Mind & Muscle

Boxing's No. 1 hood is natty Frankie ("Mr. Grey") Carbo, 55, among whose brushes with the law is a conviction for manslaughter. Boxing's leading intellectual is a suave, light-skinned Negro lawyer named Truman K. Gibson Jr., 47, who had remained unsullied by the fight game's messier side while supplying the brainpower for Jim Norris' monopolistic International Boxing Club (dissolved by a U.S. Supreme Court decision in January). Last week, a federal grand jury in Los Angeles handed down an indictment that lumped together Gibson and Carbo, plus a dull-eyed Philadelphia thug named Blinky Palermo and two lesser Los Angeles musclemen. Main charges: extortion and conspiracy to extort.

The indictment stemmed from hearings last spring by the California state athletic commission (TIME, June 15), during which L.A. Fight Promoter Jackie Leonard testified that Palermo had demanded a piece of the earnings of Welterweight Don Jordan shortly before he became champion in December. Leonard said that Palermo's demands were later backed up by Carbo himself, added that he began getting phone calls threatening bodily harm ("It'll be with a pipe wrapped in a paper sack"). But Manager Don Nesseth, 33, had flatly refused to knuckle under, and, according to the indictment, Leonard had handed over only $1,725. After the hearings, Leonard landed in a hospital, claimed that he had been bludgeoned while closing his garage door. While Carbo and Palermo were applying threats, charged the indictment, Gibson "would use his power and authority to persuade victims ... to accede."

Truman Gibson, winner of the prestigious Medal for Merit for his services as civilian aide in the War Department in World War II. still has plenty of power over a boxer's future: he is president of National Boxing Enterprises, Inc. of Illinois (successor to the I.B.C.), which puts on TV's Wednesday-night fights. "I was picked up and handled like a murderer," complained Gibson after his arrest in Chicago. As for Jordan, he was taking the whole affair in stride. When newsmen finally caught up with the champ, he was hanging around with none other than gangland's celebrated Mickey Cohen.

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