Art Donovan, was he at all partial to Joe Louis?

By 1930 the mobsters had a very strong influence in boxing, and it wasn't thought to be benign. It was being covered in the newspapers, and almost the exact same set up as would be described 15, 20 or 25 years later - ie. a syndicate of racketeers owning managers and fighters, with front men, and influence that reached outside of New York.
We can accept that as true or just some fiction that a few press men came up with. It has the ring of truth to me.

We could argue the toss about when it started. You can contest the claim that it was in the 1920s, and you're an expert in that era, but it certainly seems to have been up and running by the time Joe Louis came along.

You're right about Boo Boo Hoff, but he was just one man. With men like him promoting fights (and very possibly he did so only as a hobby and/or as a 'front business') throughout the 1920s, it seems more than possible that it provided a way in for others of his ilk who were hungry and had other motives. He's a major underworld connection at least. The fact is by 1930 other racketeers were proving to be a huge concern on the boxing scene.

Going back to the early '20s and before that, Arnold Rothstein, who was politically connected, allegedly owned 10% of Benny Leonard, in exchange for having arranged for Billy Gibson to get a promoter's licence. This was in the same era that he (Rothstein) was fixing the World Series, (with the help of Abe Attell) and about to become one of the biggest bootleggers in America and financier and mentor to such figures as Lansky and Luciano, possibly the biggest mob figures of the 20th century.

So we're talking about Rothstein, a huge underworld figure, gambling racketeer, and a Fixer of at least one big sporting event (the sports scandal of the century), have an active role and a financial interest in the career of a champion fighter.
Benny Leonard was certainly no minor figure, and his fights were not low profile and were not always without controversy either.
If Rothstein's connection to Leonard is an "exception" to the norm, it's significant enough to warrant mention.


I cannot say for sure how many fighters Madden had a piece of. Some suggest it was many. People only really seem to come down hard on Primo Carnera, and I think that's because of the hype surrounding the giant and his barnstorming tours, rather than the fact that mobsters owned him. The objection to Primo is that he couldn't fight and yet he became champion. If you look at the mobsters who owned him and built him up, they almost all had influence and interest in other fighters too. It's not like Primo Carnera brought the gangsters in to boxing - it's the other way round.
(I think Carnera arrived in America Dec.31, 1929)

Carnera is accepted as being mob-owned. I have my doubts about the legitimacy of Braddock, he was connected and said to be owned by Madden too. And Max Baer, who would even know if he was throwing a fight? There are always rumours. Joe Jacobs was said to be a front for Madden in the 1920s(according to Peter Benson in his Battling Siki book), and Jacobs was accused of fixing fights in the 1930s. Jack Sharkey is outright suspected of taking a dive against Carnera. This is the 1930s scene that Joe Louis came in to. The hold of gangsters by that time must have been very strong, the early-mid 1930s.

I could go on, but the point is that racketeer influence in boxing in the 1920s was not nil. It may not have been saturation, or even started out as 'the exception', but it grew strong as the decade progressed .... just as 'protection rackets' in all other areas grew at this time in the USA too, due to the power afforded to gangsters by Prohibition.

 

Well, I just watched the Louis-Farr and Louis-Godoy fights in the film available (I think less than half of each, but most rounds)

Godoy--I don't even see this as very close. Almost all the sharp punching is done by Louis. Godoy's strategy is to crowd Louis but he didn't seem to do much when he got there. Godoy didn't throw a jab in the whole film off what I saw, so Louis got all the points when the two men were at distance. Godoy would also eat body shots and inside punches coming in. Godoy seemed to be only trying to survive the last two rounds.

The 11th round appeared to be missing. Of the other 14, I scored 12-2 for Louis.
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Farr looked much the better fighter, and gave the better fight. His problem was that while he was a good boxer, Louis was better. The British announcer acknowledged that the second half of the fight was all Louis. The first half was competitive, but Farr certainly wasn't dominating. In fact I had Louis up 5-3 after eight. My score was 12-3 for Louis.

I don't see why anyone would get into a tizzy about these two fights and their scoring. Louis obviously won both. The only controversy for me was how anyone could see Godoy winning.

 

A ton of the first hand, ringside accounts echo this sentiment.

 

Still no response to my 14 correcting points? Why am I not surprised?

 

Below is a contemporary account of the fight and the scoring.It states the Associated Press scored solidly for Louis.
10-4-1
http://news.google.com/newspapers?n...yoyAAAAIBAJ&sjid=LbYFAAAAIBAJ&pg=1124,4072073