Aged 16 the young Vicent started on his short lived dream of being a professional boxer, although his career started with a loss he soon get into the swing of things and managed to amount a respectable 21-3 record before facing Jimmy Slade. Slade would stop Gigante in the 7th round as a result of cuts and spell the end of Gigante's professional boxing career. Aged just 19 Gigante waved good bye to boxing and became ever more involved in the Genovese crime family.
In the 1950's Gigante's involvement with the Genovese family became more and more sinister. What started off as a bit of illegal gambling and Auto-Theft soon became attempted murder as Gigante was ordered to shoot Frank Costello. Thankfully for Gigante Costello refused to identify him and he was acquitted for the attempted murder the following year.
Gigante's involvement would continue to get more and more serious and by the early 1980's he had become the boss of the Genovese family. As the boss Gigante would often be found wondering around in his pyjama's in the park which saw him dubbed “The Oddfather” as he tried to give off the impression that he was mentally ill. This act as well as his “paranoid” allowed Gigante to run the families business with out too many issues until 1990, when he was finally arrested for racketeering and murder. During his reign at the top Gigant would rarely leave the house empty and rarely make phone calls instead using a messenger to give his orders out.
Despite being arrested in 1990 it took years before they could eventually try Gigante who's act of being mentally ill continued despite his arrest. This was helped further with witnesses testifying that Gigante was in no fit state to be tried with his own family coming forward and claiming he had an IQ in the high 60's and wouldn't know how to run a Mafia family. In fact so good was Gigante's acting that psychiatrists had claimed he had been insane since the the 1960's, it wasn't until a trial in 2003 that Gigante actually admitted that he had been feigning his mental illness. Soon after coming clean about his mental health Gigante's psychical health started to decline and in 2005, aged 77 Gigante passed away.
Whilst his boxing career was short and somewhat underwhelming, it's hard not view Vincent Gigante as one of the most weird and wonderful stories that boxing has had it's hand in. A whirlwind 3 year boxing career followed by a climb to the top of one of the biggest Mafia Families.
Picture courtesy of the FBI.