Early Life
Rocky Graziano was the son of a boxer known as 'Fighting Nick Bob', and was born in Brooklyn. He later moved to Little Italy in New York's Lower East Side. Graziano grew up as a street fighter and learned to look after himself before he could read or write. He spent years in reform school, jail, and Catholic protectories. His father, who got occasional work as a longshoreman, kept boxing gloves around the house and encouraged Graziano and his brothers to fight one another When Graziano was as young as three years of age, his father would make him and his brother Joe (who was three years older) fight almost every night in boxing gloves. Graziano was in trouble for much of his childhood.
At 18 he won the Metropolitan A.A.U. welterweight championship. Despite the fame and money that professional fighting seemed to offer, Graziano didn’t especially want to become a serious prize fighter. He didn’t like the discipline of training any more than he liked the discipline of school or, later, the Army.
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