BOXING Glory days of Joey Carkido worth reliving

The boxer is stricken with Parkinson's Disease.
SPECIAL TO THE VINDICATOR
YOUNGSTOWN -- His face cleanly shaven to a neatly trimmed beard with every hair on his graying head combed perfectly in place, Joey Carkido sat in a wheelchair gazing intently at a movie on television.
A 16-year victim of Parkinson's Disease, he is in room 136 of the Ron Joy Nursing Home where he has been for the past two years. With attention span and memory limited, life is a day to day existence for the 73-year-old former pro boxer.
Carkido looks a lot younger than his 73 years and not much heavier than he was when he was the hardest working pugilist on proverbial "Jacob's Beach" in New York City during boxing's greatest era.
It was post World War II and the 16-year-old from Youngstown, after winning the local Golden Gloves Tournament, fibbed a little about his age and joined fellow Youngstowners Leonard Mancini, Red D'Amato and Tony Janiro in the Frankie "Jay" Jacobs boxing stable.
It was a natural for Carkido to fight because he was one of eight brothers who all at one time or another boxed in Tom Carney's Golden Gloves.
This was a natural during the Depression for a bunch of hard-nosed kids raised on Youngstown's lower southside, with the area of the Pyatt Street Market a playground for many sports.
27-3 record
After 30 amateur fights, most of them at the old Rayenwood Auditorium, with Carkido winning all but three of them, he decided to get paid for doing something he liked.
Carkido did really love to fight and in an era when there were only eight recognized weight divisions, with one champion for each, he was the busiest fighter in the largest fight market in the world.
First as a lightweight and then as a welterweight, Carkido, within an eight-year span, fought 100 bouts, winning 77.
You could name the arena in New York -- from Madison Square Garden to Parkway Arena, St. Nicholas Arena, Ridgewood Grove and Broadway Arena -- and Carkido was part of main events and a ton of supporting cards.
He fought five former world champions in Beau Jack, Charlie Fusari, Paddy DeMarco, Johnny Saxton and Lew Jenkins.
Carkido beat Beau Jack, getting a unanimous decision and lost a very close decision to Fusari, who said, "They must have a factory in Youngstown that turns out good fighters."
Rejections
While others turned Carkido down for bouts, he turned nobody away, taking on all comers, with 18 fights in 1945 that included him stopping eight opponents, 20 more in 1946, 13 in 1947 and 16 in 1948.
When he finally graduated to fighting eight- and 10-round semi-windups in the Garden, he became the star of the show.
In 1948 when he fought 17 times in the old Madison Square Garden, Carkido set a record for most bouts in one venue that still stands.
Carkido came home to Youngstown, married and had two children. From that bonding of nearly a half century ago with his wife, Jeanie, there are grandchildren.
Carkido was a construction worker for years, which he always facetiously claimed kept him in fighting shape.
He never forgot his boxing roots. For nearly 30 years he trained fighters, and one in particular, Tommy Kristian, became his prot & eacute;g & eacute;, both as an amateur and professional.
Kristian, along with members of his family, are frequent visitors at the Ron Joy home and Carkido's wife is there more than she is at the couple's longtime home on Sheridan Avenue.
A mention of a fighter or fight from yesteryear will at times have Carkido smiling, but it was the many blows from so many fights which have produced blood clots on his brain.