Tony De Marco, Welterweight Pride of Boston, Is Dead at 89

When he was 11, Leonardo, as he was known then, began boxing for a Boston boys’ club and won the state boys’ championship for 100-pounders. At 15, he was sparring with pros, but he was three years too young to obtain a professional license. He solved that problem with help from a priest and an 18-year-old friend whose identity he took.

“I went down to the parish to see Father Mario, who gave me a fake baptismal certificate and I ‘borrowed’ the name of another kid named Tony De Marco for the certificate,” he told the Cyber Boxing Zone website in a 2011 interview.

“Of course, Father Mario — good man that he was — thought I was using this to get a job, not to become a professional fighter at the age of 16.

“Anyways, shortly after that the real Tony De Marco tells me he was going pro. I said, ‘What name are you fighting under?’ He said, ‘Tony De Marco.’ I tell him, ‘You can’t have it! Pick another name.’ So he took the name of another kid named Michael Termini, who also wanted to turn pro, but he had to take his brother’s name. So there was three of us fighting, all from the same neighborhood, all using someone else’s name.”

De Marco turned pro in October 1948, when his true age was 16.

His idol as a teenager had been the middleweight champion Jake La Motta.

“I tried to fight like him, just bullying and crowding,” De Marco was quoted as saying by Boxing.com. “I’m not a boxer. Never was and never will be. I just don’t feel right jabbing and countering and trying to be fancy. I tried it when I first started and nearly got killed.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/12/sports/tony-de-marco-dead.html