The "champeenship" fight went off yesterday as scheduled. Rob Black vs. Tony Everready. Considering Black's golden glove pedigree, it would have been a pure sucker bet to have put money on Everready.
As you might have expected, given the slight disparity of weight - Black's built like Sammy the bull Gravano, Everready, like Sammy Davis Jr. - Black left Tony stretched out on the canvass - a combination of sheer exhaustion and a right cross to the head that left Everready's eyes blowing bubbles.
Van Gogh couldn't have painted a still life on canvass any better. Though Black was the victor in a fight that has as vague an origin as the Vietnam war, the big question of the day was never answered - is there one or two "r"s in Everready?
The action went down at Brother's Gym in the Valley - a place even the U.S. Postal Service might have trouble finding. The gym is tucked way back behind a residential home. No neon signs or boxing gloves pointing you in the right direction. And one could have missed the placed entirely had it not been for the fact that the Matt Zane entourage pulled up at a convenient moment. Either there was going to be a chop-sockey porno shoot, or a fight.
"I've been looking forward to this for an entire month," Matt says. Zane also said he wouldn't have found the place, either, had it not been for the fact that he trained here one time to get in shape for Sunset Incorporated. Matt Zane's the only guy in porn who trains for a video which probably makes him more like the Sylvester Stallone of porn than Jackie Chan whom he sometimes compares himself to in the press releases.
Some guy named Hector got Zane in shape. Hector, I'm told, is a very big name in the kickboxing [and regular boxing] game. [Like a fool, I always thought it was Jean Claude Van Damme.]
Being more up on Vince McMahon than kickboxing, I ask Hector his last name. "The Aztec Warrior," he replies. Which must look pretty funny on his driver's license. Hector's a very polite man but obviously lethal. I'm told he holds something like 11 world title belts in various weight categories and sanctioned bodies, and has something of the fighter's schnozzola to prove it. Hector goes into the mathematical complications of how you can win all these belts. Given that, I mention to Hector that he can probably kick the piss of pretty much anybody. "It's something I wouldn't do," he says quietly.
Brother's Gym is a boxer's dream, a place that could give Burgess Meredith a hard on. It shits thunder and pees lightning with a gallery of 8 by 10 glossies of the likes of Carmen Basilio and other boxers from another era - all with swollen noses. It's also poster collector's dream come true. All the big fights of the last 20 to 30 years. Caricature statues of Muhammad Ali, a picture of DeNiro from Raging Bull, a Leroy Neiman portrait of Stallone as Rocky, and enough free weights and machines to turn a 95 pound weakling into Stallone. And the ring itself where the fight will take place.
Matt Zane: "Sunset Incorporated was like the third or fourth action flick I did. Hector said to me, do you want some help? I said I'd love it. I'd be honored. If you're in the martial arts world, you know who Hector is. So I just thought we'd get together. I already was in pretty good shape and thought we'd just like choreograph some fights. But Hector says, 'No, no, no. You have to come down to the gym.' So he brought me down here. The first day he just put me right in the ring. He said get warmed up. He actually trained me for a couple of weeks. It was brutal. I broke my toe. I was almost passing out. I was losing weight. I think I lost 10 pounds that first week. It was a lot of fun. He had me on the bags and the whole bit. Then, like the last day, we choreographed the fight. We went in and did it. Actually, it came out so well, that Karate International, which is a karate magazine, decided to run an article about it in their May issue. If you want to see a crazy-assed fight scene, get that movie [Sunset Incorporated]. Just fast-forward to the fight scene between him and me. It's crazy. At the end of the movie, I do this kick where I kick him in the neck and he falls down, and I jump off his back onto a sledge through a window. I use him as a ladder. It's a pretty good scene. It's intense.
Hector: "It wasn't so hard to train him [Matt Zane] because he's a naturally talented kid. He's the one who made it easy for me to help him out. I hold all the world titles, and little guys come here and train because of who I am. This is not a real high class gym, so the guys from the streets come here. This is where you start. This is where I began. I can't leave the roots."
Zane: "I'll do more of this stuff if my wrist ever heels. I was doing a show at Club Rubber a couple of months ago and I fell on my arm... Rob and I are cousins. We grew up together. I used to go see him fight. It was a thrill for me, being a kid. When he was younger he used to go to these boxing matches and fight. This is going to be exciting. I like Tony [Everready] too. I'm just here for the sport of it. I really like live fighting. I don't train as much as I used to in martial arts because of the music-thing and the porno-thing, but I still enjoy watching stuff. He was one tough guy, Rob. Really tough. He could take punches you wouldn't believe."
Rob Black pulled up several minutes with HIS entourage. He was asked if he had any pre-fight commentary to offer.
Black: "No. I'm like Lennox Lewis. We'll just watch, wait and see. I had a good sparring session with Hector. My face is a little sore. Other than that...."
Ashlyn Gere's husband is wielding a digital camera. Black was asked which of his movies all this footage is going into. "I don't know," Black says. "We haven't figured it out yet. I guess we'll have to figure it out." He's asked what precipitated this grudge match. "I don't know," Black shrugs. "I guess he [Everready] said I disrespected him, like months ago. We talked. He kept postponing it [the fight]. I told him to come down to the office, and we'll fight in the warehouse. He said, no, because I'll have people there, and they can jump in. He goes, 'I'll fight you anywhere, anytime. We'll wrestle, we'll arm wrestle, we'll box.' I said, okay, we'll box and go from there. I don't care what we do...sling shots, pillow fights...very rarely does an executive in a major company do this type of shit." The rules stipulate that Black and Everready use 10 oz. gloves. "You can still feel good knuckle with tens," Black says.
Other interesting fight game characters start arriving. T.T. Boy shows up. T.T. tells me the area, the gym is his turf and that Mark Davis was totally "disrespected" in this year's balloting for Male Performer of the Year. T.T. said he didn't care about himself, personally, but that AVN blew it, big time, on the Davis thing.
Rob Spallone, who arrives with Jim DiGiorgio, is looking for some gambling action. Jim Powers says Tony Everready started out being the odds-on favorite, but things have changed. "I hope they're not wearing no headgear," Spallone says.
Spallone, who relates stories as though they were John Gotti episodes, tells Jim Powers about a blackjack incident at Sneaky Pete's, a casino outside of Vegas. Spallone relates how he's got 500 bucks on the table and doubles-down holding a 12 against a 4. Spallone's asked by the house why he did that. "Balls," he tells them. Speaking of which, Spallone relates another story where he visited a video company several weeks ago carrying a golf club. It wasn't for the purposes of playing 18 holes. Spallone says he sold the company a blowjob tape for $2600. $600 down down, and the company, presumably, took a lifetime to pay the balance. "They asked me why I had a golf club. I told 'em I forgot my baseball bat," Spallone relates
Spallone's been shooting two gonzos-at-a-time for Russ Hampshire and VCA. He just finished up his fifth and is halfway through the sixth. He says he'll be doing a feature next. "Russ' word is good," Spallone says. "He gave me a shot. The girl who does the paperwork sent me a letter saying, 'Your paperwork's so beautiful, you should see what we've been getting.' It was nice, she didn't have to do that - pat me on the back like that. Russ' money is unbelievable. He ain't like anybody else. Everybody else lies." The titled gonzos are California Reamers, Anal Fixation, Explicitly Anal, and Anal Obsession.
Bukkake night, according to Powers, has been moved to Wednesday, from Friday nights. Powers has been running ads in the LA Weekly looking for guys. "For a lot of guys Friday is tough because they're jacking off first before they go out on their dates," Powers says. "Now we actually have a set place. There's Club Bukkake, every Wednesday night. I'll have a little sign out front and everything."
Everready shows up about an hour late. He's got an entourage - lots of guys with pants falling off their asses - and the wait's now for Everready to get his act together. The referee's named Vinny. It figures.
Black, wearing an ECW shirt, paces in the ring and starts doing the Stallone hand-foot choreography from Rocky III after the scene where Stallone's been severely tongue-lashed on the beach by Talia Shire. Adam Film World's Jeremy Stone comments that Black should have waxed his back.
A ring official explains that the fight will consist of three, two-minute rounds with a one minute rest period, but the distinction becomes amazingly blurred when Black comes out flailing like a jazzed-up windmill in a miniature golf course. Black's girlfriend, Lizzy Borden, and Everready's squeeze, Porsche, start mixing it up on the sidelines and have to be pulled apart. Someone comments that this should be the start of Internet grudge battles in the industry.
During the course of the actual fight, Everready goes down on one knee four separate occasions, including the time he slips. You can see where Black, time and again, tries to set Everready up for one big right to the face for a knockout.
That never happened, but, on points, Black was the decisive winner.
Scotty Schwartz confirms the rumors we've been hearing that links him to the formation of a new video company. "Gene, so far, it's not just a rumor, but it's a definite probability. I have a backer and we just have to cross the "T's" and dot the "I's". Should be final before the end of April. You will have the exclusive story of all my going's on. Much more will follow. Lots of news will be upcomming, but at this time I can't elaborate on anything else, but I PROMISE you'll know first!!!!"
