Still A Nice Guy, Long After All Those Boxing Matches

Nostalgia, they say, isn't what it used to be. Begging to differ, I got hold of George Chemeres, the fight manager, and we drove to Everett to visit Harry "Kid" Matthews.

You should know about Harry the Kid. In these days of megabuck stadiums, $8 million ballplayers, 55,000 and 70,000 crowds, Seattle was an empty lot for sports in the early '50s.

We had the triple-A baseball Rainiers, the moribund football Huskies, some crew and hydro races; for most of the year, the largest-paid sports event was UW football's spring-practice game.

And Billy Graham turned us down; we didn't even qualify for major-league religion.

Into this entertainment vacuum came Harry the Kid, a boxer. He was led by a Machiavellian hustler out of Fargo, N.D., and Chicago, Harry's new manager, Deacon Jack Hurley.

In Everett, we were sitting in Jack's Restaurant, a workingman's down-home hangout with the owner, Jack Sherin; with Harry Winder, Chemeres and Kid Matthews.

Together, Hurley and Matthews lit up the skies over Seattle, the Northwest and eventually New York. Once a stab-grab-and-apologize fighter, Matthews suddenly became a dramatic knockout artist, a contender for the heavyweight championship of the world. He weighed 173 pounds.

Altogether, he had 111 fights and won 104 of them. He beat four ex-champs and would-be champs, and put Tony Zale, the middleweight titleist, on the deck in a sparring match.

"Hurley slowed you down," I said to Harry. "He made a counter-puncher out of you."

"He taught me leverage," Harry said, "leverage and balance."

Harry is 75 now. Not a mark on him, no boxing injuries, a warm, easy, friendly man, living well in retirement. I gave him one of my books in which I had written that Harry Matthews "was one of the nicest athletes I ever knew."

In those days he was beautiful to watch. He could slip a punch, bend sideways, and counter with terrific force and leverage. I saw him put Rex Layne, a 210-pound heavyweight contender, on the canvas. He beat such ex-champions as Al Hostak and Ezzard Charles; he lost a close decision here in Seattle to Don Cockell, the 215-pound European champion.

He was in line for a match with Jersey Joe Walcott, the then-heavyweight champion. But first he had to beat Rocky Marciano, later to be perhaps boxing's greatest champion - unbeaten in 44 fights.

"Lemme tell you about the Marciano fight," Chemeres said. Harry laughed as George said, "Marciano was 200 pounds. If Harry had trained, got his weight down to 175, they'd have called the fight off. So we let him eat cakes and pies and ice cream, and when the weigh-in came, we put lead in his shoes."

Marciano, of course, was square-set, bull-strong, and he could hit like a wrecking ball. Harry out-boxed him in the first round at Madison Square Garden, but Rocky scored a knockout in the second.

"I always said it should have been a draw," Harry laughed. "I won the first round and Rocky won the second. I liked Rocky. We became good friends after that fight."

Chemeres, as Harry's second, had to peel Matthews off the canvas. With help, he led the wobbly fighter back to the dressing room.

"For the record," Chemeres said, "the guy who helped me get Harry out of there was Senator Warren G. Magnuson."

For several years, Hurley and Matthews dominated sports excitement in this town. They packed arenas here and everywhere. In today's TV markets, they'd have made millions.

Harry was an unlikely sports meteor in Seattle, always low-key, neighborly, patient, down-to-earth. Nothing to add except what I wrote before. He was one of the nicest athletes I ever knew.

Emmett Watson's column appears Tuesday in the Local News section of The Times.