The Telephone Booth Indian - Abbott Joseph Liebling [15]
One reason he prefers sparring to fighting is that it keeps him out in the country for weeks at a time. George loves nature, usually soaking up its beauties through the pores of his skin, with his eyes closed. He is never more content than when he can sprawl his fivefootelevenandthreequarterinch body in one of the deep lawn chairs at Dr. Joseph Bier's training camp at Pompton Lakes, New Jersey, where Louis has trained for eleven Eastern fights and prepared for his match with Tony Galento at the Yankee Stadium. It is pleasant to watch Nicholson in his chair, a straw sombrero cocked over his eyes, which are further protected by smoked glasses with octagonal lenses. His torso slopes backward at an extremely obtuse angle to his thighs. One leg, with a sizethirteen shoe at the end of it, is negligently crossed over the other knee. Sometimes he drops off to sleep.
At two o'clock in the afternoon a brisk, pinkcheeked Jewish trainer named Mannie Seamon appears on the lawn and says, “C'mon, George, time to get going.” The big man arises and starts for the gymnasium at the back of the house to prepare for the few minutes of acute discomfort whereby he pays for his leisure. Louis in training usually boxes against three sparring partners in an afternoon, two threeminute rounds with each man.
Nicholson is at home at Pompton Lakes. He has been there to help Louis prepare for four fights. In 1936 he spent three weeks in the same camp with Jim Braddock, when Braddock was getting ready to fight Tommy Farr. Now and then, Nicholson gets a fight on his own account, but he doesn't earn much that way. A sparring partner must be a pretty good fighter to give a star a workout, but if he is a financially successful fighter he will not work for trainingcamp wages. Since there are not many bouts available for a runofthemill Negro heavyweight unless he has a powerful white promoter building him up, the best sparring partners are apt to be Negroes. White boys of commensurate ability are usually in training for their own fights.
A partner's life is not arduous when he has a camp job. He may take some hard punches in a workout with a hitter like Louis, but boxers in training wear headguards and sixteenounce gloves, and Nicholson has seldom received a cut. Nor has he ever been knocked down in a sparring match. The trouble with the calling is that stars usually train only four weeks for a bout and fight at most two or three times each year. Sometimes a heavyweight champion skips a year without fighting at all. In the intervals a sparring partner has slim pickings. This sometimes discourages Nicholson, but not for long. His is a sanguine nature.
“When it's no business in the fall,” he says, “I go home to my parents' place in Mantua, New Jersey, and hunts rabbits and squirrels with a gun. And when it's no work in the spring I go there and work in the garden. And then, also, I might get a fight inbetweentimes.” He does not say this last with any conviction. He had just fourteen fights in his first four years as a professional, and his net income from them was less than fifteen hundred dollars. George won nine bouts and thinks he got bad decisions in a couple he lost. He was twentyeight—a ripe middle age for a fighter.
Boxers never start