Giachetti rubbed elbows with famous, but didn’t forget his roots
Richie Giachetti rubbed elbows with Frank Sinatra, Sylvester Stallone and Gregory Peck, just to drop a few names, but he never forgot where he came from.
Giachetti grew up in a tight-knit Italian family in Uniontown, and played football and baseball for North Union High School.
“I have great memories about playing football,” Giachetti said. “We played German and Masontown, and we should have beaten South Union when I played. The South Union game was a big game. It was a good rivalry.
“I had some really good teammates. I played guard alongside Tom Sankovich, who was a tackle. We had the Swaney brothers, Bill and LeRoy, Joe Bartock, a good group of guys.”
In the two seasons that Giachetti started at guard, the Rams posted a 4-6 record 1956, and in 1957, a season that saw many games canceled because of a virus outbreak, the Rams were 6-2. Giachetti garnered honorable mention All-County honors as a senior.
North Union was coached by Nick Bubonovich and Giachetti has some thoughts on the Rams’ head man and the coaching staff.
“Bubonovich was tough,” Giachetti recalled. “But the guy who really helped me was assistant coach Steve Polach. My big thing was downfield blocking against guys that were bigger than me, and I outfoxed them. I only weighed 157 pounds. Polach taught me a lot about blocking. He wasn’t very big himself. He played for Pitt and he showed me angles and blocking technique.”
Giachetti was a catcher in baseball for the Rams, but got into boxing at a young age. He graduated from North Union in 1958.
His uncle, Johnny Giachetti, was a 118-pound battler who won the Pennsylvania state amateur championship in 1934 and won the Cleveland 1938 featherweight title in the Golden Gloves. Johnny compiled a record of 214 victories and 22 defeats as an amateur and pro.
“Uncle Johnny was a good boxer and later trained me and my twin brother Bob,” Giachetti recalled. “How I got into boxing was after football Tommy Shaffer and my uncle got me interested in boxing, but it was Shaffer who got me started.”
Giachetti and his brother Bob started turning up on boxing cards in Fayette County and fought for the Shaffer’s Boys Club.
“There were some tough boxers back in the day in Fayette County,” Giachetti stated. “Guys like Joe Dragone, who was tough, and Jack Rogers. It was a good brand of boxing.”
Patsy, older brother of the twins who played tackle at Uniontown, moved to Cleveland and found jobs for the twins with the firm he has been employed with for several years.
“We moved to Cleveland in 1959. I couldn’t get any work in Fayette County,” Giachetti stated. “I was raised by my aunt and my uncle when I went to North Union. Under my uncle Johnny’s guidance, my brother and I used to fight all over the place. They used to pay us $150 on the card to to fight.”
In 1962, Giachetti won the welterweight division of the Cleveland Golden Gloves. He won 85 bouts and lost only 10 during his career inside the ring.
“I got hurt in a car accident and went through a windshield on my way home from work in 1963,” Giachetti said.
“I had a concussion and the doctor told me not to fight. I started training my brother and some different guys I was boxing with. I won the Golden Gloves in 1962 and my brother won the Golden Gloves in 1963. My uncle was a good trainer, but my uncle couldn’t turn down anybody that walked in the gym. We had fights coming and he wouldn’t take care of me and my brother first, and we’d have to wait until he got done with the little kids. I started training and that was the start of my career as a trainer.”
The first champion Giachetti trained was Esteban DeJesus, a Puerto Rican world lightweight champion in the early 1970s. But he was most famous for training Larry Holmes, heavyweight champion of the world from 1978-85.
His list of fighters that he trained reads like a Who’s Who of boxing, including Earnie Shavers, Aaron Pryor and Greg Page. Giachetti also trained two-time world cruiserweight champion Jean Marc Mormeck and worked with another top cruiserweight, Steve Cunningham.
“The greatest moment was when Holmes won the title from Ken Norton (on June 9, 1978),” Giachetti said.
“It was a battle back and forth, and the 15th round was probably one of the great rounds in boxing. This is what I lived for my entire life. Larry, when I had him from Day One, I said he would be heavyweight champion. I liked his moves. What I had to correct he listened. He was a perfect student.”
Giachetti always felt that Holmes never got enough recognition as a great champion.
“Larry had more of an arsenal than Muhammad Ali,” Giachetti opined. “I rated him like one or two, but I still got to go back to Jack Johnson and Jack Dempsey. Holmes is definitely underrated.”
When Mike Tyson was dethroned of his heavyweight crown by James “Buster” Douglas in 1990 in a 10th-round knockout in Tokyo, Don King inserted Giachetti as Tyson’s trainer. Giachetti trained Tyson for his next four fights, those against Henry Tillman, Alex Stewart, and the two fights against Donovan “Razor” Ruddock. Giachetti later returned to Tyson’s corner for his second fight against Evander Holyfield, the infamous “bite fight.”
“It was the most shocking thing I’ve seen in the ring. I was stunned. It was bizarre,” Giachetti said.
Giachetti worked with Cleveland native King, arguably the most influential boxing promoter in the history of the sport. Giachetti helped King in his first promotion with Muhammad Ali.
“When I work for somebody, I stand up for him, right or wrong,” he said. “I stayed with him for so long I couldn’t go anywhere else. I was marked as a Don King guy. He did things he shouldn’t have done, even with Muhammad Ali. He played the odds all the way. It got out of hand. Don King became bigger than the fighters.”
Another highlight for Giachetti was working on the set of the 1985 movie “Rocky IV,” choreographing the fight scenes between Stallone and Dolph Lundgren, who played Russian boxer Ivan Drago.
Giachetti, 72, suffered a stroke on April 1, 2011, but after rehab is recovering nicely. He lives in Lodi, Ohio, and has been married twice and has four children: Annette, Ricky, Tori and Antonio.
“I never forgot Uniontown,” Giachetti said. “I never forgot where I came from.”
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George Von Benko’s “Memory Lane” columns appear in the Tuesday editions of HeraldStandard.com. He also hosts a sports talk show on WMBS-AM radio from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturdays.