Joe's Last Fight

The boos began in the second round. They stopped momentarily in the third, when jiggling Jersey Joe Walcott threw a punch that knocked Champion Joe Louis to his knees. Then the boys lapsed back into their waltz. The referee barked at them to pep it up. The big fight--the famed Brown Bomber's last--was smelling up Yankee Stadium.

Louis, trudging lethargically forward, looked slow and dull. Without trying to be funny, Jersey Joe (real name: Arnold Cream) supplied the comedy. He wiped his nose with one hand, while pulling up his pants with the other. He did little dance steps on India-rubber legs. Entire minutes went by in which neither fighter touched the other. The only thing that saved it from being the worst heavyweight championship fight in history was the eleventh round.

In the eleventh, the champ popped Jersey Joe, and was hit back. Then Walcott, trying to retreat, backed into the ropes. For a second or two nothing happened; the champ's slow reflexes were manufacturing a punch. "I don't shoot so fast as I used to," he admitted later. When the punch finally came, it was a killer. Louis hit Walcott with a rain of lefts & rights and Jersey Joe pitched forward on his face. A great roar shook the stadium. A man of brave instincts, Walcott tried to climb back on to his feet. Afterward, still stunned, Jersey Joe admitted he didn't know what hit him. But he insisted he hadn't been hurt, "just hurt inside."

A Word to Mother. A radio announcer thrust a mike at victorious Joe Louis. "For my mother. This is for her," Joe said into it. "Tonight was my last fight."

Joe Louis had been world heavyweight champion so long (eleven years and three days) that many people had forgotten the last one.* Idol of the Negro race, and so popular with the whites that the old cry for a "white hope" never came up, Joe Louis, the slow-thinking Alabama boy, was a champion the whole U.S. was proud of. No taint of suspicion ever hung over any of his 61 pro fights (although he was managed for years by racket men). The gate receipts grossed a whopping $11,000,000 of which his share was $3,150,000.

He was always scrupulously correct when white folks were around. But when with his own people, he liked to whoop it up. Wherever he went, he was followed by cronies--who admired him and split up what money there was in his wallet if it was lying around handy. Joe didn't mind. He never quibbled about a few hundred dollars; he never ducked an opponent. He has defended his title 25 times (more than any champion before him) and scored 22 knockouts.

Balcony Rescue. When Joe Louis pulled up in front of Harlem's Theresa Hotel after the fight, 10,000 hysterical admirers crowded around his car. They kept him prisoner at the curb for half an hour. Then they tore off the car hood, broke the windows, ripped off the tires, danced on the car roof. It took a balcony speech from Joe to disperse them. Joe didn't mind the damage much; he had earned an estimated $413,000 that night.

Next day, he drove out to Long Island for the only exercise he says he wants from now on--a game of golf.

*James J. Braddock.

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