Chuckie Gets His Mojo Back
 “I can’t breathe,” Wildwood light heavyweight
Chuck “The Professor” Mussachio told his father/
trainer Al after the first round of his eightround
main event with scrappy Bobby Rooney
of Bayonne back in November at the Taj Mahal.
Mussachio, 30, had gone into the fight with an
unacknowledged broken nose suffered in
training and a mild fever, so it was no mystery
why he wasn’t breathing normally. The lanky
Rooney had put together combinations and
body shots to take that breathless first round,
but The Professor sucked it up and hit Rooney
with some big shots the next round and after
that put what old-timers call a paint job on
the 37-year-old Bayonne battler.
The rest of the way, Mussachio shellacked
Bobby Rooney with a left jab as educated as
The Professor himself. Indeed, in the third
round he pasted Rooney with seven consecutive
jabs at one point and mixed in some beautiful
right hand counters to set a pattern that
was to harden into a concrete victory. Before
the sixth round, Mussachio semaphored his
arms upward to further stir up his already
raucous Wildwood fans, who spent a good
part of the night competing with the Bayonne
cheering section that Rooney had brought to
town. It was South Jersey versus North Jersey
both in and out of the ring.
Chuckie gave the Wildwooders something to
really cheer about in the sixth round with a
beautiful right hand off a moving feint. The next
round, he put his defense on display, but nonetheless
ate a good Rooney right hand; he answered
immediately with a hard jab and a right
of his own. Mussachio finished strong with a
Michigan check hook in the eighth that was
as cute as a basket of kittens and encored it
with a ducking hook that found the mark. It
was his best round of the scrap.
It was a very necessary win for Charles
Constantine Mussachio, coming as it did after
his first professional loss, a suspect decision
in Morgantown, West Virginia, to local hero
Tommy Karpency in late August.The Rooney
victory brought The Professor’s ledger to 14-
1-2, with 5 knockouts, and gave him back his
passion for the sweet science.
 The Mussachio-Rooney bout had been moved
up to the main event of the evening because
Camden’s Prince Badi, who was to defend his
National Boxing Association light heavyweight
title against Brookyn’s Daniel Judah, weighed
in at ten pounds over the 175-pound limit,
and was disqualified. At a press conference at
the Ducktown Tavern in Atlantic City the day
before the weigh-in, “The Boxing Prince,” obviously
knowing he would never make the
weight, held the floor for fifteen minutes, rapping
away like he didn’t have a care in the pugilistic
world. Boxing breeds some strange cats
indeed.
For his part, Bobby Rooney ran into Al
Mussachio in a Taj Mahal bar after the fight
and admitted that the younger Mussachio’s
educated left jab had simply been too much
for him. “But we had fun, didn’t we, Al?” he
asked. Spoken like a true sportsman.
The Mussachio-Rooney bout had been moved
up to the main event of the evening because
Camden’s Prince Badi, who was to defend his
National Boxing Association light heavyweight
title against Brookyn’s Daniel Judah, weighed
in at ten pounds over the 175-pound limit,
and was disqualified. At a press conference at
the Ducktown Tavern in Atlantic City the day
before the weigh-in, “The Boxing Prince,” obviously
knowing he would never make the
weight, held the floor for fifteen minutes, rapping
away like he didn’t have a care in the pugilistic
world. Boxing breeds some strange cats
indeed.
For his part, Bobby Rooney ran into Al
Mussachio in a Taj Mahal bar after the fight
and admitted that the younger Mussachio’s
educated left jab had simply been too much
for him. “But we had fun, didn’t we, Al?” he
asked. Spoken like a true sportsman.
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