North Shore Towers Courier n April 2016 13 School salesman, representing brown and black belt degree experts, selling lessons to kids around the neighborhood. By the time, he was 15, Rappaport was dabbling in real estate and purchased his first home when he was only 18, after he acquired his license. Even while at college—University of Miami and Long Island’s Hofstra University—he continued to purchase homes, keeping them as rentals and using the profits toward buying additional twofamily dwellings on Long Island. Rappaport graduated from Hofstra with a degree in Marketing Management and about 20 homes in his portfolio. As successful as Real Estate was to Rappaport, he never embraced it and continued to carry a torch for boxing. One fateful day, while enjoying a fight at the Nassau Coliseum, he bumped into Mike Jones, a friend with whom he often played poker. Neither knew the other shared a passion for the sport. At the end of the matches, the duo approached one of the trainers heading back to the locker rooms. They expressed their desire to enter the field and told the man to call them if anything came up and he needed some help. Not long after, Rappaport and Jones were called into legendary Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn. “I saw these characters right out of a Damon Runyon novel,” Rappaport recalled of the moment he entered the iconic palace to pugilism. “All the angst I carried from real estate, lifted off my shoulders. I was in Valhalla.” Soon, Rappaport and Jones were promoting their first fighter, 18-year-old sensation, Ronnie Harris. But as neophytes to the biz, the two outsiders had no connections and they were getting nowhere cold-calling agents and boxing officials Linda and Dennis Rappaport flank Ali trying to get Harris a bout. To drum up publicity and help get Harris into the spotlight, Rappaport came up with a hair-brained scheme… literally! “Ronnie had a giant afro—this thing was tremendous,” Rappaport said of his former client. “So I told everyone he was a black Jew and was very religious, and that he refused to fight without a yarmulke, which was against Commission rules.” Rappaport and Jones begin promoting their client as Ronnie “Mazel” Harris— “Mazel” meaning “Good Luck” in Hebrew—using the tagline, “All you need is Mazel.” Even after they booked a fight, the pair continued their crusade, going so far as to take the Commission to court to allow Harris to box with his yarmulke. Rappaport and Jones won the case, but on the eve of the fight, just before the bell sounded to begin the match, the Commission got a stay on the court order and the bout was canceled and a riot ensued, all of which helped Rappaport and Jones launch Harris’s career. “Good thing no one ever questioned why he was fighting on a Friday night,” Rappaport said with a laugh. Rappaport (far left) celebrates Cooney victory It was sometime during these early days of the “Black Jew” that famous Madison Square Garden (MSG) boxing matchmaker, Teddy Brenner, promised Rappaport he’d organize a fight with Harris at MSG. It was a vow Rappaport never forgot, and as the meteoric career of Harris continued to flourish, the young promoter grew more and more frustrated with Brenner’s lack of keeping that promise. Brenner’s claims of being unable to get an opponent for Harris fell on deaf ears and prompted Rappaport to take his case to the press. “If no man is willing to fight Ronnie Harris, he’ll fight a live gorilla,” Rappaport threatened, swearing to walk the beast through the Penn Station offices of the Commission before the match. Of course, now Rappaport had to find a live gorilla in New York City. But he did, though many claim it was only an actor in a gorilla suit. “There are those who swear it was a real gorilla,” Rappaport said. “I will never tell; that will be buried with me.” Arguably, Rappaport and Jones’s most famous client was Gerry Cooney, who the “Gold Dust Twins” led to one of boxing’s most renowned and lucrative bouts. Rappaport and Jones met Cooney when he was working at a gas station, and immediately set about ways to promote the fighter. “I wanted to call him Gerry ‘Candy Kisses’ and have him throw Kisses into the audience when he entered the ring,” Rappaport revealed. “I figured I could work out an endorsement deal with Hersey Chocolates as Sponsor. Good thing Gerry had better sense than I did.” Instead, Cooney became “Gentleman Gerry Cooney,” playing off the boxer’s good-naturedness. Of course, such a relatively tame nom de guerre didn’t satisfy boxing’s “Wacko Twins.” Cooney presented his opponents with a rose before every bout, but even that bit of showmanship wasn’t enough to sate Rappaport and Jones. Ronnie Harris H H H H H H H H H H H H
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