Jeffrey Sussman is the author of twelve non-fiction books, as well as numerous articles and short stories about boxing. He is a regular writer for the premier boxing website www.boxing.com and is the author of Max Baer and Barney Ross: Jewish Heroes of Boxing (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016). Sussman is the president of a public relations and marketing firm based in New York City (www.powerpublicity.com).
Jeffrey Sussman brings Rocky Graziano to life not only inside the
ring but also—and more important to this reader—outside of it.
Graziano’s personality and his personal life, his post-fight career
as a television comedian with Martha Raye and as a television
pitchman and his giving nature to others less fortunate is what
makes this an outstanding biography.
*J Russell Peltz, boxing promoter, International Boxing Hall of
Fame, class of 2004*
Rocky Graziano was one of my all-time favorite fighters. Being in
the boxing business for over thirty-five years, I thought I knew it
all about Rocky. That was until I read Jeffrey Sussman's new book,
Rocky Graziano: Fists, Fame and Fortune. Sussman tells Graziano's
story like no other ever written. I learned things about Rocky I
never knew before. Sussman's writing style not only educated me
more about Rocky Graziano, he put me there with him. Page after
page, I felt I was with Graziano, feeling his pain as a child and
his triumphs as World Champion. I could not put it down! This book
is a must read for all, not just boxing fans. I fully enjoyed this
book!
*Bill Calogero, boxing historian and host of the Talkin' Boxing
with Billy C TV & Radio Program*
Rocky Graziano was one of the most exciting and interesting boxers
of the twentieth century. He was one of the highlights of the
Golden Era of boxing. Jeffrey Sussman has captured this man and
this time period in a fascinating story. Every punch that Rocky
threw from his young years, through his championship years and into
his old age is presented in riveting excitement. When you read
Jeffrey’s work you relive the three classic fights with Tony Zale.
You feel like you are in the ring with them. You can feel the
emotion that Rocky felt emerging from a street tough to a very
wealthy and famous person. Once you start this book, you will not
put it down.
*Bruce Silverglade, owner of boxing’s world-famous Gleason’s
Gym*
Boxing aficionado Jeffrey Sussman has done it again! Sussman tells
the story of a hero from the late 1940's and 1950's in Rocky
Graziano: Fists, Fame, and Fortune. Graziano was a tough-as-nails
fighter who became a beloved figured in the United States,
especially in the Italian-American community. Rocky was not just a
great fighter but a celebrity who could be seen all over during the
early days of American television. Sussman tells Rocky’s story,
which sweeps through the mid-twentieth century, discussing the
appeal of boxing as a road to stardom.
*Steven R. Maggi, host/executive producer of the radio show Vegas
Never Sleeps*
A good biography is successful when the reader can imagine the
subject as a living and breathing human being. If an author is
unable to bring the person he or she is writing about alive, they
often end up resembling a statue—still untouchable and hard to
understand. Jeffrey Sussman’s writing on Rocky Graziano breathes
life into a legendary fighter who has been largely
forgotten in some quarters. Graziano’s unlikely rise from
thief to middleweight champion of the world, and television star,
is beautifully realized. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
*John J. Raspanti, co-author of Intimate Warfare: The True Story of
the Arturo Gatti and Micky Ward Boxing Trilogy*
The rebellious knockout artist, Rocky Graziano, made a dramatic
comeback in 1956 with Robert Wise’s award-winning film Somebody Up
There Likes Me. Now, sixty-one years later, Graziano is making what
should be a second award-winning comeback with Jeffrey Sussman’s
Rocky Graziano: Fists, Fame, and Fortune. Graziano’s life was
colorful and turbulent and it is chronicled here in exciting
detail. Sussman captures it all. This is a must read!
*Peter W. Wood, author of Confessions of a Fighter and A Clenched
Fist: The Making of a Golden Gloves Champion*
Rocky Graziano (1919–90), born Tommy Rocco Barbella, was a
charismatic boxer who held the world
middleweight title in the late 1940s. His three title fights with
Tony Zale in which Zale won the first and
last, are considered by boxing historians to be among the most
brutal ever contested. After Graziano
retired from the ring in the early fifties, he became a popular
show-business personality. Sussman
examines Graziano’s sketchy youth, which seemed to foreshadow a
life of crime. A stint in prison
following his going AWOL from the army took him further down that
road, but boxing proved to be his
way out, as it did for so many young men in the postwar era. As
talented as he was, Graziano hated to
train, opting for the good life after he won the title from Zale.
Sussman does a fine job with the biographical details from start to
finish, but he really nails the fight descriptions, creating a
sensory
experience in which the reader can almost feel the punches and hear
the crowds. A vivid slice of boxing
History.
*Booklist*
Prolific boxing writer Sussman (Max Baer and Barnie Ross: Jewish
Heroes of Boxing) relates in overwrought prose the rags-to-riches
saga of a delinquent who slugged his way from the slums of
Manhattan into America’s heart. Thomas Rocco “Rocky” Barbella was
born in 1919 to a mentally ill mother and abusive, alcoholic
father. He had to fight for everything: by the time he was three,
his six-year-old brother was regularly thrashing him in sparring
sessions ordered by their father, a failed boxer. Violent and
hyperactive, Rocky took to gang life and street crime, a course
that landed him in reform school and then prison. He joined the
military but went AWOL after punching a captain (to elude the MPs,
he took the name Graziano and fought four boxing matches until he
was discovered). Fortunately for Rocky, boxing’s popularity turned
his powerful right hand into a valuable commodity. A brutal trilogy
of fights with Tony Zale made him a sports-page fixture; an
unexpected talent for performing made him a sitcom star and
pitchman for everything from Post Raisin Bran to Off-Track Betting.
He wrote a bestselling memoir in 1955 called Somebody Up There
Likes Me; Paul Newman played the boxer in the movie version...That
said, his more thoughtful sketches of the long-forgotten men who
faced Graziano provide a moving reminder that a career in boxing is
not a fairy tale for most.
*Publishers Weekly*
[Sussman] chronicles the life of an outstanding world champion
middleweight in the postwar era. . . .[Its] engaging narrative will
appeal to fans of boxing history. Recommended.
*CHOICE*
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