Cinderella Man (12 page)

Jim shook his head, trying hard not to chuckle at the outlandish request. “I've already got my regular seconds,” he replied, face somber. “You know how it is, huh Mike?”

Mike's shoulders slumped, but he laughed off his obvious disappointment. “Yeah, sure, Jim. I understand. Go get 'em, champ.”

With a final wave to his neighbors, and a glance at the basement window where his wife stood watching, Braddock climbed into Joe Gould's car waiting at the curb. As they drove down the street, Mae Braddock at her window and Mike Wilson out on the sidewalk, both watched him go.

 

A punishing left jab snapped Braddock's head back. The arena had undergone some sort of earthquake, Jim decided, as he staggered, struggling to regain his balance. Braddock found himself against the ropes, looking up but seeing stars instead of the Garden's klieg lights. That powerful wallop was followed by another and another. Jim managed to recover, darting around his opponent to get clear of the ropes.

But John Henry Lewis wasn't about to let this big fish escape. The fast, lethal black boxer displayed a style well ahead of his time, and Lewis ripped into the Irishman with a series of perfectly timed combinations, once again pinning Braddock to the ropes with a flurry of blows.

At ringside, Ford Bond delivered blow-by-blow commentary to radio listeners. “Lewis, the uncrowned heavyweight champ, having beaten Rosenbloom twice in non-title fights, is here to repeat his 'Frisco performance and defeat Jim Braddock…”

Over the roaring crowd, Braddock couldn't hear Bond's words. Instead, the voice of Joe Gould boomed like cannon shot in his ears. “You're just fodder, Jimmy…
Fodder
.”

As the black phantom closed to finish him, Jim ducked and weaved and slipped away from his opponent, dancing from the ropes to the center of the ring. Like a tidal wave Lewis surged after him, throwing and jabbing with arms as long as a soup line. His speed was dazzling, his force impossible to resist, yet Jim Braddock was demonstrating surprisingly quick footwork of his own, and once he escaped the ropes he mounted a remarkable defense.

Suddenly, Braddock spied an opening in the whirl
wind and took it. He smashed a hard left into Lewis's head, followed by a pair of punches too fast for the other man to deflect. This time it was Lewis who danced away from his furious opponent, a look of shock on a face swollen with knots and gleaming with sweat.

But Lewis quickly shook off the blows along with his surprise. He locked eyes with Jim Braddock—who actually threw him, of all things, a smile. With an irritated grunt, Lewis closed on his opponent and they clashed in the center ring, the level of ferocity increasing with each jab, each swing, each punch.

For three rounds, the crowd had remained unimpressed while the two fighters danced and sparred and took the measure of each other, each trying to outbox or outfox the other man in what seemed was turning out to be a fairly timid display. But suddenly, in this ferocious fourth round—Jim Braddock's confident smirks no doubt goading Lewis on—the rule had finally been set, both fighters determined to yield no ground.

The furious exchange ended in an exhausted clinch that the bell broke before the referee had the opportunity. The fighters moved to their corners without a backward glance. Jim slumped onto his stool and Joe Gould hopped over the ropes. He checked Jim's face, then rubbed some life into his heavy, tired arms. While he worked the muscles, Gould glanced into the opposite corner, where he saw stunned confusion in John Henry Lewis's expression, and consternation on the face of his coach.

“Come on,” the man screamed. “What are you doing? You beat this guy easy last time.”

But Lewis just shook his head. Above the noise of the near capacity crowd, Gould could just make out the boxer's muttered reply. “He…he ain't the same guy…”

Behind them, Gould spotted Lewis's manager, gambler and racketeer Gus Greenlee, a big shot in the Negro Baseball League and owner of the Pittsburgh team. Under his fedora, the man chewed nervously on his big Cuban cigar, puffing like a chimney. Joe Gould cracked a smile and offered it to the opposing corner. Greenlee sneered back.

“Faster than I remember, even,” moaned Jim Braddock. Gould looked up to find that Lewis wasn't the only fighter taken by surprise this round. Jim's chest was heaving, and sweat was pouring off him in a stinging, salty torrent.

Joe nodded, still working Braddock's arms. “Yeah, he's fast. But only in one direction…”

Jim traded a look with his manager, who stood and leaned into his ear. “He's always moving to the right,” rasped Gould. “Cut down the ring. You gotta unload. You hit him, he's not going to like it. The more you hit him, the slower he's going to get.”

Jim nodded, eyes flinty. Going into this bout, Braddock had known Lewis wasn't going to be a pushover. The son of an athletic coach for the University of Arizona, John Henry Lewis had been boxing since childhood, where he'd knocked down older kids during “midget” boxing competitions in his father's gym. Lewis turned pro at fourteen by defeating Buster Grant in a four-round decision. In his fifteenth professional match, Lewis defeated Sam Terrain in a fourth-round knockout beating that proved fatal when
Terrain died days later from injuries sustained during the fight.

Lewis had beaten Jim Braddock too, with a decision in San Francisco back in 1932. But despite his success and his well-connected manager, Lewis had not had much luck outside the ring since 1929. Though he was being groomed for a shot at the title, Lewis was just as financially strapped and fighting from hunger as Braddock himself. Both men's futures were riding on the outcome of this one match.

The bell clanged the start of round five. The sound had hardly faded when the boxers charged like mad bulls to the center of the ring, leather flying.

“The fighters are still toe to toe. No one is giving an inch,” Ford Bond barked at his audience. “I have never seen a fight this ferocious go on for this long.”

The sustained savage exchange finally broke. And it was Lewis who danced away, Jim who pursued him to the ropes, aggressively carrying the fight back to his opponent.

Lewis countered with a venomous combination—left, right, left. The power of those punches drove Jim back, but he quickly pivoted and tossed a surprise uppercut that heaved Lewis up, backward, and down again, leaving him wavering on one knee.

Jim stepped back, left poised to strike again as the ref jumped between the fighters and began the count—barely audible above the roar of the crowd.

Lewis stumbled to his feet, and the referee reluctantly waved Jim forward. Braddock didn't hesitate—

Years before, just two months after he'd KO'd Tuffy Griffiths, Jim had climbed into this very ring to fight
Leo Lomski. Jim had nearly KO'd Lomski too…
Nearly
. Instead of finishing him off, Jim had shuffled around and hesitated, squandering his opportunities long enough to give Lomski time to recover and win. Braddock wasn't about to let that happen again—

Rushing to the center ring, he delivered a trio of jabs. Lewis, still dazed from the knockdown, could not keep his guard up. Even Lewis's legwork slowed, until he could not mount an effective defense, leaving himself open for a tremendous right cross that sent him reeling into the ropes.

James Braddock threw up his arms and the crowd exploded. Their cheers blew off the roof, echoing loud enough to reach beyond the Garden's walls to the busy Manhattan streets outside. Loud enough to rock the richly paneled executive offices of the Garden's influential power broker, Jimmy Johnston.

 

Jim Braddock's upset victory over John Henry Lewis turned out to be a close win—a split decision rendered by the judges. A similar split opened among fight fans and members of New York City's sporting press. Impartial witnesses deemed John Henry Lewis the winner of the first four rounds since he'd clearly dominated his opponent with quicksilver moves, amazing flurries, fancy footwork, and perfect timing.

But after the fateful fifth round—when Jim Braddock had sent Lewis to his knees—the black fighter never recovered. His confidence shaken, Lewis's poor performance tossed the next several rounds to the boxer from New Jersey. John Henry Lewis's reputation was further tarnished by a low blow he threw at Brad
dock, unsportsmanlike behavior that caused Lewis to forfeit a round.

That low blow—hurled by accident in the heat of battle—knocked the wind out of Braddock, though he refused to show it. Fortunately, the stunning smash came near the end of the fight, and Jim thanked his lucky stars for the money Joe Gould had fronted him because he'd used the cash to increase his strength and stamina under the tutelage of Joe Jeannette, the king of endurance fighters in his day. Jim realized that if he'd showed the faintest trace of weakness during the closing rounds, the decision would have surely gone to Lewis and ended Braddock's fistic resurgence for good.

Most sportswriters gave Braddock his due, and a few even declared his performance against Lewis the pinnacle of his boxing career. But not everyone sided with the Bulldog of Bergen. Writers who favored John Henry Lewis were especially unimpressed with the “Jersey stooge.” In their view, Jim had merely connected with a few lucky punches.

But the split in the press over Braddock vs. Lewis was inconsequential compared to the spotlight on the bout that followed, in which New York favorite Bob Olin overthrew Maxie Rosenbloom to become the world's light heavyweight champion. That titanic battle drew headlines away from the spectacular exhibition by Jim Braddock—media neglect that ensured Jim would enter his next fight with his underdog status as firmly fixed as ever. But it also made getting that next fight much tougher, an unpleasant truth that Gould never shared with his fighter.

As Gould handed Braddock his share of the seven-
hundred-dollar purse, he offered some advice to go with it. “Always keep your hands up, Jimmy. Take care of yourself and keep in shape. Our luck has changed at last. I can feel it in my bones.”

Jim trained fairly steadily after that, but he also went back to the docks to work part time to feed his family. Meanwhile, Joe Gould visited Jimmy Johnston's offices daily, pestering the promoter for another bout. He sometimes brought Jim Braddock along with him, as if to show him off. While Gould pressured Johnston for another Garden match, Braddock planted himself in the outer office where he charmed Johnston's seasoned, tough-as-nails secretary and guardian of the gate, Francis Albertanti.

Braddock became quite a fixture in subsequent weeks, and every time Johnston passed the fighter on his way in or out of his office, he muttered a curse under his breath. One day, Johnston protested out loud. “You've spoiled two guys for me, Braddock. Two fighters I was grooming for a shot at the championship.”

“So,” Jim replied with a guileless shrug, “when are you gonna throw me another?”

 

It would take a considerable amount of wheeling and dealing by Joe Gould to get Jim another bout, but circumstances helped his cause.

In December, 1934, a month after the Braddock vs. Lewis fight, Jimmy Johnston publicly announced what Joe Gould and many others had long suspected—that the Garden would soon host a series of elimination bouts to determine which fighter would be a suitable challenger for Max Baer's championship title. A re
match with the man Baer snatched that title away from was a given, which placed Primo Carnera at the top of the list.

Other contenders included Art Lasky, an up-and-coming, left-handed bruiser from Minnesota; Max Schmeling, who'd just returned to his native Germany to be celebrated by its newly elected chancellor, Adolf Hitler; Steve Hamas, a former four-letter man from the University of Pennsylvania; and “Big Ray” Impelletiere, whom Tommy Loughran had recently beaten in a decision despite a cut over Tommy's eye that almost stopped the fight.

Of course, Joe Gould wanted Braddock to have a shot at the title, but he ran into a hitch named Johnston. After his victory against John Henry Lewis, Johnston had concluded Braddock was more than lucky—he was
good
—and because he didn't want another of his rising young prospects to get smashed by the wild card from New Jersey, Johnston resisted Braddock's entry into the competition. But in his efforts to exclude Braddock, Johnston encountered a hitch of his own—Joe Gould, who badgered him day after day, week after week for another bout.

“How about a fight with Al Gainer?” said Johnston after Joe Gould burst into his office one chilly December afternoon.

Joe Gould waved that suggestion aside along with a cloud of cigar smoke. “How about Lasky?” he replied.

Johnston knew that Art Lasky—a fighter who'd chalked up a string of victories in the West—was a good deal slower on his feet than John Henry Lewis, the man Braddock had just defeated. So he refused to sanction the match, and said so.

“How about a series of bouts in the spring?” John
ston countered. “I can line up maybe five fighters for your boy, take him through next Christmas.”

“How about Art Lasky?”

“Okay. But how about another fight
before
Lasky?” Johnston offered, hoping the other boxer would knock Braddock down and out of the running.

“I want Lasky,” came Joe's reply.

Johnston threw Gould out of his office that day, but Joe came back the next, and the next. Gould stuck to his guns, and eventually Johnston—after listening to the confident Lasky crowd—began to believe that he'd been underestimating Art Lasky's fistic abilities and overestimating the boogie man named James Braddock.

In the end it was Jimmy Johnston who called Joe Gould into his office after Christmas 1934 to offer Braddock the Lasky match, with a contract that stipulated the bout would take place in the Garden on February 1, 1935. Gould fronted Jim some money and he went off to train. But on the eve of that fight, Lasky was stricken with pleurisy and the tussle was postponed—a sharp disappointment to Gould and Braddock, who were both sparring with hungry wolves at their debtridden doors as they waited for the long-delayed purse.