The Sweet Science - A. J. Liebling [28]
My maid walked by Sugar Ray’s a couple of days after the fight, and she said there were twenty-five Cadillacs parked in front of the place. “Any that weren’t 1951 had to double-park,” she said. “His is a big pink one. He was standing outside, with just a small patch over his eye, and everybody that came by shook hands with him.”
I went up to Sugar Ray’s myself on the following Sunday, but it was very quiet, with only a girl about five feet tall behind the bar, and a monumental cash register and a sign that read, “Try Sugar Ray’s Bolo, 55 cents.” The bolo, which is named after one of Robinson’s favorite punches, is made of rum. There were enough customers to keep the girl busy, but they all looked tired, as if they had been celebrating for several nights in a row and had just come in for pick-me-ups.
Kearns by a Knockout
The division of boxers into weight classes is based on the premise that if two men are equally talented practitioners of the Sweet Science, then the heavier man has a decided advantage. This is true, of course, only if both men are trained down hard, since a pound of beer is of no use in a boxing match. If the difference amounts to no more than a couple of pounds, it can be offset by a number of other factors, including luck, but when it goes up to five or six or seven, it takes a lot of beating. The span between the top limit of one weight class and the next represents the margin that history has proved is almost impossible to overcome. Between middleweight and light heavyweight, for example, that gap is fifteen pounds. A middleweight champion may weigh, at the most, a hundred and sixty, and a light heavy a hundred and seventy-five. But some champions are more skillful than others, and every now and then one comes along who feels he can beat the titleholder in the class above him. That was what made it interesting to anticipate the match between Sugar Ray Robinson, the middleweight champion, and Joey Maxim, the champion of the light heavyweights, in June, 1952. As soon as I heard the match had been arranged, I resolved to attend it. I had seen Robinson in four fights, not including television, and knew that he was a very good fighter. I had heard that Maxim, whom I had never seen, was merely pretty good. But there was that fifteen pounds. It was the smaller man who appealed to the public’s imagination, and to mine. Goliath would not have been a popular champion even if he had flattened David in the first round. Robinson is such a combination of skill and grace that I had a feeling he could do the trick. For exactly the same reason, the London fancy, back in 1821, made Tom Hickman, the Gas-Light Man, who weighed a hundred and sixty-five, a strong favorite over Bill Neat, at a hundred and eighty-nine. The Gas-Light Man, according to Egan, was “a host within himself—his fist possessing the knocking-down force of the forge-hammer—his brow contemptuously smiling at defeat—to surrender not within the range of his ideas, even to the extremity of perspective—and VICTORY, proud victory, only operating as a beacon to all his achievements.” Neat was a mere plugger, but he “turned out the Gas.”
One man who did not share the public’s sentimental regard for Robinson was an old-time prizefighter, saloon-keeper, and manufacturer of fire extinguishers named Jack Kearns. This was not surprising, because Kearns, who in more glorious eras managed Jack Dempsey, the Manassa Mauler, and Mickey Walker, the Toy Bulldog, now happens to be the manager of Maxim. Not even Kearns hinted that Maxim was a great champion, but he said he had a kind nature. “All he lacks is the killer instinct,” Jack maintained. “But he takes a good punch. When he’s knocked down he always gets up.” He once told a group of fight writers, “Maxim is as good a fighter as Dempsey, except he can’t hit.” Since that was all Dempsey could do, Kearns wasn