My Memories of GorDoom: Stephen Gordon
By Thomas Gerbasi
It may have been a few weeks into knowing Stephen Gordon that I realized that was his name.
Prior to that, he was always GorDoom (his email address) or the Bucket (short for The Ol’ Spit Bucket), and that was fine for a budding writer and boxing fan entering this strange new world. In those early days, I just assumed that was how it was done.
But it wasn’t, and Gordon never followed the status quo in boxing or in his life outside the sweet science. As Dan Cuoco wrote in his obituary of Gordon in September of this year, even his early days weren’t the norm.
“He was born in Paris, France, during his father’s assignment in France. ‘My old man was a CIA operative operating under the guise of being a ‘diplomat.’ In 1956, when I was seven years old, he got assigned to Mexico City. In his younger days, my father had been a professional fighter out of New York City in the late 30s – early ’40s; he began managing & training young Mexican fighters as a sideline. As his firstborn, I was brought into the brutal realities of the fight game as the guy (child) who carried the spit bucket into the ring.”
Hence “The Ol’ Spit Bucket” moniker. Gordon would tell me of even working a corner for Davey Moore before the featherweight’s untimely death in 1963, and there may have been even more considering Moore’s willingness to cross the border and fight in Mexico over the course of his career. And though getting exposed to those “brutal realities of the fight game” might have turned some off, Gordon was all-in on the sport from then on.
One of my favorite pieces of his was called “Twilight of the Demi-God” from the AOL Boxing Newsletter in April of 1997. The editorial was about the Julio Cesar Chavez-Tony Martin fight, but it was highlighted by Gordon’s recitation of his favorite fighters past and present, giving a real insight into his love for the sport.
“There are fighters well known & obscure that have captured my fascination like Tony Canzoneri, King Tut, Chalky Wright, Harold Johnson, Battling Torrez, Pajarito Moreno, Tony Sibson, Chic Calderwood, Davey Moore (both of ’em, the featherweight & the jr. middleweight champion), Toluco Lopez, Alejandro Lavorante, Emile Griffith, Luis Rodriguez, Dick Tiger, Joey Giambra, Henry Hank, Florentino Fernandez, Fighting Harada, Pong Kingpetch, Benny Bass, Carmen Basilio, Mushy Callahan, Jimmy Lester, Zora Folley, Eddie Machen, Cleveland Williams, Pascual Perez, Niccolino Loche, Gene Fullmer, Jackie “Kid” Berg, Mickey Walker, Aaron Pryor, Harry Greb, James “Hard Rock” Green, Mustapha Hamsho, Barney Ross, Gene Tunney, Sugar Ramos, Carlos Ortiz, Eder Jofre, Terry McGovern, Hagler, Hearns, Sugar Ray (both of them) – that have for one reason or another have captured my fascination … The list is practically endless – & like women – there’s no explaining your choices … It just felt right at the time. Fighters, like women & rock & roll are unexplainable & that’s the fascination…”
Yet being a fan and being a journalist are too different things, and while I know Gordon would dry heave at the thought of being called a journalist, he gave it to his readers straight, yet was fair at the same time. That’s a rare combination, and it’s why when the AOL Boxing Newsletter eventually turned into the CyberBoxingZone, the pioneering internet site formed with Mike DeLisa, they continued to do things their way, against the grain.
As Mike told me in an interview for Boxing News magazine, “I started by putting up the newsletters, then I said let me put up the current champions’ records. Let me put up Top Ten best fighters’ records, and I started putting up what is now the CBZ Encyclopedia. The only place for the records in those days was the Cyber Boxing Zone.”
Yet while the internet started to boom in the late 90s and money was flying everywhere for anything with a www in front of it, DeLisa and Gordon stuck to their guns. Their site was going to remain free for all.
“I’m partners with Steve Gordon and we decided that it just didn’t make any sense,” said DeLisa. “What were we gonna do, sell t-shirts? We’re devoted to boxing. There are some other good sites but they’re all personality driven. It was basically a front for people to give their opinions and make themselves be the experts. And we weren’t interested in that. The very first issue we had, I said to myself, there’s this guy Roy Jones. How the hell are you gonna beat Roy Jones? Let me reach out to some fighters. And it wound up that (four-time New York Golden Gloves champion) Dennis Milton was one of the earliest subscribers to the AOL newsletter, and he wrote a little article about how you beat Roy Jones. That was the level we were bringing to the sport, even from the earliest time – fighters, ex-trainers, people who really knew their stuff, people who had been in the business for a long time.”
Well, not everybody knew their stuff, but Gordon did see something in a kid from Brooklyn who was enthusiastic and wanted to write about boxing, and he brought me in during those late 90s days. Soon, the guy who cleaned toilets for a living was interviewing Shane Mosley, Chuck Bodak and Lucia Rijker on lunch breaks and after work, and not once did I ever feel like an interloper in this “secret society” of boxing writers.
That had everything to do with Stephen Gordon, who could be as gruff as anyone, but only on the outside. Get past that, and he was the kind of guy who remembered the names of your wife and kids, asked about life outside of work, and was a genuine good guy. When my father passed in 1999, I wrote a short piece on him for the CBZ. So did Gordon. And it’s below. I dug it up and I got emotional immediately. I remember showing it to my mother before the wake, and she printed it out for visitors to the funeral home to see. She didn’t print mine out, but that’s another story. I kid, I kid.
“Thomas Gerbasi Sr. wasn’t a boxer. His connection to the CBZ was that my stalwart, associate editor, Tom Gerbasi, is his son. Gerbasi Sr. taught his son to be a tough, stand up, guy, with a real blue collar work ethic & instilled in him his lifelong passion for boxing. I never met or spoke with Tom’s father but he was exactly the kind of hard core boxing guy that I write for.
After we publish every issue of the CBZ Journal, I always ask Tom if he’s printed out the issue & shown it to his dad yet. He would always come back with some pithy comments from his father. In fact, in our July 98 issue, I wrote a eulogy for Frank Sinatra … The whole time I was writing the piece I had Tom’s dad in mind as exactly the kind of person I was writing the article for. I figured if a New Yawk, Eyetalian, dyed in the wool, Sinatra & boxing fan of his generation dug my article, then I had done my job well.
I remember driving Tom Jr. crazy bugging him about printing the issue out & getting it over to his dad … It’s weird how someone you’ve never even met or spoken to can influence you. I mean, it was damn important to me that Tom’s father read my piece on Ol’ “Blue Eyes”.
Death is so final & the Ol’ Spit Bucket (for once), is at a loss for words to comfort Tom & his family … All I can say is, rest in peace, Thomas Gerbasi. & even though I never met you, you were my kinda guy…”
In 279 words, that was who Steve Gordon was on the inside, and I’ll never forget that or him. That kindness and integrity was apparent to all who got to know him, and some of this era’s greatest writers – Katherine Dunn, Lucius Shepard, Mark Jacobson and Enrique Encinosa – all called him a friend and all looked at the CBZ as a vital part of the boxing machine when it came to reporting, opinion and analysis. And to Gordon, everyone who wrote for the site was on a level playing field, so while I would get a little starstruck when interacting with the aforementioned Fab Four, they all treated me as an equal, which still makes me smile, even though we’ve lost Katherine and Lucius over the last few years.
So it’s obvious that when it came to boxing, he was clearly obsessed and clearly cared, but he felt the same way about music and his day job running Savoy Music International, home to artists like Ray Manzarek, Shana Morrison and Roy Rogers. As for NFL football, let’s just say that he would tape every game he watched. Okay, nothing peculiar about that. But he took it to a different level, stopping the recording after every play and not starting until the next play began. No commentary, no replays, just 60 minutes of football. He even threatened to leave his set of game tapes to me in his will. If he did put me in his will, I was hoping the day would never come for it to be read.
Unfortunately, in February, Gordon passed away at 72. There aren’t a lot of details about his passing, and we hadn’t spoke in a few years. When we did, he was enjoying life in Panama, bragging to me how cheap it was to live there, and while he had his usual gripes about boxing and the music business, he seemed content, and sometimes that’s the best way to be. Happy and sad can come and go, but if you’re content, that makes it all good.
When my father would read my early pieces on the CBZ, he would tell me that I rambled too much. I’m probably doing that now, but my favorite editor always opened the gates and let me run, so if I went on too long, it’s a tribute to a friend.