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The this-should-be-made-into-a-movie life of Joey Eye began in 1969 in Palermo, Sicily, when his 14-year-old mother and 35-year-old father gave him up for adoption. He was sent to Philadelphia.
He grew up as “a little curly-haired Italian kid” in a rough Irish-German neighborhood in North Philadelphia (“that built character”) and later found comfort among the paesani in South Philadelphia (“growing up Italian meant everything to me”).
In his boxing days, Joey Eye was called “The Tiny Terror.”
“I got beaten up a lot, but I didn’t want to have anything to do with fighting,” he said in the premiere episode of “Eye on the Prize,” his podcast and multimedia effort on the boxing and movie businesses.
But then in 1978, he was cast in “Rocky II,” playing one of the first kids to accompany the legendary boxer up the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s 72 steps. “I ran home to my father and said ‘I want to be a fighter.’ I’m Italian. I’m left-handed. I’m small. I want to be just like Rocky.”
That role led to careers in boxing (as an amateur fighter in 1979, going pro in 1992 and famously as the cutman who treats injured fighters between rounds, in fights around the world) and entertainment (100 or so appearances in movies, series, commercials and music videos, plus his own talk show).
Joey Eye hangs with his co-star Sylvester Stallone. He appeared in four “Rocky”
movies, playing himself in “Creed.” | PHOTOS COURTESY OF JOEY EYE
Along the way, he has also run a pizzeria, a restaurant, a cement operation, an auto repair shop, a bake-at-home business for tomato pies and since 1998 an auto salvage operation, now Hercules Auto Salvage in Haddon Heights, N.J., where he lives. He often speaks to schoolchildren visiting South Philadelphia’s History of Italian Immigration Museum, where most
of a room is filled with mementos of his life. “The tour goes from Columbus to Vespucci to me, but they’re dead,” he joked.
“Have no regrets,” he tells them. “Don’t be the woulda, shoulda, coulda guy. Do whatever you want, as long as it’s legal. Don’t let people tell you that you can’t do something. I was told my whole life I was too short [5-foot-2], wasn’t good-looking enough [31 broken noses], wasn’t smart enough or didn’t have enough money. I never turned anything down. Get it all in and make your mark in this world.”
Joey has made his mark.
His full name is Giuseppe Tommaso Agostino Intrieri, with the two middle names honoring his grandfathers. Nobody, not even the bank, calls him that. And that calls for a story.
One day his grandmother saw a gruesome Daily News photo of him taking a punch. “My father says ‘You gotta see your grandmother. She thinks you’re dead.’ I go see her and say ‘I’m fine.’ She says ‘That boxing’s no good. And I don’t like that our name is on your pants. And if your grandfather was still alive, he wouldn’t like it. That gives us a bad name.’
As a kid, everybody called me Joey Eye anyway because they couldn’t say my last name. So I became Joey Eye, and it worked out perfectly because when I became a cutman, I’m the guy to fix your bleeding, on your eyes and everything.”
As a youngster, he ran track, wrestled and played football and baseball. After “Rocky II,” he committed himself to learning how to be a boxer, and he later wrestled and boxed professionally. “As a fighter, you’re always chasing for that high, always a showman,” he said in an interview. Unfortunately, a bad knee injury meant an early end to his career as “the Tiny Terror,” a 135-pound lightweight. “I have two bad knees, probably from running five miles in the streets every day for boxing and being on your hands and knees all the time with the cement,” he said.
He took courses at the Community College of Philadelphia. He took on other opportunities. He weighed options in boxing-related careers, such as being a promoter, gym owner, manager and trainer.
“I didn’t want to be a promoter, because promoters are always losing money,” he said. “I didn’t want to be a gym owner, because there’s no money in having a gym. I didn’t want to be a manager, because you do everything for the fighters, and then they jump ship. I didn’t want to be a trainer, because fighters aren’t like horses – they think they know everything. Guess what? I did every damn one of those things.”
He was just a teenager when he started as a cutman, who tends to the wounds of boxers and mixed martial artists in the frenetic time between rounds – sometimes handling both fighters in a match, sometimes handling every athlete on the night’s lineup. It’s technically a minute, but he figures it’s at best 45 seconds, considering the time to get in and out of the ring.
His toolkit as “a street doctor” includes gauze, tape, Vaseline, coagulants, an ice bucket and “enswells” – small compresses of refrigerated metal used to reduce eye swelling, including one that he invented. After fights, he’ll also use stitches and glue to patch up wounds so fighters don’t have to go to the hospital. And he has strong opinions about hospitals: “I don’t belong in
an emergency room, and a doctor doesn’t belong in the corner” of the ring. “I got it down to a science,” he said. “I think blood is afraid of me at this point.”
As the cutman, “you have a guy’s career – and his life – in your hands. We should have T-shirts that say ‘manager 30%, trainer 10%, cutman priceless.’ We’re the ones that make the least amount of money. But we’re like car insurance. If nothing happens, you still gotta pay us.” Time for another joke: “The blood’s red, and the money’s green. Two of my favorite colors, and not just
because I’m Italian.”
He learned by doing and getting pointers from Hall of Fame cutmen – such as Eddie “The Clot” Aliano, Adolf “Little Abie” Ritacco and Stan “the Cutman” Maliszewski – in gyms, bars and fire stations.
Joey worked on three more “Rocky” movies: Acting in “Rocky V” and “Rocky Balboa” and serving as technical advisor and playing himself in “Creed.” As an actor, he recognizes his type, noting that he’s been in “a lot of prison movies, mob movies, boxing movies.” He has also appeared in “The Sopranos” and demonstrated his breadth of skills working as a producer, stuntman and set decorator – plus using cutman skills to save the life of a stranger who had fallen near where he had been filming.
No wonder he’s been followed several times by people trying to create reality series about him.
He’s in four boxing halls of fame and nominated for several more. After being named cutman of the year for 15 years by Salute to Philly Boxers, he asked to step aside and let others earn the honor. They agreed, and he now presents the Joey Eye Award, decorated with his eyeball logo.
One of his latest ventures is writing, producing, directing and co-starring in “The Sharkey Twins,” a series that he hopes to sell to Netflix. The comedy follows two “half-assed wannabe mobsters,” with many elements of the eight episodes shot so far based on his own life. He plays Louie, and longtime friend Sonny Vellozzi plays his mismatched twin.
Joey and his wife Nancy (half Italian, half Armenian) have made sure to bring up their children with Italian foods, including Friday pizza (they prefer tomato pie) and Sunday dinner (with all the people and all the traditions). “We’ve made sure the kids know where they’re from,” he said. “Without us Italians, Americans would still be eating hotdogs and hamburgers and living in log cabins.”
Son Vinny works as a mechanic at Hercules. Son Joey is a barber. Daughter Gianna is studying art in college. And son Nicky is preparing to move to New York to study acting, singing and dancing.
Joey visited Sicily for the first time in 2024, and he knew that he fit into the physicality of Sicilians, with multiple people telling him “You were born right here.”
Although he’s only 56 and plans on a lot of years yet to live, he has already contemplated his burial. “I want that big eyeball on it,” he said. “But I want a mausoleum. I don’t want to be buried. After all those years in the cement business, I’ve spent enough time digging holes in the ground.”
Ken Mammarella was born in Delaware and has lived most of his life in the Delaware Valley. His heritage on both sides of his family goes back to Abruzzo.
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