Frank Bruno vs Chuck Gardner: A Shabby Shambles

Frank Bruno vs Chuck Gardner: A Shabby Shambles

By Garry White

He looked like he should have been wearing a John Deere cap atop of his closely-shaven skull. You wouldn’t have been at all surprised to see the rouge tint of a truck drivers tan on his forearms, but instead he was mostly pasty white. The long spindly chicken legs were whitest of all, and at their apex were a too-short pair of pure 80s trunks.

Peculiarly upright yet strangely precarious he jigged around the ring as though he were a guardsman who’d just sunk a yard of ale. His 6”4 frame and 243 lbs weight had Harry Carpenter remarking at ringside: “He looks more like an all-in wrestler than a fighter.” In future years he could have snared a gig as a taller, less fit stunt double for the WWE’s beer-swilling ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin.

The mostly well-heeled crowd in the Grand Auditorium of the Palais des Festivals stared at their gleaming Rolex’s and Louis Vuitton slip-ons in amazement. Perhaps, far away from boxing’s familiar smog and graffiti, the rarefied climes of Cannes in the south of France was the perfect place to pull off such a heist.

The beer-gutted, broken-nosed, pie-n-mash faithful at the York Hall would have seen this one coming a mile off. But the denizens soaking up the early summer sunshine were largely uninitiated in boxing’s multifarious offerings. However, following just one look at Minneapolis’s Chuck Gardner stripped to the waist alongside the rippling biceps and torso of big Frank Bruno, no one could be in any doubt that they had handed over their Francs to witness something other than a sporting spectacle.

It didn’t help that every time Gardner took a step on those stork-like legs that his ample bosom wobbled and his flabby midriff gently rose and fell like the waves meeting the golden sands at La Garoupe. Despite an unsuccessful world title shot against Tim Witherspoon, Bruno looked like an athlete. For those that had never heard him open his mouth and deliver those endless, murderous one-liners, he looked intimidating as well. In fairness, Chuck wasn’t without his own aura of toughness, but it was of a markedly different variety. More the kind that you might regretfully encounter if you stumbled into the wrong bar at 1am in the morning, or if you absent-mindedly reversed into his pick-up truck outside of the local I-Hop.

To quote the boxing cliché: there are levels in this game. Whilst Bruno was hitting the gym, the allegedly 35-year-old Gardner appeared to have been hitting the local burger joint in a prototype quest of Man versus Food.

As the first (and only) bell rang Chuck gently wiped his gloves on his red satin shorts. These were to be the only thing they were given the opportunity to touch in the ensuing 55 seconds. He moved uneasily around the ring as Bruno circled, his guard high, but even then, at the outset, looking strangely flimsy, as though he were Snagglepuss, preparing to: “Exit, Stage right!”

Both men pawed with a jab and then Bruno vaguely caught him with an exploratory left hook. It was far from on the button, but it was clear that it was enough to hurt the American and make those Foghorn Leghorn legs wobble and strain. If it wasn’t clear to Bruno before the fight, it now must have been cut glass and crystal to him that the landing of one semi-decent punch would be sufficient to secure an infamous victory.

He found it not long afterwards. A fizzing left hook, bypassing Gardner’s wispy moustache and cracking the side of his jaw. The American immediately crash-landed and fell to earth with his head hanging precariously over the bottom rope. Out cold, the referee rushed to remove his gumshield and slowly Gardner’s eyes regained a semblance of focus, as a concerned George Francis gently reassured him: “It’s alright, Chuck. You’re okay.” Before reminding him helpfully, “You’re in the south of France,” as if the American were Maurice Chevalier after one too many flutes of champagne.

Meanwhile Carpenter on ringside commentary, already established as a one-man Bruno fan club, candidly reinforced what the watching television audience had already figured out for themselves: “The man [Gardner] had no chance. He shouldn’t have been in the ring” he said, questioningly. Before adding: “And Bruno won’t be too proud of that victory either.”

Nevertheless, post-fight Bruno told the press that “I threw a very good left hook and caught him just right. It was a matter of practice makes perfect.” This was perhaps an overly optimistic assessment of the evening’s events. The following week’s front cover of Boxing News was closer to the mark dubbing the fight: ‘A Shabby Shambles.’ In fact, one so naked in its undertaking that even promotor Mike Barrett pulled rank on his pin-striped brethren proclaiming it to be “The most disgusting mismatch ever to take place in a boxing ring.”

It had taken poor old Chuck Gardner a nightmare 30-hour journey of airline misery to roll up in the South of France before his all too predictable rollover on primetime television. It is not recorded how long it took him to return to his safe haven of Minnesota. He didn’t fight for another six years, and when he did, he was inevitably knocked out in one round in Iowa in a fight that no one, probably not even Chuck, cared about.

A 32-fight career carried with it many successes, but with the exception of a points win over an irretrievably washed-up Jimmy Young, was always against unknown names in anonymous ramshackle places. Where a glitzy name like Tony Tucker, Earnie Shavers, Trevor Berbick, or John Tate appears on his record it is always foreshadowed by a big fat ‘L’ and an early horizontal conclusion.

All those wins in backwoods venues, far down the gravel and sawdust of boxings unlit roads, set him up as the perfect stooge for the sport’s usual clandestine shenanigans. A healthy win column was thought to be enough for men like Gardner to convince Joe Public that they were capable and worthy opponents for the latest contender or blue-chip adversary.

Except on this one night in Cannes, where Bruno’s team and a rambunctious fight agent named Johnny Bos -known in the trade as ‘The Gravedigger’ for his ability to shovel up willing bodies- pushed the envelope too far, and the woefulness of Gardner’s condition and the resulting inadequacy of his performance couldn’t be masked even by a hundred tenth-rate notches in the ‘win’ column.

And none of the ensuing debacle was dear old Chuck Gardner’s fault… or Bruno’s for that matter.