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

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Nor was he a mug as a fighter. In the twelfth round of their first fight, Schmeling hauled down Joe's star. Joe, who'd grown complacent in the glow of adulation, hadn't trained well. Max had. The German belted Louis senseless and left him shaking his head as he sat bewildered, hurt, and friendless on the canvas. Max deserved his win; he'd done it on the night, and Joe had let himself down. That's sports. It should neither have vindicated Nazism nor demeaned Louis. But it did both those things in many people's eyes, for reasons that now seem obvious but did not seem so at the time.

The picture of Joe Louis sitting on the canvas staring into the middle distance, with the German standing over him, was one America did not want to look at. It was the worst sort of news for the other main players, too. Especially for Joe Gould. Initially, he'd wanted Braddock to fight Louis sooner rather than later because he knew that was the one big go he and his fighter would ever have at making a pile. The apparently foolproof plan that emerged after the Braddock–Baer fight was to build Louis and mothball Braddock. Nobody counted on Schmeling beating Louis.