Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Cinderella Man
James J. Braddock, Max Baer, and the Greatest Upset in Fighting HistoryBy Jeremy SchaapMariner Books
Copyright © 2006 Jeremy Schaap
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780618711901
1 CORN AND HASH
Queens, New York: June 14, 1934
On the night of June 14, 1934, James J. Braddock walked into the Madison
Square Garden Bowl, an enormous outdoor arena in Queens, New York. His
pockets were empty. A week earlier he had turned twenty-nine. He was a
father of three, a washed-up fighter, and a part-time longshoreman. As feared
as his right hand had once been — he was among the most powerful
punchers in the light heavyweight division in the late 1920s — he was equally
adept at taking a punch. In eighty pro fights, only one opponent had ever
knocked him out, and that was a technical knockout. He had never been
counted out. Beyond the ring, his toughest opponent had clearly been the
Depression — which nearly knocked him out. But here he was, getting back
into the fight game after nine months of inactivity.
By 1934, Braddock had outgrown the light heavyweight division"s
175-pound weight limit and was fighting as a heavyweight, at about 180
pounds. He was six feet, two inches tall, with a head of thick, curly black
hair. Ruggedly handsome, he looked every bit as Irish as his name, and he
wore a shamrock on his trunks and was sometimes known as Irish Jim
Braddock. He didn"t talk much, but when he did the words were delivered
from the side of his mouth in a thick, blue-collar Jersey accent. His smile
was always described as crooked. His parents, Joseph and Elizabeth
O"Toole Braddock, had been born in England and immigrated to the United
States in 1889, but they were both much more Irish than English or
American, though there is no evidence that either ever set foot on Irish soil.
They were raised in impoverished Irish enclaves in and around Manchester,
where the Braddocks and the O"Tooles clung to their Irishness — mostly
because the English never let them forget where they came from.
Forty-five years after Joseph Braddock escaped from the poverty
and prejudices of northern England and made his way to America, his son
James was struggling to clothe and feed his burgeoning family. He owed
money to his landlord, the milkman, the gas and electric company, and his
manager, to name just a few of his creditors. In the bitter winter of 1933–
1934, he had trudged through the streets of North Bergen, New Jersey, in
shoes that were falling apart. Most of the time he was hungry.
Braddock"s decline as a boxer exactly paralleled the nation"s
descent into the Depression. After fighting for the light heavyweight
championship in the summer of 1929, Braddock met defeat after defeat, first
in big arenas, at the hands of top competitors, and then, gradually, at the
hands of boxers only a couple of notches above club fighters — tomato cans
and ham "n" eggers, the dregs of the heavyweight division. He had lost
sixteen out of twenty-six fights since the day the market crashed in 1929.
Finally, on September 25, 1933, he broke his right hand, his only real
weapon, on the jaw of a twenty-year-old heavyweight named Abe Feldman.
The hand had been broken twice before, and Braddock thought it was
unlikely that it would ever heal properly. If he somehow managed to scrape
up enough cash to find a doctor who knew how to set the fracture, it would
still take months to mend. By that time, he knew, he would be older and even
slower than he already was, which was quite slow. Braddock announced his
retirement — but virtually no one noticed.
Braddock was often called plodding. "Slow of foot" doesn"t begin
to describe the inadequacy of his speed and footwork. He could punch, he
could take a punch, he could even box a little, but James J. Braddock
couldn"t move. Nor could he inflict much damage with his left hand.
Incapable of fighting, he sought work on the docks of Hoboken
and Weehawken. The man who just five years earlier had come within one
punch of winning the world light heavyweight championship was reduced to
hauling railroad ties off ships coming from the south and loading them onto
flatbed railroad cars. Initially he wasn"t very good at it — not with a lame right
hand. But Braddock was strong, and physical labor was something he never
shied from. Not when he was training for a fight, and not when he was earning
four dollars a day operating a baling hook.
Like tens of millions of Americans who had thrived in the 1920s,
Braddock was wiped out by the economic collapse. Much of the money he
had earned fighting at famous arenas like Boyle"s Thirty Acres and Madison
Square Garden disappeared when the Bank of the United States, in which he
had deposited thousands of dollars, failed. He was far from alone. The men
standing beside him on the docks in the shapeups, hoping to get picked by
the hiring foremen for work, were lawyers and bankers and stockbrokers as
well as laborers. The Depression took nearly everyone down a few pegs — or
more. Unlike everyone else on the docks, however, Braddock was
unknowingly building the strength he would need to get himself back in the
ring.
Still, the work was irregular. There were days when he would walk
the three miles from his apartment in Woodcliff down to the waterfront in
Hoboken in vain. He would then turn north and walk another couple of miles
to West New York, or farther, to Edgewater. Sometimes there would be work
on the docks. Sometimes he would just turn around and head back home. It
wasn"t uncommon for him to walk ten or twelve miles in a single day. When
there was work to be had, he would keep working until the job was finished.
A double shift meant double pay. Fatigue was for sissies.
People who knew Braddock well thought that the nickname that
best described him was Plain Jim, coined by John Kieran of the New York
Times. Unlike John L. Sullivan and Jack Dempsey, the most popular
heavyweight champions of the early days of gloved boxing, Braddock was as
far as it was possible to be from a showman. He liked to go to pubs and have
a few beers with the friends he had made growing up in West New York. But
it concerned him not at all whether his dinner companions found him
amusing. Or whether the sportswriters enjoyed his quips. Or whether the fans
got a glimpse of his personality. On those rare occasions when he did speak,
his words made an impact.
Braddock was teetering on the verge of anonymity as winter
turned into spring in 1934. The talents he had displayed in the late 1920s
were fading rapidly from the collective memory of the boxing community.
When aficionados discussed the men who might challenge Primo Carnera for
the heavyweight championship, the name Jim Braddock never entered the
conversation. But Braddock remembered. So did his manager, Joe Gould.
Perhaps a few of the men he had punished with his big right hand did too.
Everyone else, though, thought of James J. Braddock — when they thought
of him at all — as a brokendown, washed-up, one-time contender who just
didn"t quite have enough talent or power.
Even so, Gould continued to sell Braddock as a worthy opponent
long after most promoters had decided he was through in the fight game.
Gould spent hours pleading Braddock"s case, insisting that all the fights he
had lost were merely the result of a bad right hand. He reminded everyone
who would listen that Jim Braddock was still only twenty-eight years old and
that he was, after all, the same young man who had broken the great Pete
Latzo"s jaw in four places, knocked out the heralded Tuffy Griffiths, and made
mincemeat of Jimmy Slattery. He didn"t mention that those events had taken
place in the 1920s, half a decade earlier.
Meanwhile, Braddock"s right hand was slowly healing. As he
sweated on the docks, stripped to the waist, his strength was returning. The
inner voice that had told him he was finished after the Feldman fight went
silent. Now another voice told him that maybe his luck was about to change
(for years he had considered himself jinxed). But if someone had made odds
on the likelihood that Braddock would eventually capture the heavyweight
championship, those odds would have been a million to one, or higher.
Dozens of heavyweights were fighting regularly in New York, and virtually all
of them were rated higher than Braddock, who was neither a solid veteran nor
a talented upand- comer. He was, like so many used-up fighters, damaged
goods — literally. Unlike most, he had once had a shot at a title, but he had
blown it and had never recovered from the disappointment. His time, it
seemed, had passed.
Braddock, however, was not entirely worthless in the ring. His
name still meant something to boxing enthusiasts. The boxing commission
had twice refused to license him, fearing for his safety, but if it licensed him
for this fight he could serve a purpose in the sport, as a human steppingstone
for young fighters climbing the ranks — for a fighter like John "Corn" Griffin.
Unlike Jim Braddock, Corn Griffin spent the early years of the Depression
gainfully employed, as an enlisted man in the United States Army. A big,
bruising Georgian, he fought in the service and eventually caught the eye of a
veteran manager named Charles Harvey. By 1934, Griffin was a civilian and
Harvey was trying to position him in the heavyweight division. "Griffin,"
someone once wrote, "had the face of a loser, with a dented nose and scar
tissue around his eyes." But he could punch.
In the spring of 1934, Griffin arrived in Pompton Lakes, New
Jersey, to join the training camp of Primo Carnera as a sparring partner.
Carnera, at six foot seven the tallest heavyweight champion ever, and at 270
pounds the heaviest ever — at least until George Foreman regained the title
in 1994 — was an atrocious boxer and a relatively weak puncher. But in an
era when many of the top heavyweights weighed no more than 190 pounds,
Carnera"s sheer size made him an attraction.
Born on October 26, 1906, in Sequals, Italy, near Venice, Carnera
had won the championship in 1933 from Jack Sharkey under a cloud of
justifiable suspicion. It was widely assumed that Carnera, who was controlled
by the mobster Owney Madden, was the beneficiary of a fix. In later years,
after the mob cruelly abandoned him, he became a pro wrestler, something
he was much better at than fighting. Carnera was also the sad inspiration for
the mob-controlled heavyweight in Budd Schulberg"s classic boxing tale, The
Harder They Fall.
When he is remembered at all, Carnera is remembered simply for
his physique, which Paul Gallico described in Farewell to Sport:
Carnera was the only giant I have ever seen who was well proportioned
throughout his body for his height. His legs were massive and he was truly
thewed like an oak. His waist was comparatively small and clean, but from it
rose a torso like a Spanish hogshead from which sprouted two tremendous
arms, the biceps of which stood out like grapefruit. His hands were like
Virginia hams, and his fingers were 10 red sausages. His head was large,
and he had a good nose and fine, kind eyes. His skin was brown and
glistening and he invariably smelled of garlic.
History does not record what Gallico smelled like.
As far as Carnera"s appetite was concerned, his publicity man
wrote, "For breakfast, Primo has a quart of orange juice, two quarts of milk,
nineteen pieces of toast, fourteen eggs, a loaf of bread, and half a pound of
Virginia ham." Publicity men of the time were prone to hyperbole, but
Carnera"s flack might just have been telling the truth.
Carnera"s handlers agreed to have him defend his title for the third
time in seven months on June 14 at the Madison Square Garden Bowl. In
preparation for the bout, Carnera trained at Pompton Lakes and sparred
frequently with Corn Griffin. Because Griffin could actually fight a little, he
often made Carnera look foolish — so foolish, in fact, that the writers who
camped out at Pompton Lakes began singing Griffin"s fistic praises, as those
writers would have put it.
On June 3, Carnera sparred two rounds against Chester Matan,
two rounds against Yuster Sirutis, and one round against Corn
Griffin. "Carnera encountered his stiffest opposition in the round with Griffin,"
Joseph C. Nichols reported in the New York Times. "The latter, a former
United States Army boxer, weighed little more than 185 pounds, but tore into
the champion as if he were his own size."
"As a sparring partner, he is no mere catcher," Frank Graham
wrote in the New York Sun. "He is a pitcher — and he pitches with both
hands. He drives straight into Primo and his fists thud against the
champion"s jaw and into his stomach. Carnera fights back hard, but he
cannot keep Corn away. The soldier piles him up in a corner, belts him
savagely with both hands, and then drives him out."
Jimmy Johnston, the matchmaker at Madison Square Garden,
which was promoting the Carnera-Baer fight, was paying close attention to
the beatings Griffin was dishing out. He signed Griffin to fight on the
undercard, in one of the preliminary bouts that both build up a crowd"s
bloodlust and provide value in the event that the main attraction is uninspiring.
"Two years from now," said Charles Harvey, Griffin"s
walrusmustached manager, "Griffin will be the heavyweight champion. When I
sent him up here to work with Carnera, I told him to be careful and not get
hurt. Now all I am afraid of is that he will hurt Carnera."
Harvey wanted to get Griffin "started in New York with a flourish,"
Joe Williams of the World-Telegram said. "The best way to accomplish this
was to get some washed-up name fighter and kick his brains out."
But as fight night approached, Johnston was having trouble
securing an opponent for Griffin. The reports of his dominance in Pompton
Lakes, whether or not they were exaggerated, scared off several would-be
opponents and their managers. No one wanted to be the lamb offered up to
Griffin for slaughter.
Except Jim Braddock.
On June 12, Joe Gould was waiting in his customary spot outside Jimmy
Johnston"s office. Nearly as broke as Braddock, Gould managed to keep up
appearances, smoking, dining, and dressing well, although he could not
afford to continue to indulge in his favorite pastime, golf. The secretaries at
Madison Square Garden — which at the time was situated on Eighth Avenue
between 49th Street and 50th Street, two miles north and west of its original
location on Madison Square — liked Gould despite themselves. They took
messages for him and signed for his packages. Like everyone else, though,
they were growing weary of his favorite topic of conversation: James J.
Braddock. Everyone knew that Braddock was washed up, but Gould
persisted, badgering Johnston, relentlessly seeking fights that would put a
little cash in Braddock"s pockets — and his own.
Surrounded by a cluster of publicists, writers, managers, and
trainers, Johnston loudly lamented the lack of a suitable opponent for Griffin.
He wanted someone good enough to pique the fans" interest but not good
enough to win — though that"s not exactly how he put it.
Gould had slid into the crowd in Johnston"s office. "Why not give
Jimmy a chance?" he said, predictably.
"Don"t mention Braddock again," Johnston said, as everyone
laughed at the joke that had already grown old. "I"m sick of hearing his name."
"Just give him a shot," Gould said. If he wasn"t begging, he wasn"t
doing his job.
"Joe, Corn will kill him," Johnston said. "Ask any one of these
guys. They"ve seen Corn in there with Carnera. I don"t want Jimmy"s blood on
my hands."
"Listen," Gould said, his eyes zeroing in on Johnston, "no one"s
ever hurt Jimmy, you know that. He"s cute that way. Nobody hits him solid.
And he"s stronger now than he"s ever been."
"Okay," Johnston said, relenting. "You"ve got me, you wore me
down. But don"t blame me if Griffin kills that old Irishman. And the purse is
two hundred and fifty bucks. Don"t even think about asking for more."
"It"s a deal," Gould said.
Now all Gould had to do was find Braddock. He had a pretty good
idea where he was.
Gould walked out of the Garden and headed south to 42nd Street
and then west to the Hudson River. He boarded a New Jersey–bound ferry
and a few minutes later landed in Hoboken. Braddock was only a few
hundred yards away, laboring on the docks, sweating in the noonday sun.
"Well, champ," Gould said, after tapping on Braddock"s
shoulder. "I"ve got a fight for you."
Braddock, his face and chest red from the sun, his thick, curly
hair drooping into his eyes, didn"t say a word. He put down the baling hook in
his left hand and peeled off his work gloves. He looked at Gould, waiting for
the details.
"But the fight"s Thursday night, on the undercard at the Bowl,"
Gould continued. "You"ve only got two days. Can you do it? Are you in
shape?"
"Am I in shape?" Braddock said, wiping the grime from his
brow. "Are you kidding? Look at me."
Braddock, who had turned twenty-nine on June 8, was in fact in
the best shape of his life. He"d been walking several miles every day for
months. He"d been unloading and hauling railroad ties. But even if his
muscles weren"t bigger than ever before, which they were, and even if his
conditioning was lacking, which it wasn"t, he would have jumped at the
opportunity to get back into the ring.
"I had about two days" notice that I was going to fight Griffin," he
later said. "Two hours — or an hour — would have been enough."
He needed the money — and he needed to fight. The gas and
electric company had threatened to shut off his service again. He had been
forced to move his wife and three children to a basement apartment in the
building in which they were living because he couldn"t pay the rent on the
apartment upstairs. Most humiliating to Braddock, he had gone on the
welfare rolls and each month was receiving twenty-four dollars from the
Hudson County relief agency.
Johnston had approved a hundred-dollar advance on the purse,
which Gould split with Braddock. For the first time in months, Braddock had
a few — very few — dollars at his disposal. He handed over the money to his
wife, Mae, and she in turn paid the milkman, the utility company, and the
landlord.
On Wednesday, the day before the fight, Braddock took the ferry to 42nd
Street, walked east to Ninth Avenue, turned left, walked fifteen blocks north
to 57th Street, turned right, and entered Stillman"s Gym, where Gould was
waiting for him. The plan was to get in one solid workout with a sparring
partner — to shake off the rust that had been accumulating for nine months.
New York"s preeminent gym from the 1920s through the 1950s,
and consequently the center of the boxing universe at the time, Stillman"s
was dubbed the University of Eighth Avenue by A. J. Liebling. It was opened
in 1921 by two millionaires who hoped to civilize wayward youths by teaching
them the rules of boxing that had been named for the marquis of
Queensberry. But Stillman"s was no Boys Town. Instead, it became simply a
gym, albeit the gym. It is impossible to say how many spirits were lifted and
how many were destroyed in its sweaty squared circles. Gene Tunney, the
man who twice defeated Jack Dempsey in heavyweight championship fights,
found the smell at Stillman"s so appalling that he said he wouldn"t train there
unless the windows were opened. The featherweight champion Johnny
Dundee responded by saying, "Fresh air? Why, that stuff is likely to kill us."
Lou Stillman — born Louis Ingber (he changed his name after he bought the
gym, to avoid confusion) — kept the windows shut. Tunney stayed away, but
not for long. Every heavyweight champion from Jack Dempsey to Joe Louis
trained at Stillman"s.
Lou Stillman was successful because he never played favorites —
except when he felt like it. "Big or small, champ or bum, I treated "em all the
same way — bad," he once said. "If you treat them like humans, they"ll eat
you alive." Irish, Italian, black, Jewish, Polish — it didn"t matter to Stillman
what you were, as long as you could fight.
Together, Gould and Braddock had spent thousands of hours at
Stillman"s — but the Jim Braddock whom Gould saw on June 13, 1934, was
a stranger. Working in a ring for the first time since the Feldman fight, he
fired off left hands with stunning precision and unexpected force. For years he
had fought entirely from starboard. Now he seemed to be ambidextrous. His
sparring partner wilted under the assault. He was also moving differently —
up on his toes, heels off the ground, resisting the urge to settle into his
customary flat-footed stance. No one was going to confuse Jim Braddock
with Fred Astaire. Nimble he was not. But his movements could no longer be
described as glacial. As a fighter, he had undergone a metamorphosis.
His longtime trainer, Doc Robb, looked at Gould from behind the
heavy bag that Braddock was pummeling and shook his head in
astonishment. The thought raced through Gould"s mind that perhaps
Braddock wasn"t washed up. For years he had been droning on and on about
Braddock"s prospects, insisting that he deserved another chance. Every
promoter in the business had at one time or another fallen asleep listening to
Gould rattle on about the great James J. Braddock. There were times,
though, when Gould would hear the words coming out of his mouth and not
believe them himself. Joe Gould was no fool. He knew the fight game. He had
grown up in it. He knew that no one had ever climbed to the top from the
depths where Jim Braddock had toiled since 1929. But he had stayed with
Braddock because they were friends and because he had no better
prospects.
On the night of the fight, the gates opened at 5 P.M. at the Madison Square
Garden Bowl, on the corner of 45th Street and Northern Boulevard in the
working-class Long Island City section of Queens. A massive wooden
structure erected in 1932, it could seat 72,000. Its life was brief but colorful.
In its first year, Max Schmeling lost the world heavyweight championship by
decision to the challenger, Jack Sharkey. Only the judges gave the fight to
Sharkey. Coining a phrase known to sports fans from Brooklyn to Bangkok,
Joe Jacobs, Schmeling"s incensed manager, howled into a radio
microphone, "We wuz robbed!"
Five times in seven years, the world heavyweight championship
changed hands at the Madison Square Garden Bowl. Clearly, it was the
arena where champions went to die.
For the Baer-Carnera showdown, 56,000 people filed into the
Bowl — a significant turnout, considering just how few people had any
disposable income in 1934. Ticket prices ranged from $25, at ringside, to
$2.30 for the cheap seats. To attend a fight was an extravagance few could
afford. Those who could spare a dime — movie stars, politicians, mobsters,
athletes — showed up in droves. Postmaster General James A. Farley, one
of President Franklin D. Roosevelt"s closest advisers and the former
chairman of the New York boxing commission, was there. So were former
heavyweight champions Jack Dempsey, Gene Tunney, and Jack Sharkey.
Barney Ross, Benny Leonard, Tony Canzoneri, and Kid Chocolate — all
legends in lighter classifications — were also in attendance.
The New York Times noted that of the two hundred policemen
assigned to the task of ensuring public safety inside the arena, three were
captains, three were lieutenants, and fifteen were sergeants. None was there
working against his will.
In the hours leading up to a heavyweight championship fight, the
crowd grows bigger, louder, and at the same time more solemn. The fans
sense the danger, which distinguishes a fight crowd from crowds at every
other sporting event except auto races. Today, only the most rabid fans pay
close attention to the preliminaries. But in the 1930s, when boxing was still
more important than every other sport except baseball and maybe college
football, most fans watched the undercard fights with at least some interest.
The newspapermen covered them closely, if only because the main events
usually ended so late that the writers needed the undercards to fill their
column inches.
After a few lackluster four- and five-round bouts, James J.
Braddock and Corn Griffin prepared to step into the ring. Braddock was
wearing old trunks and borrowed shoes. When he climbed through the ropes,
the crowd was paying scant attention. Those who knew little about boxing
were at the Bowl only to see the championship fight. Those who knew the
sport assumed it would be a one-sided affair. If they had been following the
goings-on at Carnera"s camp, they knew that Griffin was considered an up-
and-comer, and if they had been following boxing since the 1920s, they
vaguely remembered Jim Braddock as a light heavyweight hopeful.
Gould, as usual, was chattering. "You feel good, Jim? You feel
good?" he kept repeating. It was a tic, not a question.
"Yeah, Joe, I"m ready," Braddock said out of the side of his
mouth. He had built up a sweat shadowboxing in his dressing room, and
now, in the warm evening air, the sweat was pouring from him. His upper
body was red and splotchy, his legs almost white. He looked out across the
Bowl. Tens of thousands of patrons were already in their seats. His last fight,
against Feldman, had also been outdoors, in Mount Vernon, New York, but
only a few hundred people had been there. At the Bowl, none of those tens of
thousands of people were there to see him fight, which was fine with
Braddock. He had long ago adjusted his ambition to match his talent. Still,
he needed a win, because a win meant another fight, which meant another
purse, which meant another meal. Braddock had never felt uncomfortable in
the ring — ever — and even nine months of inaction had not changed that.
"Remember, Jimmy," Doc Robb told Braddock just before the
bell, "stay away from his right hand. He can punch."
At the bell, Griffin, well tanned, his hair close-cropped, went
straight for Braddock. Within seconds he landed a right squarely on
Braddock"s jaw. Braddock staggered. He hadn"t been hit that hard in years.
As Griffin dominated him in the first round, Braddock simply tried to get his
bearings.
"Come on, Jim," Gould said between rounds. "You look like you"re
sleeping."
Braddock stared straight ahead, refused the water he was offered,
pounded his gloves together, and stood up.
In the second round, Griffin went for Braddock again. Braddock
stood still, and Griffin followed a left jab with another right to Braddock"s jaw.
Braddock went down.
Watching from ringside, Lud Shabazian, the sports editor of the
Hudson Dispatch, Braddock"s hometown paper, winced. Shabazian was
Braddock"s Boswell, the only writer who had seen virtually all his East Coast
fights since 1923. He wasn"t at the Bowl specifically to cover Braddock — he
was there to see the title fight — and he was more interested in Braddock as
a friend than as a fighter. As Braddock writhed on the canvas, Shabazian felt
his friend"s pain. He and his colleagues on press row stayed in their seats,
but the sharp report of Griffin"s blow had alerted the crowd that something
worthy of attention was now taking place in the ring, and thousands
scrambled to their feet. No one would have blamed Braddock if he had closed
his eyes, waited for the count of ten, and walked away from the ring forever.
He was twenty-nine, a tomato can, better suited to life as a longshoreman.
Maybe it was time to quit.
But a voice in Braddock"s head urged him to get up — the same
voice that had always urged him to get up when he was down. Too proud, too
stubborn, and too broke to be counted out, he gathered himself, waited for
the count of nine, picked himself up off the canvas, and waded straight into
Griffin. He threw a jab that missed but followed with a short right to the chin.
Griffin didn"t see it and went down in a heap. Finally the Georgian got up, but
he never recovered.
For the rest of the second round, with Gould screaming wildly and
jumping up and down in his corner, Braddock continued to bludgeon Griffin. It
had been years since he had fought so effectively. His punches — jabs,
uppercuts, overhand rights — were crisper than they had been when he was
the upand- comer. His left hand, for years an almost vestigial extremity, was
suddenly potent.
Maybe Braddock knew that he was better than ever. Maybe he
could sense how far his comeback would take him. Probably not. What he
did know, what he could sense, was that Corn Griffin was finished.
At the bell commencing the third round, Braddock went straight
out to meet Griffin and jolted him with two more powerful right hands. Griffin
was nearly out on his feet, his head still swimming from the punch that had
knocked him down in the second round. But he kept fighting. Now Braddock
was moving fluidly, throwing punches at a staggering target. Finally, with
twenty-three seconds remaining in the round, the referee, Kid McPartland,
stopped the fight. Braddock had his first knockout in eighteen months and
only his second in more than four years.
Drained, Braddock stood in the middle of the canvas, wait- ing for
Gould to throw a sponge full of icewater in his face. Gould took the sponge
from the bucket, walked right past Braddock, and threw it in Griffin"s face.
"What did you do that for?" Braddock said.
"Corn"s in worse shape than you are," Gould said.
Before retreating to Braddock"s dressing room, Gould found
Johnston at ringside. "Hey, Jimmy," he said, his smile widening, "I hope
Jimmy didn"t hurt Corn. I know you"ve got high hopes for him."
"Tell Jimmy I"m proud of him," Johnston said bravely, trying to
mask his disappointment.
Back in his dressing room, Braddock popped open a beer,
embraced a few friends and relatives, and searched in vain for a shower.
When Shabazian walked in, Braddock hugged him too.
"He had me on the deck," Braddock said as Shabazian
scribbled. "He hit me with a right hand behind the ear. He"s a left hooker, and
I"ve always had a lot of success with left hookers. I have a fast right hand,
and coming in with a left hook, you meet a guy with a right hand, and if you
hit him in the right spot, which I done to him, I hit him right on the chin and
that was it."
Then, turning to Gould, Braddock said, "I did that on hash, Joe.
Wait till you see what I can do on steak."
Continues...
Excerpted from Cinderella Manby Jeremy Schaap Copyright © 2006 by Jeremy Schaap. Excerpted by permission.
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