{"id":56430,"date":"2015-10-28T22:22:43","date_gmt":"2015-10-29T03:22:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/?p=56430"},"modified":"2026-04-26T22:26:49","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T03:26:49","slug":"wilbert-vampire-johnson-the-man-behind-the-cape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/?p=56430","title":{"rendered":"Wilbert \u201cVampire\u201d Johnson: The Man Behind the Cape"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-1545664804358300\" crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script><br \/>\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" style=\"display: block; text-align: center;\" data-ad-layout=\"in-article\" data-ad-format=\"fluid\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-1545664804358300\" data-ad-slot=\"8616314829\"><\/ins><br \/>\n<script>\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/script><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/?p=56430\" rel=\"http:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/?p=56430\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-56431 size-full\" style=\"margin-right: 10px;\" src=\"http:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/WVJ.jpg\" alt=\"WVJ\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<\/strong><br \/>\nIf you were inclined to paint a mental picture of Wilbert Johnson in his prime, think one part Leon Spinks and a similar measure of William Marshall. Leon famously flashed his gap-toothed grin from beneath the hood of his blue sweatshirt on the February 19, 1978 cover of Sports Illustrated after pulling off one of the most momentous upsets in boxing history by winning the World Heavyweight title in a split decision over Muhammad Ali in only his eighth professional fight.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike Spinks, Wilbert lost his four front teeth not in the boxing ring but on the football field, when they were smashed out while playing for his high school team in Middletown, Ohio. The bicuspids on either side of the chasm in Johnson\u2019s mouth happened to curve slightly inward and appear somewhat pointed, giving the impression of a set of fangs.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>William Marshall, meanwhile, was a graduate of the New York University arts program and a performer with the renowned Actors Studio who had once served as Boris Karloff&#8217;s understudy for a Broadway staging of Peter Pan, earned rave reviews in several Shakespearean productions, appeared in &#8220;The Ultimate Computer&#8221; episode of the original Star Trek series, and portrayed Frederick Douglass in the 1983 made-for-television movie Slave and Statesman. Nevertheless, Marshall followed in the footsteps of Max Schreck, Bela Lugosi, and Christopher Lee before him and will always be best remembered as the badass bloodsucker in 1972&#8217;s low-budget blaxploitation horror flick Blacula and its sequel Scream, Blacula, Scream.<\/p>\n<p>Having once said of himself \u201cI don\u2019t know if there could have been any badder kids than me\u201d, boxing fortunately provided Wilbert Johnson direction in his life which guided him from a misspent youth fighting in the streets to positively channeling his aggression and frustration in the local rec center. While reportedly amassing an amateur record of 130-10, Wilbert would win five Ohio Golden Gloves titles in the late 70s and it was during one of these tournaments that he first came by his mischievously macabre persona. \u201cIn the Dayton Golden Gloves, I was cutting people up and there was blood everywhere,\u201d Johnson told the Tuscaloosa News in 1983, \u201cand some guy said \u2018hey, he\u2019s a vampire\u2019, so I let it stick.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He would play it to full effect upon turning pro in 1980, with a fourth round knockout of David Carr in Lexington, Kentucky on the undercard of the eleventh fight of hometown favorite and future WBA World Heavyweight Champion Greg Page. Not content to simply materialize from arena walkways in black trunks with crimson stripes (or vice versa) and flashing that \u201cvampire smile\u201d with great relish at delighted (if slightly taken aback) ringside spectators, Wilbert decided to give an additional transfusion of showmanship to his entrance. \u201cI just thought, I\u2019ve got to do something else with this. So, I made up my cape and me and my manager talked about it and came up with the coffin. When I make enough money,\u201d Johnson had added wistfully, \u201cmaybe I\u2019ll get a hearse.\u201d<br \/>\nWibert had a terrific nickname and the unique ring-walk gimmick to go along with it, was a talented boxer and effective counter-puncher with a sharp left jab and quick right hand, but didn\u2019t possess diligence and perseverance equal to that of his charisma and skillset and, therefore, was frustratingly unable to become greater than the sum of his parts. \u201cVampire has natural talent, but he\u2019s not dedicated,\u201d bemoaned Johnson\u2019s manager Pete Susens. \u201cHe trains but then he smokes and drinks.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Future WBC Light-heavyweight Champion Donny Lalonde was only four fights into his professional career when he was matched against Wilbert at the Winnipeg Convention Centre on March 6, 1981. \u201cWhat happened was in the very first round, I caught him on top of the head and broke my first metacarpal and so I had to box very carefully the rest of the fight,\u201d Donny recalled for me via Skype recently. \u201cAt the end of the fight actually, I followed him back to his corner just to say \u2018good fight\u2019 or whatever and Susens threw a whole bunch of water on him and said, \u2018You f\u2019n bum, you could\u2019ve won that fight.\u2019 So, even their side thought they lost. There was some politics happening in my hometown at the time, even with just the four fights I had and the people who controlled boxing in town at the time were trying to build one guy\u2019s son and they didn\u2019t want me to be gaining crowd-pleasing relations because they wanted his son to be the kind of new hero. There was another guy called Wayne Caplette who was on his way out and they wanted to build up this guy\u2019s son. So, they had the judges give the decision to Wilbert and we fought in a rematch. It took seven months because it was a pretty bad break and the doctor didn\u2019t treat it properly. Rather than put a pin in and straighten the metacarpal, he just put a cast on it. He was hung over from the post-fight party and didn\u2019t want to do the surgery the next day and put a pin in like I asked him to. He said \u2018It\u2019s a dumb sport anyway, Donny, you should just get out of it.\u2019 So for the rest of my career I had a short index-finger metacarpal which meant the middle knuckle took all the brunt of the punch every time I sparred or fought which caused eventually a split lining in that joint which caused tremendous pain and a lot of lost training time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Wilbert kept plenty busy in between his engagements with Lalonde, fighting and winning six times with five knockouts, including three in a thirteen day span that June and two inside of a week the month after. \u201cThe second round, I stopped him in the rematch,\u201d remembered Donny. \u201cHe was definitely a good fighter. I moved down to Indianapolis and started training at the PAL gym where Wilbert trained out of. Back then, it wasn\u2019t so easy to find out where good sparring was, but I kept hearing the rumors that Marvin Johnson was the meanest guy in the gym. And I figured since I didn\u2019t have much amateur background, I should really get to a gym where I could get a lot of challenging sparring. So, I went to the PAL gym and Wilbert was there, Ronnie Essett trained there, Marvin of course. I walked into that gym with my brother John. The whole gym kind of went quiet because we were the only two white guys in the gym at the time right in downtown Indianapolis. Champ (trainer and former heavyweight boxer Colion Chaney) says to us, \u2018You boys lost?\u2019 and I was like, \u2018No, I\u2019m here to box Marvin Johnson.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>He started to laugh a lot harder than I was and so were a few of the people around him and he said, \u2018Well that can be arranged any day you want.\u2019 Marvin would box anybody but he was out to knock you out, so if you\u2019re going to spar with him, be ready because Marvin just believed that you had to fight to the death for every minute whether sparring or a fight. Wilbert was in there and he was a really nice guy and we sparred and he made me feel a lot more comfortable, and Champ Chaney, and Marvin was great. Sparring he was an animal, he was really good to us, Ronnie Essett, all the guys. So I got to know Wilbert a little bit more as a friend than as a fellow fighter in that time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t know who I\u2019m fighting, but I never do, so I never have to worry,\u201d said Wilbert before his bout with Jim Freeman (15-3, 10 KOs) on February 19, 1983. \u201cI feel okay, but I\u2019m not getting the breaks some fighters are. I\u2019ve won 20 fights with one loss and one draw and some guys are getting title shots when they\u2019re just 12-0. Hopefully, one of these years I\u2019ll get a shot somewhere in there.\u201d Johnson, after knocking his man down four times and cruising to the unanimous decision, said of Freeman that \u201cI hit him with everything but the kitchen sink to the body. I never fought anybody that I hit with shots like that that got back up and fired back like he did.\u201d<br \/>\nEchoing the sentiments sounded above by Pete Susens in reference to Johnson\u2019s physical regimen, Donny Lalonde noted regretfully that \u201cHe wasn\u2019t the most committed, he didn\u2019t like doing his roadwork, he didn\u2019t like training so much, he\u2019d be struggling with weight. I think if he had taken it really seriously-and I think you can really see it in the Tite fight-there was a certain level that he was competent at.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The fight Donny references was against Carlos \u201cThe Force\u201d Tite on September 7, 1983 at the Hammond Civic Center for the inaugural USA Indiana State middleweight title which was broadcast on ESPN as were several of Wilbert\u2019s bouts during the channel\u2019s formative years. Carlos was a tough customer and power puncher who went into that night undefeated in 18 fights with 15 knockouts, having won the newly created USA Mid-American and Mid-West middleweight titles six months before and looking for yet another belt. He would earn that strap as well but had a hell of a time doing it as Wilbert took Tite the distance only to come out on the short end of a razor-thin unanimous decision.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Vampire Meets The Beast\u201d. I can envision the title even now, splashed like gore across a provocative advertisement for a schlocky midnight-movie but it could realistically have been used not on a film poster but a fight poster when Wilbert Johnson took on John Mugabi in Maracaibo, Venezuela on May 27, 1984 on NBC. The ending came suddenly if anticlimactically when The Beast unleashed a savage second-round left hook which temporarily drove a stake through The Vampire. There is some merit to Wilbert&#8217;s claim that, having risen to beat the count, he could have continued and was the victim of a premature stoppage courtesy of referee Enzo Montero. However, given the dominant nature of Mugabi&#8217;s 20-0 record coming into the bout-all coming by way of knockout, a streak which would continue until The Beast was finally tamed by Marvin Hagler four fights later-the plotline against The Vampire was all too predictable and merely following a familiar script. And, because Mugabi had already been sniffing around the enclosure of Frank &#8220;The Animal&#8221; Fletcher, there would be-contrary to Dracula, Blacula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Wolfman or any other monster movie franchise-no sequel reuniting The Vampire and The Beast.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, \u201cVampire\u201d Johnson was left to hope in vain that \u201cChoirboy\u201d Mike Landini didn\u2019t sweat holy water. Landini, a hot middleweight prospect out of nearby Calumet City, acknowledged Wilbert as a worthy adversary that he would need to deal with assertively enough to propel up the regional rankings with national exposure hopefully to follow. Although his right eye was three-quarters closed from being beaten to the punch and terribly outjabbed, Wilbert was able to summon the one big shot he had been reliant upon late in the sixth when he landed a perfectly-timed left hook over Landini\u2019s temporarily dormant right that forced Landini to stumble backward into the corner where Vampire swooped in to follow up with a seven punch combination, the highlight of which was a flush right uppercut. As if he were kneeling on a church pew, \u201cThe Choirboy\u201d assumed a contrite pose for five seconds before standing to take the eight count as the round ended. It took Landini until late in the seventh to collect his senses and get his legs securely beneath him but he finished on his feet and was rewarded for his efforts with the split decision win.<\/p>\n<p>Prolonged spans of inactivity and mixed results (3-3 with 1 no decision) would plague Johnson over the last five years of his 29-8-2 career. It is only fitting that Wilbert\u2019s last fight was held on Halloween night 1989, in Indianapolis against Dan Morgan who must have loaded his gloves with garlic cloves, as he knocked Wilbert out in the eighth and last round. The final nail had been driven into the Vampire\u2019s prizefighting coffin but Wilbert Johnson, I am happy to report, is very much alive and well at the age of 59. The crucifix is an object to which his alter-ego may have had an aversion. It evidently is a welcome sight to Wilbert who is an active member of the church back in his home city of Middletown, Ohio. Johnson also holds tight to a vision he may be close to soon realizing of opening a boxing gym named for his mentor Harold Burton so that he can provide the same opportunities to underprivileged children that he benefited from as a \u201cbad kid\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRecently, through Facebook, I was able to reconnect with him which was awesome. It\u2019s so nice because so many of the guys over the years, you see how hurt they are and he seems healthy and happy,\u201d concluded Donny Lalonde. \u201cIt\u2019s really, really nice for me to see that he is alright because it wasn\u2019t the kind of story you expect to go real well from back in the day because he wasn\u2019t so committed and he wasn\u2019t so educated, that you kind of wondered if he would fall off and fall into harder times. And maybe he did, but ultimately, at this point, he seems fine and it sure is nice to see. He\u2019s in a really good place.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It would be wise to pause in the maelstrom of adversity which life perpetually challenges and perplexes us with and meditate optimistically upon Wilbert Johnson\u2019s own words spoken back in 1983, in what admittedly seems a peculiar philosophy advocated by a Vampire. \u201cThe sun rises the next day anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Bill Cancel 360 Conversation: Podcasting, Politics, Trump, Humanity, The Godfather &amp; Much More...\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/x262ZmqXl6U?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em><strong><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; color: #808000;\"><a style=\"color: #808000;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.authorhouse.com\/en\/bookstore\/bookdetails\/232300-BOXING-INTERVIEWS-OF-A-LIFETIME\">Click Here to Order Boxing Interviews Of A Lifetime By &#8220;Bad&#8221; 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Leon famously flashed his gap-toothed grin from beneath the hood of his blue sweatshirt on the February 19, 1978 cover of Sports Illustrated after pulling off one of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[14035],"class_list":["post-56430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-boxing-news","tag-wilbert-vampire-johnson-the-man-behind-the-cape"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56430"}],"version-history":[{"count":-2,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56430\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}