Giuseppe Barnes

From The Great Outdoor Fight

Giuseppe Barnes (1866-1905), a.k.a. "Joey Milano", was the son of Malcolm Barnes, a Scottish born Civil War veteran, and Filomena D'Agostino, the only child of a formerly powerful California wine family. The D'Agostinos had been in California since the Gold Rush, and were well on their way to establishing a successful Italian-style vineyard in the Napa Valley region. They had just released the first successful vintage of their California Nebbiolo wine when the phylloxera epidemic wiped out their vines. The family never recovered from the devastating financial shock, and were reduced to paupers.

Filomena, having been raised in luxury, found herself working as a barmaid in some of the seedier saloons outside of Sacramento. It was in one of those saloons that a brief encounter with Sergeant Malcolm Barnes (9th New York "Hawkins Zouaves") led to the conception of young Giuseppe Barnes. Though Filomena and Malcolm never married, Giuseppe was given his father's last name. Malcolm drank himself to death in 1868, and Filomena decided to fight back against her dead boyfriend, her impoverished parents, and the lecherous abuses of her employer and customers. Filomena became a powerful figure in the growing Temperence/Prohibition movement, while at the same time becoming engaged in the early vegetarian/health food craze of the late 19th century.

Giuseppe was raised on naught but grains, rice, and boiled vegetables. Being the only vegetarian in several hundred miles meant that Giuseppe was regularly ridiculed and beaten by his classmates, random passers-by, and even the Sisters of Mercy at St. Benedict's. Rage and shame drove Giuseppe to the woods, where he would spend months at a time eating raw squirrels, climbing trees, and hauling boulders. Giuseppe spent the majority of his adolescence and early adulthood in the wilderness, becoming a burly mountain man. However, in honor of his now-deceased mother, during his brief incursions into town he never touched alcohol.

In an effort to win the cash and fame necessary to begin a new life, Giuseppe entered the Great Outdoor Fight of 1890, a fight that found itself haplessly populated by many young dandies wearing red striped suits and straw boaters. The popular formation of "four guys singing in harmony" did not fare well against raw feral rage, and Giuseppe spent most of the first day clobbering anyone who did so much as whistle. His experience wrestling mountain lions and bears served him well for the second day, and the endurance learned by attending his mother's lengthy temperance meetings gave him stamina on the third day. Giuseppe did not fall into a fugue state or engage in any similar rages; to him the Great Outdoor Fight was simply an extension of what he'd been doing since the age of twelve. He was pronounced the first Champion of Italian heritage.

In the years following the GOF, Giuseppe tried to settle down, but was unable to stay in one place. Itchy feet drove him to ride the trains, using his fame to pick up cash in small towns along the way. He was usually lucky to find a carnival or county fair in which he could parlay his Champion status into some cold hard cash. Lots of drunk farmers in Hicksville wanted to take a swing at the Winner of '90, and more often than not Giuseppe came out on top.

Following a tour of Europe after the turn of the century, Giuseppe found himself in Russia during a turbulent time, with much unrest amongst the working class towards the Tsar and the imperial family. Having tried vodka (he was told it was "little water") for the first time in his life, and drinking far too much of it, he joined a group of disgruntled coopers in a mass protest outside the Tsar's Winter Palace. Barnes died under a hail of bullets in St. Petersburg, Russia on "Bloody Sunday", January 22, 1905. He was posthumously honored as a Hero of the Soviet Union in a private ceremony by Nikita Khrushchev in 1961.

Giuseppe Barnes remains one of the most popular GOF champions in history, a fact that undoubtedly owes much credit to the 1906 opera, La Lotta Grande, which portrays Barnes' rise to fame. The role was first, and most famously portrayed, by tenor Enrico Caruso