100 years after winning the Bantamweight Boxing World Championship, Pete Herman might be the greatest athlete in local history, that many New Orleanians have never heard of.
"After a few years, people forget about things like that," Pete Herman's grandson Ralph Marshall said. "But back then, 50 to 100 years back, everybody knew who he was."
Pete Herman is a member of the International Boxing Hall of Fame, and the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame. A Canadian website called "The Fight City" lists Herman as the 3rd best bantamweight fighter of all-time, and his rise was rapid.
He was born Pete Gullotta in Convent in 1896 but grew up in the French Quarter. The son of Sicilian immigrants, like many children of immigrants in the early 19th Century, he dropped out of school in the eighth grade to get a job. He worked as a French Quarter shoe shine boy.
"His father hauled bananas off the freighters on the river wharf," Dick Anderson said. Anderson is working on a biography/documentary on Pete Herman.
"Pete, in two years, made himself the best shoeshine boy," said Anderson. "His father retired. He made more money shining shoes than his father was making working on the wharfs, and he supported his parents from that point forward."
In the early 19th Century, boxing was one of America's glamour sports, and Pete was an athlete kid. So, he took up boxing, and so his father wouldn't know he was fighting, took the stage name Pete Herman. Stage names were popular with boxers of that era.
New Orleans was a boxing mecca in the early 1900's, and quickly word spread about a little Italian Bantamweight with surprising power for someone 118 pounds. Pete Herman had received enough notoriety that by 1916, at 19 years old, he fought Kid Williams for the Bantamweight World Championship. Williams kept his title with a controversial draw.
"He beat the champ, in his first fight in New Orleans, but he didn't knock him out," Anderson explained. "You've got to beat the champ, you can't just decision him. So Pete finagled another fight."
A year later, Pete Herman got his rematch.
"To sway Kid Williams back with the title, he paid him $5,000, which was big at the time, and let him have his own referee," said Anderson.
At that time in boxing, the referee was the sole judge of a fight. On January 7, 1917, Kid Williams' hand-picked referee awarded a close decision, and the Bantamweight World Championship, to Pete Herman.
In 1917, Pete Herman became New Orleans first boxing World Champion, and the first Italian-American to win a world championship. His style came from his days shining shoes in the French Quarter, a two-fisted, rapid-fire inside assault. They called it the Shoe Shine Punch.
"If you're every getting a shoeshine, they take that rag and they go a million miles an hour up and down," grandson Ralph Marshall explained. "And he did that for years, and when he would get into the ring, he was an infighter and when he would get in there, he would do this to people and he would destroy them."
Modern champions rarely fight more than once a year, but in 1917, after winning the title, he fought 18 more times, without losing. He lost his title in December of 1920, by unanimous decision, to New York City's Joe Lynch. That fight was at Madison Square Garden. He won the title back in July of 1921, by beating Lynch at Ebbets Field, where the Brooklyn Dodgers played. Twenty-five thousand people were there for that fight, and it was the first fight ever broadcast on the radio. That's how large the Pete Herman celebrity had grown.
When he returned home to New Orleans after regaining the title, thousands came to the L&N Railroad Station to welcome him home.
"He was well known all over the world," Marshall said. "But in New Orleans, he was number one, you're talking a Drew Brees type of celebrity."
Pete Herman was friends with Heavyweight Champion Jack Dempsey and baseball great Babe Ruth.
"Everybody knew the names of every boxer then, in every weight class," Marshall explained. "Just like they know in the NFL today."
Ernest Hemingway saw Pete Herman fight and wrote a short story about him. When learning to combine eastern and western fighting styles, the great Bruce Lee said he studied three western fighters, Jack Dempsey, British Flyweight Champion Jimmy Wilde, and New Orleans' own Pete Herman.
"Keep in mind, Pete was 5'2, 118 pounds, and yet he was able to knock people out," Anderson explained. "Even with of his lack of size, he had that power. And Bruce Lee learned how to fight like Pete Herman."
Pete Herman fought across the country and around the world. He became a big draw in London, beating British great Jimmy Wilde in the Royal Albert Hall, and Scottish Champion Jim Higgins in Kensington. Pete Herman fought every great fighter of his era and made $500,000 boxing; roughly equivalent to $10 million dollars now.
At some point in his career, Pete Herman took a vicious thumb to the eyes. He gradually lost his sight and lived his later life largely blind. Still, he never lost his sharpness. In an era where many boxing greats died pennilessly, Pete Herman managed his own business and lived the rest of his life comfortably. Among the things he owned; a French Quarter Nightclub called Pete Herman's.
"Pete was a very wealthy real estate investor," Anderson said. "He seemed to excel at everything. And he was a humble man, and people liked him."
Pete Herman died in April of 1973 -- the son of Sicilian immigrants who rode his Shoe Shine Punch to international fame.
"It's an incredible story, and it's a cliche, it's rags to riches," Anderson said. "They come over from Sicily, and Pete makes himself into a world champion superstar."