On Saturday night, Regis Prograis will defend his WBC super lightweight championship in the Smoothie King Center.
But Prograis isn’t the first New Orleans-born boxer to fight for the 140-pound title in his hometown.
Ninety years ago, Tony Canzoneri took the belt from Battling Shaw before an approving crowd at Heinemann Park, adding it to the lightweight title he’d held since 1930.
Canzoneri’s victory on that night of May 21, 1933, was one of 137 he recorded in a remarkable career that began in 1925 when he was 16 and ended in 1939 when he was knocked out for the only time in 175 fights and retired at 31.
He won five titles at three weight levels, is one of just three boxers to simultaneously hold titles in more than one division and is a member of the International Boxing Hall of Fame and a charter inductee to the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame.
Canzoneri died of a heart attack in 1959 at age 51 in his adopted home of New York City, where he fought a record 28 times in Madison Square Garden. When Canzoneri died, the New York Times called him, “One of the great fighters in an outstanding boxing era.”
Canzoneri’s story is chronicled in a new book by local journalist Ramon Vargas, “Family, Gangsters and Champions,” being released in paperback and on Amazon Kindle on June 29.
“He literally fought everyone,” Vargas said. “That’s what sets him apart. There were guys on the way up, guys on the way down and lots of guys in their prime just like Tony was. He beat just about all of them.”
As Vargas puts in his title, this is more than a boxing story.
Born in Slidell to Sicilian immigrants who moved to New Orleans shortly afterward, his father, George, operated a meat market, first in Carrollton and then in Mid-City. Canzoneri got his boxing start at the Gayoso Athletic Club.
Like Prograis — whose family relocated to Houston when he was a teenager after Hurricane Katrina — it would take moving, in this case to Brooklyn, for Canzoneri’s talents to take full flight.
Under the guidance of Sammy Goldman, who had earlier managed New Orleanian Pete Herman to the bantamweight title, Canzoneri won his first title at age 19, defeating Benny Bass for the featherweight championship.
Canzoneri used the earnings from that fight to purchase a farm in upstate New York that the family turned into a country club that became an Italian haven, even attracting the likes of mob bosses Joe Bonano and Lucky Luciano.
He was one of the stars of the New York sports scene, attaching his name to a theater district restaurant and appearing in movies, TV and nightclubs after his retirement.
But, as Vargas points out, Canzoneri never forgot where he came from, always being identified as being a New Orleanian rather than a New Yorker.
He fought five times in New Orleans, never losing. But in his last hometown fight — a draw against local lightweight Nick Camarata in May 1939 — he was only a shell of his former self.
“The speed and stamina are gone,” wrote Item sports editor Fred Digby. “Only the spirit remains.”
Canzoneri would fight six more times after that, winning them all until the loss to Davis.
“That’s crazy,” Prograis, who at 34 has had 29 pro fights, said of Canzoneri’s record. “I can’t imagine doing that.”
It’s why Vargas rates Canzoneri the greatest fighter ever produced by the Crescent City — plus a worthy book subject.