His manager once explained the folk-hero status of Larry "Tiny" Beilfuss on the Milwaukee boxing scene by calling him "a rough, tough son-of-a-gun, a lumberjack type of fighter with limited ability but a hell of a heart."
But Beilfuss himself said it probably boiled down to the fact that "I was a big, fat, white boy from up north, and they don't see a lot of them down here."
Whichever the case, the native of Two Rivers who died on March 2 at age 63 qualified as a local ring institution during his quarter-century career as a heavyweight boxer, even though as a professional Beilfuss lost more fights than he won.
Promoter Al Moreland featured him in several bouts at the Milwaukee Eagles in the 1990s, and bestowed his highest praise when he said Beilfuss "puts butts in the seats."
His hell-for-leather style in the ring brought a lot of butts out of the seats, too. That started at the 1968 Golden Gloves tournament at the Auditorium. The 300-pound "Tiny" went up against a football player from Kenosha for the novice heavyweight title, and the crowd hooted as the fat boy ate leather for most of the three round bout. But seconds before the final bell the lumbering Beilfuss knocked his tormenter out. It was too late to win the fight, but when the other guy got the decision, Tiny got the cheers.
Fighting at the old County Stadium on August 25, 1969, Tiny did it again when he got off the canvas after Mexican amateur champion Gregorio Ojeda knocked him down with he first punch of their fight and tlhen knocked Ojeda out in the second round.
After turning pro the following year, Beilfuss -- who once said he enjoyed boxing because "It's a good way to meet people" -- fought all over the world and was introduced to several world champions. Some of the introductions were short. Onetime heavyweight champions Tim Witherspoon and Pinklon Thomas each stopped him in one round.
Tiny insisted the loss to Thomas, on Sept. 5, 1992, in Daytona Beach, Florida, was due to a misunderstanding with the referee.
"I was boxing beautifully, jabbing and throwing combinations," he said. "I was hitting him with everything, and he never laid a glove on me. I felt like I could go 25 rounds that night. Then he kinda pushed me and my feet got tangled up and I fell down and my head hit the beam under the canvas and I knocked myself sorta goofy."
Tiny -- who instructed the referee before his fights, "Don't ever stop the fight if I get knocked down. If I get hurt I'll stop it myself" -- got up with 15 seconds left in the round. But before letting the fight resume, the ref had a couple questions for him.
"Where are you?" he asked.
"In Florida," Tiny answered.
"Who are you fighting?" asked the referee.
Unable to come up with his opponent's name on the spur of the moment, Tiny answered, "That big black guy over there."
The referee stopped the fight, which he might not have had he known that sometimes Beilfuss had trouble remembering his own name.
"Even my parents used to call me 'Tiny,'" he once lamented. "I damned near forgot my real name. Once I had to sign some insurance papers, and I had to stop and think what it was."
Names were also an issue when Beilfuss fought Rahaman Ali at the Milwaukee Auditorium on September 13, 1971. Ali was the younger brother of Muhammad Ali, who accompanied him to Milwaukee. At the weigh-in, Tiny went up to the legendary heavyweight champion and said, "Hi, Cassius," using the birth name Ali had renounced as his "slave name."
When Ali objected, Tiny offered to bet him $1 million that it said "Cassius Clay" on his birth certificate. That night Rahaman (ne' Rudolph Valentino Clay) defended the family's honor by knocking Beilfuss out in two.
Though 14 of his 23 losses (against 19 victories and one draw) were by knockout or TKO, Beilfuss insisted that he was never knocked cold. He said the hardest punch he ever took was in a 1973 fight in London against British heavyweight champion Richard Dunn.
"He hit me one time and I opened up my eyes and saw 15 of him," recalled Tiny. "If he'd have blown on me I'd have fell over." Instead, Dunn hit him again "and I snapped right out of it." But the fight was stopped in Dunn's favor in the fourth round.
That same year Tiny went the 10-round distance against former light heavyweight champion Vincente Rondon in Puerto Rico, and later fondly recalled, "I took a beating, he took a beating. It kept everybody on the edge of their seats."
"I like to go out there and just bang away," said Tiny. "I'm not afraid of anybody. I'll fight anybody, any place, any time." He was 48-years-old when state heavyweight champion Lyle McDowell stopped him in one round at the Eagles Club in 1995, and finally retired from boxing after one more fight.
A bartender when he wasn't fighting, Tiny said he felt safer in the ring than behind the log. "If I toss a guy out of the bar and he comes back with a shotgun, I can't outrun a bullet," he said.
A celebration of Tiny’s life will be held from 2-4 p.m. on Saturday at Oak Creek VFW Post 8482, 9327 S. Shepard Ave.
