THE SWITCH

By Roger Esty

Heard this one today from my friend Pat who used to be real close to Moyer and Ronnie Wilson when those two were still trying to represent themselves as contenders in the ring.

Sid Flaherty was handling the two, along Johnny Rodriguez who was Sid's trainer. Flaherty opened up a camp in the foothills outside San Diego.Within the boxing camp was a kennel that housed Sid's malmutes. From what I saw and what my pal Pat has related,I think Sid was closer to man's best friend more than his stable of fighters. Just trying to deal with Moyer and Wilson was enough to make a guy eat dog food.

I'm going to have to bend Pat's ear more about those two Irishmen. Wilson was rooming with Pat when Ronnie was getting the "heave ho" out the door from his wife for various miscodes of conduct of being a proper husband.

Moyer was brought down to San Diego to help Ronnie out being a fighter,but they both liked drinking more than fighting by that time,so all they did was help each other buy drinks for the saloon patronizing.

Training at Flaherty's camp in the foothills were a group of Mexican fighters.Pat told me they never spoke English. With Rodriguez working them, the language stayed Spanish. Moyer and Wilson,according to Pat,would get sore about hearing words that were either "feminine" or "masculine." Sometimes they thought the Mexican boys were taliking about them and didn't want them to "comprende." After a night of drinking,the Irish gladiators were really on the defense about their talk.

Pat told me one day before an afternoon training session,Moyer had had enough about not understanding a word of what was going on. One of the Mexicans he was going to spar with that day was a "hombre" Moyer never took a liking to. Before going into the ring for a workout,Moyer told Pat that he was going to piss into the guy's water bottle. And he did.

Well the sparring was going on like usual and Moyer was grinnin' ear to ear every time the Mexican was slurpping down his water. After the sparring was done for the day,Moyer saw Pat in the locker room and was laughing about how the Mexican got more than H2O in his drink.

Just then Johnny Rodriguez walked in. Rodriguez walked over to Moyer and said the Mexican fighter wanted to switch water bottles before the sparring session. Rodriguez said he just shrugged his shoulders and switched the bottles.It was Denny who was drinking "lemonade".

From what Pat told me Moyer wanted to kill the Mexican. I guess one of the other Mexican fighters saw what Denny had done and the switch was made.

The Mexican fighter who had pulled the double cross never came back to camp. It was probably for the best. I don't think Denny would heve asked him to give him Spanish lessons.