Nothing is Illegal.
Fritzie Zivic. May 8, 1913 – May 16, 1984
I grew up hearing stories about Fritzie Zivic. My Father ran a business in Lawrenceville his entire life, inheriting it from his mother, whom had previously inherited it from her husband(my grandfather) after he died in 1962. Very few buildings in that area stand the test of time with the same name.
Lawrenceville is an extremely ancient Pittsburgh neighborhood, it sits right on the Allegheny river just upstream from the city. People have been recorded living there since the French and Indian War, more probably before that. A city unto itself, more or less. At one point or another it had everything, food, industry, acres upon acres of housing, hospitals… armories. One of the other oldest buildings in Lawrenceville was what my father referred to as the Boys club. It’s owned by some for profit business school now, but it was built in 1912 as a YMCA, by 1928 it had been sold to the Pittsburgh Boy’s Club, which eventually became attached to the Boys and Girls Club of America.
As a member of the Lawrenceville Rotary Club, my father would frequently bring me to community events there. This was the 90’s. Corn carnivals, bingo nights, community action events, neat little things to create funding for this or that or support your local firemen. He would announce bingo and help in the kitchen, and I would do my best to stay out of trouble. Sometimes my grandmother would give me a stack of quarters to play in the little arcade in the front and I would meet others who had been in Lawrenceville their entire lives. Lawrenceville was a pretty rough then, for the most part it was still reeling from the exit of the steel industry years earlier.
The Boys club building was old, I mean, it felt old. Everything was stone, marble. The walls, concrete and steel with years of plaster. There was a big gym that had been turned in to a basketball court in the center of the building, with an old timey balcony that ran the whole way around it, exquisite brasswork all painted over with patchy white paint. You could rap your knuckles on the marble and brass underneath the layers of failed modernization and hear history vibrating through the building. My dad told me that the big gym was used as a exhibition center years ago. They would have boxing matches there. This was years before I became a boxer myself.
I remember walking around and exploring the side halls and offices. From the gym, there were these tiny narrow hallways that ran down into old locker rooms and training areas, at the time filled with things like bingo equipment or voting. Very low ceilings, being down there was like being in a cave. After I knew about the boxing matches I would sneak around and try to imagine what the place looked like then. Even the locker rooms had that classy early modernist feel. Marble and white tile everywhere, thick porcelain fixtures, stone and brass turned green after years of leaks and humidity.
Once, I was wandering around deep in the caves and my Dad came down to use the bathroom in between bingo games. “Hey, you know, Fritzie Zivic used to train here.”
“Who’s that?”
“Fritzie was a professional boxer from the ninth ward, old time boxing. He used to train back in those rooms over there.” He motioned to one of the old dark unused rooms under the gymnasium. “You know Steve Zivic, right? He’s related to him.”
Steve was an attorney friend of my father’s who used our office sometimes. I didn’t have many interactions with him but what I did have were very pleasant, Mr. Zivic did not at all conjure images of boxing in one’s mind.
Seeing I was already exploring, my Father and I poked around the basement for a moment while he told me of old connections and Lawrenceville families, Polish and Croatians and the people who came and went.
Fritzie had been Lawrenceville royalty. He held the undisputed World Welterweight championship through ‘41. His list of opponents included famous old names, Lamotta, Robinson, Burkey, Conn. Two hundred and thirty three fights. One hundred fifty eight wins, eighty one of them by knockout.
Take a moment and imagine striking someone so hard with your own hands that they fall over and cannot get up again. Then realize that Fritzie did it eighty one times. Fritzie was apparently a very pleasant individual… outside the ring, and would frequently have visitors. He was fairly plain about what boxing was as a sport, and made no questions about its brutal nature. “You're boxing, you're not playing the piano.” -is one of his more well known adages.
In the ring, however Fritzie was… is… considered one of the most dirty boxers, perhaps of all time. He would frequently thumb opponents, that’s when you throw a weak punch and let it sit on your opponents head so you can hook your thumb through the old style leather glove into their eye socket and try to manipulate their head. He would elbow, knee, headbutt, step on toes… anything really. After an illegal offense, Fritzie would often apologize sincerely to his opponent, and then, immediately return to the behavior. One particular story, Dad’s favorite perhaps, was about a family member who had come to visit Fritzie while he was home and training in the club.
How the little story goes, is this family member was invited to go find Fritzie in the bowels of the Boy’s club one day. This person arrived to find the training area empty as Fritzie liked training alone. They walked down into the caves to find him practicing rounds on the heavy bag and politely waited until he finished.
Apparently, Fritzie was practicing a punch combination he liked to use often. Now, boxers number their punches, and to explain it to the layman, this combo would be; One(left jab), two(right cross), then a headbutt. Fritz was prancing around the bag repeating that; One-Two-head, One-two-head, one-two-head with as much intensity as one would expect from a professional boxer. Each punch solid and straight leading directly to an exceptionally strong, highly illegal headbutt that lifted him forward, into the bag at what would be the opponents lower face level. For those that don’t know, the move is equal to being smashed in the face by a bowling ball, hence its banned status.
The friend waited until time expired in the round, and at the buzzer, Fritzie turned to meet him in cordial fashion.
“Hey Fritz,” the friend had exclaimed. “Why are you training a headbutt? I thought you weren’t supposed to do that. Aren’t those illegal?”
Fritzie apparently shrugged if off and replied succinctly, “Hey, nothing is illegal until the ref tells you to stop.”
A plain answer for a plain methodology. Let me, for a moment, inform the reader on an interesting nuance in the rules of boxing…
There are a considerable amount of strikes and techniques that are illegal. However, should an opponent find themself on the receiving end of one, A few things need to happen before any sort of intervention arrives. First, a referee needs to see the offense clearly, and unfortunately, there’s only one ref. A smart fighter knows to keep track of his position and keep his offenses out of the line of sight. Second, should the ref observe an illegal move, it’s up to their discretion to determine if it was intentional or not and if it did damage. There is, after all, a house full of paying customers who are here to see a fight. Third, should the ref determine the offense created an unfair advantage, they will always stop play briefly and provide a warning first. This essentially allows the risk tolerant fighter, “one free shot.”
At the time, I thought; Oh, what a neat story, Fritzie sounds like kind of an asshole, though… and isn’t that cheating? I enjoyed the time with my dad and we moved on, armed now with a fun quip to tell other kids and a good memory of times with just me and my father. I grew older, my father eventually left the rotary and the building was sold when a more modern boys and girls club was built, albeit much smaller and less impressive.
As time went on, however, I found myself competing against others, or just the world or the environment, and the little parable would float to the surface. One-two-headbutt. It would wear on me, like a rock in my shoe in boys soccer. One-two-headbutt. Where once, when I was really starting to develop as an athlete, I waited by the goal in practice for a corner kick. When the ball sailed my direction I attempted to leap for a header into the goal and found my self planted to the ground. A mentor of mine on the other team, a guy shorter than I, had stepped on my foot, clutched me by the hips and simply fallen over, bringing me with him. We fell in a heap as the ball was deflected away from the net. One-two-headbutt. Instead of scoring, I was struggling to catch back up. He laughed and I called him a motherfucker and we ran on.
Later, I remembered it when as a swimmer, our fastest butterfly swimmer was beaten in a race by a rival team athlete who simply… stayed underwater. He knew he couldn’t beat our fastest guy, but he had great breath control and strong legs, so he made his dive and kicked his way through the sprint to the other side without breaking the surface, One-two-headbutt, avoiding having to use his arms.
As a young man, when I became a boxer myself, I frequently sparred with a smaller, younger, faster fighter. A southpaw(right foot forward), he really was great, later to turn pro. I was quite fast for my weight at 199lbs, but nothing to his lightning quick movements at 155lbs. He could retreat faster than I could advance. After round after round of being pitter-patted almost to death, I closed the distance, rotated inside and found the big toe of his front foot with the outside of my forward foot. He tried to retreat and I foiled him, unable to lift his foot. One-two… I spared him the headbutt, I was an older mentor by then.
When I found myself graduated from nursing school I searched for jobs in a market that was saturated, this was pre-Affordable Care Act at the maximum of healthcare growth and profit. Hospital recruiters turned me down left and right, units were full, there were waitlists. So, I simply picked the unit I wanted to work for, and spam emailed the entire management chain until they allowed me to come in and shadow. Once there, they figured the delays of going through the recruiters would be too long and arduous, after all, I was right there and ready to start. One-two-headbutt. I was essentially hired on the spot, and they just contacted HR to let them know to stop sending recruits.
It took a long time, but the brilliance of Fritzie’s game had finally fermented into a fine liquor in my mind. When we’re young we’re taught so much, how to grow how to think, how to be just and polite and how to try to avoid hurting others. What were not taught is how to excel, how to succeed… objectively. How to focus on specifics and distill away the trivial details. As it turns out, much of life is filled with trivial details.
Herein lies Zivic’s logic. The game itself exists outside the rule of law from the outset. It’s pure, visceral, as hard and deadly as one cares to make it. There’s more danger, but more opportunity, nothing to hold you back. In that time of pure freedom, it’s well worth it to train for any and all eventuality and to be as ambitious and egregious as possible. Should you cross a line, the only danger is that your options now become slightly limited. This is the hard center of the fact. There are no limits except the ones you have allowed to be placed.
What game are you playing? Risks like the breaking of rules and their punishments, they exist as trivial details in the face of your goals. Life is one benefit vs risk assessment after another. It pays to remember the risk tolerant fighter always gets that free shot. Sometimes, maybe even more than one. Just remember to apologize.