Joe Louis' record - held title for 12 years

by A.C. de Silva

FLASHBACK: Joe Louis was a champion boxer many years ago. He became a champion and made plenty of money through boxing. When an ardent fan told him that he should have boxed a little longer, Joe said: "No, when I was boxing I made five million dollars and wound up broke, owing the government a million. If I was boxing much later, I'd make 10 million dollars and still I would have wound up broke, owing the government yet a handsome amount."

The great boxer lived a month less than 67 years. He was the heavyweight champion of the world in an era when the heavyweight champion was, in view of many, the greatest man of the world. He held the title for 12 years defended it 25 times and retired undefeated.

Not once in 66 years was he known to letter a world of complaint or bitterness or offer an excuse for anything. To be sure, he had nothing to make excuses about.

In 71 recorders fights he lost three times, on a knock-out by Max Schmeling before he won the championship, on a decision to Ezzard Charles when he tried to regain the title and finally on a knock-out by Rocky Marciano when that young man was on his way to the top.

Dignity and candour

Joe had just celebrated his 21st birthday when he came to New York the first time. That was 1935, yet some people still saw any black man as the stereotype darkes, who loved dancing and watermelon. Some news photographers brought a watermelon and asked Joe to pose eating a slice. He refused saying he didn't like watermelon.

At 21, this unlettered son of Alabama sharecropper shade the perception to realise what the pictures would employ and the quiet dignity to have no past of the charade. Dignity was always a word that applied to him. Dignity and candour.

Early in Muhammad Ali's splendid reign as heavyweight champion, he hired Joe as an "adviser' and they appeared on television together.

"Joe you really think you coulda whopped me?", Ali said.

"When I had the title", Joe said.

"I went on what they called a bum-of-the-month tour."

Ali's voice rose three octaves. "You mean I'm bum?"

"You woulda been on the tour", Joe told his new employer.

'On God's Side'

During World War II Joe defended his championship against Buddy Baer for the benefit of the Naval Relief Fund. Wendell Wilkie defeated candidate for President of the United States, made a resounding speech in the ring. "And you, Max Baer", he said, "and you Joe Louie."

Earlier that day Harry Markson, then doing publicity on Mike Jacobs' promotions in Madison Square Garden, offered to write a few words for Joe in case he was called on to speak, Joe said no, thanks, he wouldn't be invited.

To his surprise, he was asked to address the crowd. Unprepared though he was, he said a few all together appropriate words, assuming listeners that America would win the war "because we're on God's side".

Dignity if memory serves, Buddy Baer wasn't called on. Before the first round ended, he couldn't speak, being unconscious.

This story has been told before, but perhaps it will bear repeating. Before Floyd Patterson's second match with Sonny Liston, the one in Las Vegas, a visitor remarked to Joe that every time Floyd talked with the Press he spoke of losing. "If I lose, if I lose bad, if I'm humiliated," he would start over again at the bottom and work his way back to main events.

The greatest

"A fighter can't think that way." Joe said, "and he can't talk that way."

"It seems to me," his companion said, "that any time a man of intelligence goes into an athletic contest, he realises that he stands a chance of losing."

"Oh, I think I recognised," Joe said. "Especially when I was first starting out scared. After I won the title I didn't think about it no more.

Oh! I knew that if I kept on fighting, some guy would come along and take the title away from me, but not this guy, never."

Joe Louis may very well have been the greatest fighter who ever lived. Companions with Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney and others are foolish, though there is no shadow of doubt here that he would have caught and destroyed Muhammad Ali as he caught Billy Conn and other skilful boxers.

At the top of his game, he would have out boxed Rocky Marcian and perhaps have taken him out, though after 49 fights without a defeat or draw. Rocky said he had never been dazed by a punch, even the punches that floored him. Joe's aging legs betrayed him when he finally fought Marciano.

That was his last competitive match, though he boxed a few exhibitions afterwards. Marciano knocked him out of the ring in the eight round, and afterwards Joe lay on his stomach on a rubbing table with his right ear pillowed on a towel.

He wore his faded dressing gown of blue and red, with a raincoat spread over it. His left hand was in a bucket of ice on the floor and a handler massaged his left ear with ice. With his face squashed against the padding of the table, newspapermen had to kneel with their herds close to his lips to hear his words.

He said that the best man had won. Asked whether Marciano could hit harder than Schmeling, who had knocked him out 15 years earlier, Joe said: "This kid knocked me out with what? Two punches. Schmeling knocked me out with - musta been a hundred punches. But I was 22 years old then. You take more then than later on."

"Did age count.... Joe?"

"Ugh," Joe said, and bobbed his head. Well, that was Joe Louis Barrow all over again.