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

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According to Jimmy Breslin, Madden took Runyon to one of his fancy apartments one night, a penthouse at the top of the London Terrace block on 23rd and Ninth Avenue. From the rooftop, they could see his brewery. Staying in the apartment were Ray Arcel, who would go on to become one of boxing's most revered trainers, and his fighter, Charley “Phil” Rosenberg. Madden was now entrenched in the boxing business and had arranged for Rosenberg to fight Eddie “Cannonball” Martin for the world bantamweight title. Rosenberg was in his apartment because Madden wanted to keep an eye on the challenger's diet. To that end, he also installed in the swanky apartment Charley Phil's cook, his mother.

Come fight night, Madden bet $1,000—on Martin, because he didn't think Phil had been eating right. Charley Phil cut the champ to pieces. Owney was livid.

Madden is sometimes overlooked in the history of gangsterism's grip on boxing, but it was during the turbulent thirties that he was at the height of his dubious powers. Along with Schultz and Vincent “Mad Dog” Coll (whom he'd later help kill), Owney had a piece of the world heavyweight champion Primo Carnera—even though, as far as the National Boxing Association was concerned, the champ's managers were Louis Soreci, Billy Duffy, and Walter Friedman. Next to Joe “The Human Punch Bag” Grim, who was knocked down at least eighty times and won maybe four of 113 verified contests in the thirteen years leading up to the Great War, Carnera was the most pathetic figure in all of boxing. At the end, he owned less than 10 percent of himself.