Читать книгу Jacobs Beach. The Mob, the Garden and the Golden Age of Boxing онлайн

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The wise guys who owned boxing also owned the heart and soul and much of the bank account of the heavyweight regarded then as the best there ever was. Joe Louis, the champ everyone loved, was a balding shadow with debts, a failing marriage, and a mind in decline by the time he sold the title to the IBC. Kefauver was as knowledgeable a boxing fan as most American males of his time and was saddened by the spectacle of Louis passing on the championship he had once valued so highly. Despite the best efforts of the senator and other do-gooders, though, the Mafia continued to control most of boxing's significant world titles for several years. And, sad as it is to acknowledge, it was Joe Louis, his faculties already shredded, whose gentle nature and lack of financial alternatives made it possible.

Not every fight in the Garden in that decade was a predetermined result. But regular bettors went there whispering. Often they trudged home scowling, stepping over ripped-up betting slips as they made their way toward the subway station on 50th Street, for the old Eighth Avenue Independent or the West Side IRT. Many a journey home from the Garden would be filled with loud discussions about the antecedents and social connections of the judges and referees. And nearly every discussion of a night at the fights was peppered with two words: the Mob.