Two Ton
  • Published: 15 November 2007
  • ISBN: 9781586421380
  • Imprint: Steerforth Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 208
  • RRP: $26.99
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Two Ton

One Night, One Fight -Tony Galento v. Joe Louis

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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” account of underdog boxer Tony Galento’s surprising 1939 victory against 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.
  • Published: 15 November 2007
  • ISBN: 9781586421380
  • Imprint: Steerforth Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 208
  • RRP: $26.99
Categories:
Share…

Praise for Two Ton

"A brisk and entertaining history that looks at the state of the nation in the 1930s.... Monninger artfully revives "'Two Ton Tony.'"
--Kirkus Reviews

"If one didn't know any better, they would think that the author actually lived during those times... Monninger glowlingly, vividly, and inspiringly recounts that 'a moment, and an era reminds us that sometimes it is through effort, exceeding expectations and beating the odds, that people can most enduringly define themselves.' This wonderful book will exceed any reader's expectations. Pulling you in from the first page of the preface, it never stops packing the same wallop that would have been contained in a follow-up left hook by Galento."
-- The Sweet Science

"Boxing's battles have occasioned some of the best writing any sport has ever inspired. Two Ton stands beside the work of such masters as W.C. Heinz on the shelf devoted to the most dangerous of games." -- Bill Littlefield, host, NPR's Only a Game

"Two Ton takes the reader back to an era when a rotund New Jersey barkeep could take on the world's greatest heavyweight and believe in his heart that he could win." --The Hartford Courant


"Joseph Monninger knocks me out with his new book Two Ton... The techniques he's honed in fiction carry over beautifully to this true story: spot-on descriptions, deftly drawn characters, sharp insights into human nature, and most of all, a master's sense of plot and structure." --Nashua Telegram