37) Max Schmeling KO1: America: The Story of the US TV - Bert Randolph Sugar - Adolf Hitler - Henry Louis Gates junior - NBC Radio Commentary - Clem McCarthy - US Fight Commentary TV -
A rematch is arranged. But this time it’ll be the fight that involves the whole world. Though attacked in the press Joe just keeps training ... June 22nd 1938: the rematch finally takes place. The hype is at fever pitch. Seventy thousand people pour into the Yankee Stadium in New York to watch the fight live. Seventy million people tune in via radio across the country. Over one hundred million listen in around the world. The biggest audience to that date for anything anywhere. The fight is no longer just about boxing, it’s a battle of ideologies as Joe Louis knew too well. America: The Story of the US: Bust
In two minutes and four seconds, Joe Louis not only destroyed Max Schmeling, he destroyed the myth of Aryan supremacy. Bert Randolph Sugar
There were pickets outside. There was a lot of turmoil in the stadium – Yankee Stadium. This was a massive event. Bert Randolph Sugar
This wasn’t a boxing match; it was a political event. Bert Randolph Sugar
We are with you. Adolf Hitler, telegram to Max Schmeling
The second Joe Louis/Max Schmeling fight took on a proportion far greater than any other fight in the history of boxing ... For one of the first times, if not the first time in American history, American symbolically was being represented by a black man. Professor Henry Louis Gates junior, Harvard University
v Max Schmeling 22nd June 1938 New York [r1] ... Louis with the old one-two ... Louis is following him ... Shoots over a hard right to Max’s head ... A right to the head, a left to the head, a right, Schmeling is going down ... is down ... is up ... And Schmeling is down. The count is five! Five … six … seven … eight. Men are in the ring. The fight is over on a technical knock-out. NBC radio commentary, cited Ringside Rivalries
This was the greatest fight of our generation. Clem McCarthy NBC
v Max Schmeling Joe 22nd June 1938 New York [r1] ... Explosive right to the jaw hurts Max Schmeling. Joe all over Max Schmeling here in round one ... A dynamite right to the jaw and Max Schmeling goes down ... A crushing right explodes on Schmeling’s jaw. US fight commentary
40) Tony Galento TKO4: Tony Galento - Peter Wilson -
I'll moider da bum. Tony Galento
Shakespeare? I ain’t never heard of him. He’s not in no ratings. I suppose he’s one of dem foreign heavyweights. They’re all lousy. Sure as hell I’ll moider dat bum!’ Tony Galento
The first time I saw Tony Galento he was posed, in the old army phrase, ‘like Venus on a rock cake’, his shorts at half-mast and someone with a huge flat-iron smoothing out the bulges in his hairy, overlapping belly! I expressed some slight surprise at this new method of training but I was informed tersely that it would ‘make a swell shot for one of the tabloids’. Peter Wilson, I'll Moider da Bum
Although he was only 29 he had had 103 fights and, despite the fact that he had lost over 20 of them, he had never been knocked out, although he had been stopped, usually on cut eyes. ibid.
One of the more memorable occasions was when Galento and his bevy of sparring partners were seen on the highway doing their daily roadwork … Two-Ton Tony lounged in the back of a luxurious limousine, taking no more exercise than was required to support a cigar the size of a medium walking stick. ibid.
Apart from one dereliction of duty before the first Schmeling fight – for which he had paid so dearly – Louis was always in the peak of condition and it must have astounded him to meet an opponent who, in Joe’s own words: ‘Was a saloon keeper, and from the looks of him must have had a drink with every customer.’ ibid.
Even though the odds were eight to one against ‘The Barrel Who Walked Like a Man’ that didn’t prevent something like 35,000 people paying good solid money to see just what would happen when the bell went. ibid.
And still the ordeal was not over. For when he got back to his dressing-room, it was discovered that he needed stitches all over his face and mouth – including his tongue which had also been badly torn. And he refused to have any anaesthetic, local or otherwise, while the stitches were inserted! ibid.
51) Billy Conn I KO13: UK Fight Commentary TV - Billy Conn - Daily Mirror - Bert Randolph Sugar -
v Billy Conn18th June 1941 Polo Grounds New York 1941 [r13] ... Louis so phlegmatic in the ring. No sign of emotion on his face. Oh! Good right hand from Conn – and following up with a good left hook ... Joe Louis is hanging on in desperation ... The smaller man senses victory ... Joe Louis maybe, maybe, has to find a knockout to turn this round. Dramatic fight here ... Conn flat-footed now ... That left hook – and there it goes again ... Good right hand though from Louis ... It’s toe to toe war in there ... Another right hand, and a left hook, and he’s gone down. All those rounds of superiority to no avail. UK modern fight commentary
What’s the sense of being Irish if you can’t be stupid? Bill Conn, after fight in dressing room
Conn KO’d In 13th With Victory Near. Daily Mirror headline
Nothing like the first fight. Bert Randolph Sugar
56) Billy Conn II KO8: Joe Louis -
The army was no easy thing, but compared with what I had to go through next, it was a song. I knew I had to make some money. Mike Jacobs knew it too; I owed him $100,000. Joe Louis with Edna and Art Rust, A Hell of a Way to End the Year
Mike have even put the ringside seats at one hundred dollars apiece. Funny how that came about. A newspaper man came up to Mike’s office and asked him the price of ringside tickets. Mike was just joking when he said one hundred dollars. Nobody ever heard of a price like that for a ticket in those days. You know something, that newspaperman went out and put that ridiculous price in the paper. The real knocker is that people started calling on the phone and buying those tickets. Mike said, what the hell, if they’ll pay that amount to see the fight, leave it. And that’s how one hundred-dollar tickets got started. ibid.
I owed Uncle Sam $81,000 in back taxes, and he was waiting there in line, too. ibid.
I told Marshall Miles and Mannie Seamon before the eighth round started that I was going to go out and punch to see if Billy could take it. I got in three hard and opened up a cut under his left eye with a right-hand shot. His knees buckled with a right to the chin. Then I gave him a left hook and a right cross, and he was flat on his back. The referee counted him out 2:19 of round eight. ibid.
58) Jersey Joe Walcott Points split decision 15: Joe Louis -
In round one, Walcott hit me with a bunch of left jabs and hook right away. When I pressed forward, Walcott stopped dancing long enough and hit me with a solid right to my jaw and floored me for a two count. I lost my head then, and I tried to take him out with lefts and rights, but Walcott ran away. Joe Louis with Edna and Art Rust, A Hell of a Way to End the Year
This was the first time in my fighting profession the fans weren’t with me. Those boos went right down to my bones. I felt a depression I had never felt before. It was one hell of a way to end the year. ibid.