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

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Joe Louis, the new heavyweight king, took his mantle in the quiet and humble way his friends associated with his every movement and utterance. The ghost of Jack Johnson had been laid to rest, to the relief of white America. There were no complaints from the loser's corner.

Any right-thinking person would regard the secret deal Gould did with Jacobs as a hangover from slave times. Such was the story of Joe's life. He was exploited from the moment he taped up until the night Rocky Marciano clattered him through the ropes at Madison Square Garden for the last time, in 1951. By that stage, he'd sold another pound or three of his own flesh to the Mob. Just like Jack Johnson told him he would. . . .

Johnson was there in Chicago to see Joe succeed him. Indeed, to the incredulity of all, Jack was still a licensed boxer. A year after Louis's win over Braddock, the Galveston Giant, slightly stooped now at sixty, got into a ring with Walter Price in Boston and was knocked out in seven rounds.

Virtually nothing is known of Price—age, nationality, where he was born, how he died—apart from the fact he had four fights in his entire professional career. The first three were in 1925, two wins and a loss against fellow novices around Massachusetts and Maine. His fourth and final bout was thirteen years later, when he beat the pension-aged illusion of a genuine ring great.