Rumble along the Passaic leads to rude awakening

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 15, 2011

BY STEVE JANOSKI

The air is charged at the packed AmeriHealth Pavilion on fight night, especially among the followers of boxer Vinny O’Brien, the local kid from Morris County who’s seeking his third professional victory in as many bouts.

This show, smaller in nature, isn’t like a title match — if you’re here, you probably know one of the fighters. That alone changes the dynamics of watching the encounter, as your heart somersaults with each punch, and for six or 10 rounds, you feel that you share your fighter’s fate.When I get there, I find out that O’Brien’s fight, which was supposedly going to be televised nationwide on ESPN, has been made the "swing bout." This, more or less, means that he’ll go on whenever they need him to, which plays hell with both his mind and his adrenal glands.The night turns out to be a jumbled mess. One fight gets pulled at the last minute, and the arena’s lights fail in the middle of another, a la "Ocean’s Eleven."

The half-hour delay lets an already drunk crowd slip further into inebriation, and the atmosphere grows tense as time ticks by.

The redeeming quality is that Main Events has matched good boxers, and the action is ferocious. Several fights are near upsets, and knockdowns are plentiful.

Unfortunately, O’Brien somehow becomes the last bout of the night, and as the welterweight begins to carve his way toward the ring to a recording of a lion’s roar, the ESPN crews are rolling up the electrical cords and dragging out their camera booms.

O’Brien is adorned in white trunks with a blue and red stripe down the side; his opponent, a Puerto Rican from Philadelphia named Rafael Montalvo, wears trunks decorated with the Puerto Rican flag.

The first round starts slowly as both fighters feel each other out. O’Brien takes some punches; he hasn’t yet learned to slip the jab. Brief, sharp exchanges seem to favor Montalvo, but no one lands anything of consequence.

The intensity rises in the second round. Initially they’re content to box from a distance, but eventually they close on each other, and Montalvo lands a hard left hook and a straight right that wobbles O’Brien.

They separate briefly but engage again, two ships of the line going volley for volley. Montalvo lands another damaging blow but, as he comes in, O’Brien comes back with a magnificent left hook that whips the Puerto Rican’s head around and drops him to the canvas. For a moment I think, "Vin’s done it again."

But Montalvo is different. He rises quickly and is on his toes, dancing, nodding his head to referee Earl Morton as he takes an eight count.

O’Brien thinks there’s blood in the water, and he approaches looking to land the Sunday punch that will send Montalvo across the Delaware in shame.

In his eagerness, though, he leaves himself open, and gets caught with a momentous hook that sends him to the ground, sprawling backward against the ropes.

He rises quickly as well, but he’s got the legs of a newborn calf and can’t seem to gain his balance, and I know right then that the fight could be, maybe should be, called.

Morton lets it continue however, and gives him a standing eight count that finishes out the round. The bell sounds, and O’Brien staggers back to his corner as his cutman flings water onto his face from a sponge and his trainer, Lou Esa, tries to bring him back to the world of the living.

Montalvo begins to take over in the third. He’s landing crisp jabs that swell O’Brien’s face and heavy hooks that begin to rob him of his faculties, but the brawler never takes a backward step — he’s determined to a fault now even though it’s clear that he’s in with a slicker, more experienced fighter.


He spends the end of the third and the start of the fourth round trying to line up a knockout punch that never comes; blood is coursing down his cheeks and his mop of black hair is sweat soaked and wild.

In the final round O’Brien takes a beating that would level most men. He’s still swinging and landing the occasional blow, but Montalvo’s hooks are too devastating, and when one catches him on the temple, he stumbles backward and falls into the ropes.

Before he rises, Morton waves the bout off. O’Brien was right – there will be no decision here tonight… but he is the one who has been knocked out.

E-mail: janoski@northjersey.com

http://www.northjersey.com/sports/123974744_Rumble_along_the_Passaic_leads_to_rude_awakening.html

Protest organizers speak on Vick appearance in Butler

SUNDAY, JUNE 12, 2011

BY STEVE JANOSKI
STAFF WRITER

Plans continue to take shape for the protest that's scheduled to coincide with Michael Vick's appearance at Main Street's Butler Sports Cards, with animal rights activists vowing to send the Philadelphia Eagles quarterback "a clear message" that he's not wanted in Butler.
The signing will take place on Sunday, June 19, and store owner Jeff Robbins expects that it will draw somewhere around 200 people, all of whom will be paying for the chance to procure the resurgent quarterback's signature.

The event has also drawn the attention of local animal rights activists, many of whom are planning to take to the street to let Vick know that they haven't forgotten his past sins.

Tracey Bradshaw, 36, is a Rockaway native and one of the organizers of the protest. She said that the activists have "no respect for Vick" and are "offended by the fact that he's coming around our area."

Bradshaw said that even though laws aren't as stringent for killers of dogs as they are for killers of humans, "a murderer is a murderer," and Vick coming to Butler is akin to any other murderer "coming to town and signing autographs."

Another of the protest's organizers, Maria Fortunato, 42, of Wayne, said that it was "vile" that he was able to continue on with his career by "doing a little bit of time, saying, 'I'm sorry,' and moving on."

Fortunato said that the goal of the protest is to keep Vick's name in the public eye and remind people of his crimes.

"The dogs don't have a voice," she said. "We need to be their voices and remind people of what he actually did."

Bradshaw said that she hopes that the protest is seen as a cry for stricter laws on animal abuse and reaches the ears of legislators.

"We want to make our point known that we need stricter laws and penalties," she said.

Candace Bright, founder of the foster service Gentle Giants Inc. of Wayne, works with giant breed dogs, many of which have been used as bait dogs in dogfighting operations.

She said that she wants to help remind the American public that animal rights people don't support Vick, and that he is not someone to be idolized even though he is a star athlete.

"I think that he is not a good figure for kids to look up to," she said.

None of the women are content with the 18-month jail sentence that Vick served. Fortunato said he should be in prison for life for what he did, and Bradshaw said that when a "human murders another human intentionally, they spend a lot longer in jail than a year and a half."

Roughly 100 people are expected to show up for the protest, which will start around noon and take place in a cordoned-off section of parking spots across the street from the card shop.

Many of those involved, including Bradshaw and Fortunato, are involved in animal rescue in one way or another and have called their impromptu group "Justice for the Vicktory Dogs."

They will carry signs and posters as well as a Vick piñata that, instead of being bashed open, will serve as a fund-raising tool. Different sums of money will be inserted through various holes cut into the dummy.

At the end of the rally, the money will be sent to the organization "Dogs Deserve Better," which is seeking to buy the Virginia property that once housed Vick's now infamous "Bad Newz Kennels."

Their plan, Bradshaw said, is to turn it into an animal sanctuary.

There is also word that a counter-protest is being planned against the animal rights people, and Bradshaw said they've "gotten quite aggressive" toward her group. Capt. Ciro Chimento, spokesman for the ButlerPolice Department, said that there will be a law-enforcement presence in the area to accommodate the protestors and counter-protestors, should they show up.

However, the loose organizational structure of the protests has given police problems in calculating exactly how many people to expect.

"We do have some traffic diversions scheduled in the event that it gets to those (higher) numbers of people, but we really don't know," he said.

Butler police are working closely with the Morris County Prosecutor's Office and surrounding jurisdictions to gather intelligence and plan for the day, said Chimento.

"We're not expecting any real problems at this point," he said. "We're planning for the worst and hoping for the best… But we're hoping for a very peaceful assembly.

An unredeemable crime?

It may be possible that in some people's eyes, the quarterback will never be forgiven for what he's done, even though he continues to speak at various schools about the evils of dogfighting as part of his community service program.

Recently, he spoke out against an app for Android phones called "Dog Wars," which reportedly allowed users to train and fight virtual dogs against each other. The app has since been pulled.

Fortunato said that maybe she would believe he changed if he takes on a proactive stance toward saving animals after his probation period is over, such as setting up a foundation or injecting money into local shelters in Philadelphia. Even then, she's not sure.

"I don't know if there's anything he could ever do," she said. "But certainly walking the walk instead of just talking out of his piehole would be a start. I wouldn't want him living next to me, just like I wouldn't want a pedophile or murderer living next to me."

Bradshaw said that he "hasn't shown one ounce of remorse" for the crimes, while Bright said that he would have to continue his public speaking and anti-dogfighting awareness campaign.

"He would have to make some major, major amends before I said, 'OK, he's rehabilitated,'" she said.

The organizers are aware of what people are saying— Bright said she has been called a racist and a Nazi, and they've all been subject to various threats over the past weeks in one way or another.

They're willing to take it though.

"A lot of people think that we're just crazy, to just let him be," said Fortunato. "But I don't know how people can just bypass the extreme way he did things."

E-mail: janoski@northjersey.com

Iron willed in the Ironbound

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1, 2011

JANOSKI, STEVE

It's raining heavily in Newark as the final press conference is about to get under way. It's two days before the fight, and the promoters, media, and boxers are gathered on the second floor of the Brick City Bar and Grill in Newark, a restaurant and bar with black hardwood floors and worn brick walls that sits next to the Prudential Center.

Vinny O'Brien sits at a long line of tables against the wall dressed in a black button down shirt and black pants, a huge grilled chicken salad in front of him, and we discuss a few upcoming pro fights before I steal off to sneak some of the bar's offerings.The smallish size of the press conference reflects the humble nature of the show. Kathy Duva, CEO of the promotional company Main Events, later says bluntly that this ticket, which features about a half-dozen lesser known fighters, is "a club show in the truest sense."

"That's what's really nice about a show like this," she says. "We can concentrate on making every single fight matter… and every fight that's going to be on the undercard really matters."

It's clichéd and inaccurate to call a press conference the calm before the storm — it's much more like putting a dozen piranhas in a tank and asking them to play nice for an hour. While it's not always a scene out of "Rocky IV," there is a measured sense of restraint emanating from the men who have trained for months with the singular purpose of collapsing each other's faces.

O'Brien's opponent, a Puerto Rican from Philadelphia named Rafael Montalvo, is not here. But O'Brien is clearly as at home in front of the press's flashing lights as he is in the gym.

As the conference starts, he sits at the end of a long black table filled with fighters, their names printed on cards in front of them. Duva sits in the middle and stands to give her opening remarks and introduce the boxers.

When she gets to O'Brien, a broad smile comes across her face as she talks about the kid from East Hanover and the hordes of fans he's drawn in his first two fights.

"He's truly an individual in every way, and watching him fight is just the most fun I can imagine," she says. "Between Vinny and his crowd, the way they interact… it's worth the price of admission just to see that."

O'Brien gives a standard fighter's statement about how he's excited for the fight and comes to win, but a brief remark hints that overall, he's as concerned with giving people their money's worth as he is with being victorious.

"I come to fight," he says. "So every time people come to see me and watch me fight, I can guarantee that I'm going to go out there and put on a show."

Ironically, the willingness to fight, to put on a spectacle, has been sorely lacking in boxing these days, and it's a refreshing statement, small as it may be, from a fighter who has yet to prove himself on the grand stage.

"You keep selling tickets like that and you'll be running the whole press conference one of these days," quips Duva.

O'Brien is laid back and amiable after the conference. He says that he feels "like a kid before Christmas" and that the only thing better than fight week is fight day.

"When I wake up, I got a big smile on my face," he says.

He's had a good camp, he says, and he can't wait to just get into the ring, and whatever nervousness he feels just feeds the internal fire that swirls in the stomach of a warrior before he goes into the fray.

"At the end of the day, you can talk about what you want to do in this sport, but I gotta take care of what I gotta take care of in the ring, and let the pieces fall where they may," he says.

One thing O'Brien doesn't want, however, is to let the fight go to the scorecards. He's got devastating one-punch power, and he means to use it. He doesn't want any part of a decision.

"Every time I fight, I go out there for a knockout," he says. "I'm not going out there to decision and put it in the judges' hands. I go out to knock out and end it early."

He's got a good feeling though, and he knows that sometimes, you just have to let things happen.

"The one thing I do know is 'Don't force anything.' In life, in boxing, whatever, you don't force anything, so I know that (the knockout) will come," he says.

Later on, we find out that his bout may not be televised on ESPN as previously advertised, but he's unfazed.

"If the cameras are on, the cameras aren't on, I don't really care," he says.

No matter what the network tells him, though, the cameras are always rolling. And the pressure, with the fight looming, is intensifying.

E-mail: janoski@northjersey.com

http://www.northjersey.com/sports/122998243_Iron_willed_in_the_Ironbound.html?c=y&page=1

Michael Vick appearance at Butler sports card store draws activists ire

THURSDAY, MAY 26, 2011

BY STEVE JANOSKI

Staff  Writer

If throngs of animal rights activists line up outside of Main Street's Butler Sport Cards doors to protest Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Michael Vick's autograph signing on June 19, store owner Jeff Robbins said he'll be ready for it.

Armed security guards will be on site, and the ButlerPolice Department has been made aware of the potential for problems that might stem from the controversial football player's appearance; already, opponents have created Facebook groups that are trying to "spread the word" about the signing and attempt to gather protesters.



Vick, who is among the NFL's elite quarterbacks, accepted a plea deal in 2007 in relation to running a dog fighting ring that put him in jail for just over 18 months.

Since his release in 2009, the quarterback has clawed his way off of the bench and back to prominence, and is now the Eagles' leader and franchise player. Some fans say that between the prison sentence and his restart at the bottom, he's paid his debt to society.

To others, specifically dog owners or animal rights activists, Vick's debt will never be repaid.

"Michael Vick has a lot of audacity to show up in the good state of New Jersey to make more money than he already has at an autograph signing!" cries the Facebook page "Sick Vick the Dog Abuser Coming toButler NJ." "If you have waited for your chance to let Michael Vick know what you think, this will be your opportunity to have your voice heard!"

About 50 people have replied that they'll be "attending" the protest.

To Robbins, however, it's just business, even if he thinks what Vick did was wrong.

"He's the most desired autograph in all of sports...and Michael Vick has fans, period," he said.

Robbins said that he respects the right of the people to protest, and agrees with them that what Vick did was "100 percent wrong," but he's got the right to have Vick come to his store and sign autographs.

"This is what I do for a living, this is how I pay my bills and support my family," he said. "Whether it's Vick, or Eli Manning, or any other player in any sport, what they do in their personal life is what they do in their personal life. It's not my concern, and if a player is desired...that's what I'm paid to do."

Robbins said that he's done numerous signings with Vick already, and that to him, it's clear that the 30-year-old star has matured far past what he was.

"In my eyes, he's a different person. He never used to want to be bothered, but now he'll stand there and take pictures with his fans, talk with his fans...he's not doing the wrong things that he used to do," he said.

Robbins, who is a season-ticket holder and diehard New York Giants fan, has already had Mario Manningham in for an autograph session, and plans on having Giants running back Danny Ware in store on June 3.

However, he has to pertain to the fan base, and there are a lot of Eagles fans. He expects around 200 people to come in on that Sunday afternoon for autographs on helmets, photos, and jerseys. Tickets for the event start at $90.

There will always be people who hate Vick for what he did, and that's fine, Robbins said. He even applauded the animal rights activists for caring as deeply as they do about their cause, but he is worried that someone might take things too far, especially when attempting to interrupt the signing.



"(The protestors) think they're going to block the entrance to my store, and stand on the sidewalk... theButler Police have said that cannot and will not happen," he said.

He's heard enough of it from the countless phone calls he's been getting at his business, on his cell phone, and at home-but there's "not one chance in hell" that he's going to cancel the appearance.

"I have people mailing things in from California to be signed...I'm here to make my customers happy, not to argue with protestors," he said.

Robbins said that it's also likely that he's going to donate 5 percent of the total made from the session to charity, although he isn't sure which one yet. It may end up being an animal rights group.

"These people will never forgive Michael Vick, and that's their opinion," he said. "In my eyes, he changed, and everybody deserves a second chance."

Whether local animal rights activists will look at it the same way remains to be seen.

E-mail: janoski@northjersey.com

Young fighter's quest for a lasting legacy

By Steve Janoski

In the back of what looks like a typical general fitness gym in Whippany sits an Olympic size boxing ring and a long row of heavy bags that sway and flutter like the ocean breakers over the rippled hardwood floor.


It’s here, among the smell of sweat and old hand wraps, that athletes are put through sweltering torture to the snapping rhythms of punches hitting leather meant to forge them into fighters.

One man here has risen a bit faster than the rest, though, and when Final Round Boxing’s pride and joy gets in the ring and goes to work, the whole gym stops and takes notice.

At 24 years old, he’s a relative newcomer to a sport where most champions train from their first steps, but as soon as he steps through the ring ropes, it becomes undeniable that the kid’s got a natural aptitude for violence; as he shadowboxes, his body hurls around like a gyroscope in a brutal ballet designed to devastate the hardiest of men.

Vinny O’Brien, lean and chiseled with slicked-back black hair, started boxing around three years ago and immediately showed his aptitude in the squared circle: a finalist in the 2008 NJ Golden Gloves tournament, he won the 141 pound title in the same tournament in 2010.

This Friday night, the East Hanover native will return to the Prudential Center in Newark for his third professional fight in the hopes of staying undefeated as he tries to turn a fledgling pro career into something bigger — much bigger.

A bell signals the end of the round, and his trainer, Lou Esa, steps between the ropes himself to work the focus mitts for the young welterweight nicknamed “The Lion.”

In another life, the mammoth 6 foot 6 inch Esa, 59, was a professional heavyweight who fought on Muhammad Ali’s undercards. With blonde hair and a huge smile, he talks with the swaggering confidence of one who’s knocked out 16 men.

He trains O’Brien every day, and calls him a “work in progress” whose maniacal attitude towards training is proving to be his finest asset.

“He’s only had eight amateur fights and two pro fights…but he works every day like it’s his last and I love that about him,” said Esa.

With every session he improves, the trainer says: increased movement, more powerful punches, the development of a left hook that can shake a building.

Pop, pop….pop, pop, bang goes the sweet cadence as combination after combination tear into the pads. Esa shouts encouragement as O’Brien throws a right hand to his chest.

“Yea, you stopped his heart with that one!” he yells.

A step to the side, and another right hand spits out from the furious dynamo, another yell, and I have no envy for his opponent.

“You hit somebody with that and its goodnight Irene!” Esa yells through his goatee.

O’Brien’s style is electrifying— he’s got no problem taking a punch to land one, and when he takes one on the chin, it’s like pulling the cord on a 5 foot 9 inch chainsaw.

He’s also white, which in boxing is nothing but a blessing; if you’re a good fighter, you can be transformed into the next “Great White Hope” overnight. If you happen to be a great fighter, it doesn’t matter what color your skin is— the money is out there.

“You’re in boxing, you could get lucky and make millions…I mean, you could set your kids up for life if you worked hard,” Esa tells me later.

He says that his fighter has a style that will fashion an iron bond between he and his fans reminiscent of the late Arturo Gatti, anotherNew Jerseynative andAtlantic Cityfavorite known for his die-hard following.

Friday’s fight will be broadcast nationally on ESPN’s “Friday Night Fights,” so if there’s any time to create that bond, it’s now.

O’Brien wants it just the same, because if it doesn’t work out in boxing….well, in his words, “It’s gotta work out.”

“There’s no backup plan. This is Plan A, Plan B, Plan C…this is everything,” he says.

It’s not an easy road to choose—littered with empty promises, shattered careers, and the corpses of good men, it’s known as a meat grinder that will use up the weak and lay low the strong.

But Esa knows the siren song of the villainous swine, and says he laid it bare to O’Brien from the first meeting.

“I was there, I been there, I done that,” he says. “I told him, ‘Look, they’re gonna’ offer you the world, and you gotta’ make the decision: it’s either you do it the right way, or we don’t do it,’ and he says, ‘No Lou, I promise I’ll listen.’”

Esa shakes his head as he relates stories about fighters from his generation who are so punch drunk that they can barely talk, or who lost everything on their journey down the rocky road.

“I won’t let that happen to (Vinny),” Esa says, shaking his head.“No matter what.”

E-mail: janoski@northjersey.com

http://www.northjersey.com/sports/122209103_Young_fighter_s_quest_for_a_lasting_legacy.html?c=y&page=1

Veteran's gravestone finally commemorates black Civil War soldier'sservice

By Steve Janoski

Staff Writer

On a spring day in April 1898, the members of the Bloomingdale Coronet Band gathered in the cemetery of the First Reformed Church of Pompton Plains to perform a final tribute to one of their own, a black Civil War veteran who played the kettle drum and was considered something of an honorary member of the local group.


It has been 113 years since that day. But on Saturday, May 7, members of the band visited the gravesite once again, this time to help dedicate a veteran’s headstone that finally commemorates the military service of their musical forbear during the nation’s greatest period of tribulation and internal strife.

The soldier’s name is Charles “Tully” Schuyler, and local officials have searched far and wide to piece together as much information as they can on what was surely an interesting life.

When Schuyler was buried in the last years of the 19th century, Councilman Ed Engelbart said, there was no money to buy him a gravestone. As a result, he lay in an unmarked grave with no one knowing who he was or what he’d lived through until a member of the Pequannock Historic District Commission (HDC) came upon his obituary in an old copy of the Butler Argus.

That member, Dave Wisneski, said he was helping his wife do research on local history for her mas

ter’s degree when he came upon the colorful obituary, which described Schuyler’s love of the band.

Wisneski had an immediate interest in Schuyler’s story. Besides being in the HDC, Wisneski also has been a trombone player in the Coronet Band for the past 22 years, and he did further research into Schuyler’s life, using census records and the website ancestry.com to track backward through the years.

At the same time, Engelbart contacted Congressman Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-11) and asked him for help in procuring information about Schuyler from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, as well as for assistance in securing a veteran’s headstone.

In the past few months, large chunks of the soldier’s past have been filled in through these combined efforts and have painted a picture of the life of a former slave who fought for theUnion.

Schuyler’s life

The HDC issued a pamphlet during the dedication of the veteran’s stone that states that Schuyler is believed to have been born inPassaicCountyin 1833.

Engelbart said that Schuyler appears to have been a slave who was freed;New Jerseywas slow to abolish the practice and didn’t do so officially until 1846.

In 1850, Schuyler was listed in theU.S.census as being one of the “free” residents of the township, and by 1860, he seems to have been living inBerry’s Hotel, which was acrossJackson Avenuefrom Jones Hardware.

Wisneski said that Schuyler lived there along with 15 other people, a mixture of both couples and single individuals. That building burned down during World War I when lightning struck it, and is now the site of the PNC Bank.

In January 1864, as the Union armies in the East were set to begin their most vicious series of battles, Schuyler left his wife, Hannah, and their 2-year-old child Francis at home to enlist with Company K of the First New Jersey, and was assigned the position of “Colored Cook.”

At 30 years old, Schuyler stood at just 5 foot 3 inches tall and was said to have a black complexion and black eyes, Engelbart said.

“Though African-Americans were frequently given low-level jobs, they also could get caught up in combat very, very quickly,” Engelbart said. “And if you were in the Union Army as an African-American, you were putting yourself at tremendous risk.”

Little is known about the particulars of his service, except that he was with the Army of the Potomac while it fought through General Ulysses S. Grant’s “Overland Campaign,” the final, ferocious advance onRichmondintended to pin down Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.

It was a bloody time for the army— in the course of two months, from the start of May to the end of June in 1864, the Union Army racked up 55,000 casualties.

Schuyler was nearly among these, as he was listed “missing” at some point during the spring, but no information remains on what was surely a grueling period of being lost in the slaveholding South before he made his way back to the army.

He eventually returned to the army and finished out his tenure, being mustered out with an honorable discharge in June 1865.

Schuyler would have two more children, one in 1867 and another in 1870, and was baptized himself at the First Reformed Church in 1867.

Wisneski said that the 1870 Census recorded Schuyler as living in the Bloomingdale area and working as a “laborer/handyman.”

He was also playing as a drum major in the Bloomingdale Coronet Band, which was founded in 1884, and although he was not an official member per se, records say he was often in rehearsals and in parades as a drummer.

Schuyler was undoubtedly one of the few blacks in the area and likely the only one in the band at that time, but Wisneski said that he figures Schuyler was a local character who band members knew and let join.

“They seem to have liked and respected him,” Wisneski said. “If he wasn’t an official member, he was definitely ‘part of the gang’ so to speak.”

When Schuyler died on April 21, 1898, the band attended his funeral and played “several appropriate selections,” his obituary noted.

A headstone a century in the making

On May 7, several parts of the community came together to mark the dedication of the headstone to Schuyler, from the First Reformed Church to American Legion Post 242 to the HDC to the Bloomingdale Coronet Band themselves.

Englebart said that Frelinghuysen was able to get the process of securing a stone moving and that within three months of Engelbart’s initial calls, the congressman had the stone delivered.

Frelinghuysen also presented a flag that flew over the U.S. Capitol to the church in celebration of its own 275th anniversary this year.

“Everything clicked with this. I couldn’t believe it,” Engelbart said.

About 20 residents turned out to see the dedication on the warm spring afternoon, and comments were made by Master of Ceremonies Lou Hebert of American Legion Post 242 and Engelbart about the significance of the event.

It was important, Engelbart said, to recognize this man who served in the Civil War with a veteran’s stone to acknowledge his existence and to carve out his own piece of the cemetery.

“It was these men who volunteered and joined who saved theUnion,” he said.

Wisneski agreed, saying that without a stone, it feels like Schuyler was completely forgotten.

“He was one case where nobody knew anything about him,” he said.

Wisneski said that he thinks that having about 20 members of the Bloomingdale Coronet Band play the dedication is something that Schuyler himself would have enjoyed.

“I think he’d especially like the fact that it was still there all these years later, that the group’s still there and able to play,” he said.

E-mail: janoski@northjersey.com

Destruction of Mosley proves Mayweather-Pacquiao is the only fight left

By Steve Janoski: When Marvin Hagler and John Mugabi fought on March 10, 1986, one man watched the match from ringside, drinking beer where the celebrities sit but still managing to hold an acute sense of interest in the bout’s result.

Hagler won the grand battle in the eleventh with a series of right hands that floored the man they called the “The Beast,” but that one observer saw that something had changed.

Later on at a post-fight party, wrote boxing scribe George Kimball, the man sat alone thinking, until he suddenly turned to actor Michael J. Fox and said, “Know what? I can beat this guy.”

That man was Sugar Ray Leonard, and the world remembers what he would go on to accomplish on one April night just over a year later.

Last night, as Manny Pacquiao utterly dominated the once-great Shane Mosley in a 12 round unanimous decision, another man was assuredly watching the fight with that same acute sense of interest. Maybe, if he was watching closely, he may have said to himself, “Know what? I can beat this guy.”

It wasn’t the career defining performance that some of us thought Pacquiao was going to have, but that’s all right— he’s had enough of those.

It was a near shutout though, a strong performance against one of the sport’s finest boxers— aged though he may be— and the latest in a string of fights that has seen the southpaw from General Santos City take the heart from his larger opponents with the strength of his will and the power of his left hand.

For Mosley, it looked like the last gasp of a crumbling legend, a final embarrassment in a career that should have ended after the Mayweather fight last spring. No fighter of Mosley’s caliber should subject themselves to the mortification of being seen as a tired 39-year-old being chased around the ring by a younger, angrier brawler, unable to pull the trigger and doing little more than desperately avoiding a knockout loss.

The game is over for Mosley, and it’s time to ring the final bell on a career that’s been as fine as any in boxing can be.

On the other end, Pacquiao, though dominant, was far from spectacular last night. Although some of this may be owed to Mosley’s unwillingness to engage, he did not look like that same vicious tornado that destroyed Antonio Margarito.

He was clearly wary of Mosley’s power, and not as willing to take chances in the early rounds against someone who he knew might be as fast as he. It wasn’t until after the false “knockdown” of Pacquiao that Mosley was gifted in the tenth round that the Filipino came out with that enraged, Roberto Duran-esque ill intent that we’ve flash in his eyes so often.

And although his defense has greatly improved, there are still holes in Pacquiao’s game— but he’s so fast that they could only be exploited by a special fighter who is still in his prime. Of course, it just so happens that the only worthwhile fight left for Pacquiao is against a man who fits that description.

The world knows that there is but one scalp left for the savage puncher to claim, and that’s Floyd Mayweather’s. If nothing else, last night proved yet again that a fight between Pacquiao and the counterpuncher-extraordinaire would be the perfect match-up of styles, the perfect match-up of men, to put boxing back in the public eye for at least one glorious night.

It would not only be that career-defining war that Leonard-Hagler became— it would be both men’s Waterloo, the last great stands of two fabled warriors whose epic battle will live forever in our memories.

All the kings of my generation have fought each other…now, it’s time for the gods to settle up.

Article posted Eastsideboxing.com on 09.05.2011



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