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For a few blessed hours in the early afternoon, The Palooka Bar is transmogrified into a country club of sorts, a veritable Agora of Socratic discourse where elevated exchange of ideas and sentiments becomes possible before the drudges and working stiffs pour in. By the round table, Viddi, The Cadaver, Rhino, and Hulk the bouncer nursed their Buds, all smiles but each sporting a shiner.

Into The Palooka Bar breezed Mercy Beaucoup, bringing with him spurts of the autumn sun. “What’s with Petey the pit bull family reunion?”

“We were gonna roll this guy…” jubilated Rhino.

“Just wanted to borrow a few rubles and he wasn’t too forthcoming,” Viddi hastened to add.

The remembrance brought forth a gentle smile across Hulk’s broad face. “We ran out of beer money.”

“He beat us to a pulp,” Rhino chimed in.

“That should make you happy,” Mercy Beaucoup acknowledged.

“Scuzzy’s our one-way ticket to the land of plenty,” Hulk announced with pride.

“First he lays some rubes on the canvas,” extrapolated Rhino in a reverie. “Then he lays the golden eggs, and then Scuzzy lays some bread on us and we lie back and live the good life.”

“But, Viddi, you’re not allowed within a mile of a boxing ring after—”

“Bah, Burgess Meredith can train him for all I care,” retorted Viddi. “Kid’s got the stuff. All I’m going to do is sit back, watch the show, and count the cash.”

“To Dimitri Sciatscu of Bucharest,” toasted The Cadaver.

Rhino raised his beer mug high. “Our gravy train just come in, straight from Bulgaria.”

The first sparring session took place after-hours in the deserted Crooked Nose Gym—Mercy Beaucoup having slipped Stinky the janitor a couple of greenbacks, as the only resolution every boxing association in the land, including the GID, KDJ, KDH, UID, KDD, KKK, YDU, GWU and IOU, had ever agreed upon was to bar Viddi from all matches and venues in perpetuity.

“No way am I getting into the ring with that shrimpster,” whined Beardy. “I’ll be busted for child molestation.” In the opposite corner, Scuzzy’s pot belly jutted out as he lounged on his stool, his physique offering a scant testament to a predilection for sports, or solid food for that matter.

“It’s somebody or nobody, and nobody’s out of town,” countered Viddi.

“Here, you take the gloves.” Beardy brandished Hulk’s Popeye boxing gloves at Viddi.

“I slip in there and you lot will be left to the Indians,” Viddi warned with a passion. “Think of the green across the Glean.”

“What’s a Glean?” wondered Rhino.

“Ready, Scuzzy?”

“Ready-steady. Rocking to go. When I get money?”

The longest time took to disentangle Beardy from the ropes and explain to him where and who he was. After Rhino had taken Hulk to the Hoboken Methodist Hospital and The Cadaver discovered he had a limp, Mercy Beaucoup was left with no choice but enter the ring in his mustard Calani pants and shiny Hungarian shoes.

Although Mercy Beaucoup danced like a butterfly, he most assuredly did not sting like a bee. For three minutes that seemed to pass slower than the seasons, Mercy buzzed around the ring, maintaining a steady presence in the corner farthest from Scuzzi, doing the Ali shuffle, gyrating his head, feigning with great flourish, and not once getting within ten feet of his opponent. Anon, Mercy Beaucoup fainted from exhaustion, falling face-first on the post. By this time, Weeping Willy had locked himself in the powder room and Viddi tried unceremoniously to pry the door open with a rusty umbrella in lieu of a crowbar as Dimitri Sciatscu voiced some reservations about the quality of his sparring partners.

At The Palooka Bar, Viddi was late for their meeting with South African trainer Ludwig Van Oizman, a contemporary legend west of Transvaal. Although Oizman had coached some Olympians of note in Jo’burg, he did not command an exorbitant fee in the land of the free, as he was just off the boat after causing a tribal dispute of some acrimony in his homeland. To boot, he met the one requisite no trainer in the Big Apple did: he’d never heard of Viddi.

“Sorry ’bout the delay, guv’nor.” Viddi was beaming with even more confidence than usual.

“No harm done. You have my fee, Mr. Golbranson?”

“In what sense?”

“In your pocket. In that sense.”

“With the neighborhood going to seed and all…” Viddi explained with forbearance.

“We gave you the dosh last night,” sighed Rhino.

“You left us ruined, man.” After his punishment at the hands of Scuzzy, Beardy found it somewhat difficult to speak.

“Well, I don’t have it on me, physically.”

Oizman, though not amused, knew the world too well to be angry. “You carrying it metaphysically?”

“You told us the dough might as well be at Fort Knox,” wailed Hulk.

“Let’s not get into politics.”

“Viddi, Viddi, Viddi,” singsonged Mercy Beaucoup, glaring at Viddi through the blackness of his eye.

“Rollo was celebrating his last outing as a free man for quite some time. You expect me to treat my own brother to tap water and easy-listening radio under such circumstances?”

Calmly, Oizman stood up and walked away.

“But who’s going to train Scuzzy?” bellowed Viddi with indignation as he tried to grab Oizman’s shirtsleeve.

“You do it for all I care.” Oizman tore himself free with a light middleweight’s grace of movement.

“Hey, Jungle Jim there isn’t as stupid as he looks,” exclaimed Viddi as the boys scowled at him in disappointed silence, reassuring them with the famous Viddi wink.

At the Ring of Fire Gym, Dan Prince had been listening long enough to the out-of-towner with the chapeau Alpin and thick sunglasses sing the praises of his prodigy—much too long, since the man kept tugging at his sleeve to the point of playing a tune to the jangling of Dan Prince’s vast array of rings and amulets.

“What title did you say your fighter holds, Mr. Gunnerson?” queried Dan Prince, his patience on the brink of exhaustion.

With caution, Viddi looked around. All it took was one palooka who recognized him and he’d be outward-bound faster than a mermaid out of a tuna factory. “The YMCU.”

“How can he be a champion when he’s never had a professional fight? In my fifty years in the game I’ve never heard of such a title.”

“It’s East European. You’ll have people from the former Ukraine stampeding at the gates.”

“The Ukraine?” Dan Prince could swear the Bedlamite was trying to play “When the Saints Go Marching In” by yanking hard enough at his sleeve.

“Scuzzy’s from Bucharest.” Viddi kept rattling the moveable jewelry store on Dan Prince’s person.

“And where do you hail from, Mr. Gunnerson?”

“In my day I was a contender in Lilleby, in Norway.”

“Professional boxing isn’t allowed in Norway.”

“I had to go all the way to Finland to beat guys into meatballs.”

“Also illegal in Finland.”

“It’s okay for Norwegians to box there, in the north.”

“Mr. Gunnerson, please go away.”

“Yumpin’ yemeni. Want to project your ham-and-eggers from m’boy, be my guest.” Viddi’s dramatic exit was somewhat foiled by his missing the door by seven inches as his dark glasses allowed for limited view.

All heads, bare and geared, Alpine and native, turned at the muffled explosion and flurry of strange curses followed by a soft hiss.

“Not again,” sighed Dan Prince.

Mambo le Primitif found himself unable to retrieve his gloved hand from the other side of the sighing boxing bag as he waited for some of the sand to sift out.

“Third bag this week.” Babycakes McGee, the trainer, yawned.

“About time he came out,” said Dan Prince softly.

“You’ll have to fly someone in from Touristown. Word’s spreading and no one east of Palookaville would be stupid enough to take him on.”

An angelic smile lit up Dan Prince’s face like all the votive candles at St. Peter’s, a portent he was about to make or save money. “Oh, Mr. Gunnerson. Wait…”

Joe, the owner, was none too happy to see the Katzenjammer Kids saunter into The Palooka Bar like an invading horde. To date, he had profited little from his acquaintance with Knold and Tot, the grandsons of the infamous Torsten “The Hooch” Jones—who spent the last fifty years of his life in Sing Sing after killing off a whole Elks Lodge in the Catskills with a batch of homemade brew labeled The Tallahassee Twister. Knold and Tot tried to slide inconspicuously towards the bar, no mean feat for the identical albino twins, Knold limping on his left leg and Tot on his right.

“I’m still in court because of that Elderberry Nectar.”

“Vintage stuff that. Chap had a defective immune system.” Tot did not take kindly to ingrates casting aspersions on their skills at the family trade.

“Check this out,” whispered Knold, affecting a conspiratorial glance.

“We call it ‘the Alabama Mama,’” hummed Tot softly but proudly.

With stealth, Knold opened his Tasmanian Devil bomber jacket, revealing a plain quart bottle. “Scentless as a Methodist altar. Go on the town and the missus won’t smell a thing.”

“And you can tipple all you want while you do the racing forms at work,” added Tot. “It’ll sell like tutti-frutti ice cream in hell.”

“I’m still using your ‘Hiroshima Hummer’ for pest control,” objected Joe.

“Keep it as a free sample,” offered Knold. “The rubes’ll be crying out for more.”

“Dying for more, most likely,” retorted Joe.

“Just keep it away from heat. It’s got a kick,” warned Knold.

Joe offered neither remonstration nor resistance as Knold thrust the bottle into his arms, seeing he was out of paint remover.

At the round table, Scuzzy and Mercy Beaucoup had waited for over an hour, the match slated to start at any minute.

“Why no one let Viddo near boxing square?” wondered Scuzzy.

“He gets kind of…involved,” explained Mercy Beaucoup. “Say, want another Bud, Scuzzy?”

An inexpertly wrapped package under his arm, Viddi dashed in with a lot of Golbranson determination and the boys flocked over.

“Did you get the belt?” asked Beardy, shooting Viddi a glance harder than an algebra test.

“A slight snag. Had to make one myself.”

“Told you we shouldn’t hock our Babe Ruth cards,” wailed Rhino

“With Rollo going on the lam, was I supposed to say goodbye to my own flesh and blood for who knows how long, the constabulary on his heels, without giving him a proper send-off? Am I not my brother’s keeper?”

“But the cops always pick him up at Barbie’s,” objected Shadow.

“Got to get cracking.” Viddi turned away from Shadow abruptly.

Beardy took Shadow aside and placed his index finger over his shoulder. “Take it easy on Viddi. Rollo was an ace safecracker before he devoted himself to the potato juice. Could’ve amounted to something.”

“Word is this Mambo dude’s been pulverizing boxing bags,” injected Joe.

“What is ‘pulverize’?” queried Scuzzy.

“Two of his sparring partners are sucking eggs in Hoboken.” Joe looked Scuzzy in the eye as he spoke.

“Not to fret. Like Joe Louis, I see something.” Viddi pointed to his eye as he gave Joe the famous Viddi wink. “Scuzzy’ll take him to the woodshed.”

“Man, ten minutes to showtime,” exclaimed Hulk.

At this, the boys darted out. Viddi ran straight into Joe, tearing the bottle of Alabama Mama from his grasp. “Thanks for the water, Joe.”

“Hold on a dadgum—”

“I’m on the beam.” Viddi was out the door before Joe could utter another syllable.

With Viddi sunglassed and chapeau’d proudly by his side, Scuzzy strode into The Banana Ballroom with his newfound YMCU championship belt, which consisted of a weightlifter’s belt sprinkled with glitter and adorned with tenuously glued-on Diet Pepsi tabs, antique French postcards of questionable taste, fifty-cent imitation Red Army medals, and, inexplicably, Elvis Presley and ABBA cards hooked on with safety pins.

“…making his professional debut from the People’s Independent Democracy of Saal-Am-A-Bu, Mambo le Primitif,” clamored Morty Buffet, the ring announcer. “In the opposite corner, the YMCU supermiddleweight champion of the world, the uncontested, undefeated, unmolested Bucharest Brawler Dimitri ‘Scuzzy’ Sciatscu.”

“Viddi, what exactly does a cutman do?” queried Beardy.

“Moral support, mostly. Hotter than hell in August here,” added Viddi, taking a swig from the bottle generously supplied by Joe.

“Where’s helmet? I’m Olympic boxer,” complained Scuzzy.

“Welcome to the U.S. of A., land of the hard-asses,” snapped Beardy.

“Yeah, this ain’t Ruministan, bub,” explicated Hulk.

Going nose-to-nose, Viddi crouched in front of Scuzzy, looking his protégé square in the eye. “First, do a bit of the Ali shuffle, then take a few on the kisser to lull him into complacency.”

“Who is Ali? What is complacency?”

“Next give him a Reykjavik roundhouse, coupled with a haymaker.”

“What is haymaker?”

“Then some love taps, eine kleine Schubster. You with me?”

“No.”

“Before the bell tolls, go south of the border when the cyclops is winking at the rubes.”

“No border. No have green card.”

“Seconds out,” bellowed Referee Thorndigger.

Referee Emil Thorndigger, tough as nails, old as the hills of Kilimanjaro, and brooker of no nonsense, motioned the two warriors forward to face off. As he stepped between the two fighters, Thorndigger found himself facing a smiling Viddi. “Get back to your corner.”

With his one eye, Thorndigger glared at each boxer as hard as a Quaker at a brewery. “Your show, not mine, so don’t make me rain on your parade. Keep it clean and defend yourselves at all times. May your God be with you.” As the bell chimed the first round, Mambo cannonballed out of his corner with all the fury of hell, whereas Scuzzy lumbered to the center of the ring as if taking out the garbage against his will. Within three seconds, the Bucharest Brawler was splayed across the canvas. Bopping up and down, Viddi held on to the ropes, shouting lofty encouragements to his fighter. “Get up, you bum. We got the farm riding on you here.” At the count of nine, Scuzzy stood up, uncoiling languidly as Mambo gazed in awe upon the rising Lazarus and Thorndigger tried to ascertain whether the fighter was in a coma or simply not overly interested in the matter at hand.

“You okay?”

“Okeydoke, let’s hit a road,” replied Scuzzy.

For the rest of the round, Mambo kept Scuzzy at the end of his left jab but did not commit to a power punch as the Bucharest Brawler’s eyes were clear as a Quaker’s rap sheet. Little did Mambo look forward to sampling Scuzzy’s punches if his fists proved as hard as his jaw. At the bell, Scuzzy dribbled down onto his stool, more exhausted than injured.

“Where’s the cutman?” roared Viddi.

“I’m the cutman,” drawled Beardy, brandishing the corkscrew on his Swiss Army knife.

“He’ll never walk again,” some ringside wisenheimer cracked.

“Cut his eyelid,” commanded Viddi.

“But no hit in eye,” remonstrated Scuzzy.

As he announced his new strategy, Viddi poured liberally from the bottle of Alabama Mama down Scuzzy’s throat. “Okay, you gotta gimp the geezer. Go whorehouse on him. Then go roughhouse. Go whorehouse again, then go to town on him with the world and his wife watching.”

“I go to town with wife?”

“Go old school on him.”

“We go to school?”

“Remember what Abe Lincoln said,” injected Beardy. “We shall fight them bitches. We shall never surrender.”

“You have to Jones him. Then give him a kisser-upper. Throw in a little Archie Moore. Once you’re done Mongoosing, use love taps.”

“I bring no taps.”

“And try catching him with a Hail Mary. Then it’s bedtime for Bonzo.”

“I pray?”

Referee Thorndigger caught a faint but mysterious whiff as he passed Scuzzy’s corner. “You whooping it up between rounds?”

After all the Alabama Mama, Scuzzy plodded out of his corner wobblier than he went in. This time, Mambo came out with a straight right, catching the YMCU champion flush. The primitive one went southpaw, laying thunderous right hooks on Scuzzy, snapping his neck back each time. Not to a cheering corner did the Bucharest Brawler return.

“I said left, left, left,” crowed Viddi. “How difficult is that for a Communist to understand?”

“I go left, left all the time and he hit me.”

“No, no, to my left. First you Obi-Wan Kenobi the bum, then go south on him when sourpuss isn’t giving you a gander—and throw in a little thumb for good measure,” exclaimed Viddi before darting to the middle of the ring.

Viddi stood himself in front of Referee Thorndigger, halting the popular march of Pixie the card girl to the bitter disappointment of the whole auditorium. “I wish to file an objection. On deep background,” added Viddi as the crowd remonstrated with abandon.

“Get back to your corner before I DQ your drunken heinie,” thundered Referee Thorndigger.

“I’m claiming unfair distraction in breach of the letter and spirit of the Queensberry Rules and the Tammany Hall Regulations of Fistic Fighting.”

“Stop your yappin’ and get back to your corner, pronto.”

“The ringading’s shaking her tush at my guy much more than she’s sashaying for the house fighter. That’s dirty pool.”

“Never mind her tush. Get out of my ring.”

Distraught, Pixie returned to her seat only to find Mercy Beaucoup firmly in place between Trixie and Lulu claiming to be a model scout from Nouvelle Vouge.

“Why you piss off referee, Viddo?” For the first time, Scuzzy seemed to be taking an interest in the proceedings as Rhino spilled more Alabama Mama down his gob.

“Psychological warfare, my friend. Boxing’s a battle of minds,” quoth Viddi, pointing to his forehead as he liberated the bottle from Rhino and partook of it unstintingly.

For the last three rounds, Mambo le Primitif had pounded his opponent with every fiber in his body and then some. Yet he had never witnessed boxing tactics as exhibited in this match and grown more and more apprehensive, mindful of stories of boxers from strange lands resorting to hemlocked gloves and breathing garlic into their adversary’s eyes.

As Mambo paused for the briefest of flashes to appraise Scuzzy’s Lithuanian defense pose, popular at the Prussian Kriegsakademie in 1805, the Bucharest Brawler appeared to melt down into the canvas before emerging again with a nuclear left uppercut, leaving Mambo suspended in air for a twinkling. Once landed, Mambo—who had never tasted the canvas—adopted the peekaboo stance while Scuzzy proceeded to pummel him into the corner.

Before he could scarcely walk, Viddi’s grandmother Amma Hia (who upon a time spent her entire lottery winnings on stock in the Hindenburg) taught him the Nordic adage, “You can’t fool the country pumpkin.” He was not raised to be taken in by such threadbare shenanigans just as his careful study of the manly art of self-defense was about to bear fruit. Immune to the transparent posturing of Mambo and his handlers, Viddi shot to the ringside table. “I demand this travesty be paused for deliberations.”

Bert Yulson, the New York boxing commissioner, thought he recognized the rather obstreperous gentleman with the funny hat from somewhere.

“My fighter’s shoelace is practically undone and the referee ain’t doing a blessed thing about it,” complained Viddi.

“I don’t see anything wrong with his shoelace.” Mr. Yulson was as calm as Bournemouth in winter.

“It’s coming apart any minute. That bum’s playing possum, just waiting for my guy to slip on his own shoelace.”

Mambo had yet to respond to the last three overhead rights from Scuzzy as the crowd clamored for the fight to be stopped when Viddi, seeing through their pathetic ruse, jumped over the ropes as Referee Thorndigger was just about to step in.

“I demand my guy be allowed to tie his shoelace,” roared Viddi as every soul in the auditorium rose in protest to his intervention.

“Are you out of what passes for your mind?” growled Referee Thorndigger in disbelief.

“But I make Mambo kaput,” objected Scuzzy.

A ruckus broke out, the scope of which was unheard of in the annals of the noble art of self-defense. The ensuing melee lasted almost fifteen minutes, with the crowd in attendance throwing everything not bolted to the floor into the ring while Viddi argued with Referee Thorndigger and Referee Thorndigger argued with the boxing commission and the boxing commission argued with Viddi whether Scuzzy should be disqualified for Viddi’s stepping in as Viddi tugged at Referee Thorndigger’s sleeve expounding the letter and spirit of the Queensberry rules and those of the Ukrainian Athletic Association to which the U.S. was a signatory member since the 1896 Athens Olympics while Beardy emptied the last dregs of Alabama Mama, no longer having to share the murderous mead with Viddi.

Before starting the fight once again, Referee Thorndigger gave Scuzzy a long, harder-than-granite look and grumbled, “Whatever you’re paying this guy, it’s too much.” Without further ado Scuzzy resumed his biffing of Mambo.

“Too bad Mambo doesn’t have the presence of mind to employ the same tactic I did,” Mercy Beaucoup muttered rather loudly, already making quite an impression on the ring girls.

“You fought the Hungarian?” squeaked Pixie. “What happened?” echoed Trixie.

“All I say is, good thing it was stopped,” answered Mercy Beaucoup, his shiner lending credence to the grandeur of his statement.

“Ooooo,” cooed Pixie and Trixie in saucy unison.

As the bell rang for the last time, Mambo was held up by his tribal dignity alone while Referee Thorndigger’s scowl betrayed his concern.

Alas, the last of the Alabama Mama had somewhat diminished Viddi’s and Beardy’s professional acumen. “Stop the bleeding,” commanded Viddi, stepping with force on Scuzzy’s toe. As the boxer howled like a Steppenwolf, desperate to extricate his foot from under his trainer’s heel, Viddi rose to the occasion. “Hurry up. Can’t you see he’s in pain?”

Beardy, wasting no time, missed the miniscule drop of blood on the champion’s nostril by an inch with his Q-Tip, sinking it right into Scuzzy’s left eye.

As the buzzing pain shot through bone and marrow, Scuzzy rocketed off his stool, oblivious to Viddi’s foot on his own, plummeting facefirst onto the canvas.

“You okay, comrade?” inqueried Viddi, snarling at Beardy before Scuzzy could answer. “You broke his beak, you muttonhead.” Viddi brandished the empty Alabama Mama bottle at his cutman-in-training. “You KO’d our guy, you dumb beatnik. Gimme that smelling salt.”

“Eh, strictly speaking…” Beardy looked around, furtively.

“We have but one recourse,” slurred Viddi, pointing to Scuzzy’s snoot.

“Is always this way?” Prompted by some avatistic sense of caution, Scuzzy covered his nose with his glove.

In the opposite corner, Referee Thorndigger took a hurried peek at Mambo’s mangled face and shook his head as the sullen cornermen administered to the scars of defeat covering his proud visage.

“No two ways about it. We’re seeing this thing through.” Viddi grabbed Scuzzy’s nose with both hands. “One day you’ll thank me for this,” reassured Viddi as he began realigning Scuzzy’s nozzle.

“What’s up with Scooter?” asked Referee Thorndigger as Scuzzy tried desperately to extricate his nose from Viddi’s grasp.

“He’s just excited to be in America.” Viddi’s response was drowned by the cracking of Scuzzy’s nose.

With the blood from his cleft schnozzle spouting profusely all over the canvas, the Bucharest Brawler sprinted in wild pursuit of Viddi around the ring, peppering him with expletives seldom heard even in the roughest nautical haunts of the Rumanian capital.

Before Thorndigger waved the match off, Mambo had long left the ring, pronouncing his professional integrity compromised.

A postfight medical examination of YMCU champion Dimitri Sciatscu, the Bucharest Brawler, revealed the most formidable amount of illegal substances found in any athlete in recorded history—absinthe, tequila, Norwegian wormwood liquor, PCP, peyote juice, lighter fluid, motor oil, juniper sapling juice, nitroglycerine, liberal doses of Danish Jolly Cola, barnyard cocaine, Grand Marnier, Old Spice, and six substances yet to be identified. The Katzenjammer Twins contemplated instituting legal proceedings against the New York State Boxing Commission for divulging the secret ingredients of their new concoction, patent pending in Uruguay and all three Baltic States.

Dimitri Sciatscu was never seen or heard from in the United States of America again. Rumor has it he became a gymnastics instructor in his native village of Timisobiurest and left for a holiday resort in southeastern Bulgaria every time a local boxing match was announced.

Wallace Beerbauer, head of security at The Banana Ballroom, was issued strict orders to shoot Viddi on sight should he ever show his face within a ten-block radius of the establishment.

Thus ended the only match in boxing history where a fighter was disqualified for attempting to strangle his own trainer in the middle of the ring with a championship belt that has yet to be claimed by anyone in the muddled world of leather and glory.