After College

After college Gig trained in boxing and excelled which was expected since his father was a middle weight boxing champion in the Army. Gig’s father was also the former Chief Inspector of the New Jersey Athletic Boxing Commission and was a childhood friend, former home heating oil business partner and co worker at the New Jersey Athletic Boxing Commission with Jersey Joe Walcott the former Heavyweight Champion of the World and former New Jersey Athletic Boxing Commissioner.

Gig does not view himself as great at any sport but rather just a decent athlete with good speed. He ran a 40 yard dash in 4.35 seconds, and possibly even faster. He was timed by his college coach in August or September 1979 after turning 18 years of age in June 1979. Prior to his official preseason soccer training, before his freshman year in college. That speed is faster than almost every professional athlete in every sport, even by today’s standards. Gig was never timed again. However, athletes get bigger, stronger and faster after the age of 18 and throughout their 20’s. And some even into their 30’s. Athletes are faster by their senior year in college, compared to prior to their freshman year. After their senior year is when athletes are timed at the NFL scouting combine for those seeking a career in professional football. It would have been very interesting to know what Gig’s fastest speed was. If Gig could have been able to maintain his top speed of the 40 yard dash over 100 meters it would have been Olympic qualifying speed. But Gig does not believe he was strong enough to have sustained his top speed over that distance. Especially not at the age of eighteen before his freshman year in college.

Gig regrets never playing football and baseball, particularly since his father played both semi professionally and an uncle (Gig’s father’s brother) played baseball professionally. Gig would have also liked to have started boxing and fighting mixed martial arts at a young age.

Currently, Gig’s favorite sport is mixed martial arts fighting, better known as the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) style. In 2008 in Las Vegas Gig met and had a conversation at Gold’s Gym with professional wrestler “The Undertaker” Mark Calaway who is Gig’s age, who stated to Gig that if he were younger he too would be an MMA fighter. Mark was in Las Vegas for a pay per view event with the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) at the Thomas and Mack Center and Gig thinks Mark was competing in the WWE Heavyweight Title match. Mark told Gig some behind the scenes details about how the WWE operates, who makes the decision about his finishing move, and when wrestlers learn about who is going to win their matches. If Gig ever decides to write a book he says that he might include this information in the book.

Years earlier, probably in the 1990’s, at Bally’s Fitness in New Jersey, Gig met two other World Wresting Federation (WWF), now called the WWE, professional wrestlers who were in town for a pay per view event at the Spectrum Arena in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and if Gig writes a book he said he will include the details of his conversation with them too. One piece of information that Gig will share is that one of the two professional wrestlers in New Jersey asked Gig what he thought of their performance which was televised the previous day, and if Gig thought it looked “real”, “believable” and “good”. Gig was surprised that he was asking him that when the professional wrestler asking had an actual black eye. Gig also did not understand why the wrestler valued Gig’s opinion when they just met.