The Sweet Science - A. J. Liebling [30]
Any effect Mr. Butler’s prediction might have had on me was dissipated by the atmosphere of the camp. When we arrived, a crowd had already gathered around George Gainford, Robinson’s immense, impressive manager, on the lawn between the sleeping quarters and the press building. It was a mass interview. The topic of discussion was what Robinson was going to do with two championships after he whipped Maxim. Since Robinson would indubitably weigh under a hundred and seventy-five pounds for the fight, the light heavyweight title would be his if he won. But since Maxim would certainly weigh more than a hundred and sixty, he could not take the middleweight championship, no matter what he did to Robinson. The chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission, someone said to Gainford, had announced that if Robinson won the heavier championship, he would have to abandon the lighter one. It sounded to me like the kind of hypothetical problem harried publicity men so often cook up as fight day approaches. But Gainford, a vast ebon man, broad between the eyes, played it straight. “The Commission do not make a champion,” he intoned. “Neither may the Supreme Court name him. The people of the world name him; that is democracy. And if Robinson emerge victorious, he will be champion in both classes until somebody defeat him.”
“How about the welterweight championship?” somebody asked. Robinson was the welterweight champion (one hundred and forty-seven pounds) until he entered the middleweight class. He was never beaten at that weight.
“I do not want to make that weight,” Gainford said majestically, using the first person singular as if he were Jack Kearns. He must weigh two hundred and forty.
While Gainford propounded, the fighter and three camp-mates were sitting around a table, unperturbed by the jostling visitors. They were playing hearts, and all shouting simultaneously that they were being cheated. Robinson put an end to the game by standing up and saying he had better get ready for his workout. He was wearing a green-and-white straw cap and a red-and-white Basque shirt and cinnamon slacks, and he looked as relaxed and confident as a large Siamese tomcat. Sam Taub, the I.B.C. press agent at the camp, led him into the press shack to be interviewed by “just the bona-fide newspapermen,” and he sprawled gracefully on a narrow typewriter shelf, one leg straight out and the other dangling. Robinson is about six feet in length, very tall for a middleweight, and on casual inspection he seems more like a loose-limbed dancer than a boxer. A long, thin neck, the customary complement of long arms and legs, is a disadvantage to a boxer, because a man with his head attached that way doesn’t take a good punch. The great layer of muscle on the back of Robinson’s neck is the outward indication of his persistence. It is the kind that can be developed only by endless years of exercise—the sort of exercise no shiftless man will stick with.
“Have you ever fought a man that heavy?” a newspaperman asked him.
“Never a champion that heavy,” Robinson said, smiling.
“Do you think you can hurt him?” the man asked.
“I can hurt anybody,” the boxer said. “Can I hurt him enough is the question. I’ll be hitting at him, all right.”
“Have you a plan for the battle?” another fellow asked.
“If you have a plan, the other fellow is liable to do just the opposite,” Robinson said.
“How are your legs?” somebody else asked.
“I hope they all right,” Robinson said. “This would sure be a bad time for them to go wrong.”
The interview broke up and the fighter went along to get into his ring togs. He worked four easy rounds with two partners, who didn’t seem to want to irritate him. They sparred