In 50 professional fights he lost 34 times, and in 23 of the losses he didn't go the distance. In the cruel parlance of the fight game, Mickey Hayes was a "tomato can."

But while his chin often let him down, his heart was as stout and upright as they came, which was why 69 years ago the Cudahy heavyweight got a new designation when one of the roughest characters in boxing history wanted nothing to do with him in the ring.

"From this day on," wrote Milwaukee Journal sports editor R.G. Lynch of Hayes on April 19, 1943, "he is 'the man Tony Galento was afraid to meet.'"

The proposition that "Two Ton" Tony Galento was afraid of anything would have started a riot at Galento's tavern in Orange, N.J., where the "New Jersey Nightstick" punched the cash register between fights – if not led by the proprietor himself then by the customers, to whom Galento was a barrel-shaped Superman.

The 5'8", 240-pound Galento was always up for a challenge, whether fighting Joe Louis for the heavyweight title or winning a $10 bet by eating 52 hot dogs minutes before climbing into the ring to fight Arthur DeKuh in 1932. They had to slit the waistband of Galento's boxing trunks to make them fit, and he knocked DeKuh out in four rounds.

Galento's standard boast before every fight is enshrined in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations: "I'll moider da bum!" The 8-1 underdog even said it about Louis before their world championship fight on June 28, 1939.

In a further effort to rile the impassive champion, when the referee called them to the center of the ring before 40,000 fans at Yankee Stadium, Two Ton Tony also bluntly told Louis what he intended to do to Mrs. Louis when he was done with Joe.

Only the most rabid or soused Galento rooters were surprised when the referee had to rescue Tony in the fourth round, but the Nightstick won boxing immortality a round earlier by sending Louis to the deck for two seconds with a left hook.

Ever after, Galento ranted that he'd been hamstrung by the boxing commission's demand that he abide by the Marquis of Queensbury rules in the fight. That injunction deprived the voluble Neanderthal of all the weapons in his arsenal – head butts, groin shots and the thumbs with which Galento massaged his opponents' eyeballs in the clinches – that earned him the No. 4 spot on the list of all-time dirty fighters in the 2004 book "Boxing's Most Wanted."

In his first fight after losing to Louis, Galento released all his pent-up atavism by roughing up contender Lou Nova so badly in a 15-round fight called by The Ring magazine "one of the most disgraceful fights staged since the days of the barroom brawls" that Nova spent several days in the hospital while doctors worked to save the eyesight Galento's thumbs had jeopardized.

That same year, Mickey Hayes had his first fight for pay, and thanks to his wide-open, artless style of mauling after just five of them the Milwaukee Sentinel referred to him as "the Cudahy punch catcher."

As tall but not as wide as Galento, Hayes palookaed around the local and Chicago fight scenes with little to recommend him but his willingness to mix it up.

In 1941, when a Detroit nightclub owner bankrolled a "White Hope" tournament in hopes of finding a worthy Caucasian challenger for Joe Louis, Hayes lost a decision to Charley Roth in the opening round of matches, but with three seconds left in the fight he sent Roth to dreamland with a wild haymaker to the jaw.

A year later, the Cudahy fighter appeared to be on his way to avenging two previous defeats to Frank Greene at Marigold Gardens in Chicago. Greene was knocked down eight times in four rounds, but in doling out such a beating Hayes broke his left hand and elbow and couldn't answer the bell for round five, giving Greene the win by technical knockout.

In April of '43, the big news in boxing was the announcement that Tony Galento was returning to the ring after a two-year hiatus. The big news in Milwaukee was that Galento's comeback would start April 28 at the Auditorium on North 5th Street and West Kilbourn Avenue against Johnny McCarthy, a Chicago heavyweight handpicked by Galento's handlers to get Two Ton's comeback off on the right foot.

McCarthy's credentials for the job were impeccable. He'd had only seven previous fights – and had been knocked out in all of them.

Learning this, the Wisconsin boxing commission nixed the obvious tank job and recommended that Galento take on the 12-18-1 Mickey Hayes instead.

You'd have thought the Cudahy fighter was Jack Dempsey redux from the haste with which Galento canceled his reservation for Milwaukee.

"In his last five starts, Mickey was stopped four times," wrote Russ Lynch in the Journal. "Still, Galento doesn't want him. The inference is all too plain. Galento doesn't want any man who intends to fight. He wants to be sure he will hear a splash after two or three rounds."

Galento's refusal to fight Hayes, wrote Sentinel sports editor Stoney McGlynn, "should go down in the boxing annals. It must be the highlight of Mickey's career."

Sensing the opportunity for a big PR score, local promoter Judd Post hurriedly matched Johnny McCarthy and Hayes to fight at the Auditorium on April 29, billing it as "The man Galento couldn't fight vs. the man Galento wouldn't fight." The winner, said Post, would get a crack at Two Ton Tony here in May.

While it would be no clash of titans, wrote McGlynn of the McCarthy-Hayes fight, "one thing sure, with Mickey in there ... the fight will be on its merits. Not knowing much of McCarthy's talents, we warn him that he might make a chopping block out of Mickey's Irish pan, but the Cudahy man will keep boring in and pouring 'em home as long as mere flesh can stand it, and that as long as he is up he's dangerous because he does pack a punch."

McGlynn was a prophet. McCarthy jabbed Hayes silly until, with five seconds left in the second round, Cudahy's new folk hero dropped him with a big right hand and McCarthy's losing streak remained unblemished.

But the victory didn't earn Hayes a fight with Galento after all. Two Ton passed on him again, and instead when he climbed into the Auditorium ring on May 19 it was to box a four-round exhibition with a couple sparring partners he brought to town with him.

"Just imagine giving that bum $1,500 for a four-round exhibition when he's afraid of Mickey Hayes, a 20 year old kid," jeered boxing fan Ted Johnson in a letter to the Journal. "If Galento is afraid to fight, why should we pay to watch him shadow box with one of his bartenders?"

Some fans who did pay to watch lobbed tomatoes at Galento between rounds of his exhibition, and he left the ring to a chorus of boos.

After just three comeback bouts (one of them against rassler Fred Blassie) Galento gave up the ring again, at least as far as human competition as concerned. He barnstormed around the country boxing and wrestling bears and even an octopus, and did several turns in the movies, most famously as a union headbreaker in "On the Waterfront." Five years ago, Joseph Monninger wrote an acclaimed book called "Two Ton: One Fight. One Night. Tony Galento Vs. Joe Louis." A screenplay based on the book is making the rounds in Hollywood.

Mickey Hayes lost all but one of his last 17 bouts but always went down swinging the way he did against heavyweight contender Elmer "Violent" Ray in Boston on January 11, 1945.

"Ray's third punch, a right to the jaw, put Hayes down for nine in the first round, but he came up fighting and succeeded in rocking Ray several times before the end of the fight" in the third round, reported the Associated Press.

When last heard of in the mid-'60s, Hayes was driving a fruit truck for a living in Florida.

"In justice to Mickey, piano legs and all, lack of any will-o'-the-wisp agility or boxing finesse, it should be stated he can punch his way around ... and will keep punching and receiving, especially a considerable portion of the latter, without showing a trace of the white feather," wrote Stoney McGlynn in '43.

Forget his boxing record. That is the book on the man Tony Galento was afraid to meet.