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

90 страница из 104

It was a brief proto-war, shown so many times since as to be fixed irremovably on the brain like a birthmark, a round that made America feel good about itself again, a round that put the world to rights, it was claimed. After the indignations and hardship of the Depression, symbolism hung heavy in every punch Joe threw.

When it was over, Max could look back on exactly two punches of his own. He was spent as a heavyweight force. Joe, who'd thrown and landed maybe a hundred, was reborn. And so the Joe Louis story could resume.

Schmeling had the manners and judgment to observe years later in his autobiography, Memories, “Every defeat has its good side. A victory over Joe Louis would perhaps have made me into the toast of the Third Reich.”

Putting the best gloss on it, maybe Schmeling learned something from Louis that night. Maybe he learned that with a decent and honest hiding sometimes comes humility and respect. Nevertheless, however tempting it is to paint the fight and the result as a blow against Hitler and a triumph for democracy and the American way, the contest had less to do with the rights and wrongs of their respective ideologies (if indeed they would even have called them that) than with two fighting men testing themselves to the limit for a considerable amount of money.