Never before had there been so many people crammed into Manhattan’s Madison Square Garden. Besides the 23,000 who filled every seat to the rafters, there were thousands standing three-deep. Outside, police formed a wall around the Garden to keep all but ticket holders away.
The crowd had gone to see a prize fight. More than that, they had gone to cheer a gallant little Negro: spindle-shanked, kinky-haired Henry Armstrong. Two years ago, at 25, Henry Armstrong held three world’s championships (featherweight, lightweight, welterweight), a feat unmatched by any other fisticuffer, white or black. He renounced his featherweight title, lost his lightweight crown to Lou Ambers. Then, last October, after defending his welterweight championship 19 times, the little tornado, whose gameness and stamina made him one of the most extraordinary fighters of all time, lost the last of his crowns to Fritzie Zivic, youngest of Pittsburgh’s five “Fighting Zivics.”
Last week little Henry faced Zivic again, in a do-or-die attempt to win back the welterweight title. Armstrong had just received the Neil Memorial Trophy, annually awarded to the most praiseworthy fighter of the year. He will take Zivic this time, fight fans figured, now that surgeons have removed the bothersome scar tissue from around his eyes. But before the first round was over, the crowd realized how wrong they were. Instead of his customary windmill attack, Armstrong tried to box, scarcely landed a blow. In awesome silence they watched round after round. The tiny dynamo, after ten years of punching, was running down at last. Gamely he swung, but Zivic landed two for one. By the fifth round, Armstrong’s eyes were dripping blood. By the tenth, he looked like an idiot, face swollen, eyes closed, mouth open.
Then suddenly the fans rose to their feet in a roaring mass. As if some unseen transformer had hooked on a new supply of power, Armstrong was the dynamo of days gone by. His little fists smashed Zivic with savage fury. It was a superhuman rally, one its witnesses will never forget. But it was too late. After 52 seconds of the 12th round, Referee Arthur Donovan stopped the fight. Three times (after the eighth, ninth and tenth rounds) he had peered anxiously at Armstrong’s wounds. His eleventh-round warning—”Just one more round, Henry”—had spurred the chocolate soldier to his last stand.
At his doctor’s office, after the fight, Armstrong joined his manager, Eddie Mead, who had brought him up from California’s breadlines to nationwide headlines. Mead, recovering from a recent heart attack, had been forbidden to watch the fight or even listen to it on the radio. With tears streaming down his cheeks, he blubbered: “You’ll never put on another glove, Henry.” Henry soberly agreed that he had heard his last bell.
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