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Obituary: Sammy Adragna, Top-ranked boxer in the 1940s
Wednesday, October 27, 1999 By Chuck Finder, Post-Gazette Sports Writer
Sammy Adragna was a prominent Pittsburgh welterweight who fought the world's finest boxers from Duquesne Gardens to Madison Square Garden, from the World War II Allied Forces boxing tournament overseas to Fritzie Zivic's gym in Millvale.
Everywhere he went, he threw punches in the same place: his opponent's body.
Other boxers went for knockout triumphs. The slight welterweight aimed for black-and-blue decisions, and it got him into the prestigious top-10 in his division.
"Sammy wasn't a big guy, but he worked his way in: He was a body puncher," recalled Andy "The Kid" DePaul, 70, the commissioner of the Pennsylvania State Athletic Commission and a contemporary of Mr. Adragna, who died Monday of respiratory failure. He was 79.
"He was one heck of a fighter. Tough guy. Sammy Adragna was a beautiful person, and you would never know he was a boxer: a real calm guy, and I never heard him say a bad word."
DePaul would know. He trained with Mr. Adragna for two years, a couple of times each week, at the same Lyceum gym where Zivic and Billy Conn and Sam Secreet and Charley Affif sparred. "I was 17, 18," DePaul remembered. "He took it easy on me. I was just a kid, and they were 10-round, main-event fighters."
Mr. Adragna was born and reared in Carnegie, where he and his brothers, Jack and Dominick "Mimi" Adragna, followed one another to Carnegie High and into a ring. The welterweight had about 95 amateur bouts before turning pro at age 20, in 1940. His career was interrupted by World War II.
While serving with the Army in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, Sardinia, southern France and Germany, Mr. Adragna found his 147-pound self in the finals of the Allied Forces boxing tournament opposite the heftier Marcel Cerdan, the middleweight champion from France.
"From what I understand, the people who saw it said he beat the heck out of [Cerdan]," said Mr. Adragna's son, Frank. "We were told [Cerdan] had to take a couple of months off."
After the war, Mr. Adragna faced such notable boxers as Secreet and Affif. In early 1947, he faced top challenger Chuck Taylor in a bout that supposedly would send its winner into a welterweight championship match with Sugar Ray Robinson. The body puncher from Carnegie beat Taylor on a decision, but Taylor was awarded a chance to fight Robinson -- showing that politics existed in the ring as long ago as a half-century. Taylor lost that title fight.
Mr. Adragna's career peaked with a Madison Square Garden match in August 1947 against Livio Minelli, a bout ending in a split decision. He retired the next year with a professional record of 50-11-1.
After boxing, he went to work with Union Electric Steel. He arose from the ranks of a laborer to head the computerized furnace operations. He retired from that career in 1984.
He is survived by his wife, Mary Bondello Adragna of Scott; a daughter, Jo Rotella of Mechanicsburg; three sons, Angelo of Dayton, Ohio, Frank of Carnegie and Anthony of Coraopolis; a sister, Pauline Kifer of Melbourne, Fla.; and a brother, James of New Jersey.
Visitation is from 2 to 4 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m. today in Bagnato Funeral Home, 50 Chartiers Blvd., Carnegie. A Mass will be celebrated at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow in Holy Souls Church, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish.
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