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

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In America, the sense of removal from the Old World, embedded in the national psyche since the earliest days of colonization, seriously delayed for the second time in the century their entry into a world war. The cries of the Anti-Nazi League who'd demonstrated against Schmeling being allowed to represent the Third Reich against Louis in New York in 1938 had little impact now in the White House. The president had urged Louis to stand up and fight for his country against a German in the ring then, but Roosevelt was not able to persuade his fellow citizens so easily that taking up arms for old allies was worth it now. It took the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 to change that. The bombs fell on American ships just six months after Joe came from behind to knock out Billy Conn in the thirteenth round and keep his title.

Two months before the day of infamy, as FDR had memorably called it, Joe gave the thoroughly outclassed Lou Nova an awful beating over six rounds at the Polo Grounds in New York, earning another $199,500. In January of 1942, at the Garden, he went to work on Max Baer's big brother, Buddy, for $65,000, a rerun of an earlier farce; in March, he gave Simon a second walloping at the Garden, this time for $45,882.