11/26/2023 0 Comments Joe lewis boxer record![]() Schmeling later recalled the “hysteria and depression” he saw in Harlem as he was driven to his hotel after the fight. Some commentators even saw Louis’s defeat as a blow to the nascent civil rights movement. Their idol had fallen, defeated by “Hitler’s Heavyweight,” a member of the so-called master race. He proved it in the dressing room when he wept unashamed.”īlack America grieved too. “This 22-year-old Negro is made of much the same stuff as any other boy of his age. “This stuff about Louis the ‘dead-pan killer’ is so much bunk,” one smug reporter scoffed. Louis, the left side of his jaw badly swollen, didn’t leave his Harlem apartment for three days after his defeat, too humiliated to appear in public. The newsreels showed Schmeling leaping into the air in victory before a crowd of 45,000. Louis sagged to his knees and fell backward. A split second later, Louis hit the canvas for the first time in his professional career.Įight rounds later, Schmeling again caught Louis with a roundhouse right. In the fourth round, sure enough, Louis dropped his guard. Within minutes, Schmeling showed that he had, after all, found Louis’s weakness. On June 19, 1936, Schmeling entered the ring in Yankee Stadium first, his glistening hair greased back above bushy brows. Hadn’t Schmeling already been humiliated in 1933 by Baer-of all things a Jew? Schmeling was, after all, taking on a formidable adversary, tagged as the “Brown Bomber” or the “Sepia Slugger,” who’d finished off five top boxers, including Uzcudun, Primo Carnera ( Mussolini’s favorite), “Kingfish” Levinsky, Max Baer, and Charley Retzlaff in a total of just 16 rounds. Hitler was worried that Schmeling was going to lose to a member of an inferior race. Schmeling broke his strict training regime on one notable occasion, when invited to lunch with Adolf Hitler in Munich. While a confident Louis womanized in Hollywood and skipped training to play golf, Schmeling prepared diligently the German was considered easy pickings for Louis as he punched his way into contention for for the world heavyweight title. With a fight against Louis scheduled for six months later, in June 1936, Schmeling returned to Berlin armed with films of Louis in action and obsessively played them over and over. “Joe had a wonderful straight hand, but he’d punch and then sometimes drop it.” “ I saw something which made me think I had a chance,” he later recalled. Didn’t Schmeling know Uzcudun had collapsed in his dressing room after the fight? Sure, said Schmeling, he knew all right. There was no way, insisted reporters, that Schmeling could beat Louis-at 21, the most awesome boxer in living memory. ![]() The German boxer was 30 years old and a veteran of some 60 bruising fights when he saw American heavyweight champion Joe Louis pulverize Spain’s Paulino Uzcudun in December 1935 at New York’s Madison Square Garden. ONLY A LONE BLACK MAN stood between Max Schmeling and world domination. ![]() The following Ring Magazine covers and photos, from the publication’s archives, chronicle Louis’ two-year journey from exposed prospect to heavyweight champ to American hero.Hitler's Favorite Boxer Fought Joe Louis Twice - and Became His Lifelong Friend Close He suffered his first pro loss, to former champ Max Schmeling, one year before he challenged Braddock. However, Louis’ road to the heavyweight title wasn’t easy. During his 11-year reign, Louis defended the heavyweight title 25 consecutive times – the record for any division that still stands. Louis, who compiled a pro record of 64-3, with 50 knockouts, held the “biggest prize in sports” until 1949. His amateur credentials were impressive but nothing in comparison to his all-time great accomplishments in the pro ranks where, fighting as Joe Louis with “The Brown Bomber” moniker, he won the heavyweight championship of the world just three years after his debut by dethroning James Braddock in 1937. Competing out of the Brewster-Wheeler Recreation Center in Detroit’s “Black Bottom” area, Louis won the national AAU light heavyweight title in 1934 en route to compiling a 53-3 amateur record. ![]() His family moved to Detroit when he was a child and it was in the Motor City where he was introduced to boxing. Joseph Louis Barrow was born on this day, in Lafayette, Alabama.
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