No One Believed These Carmen Basilio Stories! Until They Watched This!

No One Believed These Carmen Basilio Stories! Until They Watched This! Carmen Basilio pulled onions from black dirt until his hands bled — then used those same hands to dethrone Sugar Ray Robinson at Yankee Stadium. From a tiny farming village the map forgot, to the Marine Corps, to factory shifts between fights, to a world championship won with a broken hand — these are the 10 moments that made Carmen Basilio the toughest welterweight who ever lived. Born in Canastota, New York in 1927, one of 10 children of Italian immigrants, Basilio fought his way out of poverty the only way he knew how — forward. The mob froze him out. The judges robbed him. His skin split open in nearly every fight. He broke his hands so often he learned to win throwing with one fist. On June 10, 1955, trailing and bleeding from both eyes, he stopped Tony DeMarco to win the welterweight title. In the rematch at Boston Garden, he retained it with a broken left hand, trailing on all three scorecards entering the late rounds. Ring Magazine named both fights Fight of the Year. Then he did what no one thought possible — moved up in weight and beat Sugar Ray Robinson, the greatest boxer who ever lived, in a 15-round war at Yankee Stadium in front of 38,000 fans. He was named Fighter of the Year and won the Hickok Belt as America's top professional athlete of 1957. After retirement, the high school dropout became a college instructor at Le Moyne College in Syracuse. He testified before the U.S. Senate and helped put mob boss Frankie Carbo behind bars. His hometown of Canastota built the International Boxing Hall of Fame specifically because Carmen Basilio had put their village on the map. In 2009, at 82 years old, he was finally awarded his high school diploma — and wept on stage. He headlined five consecutive Ring Magazine Fights of the Year from 1955 to 1959. No fighter has ever matched that streak. What moment in Carmen Basilio's life hit you the hardest? Drop it in the comments — we read every single one. Subscribe to Iron Era Legends for more stories of the men who fought with everything they had and never stopped coming forward. New videos every week. #CarmenBasilio #SugarRayRobinson #BoxingHistory #IronEraLegends #YankeeStadium Chapters 0:00 Introduction 1:26 The Onion Fields 3:12 The Marine and the Bleeder 5:26 The Mob and the Factory 7:20 The Gavilan Heartbreak 9:19 I Did It 11:16 The Broken Hand and the Belly 13:16 Robbed in a Dark Alley 15:15 The Night at Yankee Stadium 18:08 Fighting Half-Blind 20:10 The Hometown Hero Facts and stories used to write the script of this video are well-researched. The following references are used: Carmen Basilio — Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen_... Carmen Basilio — BoxRec https://boxrec.com/en/box-pro/009037 International Boxing Hall of Fame — Carmen Basilio https://www.ibhof.com/pages/about/ind... Sugar Ray Robinson vs Carmen Basilio — Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_R... International Boxing Hall of Fame — Canastota, New York https://www.ibhof.com The Dirty Mob History of 1950s Boxing — Frankie Carbo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankie... Carmen Basilio — Britannica https://www.britannica.com/biography/... --- Iron Era Legends does not own all content featured in this video. All rights remain with the original copyright owners. We use portions of copyrighted material under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act (Fair Use) for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. If you are the copyright owner and believe any content is used incorrectly, please contact us and we will promptly review the request. Viewers may also contact us if they see any problem in the content being used Contact Email: [email protected]