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

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“Mike, I'm a reasonable man,” said Gould. “I'll settle for 10 percent—or there's no fight.”

Jacobs, who'd been in the game too long and had muscle of his own, laughed in Gould's face. “Joe, you're crazy. There ain't no 10 percent to give ya! Didn't Roxy tell ya that?”

He hadn't. The boys had already carved Joe Louis to pieces. “We need something, Mike. We need something. You got it. We need it.”

“Tell ya what, Joe. We all need this fight, so I'll do this for ya: you can have one dollar in every ten Uncle Mike earns with the title until some schmuck gets lucky and knocks the schwartze over. Whaddya say? Joe Louis is gonna be around a long time, Joe. And so is Uncle Mike. We're all gonna earn some serious moolah here.”

Gould did his math as quickly as if standing in front of the bookies at Santa Ana.

“Done.”

So Gould was set for a tenth of Jacobs's profits from every world heavyweight title he would promote for the next ten years. That, effectively, meant every fight Joe Louis had under Jacobs's promotion with the Twentieth Century Sporting Club. It also meant the new champ's purse would be shaved accordingly. Mike Jacobs was not about to give Joe Gould 10 percent of Mike Jacobs; but he would give him 10 percent of Louis.