Sport: Heavyweight Happenings

To that portion of the U. S. public which feels aggrieved unless the holder of the world’s heavyweight prizefighting championship is an A-1specimen, the years since 1928 have been even sadder than for the rest of the world. Since Gene Tunney retired, the incumbents of this choice eminence have been uniformly unsatisfactory. Last week was the summer’s busiest in heavyweight circles. In it, the promise of a happier era: 1) flickered darkly on the heavyweight horizon and 2) went out.

Flicker, Prime requisite of a heavyweight champion is that he be a superfighter. To prove that he is still the superfighter that boxing experts considered him until Max Schmeling gave him a workman-like beating last June, was the task that confronted Detroit’s coffee-colored, 22-year-old Joe Louis. More specifically, Louis’ job last week was to knock out Boston’s 33-year-old Jack Sharkey, now back in the ring, after two years’ retirement, to secure additional working capital for his none too prosperous Boston barroom.

Grown paunchy but no more quarrelsome during his absence from the ring, Fisticuffer Sharkey came cautiously out of his corner in New York’s Yankee Stadium, dabbed tentatively at his opponent until Louis’ right fist exploded on his jaw. Thereafter his efforts, devoted exclusively to self-defense, were even less successful. Louis scored two knockdowns in the second round, two more in the third. After the fourth knockdown Fisticuffer Sharkey shook his head, removed his rubber mouth-guard, lay down while the referee counted him out. Next day. sports writers told what they thought had happened: Fisticuffer Louis had resumed functioning as a “superfighter.”

Out. Two years after Tunney’s retirement, Sharkey and Schmeling, final survivors of a prolonged elimination tournament, fought for the title. Schmeling won on a foul. In 1932 Schmeling lost the title to Sharkey on points. In 1933 Sharkey lost it to Camera. In 1934 Camera lost it to Baer. In 1935 Baer lost it to James J. Braddock who, of his preceding 25 fights, had contrived to win only ten. To enable Braddock, whose shortcomings were increased by the unanimous if somewhat unreasonable sports-page definition of his character as “colorless,” to gain a living from the title he had so unexpectedly acquired, was the job of the Irish champion’s Jewish manager, wily little Joe Gould. An unemployed dockworker a few months before he won the title, Braddock has since totally refrained from fighting while making $150.000 out of exhibition bouts, refereeing, sales of a parlor game called Knockout.

When Schmeling unexpectedly knocked out Joe Louis last June, the next major fight in prospect was Schmeling v. Braddock. Either because wily little Joe Gould considers Schmeling more likely than Louis to beat his fighter or because, supposing that the feat can be accomplished by either, he would prefer to have it done by Louis who is sure to draw a bigger crowd, Manager Gould has never shown much eagerness to have the Schmeling v. Braddock fight take place.

Last week, as soon as Louis’ defeat of Sharkey re-established Louis as a front-rank contender, Manager Gould appeared in the offices of the New York State Athletic Commission with what the prizefight industry regarded as a masterful “out” for Braddock’s not fighting Schmeling. Gould’s excuse would not only permit the champion to continue making reasonably

Are Iowa convicts now bragging? large sums from sidelines but also, by postponing the fight almost a whole year, would leave ample time for the notoriously undependable Athletic Commission to reverse its ruling that Braddock must fight Schmeling before anyone else. The “out” consisted of x-ray photographs and a statement to the effect that Champion Braddock was suffering from arthritis of both elbows and the little finger of his left hand. According to Dr. Fred Albee, Manhattan bone specialist, who two years ago drew censure of the New York County Medical Society when the Seaboard Air Line Railway publicized his Venice, Fla. hospital, Champion Braddock’s arthritis was too severe to allow him to start training before Sept. 15 at the earliest. Even if Braddock started training on Sept. 15, he would lack time to prepare for an outdoor fight this season. Indoor arenas are too small for heavyweight championship fights.

Disgruntled by the assurance that he would have to wait until next June at least to achieve his ambition of being the first heavyweight on record to recapture the championship, Fisticuffer Schmeling last week set off for Berlin on the first boat he could catch. It happened to be the Bremen, on which Communists made a great whoop-dedo against Nazi intervention in Spain (see p. 13).

Meanwhile Fisticuffer Braddock found a new $35-per-week salesman for his game of Knockout in the toothless person of one John McGrath who did his best to balance the champion’s reputation by a colorful description of his own romantic past. He explained that the recollection of their boyhood friendship had prompted Fisticuffer Braddock to persuade Iowa’s Governor Clyde Herring to have him re-leased on parole from the reformatory at Anamosa where he had been serving a ten-year sentence for stealing a bottle of beer. Exulted Ex-Convict McGrath when he was met by his new employer: “Boy, if the guys at Anamosa could only see me now. Say, I’ll bet those guys are bragging already that they know me. I’m probably the luckiest guy who ever got out of stir.”