Sport: Sham Battle

“It was a lousy fight,” admitted Heavyweight Champion Joe Louis. Thirteen thousand fight fans, gathered in Boston’s Garden, heartily agreed. They had come to see Joe Louis defend his title against Al McCoy (real name: Florien La Brasseur). They knew it would be one-sided. McCoy, a local oldtimer who had been crouching around New England for ten years, had been licked by young Billy Conn only a few weeks before. But the crowd was hardly prepared for the sham battle it saw.

Instead of the expected Blitzkrieg knockout, Louis shuffled as if his mind was on his Christmas shopping. He landed a few good punches, but for every one he landed, he missed two. When the bell rang for the sixth round, McCoy, for no good reason except that his left eye was swollen shut, remained in his corner.

“His eye was in such bad shape that a blow might have impaired his sight,” explained McCoy’s trainer. But Boston’s dumfounded fight fans booed and whistled. Joe Louis recently agreed to defend his championship once a month—against second-raters like Red Burman, Gus Dorazio, Tony Novak, Abe Simon. If the rest of this series of fights—cooked up by his co-managers, John Roxborough, Julian Black, and Promoter Mike Jacobs—make Louis look as mediocre as he did in Boston, they may not work out badly for Messrs. Roxborough and Black. They had scheduled Louis for an outdoor fight with Billy Conn next June. If by that time people think the champ is slipping, they may get a big gate then.