Dateline: RENO – The soft side of Livingstone Bramble, the Rastafarian who took away Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini’s lightweight fist-fighting title by pounding Mancini’s face into sausage last summer, is that Bramble loves pets.
Bramble won’t go anywhere without his animal friends and insists on even bringing them with him to work.
Think of the guilt you have felt when leaving home to the sounds of Bowser whining on the other side of the door. Bramble would never be so heartless.
He has brought many of his household favorites with him from his home in New Jersey. And the hotel where he is living and training couldn’t be nicer about it, though it usually discourages anything but casino pigeons.
It is not uncommon for Bramble to sign autographs while one of his adoring little pals nuzzles his neck, and he often will park one of them in the corner of the ring while he spars for his rematch with Mancini, or maybe hang it over the top rope. Wherever it is most comfortable.
Bramble’s concern for his pets is a treasure to see, and infinitely more urgent than his concern for the health of Mr. Mancini, whom he has taken to calling “Boy-cini” and whom he promises to rehumiliate here Saturday for cable television.
Two of Bramble’s constant companions are Turtle and Dog, the first of which is a 7-foot python and the second a 5 1/2-foot boa constrictor, neither of which will eat anything that isn’t alive. Feeding time is Bramble’s favorite part of the day.
Why they are called Turtle and Dog is not quite clear, except that Bramble’s favorite pet is called Snake, and he had the name first, even though Snake is a serious pit bull terrier that once bit the head off a friendly poodle. Or so the story goes.
Bramble likes Snake so much that he has taken on the nickname of Pit Bull himself, proving that he is generous and ecumenical when sorting out all of God’s creatures, be they large, small, slithery or full of teeth.
However, one can only be grateful that it was not Bramble’s job to name all animals in the first place, otherwise we might be calling a cockroach a sparrow, a vulture a lamb, and have no idea what to call lawyers.
Part of Bramble’s warm-up ritual is to chase a chicken while Turtle and Dog watch with interest, but Bramble never catches the chicken. It is just his way of keeping each of them in shape, like doing roadwork with a friend.
There has been no talk that Bramble’s unique method of exercise will be made into a video cassette, but the possibilities are intriguing: “Now on tape. In the privacy of your own living room. Trim down, firm up and stay fit by chasing your dinner around the house”–boiled, not fried, of course.
It has been said that animal lovers tend to take on the characteristics of their pets. Bramble will not dispute this theory.
“When I fight, I shoot out my jab and then bring it back real fast,” he says. “Just like my snakes when they’re going after a rat.
“When I get somebody in trouble, I just keep pouring it on, using my killer instinct, just like my pit bulls if they were in a fight to the death.”
How, then, can anyone who is so in touch with the harmony of nature be judged harshly, even if Bramble did beat up everybody’s boy next door, which is what Mancini was to us all, although I cannot think of any kid on my block who ever killed a foreigner with his fists, as Mancini did. At least not in public.
Bramble has yet to be widely accepted as champion. His victory over Mancini was decisive and undisputed, even if it was only the second main event Bramble had ever fought.
He has fought 24 times since leaving his home in the Virgin Islands six years ago, losing once and drawing once. Bramble oftens fights with the wrong hand from the wrong stance, appearing awkward and vulnerable in the process. He gets by on tenacity as much as skill, and the same could be said of Mancini.
He has a 9-inch reach advantage on Mancini, 74 to 65, and one year of age, 24 to 23. But, mostly, Bramble has weirdness.
Mancini confessed to being shaken up by Bramble’s sense of mischief before the first fight. Bramble kept calling Mancini a murderer for the ring death of Korean Duk Koo Kim, not something Mancini was anxious to remember, and Bramble is not exactly the kind of guy Mancini was used to running into at the neighborhood pool hall.
Bramble does not wear the dreadnoughts of the Rastafarian religion, but he does wear his hair in corn rows, as well as the occasional snake around his neck.
Mancini’s people last week wanted to make sure that Bramble’s braided corn rows were not an unauthorized weapon and requested the Nevada boxing authories to check them out.
An official dutifully went to Bramble’s camp and insisted that Bramble rub his hair against the official’s cheek.
Coming away unscarred, the official proclaimed that Bramble’s hair was soft enough to be admitted to the ring, though both snakes have to be left in the room or pay their own way to ringside. Thirty seats ought to be enough.
PHOTO: Livingstone Bramble.