Boxing, the Sweet Science, has gone sour, and yet there is always the past. At a time when nobody knows who the heavyweight champion is -- or, rather, who the heavyweight champions are, except that they all seem to be Russians -- Muhammad Ali and Jack Johnson keep the social historians busy and two recent biographies of Billy Conn have appeared.
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| | "SWEET WILLIAM: THE LIFE OF BILLY CONN" By Andrew O'Toole
University of Illinois Press ($32.95) | |
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The latest by Andrew O'Toole, who wrote an earlier biography of Art Rooney, covers much the same ground as Paul F. Kennedy's "Billy Conn: The Pittsburgh Kid," but in greater, richer detail.
This revival of interest in Conn goes back to a lengthy and evocative 1985 Sports Illustrated story, "The Boxer and the Blonde," a paean by Frank Deford to Billy and his girl, Mary Louise Smith, and to Pittsburgh as it was in the summer before Pearl Harbor.
Subsequently there came an ESPN documentary and a Billy Conn Web site. The Web site of Harry Greb, the only Pittsburgh fighter whose magnetism was equal to Conn's, may well be more popular, but not since a work of doubtful authenticity called "Give Him to the Angels" went out of print more than half a century ago has any author been able to put Greb between book covers, although many have tried.
For cult figures of the sports-hero variety, there is usually a defining moment, as with Franco Harris (the Immaculate Reception) and Bill Mazeroski (the home run that won the 1960 World Series).
Conn's defining moment was the 13th round of his fight with heavyweight champion Joe Louis on June 18, 1941. From then on, for as long as he lived, he was asked the same question day after day.
Why did he decide, at the start of that round, to come down off his toes and slug it out with perhaps the deadliest puncher the fight game ever had known?
Louis weighed 200 pounds, Conn an almost frail-looking 169. But the way the fight was going, Conn couldn't lose. In the 11th and 12th rounds, Louis had seemed hurt and befuddled. Conn was too fast and elusive for him.
And now with three rounds to go, the one and only heavyweight championship was Conn's for the taking. So why did he stand still and slug?
His original spur-of-the-moment answer -- "What's the use of being Irish if you can't be dumb?" -- survives in folklore. Too late, he saw the folly of his notion that winning on points would not have been good enough, that he must knock Louis out.
Later in round 13, somebody took the 10 count all right, but it wasn't Joe.
Even so, Conn entered myth that night for his failed, spectacular effort, with many millions tuned in to the radio broadcast and 55,000 frenzied ticket buyers looking on in the Polo Grounds, where the New York Giants played baseball. As Deford wrote, this was the best fight there ever was, the best there ever would be.
It's the one thing people remember about Conn besides his good looks. Other than Ali, there was never a fighter as handsome. Warner Brothers asked him to play the 19th-century champion Gentleman Jim Corbett in a movie; he turned them down and they settled for Errol Flynn.
"Sweet William" deals mostly with the forgotten parts of the Conn story:
The eighth-grade dropout from East Liberty showing up at Johnny Ray's gym. A big-time main-event fighter at 19, beating past, current and future world champions. A champion himself (light-heavyweight division) at 21. Moving up to the heavyweights because that's where the money was.
O'Toole's only sources are ancient newspaper clippings (hardly anyone still alive ever saw Conn fight). There are quotes that don't sound much like Conn. His "biting wit" -- O'Toole's phrase -- never made the transition to print very easily, and some of the old-time sportswriters were known for their creativity.
Mary Louise helped O'Toole reconstruct the second most memorable fight of Billy's career -- the one with his father-in-law, Greenfield Jimmy Smith, at the christening party for the Conns' first-born son, Tim.
On this Sunday afternoon in 1942, Billy, who'd enlisted in the Army, was home on furlough. Greenfield Jimmy had vowed that no pug would ever marry his beautiful Mary Louise, and the young lovers' elopement -- he was 23, she was 18 -- continued to rankle.
The day of the baptism, Art Rooney, acting as peacemaker, got the feudists together in the kitchen of Jimmy's house. Jimmy said something inflammatory, and Billy went after him. Once again his judgment was flawed.
When the scuffling ended there were scratches all over Billy's face and the swift-striking left hand that had staggered Joe Louis was broken. Middle-aged Mr. Smith was unmarked.
Conn's injuries put off his return match with Louis for the Army relief fund. The fight was delayed until after the war, and by then Conn had lost his speed and his flair. Louis retained only his punch. It was more than adequate. He won in the eighth, by a knockout. Conn's zombie-like behavior at the weigh-in and his sluggishness in the ring were so perplexing that certain sportswriters said he'd been drugged.
Jimmy Smith, reconciled now with Conn, thought so, too. When Billy's son Tim brought up the subject years later, Billy just said, "Aw, forget it."
Another time, he said, "People think you're nuts to be a fighter, and they're right, but it's better than working in the mills."
"Sweet William" is part of a series called Sport and Society, published by the University of Illinois Press, but Conn, who died at 75 in 1993, was not a change agent like Ali and Jack Johnson.
Society formed him; during the Depression of the 1930s it made sense to be a fighter if you could get to the top, and Billy Conn did.
Late in life, he paid a price: pugilistica dementia. As no one else has, O'Toole writes extensively and revealingly about this, courtesy of the Conn family. Billy himself never sugar-coated anything. Mary Louise and their sons, Tim and Billy Jr., are no less forthright.
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