Saturday, February 3, 2007
Friday, February 2, 2007
Interview With Gary Hammonds
Gary Hammonds
ALL ACCOUNTS ARE FICTIONAL, AND SHOULD BE VIEWED AS SUCH:
Times Interview With Gary Hammonds….
When talking to somebody who owns a Pit Bull Terrier, it is unavoidable that the subject of pedigrees comes up. Pedigrees make up a very important aspect of breeding any type of animal, but especially so with high performance animals such as Pit Bull Terriers.
When it comes to breeding and raising puppies into full grown healthy dogs some people seem to have more success than others. Anyone who has experience in the field will tell you that it takes a lot if time, money and patience along with plenty of common sense before any good results will come off.
Unmistakably, Gary J. Hammonds from Texas is one of the very few that can look back at a very successful career, breeding a high percentage of good dogs. Some of the better known dogs that he bred are such as Frits Jansen’s Champion SPIKE, which turned out to be one of the best producing dogs in Europe. Ronnie Anderson’s Champion SPADE, Champion SMILEY and Champion GOOSE. But the dog that Gary gained most fame with is, without any doubt, the RUFUS dog who proved to be one of the best producing male dogs in the World.
Gary is known to be a very scientific breeder and is most famous for his ALLIGATOR line of dogs which are still playing an important role in the breeding program of many serious breeders around the world. During my trip through North Texas, I decided to look him up and ask him about his experience on the subject of breeding dogs. Upon arriving he spontaneously agreed on doing an interview. While Gary was finishing his last preparations for the weight pull of the following day, I started to ask him the next question:
Gary, why have you chosen to bred the ALLIGATOR bloodline? Years ago I had access to a bunch of dogs and I had mainly BRUNO/HEINZL dogs. I could have taken good BULLYSON and good CORVINO bred dogs, but I’ve seen the ALLIGATOR stuff and really liked what I saw. The main thing that I liked so much about these dogs; SOKO, RENEE and ALLIGATOR was that they were smart dogs, they were hard to hurt, and they were real game dogs. This was 10 or 15 years ago. The mom and daddy to these dogs were not really impressive, they were NIG and SATIN LADY, but together they certainly produced some good dogs. I didn’t like either of them as individuals, but they sure produced. At this moment I have about one hundred and ten dogs and most are bred from this bloodline.
Some people that I have spoken to told me that NIG was a cur. What do you think about this? I’ve heard the same thing. I don’t know if it was true. But, too many people tell the same story that it had to be true. See NIG was one of the last of the Tudor stuff. NIG was heavy JEFF and BABY breeding, so when you got down to that end and you wanted to breed to that stuff you were pretty much limited and NIG was, I suppose, the best producer of them all.
How did you get started with these dogs? When I was 3 years old I had a Bulldog that saved my life. He pulled me out of a bar ditch that was flooding and without that dog I would have drowned. He was not a full blooded top line Pit Bull, but he was ¾ Pit and ¼ farm dog. He thought he was 100% Bulldog and looked like it too. He would jump on anything. His name was TIPP. That’s how I got started with Pit Bulls and I have had a love affair with them ever since.
How do you feel about heavy inbreeding? I sure like inbreeding. It’s a tool that if you take it a generation or two far you will lose what you are inbreeding for. Those types, those characteristics, that are linked with inbreeding, many times, are lost due to too heavy inbreeding.
What do you do to prevent this from happening? With every generation you take a hard look at what you’ve got and you decide if the individuals from that generation are good enough to breed back to the previous generation, like; father to daughter, mother to son, or whatever and if you can’t justify it then you don’t need to carry it on any further. Although you could very easily cutcross in that generation, or even introduce a catalyst blood to that family of dogs to keep it vigorous. Some times that’s the only thing you can do.
What’s the catalyst factor in your breeding program? I’ve used BULLYSON and BRUNO/HEINZL as the catalyst and with good results. Right now I’ve got a little stud dog that is out of the NIGERINO type stuff. JOLIE BLOND bred to MITZIE and I think that’s going to be a good catalyst along with the RALPH dog I have. He is down from PEDRO. I think either of these can be good catalyst blood. PEDRO is from that RASCAL type breeding and he was owned by GARNER.
What is the main quality you are looking for in a stud dog? An ability to reproduce. The qualities that a dog has to have in today’s environment, whether it’s Pit environment, Catch dog, Weight pull dog or whatever. The qualities I breed for are GAMENESS and INTELLIGENCE, a good example is GARY and CHRISTI ATHANS SAIGON. SAIGON is a tremendous weight pull dog and comes from a good family of dogs, he is straight out of my stuff. But you don’t see many of my dogs that are good weight pull dogs.
There is a lot of growing interest in breeding dogs for weight pulls and etc…. It seems that most of these people are not interested in gameness and other traditional qualities. No they aren’t. But of course there are a lot that are just Pulling dogs. For instance, a lot of weight pull dogs are straight stifled UKC type dogs that would have a hard time with the more fighting type dog whether it be a good fighting dog or not. At the APBA Nationals, I see more and more of the Pull dogs that look like the old fighting dogs with the roached back and long legs.
Do you make a distinction between a fighting dog and a stud dog? In my opinion what you need in a stud dog, whether he is a fighting dog or not is a dog that can reproduce. Sound genetic structure both between the ears and in the heart, and also, the body has to be sound. Too many times people lose track of this and they breed to Champion so and so or Grand Champion etc… but because of their title it doesn’t mean they will be able to produce that type of dog. So what I look for in a stud dog is a relatively tight genetic pool, and a family rather than two or three good individuals.
But that means you have to by pedigrees and you know as well as I do there are a lot of dogs out there with fake pedigrees on them! Yes, I use pedigrees a great deal, but it’s not just what you see on paper…. Like the dogs I’ve messed with, I’ve seen their grand-parents first hand, as well as the parents and other similar bred individuals and I’ve used those dogs instead of the dogs from another part of the country that I was not sure about the pedigree.
About pedigrees. Practically all of your dogs go back to Maurice Carver stuff. There are a lot of rumors about him mixing up pedigrees when he was still alive. Since you work a great deal with pedigrees do you believe to know the true ancestry of your dogs when it goes back to SATIN LADY for instance? I believe so and I’ll tell you why. It was too screwed up of a breeding, as far as on paper, not to be the truth. If you look at SATIN LADY , she was a scatter bred bitch out of IRONHEAD and BLACK BEAUTY. She was a big black bitch and I asked Maurice about it on one of my visits to his place. I asked him; “Maurice why did you make a breeding like that?” And he said, “Well son, I tell you, I thought it be good.” Maurice had a way of mixing blood on papers and pedigrees and whatever it took to make it work. I think that part of the reason for Maurice putting out bogus pedigrees was to keep the secret to himself. I sincerely believe that the pedigrees on the dogs that I use to be right. If they’re not, it’s too late to worry about it anyway because I’m 3 or 4 generations away from what Maurice owned or sold to old man Williams, like the SATIN LADY bitch and others, but I will say this, in the seventies Maurice Carver was the BEST breeder in the country. He bred more dogs in those years, first class dogs, than any other 5 top breeders in the country. But the pedigree thing I really sincerely believe it’s no more than Maurice’s way of keeping his secrets secret. He would sell you the cake, but keep the recipe.
What about your Howard Heinzl dogs? They were certainly good dogs but…. And I hate to say this, they lost a lot of what they were famous for in the sixties and seventies. It is no fault of Howard because he bred with some real good genetic back ground and put it together the way it was suppose to be. I think he lived bred those dogs just too tight and they played out. It would click if you would cross it, but Heinzl kept it pure. The stuff he used before and what I liked so much was line bred; 50/50 Colby/Dibo. That combination was hard to beat. My TAFFY bitch was one of those combinations. She was a hell of a dog and I saw some more that were bred the same way, that would make the owner proud. She was a double MUSTY bred dog off BAT and TWIGGY.
Texas is a very big state with an awful lot of Bulldogs and a great number of dog men. Some claim the best dogs and breeders are in Texas. Do you agree with this? I think we have a tremendous base in Texas because there have been a great deal of breedings between the top dog men from Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana and to a lesser degree in Mexico. When you have a situation like this and the competition of the last 40 or 50 years right here in Texas between top dog men it’s only logical that you come up with some top notch bulldogs and dog men. Also, another thing that has made the Texas dogs so good is that several breeders from here went out to buy dogs from Corvino, Heinzl, Tudor, Kinard and Boudreaux. All these very good bloodlines were put together so it’s just the situation that arose. I’m sure at some time in history, there will be another spot in the world the dogs will be just as good as the dogs in Texas are right now, but they really have to do their work to get there.
PART TWO: GARY J. HAMMONDS
If you were to breed a bitch outside your own yard, which male would you pick? Right now I’m picking the MACHO dog from Gary. He comes from Rick Burns and he is a Thibodeaux bred dog. This man bred some very good dogs down from the CLINT stuff and that STOMPANATO blood he had. I sure like what MACHO produces. There are several good stud dogs around the country that I sure wouldn’t be afraid to breed to. One of them is a little dog here in Dallas; the JAP dog. He is a Grand Champion and goes back to some of my blood I used several years ago. He should be a good producer. Two other good ones are the WINO dog in the North East, and Greenwood’s OSCAR in the North West. PATCH EYED PETE would be worth a gamble too. There are a few others I would like to try, but I probably will not for the simple fact that I’ve got several dogs on my yard that I like very much.
Who would you describe as being the best breeders in the country? I can think of a few that I consider very good breeders. Pat Patrick would of course be one of the better breeders. He is a real scientific breeder and has proven himself in the fact that he probably produced as many good dogs as anybody. There are a hundred people who breed some good dogs and especially in Texas you have a great number of good breeders. (I hate to name one for overlooking the others) but Jim Uselton is an awful good breeder. I don’t know if he is still breeding it, but the RED BILL line has been real good for him. Also someone else I have a tremendous amount of faith in is Wendell Trussels. Through the years I’ve seen Trussels’ bred dogs that were not suppose to be good, but they were sure good dogs. Also from what I understand Sorrels and Girley Crum breed some good ones.
What was your relation with Ronnie Anderson? Ronnie was a real competitor. Ronnie was a good friend of mine and as tough as ever come down the path. One of the reasons why I think Ronnie was so good was that he had a tremendous eye for a Bulldog. He could spot a good one and tried them very hard. In his days he was probably one of the very best conditioners in the country. He started out with some dogs that he got from me. I believe the second dog he ever owned was the SPADE dog and of course he made Champion with him. He was into some tough, tough competition in those days.
What about Ronnie’s Champion GOOSE and Champion SMILEY? Yes. GOOSE was off of RUFUS and that bitch from Trussels called MIDGET. There were two Champions in that litter, SMILEY and GOOSE and there was another dog in the same litter that won two and got killed the third time out. His name was GATOR. When we bred RUFUS to MIDGET it produced all first class dogs, except one. The one that lost was 16 months old, so that happens. The best dog in that litter, and Ronnie might disagree with me, was a little dog I called REGINALD. PJ ended up with him and, as far as I know, never did anything with him. REGINALD was head and shoulders above the rest of that litter. The reason why I liked him so much was because he was a very smart dog and used the head to his advantage. He was a very defensive dog, plus he was a dog that could take you out.
George Gillman! God bless George, he and Mac were good friends of mine. He was a very good person deep down. I lived just down the road from him. George started out by buying any and every dog in the country and was just going to get there by maxi-mizing the quality instead of minimizing. George made tremendous impact on the Bulldogs here in Dallas/Fort Worth area. He sure would keep things stirred up. He used and liked the NIG-ALLIGATOR stuff.
Don Mayfield! He was a top conditioner and handler. I guess I heard about him before I heard about anyone else. I had a good friend that helped me more than anybody else in getting my first dog, his name is John Langham and he told me about Mayfield. What a tremendous conditioner he was and a top competitor. I saw Mayfield match several dogs and that was pretty good. He was a hell of a conditioner. The first dog I saw him match that I was really impressed with was the SWIG dog of Weldon Stockton. All of this was before there was a law against fighting dogs, somewhere in the late sixties. I saw SWIG go into a little dog that Jimmie Jobe had, a dog called RUSTY. Well RUSTY was an odds-on favorite. He was a hell of a ear dog and was hard to get to. I remember that Mayfield brought in SWIG and he was 5lbs lighter that I would have brought the dog in and perhaps about 2lbs lighter than Ronnie Anderson would have brought him in. Razor thin and one of the strongest malnourished looking dogs I’ve ever seen in my life. That’s when I developed a great amount of respect for Mayfield as a conditioner. The dogs Mayfield had at that time were probably pretty good dogs, but he often used dogs that belonged to other people like Weldon and a lot of George’s dogs. Mayfield and George made a team that were real hard to beat. I never had much dog dealings with George or Mayfield. I bought the old BUD dog from Mayfield, which was a pure Heinzl dog. He was bred like Greenwood’s GENTLE BEN.
Do you believe the breed has improved over the years? Tremendously so. I think the dogs we have today are 20 or 30% better than the dogs back in the sixties, and perhaps 5% better than the dogs in the seventies. I look for the dogs to get better if the standards are kept and if the people are responsible in how they breed dogs. Because the genetic pool of good dogs is bigger than it has ever been before. The thing that I’ve seen happen with Bulldogs is that the popularity has grown immensely and a lot of people get Bulldogs that don’t need them. We have seen a lot of bad media on the dogs with the result that the general public doesn’t look at Bulldogs as any other breed, but see them almost like a white shark. A wild animal that is looking for something to mouth, something to kill. If we can change that image in the public eye, for what reason, and if the breed continues to exist, we have to do that. The main thing that I think is a problem and probably will be until the dogs are gone is indiscriminate breeding. What started out with a genetic pool of very, very few dogs that were man aggressive has changed into a situation where we’ve now got several first class dogs that are very man aggressive, that’s a trait the old timers surely wouldn’t have carried on. I don’t know if it is all that bad a trait, but when it is in an uncontrollable man aggressive trait it sure can cause serious problems. Man eaters in the wrong hands, are also bad for the breed.
Being a President of the Long Star State Pit Bull Club… what’s that all about? The club was formed years ago by Perry Reneau to create a better understanding of the breed, to sort of fight the laws that were being enacted at the time. At that same time I became affiliated with the club. I went to Austin and spoke against the felony law, in other words, like spokesman for the club. Next time when the election came up, I was elected President and have been ever since, which has been 4 or 5 years now. We had 70 or 80 active members and about 20 or 30 workers. Most members are from this area, but also from Louisiana and Oklahoma and several other places. We can use everybody we can get, but this number of members is pitiful when you start thinking about the large group of Pit Bull owners in this Dallas/Ft. Worth area.
Where did you get RUFUS? I got him from some people in Ft. Worth that are named Burnett. They had him as a pet, just a backyard dog. The reason why I liked him was because he was double up on that SATIN LADY side of the pedigree and I figured that was the strength. I knew that if you tighten the NIG stuff you seem to lose something because I’ve seen the tight NIG dogs and didn’t particularly like them. Some of them were good, but most were not. The SATIN LADY stuff was a gamble. I didn’t bred RUFUS a whole lot because I didn’t get him until he was 7 years old. I had RUFUS for a long time before I figured out he was deaf. The only deaf dogs from the ALLIGATOR line comes from RUFUS, but most of these deaf dogs are pretty Game dogs. I do think it is a disadvantage for a dog to be deaf and I certainly wouldn’t like to breed a line of deaf dogs, but I get one in every fifty or so dogs down from RUFUS that is deaf, but they are almost all those dogs and their littermates are always Game dogs.
What were the most successful combinations you have made? Well, I was very reluctant to use the BULLYSON line of dogs back years ago and one of the first people to encourage me and told me it would do good with the ALLIGATOR blood was Carver. I remember I thought he had good luck with it and I probably would fall on my face trying, but I’ve had good results with it, even better than with the ALLIGATOR/BRUNO cross. RUFUS bred to BLACK SISTER produced MICHELLE and Champion SPIKE of Frits Jansen, who proved to be as good a dog and also produced a good percentage of top Bulldogs in Europe. BLACK SISTER was from STOMPER and BONNIE BOOTS, that’s BULLYSON and ELI JR. STOMPER was a very good dog, a rough mean crazy Bulldog. I don’t know if he would have been my type of dog, but I sure was impressed with him. We bred RUFUS to LUCELLE, which was a STOMPER kind of bitch and we got Champion BRUTUS which is registered as SIMBA. Also, we got Champion TAR, ALLYEYSON, and several other good ones. Then I bred RUFUS to MAURICE and we got Jay Howard’s Champion JACK. MAURICE was out of Carver’s yard. And of course the breeding to MIDGET produced a bunch of good ones. MIDGET went back to GR. CH. ART and BLACK GEORGIA, so you are talking about a tremendous genetic pool and it is hard to go wrong when you breed such a bitch to a producer like RUFUS.
What is your ANDY L. dog out of? He is out of RUFUS bred back to MICHELLE, she is one of RUFUS daughters. MICHELLE was stolen after her first match where she did pretty good. ANDY L. is a pretty good dog. He is 8 years old. Andy Leteff had a brother to him called ROOSTER that was a good dog too.
What about your BRUNO dog from some years ago? He was a good one. I sure liked him. Everybody thought he was a cur, but he gave me 1 hour and 56 minutes against George’s COMER in Louisiana. I got him from some people in Arlington that had him as a pet. He was a little over 1 year old when I got him. He was a super dog. Intelligent and rough, and just a real good dog. The minute the fight was over with, BENNY BOB and BULLYSON, the Plumbers went up to Rick Halliburton to match BRUNO into BENNY BOB. Halliburton said he didn’t think he was interested. That shows you the quality of dog BRUNO was, BENNY BOB was a very good 50lb dog. BRUNO lost to GOMER which was a Champion dog, GOMER was a NIG bred dog. I believe GOMER was the first NIG cross bred dog that George used that came from Salty McKnight.
Can you tell a little bit about your VITO dog, and about the brindle male called PIG? VITO is the ugliest dog in Texas. I won several ugly dog awards with him. He is right out of RUFUS and SUE. He is a pure ALLIGATOR bred dog. He is producing some pretty good dogs. The man that has most of these dogs is Billy Haynes from Louisiana. He uses them as weight pull dogs. They are not suppose to be pulling dogs, but they don’t know that and they pull pretty good. Billy bred them even tighter than I would have and he had some good results doing it….so…the VITO dog is getting so old that part of the year he is not having good sperm anymore, so I have to check his sperm before I bred him. So far he has turned out to be a very good producer for me. The PIG dog is out of RUFUS and MAURICE. He is a straight cross, but comes from a good family and has produced some pretty good dogs too. His sister HARRY is the dam of that Champion EVIL dog and RUFIN, so I look for that to be a good foundation family of dogs for the future. I use PIG quite a bit and like what I’m getting from him. He is a smaller type of dog although he goes back to STOMPANATO on bottom and ALLIGATOR on the top. Both real big dogs.
What is the best weight pull dog you’ve seen? I’ve seen a couple I really like. But up until I saw BIG HEAD I thought weight pulls were for the other guy, I wasn’t really excited about it, but when I saw BIG HEAD come to the track I sat down and watched him pull, I was impressed. When his owner, John Bettes, dropped the pull lead and said, “pull BIG HEAD,” he would drop his head and here he comes. It gave me the chills to see him pull. He was strictly a command pull dog and the best I’ve seen.
What is the best fighting dog you’ve ever seen? That would be a very hard question to answer. I was involved with the Plumbers quite a bit. They had ALLIGATOR, SOKO and other good dogs. I got to handle ALLIGATOR in some pretty hard rolls. He was a rough “go and get them” kind of dog. He didn’t have a defensive bone in his body which would probably get him killed in today’s competition, but still I think there is not a whole lot of big dogs around that could compete with ALLIGATOR. He did take the bottom to win a couple of times, went uphill and went into some dogs that would have killed him if they had been more game. I’ve seen a bunch of dogs I liked pretty good, but even though he is a controversial dog, I have to say that GR. CH. ART was an awfully good dog. I refereed, I believe, two of his fights, one for sure. Also, JEREMIAH was a tremendous dog. I saw him win his last fight with no more than 2 teeth and he whipped a dog that Gene Ridley had that was a good one.
What is the best stud dog you’ve ever seen? I don’t know, there a lot of good stud dogs, but even the best stud dog can miss and produce nothing once in a while.
If you could make a choice between BIG HEAD, GR. CH. ART, or that famous stud of your dreams, which one would you pick? The stud dog for sure. The one that could produce the good ones. Breeding Pit Bulls is probably the hardest animal to breed in the world. I feel certain that dogs from Game stock make better protection animals, better catch dogs, and better pets than the scatter bred stuff in somebody’s back yard. The real dogs are just better dogs. I like to think that I’m a breeder of good dogs and some of them can fight a lick.
ALL ACCOUNTS ARE FICTIONAL, AND SHOULD BE VIEWED AS SUCH:
Times Interview With Gary Hammonds….
When talking to somebody who owns a Pit Bull Terrier, it is unavoidable that the subject of pedigrees comes up. Pedigrees make up a very important aspect of breeding any type of animal, but especially so with high performance animals such as Pit Bull Terriers.
When it comes to breeding and raising puppies into full grown healthy dogs some people seem to have more success than others. Anyone who has experience in the field will tell you that it takes a lot if time, money and patience along with plenty of common sense before any good results will come off.
Unmistakably, Gary J. Hammonds from Texas is one of the very few that can look back at a very successful career, breeding a high percentage of good dogs. Some of the better known dogs that he bred are such as Frits Jansen’s Champion SPIKE, which turned out to be one of the best producing dogs in Europe. Ronnie Anderson’s Champion SPADE, Champion SMILEY and Champion GOOSE. But the dog that Gary gained most fame with is, without any doubt, the RUFUS dog who proved to be one of the best producing male dogs in the World.
Gary is known to be a very scientific breeder and is most famous for his ALLIGATOR line of dogs which are still playing an important role in the breeding program of many serious breeders around the world. During my trip through North Texas, I decided to look him up and ask him about his experience on the subject of breeding dogs. Upon arriving he spontaneously agreed on doing an interview. While Gary was finishing his last preparations for the weight pull of the following day, I started to ask him the next question:
Gary, why have you chosen to bred the ALLIGATOR bloodline? Years ago I had access to a bunch of dogs and I had mainly BRUNO/HEINZL dogs. I could have taken good BULLYSON and good CORVINO bred dogs, but I’ve seen the ALLIGATOR stuff and really liked what I saw. The main thing that I liked so much about these dogs; SOKO, RENEE and ALLIGATOR was that they were smart dogs, they were hard to hurt, and they were real game dogs. This was 10 or 15 years ago. The mom and daddy to these dogs were not really impressive, they were NIG and SATIN LADY, but together they certainly produced some good dogs. I didn’t like either of them as individuals, but they sure produced. At this moment I have about one hundred and ten dogs and most are bred from this bloodline.
Some people that I have spoken to told me that NIG was a cur. What do you think about this? I’ve heard the same thing. I don’t know if it was true. But, too many people tell the same story that it had to be true. See NIG was one of the last of the Tudor stuff. NIG was heavy JEFF and BABY breeding, so when you got down to that end and you wanted to breed to that stuff you were pretty much limited and NIG was, I suppose, the best producer of them all.
How did you get started with these dogs? When I was 3 years old I had a Bulldog that saved my life. He pulled me out of a bar ditch that was flooding and without that dog I would have drowned. He was not a full blooded top line Pit Bull, but he was ¾ Pit and ¼ farm dog. He thought he was 100% Bulldog and looked like it too. He would jump on anything. His name was TIPP. That’s how I got started with Pit Bulls and I have had a love affair with them ever since.
How do you feel about heavy inbreeding? I sure like inbreeding. It’s a tool that if you take it a generation or two far you will lose what you are inbreeding for. Those types, those characteristics, that are linked with inbreeding, many times, are lost due to too heavy inbreeding.
What do you do to prevent this from happening? With every generation you take a hard look at what you’ve got and you decide if the individuals from that generation are good enough to breed back to the previous generation, like; father to daughter, mother to son, or whatever and if you can’t justify it then you don’t need to carry it on any further. Although you could very easily cutcross in that generation, or even introduce a catalyst blood to that family of dogs to keep it vigorous. Some times that’s the only thing you can do.
What’s the catalyst factor in your breeding program? I’ve used BULLYSON and BRUNO/HEINZL as the catalyst and with good results. Right now I’ve got a little stud dog that is out of the NIGERINO type stuff. JOLIE BLOND bred to MITZIE and I think that’s going to be a good catalyst along with the RALPH dog I have. He is down from PEDRO. I think either of these can be good catalyst blood. PEDRO is from that RASCAL type breeding and he was owned by GARNER.
What is the main quality you are looking for in a stud dog? An ability to reproduce. The qualities that a dog has to have in today’s environment, whether it’s Pit environment, Catch dog, Weight pull dog or whatever. The qualities I breed for are GAMENESS and INTELLIGENCE, a good example is GARY and CHRISTI ATHANS SAIGON. SAIGON is a tremendous weight pull dog and comes from a good family of dogs, he is straight out of my stuff. But you don’t see many of my dogs that are good weight pull dogs.
There is a lot of growing interest in breeding dogs for weight pulls and etc…. It seems that most of these people are not interested in gameness and other traditional qualities. No they aren’t. But of course there are a lot that are just Pulling dogs. For instance, a lot of weight pull dogs are straight stifled UKC type dogs that would have a hard time with the more fighting type dog whether it be a good fighting dog or not. At the APBA Nationals, I see more and more of the Pull dogs that look like the old fighting dogs with the roached back and long legs.
Do you make a distinction between a fighting dog and a stud dog? In my opinion what you need in a stud dog, whether he is a fighting dog or not is a dog that can reproduce. Sound genetic structure both between the ears and in the heart, and also, the body has to be sound. Too many times people lose track of this and they breed to Champion so and so or Grand Champion etc… but because of their title it doesn’t mean they will be able to produce that type of dog. So what I look for in a stud dog is a relatively tight genetic pool, and a family rather than two or three good individuals.
But that means you have to by pedigrees and you know as well as I do there are a lot of dogs out there with fake pedigrees on them! Yes, I use pedigrees a great deal, but it’s not just what you see on paper…. Like the dogs I’ve messed with, I’ve seen their grand-parents first hand, as well as the parents and other similar bred individuals and I’ve used those dogs instead of the dogs from another part of the country that I was not sure about the pedigree.
About pedigrees. Practically all of your dogs go back to Maurice Carver stuff. There are a lot of rumors about him mixing up pedigrees when he was still alive. Since you work a great deal with pedigrees do you believe to know the true ancestry of your dogs when it goes back to SATIN LADY for instance? I believe so and I’ll tell you why. It was too screwed up of a breeding, as far as on paper, not to be the truth. If you look at SATIN LADY , she was a scatter bred bitch out of IRONHEAD and BLACK BEAUTY. She was a big black bitch and I asked Maurice about it on one of my visits to his place. I asked him; “Maurice why did you make a breeding like that?” And he said, “Well son, I tell you, I thought it be good.” Maurice had a way of mixing blood on papers and pedigrees and whatever it took to make it work. I think that part of the reason for Maurice putting out bogus pedigrees was to keep the secret to himself. I sincerely believe that the pedigrees on the dogs that I use to be right. If they’re not, it’s too late to worry about it anyway because I’m 3 or 4 generations away from what Maurice owned or sold to old man Williams, like the SATIN LADY bitch and others, but I will say this, in the seventies Maurice Carver was the BEST breeder in the country. He bred more dogs in those years, first class dogs, than any other 5 top breeders in the country. But the pedigree thing I really sincerely believe it’s no more than Maurice’s way of keeping his secrets secret. He would sell you the cake, but keep the recipe.
What about your Howard Heinzl dogs? They were certainly good dogs but…. And I hate to say this, they lost a lot of what they were famous for in the sixties and seventies. It is no fault of Howard because he bred with some real good genetic back ground and put it together the way it was suppose to be. I think he lived bred those dogs just too tight and they played out. It would click if you would cross it, but Heinzl kept it pure. The stuff he used before and what I liked so much was line bred; 50/50 Colby/Dibo. That combination was hard to beat. My TAFFY bitch was one of those combinations. She was a hell of a dog and I saw some more that were bred the same way, that would make the owner proud. She was a double MUSTY bred dog off BAT and TWIGGY.
Texas is a very big state with an awful lot of Bulldogs and a great number of dog men. Some claim the best dogs and breeders are in Texas. Do you agree with this? I think we have a tremendous base in Texas because there have been a great deal of breedings between the top dog men from Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana and to a lesser degree in Mexico. When you have a situation like this and the competition of the last 40 or 50 years right here in Texas between top dog men it’s only logical that you come up with some top notch bulldogs and dog men. Also, another thing that has made the Texas dogs so good is that several breeders from here went out to buy dogs from Corvino, Heinzl, Tudor, Kinard and Boudreaux. All these very good bloodlines were put together so it’s just the situation that arose. I’m sure at some time in history, there will be another spot in the world the dogs will be just as good as the dogs in Texas are right now, but they really have to do their work to get there.
PART TWO: GARY J. HAMMONDS
If you were to breed a bitch outside your own yard, which male would you pick? Right now I’m picking the MACHO dog from Gary. He comes from Rick Burns and he is a Thibodeaux bred dog. This man bred some very good dogs down from the CLINT stuff and that STOMPANATO blood he had. I sure like what MACHO produces. There are several good stud dogs around the country that I sure wouldn’t be afraid to breed to. One of them is a little dog here in Dallas; the JAP dog. He is a Grand Champion and goes back to some of my blood I used several years ago. He should be a good producer. Two other good ones are the WINO dog in the North East, and Greenwood’s OSCAR in the North West. PATCH EYED PETE would be worth a gamble too. There are a few others I would like to try, but I probably will not for the simple fact that I’ve got several dogs on my yard that I like very much.
Who would you describe as being the best breeders in the country? I can think of a few that I consider very good breeders. Pat Patrick would of course be one of the better breeders. He is a real scientific breeder and has proven himself in the fact that he probably produced as many good dogs as anybody. There are a hundred people who breed some good dogs and especially in Texas you have a great number of good breeders. (I hate to name one for overlooking the others) but Jim Uselton is an awful good breeder. I don’t know if he is still breeding it, but the RED BILL line has been real good for him. Also someone else I have a tremendous amount of faith in is Wendell Trussels. Through the years I’ve seen Trussels’ bred dogs that were not suppose to be good, but they were sure good dogs. Also from what I understand Sorrels and Girley Crum breed some good ones.
What was your relation with Ronnie Anderson? Ronnie was a real competitor. Ronnie was a good friend of mine and as tough as ever come down the path. One of the reasons why I think Ronnie was so good was that he had a tremendous eye for a Bulldog. He could spot a good one and tried them very hard. In his days he was probably one of the very best conditioners in the country. He started out with some dogs that he got from me. I believe the second dog he ever owned was the SPADE dog and of course he made Champion with him. He was into some tough, tough competition in those days.
What about Ronnie’s Champion GOOSE and Champion SMILEY? Yes. GOOSE was off of RUFUS and that bitch from Trussels called MIDGET. There were two Champions in that litter, SMILEY and GOOSE and there was another dog in the same litter that won two and got killed the third time out. His name was GATOR. When we bred RUFUS to MIDGET it produced all first class dogs, except one. The one that lost was 16 months old, so that happens. The best dog in that litter, and Ronnie might disagree with me, was a little dog I called REGINALD. PJ ended up with him and, as far as I know, never did anything with him. REGINALD was head and shoulders above the rest of that litter. The reason why I liked him so much was because he was a very smart dog and used the head to his advantage. He was a very defensive dog, plus he was a dog that could take you out.
George Gillman! God bless George, he and Mac were good friends of mine. He was a very good person deep down. I lived just down the road from him. George started out by buying any and every dog in the country and was just going to get there by maxi-mizing the quality instead of minimizing. George made tremendous impact on the Bulldogs here in Dallas/Fort Worth area. He sure would keep things stirred up. He used and liked the NIG-ALLIGATOR stuff.
Don Mayfield! He was a top conditioner and handler. I guess I heard about him before I heard about anyone else. I had a good friend that helped me more than anybody else in getting my first dog, his name is John Langham and he told me about Mayfield. What a tremendous conditioner he was and a top competitor. I saw Mayfield match several dogs and that was pretty good. He was a hell of a conditioner. The first dog I saw him match that I was really impressed with was the SWIG dog of Weldon Stockton. All of this was before there was a law against fighting dogs, somewhere in the late sixties. I saw SWIG go into a little dog that Jimmie Jobe had, a dog called RUSTY. Well RUSTY was an odds-on favorite. He was a hell of a ear dog and was hard to get to. I remember that Mayfield brought in SWIG and he was 5lbs lighter that I would have brought the dog in and perhaps about 2lbs lighter than Ronnie Anderson would have brought him in. Razor thin and one of the strongest malnourished looking dogs I’ve ever seen in my life. That’s when I developed a great amount of respect for Mayfield as a conditioner. The dogs Mayfield had at that time were probably pretty good dogs, but he often used dogs that belonged to other people like Weldon and a lot of George’s dogs. Mayfield and George made a team that were real hard to beat. I never had much dog dealings with George or Mayfield. I bought the old BUD dog from Mayfield, which was a pure Heinzl dog. He was bred like Greenwood’s GENTLE BEN.
Do you believe the breed has improved over the years? Tremendously so. I think the dogs we have today are 20 or 30% better than the dogs back in the sixties, and perhaps 5% better than the dogs in the seventies. I look for the dogs to get better if the standards are kept and if the people are responsible in how they breed dogs. Because the genetic pool of good dogs is bigger than it has ever been before. The thing that I’ve seen happen with Bulldogs is that the popularity has grown immensely and a lot of people get Bulldogs that don’t need them. We have seen a lot of bad media on the dogs with the result that the general public doesn’t look at Bulldogs as any other breed, but see them almost like a white shark. A wild animal that is looking for something to mouth, something to kill. If we can change that image in the public eye, for what reason, and if the breed continues to exist, we have to do that. The main thing that I think is a problem and probably will be until the dogs are gone is indiscriminate breeding. What started out with a genetic pool of very, very few dogs that were man aggressive has changed into a situation where we’ve now got several first class dogs that are very man aggressive, that’s a trait the old timers surely wouldn’t have carried on. I don’t know if it is all that bad a trait, but when it is in an uncontrollable man aggressive trait it sure can cause serious problems. Man eaters in the wrong hands, are also bad for the breed.
Being a President of the Long Star State Pit Bull Club… what’s that all about? The club was formed years ago by Perry Reneau to create a better understanding of the breed, to sort of fight the laws that were being enacted at the time. At that same time I became affiliated with the club. I went to Austin and spoke against the felony law, in other words, like spokesman for the club. Next time when the election came up, I was elected President and have been ever since, which has been 4 or 5 years now. We had 70 or 80 active members and about 20 or 30 workers. Most members are from this area, but also from Louisiana and Oklahoma and several other places. We can use everybody we can get, but this number of members is pitiful when you start thinking about the large group of Pit Bull owners in this Dallas/Ft. Worth area.
Where did you get RUFUS? I got him from some people in Ft. Worth that are named Burnett. They had him as a pet, just a backyard dog. The reason why I liked him was because he was double up on that SATIN LADY side of the pedigree and I figured that was the strength. I knew that if you tighten the NIG stuff you seem to lose something because I’ve seen the tight NIG dogs and didn’t particularly like them. Some of them were good, but most were not. The SATIN LADY stuff was a gamble. I didn’t bred RUFUS a whole lot because I didn’t get him until he was 7 years old. I had RUFUS for a long time before I figured out he was deaf. The only deaf dogs from the ALLIGATOR line comes from RUFUS, but most of these deaf dogs are pretty Game dogs. I do think it is a disadvantage for a dog to be deaf and I certainly wouldn’t like to breed a line of deaf dogs, but I get one in every fifty or so dogs down from RUFUS that is deaf, but they are almost all those dogs and their littermates are always Game dogs.
What were the most successful combinations you have made? Well, I was very reluctant to use the BULLYSON line of dogs back years ago and one of the first people to encourage me and told me it would do good with the ALLIGATOR blood was Carver. I remember I thought he had good luck with it and I probably would fall on my face trying, but I’ve had good results with it, even better than with the ALLIGATOR/BRUNO cross. RUFUS bred to BLACK SISTER produced MICHELLE and Champion SPIKE of Frits Jansen, who proved to be as good a dog and also produced a good percentage of top Bulldogs in Europe. BLACK SISTER was from STOMPER and BONNIE BOOTS, that’s BULLYSON and ELI JR. STOMPER was a very good dog, a rough mean crazy Bulldog. I don’t know if he would have been my type of dog, but I sure was impressed with him. We bred RUFUS to LUCELLE, which was a STOMPER kind of bitch and we got Champion BRUTUS which is registered as SIMBA. Also, we got Champion TAR, ALLYEYSON, and several other good ones. Then I bred RUFUS to MAURICE and we got Jay Howard’s Champion JACK. MAURICE was out of Carver’s yard. And of course the breeding to MIDGET produced a bunch of good ones. MIDGET went back to GR. CH. ART and BLACK GEORGIA, so you are talking about a tremendous genetic pool and it is hard to go wrong when you breed such a bitch to a producer like RUFUS.
What is your ANDY L. dog out of? He is out of RUFUS bred back to MICHELLE, she is one of RUFUS daughters. MICHELLE was stolen after her first match where she did pretty good. ANDY L. is a pretty good dog. He is 8 years old. Andy Leteff had a brother to him called ROOSTER that was a good dog too.
What about your BRUNO dog from some years ago? He was a good one. I sure liked him. Everybody thought he was a cur, but he gave me 1 hour and 56 minutes against George’s COMER in Louisiana. I got him from some people in Arlington that had him as a pet. He was a little over 1 year old when I got him. He was a super dog. Intelligent and rough, and just a real good dog. The minute the fight was over with, BENNY BOB and BULLYSON, the Plumbers went up to Rick Halliburton to match BRUNO into BENNY BOB. Halliburton said he didn’t think he was interested. That shows you the quality of dog BRUNO was, BENNY BOB was a very good 50lb dog. BRUNO lost to GOMER which was a Champion dog, GOMER was a NIG bred dog. I believe GOMER was the first NIG cross bred dog that George used that came from Salty McKnight.
Can you tell a little bit about your VITO dog, and about the brindle male called PIG? VITO is the ugliest dog in Texas. I won several ugly dog awards with him. He is right out of RUFUS and SUE. He is a pure ALLIGATOR bred dog. He is producing some pretty good dogs. The man that has most of these dogs is Billy Haynes from Louisiana. He uses them as weight pull dogs. They are not suppose to be pulling dogs, but they don’t know that and they pull pretty good. Billy bred them even tighter than I would have and he had some good results doing it….so…the VITO dog is getting so old that part of the year he is not having good sperm anymore, so I have to check his sperm before I bred him. So far he has turned out to be a very good producer for me. The PIG dog is out of RUFUS and MAURICE. He is a straight cross, but comes from a good family and has produced some pretty good dogs too. His sister HARRY is the dam of that Champion EVIL dog and RUFIN, so I look for that to be a good foundation family of dogs for the future. I use PIG quite a bit and like what I’m getting from him. He is a smaller type of dog although he goes back to STOMPANATO on bottom and ALLIGATOR on the top. Both real big dogs.
What is the best weight pull dog you’ve seen? I’ve seen a couple I really like. But up until I saw BIG HEAD I thought weight pulls were for the other guy, I wasn’t really excited about it, but when I saw BIG HEAD come to the track I sat down and watched him pull, I was impressed. When his owner, John Bettes, dropped the pull lead and said, “pull BIG HEAD,” he would drop his head and here he comes. It gave me the chills to see him pull. He was strictly a command pull dog and the best I’ve seen.
What is the best fighting dog you’ve ever seen? That would be a very hard question to answer. I was involved with the Plumbers quite a bit. They had ALLIGATOR, SOKO and other good dogs. I got to handle ALLIGATOR in some pretty hard rolls. He was a rough “go and get them” kind of dog. He didn’t have a defensive bone in his body which would probably get him killed in today’s competition, but still I think there is not a whole lot of big dogs around that could compete with ALLIGATOR. He did take the bottom to win a couple of times, went uphill and went into some dogs that would have killed him if they had been more game. I’ve seen a bunch of dogs I liked pretty good, but even though he is a controversial dog, I have to say that GR. CH. ART was an awfully good dog. I refereed, I believe, two of his fights, one for sure. Also, JEREMIAH was a tremendous dog. I saw him win his last fight with no more than 2 teeth and he whipped a dog that Gene Ridley had that was a good one.
What is the best stud dog you’ve ever seen? I don’t know, there a lot of good stud dogs, but even the best stud dog can miss and produce nothing once in a while.
If you could make a choice between BIG HEAD, GR. CH. ART, or that famous stud of your dreams, which one would you pick? The stud dog for sure. The one that could produce the good ones. Breeding Pit Bulls is probably the hardest animal to breed in the world. I feel certain that dogs from Game stock make better protection animals, better catch dogs, and better pets than the scatter bred stuff in somebody’s back yard. The real dogs are just better dogs. I like to think that I’m a breeder of good dogs and some of them can fight a lick.
Interview With Floyd Boudreaux
Interview With Legendary Dogman Floyd Boudreaux
How many of us can say that his daddy had bulldogs for more than 40 years? How many of us can say without exaggeration that he played an important roll in developing a line of dogs that have stood the test of time and become the backbone of some of the best performing bloodlines around these days. One of the very few that can answer these questions with a positive “Yes” is Floyd Boudreaux from Louisiana. We sat down and talked to Mr. Boudreaux about his most famous dogs. Like the BLIND BILLY dog, BOZE, ELI, OX and many more. For the first time Mr. Boudreaux tells about his friendship and relations with dogmen like Leo Kinard, George Saddler, Joe Corvino, Maurice Carver and others.
Floyd Boudreaux is without any doubt a very knowledgeable dogman and has bred, raised and handled some of the best ever to cross a pit. Stay with us and read about the living legend from Louisiana, Mr. Floyd Boudreaux.
What was your first dog and when was the first time for you to leave Louisiana with these dogs to fight into something other than local competition? I remember my first dog was a brindle female, her name was FLOSSIE. I started at a very young age but the first time for me to fight a dog in the fast –lane must have been when I took STAGGER LEE to San Antonio to one of Maurice Carver’s shows. I went into a guy named Steven and he had a dog called ROHO. We had that dog beat but he kept pushing his dog in the corner with his knees each time when it was his time to scratch. Maurice was the referee and I said: “Gentleman be sure not to push that dog anymore, you have pushed him for the last time.” If I wouldn’t have said anything that time, who knows what might have happened!
How well did you know Carver? Pretty good. I saw a lot of his shows and gave him some dogs, but I never really did much business with him. He was a nice looking man and could tell a story like no other. I remember Maurice and Mr. Jolley, from south Texas, came here one time in 1955 and they were driving a red Thunderbird convertible. You had to push the car to start it and they had a black dog named BUTCH with them. He jumped out of the car and was running to highway and we had to catch him. Maurice told me he started with the dogs in 1946, one year after I fought my first dog. He and his friend Jolley went to Louisiana to fight that WINO dog that was owned by Jolley. After the fight Jolley sold the dog over here and Maurice was so angry with him that he refused to drive back to Texas with Jolley in the same car. Maurice knew a lot of good dog people and he would watch the hot young dogs in somebody’s backyard and if you had something he liked he would try and talk you out of it and then start selling them. I saw him fight a few good ones but he never did fight many dogs and a lot of times he would come in overweight. One time he was matched into Mayfield and come in overweight. But Mayfield said he would fight anyway. Carver refused and then sold his dog. That’s how he was. Maurice was always trying to make money with the dogs. How else could he survive? He wasn’t going to work for a living.
Do you think he misrepresented those papers to keep that a secret? I’m sure he did to some degree. But in those days it was pretty much common knowledge that he did and everybody that needed to know, knew about it. I did. He bred to my BLIND BILLY dog and that’s how he got IRONHEAD, BOOMERANG and others. They came out of my stuff. He always told us that BOOMERANG was out of IRONHEAD. You see Maurice would exaggerate a lot all the time, and he was smart enough to tell you a lie. Don’t get me wrong, Maurice was a nice guy, but also a liar. He told me one time that he worked for the Mexican Government, the Border Patrol, and even told my wife he worked for the Foreign Legion. But one thing is for sure, he was a hell of a ladies man and could convince you that black was blue. He sure was a good salesman.
What was the best dog you ever owned? They ask me that all the time. It’s tough to answer, but I think I’m partial to my BOZE dog. I probably had a few that were as good, but I always liked him a lot. He won 27 rolls for me and he was always the smaller dog, but they couldn’t beat him. He also won one contracted fight. One time Jerry Clemons and Douglas Nirider brought a dog that was 19lbs bigger than BOZE and that big dog would bite through car tires. When we put them down it was a joke. BOZE was a fast, hard mouth dog. He would fight high in the shoulder and destroy a dog quick. During the day time he would usually sleep with the puppies around the house and I always thought he was a little shy, just like BLIND BILLY. One time he won a fight in just 6 minutes, that was in New Orleans. We had 10 matches that day and he beat a dog of Jerome Hernandez. He just wrecked the dog. It was no contest. BOZE was out of SCRUB and CANDY. After that fight, they claimed that their dog wasn’t conditioned. I don’t know, but mine was ready to fight. I matched against Jerome 3 times and won twice. Jerome was a dogman and hard to beat.
What was the last dog you matched? I guess that was the CACTUS dog from Grady Cummings about 15 years ago. This dog quit in 28 minutes. He had quit before, but I didn’t know that at the time and nobody told me about this until we were about to wash the dogs for the fight. Atlas Brewer came up to me and said, “Do you want to know something about that dog?” I said, “I appreciate that, but it is a little late.” We had our money up and I wasn’t trying to be rude, but if a man wants to help me then help me on the get go. I would never let a man start conditioning a dog if I knew the dog was a cur, but it happened.
Mr. Boudreaux, I want you to tell me the full story on the old ELI dog. How he was bred, his parents, his pups and so on. I will tell you the true story as it is and I have witnesses that can tell you this is the truth. If this is not right, I’m the brother of Martin Luther King. Today at least 80% of the dogs that are fighting come from ELI. It makes me mad that they got the story on him and his sons BULLYSON and ELI JR., turned around. Not for myself, I know better. I lived it, but the future generation that is coming behind us doesn’t know anything about the truth and have to rely on what they are reading. That’s why I’m so glad I can do this interview in the TIMES. It takes a small man to lie and change a story. I’m telling the truth about how them dogs are bred just like I was told before. ELI was a pretty good individual and after his match against Jack Smith in Cleveland I bought him home. We doctored him up and then a sheriff from Mississippi tried to buy him, but I wouldn’t sell him. Then the next day Raymond Holt of Texas and his wife Sharon came by to buy him, but I gave ELI to my friend Jr. Bush, from Alabama. He loaned ELI to John Cotton from Chattanooga, TN. They were friends at the time and that’s where somebody stole ELI. I gave ELI to Jr. because he is a real high-class dogman, an example for a lot of other so called dogmen. When ELI got stolen, Cotton gave Jr. $1000 and told him to go and buy another dog, and said that if there was another dog he liked that cost more he would make up the difference. There is a lot of stories about what happened after this, when ELI got stolen from Chattanooga. I think he went from Chattanooga to Memphis and from there on, I just don’t know for sure, but I feel that some of that bunch in Memphis had something to do with it. I just don’t know what happened with ELI but I feel very strong about this, and I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t believe it myself. I truly believe that ELI was also the sire of that GR. CH. ZEBO dog.
They were too much alike not to be true. At one time I gave a nice red puppy to Jerry Clemmons. He is a friend of mine and I still think a lot of the man. He took the pup, kept him for 6 weeks and sold the pup. He came here and I gave him another pup that I had here in the blacksmith shop. I called that pup SPOOK. She was out of a litter that killed each other when they were still very young. He kept her for about 2 months at the most when she came in season for the first time. He brought her back and I bred her to ELI. They had 4 pups, 3 black and 1 brindle. Two males and two females.
One of the black males was BULLYSON, the other was ELI JR. The brindle was BRENDY. She bit the hardest of them all and she was the biggest. She could break a dog down in less than 3 minutes. BRENDY was awesome, a bad Bulldog. As bad as a man has ever seen. She beat a dog one time like she was having breakfast. I’ve never seen anything like her again. The other female in the litter out of ELI and SPOOK was a black named LADY. She was my kind of dog and I think the best in the litter. Both BULLYSON and his brother ELI JR. were exceptional Bulldogs. They were the cream of the crop, top-notch Bulldogs and went into some tough competition to make history. BULLYSON was a good dog, but he was not as good as ELI JR. ELI JR. was a much better producer. He was just not bred to good selected bitches, but he was definitely a better dog than BULLYSON. He didn’t care if he was getting bit because he was going to bite you. Red Walling was the owner of BULLYSON when he was matched into his son BENNY BOB. Maurice conditioned him, but he was not fit to fight. This is what happened. Maurice had BULLYSON and bred him to a bitch named BETH at his place. A few weeks after that BULLYSON got bit by a rattlesnake and his head was as big as a Texas hat. Also there was this big old dog at Maurice’s place that got off the chain and BULLYSON who was in a kennel was fighting with this dog through the fence and messed up his teeth and gums. Just before the fight with BENNY BOB we checked his blood count and it was down to 33. BENNY BOB was a brindle dog and BULLYSON a black. The match was at 52lbs, but BULLYSON was only a 48 or 49 pound dog. The fight was reported in Pete Sparks’ magazine and also in the book that Mayfield had out at the time, but it was not until Mayfield wrote that little book called ‘Rednecks’ that he came out with all that nonsense about a black dog against a white dog. I think he was confused by another match between Danny Burton, who had a black 54lb dog, and Raymond Holt, who had a white dog called LIGHTNING IV, owned by a black man named Chris. ELI JR. was sold to Douglas Nirider when he was 17 months old for $400. He won his match on a broken leg in Oklahoma. If BULLYSON would have been in shape against BENNY BOB I think that would have been a hell of a fight. One time I had a dog called NAPOLEON and I rolled him with BULLYSON when he was at my place. BULLYSON was an 18lb bigger dog, but NAPOLEON held his own for a little while. It didn’t go very long because BULLYSON was coming on hard. Later I won with NAPOLEON in the same show when BULLYSON won over that SIR dog that was handled by Bert Clouse.
I remember one incident with BULLYSON when he was at my place. Jerry Clemons brought the dog to me to be tested and one day while I was cleaning up around his chain he tried to bite me. Before he could put his mouth on me I hit him hard with a shovel and knocked him out. After this happened he never, at my place, tried to bite anyone again. If a dog is a biting dog I don’t like them and if they try to bite me or my family, it’s a dead dog. Jerry had BULLYSON when he was a young dog and his dogs were always sort of hyper. It’s easy to male them that way.
On the subject of schooling. How do you go about this? I don’t think you can change a dog a whole lot after he is born. All you can do is sharpen his ability a little bit but you can’t make him game. Now people say that it is a risk to breed a young untested bitch. Well I bred SPOOK her first time in heat. She was never tried before, but she produced some exceptional dogs. I think it is like this. They have the genetic ability to produce good or they don’t know matter how they are themselves. There is just one Ace in every hundred or so and the rest are just mediocre dogs, that’s something you always have to keep in mind. What happens now is that all these fast-lane dogs, with hard mouths are doing away with all these old game dogs, going right through them. But I still prefer gameness more than anything else. Anybody can breed dogs that will bite and are rough, but it is more difficult to breed a dog that will stay. With a game dog you have a shot at the money and there is no monopoly. There is nobody that has corned the market on these dogs. Dogs are just like humans. I’ll explain that to you; you can have two brothers, one a gentleman and the other one that’s not even worth the powder to blow him up and still they both came from the same father and mother. So, with these dogs, it is the same. You are going to have dogs with each his own character and what we try to do is to get the good genes together. We would all like our sons to be President, but the chances are few. If a dog doesn’t perform at an early age there is nothing you can do about that. My dogs are basically late starters and as a rule of thump your late starters make you a better dog. I want a young dog to show a pretty strong interest in what we are doing before I start them out. This is how I schooled my dogs; they must be ready to understand what is going on and have a desire to do it. When they are willing I start to school them a few times and when I think he is ready I put everything on him. I’m serious. I put a big dog on a little one and most people will tell you I put 2 or 3 dogs on one if I want to test him. I have to see a dog to satisfy me, not please somebody else. I have used dogs that I rolled for only 8 or 9 minutes but if they give me a reason to take a longer look, I certainly will. No one knows if a dog will make one more scratch enough. You pick him up to your satisfaction and he goes like a bullet and stands the line the next shot. Who is smart enough to say, he is gambling. That’s why they call it gambling. One bit of advice to young men that start out in these dogs would have to be ‘learn to have patience’. Let your puppies grow up before you make a decision about them. You can’t expect a child to do a man’s job. You have to give them a shot.
If I was to use a dog for serious money I would wait until he is 2 or 2 ½ years old at least. I would certainly not use him sooner than that. The oldest dog I used was 9 years old. But you can use them up to 6 years old easy. They can’t win them all, but they can take so much more when they are 3 years old. To me that’s being at peak. I will give an example; my daddy had a dog called NAN. He matched him into Gaboon Trahan and he was using a dog named COUNTRY BOY which was also named PETER. COUNTRY BOY was just a young dog. In 33 minutes we beat him and he jumped the pit. I will never forget this because my dog had a broken tail. He let him get some age on him and then started to school him. When this dog matured , “Hell you couldn’t stop him anymore.” So Gaboon got his dog back again and by this time COUNTRY BOY had won several fights. One of his wins was over a good winning son of DIBO called TOPPER. He beat him in a real short time. TOPPER was owned by Bob O’Neal at that time. Eventually, COUNTRY BOY was matched into a dog called BOBTAIL and that fight went something like 2 hours. BOBTAIL broke his jaw and COUNTRY BOY probably would have won, but Gaboon offered a draw because he knew that the man who owned BOBTAIL didn’t have a lot of money and a wife and some kids. He knew that if he would take the money it would come from the farm. His reason to fight these dogs was to demonstrate that he had a better dog and he had done that already, so he offered to call it a draw. The moral of this story is that we really gave COUNTRY BOY a second chance after he had quit against NAN. Most other men would have shot him, but age really helped this dog and that’s the hardest thing to explain to a young man who is coming into the game. I’m not making excuses for a dog that quits. I’m not like Mr. Mayfield, who is a fine man and a good dogman, but he will sell you a pup for $2,000 or $3,000 and tell you to wait 4 or 5 years. A lot of dogs are retired at that age, good or bad. Maybe Mayfield hopes you will wait until the dog dies of other causes in the meantime, or that the guy who owns him gets rid of him before that and won’t ask for his money back. No, I don’t make excuses, but in turn, I had some of the best that were late starters.
When Leo Kinard started to keep dogs in Mississippi was he the first one to introduce bulldogs over there? Not really, George saddler was fighting them before Leo in Mississippi. Both Leo and George put on some big shows, but Leo’s were always a little bit better. He had a real nice place, a nice building, and he kept more bulldogs than anybody else in those days. He had about 250 dogs. Leo had a friend named Frank James and this Frank was an interesting person, he was namely brother of the notorious Jesse James. Both Frank and Jesse were well-known outlaws. Jesse was killed. Frank got amnesty and later moved to Meridian, Ms. And worked in a restaurant. Leo told me that Frank Fitzwater was a son of that “Jesse James.”
Fitzwater was a good dogman, he was a sharp man. Anyway, Leo was a special man and very good, honest dogman. His wife Sarah was sick, she had cancer and Leo took her to the best doctors in the country. They went to New York and he did anything for her, he loved her dearly. He told me he spent more than $125,000 on her without much results. When she died it broke him and then later the State bought some of his properties but they never paid him. He died broke. We sent him some money every month. I was working and he was not. The last time I saw the man he walked us to the car and shook my hand. He didn’t say much, but he was crying and so was I. He died of a heart attack. I believe he was 67 years old when he died in 1976. He left me some dogs, doghouses, some chains and etc… Leo loved to talk about dogs, from the time we got up till late at night. He was a bootlegger and always had all kinds of whiskey, champagne, cigarettes of all brands and if you were a guest, it was yours. Many times we were there and talked dogs with Jim Taylor and many others. Leo lived his life to the fullest. He had three different cars, two Cadillacs, and a truck. He would deliver the whiskey with the cars, sometimes I would go with him and often we would come home, change cars and go off again. He never had any trouble with the law until the National Guard came down on him. Leo was not a breeder as such. He bred some, but from all the good dogs he had I can’t remember one that produced something equally as good as themselves. I remember he had some pure Colby dogs that were game until the third generation, then they started to quit in the pit, but he still bred several and they were game again. Leo had full time help and that makes a difference of course, his set-up was beautiful. All fenced in and a big gate that was closed around the six bedroom house. Guard dogs were all around running loose. Leo was a great dogman. I knew him when he had $65,000 in his pocket and later when he had less than $1 to spend. It didn’t make any difference to me because he was my friend and that never changed.
From all the dogmen that you knew in those days, who was the toughest? Who was the best dogman in your time? The man I admired most was George Saddler. He too, like Leo, was from Mississippi. George taught me a great deal about conditioning. He never had many friends because he was a businessman. He had a restaurant and he never needed friends, he just went on with his business, but I thought I was his friend. One of the first things he told me was to take care of your dog and he’ll do right for you. Don’t come half drunk with some ladies to have fun and expect to do good. Stay with your dog and give him all the attention he needs. If you come, come to win. There is plenty of time to party.
Did Saddler bring his dogs in fine or dried out pretty good? Yes, he brought them in keen, always sharp and prepared for the duration.
Did he fight a basically hard biting dog, a punisher? No. I remember him winning more on the distance than on the bad dogs. My REBEL dog was a rough dog and George ran him half an hour just before he fought him because he was overweight. He fought him on Tuesday night, came in overweight and took him down the road around the river until he made weight, and still won the fight in a short time. He pretty much picked his dogs and he, just like Leo, had some help to walk the dogs. He would send somebody out to walk his dog and tell them not to come back until late at night. I learned from him that hand walking a dog will help him to stand on his feet during a long hard contest. I’m sure you can do it many other ways, but that’s how I learned it. George was a gambler. If he had seen your dog before, and you were matched into him, you were automatically at a loss. He would buy a good dog and gamble hard. He had a good eye for a bulldog. His son-in-law Curley Hayes also helped George a lot and he was a very competitive dogman himself.
Did you know Joe Corvino and Earl Tudor? Oh yes. Joe was a good man and a friend of mine. He was a short stocky man and chewed tobacco. He was a gentleman and really liked the dogs. He would come here mostly on Thursdays, a few days before the fights and he would stay here, talking dogs. He was like me, he thought that if you had gameness in your dog you had a shot, no matter what. Joe was always dressed up in a three piece suit plus watch chain. There were others that had suits on like Bob Wallace, Mr. Marshall, Leo Kinard sometimes, Cecil Collins and of course, George Saddler. Howard Heinzl always wore cowboy boots and a Texas hat. Another gentleman was Bob Hemphill, the man who had all those red nose dogs. Hemphill lived here quite a while and worked at the fire station. That was in 1927. He left from here and took two dogs with him. One was HOBO JOE, but I can’t remember the other one. Earl Tudor was more a conditioner than a breeder. He had some very good dogs like DIBO, JEFF, SPIKE, WHITE ROCK, and a dog named CRACKER. In his younger days, Earl fought a lot of dogs all the time, always looking for something to match. Back in those days, he bought a lot of dogs from other people, but later, when I knew him, he bred his own. When he was younger he had those Komosinski type dogs, not the terrier type, but more like the old Donovan type. I really don’t know where he got them, but they looked a lot like the dogs that Cockney Charlie Lloyd had and later were owned by men like komosinski and Donovan. I was lucky to get BLIND BILLY and RASCAL. I put them together with good results.
Gaboon Trahan’s RASCAL? Yes, you see Trahan never owned that dog. It should be Boudreaux’s RASCAL, like he is registered. I still have the papers here, but I don’t care if the rest of the world thinks of him as Trahan’s RASCAL. Anyway, I owned that dog and I crossed him with BLIND BILLY. Now RASCAL wouldn’t start when he was a young dog and, as a matter of fact, he was stolen one time but because he wouldn’t fight, they turned him loose. I saw him in 1957 when I got out of the service and he fought against a big black dog that was out of Cannon’s BLACK SHINE and those dogs. At the time we were all arrested, but in those days it was just a misdemeanor, there was nothing against bulldogs really. RASCAL was owned by S.P. and I traded one of RASCAL’s sons for him, a young dog called RASCAL JR. This pup only had one testicle, but S.P. took the pup and later sold him. The man that traded RASCAL to me is still alive. RASCAL produced that COUNTRY BOY dog, MARCIANO, and several other good females. As a match dog I think RASCAL was probably overrated. He was a game dog, red and white in color. He also was a bad ear dog just like COUNTRY BOY.
Is your good stock mostly Corvino? Yes. What I did…. My BLIND BILLY dog was born in 1952 and I bought him in 1953. My uncle had four Ace roosters and we traded them with Earl Tudor for BLIND BILLY. He was a son of DIBO and he wouldn’t fight until he was 2 ½ years old.
Was he blind? No, not really. His eyes had always been a little weak and in his last contest he was blind, yes. I won a real good match with him in 26 or 28 minutes. Then the second time, I was very young then, they tried to fool me. It was pretty dark in the place where the pit was set up and it was my turn to scratch BILLY. Earl Tudor jumped up out of joy when BILLY was scratching towards the other dog. He was about halfway when he turned around to look at Earl and hit the pit wall. He never stopped looking for the other dog, but he was counted out and lost the fight. We didn’t get the trophy that day, but BILLY was the best dog in the show and from then on they called him BLIND BILLY. Like I said before, his sire was the DIBO dog and I believe Howard Heinzl had something to do with that dog. DIBO was stolen when he was a young dog and sold to a black man who owned a restaurant, DIBO’S real name was RUNT and when he started at the age of four they picked him up again and matched him.
What about your dog named OX? OX was a very smart dog. He was a superb ear dog and also very game. When I turned him loose he never missed that ear. A long time ago we matched him in Mexico. He was matched for $16,000, which in those days was a lot of money. I was matched into the District-Attorney of Mexico City. He had a good little dog and he told me that his dog would break legs and said that that was going to happen to OX too. The only comment I had to make was that if OX would turn him loose he wasn’t going to break anything. OX was smart and I am convinced that he would have stayed out of trouble, the only thing OX couldn’t do was talk. That’s how smart he was. But the show never came off because of a couple of punks from California who were involved in other activities and had been followed by the authorities.
This was not just another convention, but it was going to be one of the greatest get-togethers in a long time. There were 2 or 3 super dogs to be matched. The trophy alone for the winner cost $2,000 and was made by Larry McCaw from California. Plus the fact that nobody brings a dog that far when they were not satisfied with the dog at home. After that, we sold OX because we needed money to buy a new place. He went to a man from Florida, named Bob Johnson. One week after he took him, he called and told me he had put three dogs on OX. He said he stopped the first dog in 20 minutes, the next one went a little over a half hour and the third one OX fought like he just started, so they picked him up. He told me OX was a very game dog. I told him that I assumed he was game, but didn’t realize he was that game. People don’t seem to understand that even the very best will often quit if you stress them hard enough. It’s just a matter of how much you put on them. There is no sense in killing them while testing them because there is something like a breaking point. Some dogs that have never been used because they quit at home might have been great dogs in the pit under the right circumstances. Lack of knowledge… that’s what it is! OX was a polished ear dog and he could keep himself out of trouble, but most other dogs couldn’t stand this kind of abuse. These dogs are just flesh and bone like anything else and most men don’t even recognize an Ace dog when they see one. They try to condition a dog on a treadmill when they are half drunk and watching TV. Now that I’m back on the subject of schooling; I took the DEVIL dog of Oklahoma and rolled him no more than 9 minutes and later I used him to whip Chicken Sam with a dog that I saw fight for three hours. Sometimes when you see an all beaten up dog people say: that’s a bad one! I say, No Sir! That’s a bad one that passed on him. That’s the way it goes.
Who was the best breeder in your days? Well, that’s hard to say. Breeding dogs is a heartbreaking experience because when you have something good it will practically never reproduce the same. You can raise anything easier than bulldogs. Like chickens, horses, etc… there is so much you’ve got to have in an Ace dog. You get them with talent and they are curs, you get them that are game but they can’t fight. Hitler tried to breed humans, but he also didn’t succeed. He had them built like he wanted, but they didn’t have the brains. I have never had many dogs in my life, but I did have some good ones, so I think that’s not bad. I can sure understand that when a man keeps 300 dogs or more, he comes up with some good ones. It’s like this… know what you see, know what the dog is and know an Ace dog when you see one. Only time will teach you that, only time. But also you have to have enough to select from. That’s the key too. If you have a good female and breed her to a good male you have a chance of coming up with something good. It’s that simple. Breed your best bulldog to another top-notch bulldog and if they don’t produce, you breed them to something else and then if it doesn’t work, you better forget about it. I had a female one time, her name was TAMMY. She was by far the smartest dog I’ve ever owned. She was out of that BLACK SHINE dog and she was the only dog I let into the house. She was real sharp. If she was fighting, for instance, I could call her off and let her sit down with me and send her back anytime I wanted. I bred her both to RASCAL and BLIND BILLY the same time with no more than 5 days or so in between. I did this because both males were old and I really didn’t want to miss this breeding. So I first bred BILLY and then bred RASCAL 5 days later, the pups were born about 61 days after I bred BILLY, but some of the pups were spotted just like RASCAL was. She had 13 pups and every pup in that litter was good, all of them were pitworthy. Bob Wallace was here when I bred RASCAL to TAMMY, so I gave him a pup. He named the pup SOCKS and always told everybody he was out of RASCAL. I didn’t really care because both BILLY and RASCAL were mine and they both were out of the same female, but people are quick to criticize. The minute they saw a spotted pup they would say he was out of RASCAL instead of BLIND BILLY. I never made a secret out of it and told everybody about it. Most people just wanted to say something, but I knew better. There are so many people making money with these dogs and all they do is deal in pedigrees. I never cared too much about that. I bred my dogs for myself and all they had to do was satisfy me and nobody else. Money is no object when you are trying to breed and raise good bulldogs. I would be rich if I had all the money other people have made by peddling these dogs, but it is against my morals to breed something just for the money if I don’t believe in it. Most people that do, don’t even know what they are talking about.
What would you say to a young man just starting out in these dogs? Stop. Don’t do it! I would try my best to discourage him. This is a bad disease. When it gets in your blood it stays. The reason why I admire them so much is for what they are capable of doing. They are all-American dogs. I’ll probably always have a few and even when I go down to 6 or 7 I will still breed a few now and then.
But if a man was going to keep bulldogs what would you tell him? I don’t know… I would say be honest and give your best shot and give your puppies a chance to prove themselves. If a pup is 12 or 14 months old he will grab anything, just like a young person. When they are close to 2 years old they will show more strength and be a better dog. These dogs cost a lot of money. They take a lot, but it makes a man proud to own a good one. I had one or two good ones, but didn’t always have the money to go into top competition. But once or twice we had somebody split the money and we gave it a shot. It was worth it. So many people talk about doing great things in their lives but they never do it, they wouldn’t know how. When the going gets tough and the stakes are high, it takes more than just money. It takes a man with guts, a strong personality and lots of ambition plus a good bulldog to compete in the fast-lane.
How many of us can say that his daddy had bulldogs for more than 40 years? How many of us can say without exaggeration that he played an important roll in developing a line of dogs that have stood the test of time and become the backbone of some of the best performing bloodlines around these days. One of the very few that can answer these questions with a positive “Yes” is Floyd Boudreaux from Louisiana. We sat down and talked to Mr. Boudreaux about his most famous dogs. Like the BLIND BILLY dog, BOZE, ELI, OX and many more. For the first time Mr. Boudreaux tells about his friendship and relations with dogmen like Leo Kinard, George Saddler, Joe Corvino, Maurice Carver and others.
Floyd Boudreaux is without any doubt a very knowledgeable dogman and has bred, raised and handled some of the best ever to cross a pit. Stay with us and read about the living legend from Louisiana, Mr. Floyd Boudreaux.
What was your first dog and when was the first time for you to leave Louisiana with these dogs to fight into something other than local competition? I remember my first dog was a brindle female, her name was FLOSSIE. I started at a very young age but the first time for me to fight a dog in the fast –lane must have been when I took STAGGER LEE to San Antonio to one of Maurice Carver’s shows. I went into a guy named Steven and he had a dog called ROHO. We had that dog beat but he kept pushing his dog in the corner with his knees each time when it was his time to scratch. Maurice was the referee and I said: “Gentleman be sure not to push that dog anymore, you have pushed him for the last time.” If I wouldn’t have said anything that time, who knows what might have happened!
How well did you know Carver? Pretty good. I saw a lot of his shows and gave him some dogs, but I never really did much business with him. He was a nice looking man and could tell a story like no other. I remember Maurice and Mr. Jolley, from south Texas, came here one time in 1955 and they were driving a red Thunderbird convertible. You had to push the car to start it and they had a black dog named BUTCH with them. He jumped out of the car and was running to highway and we had to catch him. Maurice told me he started with the dogs in 1946, one year after I fought my first dog. He and his friend Jolley went to Louisiana to fight that WINO dog that was owned by Jolley. After the fight Jolley sold the dog over here and Maurice was so angry with him that he refused to drive back to Texas with Jolley in the same car. Maurice knew a lot of good dog people and he would watch the hot young dogs in somebody’s backyard and if you had something he liked he would try and talk you out of it and then start selling them. I saw him fight a few good ones but he never did fight many dogs and a lot of times he would come in overweight. One time he was matched into Mayfield and come in overweight. But Mayfield said he would fight anyway. Carver refused and then sold his dog. That’s how he was. Maurice was always trying to make money with the dogs. How else could he survive? He wasn’t going to work for a living.
Do you think he misrepresented those papers to keep that a secret? I’m sure he did to some degree. But in those days it was pretty much common knowledge that he did and everybody that needed to know, knew about it. I did. He bred to my BLIND BILLY dog and that’s how he got IRONHEAD, BOOMERANG and others. They came out of my stuff. He always told us that BOOMERANG was out of IRONHEAD. You see Maurice would exaggerate a lot all the time, and he was smart enough to tell you a lie. Don’t get me wrong, Maurice was a nice guy, but also a liar. He told me one time that he worked for the Mexican Government, the Border Patrol, and even told my wife he worked for the Foreign Legion. But one thing is for sure, he was a hell of a ladies man and could convince you that black was blue. He sure was a good salesman.
What was the best dog you ever owned? They ask me that all the time. It’s tough to answer, but I think I’m partial to my BOZE dog. I probably had a few that were as good, but I always liked him a lot. He won 27 rolls for me and he was always the smaller dog, but they couldn’t beat him. He also won one contracted fight. One time Jerry Clemons and Douglas Nirider brought a dog that was 19lbs bigger than BOZE and that big dog would bite through car tires. When we put them down it was a joke. BOZE was a fast, hard mouth dog. He would fight high in the shoulder and destroy a dog quick. During the day time he would usually sleep with the puppies around the house and I always thought he was a little shy, just like BLIND BILLY. One time he won a fight in just 6 minutes, that was in New Orleans. We had 10 matches that day and he beat a dog of Jerome Hernandez. He just wrecked the dog. It was no contest. BOZE was out of SCRUB and CANDY. After that fight, they claimed that their dog wasn’t conditioned. I don’t know, but mine was ready to fight. I matched against Jerome 3 times and won twice. Jerome was a dogman and hard to beat.
What was the last dog you matched? I guess that was the CACTUS dog from Grady Cummings about 15 years ago. This dog quit in 28 minutes. He had quit before, but I didn’t know that at the time and nobody told me about this until we were about to wash the dogs for the fight. Atlas Brewer came up to me and said, “Do you want to know something about that dog?” I said, “I appreciate that, but it is a little late.” We had our money up and I wasn’t trying to be rude, but if a man wants to help me then help me on the get go. I would never let a man start conditioning a dog if I knew the dog was a cur, but it happened.
Mr. Boudreaux, I want you to tell me the full story on the old ELI dog. How he was bred, his parents, his pups and so on. I will tell you the true story as it is and I have witnesses that can tell you this is the truth. If this is not right, I’m the brother of Martin Luther King. Today at least 80% of the dogs that are fighting come from ELI. It makes me mad that they got the story on him and his sons BULLYSON and ELI JR., turned around. Not for myself, I know better. I lived it, but the future generation that is coming behind us doesn’t know anything about the truth and have to rely on what they are reading. That’s why I’m so glad I can do this interview in the TIMES. It takes a small man to lie and change a story. I’m telling the truth about how them dogs are bred just like I was told before. ELI was a pretty good individual and after his match against Jack Smith in Cleveland I bought him home. We doctored him up and then a sheriff from Mississippi tried to buy him, but I wouldn’t sell him. Then the next day Raymond Holt of Texas and his wife Sharon came by to buy him, but I gave ELI to my friend Jr. Bush, from Alabama. He loaned ELI to John Cotton from Chattanooga, TN. They were friends at the time and that’s where somebody stole ELI. I gave ELI to Jr. because he is a real high-class dogman, an example for a lot of other so called dogmen. When ELI got stolen, Cotton gave Jr. $1000 and told him to go and buy another dog, and said that if there was another dog he liked that cost more he would make up the difference. There is a lot of stories about what happened after this, when ELI got stolen from Chattanooga. I think he went from Chattanooga to Memphis and from there on, I just don’t know for sure, but I feel that some of that bunch in Memphis had something to do with it. I just don’t know what happened with ELI but I feel very strong about this, and I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t believe it myself. I truly believe that ELI was also the sire of that GR. CH. ZEBO dog.
They were too much alike not to be true. At one time I gave a nice red puppy to Jerry Clemmons. He is a friend of mine and I still think a lot of the man. He took the pup, kept him for 6 weeks and sold the pup. He came here and I gave him another pup that I had here in the blacksmith shop. I called that pup SPOOK. She was out of a litter that killed each other when they were still very young. He kept her for about 2 months at the most when she came in season for the first time. He brought her back and I bred her to ELI. They had 4 pups, 3 black and 1 brindle. Two males and two females.
One of the black males was BULLYSON, the other was ELI JR. The brindle was BRENDY. She bit the hardest of them all and she was the biggest. She could break a dog down in less than 3 minutes. BRENDY was awesome, a bad Bulldog. As bad as a man has ever seen. She beat a dog one time like she was having breakfast. I’ve never seen anything like her again. The other female in the litter out of ELI and SPOOK was a black named LADY. She was my kind of dog and I think the best in the litter. Both BULLYSON and his brother ELI JR. were exceptional Bulldogs. They were the cream of the crop, top-notch Bulldogs and went into some tough competition to make history. BULLYSON was a good dog, but he was not as good as ELI JR. ELI JR. was a much better producer. He was just not bred to good selected bitches, but he was definitely a better dog than BULLYSON. He didn’t care if he was getting bit because he was going to bite you. Red Walling was the owner of BULLYSON when he was matched into his son BENNY BOB. Maurice conditioned him, but he was not fit to fight. This is what happened. Maurice had BULLYSON and bred him to a bitch named BETH at his place. A few weeks after that BULLYSON got bit by a rattlesnake and his head was as big as a Texas hat. Also there was this big old dog at Maurice’s place that got off the chain and BULLYSON who was in a kennel was fighting with this dog through the fence and messed up his teeth and gums. Just before the fight with BENNY BOB we checked his blood count and it was down to 33. BENNY BOB was a brindle dog and BULLYSON a black. The match was at 52lbs, but BULLYSON was only a 48 or 49 pound dog. The fight was reported in Pete Sparks’ magazine and also in the book that Mayfield had out at the time, but it was not until Mayfield wrote that little book called ‘Rednecks’ that he came out with all that nonsense about a black dog against a white dog. I think he was confused by another match between Danny Burton, who had a black 54lb dog, and Raymond Holt, who had a white dog called LIGHTNING IV, owned by a black man named Chris. ELI JR. was sold to Douglas Nirider when he was 17 months old for $400. He won his match on a broken leg in Oklahoma. If BULLYSON would have been in shape against BENNY BOB I think that would have been a hell of a fight. One time I had a dog called NAPOLEON and I rolled him with BULLYSON when he was at my place. BULLYSON was an 18lb bigger dog, but NAPOLEON held his own for a little while. It didn’t go very long because BULLYSON was coming on hard. Later I won with NAPOLEON in the same show when BULLYSON won over that SIR dog that was handled by Bert Clouse.
I remember one incident with BULLYSON when he was at my place. Jerry Clemons brought the dog to me to be tested and one day while I was cleaning up around his chain he tried to bite me. Before he could put his mouth on me I hit him hard with a shovel and knocked him out. After this happened he never, at my place, tried to bite anyone again. If a dog is a biting dog I don’t like them and if they try to bite me or my family, it’s a dead dog. Jerry had BULLYSON when he was a young dog and his dogs were always sort of hyper. It’s easy to male them that way.
On the subject of schooling. How do you go about this? I don’t think you can change a dog a whole lot after he is born. All you can do is sharpen his ability a little bit but you can’t make him game. Now people say that it is a risk to breed a young untested bitch. Well I bred SPOOK her first time in heat. She was never tried before, but she produced some exceptional dogs. I think it is like this. They have the genetic ability to produce good or they don’t know matter how they are themselves. There is just one Ace in every hundred or so and the rest are just mediocre dogs, that’s something you always have to keep in mind. What happens now is that all these fast-lane dogs, with hard mouths are doing away with all these old game dogs, going right through them. But I still prefer gameness more than anything else. Anybody can breed dogs that will bite and are rough, but it is more difficult to breed a dog that will stay. With a game dog you have a shot at the money and there is no monopoly. There is nobody that has corned the market on these dogs. Dogs are just like humans. I’ll explain that to you; you can have two brothers, one a gentleman and the other one that’s not even worth the powder to blow him up and still they both came from the same father and mother. So, with these dogs, it is the same. You are going to have dogs with each his own character and what we try to do is to get the good genes together. We would all like our sons to be President, but the chances are few. If a dog doesn’t perform at an early age there is nothing you can do about that. My dogs are basically late starters and as a rule of thump your late starters make you a better dog. I want a young dog to show a pretty strong interest in what we are doing before I start them out. This is how I schooled my dogs; they must be ready to understand what is going on and have a desire to do it. When they are willing I start to school them a few times and when I think he is ready I put everything on him. I’m serious. I put a big dog on a little one and most people will tell you I put 2 or 3 dogs on one if I want to test him. I have to see a dog to satisfy me, not please somebody else. I have used dogs that I rolled for only 8 or 9 minutes but if they give me a reason to take a longer look, I certainly will. No one knows if a dog will make one more scratch enough. You pick him up to your satisfaction and he goes like a bullet and stands the line the next shot. Who is smart enough to say, he is gambling. That’s why they call it gambling. One bit of advice to young men that start out in these dogs would have to be ‘learn to have patience’. Let your puppies grow up before you make a decision about them. You can’t expect a child to do a man’s job. You have to give them a shot.
If I was to use a dog for serious money I would wait until he is 2 or 2 ½ years old at least. I would certainly not use him sooner than that. The oldest dog I used was 9 years old. But you can use them up to 6 years old easy. They can’t win them all, but they can take so much more when they are 3 years old. To me that’s being at peak. I will give an example; my daddy had a dog called NAN. He matched him into Gaboon Trahan and he was using a dog named COUNTRY BOY which was also named PETER. COUNTRY BOY was just a young dog. In 33 minutes we beat him and he jumped the pit. I will never forget this because my dog had a broken tail. He let him get some age on him and then started to school him. When this dog matured , “Hell you couldn’t stop him anymore.” So Gaboon got his dog back again and by this time COUNTRY BOY had won several fights. One of his wins was over a good winning son of DIBO called TOPPER. He beat him in a real short time. TOPPER was owned by Bob O’Neal at that time. Eventually, COUNTRY BOY was matched into a dog called BOBTAIL and that fight went something like 2 hours. BOBTAIL broke his jaw and COUNTRY BOY probably would have won, but Gaboon offered a draw because he knew that the man who owned BOBTAIL didn’t have a lot of money and a wife and some kids. He knew that if he would take the money it would come from the farm. His reason to fight these dogs was to demonstrate that he had a better dog and he had done that already, so he offered to call it a draw. The moral of this story is that we really gave COUNTRY BOY a second chance after he had quit against NAN. Most other men would have shot him, but age really helped this dog and that’s the hardest thing to explain to a young man who is coming into the game. I’m not making excuses for a dog that quits. I’m not like Mr. Mayfield, who is a fine man and a good dogman, but he will sell you a pup for $2,000 or $3,000 and tell you to wait 4 or 5 years. A lot of dogs are retired at that age, good or bad. Maybe Mayfield hopes you will wait until the dog dies of other causes in the meantime, or that the guy who owns him gets rid of him before that and won’t ask for his money back. No, I don’t make excuses, but in turn, I had some of the best that were late starters.
When Leo Kinard started to keep dogs in Mississippi was he the first one to introduce bulldogs over there? Not really, George saddler was fighting them before Leo in Mississippi. Both Leo and George put on some big shows, but Leo’s were always a little bit better. He had a real nice place, a nice building, and he kept more bulldogs than anybody else in those days. He had about 250 dogs. Leo had a friend named Frank James and this Frank was an interesting person, he was namely brother of the notorious Jesse James. Both Frank and Jesse were well-known outlaws. Jesse was killed. Frank got amnesty and later moved to Meridian, Ms. And worked in a restaurant. Leo told me that Frank Fitzwater was a son of that “Jesse James.”
Fitzwater was a good dogman, he was a sharp man. Anyway, Leo was a special man and very good, honest dogman. His wife Sarah was sick, she had cancer and Leo took her to the best doctors in the country. They went to New York and he did anything for her, he loved her dearly. He told me he spent more than $125,000 on her without much results. When she died it broke him and then later the State bought some of his properties but they never paid him. He died broke. We sent him some money every month. I was working and he was not. The last time I saw the man he walked us to the car and shook my hand. He didn’t say much, but he was crying and so was I. He died of a heart attack. I believe he was 67 years old when he died in 1976. He left me some dogs, doghouses, some chains and etc… Leo loved to talk about dogs, from the time we got up till late at night. He was a bootlegger and always had all kinds of whiskey, champagne, cigarettes of all brands and if you were a guest, it was yours. Many times we were there and talked dogs with Jim Taylor and many others. Leo lived his life to the fullest. He had three different cars, two Cadillacs, and a truck. He would deliver the whiskey with the cars, sometimes I would go with him and often we would come home, change cars and go off again. He never had any trouble with the law until the National Guard came down on him. Leo was not a breeder as such. He bred some, but from all the good dogs he had I can’t remember one that produced something equally as good as themselves. I remember he had some pure Colby dogs that were game until the third generation, then they started to quit in the pit, but he still bred several and they were game again. Leo had full time help and that makes a difference of course, his set-up was beautiful. All fenced in and a big gate that was closed around the six bedroom house. Guard dogs were all around running loose. Leo was a great dogman. I knew him when he had $65,000 in his pocket and later when he had less than $1 to spend. It didn’t make any difference to me because he was my friend and that never changed.
From all the dogmen that you knew in those days, who was the toughest? Who was the best dogman in your time? The man I admired most was George Saddler. He too, like Leo, was from Mississippi. George taught me a great deal about conditioning. He never had many friends because he was a businessman. He had a restaurant and he never needed friends, he just went on with his business, but I thought I was his friend. One of the first things he told me was to take care of your dog and he’ll do right for you. Don’t come half drunk with some ladies to have fun and expect to do good. Stay with your dog and give him all the attention he needs. If you come, come to win. There is plenty of time to party.
Did Saddler bring his dogs in fine or dried out pretty good? Yes, he brought them in keen, always sharp and prepared for the duration.
Did he fight a basically hard biting dog, a punisher? No. I remember him winning more on the distance than on the bad dogs. My REBEL dog was a rough dog and George ran him half an hour just before he fought him because he was overweight. He fought him on Tuesday night, came in overweight and took him down the road around the river until he made weight, and still won the fight in a short time. He pretty much picked his dogs and he, just like Leo, had some help to walk the dogs. He would send somebody out to walk his dog and tell them not to come back until late at night. I learned from him that hand walking a dog will help him to stand on his feet during a long hard contest. I’m sure you can do it many other ways, but that’s how I learned it. George was a gambler. If he had seen your dog before, and you were matched into him, you were automatically at a loss. He would buy a good dog and gamble hard. He had a good eye for a bulldog. His son-in-law Curley Hayes also helped George a lot and he was a very competitive dogman himself.
Did you know Joe Corvino and Earl Tudor? Oh yes. Joe was a good man and a friend of mine. He was a short stocky man and chewed tobacco. He was a gentleman and really liked the dogs. He would come here mostly on Thursdays, a few days before the fights and he would stay here, talking dogs. He was like me, he thought that if you had gameness in your dog you had a shot, no matter what. Joe was always dressed up in a three piece suit plus watch chain. There were others that had suits on like Bob Wallace, Mr. Marshall, Leo Kinard sometimes, Cecil Collins and of course, George Saddler. Howard Heinzl always wore cowboy boots and a Texas hat. Another gentleman was Bob Hemphill, the man who had all those red nose dogs. Hemphill lived here quite a while and worked at the fire station. That was in 1927. He left from here and took two dogs with him. One was HOBO JOE, but I can’t remember the other one. Earl Tudor was more a conditioner than a breeder. He had some very good dogs like DIBO, JEFF, SPIKE, WHITE ROCK, and a dog named CRACKER. In his younger days, Earl fought a lot of dogs all the time, always looking for something to match. Back in those days, he bought a lot of dogs from other people, but later, when I knew him, he bred his own. When he was younger he had those Komosinski type dogs, not the terrier type, but more like the old Donovan type. I really don’t know where he got them, but they looked a lot like the dogs that Cockney Charlie Lloyd had and later were owned by men like komosinski and Donovan. I was lucky to get BLIND BILLY and RASCAL. I put them together with good results.
Gaboon Trahan’s RASCAL? Yes, you see Trahan never owned that dog. It should be Boudreaux’s RASCAL, like he is registered. I still have the papers here, but I don’t care if the rest of the world thinks of him as Trahan’s RASCAL. Anyway, I owned that dog and I crossed him with BLIND BILLY. Now RASCAL wouldn’t start when he was a young dog and, as a matter of fact, he was stolen one time but because he wouldn’t fight, they turned him loose. I saw him in 1957 when I got out of the service and he fought against a big black dog that was out of Cannon’s BLACK SHINE and those dogs. At the time we were all arrested, but in those days it was just a misdemeanor, there was nothing against bulldogs really. RASCAL was owned by S.P. and I traded one of RASCAL’s sons for him, a young dog called RASCAL JR. This pup only had one testicle, but S.P. took the pup and later sold him. The man that traded RASCAL to me is still alive. RASCAL produced that COUNTRY BOY dog, MARCIANO, and several other good females. As a match dog I think RASCAL was probably overrated. He was a game dog, red and white in color. He also was a bad ear dog just like COUNTRY BOY.
Is your good stock mostly Corvino? Yes. What I did…. My BLIND BILLY dog was born in 1952 and I bought him in 1953. My uncle had four Ace roosters and we traded them with Earl Tudor for BLIND BILLY. He was a son of DIBO and he wouldn’t fight until he was 2 ½ years old.
Was he blind? No, not really. His eyes had always been a little weak and in his last contest he was blind, yes. I won a real good match with him in 26 or 28 minutes. Then the second time, I was very young then, they tried to fool me. It was pretty dark in the place where the pit was set up and it was my turn to scratch BILLY. Earl Tudor jumped up out of joy when BILLY was scratching towards the other dog. He was about halfway when he turned around to look at Earl and hit the pit wall. He never stopped looking for the other dog, but he was counted out and lost the fight. We didn’t get the trophy that day, but BILLY was the best dog in the show and from then on they called him BLIND BILLY. Like I said before, his sire was the DIBO dog and I believe Howard Heinzl had something to do with that dog. DIBO was stolen when he was a young dog and sold to a black man who owned a restaurant, DIBO’S real name was RUNT and when he started at the age of four they picked him up again and matched him.
What about your dog named OX? OX was a very smart dog. He was a superb ear dog and also very game. When I turned him loose he never missed that ear. A long time ago we matched him in Mexico. He was matched for $16,000, which in those days was a lot of money. I was matched into the District-Attorney of Mexico City. He had a good little dog and he told me that his dog would break legs and said that that was going to happen to OX too. The only comment I had to make was that if OX would turn him loose he wasn’t going to break anything. OX was smart and I am convinced that he would have stayed out of trouble, the only thing OX couldn’t do was talk. That’s how smart he was. But the show never came off because of a couple of punks from California who were involved in other activities and had been followed by the authorities.
This was not just another convention, but it was going to be one of the greatest get-togethers in a long time. There were 2 or 3 super dogs to be matched. The trophy alone for the winner cost $2,000 and was made by Larry McCaw from California. Plus the fact that nobody brings a dog that far when they were not satisfied with the dog at home. After that, we sold OX because we needed money to buy a new place. He went to a man from Florida, named Bob Johnson. One week after he took him, he called and told me he had put three dogs on OX. He said he stopped the first dog in 20 minutes, the next one went a little over a half hour and the third one OX fought like he just started, so they picked him up. He told me OX was a very game dog. I told him that I assumed he was game, but didn’t realize he was that game. People don’t seem to understand that even the very best will often quit if you stress them hard enough. It’s just a matter of how much you put on them. There is no sense in killing them while testing them because there is something like a breaking point. Some dogs that have never been used because they quit at home might have been great dogs in the pit under the right circumstances. Lack of knowledge… that’s what it is! OX was a polished ear dog and he could keep himself out of trouble, but most other dogs couldn’t stand this kind of abuse. These dogs are just flesh and bone like anything else and most men don’t even recognize an Ace dog when they see one. They try to condition a dog on a treadmill when they are half drunk and watching TV. Now that I’m back on the subject of schooling; I took the DEVIL dog of Oklahoma and rolled him no more than 9 minutes and later I used him to whip Chicken Sam with a dog that I saw fight for three hours. Sometimes when you see an all beaten up dog people say: that’s a bad one! I say, No Sir! That’s a bad one that passed on him. That’s the way it goes.
Who was the best breeder in your days? Well, that’s hard to say. Breeding dogs is a heartbreaking experience because when you have something good it will practically never reproduce the same. You can raise anything easier than bulldogs. Like chickens, horses, etc… there is so much you’ve got to have in an Ace dog. You get them with talent and they are curs, you get them that are game but they can’t fight. Hitler tried to breed humans, but he also didn’t succeed. He had them built like he wanted, but they didn’t have the brains. I have never had many dogs in my life, but I did have some good ones, so I think that’s not bad. I can sure understand that when a man keeps 300 dogs or more, he comes up with some good ones. It’s like this… know what you see, know what the dog is and know an Ace dog when you see one. Only time will teach you that, only time. But also you have to have enough to select from. That’s the key too. If you have a good female and breed her to a good male you have a chance of coming up with something good. It’s that simple. Breed your best bulldog to another top-notch bulldog and if they don’t produce, you breed them to something else and then if it doesn’t work, you better forget about it. I had a female one time, her name was TAMMY. She was by far the smartest dog I’ve ever owned. She was out of that BLACK SHINE dog and she was the only dog I let into the house. She was real sharp. If she was fighting, for instance, I could call her off and let her sit down with me and send her back anytime I wanted. I bred her both to RASCAL and BLIND BILLY the same time with no more than 5 days or so in between. I did this because both males were old and I really didn’t want to miss this breeding. So I first bred BILLY and then bred RASCAL 5 days later, the pups were born about 61 days after I bred BILLY, but some of the pups were spotted just like RASCAL was. She had 13 pups and every pup in that litter was good, all of them were pitworthy. Bob Wallace was here when I bred RASCAL to TAMMY, so I gave him a pup. He named the pup SOCKS and always told everybody he was out of RASCAL. I didn’t really care because both BILLY and RASCAL were mine and they both were out of the same female, but people are quick to criticize. The minute they saw a spotted pup they would say he was out of RASCAL instead of BLIND BILLY. I never made a secret out of it and told everybody about it. Most people just wanted to say something, but I knew better. There are so many people making money with these dogs and all they do is deal in pedigrees. I never cared too much about that. I bred my dogs for myself and all they had to do was satisfy me and nobody else. Money is no object when you are trying to breed and raise good bulldogs. I would be rich if I had all the money other people have made by peddling these dogs, but it is against my morals to breed something just for the money if I don’t believe in it. Most people that do, don’t even know what they are talking about.
What would you say to a young man just starting out in these dogs? Stop. Don’t do it! I would try my best to discourage him. This is a bad disease. When it gets in your blood it stays. The reason why I admire them so much is for what they are capable of doing. They are all-American dogs. I’ll probably always have a few and even when I go down to 6 or 7 I will still breed a few now and then.
But if a man was going to keep bulldogs what would you tell him? I don’t know… I would say be honest and give your best shot and give your puppies a chance to prove themselves. If a pup is 12 or 14 months old he will grab anything, just like a young person. When they are close to 2 years old they will show more strength and be a better dog. These dogs cost a lot of money. They take a lot, but it makes a man proud to own a good one. I had one or two good ones, but didn’t always have the money to go into top competition. But once or twice we had somebody split the money and we gave it a shot. It was worth it. So many people talk about doing great things in their lives but they never do it, they wouldn’t know how. When the going gets tough and the stakes are high, it takes more than just money. It takes a man with guts, a strong personality and lots of ambition plus a good bulldog to compete in the fast-lane.
Interview With Bobby Hall
ALL ACCOUNTS ARE FICTIONAL, AND SHOULD BE VIEWED AS SUCH
Interview With Bobby & Jeanette Hall:
Famous dogs of the past. Legendary warriors, they’ve lived and died, but still live on in the minds of thousands. Who has never heard before of the “Big Bad Black Bullyson” dog! A myth? Perhaps . But if there is one man who can tell use the inside-story on the renowned Bullyson it is Mr. Bobby Hall from Houston, Texas. This is the story about a man and his dog. Bobby Hall and Bullyson. A pair that made the world shiver…..
When the plane landed in Houston, Texas it was already dark, but the humid hot air was still ever present. After a quick drive to the Hilton and the following drinks at the hotel bar, I went back to my room and laid back, trying to relax and think of the questions I was going to ask Bobby Hall the following day.
I had spent the last days reading his book “Bullyson and His Sons”, now my mind kept drifting away into a “long ago time” when all the great gentleman dogfighters would meet to determine who’s dog earned the title of being the Best, proven under fire Champion.
I was only hours away from meeting Mr. Bobby Hall, I was about to meet one of the all time great dogmen and with the last thought in my mind I went to sleep.
The next morning was like many others, sunny, humid and began much too soon. At breakfast I started to concentrate on the upcoming meeting with Mr. Hall.
Only minutes after I got back to my room, my concentration was broken by a phone call with a soft, friendly voice asking me if I was ready for my complimentary continental breakfast, a “How ya doing boy” told me this was Mr. Bobby Hall.
It turned out I landed at the wrong airport in Houston, but he insisted on picking me up at the motel. He arrived after no more than 45 minutes. When I opened the door I was immediately struck by his big smile, Texas hat and eyes that looked at me straight and clear as trying to analyze my thoughts. With him was a nice young man called Rudy Flinkevleugel, visiting from Holland, Bobby, who had a hard time pronouncing his name, called him “FinkleWinkle”.
Upon arriving at his home the door was opened by a tall, attractive, brown eyed lady that turned out to be his wife Jeanette. The day was spent with dog talk, a few drinks and plenty of good food.
His house was surrounded by dogs that were chained up and inside were many trophies, pictures, and other memories of yesterdays Champions and other well known dogs from the past when dogfighting was not yet a felony and a popular spectator sport. The back porch was also filled with photos, wall to wall, of famous bulldogs and people like Danny Burton, Norman Hooten, and many others from all over the world. The night was filled with the trading of stories and drinking lots of champagne. It was obvious that this man had more than just one interesting story in him and that a good interview was on hand. Talking to him was like reading his book, interesting, instructive, and above all entertaining.
The ice was broken. The stage was set.
The next morning early as we sat in the shadow of the back porch, with a cup of Jeanette’s good coffee, I started the cassette-recorder.
Except for the sleeping sounds of MS. BOOBS, a brindle female and Bobby’s most favorite brood bitch it was peacefully silent when I landed my first question: “Mr. Hall, what is in your opinion a good Bulldog?” Without looking at me he answered in his typical soft spoken manner; “Well, first of all a dog that is “game” above everything. Then second would be a bite like a knock out prize-fighter like Tyson. A dog that can get it over with in 20 minutes, because there is very few of them like that and I think also a stifle dog. I prefer one of those over any of the others.” I wasn’t expecting this kind of answer, so instead of shooting my second question on the list, I asked him what his definition of that much spoken word Gameness was and why he liked a stifle dog so much. Again he didn’t hesitate and readily replied; “a Game dog is one that will crawl across, fall, stumble, get back up and finally reach his opponent again after he is worn out,” slowly he puts his arms on the table and continued, “If you got a stifle dog, it’s like getting in a fight with someone and you throw up your guard and they start running around and hit you in the back, you’re not used to that, it’s so awkward. In other words they don’t come straight at you like you expect them to, stay there and punch it out. It’s an unorthodox style and confuses so many dogs and you can get the early start and the match is over before it begins.” Now I felt I was getting somewhere and continued to question; “Can you give me an example of a Game dog?” “Yes, I sure can”, he replied. “The dog that lost to BULLYSON, the on that Bert Clouse had, that was the best example that I’ve ever seen of it. He showed something like 300 people what a Game dog looks like, he lost the fight, but the crowd gave him a standing ovation. This happened almost 20 years ago, but it is rare that you see a dog like that.”
Just before I was getting to my next question, Jeanette came out of the house carrying a portable phone. It was Mr. Teddy Bear from Tokyo, while he was talking to his far away friend I rewinded the cassette-player to see if it was recording alright. Fortunately it was working perfect. While Bobby was still on the phone I looked through my list of question that I prepared the morning before at breakfast and decided to ask him next about the bobtail dog, BEN, that made fame in Taiwan and about his famous PRINCESS bitch who, according to some rumors, was now owned by a gentleman in Mexico.
When Bobby said goodbye to his friend and returned to his seat with a fresh cup of coffee he had a smile on his face, after I confronted him with my next question he began where he left off, “A true Game dog is very rare. To me a pedigree is not as important as the individual quality of a dog because I take each dog on his own, but when you start breeding every once in a while you will get a fluke, a superdog, but is not producing and that takes time to find out, also money, so you can understand how hard it is for the breeder and how important it is to breed with nothing than the gamest of dogs. PRINCESS was out of MS. BOOBS sired by my old ROBERT. She is a BULLYSON bred dog all the way, I think she was my all time best female, she would rate up there with my FOOTS bitch who won over the highly regarded COLORADO bitch. PRINCESS is now owned by a gentleman named Arnold, he is from Monterrey, Mexico, but comes to the States quite often. The BEN dog is a different story. I bought him from a man named Biscuit and conditioned him for six months before I sold him to Mr. A Chain Cao; a very nice man from Taiwan. His new owner matched him into GR. CH. MIKEY and won the fight. I thought the dog was in top shape considering the caliber of dog he went into. Then they’ve made the mistake of matching the dog too soon, it was only three months later to his next match, which was much too soon. Although he won this fight too, he was not in the shape he should have been. “At this point we were really into the interview and I thought it was a good time to switch the subject to the more serious questions. I realized that the next few minutes would make the difference between a friendly chat and an interesting interview. I waited for a few seconds before stating my next question.
“Mr. Hall, the BULLYSON dog is considered by many to be one of the All Time Greats and you wrote a book called “Bullyson and his Sons”. Why didn’t you write about the BULLYSON vs. BENNY BOB match in your book since this is the fight that raised a lot of controversy? “Well, he replied, “at the time that I was writing the book I had to stop somewhere because I spent 3 years on it and couldn’t cover the whole thing. My new book will be out sometime in 1989 and I will take up where I left off. The next book will be “Sons of Bullysons”. There has been a lot of controversy on BULLYSON, lots of things have been said and a lot of them are true, and a lot of them are just hearsay, but the whole truth will be told in my next book, blow by blow. There will be a lot of exciting things to talk about, I will go into each son of his, of course it takes a lot of time for research and to get all the facts straight so there can be no question on them and that’s the kind of book I’m trying to do.”
The answer was honest, but Bobby was certainly avoiding the essence of the question. I wasn’t really satisfied so far and decided to try a more direct approach.
“According to several people that witnessed the BULLYSON vs. BENNY BOB fight, Maurice Carver, who handled BULLYSON, picked him up at the count of six because he wouldn’t scratch. Also, several years ago Don Mayfield, as well as Bobby Smith, sent in articles to various magazines that Maurice could not get BULLYSON to scratch and that he asked Floyd Boudreaux if he could get him to cross the Pit, all at no avail. What do you have to say about this?” Bobby, who was sitting to my right side turned his head slightly, looking at me he slowly replied; “Well, that’s true, but that’s only a way of bowing out, I see it like this….the fight was over, someone had to win, someone had to lose, but what gets me is why the dogmen can’t figure it out for themselves. Only common sense will tell someone that if you really looked at it and researched it…; BULLYSON was a 49lb dog, that’s what I brought him in at before, he was not a 52lb dog. BENNY BOB could have easily fought at 53 or 54lbs, so even Ray Charles could see the outcome of that. When you have two dogs that are equal you can’t give away that kind of weight. I would say that BULLYSON was a deadgame animal…” I interrupted Bobby’s analysis, “even though he did not attempt to scratch?” “Right”, he said. “He was definitely into shock, no doubt about that. You have no idea about what kind of dog BENNY BOB was and how he could bite. You would have had to been there to know what kind of dog they were up against and saying that his son killed him is a complement in itself.” I had been listening to his answer real good and was fascinated on how easy he handled the question. After reading his book this was the one question that was burning on my mind. Almost like MS. BOOBS could sense my excitement of being here started to bark, producing a low deep sound. Jeanette would now come out of the house and sit with us listening to the rest of the interview.
“Do you know what happened to BENNY BOB after his fight against BULLYSON?” “Yes I do,” Bobby answered, “he went back to Willie Brown’s yard and later on he went out to California and was matched into Ralph Greenwood’s JIMMIE BOOTS. That was the most vicious and best fights I’ve ever seen. It was like when you were watching it you knew it couldn’t go on another five minutes. It was really like two full grown men with icepicks and you knew it just couldn’t go on any further, but that five minutes would pass and then you knew for sure it was impossible to go on another five minutes.
The whole fight was like that…you knew it had to be over because no two dogs could take that kind of punishment. I’ve never been in a match like that before. Rick Halliburton and Willie Brown did the conditioning on BENNY BOB and did Ralph Greenwood on JIMMY BOOTS, I think both dogs were in super shape. After the fight I would have bet you $100 that it didn’t last longer than twenty minutes, that’s how exciting it was, but it lasted nearly two hours with JIMMY BOOTS being the winner.” “Did you condition BULLYSON for his bout with BENNY BOB?”, was my next question to Bobby. “No, Maurice Caver conditioned him, but I didn’t feel he was in a good shape, not that it really matters because he couldn’t have whipped him on his best day. You can’t give away that kind of weight with dogs that are just as even. After I sold BULLYSON to Red Walling he left me the manager of the dog in the world at that weight. I even challenged his litter brother ELI JR. but he never should have matched into BENNY BOB.”
At this point I felt like changing to another subject and asked Bobby about his stud dog BERT, where he got him from, etc… He told me the dog was about five years old and that he bought him from Dennis Meier who had the dog from Don Maloney’s wife. She has given the dog to Dennis since he had helped Don work the dog for his first match and really took a liking to the dog and she couldn’t take care of the dog after Don’s tragic death. Bobby also stated that the dog is not open at public stud service and that he would cross him with his bitches only.
“Some time ago I had a dog called BOWSER that won over a two time winner within about one hour. BOWSER was a great dog,” Bobby continued, “but had one problem; he wouldn’t work the Jenny or the treadmill, luckily you could turn him loose in a lake and he would stay in there all day until he couldn’t walk. I had sold BOWSER to friend of mine called Shankbone, but then came Bert along and whipped BOWSER in a little less than two hours; I couldn’t believe it. The next thing that I’ve heard was that my good friend Danny Burton and his amigo Tony had lost that BERT dog again with a two time winner they had. After this I started to check into the dog a little bit and called somebody in Oklahoma because I knew Dennis lived out in the country without a phone and I paid this man $50 to drive to this little town where Dennis lived and had him call me. He did and I met him in a place called Bowie in Texas. When he brought the dog into the motel room he reminded me of a great warrior, every scar on his body was showing, he was practically 90% scar tissue. I got the dog home, at that time he weighed only 45lbs, the same he matched at. What really made me buy BERT is while talking to Dennis he told me how he conditioned the dog and revealed to me he only worked the dog five miles a day behind a truck and that showed me that old BERT won his last two matches strictly on his heart. In other words you would have to kill every hair on him to win. At the time he also brought a six generation pedigree I looked at it and almost every dog in the pedigree I had seen go the last thirty years. I was so happy to get the dog I can’t tell you. After losing my stud dog ROBERT to cancer at the age of 13 years, I began my search. I was looking for a super stud dog, but a outcross that would “click” with my BULLYSON blood.
I had been looking for the All Time Great stud dog for a long time and this dog was my ultimate dream to have. A perfect stud dog. He is the only dog to win three straight fights in one year with a total of six hours of battle time.”
Right at this moment Rudy appeared at the scene. He had been busy with a little black male dog named CATFISH. This little dog belonged to Bobby who had bought the dog a few weeks before and was now conditioning the dog to get in better shape. Looking at Rudy reminded me of what Bobby had told me before about many young men that would come and visit with him trying to learn more about the part of conditioning a dog. Bobby would refer to these men as students like he himself was one time with Maurice Carver. I decided to ask him about his feelings toward the modern dogmen like 20 or 30 years ago. He answered; “The student that you are working with today is going to be your man tomorrow. It takes a lot of time and effort to work with someone, like I’m not wasting my time because the people are so eager to learn, sometimes it’s just unreal how hard they work and that is what it is all about. I have people coming over from England, Holland and Tokyo, most of them young lads under 30 years old. I have a lot respect for them because they don’t have quit in them, they are like a good dog, they hold up real good, work their dogs faithfully and make great students. They remind me of myself 30 years ago when the older dogmen wouldn’t even tell you how to rub a dog down much less getting into the real part that brings a good dog. Of course they are getting better dogs all the time. I have sold SWAMPER to Allen Sanky of England and he is doing very well with the dog, everybody wants to breed to the dog. I had won four with SWAMPER, beating the JO JO dog, which was one of the most famous ones he beat. Also, I sold JAILHOUSE over in England to a gentleman named David Hill. When I sent her over she was bred to my CH. BERT and she had 9 pups in quarantine. Then I sold a real good bitch to Peter O’Donnell, her name was SHORTY and she also had 9 puppies. I really believe that especially in the last ten years there has been a lot more serious dogmen come along over there. They have bought some of my very best and if they watch what they are doing they will wind up having better dogs than we have here.
“Do you believe the people from Europe are able to compete on the same level as far as conditioning and the quality of the dogs?”
“They are coming along very nicely and they have had tremendous progress for the last 10 years. They might be lacking in as many good dogs as we have, but they are getting better dogs and have learned a great deal about conditioning. Give them another five years and…watch out!”
“What about the people in Taiwan?” I was expecting the same answer, but to my surprise Bobby shook his head and said “I would say No. Their conditioning is not up to standards, they don’t have the dogs to compete with us over here and the “good dogs that they did have came from the USA. The people from Europe; that is a different story”. Rudy had left off again and Jeanette went back into the house answering another phone call. The conversation had been very satisfying so far and one of the last items that was still on my list had to do with, what else, the conditioning part. By this time one of Bobby’s friends, Jerry Stine from Austin, came walking up from the house and he took a seat at the table holding a cup of coffee in his hand. It was still early in the morning, but a quick look at my watch told me I had no more than 90 minutes to get to the airport and catch my plane back to Nashville. Not wasting any more time than absolutely necessary I placed my next question. “What was your relation with Maurice Carver?” “Maurice,” Bobby answered, “was a unique person and the most interesting persons I’ve ever met, there will never be another one like him and those people that are like Maurice, and they come along and are few and far between, Frank Fitzwater and Ralph Greenwood are two of them. Ralph’s death recently hit me right in the gizzards because we were not too far apart in age and he was a true friend that knew all the people that I’ve known over the last 30 years, which you can’t replace, those people their gone and that hurts.” He looked at me for a few seconds without saying a word, his smile was gone but his eyes were still pointed in my direction. In a strange way I felt sadness coming over me. It was the same feeling that I had a few weeks before when I, accompanied by my friend Bobby Smith, went over to San Antonio and walked over the land that Maurice Carver had lived on for so many years. The house he lived in was broken down, but there were still many things that reminded one of Carver’s life and the many famous dogs that were kept on this place. Later on, during a telephone conversation Bobby would tell me that Maurice was still alive and will always be remembered for the great personality he was.
I had reached my last questions concerning conditioning. “Mr. Hall can you tell me if you use steroids on your dogs and how you feed and work them?” Well, the work starts off very slow,” he instantly replied. “Anyone needs at least 90 days and if we are talking about a beginner I would say they need 5 months because they are going to make so many mistakes. I will start out at maybe 5 minutes on the Jenny, then 10 minutes to cool out and back on till I’ve done about 30 minutes worth of 5 minutes work outs which is nothing for a dog. Then in the second month I would work him up to what I call 8 hour days. That means a lot of hand walking and etc…it doesn’t mean that your dog is running the Jenny or treadmill the whole day, but you spend the whole day working that dog by hand walking , rubbing him down and so forth. I use both Jenny and treadmill, but I prefer the Jenny 2 to 1 over treadmill. The reason why I switch from the Jenny to the mill is because a dog will get bored within a certain time and it’s like a new toy for him if you switch to something else. I feed once a day, feeding twice a day is just wasting energy to me. The feeding is of course very important. To the beginner I would say get some Science Diet, or A&F dog food, both I like very much because they will hold more fluid in your dog which he’ll need. I feed like ground round meat raw in my food, also I feed a lot of chicken broth. I broil it with real garlic the broth will help to keep the fluids in the dog which he desperately needs so he will not dehydrate. This way you will have a much stronger dog, with a dehydrated dog you have nothing left but a shell. As far as the steroids go, I can not give away my secrets because that is the winning key. I only share that with the type students that I believe in and that will go on and really serious dogmen. Whenever you use the word steroid, people tend to blow that all out of proportion, like your pumping something into a dog. The only thing I believe in is in getting the dog a little help and therefore I don’t use steroids all the way thru the keep. Also, you have to remember that steroids will lower the dog’s resistance on infection and they can’t fight anything off if they get sick. You really have to know how to use steroids, it’s not something you can play with and it’s not… “Can you be a little more specific about what type of steroids you’re talking about?” “No, I can’t because people would give a fortune just to know what I use.”
Jerry Stine stood up and went for his second cup of coffee. I had only one hour left before my plane would take off and I knew it would take me at least 45 minutes to get to the airport. Bobby assured me there was no reason to worry and that he would get me to the airport in time. I looked at the notes that I made on a little piece of paper during the whole interview and asked Bobby, who was waiting for the next question, about the use of special vitamins or a hormone called Azium and if he didn’t believe that a dog with lots of fluid in his body wouldn’t run hot quicker than a dog with less fluid. He continued to answer the last question first. “They’ll definitely run hot if you don’t have as many hours a day in him, that’s working 8 hours a day, 7 days a week. If he is used to that his body is kind of custom to hard work while being under stress. Then you’ll have to keep enough fuel in him where he can go on for along time. It’s like a race car, when they run out of gas their going to stop and it is the same way with any animal, horse, dog or whatever. The vitamins are something I really believe in but, there again, knowing how to give the right stuff is an art. It takes years of experience of learning what to give and how much to give because if you give too much of anything it can work against you. Vitamins are very, very important, it’s just as important as working a dog to me. About the use of Azium, I’d like to say to the beginner…well, the beginner doesn’t know when to put the Azium in, that’s the sad part about it, it’s a drug they have no knowledge of, when it is at it’s peak or anything. Therefore I wouldn’t suggest anything to a beginner because they would do more harm than they would good, again…using this kind of stuff is a knowledge and not something that you give and it works.” I agreed on his last answer, but couldn’t stop wondering if this answer would be really helpful to any real beginner who was trying to learn. I decided to go and talk to a pharmacist about this subject as soon as I had the chance. There was no more than 50 minutes left to get to the airport when I arrived at my last question to Bobby Hall. We were alone and beside the ever sleeping MS. BOOBS there was no sound disturbing this perfect, beautiful Texas Sunday morning in Houston. “Mr. Hall, final question. Who is you best friend? Once again he looked me straight in the eyes, his face was smiling and without the slightest hesitation he answered me with a voice that was filled with love…… “Jeanette.”
The drive to the airport was fast and only seconds before the plane closed it’s door, I fell into my seat, trying to catch my breath after a run that would have made A.J. Foyt jealous. Far above the world, gliding so effortlessly from one cloud to another I thought about what Bobby Hall had told me and what I had learned from the visit. I thought about what he had said to me one time in his car… “If you want to be successful, it takes a lot of hard work and dedication….there is no way I could have done it any different.” Bobby Hall, a man who has clearly motivated himself in a direction of being what he eventually became… A first class dogman, his award of hard labor.
Interview With Bobby & Jeanette Hall:
Famous dogs of the past. Legendary warriors, they’ve lived and died, but still live on in the minds of thousands. Who has never heard before of the “Big Bad Black Bullyson” dog! A myth? Perhaps . But if there is one man who can tell use the inside-story on the renowned Bullyson it is Mr. Bobby Hall from Houston, Texas. This is the story about a man and his dog. Bobby Hall and Bullyson. A pair that made the world shiver…..
When the plane landed in Houston, Texas it was already dark, but the humid hot air was still ever present. After a quick drive to the Hilton and the following drinks at the hotel bar, I went back to my room and laid back, trying to relax and think of the questions I was going to ask Bobby Hall the following day.
I had spent the last days reading his book “Bullyson and His Sons”, now my mind kept drifting away into a “long ago time” when all the great gentleman dogfighters would meet to determine who’s dog earned the title of being the Best, proven under fire Champion.
I was only hours away from meeting Mr. Bobby Hall, I was about to meet one of the all time great dogmen and with the last thought in my mind I went to sleep.
The next morning was like many others, sunny, humid and began much too soon. At breakfast I started to concentrate on the upcoming meeting with Mr. Hall.
Only minutes after I got back to my room, my concentration was broken by a phone call with a soft, friendly voice asking me if I was ready for my complimentary continental breakfast, a “How ya doing boy” told me this was Mr. Bobby Hall.
It turned out I landed at the wrong airport in Houston, but he insisted on picking me up at the motel. He arrived after no more than 45 minutes. When I opened the door I was immediately struck by his big smile, Texas hat and eyes that looked at me straight and clear as trying to analyze my thoughts. With him was a nice young man called Rudy Flinkevleugel, visiting from Holland, Bobby, who had a hard time pronouncing his name, called him “FinkleWinkle”.
Upon arriving at his home the door was opened by a tall, attractive, brown eyed lady that turned out to be his wife Jeanette. The day was spent with dog talk, a few drinks and plenty of good food.
His house was surrounded by dogs that were chained up and inside were many trophies, pictures, and other memories of yesterdays Champions and other well known dogs from the past when dogfighting was not yet a felony and a popular spectator sport. The back porch was also filled with photos, wall to wall, of famous bulldogs and people like Danny Burton, Norman Hooten, and many others from all over the world. The night was filled with the trading of stories and drinking lots of champagne. It was obvious that this man had more than just one interesting story in him and that a good interview was on hand. Talking to him was like reading his book, interesting, instructive, and above all entertaining.
The ice was broken. The stage was set.
The next morning early as we sat in the shadow of the back porch, with a cup of Jeanette’s good coffee, I started the cassette-recorder.
Except for the sleeping sounds of MS. BOOBS, a brindle female and Bobby’s most favorite brood bitch it was peacefully silent when I landed my first question: “Mr. Hall, what is in your opinion a good Bulldog?” Without looking at me he answered in his typical soft spoken manner; “Well, first of all a dog that is “game” above everything. Then second would be a bite like a knock out prize-fighter like Tyson. A dog that can get it over with in 20 minutes, because there is very few of them like that and I think also a stifle dog. I prefer one of those over any of the others.” I wasn’t expecting this kind of answer, so instead of shooting my second question on the list, I asked him what his definition of that much spoken word Gameness was and why he liked a stifle dog so much. Again he didn’t hesitate and readily replied; “a Game dog is one that will crawl across, fall, stumble, get back up and finally reach his opponent again after he is worn out,” slowly he puts his arms on the table and continued, “If you got a stifle dog, it’s like getting in a fight with someone and you throw up your guard and they start running around and hit you in the back, you’re not used to that, it’s so awkward. In other words they don’t come straight at you like you expect them to, stay there and punch it out. It’s an unorthodox style and confuses so many dogs and you can get the early start and the match is over before it begins.” Now I felt I was getting somewhere and continued to question; “Can you give me an example of a Game dog?” “Yes, I sure can”, he replied. “The dog that lost to BULLYSON, the on that Bert Clouse had, that was the best example that I’ve ever seen of it. He showed something like 300 people what a Game dog looks like, he lost the fight, but the crowd gave him a standing ovation. This happened almost 20 years ago, but it is rare that you see a dog like that.”
Just before I was getting to my next question, Jeanette came out of the house carrying a portable phone. It was Mr. Teddy Bear from Tokyo, while he was talking to his far away friend I rewinded the cassette-player to see if it was recording alright. Fortunately it was working perfect. While Bobby was still on the phone I looked through my list of question that I prepared the morning before at breakfast and decided to ask him next about the bobtail dog, BEN, that made fame in Taiwan and about his famous PRINCESS bitch who, according to some rumors, was now owned by a gentleman in Mexico.
When Bobby said goodbye to his friend and returned to his seat with a fresh cup of coffee he had a smile on his face, after I confronted him with my next question he began where he left off, “A true Game dog is very rare. To me a pedigree is not as important as the individual quality of a dog because I take each dog on his own, but when you start breeding every once in a while you will get a fluke, a superdog, but is not producing and that takes time to find out, also money, so you can understand how hard it is for the breeder and how important it is to breed with nothing than the gamest of dogs. PRINCESS was out of MS. BOOBS sired by my old ROBERT. She is a BULLYSON bred dog all the way, I think she was my all time best female, she would rate up there with my FOOTS bitch who won over the highly regarded COLORADO bitch. PRINCESS is now owned by a gentleman named Arnold, he is from Monterrey, Mexico, but comes to the States quite often. The BEN dog is a different story. I bought him from a man named Biscuit and conditioned him for six months before I sold him to Mr. A Chain Cao; a very nice man from Taiwan. His new owner matched him into GR. CH. MIKEY and won the fight. I thought the dog was in top shape considering the caliber of dog he went into. Then they’ve made the mistake of matching the dog too soon, it was only three months later to his next match, which was much too soon. Although he won this fight too, he was not in the shape he should have been. “At this point we were really into the interview and I thought it was a good time to switch the subject to the more serious questions. I realized that the next few minutes would make the difference between a friendly chat and an interesting interview. I waited for a few seconds before stating my next question.
“Mr. Hall, the BULLYSON dog is considered by many to be one of the All Time Greats and you wrote a book called “Bullyson and his Sons”. Why didn’t you write about the BULLYSON vs. BENNY BOB match in your book since this is the fight that raised a lot of controversy? “Well, he replied, “at the time that I was writing the book I had to stop somewhere because I spent 3 years on it and couldn’t cover the whole thing. My new book will be out sometime in 1989 and I will take up where I left off. The next book will be “Sons of Bullysons”. There has been a lot of controversy on BULLYSON, lots of things have been said and a lot of them are true, and a lot of them are just hearsay, but the whole truth will be told in my next book, blow by blow. There will be a lot of exciting things to talk about, I will go into each son of his, of course it takes a lot of time for research and to get all the facts straight so there can be no question on them and that’s the kind of book I’m trying to do.”
The answer was honest, but Bobby was certainly avoiding the essence of the question. I wasn’t really satisfied so far and decided to try a more direct approach.
“According to several people that witnessed the BULLYSON vs. BENNY BOB fight, Maurice Carver, who handled BULLYSON, picked him up at the count of six because he wouldn’t scratch. Also, several years ago Don Mayfield, as well as Bobby Smith, sent in articles to various magazines that Maurice could not get BULLYSON to scratch and that he asked Floyd Boudreaux if he could get him to cross the Pit, all at no avail. What do you have to say about this?” Bobby, who was sitting to my right side turned his head slightly, looking at me he slowly replied; “Well, that’s true, but that’s only a way of bowing out, I see it like this….the fight was over, someone had to win, someone had to lose, but what gets me is why the dogmen can’t figure it out for themselves. Only common sense will tell someone that if you really looked at it and researched it…; BULLYSON was a 49lb dog, that’s what I brought him in at before, he was not a 52lb dog. BENNY BOB could have easily fought at 53 or 54lbs, so even Ray Charles could see the outcome of that. When you have two dogs that are equal you can’t give away that kind of weight. I would say that BULLYSON was a deadgame animal…” I interrupted Bobby’s analysis, “even though he did not attempt to scratch?” “Right”, he said. “He was definitely into shock, no doubt about that. You have no idea about what kind of dog BENNY BOB was and how he could bite. You would have had to been there to know what kind of dog they were up against and saying that his son killed him is a complement in itself.” I had been listening to his answer real good and was fascinated on how easy he handled the question. After reading his book this was the one question that was burning on my mind. Almost like MS. BOOBS could sense my excitement of being here started to bark, producing a low deep sound. Jeanette would now come out of the house and sit with us listening to the rest of the interview.
“Do you know what happened to BENNY BOB after his fight against BULLYSON?” “Yes I do,” Bobby answered, “he went back to Willie Brown’s yard and later on he went out to California and was matched into Ralph Greenwood’s JIMMIE BOOTS. That was the most vicious and best fights I’ve ever seen. It was like when you were watching it you knew it couldn’t go on another five minutes. It was really like two full grown men with icepicks and you knew it just couldn’t go on any further, but that five minutes would pass and then you knew for sure it was impossible to go on another five minutes.
The whole fight was like that…you knew it had to be over because no two dogs could take that kind of punishment. I’ve never been in a match like that before. Rick Halliburton and Willie Brown did the conditioning on BENNY BOB and did Ralph Greenwood on JIMMY BOOTS, I think both dogs were in super shape. After the fight I would have bet you $100 that it didn’t last longer than twenty minutes, that’s how exciting it was, but it lasted nearly two hours with JIMMY BOOTS being the winner.” “Did you condition BULLYSON for his bout with BENNY BOB?”, was my next question to Bobby. “No, Maurice Caver conditioned him, but I didn’t feel he was in a good shape, not that it really matters because he couldn’t have whipped him on his best day. You can’t give away that kind of weight with dogs that are just as even. After I sold BULLYSON to Red Walling he left me the manager of the dog in the world at that weight. I even challenged his litter brother ELI JR. but he never should have matched into BENNY BOB.”
At this point I felt like changing to another subject and asked Bobby about his stud dog BERT, where he got him from, etc… He told me the dog was about five years old and that he bought him from Dennis Meier who had the dog from Don Maloney’s wife. She has given the dog to Dennis since he had helped Don work the dog for his first match and really took a liking to the dog and she couldn’t take care of the dog after Don’s tragic death. Bobby also stated that the dog is not open at public stud service and that he would cross him with his bitches only.
“Some time ago I had a dog called BOWSER that won over a two time winner within about one hour. BOWSER was a great dog,” Bobby continued, “but had one problem; he wouldn’t work the Jenny or the treadmill, luckily you could turn him loose in a lake and he would stay in there all day until he couldn’t walk. I had sold BOWSER to friend of mine called Shankbone, but then came Bert along and whipped BOWSER in a little less than two hours; I couldn’t believe it. The next thing that I’ve heard was that my good friend Danny Burton and his amigo Tony had lost that BERT dog again with a two time winner they had. After this I started to check into the dog a little bit and called somebody in Oklahoma because I knew Dennis lived out in the country without a phone and I paid this man $50 to drive to this little town where Dennis lived and had him call me. He did and I met him in a place called Bowie in Texas. When he brought the dog into the motel room he reminded me of a great warrior, every scar on his body was showing, he was practically 90% scar tissue. I got the dog home, at that time he weighed only 45lbs, the same he matched at. What really made me buy BERT is while talking to Dennis he told me how he conditioned the dog and revealed to me he only worked the dog five miles a day behind a truck and that showed me that old BERT won his last two matches strictly on his heart. In other words you would have to kill every hair on him to win. At the time he also brought a six generation pedigree I looked at it and almost every dog in the pedigree I had seen go the last thirty years. I was so happy to get the dog I can’t tell you. After losing my stud dog ROBERT to cancer at the age of 13 years, I began my search. I was looking for a super stud dog, but a outcross that would “click” with my BULLYSON blood.
I had been looking for the All Time Great stud dog for a long time and this dog was my ultimate dream to have. A perfect stud dog. He is the only dog to win three straight fights in one year with a total of six hours of battle time.”
Right at this moment Rudy appeared at the scene. He had been busy with a little black male dog named CATFISH. This little dog belonged to Bobby who had bought the dog a few weeks before and was now conditioning the dog to get in better shape. Looking at Rudy reminded me of what Bobby had told me before about many young men that would come and visit with him trying to learn more about the part of conditioning a dog. Bobby would refer to these men as students like he himself was one time with Maurice Carver. I decided to ask him about his feelings toward the modern dogmen like 20 or 30 years ago. He answered; “The student that you are working with today is going to be your man tomorrow. It takes a lot of time and effort to work with someone, like I’m not wasting my time because the people are so eager to learn, sometimes it’s just unreal how hard they work and that is what it is all about. I have people coming over from England, Holland and Tokyo, most of them young lads under 30 years old. I have a lot respect for them because they don’t have quit in them, they are like a good dog, they hold up real good, work their dogs faithfully and make great students. They remind me of myself 30 years ago when the older dogmen wouldn’t even tell you how to rub a dog down much less getting into the real part that brings a good dog. Of course they are getting better dogs all the time. I have sold SWAMPER to Allen Sanky of England and he is doing very well with the dog, everybody wants to breed to the dog. I had won four with SWAMPER, beating the JO JO dog, which was one of the most famous ones he beat. Also, I sold JAILHOUSE over in England to a gentleman named David Hill. When I sent her over she was bred to my CH. BERT and she had 9 pups in quarantine. Then I sold a real good bitch to Peter O’Donnell, her name was SHORTY and she also had 9 puppies. I really believe that especially in the last ten years there has been a lot more serious dogmen come along over there. They have bought some of my very best and if they watch what they are doing they will wind up having better dogs than we have here.
“Do you believe the people from Europe are able to compete on the same level as far as conditioning and the quality of the dogs?”
“They are coming along very nicely and they have had tremendous progress for the last 10 years. They might be lacking in as many good dogs as we have, but they are getting better dogs and have learned a great deal about conditioning. Give them another five years and…watch out!”
“What about the people in Taiwan?” I was expecting the same answer, but to my surprise Bobby shook his head and said “I would say No. Their conditioning is not up to standards, they don’t have the dogs to compete with us over here and the “good dogs that they did have came from the USA. The people from Europe; that is a different story”. Rudy had left off again and Jeanette went back into the house answering another phone call. The conversation had been very satisfying so far and one of the last items that was still on my list had to do with, what else, the conditioning part. By this time one of Bobby’s friends, Jerry Stine from Austin, came walking up from the house and he took a seat at the table holding a cup of coffee in his hand. It was still early in the morning, but a quick look at my watch told me I had no more than 90 minutes to get to the airport and catch my plane back to Nashville. Not wasting any more time than absolutely necessary I placed my next question. “What was your relation with Maurice Carver?” “Maurice,” Bobby answered, “was a unique person and the most interesting persons I’ve ever met, there will never be another one like him and those people that are like Maurice, and they come along and are few and far between, Frank Fitzwater and Ralph Greenwood are two of them. Ralph’s death recently hit me right in the gizzards because we were not too far apart in age and he was a true friend that knew all the people that I’ve known over the last 30 years, which you can’t replace, those people their gone and that hurts.” He looked at me for a few seconds without saying a word, his smile was gone but his eyes were still pointed in my direction. In a strange way I felt sadness coming over me. It was the same feeling that I had a few weeks before when I, accompanied by my friend Bobby Smith, went over to San Antonio and walked over the land that Maurice Carver had lived on for so many years. The house he lived in was broken down, but there were still many things that reminded one of Carver’s life and the many famous dogs that were kept on this place. Later on, during a telephone conversation Bobby would tell me that Maurice was still alive and will always be remembered for the great personality he was.
I had reached my last questions concerning conditioning. “Mr. Hall can you tell me if you use steroids on your dogs and how you feed and work them?” Well, the work starts off very slow,” he instantly replied. “Anyone needs at least 90 days and if we are talking about a beginner I would say they need 5 months because they are going to make so many mistakes. I will start out at maybe 5 minutes on the Jenny, then 10 minutes to cool out and back on till I’ve done about 30 minutes worth of 5 minutes work outs which is nothing for a dog. Then in the second month I would work him up to what I call 8 hour days. That means a lot of hand walking and etc…it doesn’t mean that your dog is running the Jenny or treadmill the whole day, but you spend the whole day working that dog by hand walking , rubbing him down and so forth. I use both Jenny and treadmill, but I prefer the Jenny 2 to 1 over treadmill. The reason why I switch from the Jenny to the mill is because a dog will get bored within a certain time and it’s like a new toy for him if you switch to something else. I feed once a day, feeding twice a day is just wasting energy to me. The feeding is of course very important. To the beginner I would say get some Science Diet, or A&F dog food, both I like very much because they will hold more fluid in your dog which he’ll need. I feed like ground round meat raw in my food, also I feed a lot of chicken broth. I broil it with real garlic the broth will help to keep the fluids in the dog which he desperately needs so he will not dehydrate. This way you will have a much stronger dog, with a dehydrated dog you have nothing left but a shell. As far as the steroids go, I can not give away my secrets because that is the winning key. I only share that with the type students that I believe in and that will go on and really serious dogmen. Whenever you use the word steroid, people tend to blow that all out of proportion, like your pumping something into a dog. The only thing I believe in is in getting the dog a little help and therefore I don’t use steroids all the way thru the keep. Also, you have to remember that steroids will lower the dog’s resistance on infection and they can’t fight anything off if they get sick. You really have to know how to use steroids, it’s not something you can play with and it’s not… “Can you be a little more specific about what type of steroids you’re talking about?” “No, I can’t because people would give a fortune just to know what I use.”
Jerry Stine stood up and went for his second cup of coffee. I had only one hour left before my plane would take off and I knew it would take me at least 45 minutes to get to the airport. Bobby assured me there was no reason to worry and that he would get me to the airport in time. I looked at the notes that I made on a little piece of paper during the whole interview and asked Bobby, who was waiting for the next question, about the use of special vitamins or a hormone called Azium and if he didn’t believe that a dog with lots of fluid in his body wouldn’t run hot quicker than a dog with less fluid. He continued to answer the last question first. “They’ll definitely run hot if you don’t have as many hours a day in him, that’s working 8 hours a day, 7 days a week. If he is used to that his body is kind of custom to hard work while being under stress. Then you’ll have to keep enough fuel in him where he can go on for along time. It’s like a race car, when they run out of gas their going to stop and it is the same way with any animal, horse, dog or whatever. The vitamins are something I really believe in but, there again, knowing how to give the right stuff is an art. It takes years of experience of learning what to give and how much to give because if you give too much of anything it can work against you. Vitamins are very, very important, it’s just as important as working a dog to me. About the use of Azium, I’d like to say to the beginner…well, the beginner doesn’t know when to put the Azium in, that’s the sad part about it, it’s a drug they have no knowledge of, when it is at it’s peak or anything. Therefore I wouldn’t suggest anything to a beginner because they would do more harm than they would good, again…using this kind of stuff is a knowledge and not something that you give and it works.” I agreed on his last answer, but couldn’t stop wondering if this answer would be really helpful to any real beginner who was trying to learn. I decided to go and talk to a pharmacist about this subject as soon as I had the chance. There was no more than 50 minutes left to get to the airport when I arrived at my last question to Bobby Hall. We were alone and beside the ever sleeping MS. BOOBS there was no sound disturbing this perfect, beautiful Texas Sunday morning in Houston. “Mr. Hall, final question. Who is you best friend? Once again he looked me straight in the eyes, his face was smiling and without the slightest hesitation he answered me with a voice that was filled with love…… “Jeanette.”
The drive to the airport was fast and only seconds before the plane closed it’s door, I fell into my seat, trying to catch my breath after a run that would have made A.J. Foyt jealous. Far above the world, gliding so effortlessly from one cloud to another I thought about what Bobby Hall had told me and what I had learned from the visit. I thought about what he had said to me one time in his car… “If you want to be successful, it takes a lot of hard work and dedication….there is no way I could have done it any different.” Bobby Hall, a man who has clearly motivated himself in a direction of being what he eventually became… A first class dogman, his award of hard labor.
Letter to Floyd Boudreaux
ALL ACCOUNTS ARE FICTIONAL, AND SHOULD BE VIEWED AS SUCH:
“Open Letter to Floyd Boudreaux” From Don Mayfield
Hello Floyd, November 30, 1989
Today is the day after I received a copy of the Jan.-Feb. 1989 American Pitbull Terrier Times. I had been told by a number of different ones that you had said a number of things about me in the interview you gave the Times. I became so interested that I subscribed for the Times, that was the first of August 1989. As of yet I have not been sent any issues, but a friend of mine did send me this Jan.-Feb. issue yesterday for me to read your interview.
Floyd I must say that your dog ain’t changed you very little, as to the way I read your interview. I told Phyllis, I said you no Floyd’s more of a liar than I thought he was, but you know it could be that he ain’t such a liar, it could be that maybe he just got a bad memory and he just gets things mixed up. And Floyd you remember how crazy and upfront Phyllis is. She said you think that all you want to about that PRINCE OF A MAN, but you’re as wrong as you could be. Floyd knows every lie he is saying in that interview.
So what I thought I would do is write you this letter as I read over this interview and point out just a few of the many things I read and feel I know I can prove is wrong, WITH FACTS!
First let me tell you Maurice Carver matched his first time in 1952, the SKIPPER dog. Eli Jr. was eight months old when Nirider deal him from Jerry Clemmons. And in that litter there was more than four pups. Nirider got one male as a puppy, he jumped out of a two story window at six months old and killed his self one day when he seen another dog walking down the street. That is when Nirider then deal for ELI JR., and at that same time or a month or two later he deal Jerry for SPOOK. She quit cold 4 or 5 different times in rolls when Nirider roll her in this area. Floyd I could go on and on one thing after another of things such as what I have pointed out to you, it is like I see it throughout the interview. What I want to write you about are the more direct things that you said that much more ways involved me.
First lets start with ELI from him to me being confused as to the BULLYSON vs BENNY BOB match. Let me first say that the match with Danny Burton and Raymond, Danny dog was black and was owend by the Plummers, Raymond’s dog was white and was called Whitey’s FORD, Danny’s dog was called 500, no dogs there that day was called LIGHTING IV.
Floyd you know as well as I know how ELI was bred. It is just like Leo told me, Curley Hayes told me and a number of us in the core knew the true breeding of ELI. Jr. Bush told Curley Hayes that you told him the true breeding on ELI. Floyd you and I talked about this in the years when the game was all talking about it. Like I said more than one told me how they knew for sure that ELI was out of CRY BABY. But like you always knew me, ain’t no one dog deal going to rile me. With me I could have forgot the matter, but when the stories began being told to the beginners of the eighties, the way that you, Bobby Hall, and a number of different ones who ya’ll be dealing with in the ways of lies, lies, lies. Well that’s when I began to do a bit more writing the true stories into the game.
As I told you in the last letter I wrote to you, that you never answered when I sent you the copy of “Rednecks”. I wrote the story A ROSE IS A ROSE after Sonny Sykes and I got together in Mississippi in 1979. Sonny told me how he was getting back in the game. Sonny and I were always a little different with our friendship. We were close, but not to close, it has been with Sonny and I in a way where we have always had lots of respect for each other. I told Sonny to pick himself a pair of pups from a litter that I had coming from a litter in Chicago. The pups were some high dollar pure bred family bred pups at Paul Sofiakis’ yard. I had bred these dogs for a number of generations and know their breeding value. Sonny and I never been the kind that would lie to each other. It’s like no matter what we talk about, we talk to each other in the way as to the truth with each other.
I had told Paul all the stories about ELI and about our deal, you and I had with CRY BABY and the pups. But to Paul it was more like just another story about the question marks in many pedigrees. After Sonny Sykes and I had talked in Mississippi and I deal him the pair of pups. Sykes and Paul later got together for a visit in Chicago. As I was told by Paul the next day when he called. Paul said Sonny and I was together all day yesterday, he said Sonny and I drank some red wine and did lots of talking about old times. Paul said Don that story you told me about ELI you were sure right, Sonny told me that he seen ELI when he was on CRY BABY when the litter was near three weeks old. Sonny said that Floyd gave Sonny pick pf the litter and told him not to tell anyone how they were bred. Sonny said for some reason he never got to get with Floyd to get the pup he had picked. Sonny Sykes said the next time he saw ELI was when you matched him into Jack Smith in Mississippi. Sonny said that after the match you came to him and told him that ELI was the pup Sonny picked out of the litter. I remember that match very well, Leo and Curly both came to me and spoke of how ELI and CRY BABY looked alike. Curly came to me five minutes into the fight and said out, “Hell son you told me all the pups out of CRY BABY died.” I said, “what can I say Curly I got eyes too.” Well Paul talked on and on as to what Sonny talked about. A few days later Sonny and I talked and I told him I always knew that ELI was out of CRY BABY but I never was told your story about seeing ELI when he was a puppy in his litter on CRY. Sykes said yup Don that is the truth it happened just like I said, I just never had no reason to tell you about it till now. Don you know me, Sonny said I will tell it to you only one way.
“Open Letter to Floyd Boudreaux” From Don Mayfield
Hello Floyd, November 30, 1989
Today is the day after I received a copy of the Jan.-Feb. 1989 American Pitbull Terrier Times. I had been told by a number of different ones that you had said a number of things about me in the interview you gave the Times. I became so interested that I subscribed for the Times, that was the first of August 1989. As of yet I have not been sent any issues, but a friend of mine did send me this Jan.-Feb. issue yesterday for me to read your interview.
Floyd I must say that your dog ain’t changed you very little, as to the way I read your interview. I told Phyllis, I said you no Floyd’s more of a liar than I thought he was, but you know it could be that he ain’t such a liar, it could be that maybe he just got a bad memory and he just gets things mixed up. And Floyd you remember how crazy and upfront Phyllis is. She said you think that all you want to about that PRINCE OF A MAN, but you’re as wrong as you could be. Floyd knows every lie he is saying in that interview.
So what I thought I would do is write you this letter as I read over this interview and point out just a few of the many things I read and feel I know I can prove is wrong, WITH FACTS!
First let me tell you Maurice Carver matched his first time in 1952, the SKIPPER dog. Eli Jr. was eight months old when Nirider deal him from Jerry Clemmons. And in that litter there was more than four pups. Nirider got one male as a puppy, he jumped out of a two story window at six months old and killed his self one day when he seen another dog walking down the street. That is when Nirider then deal for ELI JR., and at that same time or a month or two later he deal Jerry for SPOOK. She quit cold 4 or 5 different times in rolls when Nirider roll her in this area. Floyd I could go on and on one thing after another of things such as what I have pointed out to you, it is like I see it throughout the interview. What I want to write you about are the more direct things that you said that much more ways involved me.
First lets start with ELI from him to me being confused as to the BULLYSON vs BENNY BOB match. Let me first say that the match with Danny Burton and Raymond, Danny dog was black and was owend by the Plummers, Raymond’s dog was white and was called Whitey’s FORD, Danny’s dog was called 500, no dogs there that day was called LIGHTING IV.
Floyd you know as well as I know how ELI was bred. It is just like Leo told me, Curley Hayes told me and a number of us in the core knew the true breeding of ELI. Jr. Bush told Curley Hayes that you told him the true breeding on ELI. Floyd you and I talked about this in the years when the game was all talking about it. Like I said more than one told me how they knew for sure that ELI was out of CRY BABY. But like you always knew me, ain’t no one dog deal going to rile me. With me I could have forgot the matter, but when the stories began being told to the beginners of the eighties, the way that you, Bobby Hall, and a number of different ones who ya’ll be dealing with in the ways of lies, lies, lies. Well that’s when I began to do a bit more writing the true stories into the game.
As I told you in the last letter I wrote to you, that you never answered when I sent you the copy of “Rednecks”. I wrote the story A ROSE IS A ROSE after Sonny Sykes and I got together in Mississippi in 1979. Sonny told me how he was getting back in the game. Sonny and I were always a little different with our friendship. We were close, but not to close, it has been with Sonny and I in a way where we have always had lots of respect for each other. I told Sonny to pick himself a pair of pups from a litter that I had coming from a litter in Chicago. The pups were some high dollar pure bred family bred pups at Paul Sofiakis’ yard. I had bred these dogs for a number of generations and know their breeding value. Sonny and I never been the kind that would lie to each other. It’s like no matter what we talk about, we talk to each other in the way as to the truth with each other.
I had told Paul all the stories about ELI and about our deal, you and I had with CRY BABY and the pups. But to Paul it was more like just another story about the question marks in many pedigrees. After Sonny Sykes and I had talked in Mississippi and I deal him the pair of pups. Sykes and Paul later got together for a visit in Chicago. As I was told by Paul the next day when he called. Paul said Sonny and I was together all day yesterday, he said Sonny and I drank some red wine and did lots of talking about old times. Paul said Don that story you told me about ELI you were sure right, Sonny told me that he seen ELI when he was on CRY BABY when the litter was near three weeks old. Sonny said that Floyd gave Sonny pick pf the litter and told him not to tell anyone how they were bred. Sonny said for some reason he never got to get with Floyd to get the pup he had picked. Sonny Sykes said the next time he saw ELI was when you matched him into Jack Smith in Mississippi. Sonny said that after the match you came to him and told him that ELI was the pup Sonny picked out of the litter. I remember that match very well, Leo and Curly both came to me and spoke of how ELI and CRY BABY looked alike. Curly came to me five minutes into the fight and said out, “Hell son you told me all the pups out of CRY BABY died.” I said, “what can I say Curly I got eyes too.” Well Paul talked on and on as to what Sonny talked about. A few days later Sonny and I talked and I told him I always knew that ELI was out of CRY BABY but I never was told your story about seeing ELI when he was a puppy in his litter on CRY. Sykes said yup Don that is the truth it happened just like I said, I just never had no reason to tell you about it till now. Don you know me, Sonny said I will tell it to you only one way.
Interview With Sonny Sykes
ALL ACCOUNTS ARE FICTIONAL, AND SHOULD BE VIEWED AS SUCH:
An Interview With Legendary Dogman Sonny Sykes:
“HOW OLD ARE YOU?” was my first question! “I’m 47 years old and I was 9 years old when I saw my first dogfight. “Where were you last night? What’s all that hair in your mouth, you son of a bitch?” I looked at him while he was sitting across the table with a big smile on his face. Sonny Sykes lived in Chicago when he was a young man, just around the corner from the blacksmith shop where Joe Corvino kept all his dogs. Sonny, like Joe, was from Italian background and it was Sonny’s uncle who brought him to Joe for the first time.
While I was talking to Sonny, I noticed a T-shirt hanging on the wall in his living room. On the front of the shirt it said, “The King of the Pit.” Later on he said that the only true King in the Pit was Bert Clouse. This and other lively statements made this interview one of the most interesting so far and, with the permission of Sonny, I would like to dedicate this interview to all the great old time Chicago dogmen, but in particular to Joe Corvino.
We at THE TIMES are proud to bring you this exclusive interview with Sonny Sykes and we trust you will appreciate his colorful stories and great old time pictures which would make an entire book themselves.
Read the rest of the story and drift back into an era long ago through the eyes of Sonny Sykes who has been a dogman for 38 years…
Sonny, where did you get your first dog? I got my first puppy from Joe Corvino when I was about 8 or 9 years old. I remember I was in the third grade and that little female lived to be 18 years old. I had her well into my first marriage. I bred her once to a Corvino bred male called JONESY, but it missed and I never bred her again.
What type of man was Joe? Well, he was Italian, very nice and very knowledgeable man. He would talk, but also he would keep a lot of things to himself. He was very hard to please and in my heart I believe that he was ahead of his time. He had a lot of friends in the dog game, everywhere…he always had a lot of guys coming to his blacksmith shop where he worked, but none of them would last very long. He taught me a lot about dogs and even how to shoe a horse. I spent a lot of time in that blacksmith shop and to be honest with you, I believe it kept me out of serious trouble. Other kids would go out and do crazy, stupid things but I spent my time over there.
Was Joe like a father figure to you? Maybe so, but I always looked at him as a friend although he was much older than me. When I met him he was already 50 years old. To me he was like a big brother type. You see, Joe had 9 children, 4 boys and 5 girls, but not one of his kids liked the dogs because he forced them to take care of them, like cleaning the kennels and stuff like that. Now, I was hungry for that, I loved the dogs.
Who were Joe’s best friends? He had many friends. He was very good friends with Bert Clouse, Earl Tudor, Walter Komosinski, Pete Sparks, Leo Kinard, George Saddler, Jack Kelly, Maurice Carver, Mike Ferris, Wiz Hubbard, and so many others… Joe also knew the old Irish men like Con Feely, Pat Conroy, the Farmer brothers, and also John Colby.
Did he tell you how he got started in the dogs? Yes, he told me one time that he stole his very first dog from an Irish saloon keeper and when he got home with the dog he broke it’s front legs because he wanted a dog that was toed in. He was just 8 or 9 years old at the time. Pete Sparks one time put on the cover of his magazine that Corvino stole his first dog and that he stole the show ever since. Pete Sparks had a real good magazine in those days called Your Friend and Mine. Pete only matched one dog in his life. He was not a dogfighter, but he was a breeder and a publicist. He was also basically a Colby breeder and I hear his dogs are doing pretty good these days, even better than in the old days. Joe told me that Con Feely was a good dogman, very hard to beat. A real dogfighter that I believe was born in Ireland. The same goes for the Farmer brothers. They, too, were Irish and very, very tough competition. In those days around that turn of the century, Chicago was the hotbed for fighting dogs because of all the good dogmen that came from Ireland. They were the ones that brought the dogs with them when they came from Europe to this country. Up until those days the dog game was an Irish sport and don’t let anybody tell you different! Joe started with dogs from Feely bloodline and he also got dogs from Jack Williams from Colorado. Not from the Williams from Oklahoma, but from Colorado. These dogs were from Bruce’s LADY LOU and TURK and they too were basically Feely’s blood. Joe also got dogs from a man named Cunningham who was from Southern Illinois. He also got dogs from Menefee and from Tudor. Joe knew a lot of people and he traveled a lot. Like I said before, he knew Colby and I’ve just showed you some letters that proved to you the kind of relationship they had.
What were the best combinations that Joe ever made? I would say the Feely-Menefee crosses. That’s what basically produced Trahan’s RASCAL and DIBO. You see, Joe didn’t breed as close as people think he did. He would breed similar breed males to outcross bitches and breed that together. But, he always said; “These dogs are goofy enough already.” Joe was a devoted game freak. He didn’t like anything more than a deep game dog that would fight the head. That was his belief and that is what I’ve been taught. A dog that will stay on the face or the ear and keep himself out of trouble. Joe didn’t like a stifle dog. He always said that a dog that would go to the back-end was running away from the action, and that he would go to the stifles because there is no teeth there. Joe really liked the smart head master and so do I.
Was Joe a gambler? No. He was strictly in the dogs. Usually we would go to a convention or something like that and go early so he could see the other guys come in with their dogs, etc. He liked that. Joe was more interested in how the dogs did and how the bloodlines compared to each other and all that.
Joe was more a breeder than a fighter, right? Right. He was definitely a breeder type. But, he would test his dogs hard, real hard!
How did he do that? Where would he draw the line? Well, you have no idea of what I saw in the blacksmith shop. Like I already said, he had no use for a punishing dog. He was looking for gameness. So he put a hard test on them. He would put two or three dogs on one just to see if he would stay solid. And, if they didn’t pass the test, he got rid of them. He wouldn’t sell or breed them if they weren’t game. He sometimes used a muzzle on a dog so they couldn’t take a hold and frustrated them to see how they did under pressure.
How do you feel about this method now? Do you like to use two or three dogs if you want to test a dog’s gameness? No. I don’t do it. I’ve tried it but I would never do that again. I had dogs that wouldn’t even fight a fresh dog, but you put them in shape, and they would fight their heart out against the same opponent. Now Joe would never test a dog before he was 2 years old. He maybe would see if they would start up, but he never rolled them hard before 2 years old. He would never match a dog before he was 3 years old. I’ll tell you something. If you really want to test a dog, you don’t have to put 2 or 3 dogs on him. It’s very simple. Take them off the chain without any conditioning, and put the against a 5 or 10 pound bigger dog. That will show you something. Let them push that weight for about 15 or 20 minutes and you’ll see! That’s what I would do and did do. I guarantee you that they will quit quicker from the heat than they will from getting hurt!
I heard about some people in the old days putting a muzzle on both dogs and letting them wrestle as a form of exercise. What do you think of that? That’s very possible, but another thing is, put a muzzle on a dog and let him chase a hide for awhile. If you let that go for more than 5 or 6 minutes, you will kill your dog! He gets so mad from chasing that hide that he hurts himself from the inside. When you take that muzzle away, he can hardly stand from all the inside fat that is coming out. It’s good exercise, but no more than 30 seconds. The Cajuns use that a lot for putting a dog in shape. I don’t have to because I know how to cut the inside fat out and bring them down to weight before the working starts. If you do it right, your dog will…listen! The trick is this; have your dog 1 or 1 ½ pounds underweight about 2 weeks before the fight, and the last 2 weeks put the weight back on so he will be just a little underweight at fight time. Everybody does it different, but this is how I do it. I have my own way of conditioning a dog and believe me a dog should never have trouble breathing while he is being worked. Why am I telling you all these secrets, you son of a bitch? Next Subject!
Is that how they did it in the old days? Yes! The ones that knew how to do it. But not everybody knew how to do it.
How important is conditioning to you? Very important. I believe it’s 70% of the fight. Peter, it’s like this; if they can’t breath, they can’t fight. The heart sends a message to the brain and oxygen is the whole thing. If you can’t breath you can’t run, let alone fight. There is a thing now they do these days to build up red blood cells to improve the oxygen level in the bloodstream and this and that, but there is nothing that will take the place of hard work. Nothing can replace hard work!
What was the deal between Howard Heinzl and Joe Corvino? Well, first I want to say that Heinzl has always been good to me. He sent me plenty of dogs that I always liked and did good with. I have nothing bad to say about Heinzl; he and I got along good. I beat Mike Ferris with a dog he sent me, and he sent me all his dogs for free! But, what is right is right, and what is wrong is wrong. Joe and Heinzl didn’t get along good and the fight between them started in the time when Heinzl still lived in Chicago. Heinzl was born in Chicago and later on he moved with his partner Bruce Johnson to Arizona to start a lettuce farm, but they went down. Anyway, Heinzl had his dogs from Colby and didn’t have a place to keep them. So Joe boarded his dogs, and the deal was that Heinzl paid him 25 cents per day(per dog) for the feed. Later on, Joe raised it to something like 30 cents because it was the depression and in that time it was hard to find meat for dogs. Heinzl thought Joe wanted to keep the dogs for himself and that’s how the feud started, for no other reason. Heinzl keep that hate with him for all those years. That was between Joe and Heinzl, but there was something else too! Heinzl and a man named Bud Morelli stole one of Joe’s dogs when his son, Joe jr., was walking the dog down the street. The dog was named BLACKIE and after Heinzl stole the dog he sent him to Earl Tudor. Joe found out about this and Earl also knew what happened, but he never returned the dog to Joe. Joe and Earl were good friends and they remained friends, but the friendship was a little cool after this incident.
Did Joe keep a lot of dogs at his place? He lived in the city and he had limited space. He had kennels for about 12 to 15 dogs and he cooked for them every day. He always had a man living above the shop and this man would take care of the dogs as Joe was always working, shoeing horses and stuff. But he had numerous people in the city that had only 1 or 2 dogs and he always kept track of them.
Joe built his own treadmills. Did he prefer to work a dog on a treadmill more than anything else? No, his first choice was handwalking, but then he preferred the treadmill. He had a turn table but didn’t like it. So he sold the table to Bert Clouse and it is still working. Bert Clouse is dead, but the table is still at his place and it still works. Joe built the best treadmills. He had slatmills and todays mills are copies of his. Colbly had a carpet mill, but Joe liked the slats more.
How do you work a dog on a treadmill? A dog should work a mill like he is going to town looking for a female, and that’s a slow tread. I don’t like a dog to go all out because it will burn him out and not put him in shape. That steady trot with his tongue hanging out his mouth, that’s it! Remember this, many a fighter lost his fight in the gym. I believe that a lot of guys are working are overworking the dog. Today there is a better understanding of how to put the dog in shape. In the old days… well, they brought them in skin and bones. If you feed a dog nothing but meat for 20 or 30 days, the protein will take all the fat out of the body and there is nothing left. Now a few guys did it different, like Ham Morris and Walter Komosinski. They did pretty good, but the rest… it was like this, if you had 20 guys in those days to match a dog, 15 of them couldn’t get Lassie to shake hands. Understand?
Who do you believe was the best conditioners in those days? I would say Don Mayfield and Roland Fontenot.
Why? You just said that some people would take too much weight off them, and Mayfield had a reputation of bringing in dogs that were real thin! That’s true, but for those days he was a good conditioner. Now today he wouldn’t stand a chance because he still sticks to the old way. I saw him in his last fight with a dog named SNOW against CHARLIE (which was Jeep’s litter brother) and he didn’t have a chance! Mayfield would bring his dogs in peaked out. Fontenot brought them in like that too, but he slowly progressed with the new way of doing things, and he fought right up until his death.
Who do you believe were the best handlers? Fontenot and Jerome Hernandez were very good handlers. To me they were probably the best all around dogmen.
How important is a good handler to you? Real important. But there is no need to jump up and down and holler and scream when they go at it hard and fast like most do the first 20 minutes or so. Nobody should be acting crazy or wild in the pit because the other dog can hear you as good as your own dog. I think the handling is important when it comes down to the nitty gritty, when they are tired and hurt, or when the turning starts. When it comes down to that moment of truth and a dogfight becomes a real dogfight the handling, like the conditioning and gameness are extremely important, no doubt in my mind!
You told me before that when you were in the pit handling a dog you didn’t like to use a wet sponge. Why not? If you bring that dog fit to fight he don’t need a shower in his corner. I’m not against wiping his mouth out a little bit, but I’ve seen guys wetting them down and that, to me, is just teaching the dog that there is a cool spot in the corner. I don’t think you will make a game dog quit by doing this but if you have a borderline case, a dog is going to think about it. You can’t stop a game dog by throwing a whole bucket of ice water over him but I just don’t like it.
What was the longest match you ever had? Three hours and 10 minutes, and ended in a draw. I was going into Red Howell from Chicago. This was a long time ago before dogfighting became a felony. I’m not active anymore, but I remember that the weight was 48lbs and that I used a dog out of Clouse’s BUTCH. Howell’s dog died but I matched mine 6 months later against Mike Ferris and won in 1 hour and 10 minutes. Mike used a dog that Floyd Boudreaux had shipped to him with a special intention to beat me.
What was the shortest match you ever had? Against Clyde Mason in 6 minutes. I won that one with my AUDREY bitch. She was a STU FOWLER/Mayfield cross.
Did you work these dogs the same way? Yes, they worked the same way, but had nothing to do with the outcome of the fight. They had different opponents.
What can you tell me about Bert Clouse? Bert was a very good person and a good dogman. He was truly the King of the Pit, and a great conditioner in those days. By today’s standard, he would probably be average. But in those days, he was one of the best! Bert was very knowledgeable and well read. Bert, like Joe, liked the head dog and he would usually come with an athletic type of dog. He once had a dog called BUTCH that he got from Joe. He won 6 fights with the dog. BUTCH was a Mason bred dog. Joe bought him from Jimmie Sheer in Louisiana where they used BUTCH in a gate fight. Joe knew the dog was pretty good so he paid $50 for the dog and took him back to Chicago. When Bert came over he liked the dog so much that he asked Joe to sell it to him. Bert kept around 35 to 40 dogs at his place and he had some good ones. He had NUBBIE, WAGGIE, BIG BOY…and others. This was back in the forties and fifties. Bert, like many others, got his first dog from Joe.
What is the best dog you ever matched yourself? A dog called BOB. He came from a man named Eichen in New York. He was a black dog, 46lbs and sired by Clouse’s STABBER. I bet Teal and Cotton’s 5 times winner PLAYBOY with him and prior to that he won over Komosinski in 1 hour and 40 minutes. He was, by far, the greatest dog I ever handled. Several people owned him before I got him, and I found out that he was matched in 5 different states all under different names. He and my SNUBBY bitch were poisoned and he died in my hands. He and SNUBBY were two of my best.
What was your relation to Don Mayfield? Real good friends. Don had all those LIGHTNING I and LIGHTNING II dogs. They were Corvino bred dogs, but later when I got out of the game he switched to the NIG stuff.
They say Don Mayfield now is crazy, do you believe that’s true? Well, I believe he was crazier before with all that speed and stuff, but to me he is an open book. Anyway, I feel sorry for the ones that are not crazy in this crazy world.
What about Mayfield as a breeder? Ever tried any NIG bred dogs from his breedings? I had no luck with them. I got dogs straight from a friend who bought them from Mayfield. His name is Paul Siofakis. He lived down there in Texas for a while, but now he is back in Chicago. I’m not saying that these dogs are not good, but I just had no luck with them, they all quit! The same with Patrick and Hammonds bred dogs. I’ve tried dogs that Bob Lowery bought from Patrick and I kept them for months and years, gave them every chance possible, but they didn’t turn out.
Back to the conditioners. Why do you believe that Mayfield was so successful in his days? I don’t know. He just was capable of getting more out of a dog than most other people, but again there were only a few guys active in those days.
Maybe he already had some knowledge about the use of steroids? Maybe that’s the reason why, I don’t know. Some people are just blessed with a gift, but there is only one person that knows and that is Don Mayfield.
What is your general impression on today’s breeders? There are two different categories. I have no great love for Sorrells from Florida, but in my heart I would rank him as a good breeder and a good dogman and believe me, there are not many that I would say this about. Patrick and Hammonds are breeding for a different purpose, but Sorrells is active and he uses what he breeds. You see, I have no use for a breeder that is not active at all.
Part Two: An Interview With Legendary Dogmam Sonny Sykes
Do you believe the dogs are more a money game to some people? I don’t know if it is. But if that’s the case, then we made it a money game. Money ain’t going to buy good dogs, perhaps you can buy some good match dogs, but it takes more than money to get yourself a good family of dogs together. There is more power to the determined dogman that keeps going on and uses common sense instead of somebody that thinks he can get there by spending a lot of money. Look at me! I’ve been buying dogs from $800 and up and what did I get. I don’t think you can buy a good dog. Let me tell you something… I don’t believe people are breeding for gameness anymore, they are breeding for mouth! You take all these magazines and you sum up all the fight reports and then divide it by the number of matches and see what you get…. 15 or 17 minutes. So what does that tell you? People are getting away from Gameness, and when you do that you are in trouble! Today for a young guy in the states it’s hard to find a good dog, so how do you think the poor kid in Amsterdam is going to find one!
Don’t you believe that was the same situation a hundred years ago when the American fanciers where importing dogs from over seas? No. Because the Irishman brought the dogs with them and they maintained their ties with their friends in their own country. There was a close relationship and they knew who they were talking to. Now the poor kid in Amsterdam knows nothing about what is really going on over here. He reads the ads in the books and he goes oohhh… this dog is a 5x winner, but he don’t know about the people who own the dogs. Don’t you know more now that you are amongst us thieves? Don’t you have a different outlook now than the rest of your friends back in Europe that don’t realize how it is over here?
In other words it’s real important to have good contacts? Right! Very important! It’s always been and always will be that the guy with the loudest vocabulary will sell the most dogs. Remember that!! All these guys that run full page ads in the mags and are selling pups on a wholesale basis don’t even look at their dogs. They sell papers and the hard work of others that made one of their dogs look good. They capitalize on that one good dog. Anyway… this is how I feel, do you believe I’m telling you something wrong or goofy?
Who do you think is a good breeder? The Carolinas have always been well represented. One of the best (if you like the Redboy stuff) is Fletcher Chavis, the old man himself. He is a good guy for someone to buy a dog from if they want to get started. I have a Mexican friend who bought the whole yard from Chavis and I like what I have seen so far. Maybe he’s got some more, I don’t know… Chavis was the first to make a Champion out of Redboy. That was the YELLOW JOHN dog. Later came S.T.P.’s TORO, JOHN BOY and others, but Fletcher Chavis was the first to do that. Also, Sorrells would be a good choice to go visit in person and buy a dog from, or Carl Winn. Go and talk to these men and see how you do. To me, that Sorrells stuff is the purest family alive because there is nothing in there but Klaus’ ZEKE, Sorrells and Corvino. I like that BLUE MONDAY dog or something with RED JERRY in it. All other breeders are just mixing bloodlines. I have some Greenwood dogs THAT I cross with my BOOMERANG stuff and that seems to work good too.
But Sonny, you must have some pure Corvino dogs around here somewhere. Tell me the truth? No, I don’t have any. I don’t, f*ck you. End interview!
O.K. but what’s that little black bitch in your backyard out of? Well… she is 6/8 Corvino, her name is ASHLEY and I will breed her to ATARI another 6/8 Corvino dog. He is a 6x winner from Roul Jaques, but there is no such animal as a pure Corvino anymore.
What about if I had a pure Corvino dog, but he was a rank cur. Would you breed to him? If he was yours, I would say no, kill him. But if he was mine I would probably take a gamble. But seriously, there is no dog alive with nothing but gamedogs in his ancestry. Look at all the great ones. Let’s take BOLIO for instance, he was out of RED BABY and she was out of a bitch called SUSIE. SUSIE quit so many times when she was in California that they changed her name to GOLDIE. There’s quitting in all them dogs! BOLIO’S sire ZEKE was a good dog, but his sire and grand sire, a dog named COLONEL quit. So I would probably breed to a pure Corvino bred dog if he did quit before.
Sonny, did you know Walter Komosinski? Oh yes, real good. Walter came from Creighton, Pennsylvania. He lived there most of his life, but he came from Poland when he was just a teenager. Walter worked in the mines and worked himself up to a foreman. In fact, after his retirement, the younger mine engineers with college educations would come up to him for advice when they had a problem. Walter’s education was experience and he was a real smart man. He could carry on a conversation on any subject, Presidents, Senators… you name it. He bought a little farm close to the mines where he worked and he had 88 acres of land. He kept around 40 dogs all the time and he was a good breeder and very good competitor. Very hard to beat! Joe and Walter were good friends, but Walter was basically a Colby breeder. He always brought his dogs in a little heavier than most other guys, and he was very successful. I fought him twice and won both times. One in 1 hour 58 minutes and one in 10 minutes. The dog I used in the 10 minute fight was BRAVO. I got him from Heinzl. I believe he was a 37lb dog, real good. The first time I beat Walter was with a dog called Hunts’ PETE that was the sire to Ciroux’s BEAR. I don’t know if Walter knew something about carbohydrates, but his dogs were always strong and he also brought them in wet with plenty of fluids in their systems. Walter wouldn’t travel. You always had to fight at his place, and the referee and time keeper were usually his friends. You always had to fight in a dimly lit place with an atmosphere between a half coal mine, and a half barn with coal dust covering the light bulbs. He was very hard to beat.
What about Mike Ferris? Now Mike was not a breeder, but a dogfighter. If he thought he had a good dog, he would meet you in Hong Kong. He was a very active man and good too. I know he brought them in fairly thin, but that was the whole idea in those days. Mike is still active and lives in Chicago working for a Catholic school or something. But he got out of the dogs because of his health, he’s got asthma real bad and then his wife divorced him, so he got out of the dogs.
Did you know Floyd Boudreaux personally? Who? Oh, you mean Martin Luther King’s brother! Yes I knew him. I met him many times. He is a good dogman. I believe we were matched into each other several times. I read the interview in the magazine, but he didn’t say much. I don’t know how the old ELI dog was bred, but I do know that we had no black dogs in those days. The only black dog I knew of was Evelyn Start’s CRY BABY. I’ve seen the SCRUB dog twice. The first time Mayfield barely won with him, he had to push him out of the corner and the second time I saw him he quit in 4 or 5 minutes. He was definitely not game. I also seen BLIND BILLY at Floyd’s father’s place, but I couldn’t tell you where he got the dog from. You hear rumors, but that’s all it is as far as I’m concerned.
What happened when you went down to Mississippi and matched into Jim Taylor? I believe I was matched into Jim for $500 a side back in 1964. I won the fight in something like 30 minutes and I remember that when we stepped over the pit wall the beats were upped to $5,000 a side and that was big money in those days. Later on, we matched again and I lost in 2 hours and 45 minutes. He used a bitch from Ed Crenshaw called LEPRCHAUN and I used PATCHES at 36lbs. Both bitches died that time.
What other good dogs did you see? Well, I’ve seen Tudor’s SPIKE kill Smith’s DUGGAN. SPIKE was strictly a shoulder dog. I liked him. SPIKE also had a brother called JEFF and one called BUCK. I saw BUCK lose to CRACKER, but now CRACKER was his half brother so I feel that never should have happened. BUCK was out of DIBO and BLACK WIDOW, and CRACKER was out of DIBO and RED LADY. Both exceptional dogs by today’s standards. There was one dog that was better and that was Kirkland’s NEGRO, he too was related to DIBO. NEGRO was owned by this man from Alabama and he beat CRACKER. Another one that I rate as one of the best I’ve seen in my life is Jerome Hernandez’s NIG as well as Teal’s TIP and SUSIE. Cotton’s BULLET and RENO were good dogs. RENO was a 4x winner out of Corvino blood and I matched into him. That was my first fight. It lasted 2 hours and 45 minutes. Mayfield had a good little bitch called JESSIE, a spotted white and brown bitch. Maybe the gamest scratch I’ve ever seen was when DUGGAN crawled across the pit into SPIKE. His bones were sticking out and even Joe got excited. He threw his blanket in the air and was screaming out of excitement. I seen the WINO dog that Mr. Jolley sold to Bill Cotton quit against Mike Ferris’ ADOLF who was a Heinzl dog. Ferris’ APACHE was a real good little 33lb bitch, a real classy head fighting bitch. I seen STRIDER against CASSIUS CLAY and oh, I’ve seen so many, sometimes I can’t remember their names.
What can you tell me about that CASSIUS CLAY dog? Where did he come from? O.K. CASSIUS CLAY was brought from a preacher by Pat Bodzionowski for $10. The preacher was from Southern Illinois, just south of Chicago, and he got rid of the dog because he was killing dogs on the street and dragging them back to the church. He was driving the preacher crazy. Nobody knows how CLAY was bred and he, for sure, was not out of TEDDY or any other Corvino dog. I had TEDDY until he died and he was never bred to any bitched outside my own yard. TEDDY was never bred to GOLDIE, CRAZY MARY or any of those other bitches that I see in the magazine ads. Anyway, back to CASSIUS CLAY. He was a bid red dog with a black mask and he was a crazy acting dog. When Pat bought him he rolled him numerous times, but never matched him for money. I tried to stop that dog but I couldn’t stop him. In the pit he would bark, growl and lay down, but he wouldn’t stop. Once a man told me that he won 18 or 19 fights. Well let me tell you, he was never conditioned for a money fight until Pat sold the dog to Don Devine of Florida. Don came up here to buy the dog because he thought he was a Corvino bred dog. He paid $900 for the dog and that was a lot of money in those days. When he was over here he was so nervous walking around with that money that he asked me to put it in my safe. At that time, I had a bar that was always full of Mexican and black people and they would do more cutting amongst each other than they do in the hospital. Devine gave me the money and the next day he bought the dog. He matched CLAY into STRIDER from, I believe, Greenwood or Maloney. The fight was in Pickens Mississippi at 5:30 in the morning. CLAY won that fight and then Devine won another fight with him that was not too good, so he never matched him again. One time when Pat still owed the dog, I asked him to give me the dog so I could work and match him. He gave him to me, but the dog was trying to kill me because he didn’t like me. Even when I came close to feed him, his eyes would turn green and he was going crazy. So, I called Pat and said “get that son of a bitch out of here!”
Who put the false papers on CASSIUS CLAY? Do you know if Devine knew about that? I’m sure Pat put those papers on the dog. I don’t care, it’s not my business. I don’t do it, but if somebody else will do it, it’s their business not mine. There are a lot of dogs with false papers on them that the public knows nothing about. You have to understand one thing; we are dogfighters first, foremost and always… like I already told you TEDDY was never bred to the females that are being mentioned in that ad on the back of the Journal.
You just said that Bert Sorrels would be a good choice to buy a dog from! Yes. TEDDY was never bred to those females. They were bred to Syke’s DUGGAN II. So anywhere you read TEDDY you should read DUGGAN II. He was a litter brother to Giroux’s BEAR out of Hunt’s PETE and MUGGS sometimes called REGGIE.
Who made the pedigrees with TEDDY up and do you know if Sorrels knows about this? I don’t know who made them up and I don’t know if he knows about it, but he will know it now. You see, TEDDY had a big reputation. I matched TEDDY into Al Offer and won in 2 hours and 14 minutes. At that time he was already 7 years old and no teeth left. He was a game dog, but DUGGAN II was a good dog too. TEDDY died February 14, 1964, and I’m telling you the truth he was never bred to those bitches. I will tell you something else, too, about GOING LIGHT BARNEY; Joe sold his sire ( a dog called BOOGER) to Morris Rootberg for a guard. Rootgerg wrote Joe a letter asking for a guard dog and Joe had a different type of dog for different kind of people. So he sold him this dog which was not out of his fighting stock. Joe put the dog’s papers on his name then sold him to Rootberg. Then Rootberg sold his restaurant and moved to California and bred that dog to a Corvino female named CRAZY MARY and that breeding produced GOING LIGHT BARNEY. His father was not a Corvino dog!
Why would Joe put false papers on a dog? Because he knew that some people that asked him for a guard dog, or a pet wouldn’t match them anyway. That’s how I feel about it. He would just polish up the dog by putting another pedigree on him, that’s all.
Do you know if the owner of GOING LIGHT BARNEY knew all this? I don’t know. I doubt it!
What was your relation to Maurice Carver, Leo Kinard and Howard Teal, for instance? Teal was a good dogman and I’m good friends with him. Teal is from North Carolina and he owned a restaurant over there. Teal had some of those old Colby dogs that originated the REDBOY line. I don’t know if his SARGE dog was a Colby dog. I believe somebody dropped the dog off at his place and that he put the papers on him. But SARGE would be REDBOY’S sire. SARGE was a good dog, but he lost his last fight. That part of the country where he came from always produced a lot of good dogmen. Leo and Maurice were both good friends of mine. Leo had a super nice place and I’ve been there many times. He would always give you a fair and square deal. I remember I was asking him some questions once like you are asking me now and bla, bla, bla… and he said, “Sonny, the more I’m around these son of a bitches, the less I know.” Just look around you and see well bred dogs that have won 2 or 3 fights, and then comes one of those scatter bred dogs and just kills them! On a scale of 10 I would say that breeding your dogs in a family and looking at the pedigrees will bring you a 4 or a 5, but them real good sons of bitches…. They are where you find them. Maurice was a good dogman. There is some controversy about him faking pedigrees and I’m sure he did to some extent, but I’m also sure that all those big time breeders do the same thing. When the bad overshadows the good I think you have a problem, but he sent me a lot of good dogs. Let me tell you what kind of man Maurice was. If he knew I had a good dog he would be on the phone asking me if he could breed to him. Carver told me he made a mistake by breeding to BULLYSON and that he wanted to breed to a dog called BOOTS the BLACKSMITH. Carver was with the border patrol and he had two 44 magnums. He gave one to Eddie Klaus and the other one to Hernandez. Hernandez gave me that 44 after Carver died. Earl Tudor was a very active dogfighter, but people that say he was just a fighter don’t know what they are talking about because he bred some real good dogs too. Joe had a friend who worked at the post office where Tudor got his mail. This was a black man, his name was Silvers, and this Silvers would open Tudor’s mail and tell Joe what was in the letters… it’s incredible but Joe got Earl’s mail before he did.
Do you believe that a pure Corvino dog would be enough to compete these days? Well, I would sat that they are basically game dogs. Now, they would be a little clumsy and they would need a little dunky in them now and then.
What kind of dogs do you have now? I am no longer in the game, but I do have a few dogs that I keep because I like dogs and really my wife Bridgette was the one that talked me into this. I have some BOOMERANG dogs that I like and I got them from a guy in Minnesota named Reuvers. He was a policeman and got a lot of people in trouble, but at the time he spent a lot of money buying good dogs. BOOMERANG goes back to that Elias PISTOL and he was out of that RASCAL dog.
Boudreaux’s RASCAL you mean? Or Trahan’s RASCAL or Pete Lormond’s RASCAL, whatever you want to call him. Listen , a man named Hanson wanted to buy a dog from Joe, so he wrote him a letter. Joe was out of town that time so they forwarded his mail and called back telling Joe Jr. to send this Hansen a pup. Hansen wanted to buy a show dog, but Joe Jr. sent the wrong dog and sent RASCAL who was out of Joe’s fighting stock. Hanson didn’t like the dog because of his build and gave the dog to a man named Claville. This man called RASCAL, PIMPLE, but it’s still the same dog. Then Pete Lormond had him for a while and RASCAL stayed around Lafayette, that’s for sure. From there on he went to, I believe, Trahan and I seen him chained up behind the grocery store that was owned by a man named LaVergne and that’s how far I know about him. There was another dog over there that was also a Corvino dog called Pete Lormond’s BLACKY. They rolled BLACKY into RASCAL, but BLACKY was beating RASCAL so they picked him up. Lormond was a truck driver who drove between Lafayette and Chicago and he brought these dogs down South with him.
What can you tell me about Altieri’s TIM? I owned TIM. Alieri was Joe’s son-in-law and he gave the dog to me, I never changed his name. At the time a man named Wilson who was a friend of mine and Joe came by with a bitch and bred to TIM. He had two pups in the litter and I told him he could keep both. I never expected him to sell these pups to Indian Sonny. Otherwise they would never have left Chicago. But, anyway, Wilson was a friend of mine and I really didn’t care, but that’s how Indian CRUSHER went to California. In Chicago they called this dog RHINO, but Sonny changed his name to CRUSHER.
When did Indian Sonny come into the picture? One of the first to ship a dog to California was Freddie Jones and then Vern Baker brought COUNTRY BOY over there. He paid Gaboon Trahan $500 for the dog and we thought that was the end of world. $500 for a bulldog! Then Indian Sonny followed and you really didn’t have a whole lot of people. Glen Jones in Oregon had a few, but that was about it. Now they’re everywhere and the younger generation are 100% more knowledgeable than the first. Indian Sonny is of the older generation. He is a good dogman and conditioner, but he bears watching.
What about that poem you wrote? Well, the people that I talked about, they know what I mean. Stratton wrote that book about all those people from that part of the country, but what ever happened to the people from New York or from Chicago? If it really comes down to it, all the good ones come from Illinois. You can trace every one of them back, and they all go back to BOUNCER, GIMP, and DIBO and all that stuff. These dogs were Corvino, Feely and Menefee. In Chicago, you had all the good dogmen like Feely, Pat Conroy, Patty Mallet, the Farmer Brothers and so many others.
Do you believe there will ever be a state where dogfighting will be legal like the chickens? No, I don’t think so because it has gone too far in the media, but they can never stop it. This is America! Like Pete Sparks said, as long as there are two men and two bulldogs, there will be dogfighting. Did they ever stop the drugs? Did they stop the Klu Klux Klan? Aren’t they more a threat than us? Then how can they stop dog fighting?
Do you believe the magazines are doing any good to this cause? I don’t know. We are the only ones that advertise our last and next move in the magazine. Do you know of a bank robber that puts in a magazine that he robbed a bank in only 3 minutes and that he is going to this and that bank next month? We are the only ones that advertise things in the book that we know are against the law, so what does that tell you Peter Parker…. THAT WE ARE LOUSY BANK ROBBERS! Right, now shut off your tape and let’s get out of the dogs! The end….
An Interview With Legendary Dogman Sonny Sykes:
“HOW OLD ARE YOU?” was my first question! “I’m 47 years old and I was 9 years old when I saw my first dogfight. “Where were you last night? What’s all that hair in your mouth, you son of a bitch?” I looked at him while he was sitting across the table with a big smile on his face. Sonny Sykes lived in Chicago when he was a young man, just around the corner from the blacksmith shop where Joe Corvino kept all his dogs. Sonny, like Joe, was from Italian background and it was Sonny’s uncle who brought him to Joe for the first time.
While I was talking to Sonny, I noticed a T-shirt hanging on the wall in his living room. On the front of the shirt it said, “The King of the Pit.” Later on he said that the only true King in the Pit was Bert Clouse. This and other lively statements made this interview one of the most interesting so far and, with the permission of Sonny, I would like to dedicate this interview to all the great old time Chicago dogmen, but in particular to Joe Corvino.
We at THE TIMES are proud to bring you this exclusive interview with Sonny Sykes and we trust you will appreciate his colorful stories and great old time pictures which would make an entire book themselves.
Read the rest of the story and drift back into an era long ago through the eyes of Sonny Sykes who has been a dogman for 38 years…
Sonny, where did you get your first dog? I got my first puppy from Joe Corvino when I was about 8 or 9 years old. I remember I was in the third grade and that little female lived to be 18 years old. I had her well into my first marriage. I bred her once to a Corvino bred male called JONESY, but it missed and I never bred her again.
What type of man was Joe? Well, he was Italian, very nice and very knowledgeable man. He would talk, but also he would keep a lot of things to himself. He was very hard to please and in my heart I believe that he was ahead of his time. He had a lot of friends in the dog game, everywhere…he always had a lot of guys coming to his blacksmith shop where he worked, but none of them would last very long. He taught me a lot about dogs and even how to shoe a horse. I spent a lot of time in that blacksmith shop and to be honest with you, I believe it kept me out of serious trouble. Other kids would go out and do crazy, stupid things but I spent my time over there.
Was Joe like a father figure to you? Maybe so, but I always looked at him as a friend although he was much older than me. When I met him he was already 50 years old. To me he was like a big brother type. You see, Joe had 9 children, 4 boys and 5 girls, but not one of his kids liked the dogs because he forced them to take care of them, like cleaning the kennels and stuff like that. Now, I was hungry for that, I loved the dogs.
Who were Joe’s best friends? He had many friends. He was very good friends with Bert Clouse, Earl Tudor, Walter Komosinski, Pete Sparks, Leo Kinard, George Saddler, Jack Kelly, Maurice Carver, Mike Ferris, Wiz Hubbard, and so many others… Joe also knew the old Irish men like Con Feely, Pat Conroy, the Farmer brothers, and also John Colby.
Did he tell you how he got started in the dogs? Yes, he told me one time that he stole his very first dog from an Irish saloon keeper and when he got home with the dog he broke it’s front legs because he wanted a dog that was toed in. He was just 8 or 9 years old at the time. Pete Sparks one time put on the cover of his magazine that Corvino stole his first dog and that he stole the show ever since. Pete Sparks had a real good magazine in those days called Your Friend and Mine. Pete only matched one dog in his life. He was not a dogfighter, but he was a breeder and a publicist. He was also basically a Colby breeder and I hear his dogs are doing pretty good these days, even better than in the old days. Joe told me that Con Feely was a good dogman, very hard to beat. A real dogfighter that I believe was born in Ireland. The same goes for the Farmer brothers. They, too, were Irish and very, very tough competition. In those days around that turn of the century, Chicago was the hotbed for fighting dogs because of all the good dogmen that came from Ireland. They were the ones that brought the dogs with them when they came from Europe to this country. Up until those days the dog game was an Irish sport and don’t let anybody tell you different! Joe started with dogs from Feely bloodline and he also got dogs from Jack Williams from Colorado. Not from the Williams from Oklahoma, but from Colorado. These dogs were from Bruce’s LADY LOU and TURK and they too were basically Feely’s blood. Joe also got dogs from a man named Cunningham who was from Southern Illinois. He also got dogs from Menefee and from Tudor. Joe knew a lot of people and he traveled a lot. Like I said before, he knew Colby and I’ve just showed you some letters that proved to you the kind of relationship they had.
What were the best combinations that Joe ever made? I would say the Feely-Menefee crosses. That’s what basically produced Trahan’s RASCAL and DIBO. You see, Joe didn’t breed as close as people think he did. He would breed similar breed males to outcross bitches and breed that together. But, he always said; “These dogs are goofy enough already.” Joe was a devoted game freak. He didn’t like anything more than a deep game dog that would fight the head. That was his belief and that is what I’ve been taught. A dog that will stay on the face or the ear and keep himself out of trouble. Joe didn’t like a stifle dog. He always said that a dog that would go to the back-end was running away from the action, and that he would go to the stifles because there is no teeth there. Joe really liked the smart head master and so do I.
Was Joe a gambler? No. He was strictly in the dogs. Usually we would go to a convention or something like that and go early so he could see the other guys come in with their dogs, etc. He liked that. Joe was more interested in how the dogs did and how the bloodlines compared to each other and all that.
Joe was more a breeder than a fighter, right? Right. He was definitely a breeder type. But, he would test his dogs hard, real hard!
How did he do that? Where would he draw the line? Well, you have no idea of what I saw in the blacksmith shop. Like I already said, he had no use for a punishing dog. He was looking for gameness. So he put a hard test on them. He would put two or three dogs on one just to see if he would stay solid. And, if they didn’t pass the test, he got rid of them. He wouldn’t sell or breed them if they weren’t game. He sometimes used a muzzle on a dog so they couldn’t take a hold and frustrated them to see how they did under pressure.
How do you feel about this method now? Do you like to use two or three dogs if you want to test a dog’s gameness? No. I don’t do it. I’ve tried it but I would never do that again. I had dogs that wouldn’t even fight a fresh dog, but you put them in shape, and they would fight their heart out against the same opponent. Now Joe would never test a dog before he was 2 years old. He maybe would see if they would start up, but he never rolled them hard before 2 years old. He would never match a dog before he was 3 years old. I’ll tell you something. If you really want to test a dog, you don’t have to put 2 or 3 dogs on him. It’s very simple. Take them off the chain without any conditioning, and put the against a 5 or 10 pound bigger dog. That will show you something. Let them push that weight for about 15 or 20 minutes and you’ll see! That’s what I would do and did do. I guarantee you that they will quit quicker from the heat than they will from getting hurt!
I heard about some people in the old days putting a muzzle on both dogs and letting them wrestle as a form of exercise. What do you think of that? That’s very possible, but another thing is, put a muzzle on a dog and let him chase a hide for awhile. If you let that go for more than 5 or 6 minutes, you will kill your dog! He gets so mad from chasing that hide that he hurts himself from the inside. When you take that muzzle away, he can hardly stand from all the inside fat that is coming out. It’s good exercise, but no more than 30 seconds. The Cajuns use that a lot for putting a dog in shape. I don’t have to because I know how to cut the inside fat out and bring them down to weight before the working starts. If you do it right, your dog will…listen! The trick is this; have your dog 1 or 1 ½ pounds underweight about 2 weeks before the fight, and the last 2 weeks put the weight back on so he will be just a little underweight at fight time. Everybody does it different, but this is how I do it. I have my own way of conditioning a dog and believe me a dog should never have trouble breathing while he is being worked. Why am I telling you all these secrets, you son of a bitch? Next Subject!
Is that how they did it in the old days? Yes! The ones that knew how to do it. But not everybody knew how to do it.
How important is conditioning to you? Very important. I believe it’s 70% of the fight. Peter, it’s like this; if they can’t breath, they can’t fight. The heart sends a message to the brain and oxygen is the whole thing. If you can’t breath you can’t run, let alone fight. There is a thing now they do these days to build up red blood cells to improve the oxygen level in the bloodstream and this and that, but there is nothing that will take the place of hard work. Nothing can replace hard work!
What was the deal between Howard Heinzl and Joe Corvino? Well, first I want to say that Heinzl has always been good to me. He sent me plenty of dogs that I always liked and did good with. I have nothing bad to say about Heinzl; he and I got along good. I beat Mike Ferris with a dog he sent me, and he sent me all his dogs for free! But, what is right is right, and what is wrong is wrong. Joe and Heinzl didn’t get along good and the fight between them started in the time when Heinzl still lived in Chicago. Heinzl was born in Chicago and later on he moved with his partner Bruce Johnson to Arizona to start a lettuce farm, but they went down. Anyway, Heinzl had his dogs from Colby and didn’t have a place to keep them. So Joe boarded his dogs, and the deal was that Heinzl paid him 25 cents per day(per dog) for the feed. Later on, Joe raised it to something like 30 cents because it was the depression and in that time it was hard to find meat for dogs. Heinzl thought Joe wanted to keep the dogs for himself and that’s how the feud started, for no other reason. Heinzl keep that hate with him for all those years. That was between Joe and Heinzl, but there was something else too! Heinzl and a man named Bud Morelli stole one of Joe’s dogs when his son, Joe jr., was walking the dog down the street. The dog was named BLACKIE and after Heinzl stole the dog he sent him to Earl Tudor. Joe found out about this and Earl also knew what happened, but he never returned the dog to Joe. Joe and Earl were good friends and they remained friends, but the friendship was a little cool after this incident.
Did Joe keep a lot of dogs at his place? He lived in the city and he had limited space. He had kennels for about 12 to 15 dogs and he cooked for them every day. He always had a man living above the shop and this man would take care of the dogs as Joe was always working, shoeing horses and stuff. But he had numerous people in the city that had only 1 or 2 dogs and he always kept track of them.
Joe built his own treadmills. Did he prefer to work a dog on a treadmill more than anything else? No, his first choice was handwalking, but then he preferred the treadmill. He had a turn table but didn’t like it. So he sold the table to Bert Clouse and it is still working. Bert Clouse is dead, but the table is still at his place and it still works. Joe built the best treadmills. He had slatmills and todays mills are copies of his. Colbly had a carpet mill, but Joe liked the slats more.
How do you work a dog on a treadmill? A dog should work a mill like he is going to town looking for a female, and that’s a slow tread. I don’t like a dog to go all out because it will burn him out and not put him in shape. That steady trot with his tongue hanging out his mouth, that’s it! Remember this, many a fighter lost his fight in the gym. I believe that a lot of guys are working are overworking the dog. Today there is a better understanding of how to put the dog in shape. In the old days… well, they brought them in skin and bones. If you feed a dog nothing but meat for 20 or 30 days, the protein will take all the fat out of the body and there is nothing left. Now a few guys did it different, like Ham Morris and Walter Komosinski. They did pretty good, but the rest… it was like this, if you had 20 guys in those days to match a dog, 15 of them couldn’t get Lassie to shake hands. Understand?
Who do you believe was the best conditioners in those days? I would say Don Mayfield and Roland Fontenot.
Why? You just said that some people would take too much weight off them, and Mayfield had a reputation of bringing in dogs that were real thin! That’s true, but for those days he was a good conditioner. Now today he wouldn’t stand a chance because he still sticks to the old way. I saw him in his last fight with a dog named SNOW against CHARLIE (which was Jeep’s litter brother) and he didn’t have a chance! Mayfield would bring his dogs in peaked out. Fontenot brought them in like that too, but he slowly progressed with the new way of doing things, and he fought right up until his death.
Who do you believe were the best handlers? Fontenot and Jerome Hernandez were very good handlers. To me they were probably the best all around dogmen.
How important is a good handler to you? Real important. But there is no need to jump up and down and holler and scream when they go at it hard and fast like most do the first 20 minutes or so. Nobody should be acting crazy or wild in the pit because the other dog can hear you as good as your own dog. I think the handling is important when it comes down to the nitty gritty, when they are tired and hurt, or when the turning starts. When it comes down to that moment of truth and a dogfight becomes a real dogfight the handling, like the conditioning and gameness are extremely important, no doubt in my mind!
You told me before that when you were in the pit handling a dog you didn’t like to use a wet sponge. Why not? If you bring that dog fit to fight he don’t need a shower in his corner. I’m not against wiping his mouth out a little bit, but I’ve seen guys wetting them down and that, to me, is just teaching the dog that there is a cool spot in the corner. I don’t think you will make a game dog quit by doing this but if you have a borderline case, a dog is going to think about it. You can’t stop a game dog by throwing a whole bucket of ice water over him but I just don’t like it.
What was the longest match you ever had? Three hours and 10 minutes, and ended in a draw. I was going into Red Howell from Chicago. This was a long time ago before dogfighting became a felony. I’m not active anymore, but I remember that the weight was 48lbs and that I used a dog out of Clouse’s BUTCH. Howell’s dog died but I matched mine 6 months later against Mike Ferris and won in 1 hour and 10 minutes. Mike used a dog that Floyd Boudreaux had shipped to him with a special intention to beat me.
What was the shortest match you ever had? Against Clyde Mason in 6 minutes. I won that one with my AUDREY bitch. She was a STU FOWLER/Mayfield cross.
Did you work these dogs the same way? Yes, they worked the same way, but had nothing to do with the outcome of the fight. They had different opponents.
What can you tell me about Bert Clouse? Bert was a very good person and a good dogman. He was truly the King of the Pit, and a great conditioner in those days. By today’s standard, he would probably be average. But in those days, he was one of the best! Bert was very knowledgeable and well read. Bert, like Joe, liked the head dog and he would usually come with an athletic type of dog. He once had a dog called BUTCH that he got from Joe. He won 6 fights with the dog. BUTCH was a Mason bred dog. Joe bought him from Jimmie Sheer in Louisiana where they used BUTCH in a gate fight. Joe knew the dog was pretty good so he paid $50 for the dog and took him back to Chicago. When Bert came over he liked the dog so much that he asked Joe to sell it to him. Bert kept around 35 to 40 dogs at his place and he had some good ones. He had NUBBIE, WAGGIE, BIG BOY…and others. This was back in the forties and fifties. Bert, like many others, got his first dog from Joe.
What is the best dog you ever matched yourself? A dog called BOB. He came from a man named Eichen in New York. He was a black dog, 46lbs and sired by Clouse’s STABBER. I bet Teal and Cotton’s 5 times winner PLAYBOY with him and prior to that he won over Komosinski in 1 hour and 40 minutes. He was, by far, the greatest dog I ever handled. Several people owned him before I got him, and I found out that he was matched in 5 different states all under different names. He and my SNUBBY bitch were poisoned and he died in my hands. He and SNUBBY were two of my best.
What was your relation to Don Mayfield? Real good friends. Don had all those LIGHTNING I and LIGHTNING II dogs. They were Corvino bred dogs, but later when I got out of the game he switched to the NIG stuff.
They say Don Mayfield now is crazy, do you believe that’s true? Well, I believe he was crazier before with all that speed and stuff, but to me he is an open book. Anyway, I feel sorry for the ones that are not crazy in this crazy world.
What about Mayfield as a breeder? Ever tried any NIG bred dogs from his breedings? I had no luck with them. I got dogs straight from a friend who bought them from Mayfield. His name is Paul Siofakis. He lived down there in Texas for a while, but now he is back in Chicago. I’m not saying that these dogs are not good, but I just had no luck with them, they all quit! The same with Patrick and Hammonds bred dogs. I’ve tried dogs that Bob Lowery bought from Patrick and I kept them for months and years, gave them every chance possible, but they didn’t turn out.
Back to the conditioners. Why do you believe that Mayfield was so successful in his days? I don’t know. He just was capable of getting more out of a dog than most other people, but again there were only a few guys active in those days.
Maybe he already had some knowledge about the use of steroids? Maybe that’s the reason why, I don’t know. Some people are just blessed with a gift, but there is only one person that knows and that is Don Mayfield.
What is your general impression on today’s breeders? There are two different categories. I have no great love for Sorrells from Florida, but in my heart I would rank him as a good breeder and a good dogman and believe me, there are not many that I would say this about. Patrick and Hammonds are breeding for a different purpose, but Sorrells is active and he uses what he breeds. You see, I have no use for a breeder that is not active at all.
Part Two: An Interview With Legendary Dogmam Sonny Sykes
Do you believe the dogs are more a money game to some people? I don’t know if it is. But if that’s the case, then we made it a money game. Money ain’t going to buy good dogs, perhaps you can buy some good match dogs, but it takes more than money to get yourself a good family of dogs together. There is more power to the determined dogman that keeps going on and uses common sense instead of somebody that thinks he can get there by spending a lot of money. Look at me! I’ve been buying dogs from $800 and up and what did I get. I don’t think you can buy a good dog. Let me tell you something… I don’t believe people are breeding for gameness anymore, they are breeding for mouth! You take all these magazines and you sum up all the fight reports and then divide it by the number of matches and see what you get…. 15 or 17 minutes. So what does that tell you? People are getting away from Gameness, and when you do that you are in trouble! Today for a young guy in the states it’s hard to find a good dog, so how do you think the poor kid in Amsterdam is going to find one!
Don’t you believe that was the same situation a hundred years ago when the American fanciers where importing dogs from over seas? No. Because the Irishman brought the dogs with them and they maintained their ties with their friends in their own country. There was a close relationship and they knew who they were talking to. Now the poor kid in Amsterdam knows nothing about what is really going on over here. He reads the ads in the books and he goes oohhh… this dog is a 5x winner, but he don’t know about the people who own the dogs. Don’t you know more now that you are amongst us thieves? Don’t you have a different outlook now than the rest of your friends back in Europe that don’t realize how it is over here?
In other words it’s real important to have good contacts? Right! Very important! It’s always been and always will be that the guy with the loudest vocabulary will sell the most dogs. Remember that!! All these guys that run full page ads in the mags and are selling pups on a wholesale basis don’t even look at their dogs. They sell papers and the hard work of others that made one of their dogs look good. They capitalize on that one good dog. Anyway… this is how I feel, do you believe I’m telling you something wrong or goofy?
Who do you think is a good breeder? The Carolinas have always been well represented. One of the best (if you like the Redboy stuff) is Fletcher Chavis, the old man himself. He is a good guy for someone to buy a dog from if they want to get started. I have a Mexican friend who bought the whole yard from Chavis and I like what I have seen so far. Maybe he’s got some more, I don’t know… Chavis was the first to make a Champion out of Redboy. That was the YELLOW JOHN dog. Later came S.T.P.’s TORO, JOHN BOY and others, but Fletcher Chavis was the first to do that. Also, Sorrells would be a good choice to go visit in person and buy a dog from, or Carl Winn. Go and talk to these men and see how you do. To me, that Sorrells stuff is the purest family alive because there is nothing in there but Klaus’ ZEKE, Sorrells and Corvino. I like that BLUE MONDAY dog or something with RED JERRY in it. All other breeders are just mixing bloodlines. I have some Greenwood dogs THAT I cross with my BOOMERANG stuff and that seems to work good too.
But Sonny, you must have some pure Corvino dogs around here somewhere. Tell me the truth? No, I don’t have any. I don’t, f*ck you. End interview!
O.K. but what’s that little black bitch in your backyard out of? Well… she is 6/8 Corvino, her name is ASHLEY and I will breed her to ATARI another 6/8 Corvino dog. He is a 6x winner from Roul Jaques, but there is no such animal as a pure Corvino anymore.
What about if I had a pure Corvino dog, but he was a rank cur. Would you breed to him? If he was yours, I would say no, kill him. But if he was mine I would probably take a gamble. But seriously, there is no dog alive with nothing but gamedogs in his ancestry. Look at all the great ones. Let’s take BOLIO for instance, he was out of RED BABY and she was out of a bitch called SUSIE. SUSIE quit so many times when she was in California that they changed her name to GOLDIE. There’s quitting in all them dogs! BOLIO’S sire ZEKE was a good dog, but his sire and grand sire, a dog named COLONEL quit. So I would probably breed to a pure Corvino bred dog if he did quit before.
Sonny, did you know Walter Komosinski? Oh yes, real good. Walter came from Creighton, Pennsylvania. He lived there most of his life, but he came from Poland when he was just a teenager. Walter worked in the mines and worked himself up to a foreman. In fact, after his retirement, the younger mine engineers with college educations would come up to him for advice when they had a problem. Walter’s education was experience and he was a real smart man. He could carry on a conversation on any subject, Presidents, Senators… you name it. He bought a little farm close to the mines where he worked and he had 88 acres of land. He kept around 40 dogs all the time and he was a good breeder and very good competitor. Very hard to beat! Joe and Walter were good friends, but Walter was basically a Colby breeder. He always brought his dogs in a little heavier than most other guys, and he was very successful. I fought him twice and won both times. One in 1 hour 58 minutes and one in 10 minutes. The dog I used in the 10 minute fight was BRAVO. I got him from Heinzl. I believe he was a 37lb dog, real good. The first time I beat Walter was with a dog called Hunts’ PETE that was the sire to Ciroux’s BEAR. I don’t know if Walter knew something about carbohydrates, but his dogs were always strong and he also brought them in wet with plenty of fluids in their systems. Walter wouldn’t travel. You always had to fight at his place, and the referee and time keeper were usually his friends. You always had to fight in a dimly lit place with an atmosphere between a half coal mine, and a half barn with coal dust covering the light bulbs. He was very hard to beat.
What about Mike Ferris? Now Mike was not a breeder, but a dogfighter. If he thought he had a good dog, he would meet you in Hong Kong. He was a very active man and good too. I know he brought them in fairly thin, but that was the whole idea in those days. Mike is still active and lives in Chicago working for a Catholic school or something. But he got out of the dogs because of his health, he’s got asthma real bad and then his wife divorced him, so he got out of the dogs.
Did you know Floyd Boudreaux personally? Who? Oh, you mean Martin Luther King’s brother! Yes I knew him. I met him many times. He is a good dogman. I believe we were matched into each other several times. I read the interview in the magazine, but he didn’t say much. I don’t know how the old ELI dog was bred, but I do know that we had no black dogs in those days. The only black dog I knew of was Evelyn Start’s CRY BABY. I’ve seen the SCRUB dog twice. The first time Mayfield barely won with him, he had to push him out of the corner and the second time I saw him he quit in 4 or 5 minutes. He was definitely not game. I also seen BLIND BILLY at Floyd’s father’s place, but I couldn’t tell you where he got the dog from. You hear rumors, but that’s all it is as far as I’m concerned.
What happened when you went down to Mississippi and matched into Jim Taylor? I believe I was matched into Jim for $500 a side back in 1964. I won the fight in something like 30 minutes and I remember that when we stepped over the pit wall the beats were upped to $5,000 a side and that was big money in those days. Later on, we matched again and I lost in 2 hours and 45 minutes. He used a bitch from Ed Crenshaw called LEPRCHAUN and I used PATCHES at 36lbs. Both bitches died that time.
What other good dogs did you see? Well, I’ve seen Tudor’s SPIKE kill Smith’s DUGGAN. SPIKE was strictly a shoulder dog. I liked him. SPIKE also had a brother called JEFF and one called BUCK. I saw BUCK lose to CRACKER, but now CRACKER was his half brother so I feel that never should have happened. BUCK was out of DIBO and BLACK WIDOW, and CRACKER was out of DIBO and RED LADY. Both exceptional dogs by today’s standards. There was one dog that was better and that was Kirkland’s NEGRO, he too was related to DIBO. NEGRO was owned by this man from Alabama and he beat CRACKER. Another one that I rate as one of the best I’ve seen in my life is Jerome Hernandez’s NIG as well as Teal’s TIP and SUSIE. Cotton’s BULLET and RENO were good dogs. RENO was a 4x winner out of Corvino blood and I matched into him. That was my first fight. It lasted 2 hours and 45 minutes. Mayfield had a good little bitch called JESSIE, a spotted white and brown bitch. Maybe the gamest scratch I’ve ever seen was when DUGGAN crawled across the pit into SPIKE. His bones were sticking out and even Joe got excited. He threw his blanket in the air and was screaming out of excitement. I seen the WINO dog that Mr. Jolley sold to Bill Cotton quit against Mike Ferris’ ADOLF who was a Heinzl dog. Ferris’ APACHE was a real good little 33lb bitch, a real classy head fighting bitch. I seen STRIDER against CASSIUS CLAY and oh, I’ve seen so many, sometimes I can’t remember their names.
What can you tell me about that CASSIUS CLAY dog? Where did he come from? O.K. CASSIUS CLAY was brought from a preacher by Pat Bodzionowski for $10. The preacher was from Southern Illinois, just south of Chicago, and he got rid of the dog because he was killing dogs on the street and dragging them back to the church. He was driving the preacher crazy. Nobody knows how CLAY was bred and he, for sure, was not out of TEDDY or any other Corvino dog. I had TEDDY until he died and he was never bred to any bitched outside my own yard. TEDDY was never bred to GOLDIE, CRAZY MARY or any of those other bitches that I see in the magazine ads. Anyway, back to CASSIUS CLAY. He was a bid red dog with a black mask and he was a crazy acting dog. When Pat bought him he rolled him numerous times, but never matched him for money. I tried to stop that dog but I couldn’t stop him. In the pit he would bark, growl and lay down, but he wouldn’t stop. Once a man told me that he won 18 or 19 fights. Well let me tell you, he was never conditioned for a money fight until Pat sold the dog to Don Devine of Florida. Don came up here to buy the dog because he thought he was a Corvino bred dog. He paid $900 for the dog and that was a lot of money in those days. When he was over here he was so nervous walking around with that money that he asked me to put it in my safe. At that time, I had a bar that was always full of Mexican and black people and they would do more cutting amongst each other than they do in the hospital. Devine gave me the money and the next day he bought the dog. He matched CLAY into STRIDER from, I believe, Greenwood or Maloney. The fight was in Pickens Mississippi at 5:30 in the morning. CLAY won that fight and then Devine won another fight with him that was not too good, so he never matched him again. One time when Pat still owed the dog, I asked him to give me the dog so I could work and match him. He gave him to me, but the dog was trying to kill me because he didn’t like me. Even when I came close to feed him, his eyes would turn green and he was going crazy. So, I called Pat and said “get that son of a bitch out of here!”
Who put the false papers on CASSIUS CLAY? Do you know if Devine knew about that? I’m sure Pat put those papers on the dog. I don’t care, it’s not my business. I don’t do it, but if somebody else will do it, it’s their business not mine. There are a lot of dogs with false papers on them that the public knows nothing about. You have to understand one thing; we are dogfighters first, foremost and always… like I already told you TEDDY was never bred to the females that are being mentioned in that ad on the back of the Journal.
You just said that Bert Sorrels would be a good choice to buy a dog from! Yes. TEDDY was never bred to those females. They were bred to Syke’s DUGGAN II. So anywhere you read TEDDY you should read DUGGAN II. He was a litter brother to Giroux’s BEAR out of Hunt’s PETE and MUGGS sometimes called REGGIE.
Who made the pedigrees with TEDDY up and do you know if Sorrels knows about this? I don’t know who made them up and I don’t know if he knows about it, but he will know it now. You see, TEDDY had a big reputation. I matched TEDDY into Al Offer and won in 2 hours and 14 minutes. At that time he was already 7 years old and no teeth left. He was a game dog, but DUGGAN II was a good dog too. TEDDY died February 14, 1964, and I’m telling you the truth he was never bred to those bitches. I will tell you something else, too, about GOING LIGHT BARNEY; Joe sold his sire ( a dog called BOOGER) to Morris Rootberg for a guard. Rootgerg wrote Joe a letter asking for a guard dog and Joe had a different type of dog for different kind of people. So he sold him this dog which was not out of his fighting stock. Joe put the dog’s papers on his name then sold him to Rootberg. Then Rootberg sold his restaurant and moved to California and bred that dog to a Corvino female named CRAZY MARY and that breeding produced GOING LIGHT BARNEY. His father was not a Corvino dog!
Why would Joe put false papers on a dog? Because he knew that some people that asked him for a guard dog, or a pet wouldn’t match them anyway. That’s how I feel about it. He would just polish up the dog by putting another pedigree on him, that’s all.
Do you know if the owner of GOING LIGHT BARNEY knew all this? I don’t know. I doubt it!
What was your relation to Maurice Carver, Leo Kinard and Howard Teal, for instance? Teal was a good dogman and I’m good friends with him. Teal is from North Carolina and he owned a restaurant over there. Teal had some of those old Colby dogs that originated the REDBOY line. I don’t know if his SARGE dog was a Colby dog. I believe somebody dropped the dog off at his place and that he put the papers on him. But SARGE would be REDBOY’S sire. SARGE was a good dog, but he lost his last fight. That part of the country where he came from always produced a lot of good dogmen. Leo and Maurice were both good friends of mine. Leo had a super nice place and I’ve been there many times. He would always give you a fair and square deal. I remember I was asking him some questions once like you are asking me now and bla, bla, bla… and he said, “Sonny, the more I’m around these son of a bitches, the less I know.” Just look around you and see well bred dogs that have won 2 or 3 fights, and then comes one of those scatter bred dogs and just kills them! On a scale of 10 I would say that breeding your dogs in a family and looking at the pedigrees will bring you a 4 or a 5, but them real good sons of bitches…. They are where you find them. Maurice was a good dogman. There is some controversy about him faking pedigrees and I’m sure he did to some extent, but I’m also sure that all those big time breeders do the same thing. When the bad overshadows the good I think you have a problem, but he sent me a lot of good dogs. Let me tell you what kind of man Maurice was. If he knew I had a good dog he would be on the phone asking me if he could breed to him. Carver told me he made a mistake by breeding to BULLYSON and that he wanted to breed to a dog called BOOTS the BLACKSMITH. Carver was with the border patrol and he had two 44 magnums. He gave one to Eddie Klaus and the other one to Hernandez. Hernandez gave me that 44 after Carver died. Earl Tudor was a very active dogfighter, but people that say he was just a fighter don’t know what they are talking about because he bred some real good dogs too. Joe had a friend who worked at the post office where Tudor got his mail. This was a black man, his name was Silvers, and this Silvers would open Tudor’s mail and tell Joe what was in the letters… it’s incredible but Joe got Earl’s mail before he did.
Do you believe that a pure Corvino dog would be enough to compete these days? Well, I would sat that they are basically game dogs. Now, they would be a little clumsy and they would need a little dunky in them now and then.
What kind of dogs do you have now? I am no longer in the game, but I do have a few dogs that I keep because I like dogs and really my wife Bridgette was the one that talked me into this. I have some BOOMERANG dogs that I like and I got them from a guy in Minnesota named Reuvers. He was a policeman and got a lot of people in trouble, but at the time he spent a lot of money buying good dogs. BOOMERANG goes back to that Elias PISTOL and he was out of that RASCAL dog.
Boudreaux’s RASCAL you mean? Or Trahan’s RASCAL or Pete Lormond’s RASCAL, whatever you want to call him. Listen , a man named Hanson wanted to buy a dog from Joe, so he wrote him a letter. Joe was out of town that time so they forwarded his mail and called back telling Joe Jr. to send this Hansen a pup. Hansen wanted to buy a show dog, but Joe Jr. sent the wrong dog and sent RASCAL who was out of Joe’s fighting stock. Hanson didn’t like the dog because of his build and gave the dog to a man named Claville. This man called RASCAL, PIMPLE, but it’s still the same dog. Then Pete Lormond had him for a while and RASCAL stayed around Lafayette, that’s for sure. From there on he went to, I believe, Trahan and I seen him chained up behind the grocery store that was owned by a man named LaVergne and that’s how far I know about him. There was another dog over there that was also a Corvino dog called Pete Lormond’s BLACKY. They rolled BLACKY into RASCAL, but BLACKY was beating RASCAL so they picked him up. Lormond was a truck driver who drove between Lafayette and Chicago and he brought these dogs down South with him.
What can you tell me about Altieri’s TIM? I owned TIM. Alieri was Joe’s son-in-law and he gave the dog to me, I never changed his name. At the time a man named Wilson who was a friend of mine and Joe came by with a bitch and bred to TIM. He had two pups in the litter and I told him he could keep both. I never expected him to sell these pups to Indian Sonny. Otherwise they would never have left Chicago. But, anyway, Wilson was a friend of mine and I really didn’t care, but that’s how Indian CRUSHER went to California. In Chicago they called this dog RHINO, but Sonny changed his name to CRUSHER.
When did Indian Sonny come into the picture? One of the first to ship a dog to California was Freddie Jones and then Vern Baker brought COUNTRY BOY over there. He paid Gaboon Trahan $500 for the dog and we thought that was the end of world. $500 for a bulldog! Then Indian Sonny followed and you really didn’t have a whole lot of people. Glen Jones in Oregon had a few, but that was about it. Now they’re everywhere and the younger generation are 100% more knowledgeable than the first. Indian Sonny is of the older generation. He is a good dogman and conditioner, but he bears watching.
What about that poem you wrote? Well, the people that I talked about, they know what I mean. Stratton wrote that book about all those people from that part of the country, but what ever happened to the people from New York or from Chicago? If it really comes down to it, all the good ones come from Illinois. You can trace every one of them back, and they all go back to BOUNCER, GIMP, and DIBO and all that stuff. These dogs were Corvino, Feely and Menefee. In Chicago, you had all the good dogmen like Feely, Pat Conroy, Patty Mallet, the Farmer Brothers and so many others.
Do you believe there will ever be a state where dogfighting will be legal like the chickens? No, I don’t think so because it has gone too far in the media, but they can never stop it. This is America! Like Pete Sparks said, as long as there are two men and two bulldogs, there will be dogfighting. Did they ever stop the drugs? Did they stop the Klu Klux Klan? Aren’t they more a threat than us? Then how can they stop dog fighting?
Do you believe the magazines are doing any good to this cause? I don’t know. We are the only ones that advertise our last and next move in the magazine. Do you know of a bank robber that puts in a magazine that he robbed a bank in only 3 minutes and that he is going to this and that bank next month? We are the only ones that advertise things in the book that we know are against the law, so what does that tell you Peter Parker…. THAT WE ARE LOUSY BANK ROBBERS! Right, now shut off your tape and let’s get out of the dogs! The end….
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