It's thanks to boxing writer and historian Springs Toledo that we now know several new things about Herbert Louis Hardwick, a.k.a the Cocoa Kid, one of the most skillful and undervalued boxers of the 1930s and '40s.
One of them is that Hardwick was a walking ghost when he came to Milwaukee to fight local welterweight Jimmy Sherrer at the Auditorium on April 29, 1947. Then 34, the native of Puerto Rico had been a professional boxer for 17 years, logging more than 230 fights. In his prime the Kid was a ring marvel, which was one of the strikes against him because even though The Ring magazine consistently ranked him among the top boxers in the world as a lightweight, welterweight and middleweight from 1933-'47, champions avoided him like he had leprosy.
"We know that he was good enough to not only defeat, but downright embarrass a few of the greatest fighters that ever climbed through the ropes," says Toledo.
The only title Hardwick ever got to fight for was the "Colored Welterweight Championship," which he won by beating Holman Williams, another marvel, in 1937.
"What he doesn't know about the fistic business isn't worth knowing," wrote Ray Grody of the Milwaukee Sentinel on the day Hardwick was knocked out here in four rounds by Sherrer (an exceptional fighter himself).
But Hardwick should not have even been allowed in the ring that night. According to information uncovered by Toledo, three years earlier Hardwick was honorably discharged from the U.S. Navy after just seven months because he was already suffering from pugilistica dementia. He'd been hit in the head too many times and had irreversible brain damage.
A decade after the Sherrer fight, Hardwick was destitute and homeless. He died in 1966 at the VA hospital in Chicago, and what we also now know about him, thanks to Toledo's diligent research, is that the Cocoa Kid is buried (under his real name) at the Wood National Cemetery just southwest of Miller Park.
That makes the him a local hero, and the announcement this week that the Kid will be enshrined next June in the International Boxing Hall of Fame & Museum in Canastota, N.Y., especially welcome news.
Read Springs Toledo's exceptional series, called "Just Watch Muh Smoke": The Secret Journeys of Cocoa Kid," here.
