THE REAL HURRICANE’S OTHER FALSE TRIAL

JUST FOR THE RECORD — In December '64 Rubin Carter got his fistic ass handed to him almost as heinously and unjudiciously — in its context — as the Big Ass-Hand Dylan so vividly (and generally accurately) describes in his current drastic change of pugilistic pace from "Who Killed Davey Moore?" Got his One and only shot at the middleweight crown, versus champion Joey Giardelto in Joey's own Philly, and beat him decisively (said my eyes at the time) over 15 torrid rounds. Even stodgy old Nat Fleischer scored it 68-64 Carter but the hometown officials gave It unanimously to Mr. G: a classic black/white backyard bum decision.

I mention Dylan's general accuracy tho because he's at least slightly off the mark in a few specific ring allusions: 1. That Rubin could take a man out with a single swat. Yeah he sure did.it to an over-the-hili Florentino Fernandez and an overconfident Emile Griffith (the welter-weight champ in his first middleweight bout) but a good proportion of his true 160-pound encounters with genuine rated leatherpushers went the distance. 2. That the man was #! contender. Says he was on the cover of RC's The Sixteenth Round — and he sure as hell should've been — but Fleischer's The Ring (as official as ratings ever got in those days) never had him higher than #3, behind Dick Tiger and Joey Archer. In fact at the time of Rubin's Incarceration he was already out of the ratings, his last appearance having been in the #8 slot of the June '66 issue. 3. That he could've been champ had he not been popped In the slammer. Fact Is a I tho he was scheduled to challenge Tiger (who'd in the interim snatched it from Gtardeilo) by the time of his arrest he'd slipped quite a bit and even lost an honest 10-rounder to Tiger a year or so before. Sure could've continued as a bonaflded mere contender for another 4-5 years however...