Why did Robinson fight Maxim?

Plus, SRR's manager said: "If we beat Maxim, we are going after Marciano"......
To which Robinson replied: "What? Are you trying to get me killed? ....

 

Regarding Robinson fighting Marciano:

There was this show in Chicago called "The Sports Writers on TV." It aired in the 1980s/early 90s. I watched it faithfully. They were pretty funny but also very well informed.

It featured grizzled Chicago area sports writers like Bill Gleason and Bill Jauss. They included a young writer named Rick Telander (who is now an old guy) and others (Lester Munson often showed up). The host was Ben Bentley, who you'll see as the ring announcer in a lot of Friday Night Fight shows from the 1950s that were held in Chicago.

Bentley was pretty old when he was on the show. And I remember when Leonard beat LaLonde in 1988 and won a portion of the light heavyweight title. They were discussing it, and wondering who Leonard would fight next.

And Ben Bentley confidently said ... "MIKE TYSON!"

And they all kind of looked at each other like he was crazy. And Bentley went on about how all these light heavys from the 50s would challenge heavyweights.

It was a memorable show.

It was funny how the mindset of the guy who was involved in boxing in the 1950s was so different than the guys who covered boxing in the 1980s.

To Bentley, it was clear. Of course, Leonard would fight Tyson.

 

Maybe Maxim was hand-picked like Ruiz was for Jones, in a way. He didn't try again once Archie Moore became the champion.

 

Robinson fought Maxim because he viewed him stylistically low hanging fruit. Maxim wasn't a big puncher and wasn't a really threatening opponent. He was a jab and grab artist that Robinson (correctly) figured he could outjab and outspeed without taking too much punishment. I doubt he intended to defend the light heavyweight title unless some kind of a mega fight could be made and maybe even not then. He had no announced intentions of retiring before the fight but he was very very sick from heat exhaustion afterward. He felt, whether correctly or not, that he nearly died from it. The shock/scare of that prompted him to call it a day. He had always been enamored with song and dance acts (he had done this as an amateur on the street while boxing as an amateur) and really felt he could move into showbiz. Im not sure how he got that impression because he was absolutely awful at singing and wasn't great at dancing either. When reality set in and the Maxim fight was two years in his rearview mirror he decided to make a comeback.

 

Leonard may as well had tried to wrestle an angry grizzly bear or fight a hungry tiger before fighting what was at that time, a prime Mike Tyson

 

There was definitely talk of Robinson and Moore meeting when they were middleweight and light-heavyweight champions respectively.

 

I think that was in 1959, both were well past it by then, but I think Robinson may have believed Moore was ready to be taken then. What I meant was him challenging Moore in say 1952/53

 

He was the dancing master

 

Some time before the fight actually came off, there might have been some over-enthusiastic news people writing about Maxim, taking on either Marciano or Robinson. To be fair to the press, I think Maxim even suggested he might meet Marciano first; then Robinson. A prospective Maxim/Robinson bout was being mooted in early '51, as far as I can recall.