LAS VEGAS — The guy bobs and weaves, slipping around Joe Louis’ big left paw. Wisely, he’s leery of that left. It’s fixed in place for eternity, but the guy dodges it as if it were flesh and blood.
A few feet away, his pal snaps photographs with a small camera. Twenty yards away, the scene entrances sportsbook director Vinny Magliulo.
It’s early June 1996 at Caesars Palace. In several days, Oscar De La Hoya will beat Julio Cesar Chavez via a fourth-round TKO to claim the WBC super-lightweight belt.
What Magliulo witnesses trumps that main event.
The Joe Louis statue — carved from the same marble quarry in Carrara, Italy, that produced the immortal pose of David and the supports in the Pantheon in Rome and the Oslo Opera House — is about to claim another victim.
“The two guys were Hispanic,” Magliulo says today. “The main guy, at first, had his arm around the champ. Then he turns around, faces the statue and starts shadowboxing it.
“He’s going up and down. He gets inside. He stands up and, boom! Right on top of his head, he catches that left hand. He goes down. He’s out!”
His pal snaps away.
“His buddy is hysterical, still taking pictures. He thinks he’s acting.”
Magliulo howls as he relives each second:
“The guy taking photos gets down on one knee. ‘. . . Seis! Siete! Ocho!’ He’s counting his pal out! He gets to 10, he’s laughing and his buddy is out cold.
“I call a supervisor. They ring paramedics. There’s all this medical gear. The guy isn’t moving. Finally, he slowly awakes. ‘Wha . . . wha . . . ’ He gets up, all wobbly. A crowd starts cheering!”
With contagious laughter, Magliulo slaps the blue vinyl seat of the booth we occupy in the South Point sportsbook.
“I told [colleagues] that we have to call the Boxing Hall of Fame and tell them that we’ve got to adjust Joe Louis’ record,’’ he says. ‘‘He’s still knocking people out! Whatever his record is, we gotta put an asterisk by it.
“It’s happened so many times.”
Historic career
A Gaughan Gaming sportsbook director and vice president of corporate relations for the Las Vegas Dissemination Company today, Magliulo left New York for Vegas in 1978.
When he worked for Michael Gaughan at the Barbary Coast, Magliulo would cross the Strip to Caesars Palace and find a smiling Louis greeting customers and shaking hands.
“He was very gracious,” Magliulo says. “A nice man, just a classy guy. One of the greatest, if not the greatest, heavyweights of all time.”
Louis excelled in Chicago, winning Golden Gloves tournaments and launching his pro career. He’d become the “Brown Bomber” (66-3, 52 knockouts) and defend his heavyweight belt 25 consecutive times, a record for any weight class.
Last month marked the 75th anniversary of his second defeat, to Ezzard Charles in Yankee Stadium. He avenged his first, to Max Schmeling in 1936, by beating the German two years later. Rocky Marciano KO’d Louis in 1951 to cap his career.
Having befriended Irving “Ash” Resnick in World War II, Louis moved to Vegas in 1971 to be, at Resnick’s invitation, a greeter at Caesars, where Resnick was a vice president.
The statue, maybe 7½-feet tall and weighing more than two tons, was completed in 1979 and took up permanent residence in the Caesars book.
On April 11, 1981, Louis attended the Larry Holmes-Trevor Berbick heavyweight title bout at Caesars. Hours later, at 66, Louis died from cardiac arrest at Desert Springs Hospital.
His funeral was staged inside the Sports Pavilion behind Caesars. Louis’ coffin occupied the middle of the ring.
“With the ropes down,” Magliulo says. “People filed in, from outside and around the property, to pay their respects, as I did.”
Louis was buried, with full military honors, at Arlington National Cemetery. His record, Magliulo insists, must be reconfigured.
“Those numbers are too low,” he says, “given how many victories he’s had in the Caesars sportsbook.”
‘That’s beautiful’
Sure, Magliulo might be half-kidding. However, upon conducting some business recently near Caesars, I checked in on Carrara Joe and nearly saw another opponent laid to waste by that boulder of a left fist.
Magliulo hands me a glistening Caesars pamphlet dated June 23, 1993, when a ceremony showcased the second-day issuance of a 29-cent Joe Louis stamp.
Artist Thomas Blackshear used a photo of Louis’ famous pose, which the statue duplicates. Carrara Joe once stood near the hotel’s buffet, then outside a Bobby Flay restaurant.
Today, it resides to the left of an entryway to the semi-circular book.
During property refurbishments, the statue must be carefully moved and situated smartly on underground supports because that’s a basement down there.
For one renovation, to an avid fan’s dismay, it stood in an unsavory spot. A ticket writer told Magliulo a visitor wanted to speak with someone “in charge.” The guy must have been 6-6 and weighed 300 pounds.
He said, “I want to know who is responsible for putting a statue of the greatest boxer in history in a corner like he’s a dog? I don’t like it.”
“I told him my plan,” Magliulo says, “to put it ‘over there,’ that this was ‘temporary.’ He goes, “Temporary?! It shouldn’t be there for a minute!’ I respond, ‘You bring up a good point,’ and ask him about himself.
“He was a sparring partner, in [George] Foreman’s or [Mike] Tyson’s camp.”
He kept repeating, “This is wrong.” Magliulo assured the man that the statue would occupy a more public and well-lit place that very day. The guy slapped the counter.
“You can do that?”
“For you, I’ll do it.”
“Man, that’s beautiful.”
The man’s eyes became glassy. He asked Magliulo to snap a photo of him with the champ.
“I’m thinking he’ll strike a pose because he’s a boxer,” Magliulo says. “But he puts his arm around Joe and rests his head on a shoulder! Like a teddy bear, but he’s as big as the statue. I’m thinking, this is not really happening.
“He goes, ‘Thanks, buddy.’ Those kinds of stories you can’t make up.”
Mythical
The “Brown Bomber” remains available 24 hours a day for photo shoots. If patrons aren’t careful, they’ll add to Louis’ ever-increasing victory and knockout counts.
“Especially during fights,” Magliulo says. “Of course, we had so many great fights.”
He can’t recall Carrara Joe ever KO-ing a female.
“No,” Magliulo says as he grins. “Joe was always a gentleman.”
Some have sought a word with Carrara Joe.
“One guy walked up to Joe, with a beer in his hand, and had a chat,” Magliulo says. “He was nodding as if the statue were talking back!
“A few walked up with a ticket in their hand, just shaking their head, talking to the statue, crying about a tough lost wager. That statue is mythical. It has a ton of stories.”
Housekeeping, Magliulo says, keeps it immaculate:
“We didn’t have to have a spit bucket put there. But definitely, a few times, Joe made his mark, and the gloves had to be cleaned. A great tribute to a great fighter and an ambassador for Caesars Palace.”