Rocky Graziano - Amateur Career

Amateur Career

Eddie Cocco is the main reason Rocky started amateur boxing. Rocky heard from a couple of his friends about a tournament going on with a gold medal for the winner. Rocky entered under the name of "Joe Giuliani". He fought four matches and ended up winning the New York Metropolitan Amateur Athletic Union Boxing competition (1939). He sold the gold medal for $15 and decided that boxing was a good way to make cash.

Trainers who saw him fight thought he could make a real mark on boxing. A couple of weeks into amateur fighting, he was picked up for stealing from a school. He went to Coxsackie Correctional Facility, where he spent three weeks, with boyhood friend Jake LaMotta, and then he went on to the New York City Reformatory where he spent five months.

After Rocky got out of the Reformatory, he headed back to the gym to make money. There he met Eddie Cocco, who started his professional career. He entered the ring under the name of Robert Barber. A couple of weeks later Rocky was charged with a probation violation and sent back to reform school. There, he was charged for starting a minor riot and sent to Rikers Island.

When Rocky got out of jail he enlisted in the military but went after punching a captain. He escaped from Fort Dix in New Jersey and started his real boxing career under the name of "Rocky Graziano". He won his first couple of bouts. After gaining popularity under the name of Graziano, he was found by the military. After Graziano's fourth bout, he was called in to manager's office to speak with a couple of military personnel. Expecting to be prosecuted and sent back to the military or jail, Graziano fled. He then returned to the military a week later. He turned himself in, but instead of being punished he was pardoned and given the opportunity to fight under the army's aegis.