Sweet Thunder Page 24

  LaMotta kept heaving during the count. And then that little shift began, the shift where the borderline sentimentalists become converts, angling with emotion toward the better fighter. And Jake LaMotta, having already whipped one Joe Louis protégé in Jimmy Edgar, seemed to be angling for another one now. In the racially haunted universe of boxing, LaMotta knew that many white fighters were wary of the Negro boxers, fearing that two losses in a row to a Negro would doom them and imagining that their manager might get interested in the Negro and forget about them. LaMotta had pondered such thinking and kicked it to the ground: He looked for Negro fighters, went after them like some Great White Hunter stalking about the Midwest and the Eastern seaboard. Now here was Robinson, a 3-to-1 favorite, flying through the ring. Who was the poor ignorant Italian now? LaMotta stood there, breathing hard above Sugar Ray, his thick neck and thick shoulders turning to the crowd. This was their Sugar Ray, their boy, whom he had knocked from the ring, shamed in the glare of the Speed Graphic bulbs. La Motta simply hated Robinson’s silkiness, that way he floated about the city—be it Manhattan or Detroit—as if the air had been scented for him to walk through; as if he owned things not yet his—such as a championship belt! Robinson got up in time, got to his corner, only to be scolded and hissed at by Gainford, who took him to task about his gallivanting around Detroit before the bout. Robinson appeared bewildered, still taking in the sting of LaMotta’s fists. Two rounds later it was all over. His winning streak—amateur and pro included—of 130 rounds had come to an end. In his hometown. Stunned faces stared into the ring; noise swooped backward all the way up to the gallery gods.

  The newspapers over the next two days—reporters and columnists from Detroit to New York and elsewhere—would point to LaMotta’s weight advantage as having been crucial. “When Jacob LaMotta brought the Sugar Man down with a body punch in the eighth round after bombarding his midsection at every opportunity in each of the seven preceding rounds,” said Charlie Ward of the Detroit Free Press, “the ears of the fight wise went up like the ears of so many startled rabbits in a midnight pasture.” It was no mystery to LaMotta why he’d won: “When I met Ray in the Garden last fall I had to scale down to 157 pounds. That took something out of me and I didn’t have enough steam at the finish.”

  Heavier now, he grabbed at his moment of glory. The Detroit Free Press headlined proclaimed: JAKE IS CITY’S CINDERELLA. Before the teletype machines had finished clacking off the reporters’ wired-in dispatches that night; before the photographers had developed their final fight pictures (they knew the editors would want that one showing Robinson flying from the ring!); before the Canadians had ventured back across the border, and the Ohioans slipped back into Ohio; before the gallery gods had made it back to their apartments and rooming houses and dropped off to sleep from exhaustion and excitement, there had been whispers of a rematch, snaking in and out of the fighters’ dressing rooms, Gainford nodding, vowing revenge. Robinson was Robinson—his pride foretold of a destined rematch.

  “I still think I can defeat LaMotta and I hope I get another chance at him,” Robinson said, his voice heavier than usual.

  A rivalry’s prerequisite—the nation’s attention—was now a certainty. The New York Times headline pointedly said: END OF ROBINSON STRING SHOCKS RING WORLD.

  Two weeks later the promoter Londes raced off to Greenwood Lake, Robinson’s training camp. The phone calls had come to an end; now it was time for the formality of signing the contracts for the third bout. It was cold and stark when Londes reached Greenwood Lake. Robinson felt he needed the disciplining climate following the debacle in Detroit and was now pushing himself very hard in training. Contracts signed, Londes took off.

  But LaMotta, as the victor, now had the pick of location. The city of Detroit had grown on him. He liked the hard and cold feel of the place, and Detroiters had taken to him too. Dale Stafford, the Detroit Free Press columnist, agreed that LaMotta “had given Detroit a brand of fighting which has appealed to the public and resulted in this great revival of professional boxing.” Stafford added: “Of course the city has been good to him, too, and it is doubtful that he could have gotten either the money or opportunity elsewhere that he has been accorded here.”

  While Robinson had received 35 percent of the gate receipts, LaMotta got 25 percent in Detroit. For LaMotta, that figure came to $39,399. “That’s the biggest check Jake ever got,” his manager said, beaming.

  LaMotta wanted—and got—a return to Detroit.

  Promoter Londes had left Robinson in the cold of Greenwood Lake. The fight date would be February 26, only twenty-one days after their earlier bout. The emotionally wounded young fighter ran and climbed the hills; he ran through the bright light and he ran into the spreading sunset. His welterweight-to-middleweight dream suddenly lay in doubt. He brooded about the defeat he had suffered in front of so many friends and family. And now, with the contracts signed, pushing himself along the pathways—Act One and Two over, Act Three looming—it was impossible for him to ignore how high the stakes were. This fighter, this Bull, had knocked him from the ring. No one—auto magnate, factory worker, shoeshine man, or gallery god—would forget it.

  After LaMotta beat him, Robinson defeated Jackie Wilson at Madison Square Garden. LaMotta was at ringside during the match—snorting, blinking, turning as fans patted him on his broad shoulders, his Bronx allies sitting close by, glorying in his growing stature.

  LaMotta arrived in Detroit three days before the fight. He took workouts—unsmiling—again at the Motor City Gym. Robinson, who had refused to stipulate any weight limits on LaMotta, lest anyone think he needed an advantage, arrived the next day. Gainford kept a tighter rein on his young fighter’s movements; coming into the city just forty-eight hours before would lessen opportunity for carousing. Because of the war there had been air-siren practice runs in the city—as well as in many cities across the nation—and the metropolis could seem somber one day (air raid!) and dizzy with excitement the next if a big-time fight was looming. Robinson obliged his fan base and invited them to a brief workout at the Brewster Recreation Center once again. His partisans—gathered, on their feet, staring up at him in the ring with the concentration of bird-watchers—commented among themselves that he seemed in wonderful shape. But there was concern that had trailed him from Manhattan, and it seeped into the minds of local boxing officials. It was believed that Robinson had injured his delicate hands in the Jackie Wilson fight. N. H. Schiafer, a physician who worked for the State Athletic Board of Control, would have to examine the fighter’s hands before giving the final go-ahead on the bout. Schiafer put Robinson’s hands through several exercises. Robinson grinned as onlookers stared with worry. “This boxer is in unusually good condition,” Schiafer finally said. Robinson’s blood pressure after a workout had been 110 over 70. “That is very good,” the doctor said, as if to reassure anyone who imagined their own blood pressure had risen during the proceedings. (In the next day’s edition of the Detroit Free Press, there appeared a photograph of Robinson’s fists—no face or body, just the elegant fists—balled and resting on a table. Darkly hued hands; the thumbnails looked freshly manicured. The photo caption said: “Sugar Ray’s Dynamite Knobs As They Appeared Wednesday After Getting Examination Okay.” The caption continued: “Now he can turn ’em loose against Jake in return bout at the Olympia Friday night.”

  Only once before—in 1930 for a welterweight title bout—had the Olympia fight promoters raised tickets all the way to $10. There was grumbling on the street, but the tickets sold at a feverish clip. (The gallery gods need not worry; their $1.20-priced ticket went unchanged.) For this bout each fighter would receive 30 percent of net receipts, a figure that told of LaMotta’s new equality against Robinson.

  Strategies evolved. “Ray is a boxer of the old English school,” Gainford ventured to explain. “Just plain speed and clean cut boxing—that’s his specialty. Naturally he wants a lot of room for his style and the ropes hamper him. Yep, we gotta stay away from
the corner and ropes.” Robinson’s sentiments echoed his manager’s: “He’ll have a tough time flagging me out there in the open,” he said of LaMotta.

  Maybe it was the air raid sirens, or the rationings that were in evidence, but Jake LaMotta—who sprang from a childhood that left him believing all manner of enemies conspired against him—paid particular attention to the military alertness of Detroit. The wartime reports on the radio, the sirens, the photographs of Detroit boys who were away at war in the local newspaper—all of it toyed with his mind. LaMotta didn’t serve in World War II because of an ear problem, but in Detroit, on the eve of his third match with Robinson, it began to rankle that Robinson was getting such good, patriotic-themed press. He wondered to himself if the Army-inducted Robinson might garner sympathy from the judges on fight night. The more his camp told him he was imagining things, the more convinced he became he was right. The Bull believed what the Bull believed.

  LaMotta couldn’t escape the rags-to-riches story line that trailed him now. Two years earlier he had been treated to nearly worthless fight-night paychecks. His manager, Mike Capriano, reminisced with local reporters about his fighter’s financial odyssey: “For a long time,” he said, “Jake was a $25 fighter. That’s what he got for his first pro start and that’s what he got when he fought Johnny Morris, Stanley Goicz, [Lorne] McCarthy and others at White Plains, N.Y.; when he fought Monroe Crewe, a heavyweight, at Ridgewood Grove; when he met Johnny Cihlar at the Broadway Arena and Morris in a rematch at the New York Coliseum. We thought we’d struck it rich one night in the Queensboro A.C. when we pulled down 85 bucks for a fight with Joe Baynes. We never made as much as 100 bucks until we came West for the first time.”

  LaMotta sat beside Capriano during his recitation, looking bored.

  The here and now was the here and now.

  ACT THREE “I didn’t lose it, he got the decision.”

  From the opening bell Robinson hewed closely to instructions given him by his corner and Gainford: Steer clear of the ropes and sting LaMotta with punches when close enough. LaMotta’s strategy was to attack, and he kept coming, making it difficult for Robinson to escape. But Robinson surprised LaMotta by holding on to him. It was as if a big disoriented penguin—one side black, the other white, which was actually close to what the gallery gods themselves were seeing—was tussling with itself. The clutching kept LaMotta from forcing Robinson to the ropes. “The crowd didn’t like that but it was sound and effective practice,” The Detroit News would say of the Robinson strategy. Going into the third round Gainford urged Robinson to ignore LaMotta’s lower body and go for the head. It took another round before he was able to do so with effect: A flurry of rights to the head—“and two jarring uppercuts”—staggered LaMotta and drew blood from a cut above his left eye. A sudden and guttural symphony of crowd noise washed over the Olympia. Robinson kept swinging, “trying for a knockout,” sending LaMotta twisting along the ropes. It was sheer will that enabled LaMotta to stay on his feet, shaking the blows—as a pedestrian does snowflakes—at conclusion of the round. When the Bull reached his corner, his face red, having survived the round, he found himself greeted with applause: This was his Detroit as well. And he was benefiting from the emotion of those who had been neutral; those who wished merely to see a good fight. Robinson’s corner was quite confident. Their fighter was meeting LaMotta’s strength with caginess. In the seventh round, LaMotta had inched Robinson toward Robinson’s own corner—near where the souls from the Brewster Recreation Center sat and where his beautiful sister sat—and he unleashed a pounding left punch to Robinson’s head. Robinson collapsed; Gainford’s fleshy hands gripped the ropes; the referee stepped in and commenced with the nine count. LaMotta’s manager had seen his fighter wallop other fighters in such a fashion; he imagined it was over. The Brewster crowd watched, then erupted as Robinson rose, beating the count. LaMotta’s failure to finish Robinson off would prove costly. In the remaining rounds Robinson fought as if starting the fight anew; his flinty punches rocked LaMotta in the last three rounds as the Bull showed signs of tiring. As both fighters retreated to their corners at the final bell, each believed he had won. But it was Robinson’s hand that was raised at center ring. The raining of boos surprised him. In those seconds of pure and raw emotion, his hometown connection held no magic. The boos kept coming. “So deafening and so prolonged were the howls of protest,” noted The Detroit News, “that [announcer George] Wise had to give up the idea of introducing the principals for the next bout.”

  Though composed, LaMotta felt robbed of a victory. Some in the crowd—it was a record-breaking $60,000 gate—shook their heads as they made their way toward the exits. In the hours afterward, LaMotta himself would begin replaying the details of the event, focusing on those minutes before the fight’s beginning when the fighter Jackie Wilson, at ringside, was introduced to the crowd—and introduced as “Sgt.” Jackie Wilson. It was that military-patriotic inclusion that he now wondered about, pondering what role it might have played in Robinson’s win; wondering if Robinson’s own military record might have kept the judges—even subconsciously—from making a harder and, in LaMotta’s mind, fairer decision. “If they say I lost,” LaMotta said, “I’m willing to take their word for it.” But that comment was suffused with disenchantment; he sulked and remained bewildered. Among the other notables at ringside were Larry Atkins, the Cleveland fight promoter, eyeing Robinson, four years away from bringing him to Cleveland to face Jimmy Doyle.

  Robinson’s dressing room was a joyful cacophony of the cheers and congratulations of elbowing well-wishers. He strained to see over their shoulders, trying to spot familiar faces as they inched toward him. A Falstaffian lightness had returned to huge George Gainford’s appearance; he was smiling. Robinson needed ice for his hurting hands. “He really hurt me with a left in the seventh round,” Sugar Ray said. “I was a little dazed and decided to stay on the deck for the count of eight. That was the only time I was in trouble and my plan of staying away worked the rest of the time.”

  But a cloud lingered over Robinson’s win. Many felt he had been beaten. And even before the fighters had left the city, the demands for a rematch were already buzzing. Both camps, within days, agreed in principle to a fourth bout. “I didn’t lose it, he got the decision,” LaMotta would say of that third bout years later.

  The loss bore into LaMotta, like darkness in the inmate hole at Coxsackie. The world, he felt, belittled him, shoved him around; believed him to be little more than “a wop.” He had flattened Robinson in the seventh round, put him on the canvas. And he hadn’t failed to take in the shock and boos from many in the audience when Robinson was announced the victor. “That’s when I began to think about Robinson as a nemesis.”

  So now they were conjoined. They were linked—and cursed—like sibling brothers, each of whom ferociously wanted what the other possessed. LaMotta also wanted revenge. The Bull was angry at Jackie Wilson and at Sugar Ray: He hadn’t forgotten all those patriotic hosannas thrown Robinson’s way in Detroit. He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep peacefully until he had righted this perceived wrong. The boxing gods had conspired against him—he’d never get to face Joe Louis because of those weight divisions. But he had no intention of letting Robinson get away.

  As for Robinson, however, he had bigger goals in his sights—the reigning middleweight champion, not to mention the welterweight belt. He wanted a fair chance to claim glory even if he had to trek across weight divisions to get it. And yet, economics mattered: Robinson-LaMotta had broken gate receipts in their joint appearances—STANDING ROOM ONLY, the Detroit placards said—at the Olympia. They confused bettors and bookies, igniting constant curiosity within both groups.

  They were big box office, and the shadow of each—pulling writers, fans, jazzmen, the young and old—loomed over the other. They were pure athleticism. “Watching those guys was like watching two fighters in a brawl down on Pier 6,” recalls David Dinkins, a young fight fan in those days and later mayor o
f New York City.

  They were opposites who attracted. Having fought three times, they now knew each other’s styles well enough that one’s ring knowledge seemed to cancel out the other’s ring knowledge. The clacking of the fight bell started each saga anew. That old racial animus hovered—but it never burst into full fury as it did with Joe Louis and Max Schmeling; instead it just sent off a few sparks and splinters—little-boy ruffians who sided with Robinson or LaMotta, who were broiled in ethnic rivalries tossing epithets as they strolled home through the tough streets of New York City, the sinister words dying before they had a chance to incite anything.

  Detroit lay behind them—and blood between them. One felt conspired against; the other had been anointed by virtue of gifts and hunger. Such were the requisites of a rivalry and the planting of its deep seed, one that would sprout in the hurt face of the Italian and the swooning pride of the distressed Negro.

  Within twenty-four months there would be crowds clamoring and jostling for tickets to see them again, this time in Manhattan, the jazzy metropolis Robinson considered far more his backyard than Detroit had ever been.

  The months—with war and victory and big-themed speeches and Billy Eckstine crooning and a certain draftee, Sugar Ray Robinson, home from war (the amnesia gone!), and all the kissing and hugging and lovemaking—passed by as if in a blur.