Ox had died, either. I started playing the horses.
"My home life was mixed up, too. Couldn't be happy. Kid, Billy Jr., was born the same year I was suspended. Lack of money caused the arguments I had with my wife. Couldn't pull myself together. Said things to my wife I wouldn't have said otherwise. Finally we decided to separate. That was in 1952. She lives in Far Rockaway, in a project. I used to have a lot of fun with the kid."
Gus and embarrassment
"Walked the streets at night. Hung around bowling alleys that stayed open all night. Just didn't give a damn. One day I was setting pins in Rego Park, and who should come in but Gus. Didn't recognize him at first. I was never so embarrassed in all my life. He was very nice about it. Shook my hand. Wished me luck. He was always friendly to me, even when he knocked me out.
"I worked all over the city in the last four years—Long Island, Levittown, 42nd Street—setting pins. Now I'm not doing anything. You might just say I got fed up setting pins.
"I keep to myself these days. Maybe I shouldn't, but that's the way it is. Guys stare at me in the street. I don't know if it's the way I look, or maybe they remember who I was. When I had money I used to go round with the fellas. Now I don't even see my kid. Not because I don't want to but because every time I see him he says, 'Daddy, you bring me something?' I don't like to disappoint him. So afraid his mother's going to spoil him. He looks just like me.
"I've just got no appeal for living. Never had it in me, though, to commit suicide.
"I like to live near the park so I can go for walks."
In recent years it has been hard to find Billy. Investigators for the Kefauver Committee searched for several months before learning that he is now a patient in a Long Island mental hospital. Fox, his doctors say, "is seriously ill," but the exact nature of his psychosis has not been determined. He is aware of the developments in Washington. He is "discouraged." He has no visitors.
I found Billy Fox in 1956 when he was living on the edges, desolate, vagrant, despairing. His only possessions, besides the soiled clothes he wore, were a pipe and a scrapbook. One rainy summer morning he told me the story of his life. We couldn't publish it then, without corroboration. Now that La Motta has spoken, we can.
"I was 17 when I turned pro. The way it happened was that Jimmy Reed says nobody wanted to fight me in the amateurs anymore. I said, 'Don't you think I'm going a little too fast?' He told me, 'Don't worry. I'll match you with guys in your own class. Just leave it to me.'
"I had about six or seven fights when they told me that Blinky Palermo was going to come around to the gym and watch me. I'd heard about Blinky, of course. I knew he had good connections. He could get you the fights because he knew the right people.
"Now, I'll tell you, looking backward, the fights I think where they might have laid down for me. First, there was the second Ossie Harris fight. I threw some punches in there, but I wasn't in the best condition. I remember I was behind on points. Blinky was in my corner. In the 10th he said, 'Throw a lot of punches. Throw a lot of punches.' It was then I thought it might be a fix. It's funny, I think I remember, I think I remember Blinky in the other guy's corner, in Harris' corner, before the 10th round started. I threw a lot, but I didn't think I had any power in my punches. I was surprised when he went down. 'Blinky,' I said afterwards, 'did you fix that fight?' 'No,' he said, 'don't pay those guys no mind who tells you things like that.' I believed him then. I mean I was slightly doubtful, if you know what I mean, but I believed him.
"Then there was Nate Bolden. Him I knocked out in two. That's another one I feel funny about. Now you knew, I can't be sure. It's just the way I feel. Sometimes you can tell. Bolden, I was a little su****ious of him. He was too elusive, dodging, ducking all the time, to get caught like I caught him. But I can't be sure. Then there was Joe Red****. He was tough in the gym, but I don't know. I don't think he was as serious as I was. He might have been dissipated. And, of course, that Larry Kellum. He couldn't beat me anyhow anyway. He was just fighting for money. He drank whisky all the time.
"Now about those 49 knockouts I was supposed to have had before the La Motta fight. Blinky made up six of them. Asked him why he did it. Blinky, he told me he was doing it for publicity. Said it would look better that way. He told me, 'You do the fighting, I'll do the managing.' That was his line, and I accepted it. Now, here are the fights I don't think I ever had. There was Jimmy Davenport. I don't remember him. Billy Smith, he's in there twice. I don't remember him, either. Who's this Kid Wolf? Johnny Furia, Wesley Hayes, I never heard of those guys.
"Before I went to camp Blinky tells me he's going to give the referee $1,000. He said he was going to beat La Motta to the punch and get the referee first. I said, 'Blinky, either get yourself a neutral referee or one you don't have to pay.' He said that was the way he was going to do it and that the $1,000 would come out of my share. I'm thinking how maybe he put the $1,000 in his pocket, that's what I'm thinking, because it looked like the referee was giving us equal breaks during the fight.
"Now, that La Motta was strong, but he was a little slow. I mean, if I had rassled him I couldn't have beat him. I had to keep him moving. To me it looked as though he was trying to knock me out. I couldn't budge the guy. Throwing fast jabs into his eyes and nose five at a time. Then he started protecting his face, and I started giving him shots to the body hard as I could. Felt the bone in there on one shot. Think I might have broken his rib. I knew it hurt by the expression on his face. It could be he wasn't trying. I don't know. I kept throwing all the time, though. I couldn't afford to get punched. My punching's my defense. I thought he was out to get me. I remember one time, though, that was kind of funny. He kind of caught me off balance, started to throw a punch, then he held back. Oh, there were boos from ringside. Somebody said 'boo,' just like that. I didn't know what La Motta was trying to do."
The cops on the corners
"Oh, they booed after the fight. On my way to Philly I stopped off at the corner and bought the papers. 'Fix, Fix,' said the headlines. I showed them to Jimmy Reed. Jimmy didn't say anything but 'Yeah, I see that.' He was a little disappointed but not as disappointed as I was. I was really brokenhearted. I asked Blinky. Blinky said no. He swore on his wife and children. He said, 'No, he didn't take no dive.' But I'd keep hearing guys talking about it in boarding houses where I lived and bowling alleys and places where I worked. If you keep hearing something over and over again, it must be right. Got where I used to go up to cops on corners on the street. I didn't tell them my name. I'd say, 'Say, officer, I want to ask you a question. Do you remember the La Motta-Fox fight?' They'd say yeah, they remember it. I'd say, 'Did La Motta take a dive?' The cops'd say, 'Yeah, La Motta took a dive in that fight.' And then I believed it.
"I still feel hurt. It affected my whole life. Made me feel despondent, downhearted, disgusted. I had such good intentions. I have a conscience, and it works on my mind. Why did he have to do it to me? Why couldn't he have done it to a guy who didn't give a damn?
"I used to brush my teeth twice a day, not only in the morning but in the night, too. Was a time there, I think it was three weeks, I didn't brush my teeth at all. Just didn't feel like doing anything, the way I felt. Didn't start back smoking until I read in the papers my fights were fixed. I mean, what's the use of my going through all that sacrifice when guys take advantage of you? So I started smoking. Might as well get some enjoyment out of life. You know how serious I'd been. First thing in the morning I'd get up, shadow-box. I'd shadow-box last thing at night. I wasn't no jitterbug ever. I was always very serious.
"I couldn't pull myself together after the La Motta fight. Thought I'd just wasted my time. For the second Gus [Lesnevich] fight I couldn't train right. Everything I did was halfhearted. I felt lonely and disgusted. I was stopped in the first round and that was it."
"I was living high then, buying expensive clothes, buying cars, selling them like a fool, riding around town having a ball. I married a girl from Pittsburgh in 1947. Bought a house in Philly and sold it back at a loss. I had two houses at one time. Most of my money was lost in cars and houses. Taxes I didn't figure, and Blinky, he had a big IOU list on me. When I broke up with him and went back to New York I was broke.
"Hymie Caplin had a lot of fights lined up but I didn't have time to train. Matches were too close together. I didn't know that Hymie had sickness and was looking to die. Greenberg was just trying to make him happy doing what he liked best before he died. Caplin had come out of prison. He was in there for swindling.
"Now, Jimmy Reed always let me have my way. He would help me, but he didn't rule my training. I read that certain book by Nat Fleischer, and I lived by it. Hymie, though, trained me different. He wanted me to be a boxer. Had me jumping up and down all the time, moving around. That hurt me. Instead of me moving in punching, I was waiting to block a punch. Way I fight, I never imagined the other guy hitting me. It was always me hitting the other guy.
"Had me eating different then, too. He had me eating lobsters, which I thought were awful, but I didn't want to hurt the guy's feelings. I think I had about 12 fights with Caplin and lost four or five of them. Got so I lost so many times I thought I'd rest and lay up a while. Then Caplin and I had an argument about training. I told him he was acting like he wanted me to lose. Right there I think I walked out on him. Greenberg said if I didn't fight for Caplin I didn't fight for nobody. I said, 'Give me my release.' Greenberg said, 'Meet me in the Pennsylvania commission office.' I think Greenberg called Ox DaGrosa [Pennsylvania boxing commissioner] before I came down, because when I got there they suspended me right there. Wouldn't let me fight, they said, because I might get hurt, which I think was something they cooked up between themselves. That was in 1950.
"While I was in the money my wife and I tried to have a baby, but she had two miscarriages. Now when I was broke and the payments on the house due, my money from the fights gone, out pops the baby. I tried to get my license back, to get someone interested in me. People said yeah, but I could see they weren't interested. I couldn't come back. If I only had some money, I could have gone out of town and fought under a different name or something, but I didn't have any money.
"I got a job in a factory. I was a porter in a restaurant. Then I couldn't find no jobs, and I had to set pins like I did when I was a kid back in Richmond. I couldn't contact Palermo or Greenberg to help me because I thought they were still mad at me. I didn't know that Caplin had died in a hospital or that Ox had died, either. I started playing the horses.
"My home life was mixed up, too. Couldn't be happy. Kid, Billy Jr., was born the same year I was suspended. Lack of money caused the arguments I had with my wife. Couldn't pull myself together. Said things to my wife I wouldn't have said otherwise. Finally we decided to separate. That was in 1952. She lives in Far Rockaway, in a project. I used to have a lot of fun with the kid."
Gus and embarrassment
"Walked the streets at night. Hung around bowling alleys that stayed open all night. Just didn't give a damn. One day I was setting pins in Rego Park, and who should come in but Gus. Didn't recognize him at first. I was never so embarrassed in all my life. He was very nice about it. Shook my hand. Wished me luck. He was always friendly to me, even when he knocked me out.
"I worked all over the city in the last four years—Long Island, Levittown, 42nd Street—setting pins. Now I'm not doing anything. You might just say I got fed up setting pins.
"I keep to myself these days. Maybe I shouldn't, but that's the way it is. Guys stare at me in the street. I don't know if it's the way I look, or maybe they remember who I was. When I had money I used to go round with the fellas. Now I don't even see my kid. Not because I don't want to but because every time I see him he says, 'Daddy, you bring me something?' I don't like to disappoint him. So afraid his mother's going to spoil him. He looks just like me.
"I've just got no appeal for living. Never had it in me, though, to commit suicide.
"I like to live near the park so I can go for walks."
Keleneki
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