Sport: New Champion

• Share

A misty June moon shone down on Madison Square Garden's Long Island City Bowl one night last week as a solemn prizefighter in a blue bathrobe climbed through the ropes. The plain Irish face of James J. (born Walter) Braddock was puckered with earnest anxiety. Improvident of his earnings when he was a top-flight light heavyweight seven years ago, 29-year-old Jimmy Braddock had, after successive defeats, toppled completely out of the prize ring. He worked briefly as a janitor. He made a pittance as a stevedore on the New Jersey docks opposite Manhattan. Finally he changed his name to No. 2796 on the North Bergen (N. J.) relief rolls last year. By unexpectedly knocking out a respectable opponent in a preliminary to the fight in which Max Baer knocked out ponderous Primo Camera and took the heavyweight championship (TIME, June 25, 1934), Jimmy Braddock managed to get back into his old profession. And by an equally unforeseen victory over Art Lasky, in whom the Garden management hoped to find a suitable match for Champion Baer. Jimmy Braddock himself was now about to have a crack at the heavyweight championship of the world. As he slipped the blue bathrobe from his pink back, he was the sentimental favorite of a Bowl crowd of 30,000, most of whom had bet their money 8-to-1 against him.

No sympathy, no best wishes rose to greet brown, broad-shouldered Champion Max Baer as that prime poseur, playboy and punchinello of the U. S. prize ring parted the ropes. The customers could not help resenting the fact that Baer's night club escapades, his cinema career (The Prizefighter and the Lady), his reluctance to train properly, amounted to a refusal to take seriously the sport of fisticuffing and, by inference, its patrons. The fact that he had won his title in the same ring where he was now about to risk it. and where no championship had ever been competed for without changing hands, did not appear to worry happy-go-lucky Baer. Over Braddock he had the advantages of weight (18 lb.), reach (3 in.) and a fabulous right-hand punch which had once killed a man. In all earnestness he had told reporters: "I'm scared stiff I'll kill Braddock. I dreamed last night I hurt the boy. I woke up in a cold sweat." Most sportswriters had branded the contest a gross mismatch, had almost unanimously picked Baer to win in the first few rounds. In the first three rounds the fun-loving Californian justified his reputation for high jinks. Dancing about in his black trunks adorned with a six-pointed Star of David, Baer feinted ferociously with his right, then danced away again smirking at Braddock as if he were some huge private joke. Irritated at the champion's clowning, the crowd shouted encouragement, warnings, admonitions to the challenger.

Box him, Jimmy! Stay away from him! Wipe dat smile offen his face!

When the referee warned Baer for hitting low, he made a ludicrous bow. When the champion noticed an acquaintance at the ringside, he waved a friendly greeting. When Braddock reached his face with stinging but unimportant jabs, Baer sounded a jolly ''Ho, ho!" But solemn, plodding Jimmy Braddock took the first three rounds.

You got him, Jimmy! He didn't like dat! Take him, Jimmy!