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A public ceremony will be held at 10 a.m., Friday, August 30, in Newton, to honor the memory of legendary world heavyweight boxing champion Rocky Marciano, who died in a plane crash here 50 years ago.  A large information sign will be dedicated, with a large rock sitting next to it stating Rocky’s record of 49-0, with 43 knockouts. Iowa Governor Ki...

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Fifty years ago, the city of Brockton was dealt a sucker punch. Hank Tartaglia remembers that horrible night in the summer of '69 like it was yesterday, as he was closing down his little Italian restaurant called Enrico's on Legion Parkway, and the phone rang with a call from a buddy working the graveyard shift at the Brockton Police Department. Th...

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Seventy-two years ago this St. Patrick's Day, Rocky Marciano — one of the greatest heavyweight boxers of all time — came to fight in Holyoke, Massachusetts. It was a turning point in his life. A friend set Marciano up with the Holyoke fight. It was 1947. He had just gotten out of the Army and was digging ditches for the gas company in Brockton, Mas...

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After one year and $40,000 of renovations, the Oceanside chapter of Sons of Italy reopened the Rocky Marciano Lodge in the fall. On Jan. 15, the non-profit organization will host an open house and ribbon cutting for the newly remodeled reception hall. “I think it’s one of the best-kept secrets in Oceanside,” said Joe Samoles, vice president of Sons...

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Rising up from the ground on the outskirts of Brockton, the two-ton, 20-foot statute of Rocky Marciano looms over the city like a god. Wearing boxing trunks wrapped around an Adonis-like body, he stretches his muscular right arm out to deliver the crushing knockout punch against Jersey Joe Walcott that ended their epic 1952 championship fight. In m...

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When Mike Stanton was researching what would become "The Prince of Providence," his riveting book about mayor-turned-felon Buddy Cianci, he learned that Cianci's father used to take him to the fights at the old Rhode Island Auditorium. One of the headliners in those days, the 1940s, was Rocky Marciano, the heavyweight from Brockton, Mass. "I was dr...

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At the end of a bout that featured more proper fighting among the occupants of the £100 ringside seats than inside the ropes in Manchester on Saturday night, Tyson Fury proclaimed he will regain the world heavyweight championship by the end of the year. What Rocky Marciano would have made of that boast can only be imagined. Seventy years ago next m...

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In one of the most storied and beloved championship sports cities in America, an ostentatious statue of New York Yankee legendary center fielder Joe DiMaggio stands in the middle of Taylor Street in Chicago. That's because across the street from the massive sculpture of the Yankee Clipper is home to the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame...

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After the First World War, with the increase in industrialization and well-being, the American people grew increasingly interested in entertainment and sports. The newspapers of that time often titled about the "Jazz Age" and the "Golden age of sports", in an enthusiastic race towards the '20s. Many Italian Americans, especially of second generatio...

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Sport is a very important topic in our trip around the US looking for how, when and where Italians have left positive contributions to the growth of the American society. Sport champions are often true heroes, especially in the US: and some of those heroes have been Italian Americans, inspiring a strong and justified sense of pride in those fellow...

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