Sweet Thunder Read online

  Two New York boys from distinctly different worlds setting off on their odyssey, preparing to taunt the social, political, and cultural realities that jumped in the air around them. The Harlem Dandy and the Bronx Bull.

  On that lower frequency where some minions of the boxing universe lingered, there was another way of expressing it: the nigger and the wop.

  Unlike Robinson, LaMotta wasn’t a student of boxing history; but he knew enough to familiarize himself with a welterweight’s mindset. He actually harbored a suspicion about welterweights. “The welterweights, you know, are tricky and fast, so you learn to duck and weave so that when you get into your own weight class you’re not a sitting duck.” The newspapers printed thousands of words about the upcoming bout. Hype Igoe of the New York Journal-American believed LaMotta would pull out a victory. The New York Times conceded that Robinson was “favored” but allowed that La Motta could pose problems because he was a “hard puncher.”

  More than twelve thousand showed at Madison Square Garden for the ten-round bout. Leaves blew through the streets of Manhattan as George Gainford taped his fighter’s delicate hands. There was much chatter among the throng indoors about the thirteen-pound weight advantage LaMotta had over Robinson. Joey LaMotta—a sometime fighter himself—tended to his brother Jake in their dressing room along with manager, Mike Capriano.

  Robinson’s loose gait and relaxed appearance were a contrast to LaMotta, who seemed coiled.

  Robinson surprised LaMotta in the first round by engaging in close battle with him, trading short stinging jabs, immediately communicating that he would give no ground regarding his foe’s strength. LaMotta’s corner would catch moments when a blow from their fighter—if delivered now!—would inflict damage, only to see that Robinson’s head—peekaboo—had vanished to one side just as quickly. In rounds two and three, Robinson had stepped back effectively, peppering LaMotta with jabs that seemed like tentacles reaching out for blood. The Bronxites in attendance urged their fighter to inch in closer to Robinson, but Robinson always slipped away. Gainford instructed his fighter to forget about a knockout, worrying that the kind of hitting it would require might damage Robinson’s hands, which were prone to swelling. It was in the fourth that Robinson—as if on a fast carousel—connected with a torrent of blows: “a flood of nerve-jarring right and left hooks, jabs and bolo wallops to the head and kidneys, wild, roundhouse swings to the head,” in the words of an Amsterdam News man. The onslaught cut a gash above LaMotta’s left eye. The Times writer Joseph Nichols sensed Robinson’s evolving strategy of quick hits: “The Harlem fighter worked along these same long-range lines through the seventh and often staggered his heavier rival with well-placed rights to the jaw.”

  This was a different type of “colored” fighter than LaMotta had ever faced. The judges agreed, giving Robinson the victory in a unanimous decision, extending his undefeated streak. Clusters of blacks erupted with joy over Robinson’s win, a reaction that had the effect of taunting every soul from the Bronx. The Times referred to LaMotta as yet another “victim” of the wily Robinson. To Dan Burley’s mind, Robinson had slid around LaMotta “with the grace and artistry of a ballet dancer,” confounding the Bronx challenger all night long.

  There were grins inside Robinson’s dressing room amid the flicker of camera bulbs. Gainford took the spotlight. “There’s a lot of things Ray can do that the experts don’t know about,” he said, sounding as if his fighter possessed the trickiness of Houdini, as if the best was yet to come. Sugar Ray rested his hands in ice water and listened, still such a surprising portrait of welterweight wispiness despite the evening’s just-completed battle with a heavier foe.

  “Beating middleweights is among them,” Gainford went on, explaining Robinson. “Look at him: There’s not a scratch on him. He’s been like that right along. That’s why he can fight every week or every other night if he wants to.” The reporters were scribbling it all down. “He knows how to keep out of the way and at the same time, mess up the other fellow,” Gainford said.

  Robinson, however, admitted that LaMotta’s blows had been delivered with menacing power. “He hit me one left hook a little high on my head and I saw stars,” he said. “He hurt me a couple of times. I have never met a fighter strong as he is.”

  LaMotta cursed long into his Bronx night, telling his brother and cornermen he could have beat Robinson; that Robinson was just quicker than he had imagined.

  But what promoters listened to and heard was the amount of fascination with the fight, the aftermath in which there was a pouring forth of raves about the tussle. Robinson won, but the punches flew and flew and neither man hit the canvas. And for a wartime audience known to spend conservatively on leisure activities, the $29,434 gate receipt was nothing to snicker at.

  When approached, both fighters quickly agreed to a rematch. Robinson’s motive was easy to understand: Now that he had climbed into the company of middleweights, he wished to remain there. It was the financial end that appealed to LaMotta. He had been fighting and scuffling for bigger paydays. Robinson’s name on a boxing marquee ensured big crowds; big crowds meant larger purses and more money for him. LaMotta had received more publicity surrounding the Robinson fight than ever before, even if some of it rankled him. There were reporters who had written profiles of him, and inside those profiles—scanning the words and sentences—he felt they were trying to make him out to be “a poor ignorant Italian.” (He hated that many of the stories mentioned that he ate a lot of macaroni, intimating his was a poor man’s diet.)

  It was the simmering anger of the proletariat.

  There was a natural belief the rematch would be held in New York. Then Boston promoters made a grab for it. But Nick Londes, a hard-hustling Detroit matchmaker, also made appealing offers to both camps to come to the Motor City. He offered the Olympia, which was a fine and celebrated venue; he promised a large crowd. Robinson, having won the first fight, had the upper hand when it came to picking out the location. He agreed to Detroit, and some of the reasons were certainly sentimental: It was his hometown; old friends who had seen the childlike hunger in his eyes when he was a little boy still resided there. LaMotta had no reservations about Detroit. It was a lunch-pail town, an underdog metropolis. In fact, the colored population of Detroit had become well acquainted with Jake La Motta. He had already whipped two tough fighters there—Jimmy Edgar and Charley Hayes—leaving those who had witnessed his victories awestruck.

  Sugar Ray Robinson arrived in Detroit a week before the fight. A deeper maturity—he was all of twenty-one years old—had seemed forced upon him in recent months, and there had been changes in his life. Bolstered by his enterprising belief in himself he had formed Ray Robinson Incorporated, and the move had quickly swelled his payroll: Now, in addition to Gainford, he was traveling with Bill Miller, an adviser; Clyde Brewer, an additional trainer; and Al Linton, a secretary. Evelyn, his stunningly beautiful sister, was along as well: “I’m his good luck charm and travel to all his fights,” she offered shortly after his arrival in the city. His stature in boxing circles had also risen. For his achievements throughout 1942, Robinson—just weeks before arriving in Detroit—was named “fighter of the year” by Ring magazine. (His victory over middleweight LaMotta had been an obvious exclamation point.) The praise from Ring magazine was not an honor that could be downplayed, since Robinson had dethroned Detroit’s own Joe Louis, winner of the designation for the preceding four years. There was warmth and an assuredness in Robinson’s smile now. He seemed joyful that his sister was at his side to bask in his glory and, at times, tend to his slights—both real and imagined.

  The Olympia stadium was already selling standing-room-only tickets, owing to the interest in the bout and its two combatants. Worrying about news of heavy betting on the fight, boxing commissioners announced that they would not name the boxing officials until the night of the fight.

  Seen around the city in the days before the bout, Robinson and his group had the loose and jovial comp
ortment of a jazz ensemble. Their long winter coats flapped in the breeze. Pedestrians eyed them with curiosity and gave them space. The surroundings elicited memories, and Robinson talked about his childhood with his companions, pointing out street corners and girls he had wooed and lost, stores where he had bought candy bars, porches where he had jitter-bugged with a child’s unharnessed energy. “Not much space for … worthwhile roadwork between school and home was there?” he remarked to his entourage as they all looked around, standing in front of the Balch Elementary School, which he attended, and his home, which was right across the street. Among them all, there was sweet, comfortable laughter in honor of that child then—and the man now. “There’s where you learned tap dancing, eh Ray,” one of his walking companions said, pointing to the school. Moving around town, he talked about the fancy stores his family never could afford to shop inside, about the bright theatre marquees he ogled; he pointed out play areas and alleyways. He bear-hugged old acquaintances, then quickly pointed to his sister Evelyn—her fashionable attire drew many admiring comments—as if to prove that the Robinson family beauty had not only held up but improved with time. (Few could deny that both siblings had a magazine-pictorial attractiveness.) He saw shoeshine men and janitors, scavengers and hoboes, city sweepers and garbage workers—the very type of occupations that might have claimed him had he not gotten away, fighting before he was a fighter to make all his dreams come true. His memory was lit yet again while standing on Ferry Street: “Oh, oh, I wonder how that gal of mine is getting along. Let’s see … Mmmm … Mmmm … She was pretty too. That’s it, Lorraine.” He scanned nearby faces awaiting smart-alecky retorts. “I was only ten then,” he said. Delighted to be back in Detroit, he found himself in a comfort zone. He made time to go bowling, young ladies squealing at the sight of him as he shone beneath the bowling alley’s fluorescent lighting. He was able to hear some fine music in the city. There were hours when he vanished completely from Gainford’s sight; his New York aides who had accompanied him to the city imagined he was availing himself of opportunities for quick romantic adventures.

  On one of his outings—an inevitable trek—Robinson and his group went over to the Brewster Recreation Center. It was bound to touch his senses, for it was a showcase of Negro pride and accomplishment in the city. And it was where, as a youth, he had spent so much time, where he first met Joe Louis, where he had stared at other fighters with awe, where he first slipped on a pair of boxing gloves. There was much laughter and joy at his appearance, voices rising and hands reaching out to touch him. His gray fedora sat back on his head as he and Leon Wheeler, the center’s director, caught up and talked about old times. He brightened at the sight of Delmar Williams, one of his earliest mentors who was still working there. The familiarity of everything overwhelmed the young Sugar Ray. He couldn’t resist a light ring workout for the gathering. He threw some easy punches and offered a peek at his fast footwork. Delmar Williams nodded and told those near enough to hear that he had first spotted this wondrous talent back in 1932. Ray broke a sweat in the ring; his sister’s eyes stayed glued to him, ready to caution against too much exertion. “I used to carry Joe Louis’s gloves and bags into this room here,” Robinson said, pointing. While heads swiveled, he stepped from the ring. Williams, the old mentor, had seen enough of his former pupil: “Yep,” he said jazzily, “there’s gonna be a jam session at Olympia Friday—and that LaMotta boy is in the jam.”

  Jake LaMotta and his traveling crew set up sparring sessions at the Motor City Gym. The Italians in the city were overjoyed at his presence. He shook hands with the locals and swapped a few Bronx stories. To relax he played pool with some pros passing through town. He had a habit of keeping his laughter to a minimum, a persona he had created but one that fit naturally with his rather severe disposition.

  There was talk on the street and throughout the city about advantages and disadvantages each fighter would bring into the ring. Robinson’s height and rangy reach over LaMotta were believed to be hugely in the fighter’s favor—as was apparent during the first meeting. But LaMotta scoffed at such theories. “People pay too much attention to the physical advantages of prize fighters,” he said. “They seem to think that if a fellow has longer arms than an opponent he will beat that opponent. That’s the bunk. If the men who bet on fights used those things as a basis for their calculations regarding the winner of a fight they would all be broke.” Nevertheless, LaMotta’s manager had employed the Youngstown fighter Tommy Bell, tall and long-limbed like Robinson, to spar with La-Motta and, in effect, to mimic the dangerous and elusive Robinson himself. (At this time Bell was three years away from his own destined date with Robinson.) It was LaMotta’s belief that surprise in the ring must be accounted for: “Often one good punch will decide a fight and knock all calculations into the water bucket.”

  Street-corner chatter and theories ricocheted around the Robinson camp as well, one being that LaMotta had trimmed his weight for the first fight and it had sucked some of his power away. It was a mistake, the naysayers believed, that he wouldn’t make again. Gainford snickered, and when he addressed the issue, it was with an easy bravado. “When Ray defeated Jake in New York the people said he did so only because he made LaMotta come in at 157 pounds. They contended that Jake was weak at that weight. Well, Jake claims to be a legitimate middleweight. So we are taking him at the middleweight limit here. When we beat him he will not have any excuses,” he proclaimed. One afternoon Gainford spotted a member of LaMotta’s camp at one of Robinson’s workouts—spying!—and after demanding the intruder leave, he complained to promoter Nick Londes, who promised it would not happen again. Denizens of fight camps were hardly above trying for an edge by angling for nuggets of information from the opposition.

  At the weigh-in LaMotta was sixteen pounds heavier than Robinson. “It’s His Big Night,” the Detroit Free Press said in a caption beneath a photo of LaMotta on fight’s eve. In the picture LaMotta, in silk boxing shorts, is crouched and looks quite brooding against the 1940s film-noir shadow of newsprint.

  In the hours leading up to the fight, Canadians crossed the border into the United States and Michigan; Ohioans crossed the state line. When the sun dropped and the skies darkened over the Olympia, all reserved tickets had been sold. A couple of hours before the ten p.m. starting time, however, promoters announced that tickets for “the gallery gods” would go on sale. The gallery gods were the stragglers, the poorer souls, the ones who’d brave standing around in the cold. The gallery gods had scrounged up coins that very day, itching for their moment to scoot over to the Olympia.

  Up high, the gallery gods were in heaven, seated among the more than 18,930 in attendance—the largest crowd ever for a Michigan bout—and clutching their $1.20 lowest-priced ticket as a keepsake.

  Both fighters received loud applause during the introductions, but Robinson’s was thunderous: The hometown boy, his sister, and the Brewster Recreation Center gang up close—every moment of it unleashed such emotion and revelry.

  From the outset LaMotta rushed Robinson—

  The vicious LaMotta right sends Robinson tumbling through the ropes in front of his hometown crowd in Detroit in 1943. The victory convinced LaMotta he was the better fighter. Robinson believed otherwise. And thus the stage was set for all future battles.

  “Jake stomped me with his first left hook,” Robinson would recall—leaning on him with his weight and firing punches. “The crowd let out a roar of expectancy as the men came out of their corners fighting in the first round,” noted the Detroit Free Press, “and it roared from then until the finish.” Robinson matched LaMotta with punches, but it was obvious that LaMotta’s were having the more desired effect. By the third round LaMotta’s strategy was clear: He was going to go after Robinson’s body, not his head. He was going to wear him down. He was going to use his extra weight to full advantage. The punches kept plowing into Robinson’s stomach and kidney area. Now and then LaMotta would take aim at Robinson’s head—but he’d h
ear that whistle as if it were the only sound landing in his ears—and he’d immediately aim his punches low again, into the stomach and kidneys. Robinson grimaced. LaMotta banged at Robinson’s head again, and again there came a piercing whistle from ringside, which no one paid attention to—not with the photographers and radio announcers and everyone else elbowing and jostling. LaMotta had trained to hear that whistling shriek because it came from a member of his corner who whistled hard every time LaMotta began focusing too much on Robinson’s head. It was the cue to get back to pounding the body, which LaMotta did. And the more the Bull pounded Robinson’s body, the more he became convinced he could win. Gainford pressed his hands into the rope at ringside, urging his fighter to stay away from LaMotta; but LaMotta kept barreling into him. Then, in the eighth round, a LaMotta strike landed so viciously, so hard, it sent Robinson backward, bent over, reaching for his groin, and flying through the ropes all in one motion; LaMotta’s body language hinted he just might charge out of the ring after his opponent. Robinson’s sister Evelyn gasped. It was as if he had been lifted and thrown by the force of a hurricane. Photographers angled their cameras and the flashes popped. There was Sugar Ray: frozen for that millisecond, bent like candy-store licorice. La Motta wanted more of Robinson. But Robinson rose slowly, into the referee’s count. Before the eyes of men and women whose front porches he had tossed newspapers onto as a kid; before women who were once girls he whistled at. There were church folk and funeral-home workers in the audience whom he knew by name. He had posed in the days leading up to the bout with old acquaintances, grinning like a handsome star of Negro cinema. And now this: their Detroit-born fighter on his butt, his face contorted and eyes honey-glazed like those of a suffering animal. The Bull had stormed into Sugar Ray’s china shop with a vengeance. They screamed for him to get up; the old gadflies from the Brewster Recreation Center, old friends of Joe Louis’s, all pointed and extended their arms, raising the sweaty cry for Robinson to rise. The gallery gods up high screamed, they screamed because this was what was so exciting about boxing; anything could happen and through their squinting eyes they were seeing it all, the telltale moment that would put them right in the middle of the soliloquies to come about what had transpired down there; that made them even with the rich man who was sitting down front, because they were there this night as well.