- 7 weeks ago
How the longest reigning heavyweight champion in boxing history was 2 rounds from losing it in under 4 years......to a light heavyweight
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Twitter: AJMckenzie94847
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Twitter: AJMckenzie94847
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00:00Battle Lines. I'm Rich Eisen. America was in a hurry in 1941. War loomed and its prospects seemed to urge
00:09athletes on to wondrous deeds. Ted Williams batted 4-0-6, Joe DiMaggio hit 56 straight games, Willoway won the
00:18Triple Crown, and on a night in June, an undersized fighter named Billy Kahn, the most dogged sort of underdog,
00:25had the mighty Joe Lewis on the ropes.
00:27It was as good as the sweet science gets.
00:37Here was this skinny little kid, fighting the invincible man.
00:47Oh, Lewis always said it was his toughest fight.
00:50A left hook to the body by Kahn, a right hook to the jaw, another right, and Kahn is still
00:55swinging.
00:56You couldn't help but say, my God, the punches are ten to one. Kahn is pelting this man.
01:03A left hook to the body, a right cross to the jaw, and Lewis is worried. A left hook, another
01:08left hook by Billy Kahn.
01:09For twelve and a third rounds, Billy Kahn, he was one of the great boxing performances in history.
01:23Joe Lewis was revered as a god by many fans, yet here he was being hammered and bewildered by a
01:30light heavyweight. How could this be? It was unthinkable.
01:33In Joe Lewis's day, being a heavyweight champion was a glorious thing. He was the number one prize in sports.
01:42To be a heavyweight champion, you were as big a celebrity as any great movie star like Clark Cable. You
01:51were bigger than life.
01:52Exactly.
01:53The heavyweight division was something unique and something special forever in the history of boxing. That was the toughest guy
01:58in the world. Joe Lewis was an absolute phenomenon. This guy is a giant. There's never been a black athlete
02:05in American history compared with the impact of Joe Lewis.
02:07Joe Lewis transcended the race and transcended being the heavyweight champion of the world to an individual who gave hope
02:14to an entire generation of Americans and many people throughout the world as well.
02:18Boom!
02:19That's how he won the title.
02:20Lewis became heavyweight champion of the world in 1937 when he took the title from James Braddock. But it was
02:28not until the following year that Lewis captivated the American public when he met up with the man who had
02:33beaten him in 1936. That was Max Schmeling, Hitler's very own Superman.
02:39He would think that I'm going to the right gunshot. Why should I go to the right gunshot? When Schmeling
02:46is two years older and I'm two years smaller.
02:49This was America and a black man versus Nazi Germany. The eyes of the world were on Yankee Stadium on
02:59the night of June 22, 1938.
03:03Lewis hooks the left to Max's head quickly and shoots over hard right to Max's head.
03:08Lewis came out of his corner, gave Schmeling absolutely no chance to practice any of his skills. Went after him
03:16the fuselage and never let him off the ropes.
03:22He hit him with a punch, knocked him against the ropes. And I've never heard a man scream and holler
03:30like Schmeling did.
03:31Oh no! Oh no!
03:33That punch broke two of Max Schmeling's vertebrae. And at that moment Schmeling was done. His left arm was useless.
03:42His legs wouldn't move him. And Lewis just annihilated him.
03:48And Schmeling is down. The fight is over on a technical knockout. Max Schmeling is beaten in one round.
04:01For the first time in the history of the US, the national hero was a black man.
04:08Even white folks on the job that would say nigger 50 times a day, that would say boy this and
04:14boy that, they would light up when they talked about Joe.
04:17He has his natural dignity. It's that dignity that leads Jimmy Cannon to write his classic line.
04:25Joe Lewis is a credit to his race. The human race.
04:29Hmm. After crushing Schmeling in one round, Lewis wore a cloak of invincibility.
04:35For the next three years, he destroyed everything placed in front of him.
04:38Surely there was no one out there to challenge him. Or was there?
04:45What about this Irish kid from Pittsburgh? The stylist with the hands quick as cobras.
04:52Billy was the ultimate boxer. His left hooks were just different than everybody else's.
04:59He had the ability to hit you with a double left hook. Boom, boom. He'd give you two up.
05:05He was a flashy fighter. He could outbox heavier hitters and he could outfight opponents who were his equal in
05:14craftsmanship.
05:16Conn was nasty, which helps a fighter. I ran on the road with him one day.
05:22And then before we started, he picked up a couple of stones and put them in his pocket.
05:26Somebody said, what are you going to do with those?
05:29He said, you'll see. We approached this house. There was a dog on a leash.
05:35As we got to it, Billy stopped long enough to throw a couple of rocks at the dog.
05:39He was in the light heavyweight ranks. Probably the fanciest and best boxer that boxing has seen in a long
05:46time.
05:48And there were very few fighters that really were as clever as he was.
05:59On June 3rd, 1941, it was arranged. Lewis would put his title at risk against a light heavyweight who wanted
06:07to move up in class for the most basic reason of all.
06:10Money. That's where the money was.
06:12My dad is not interested in the light heavyweights because he beat the two top guys and there was no
06:17one else for him to fight.
06:18Light heavyweight did not make money. When you see light heavyweight championship fight, you say, well, let's fight.
06:25But when you see heavyweight championship fight, that's a mark.
06:30When you fought someone like Lewis, it always meant mega bucks.
06:35Before Khan, there had been light heavyweights who were challenged and without exception, lost.
06:43Luke Khan was as legitimate a contender for the heavyweight championship as any light heavyweight could be.
06:50Light heavyweights did not beat heavyweights.
06:53The fight itself was just a fight between the greatest heavyweight in the world and a brash, tough, young light
07:04heavyweight from Pittsburgh.
07:12It was the 18th time the champ defended his title.
07:16What a long, long way he had come from such hardscrabble beginnings.
07:20Joe Lewis was born in Alabama.
07:23He was a descendant of a slave owner named James Barrow.
07:28And his given name was Joseph Lewis Barrow.
07:32Lewis's father was declared insane and wound up in an institution.
07:38He was raised by his mother and his stepfather.
07:42Joe's stepfather, Pat Brooks, brought five children of his own to the Barrow household, which already had eight children.
07:49In 1926, the family picked up and headed north out of Alabama.
07:55After World War I, hundreds of thousands of African Americans moved up from the southern states to work in the
08:02auto plants and all the other industrial plants in the north.
08:06The family moved to Detroit.
08:08His mother wanted him to play the violin.
08:11He actually took lessons.
08:13But most times he would just walk out of the house with his violin case, go to the gymnasium.
08:17The money that he was spending for violin lessons, he started spending it to rent equipment to box, unknown to
08:24his parents.
08:24He didn't want his mother to find out he was boxing.
08:26Once she did find out he was a boxer and wanted to pursue boxing versus violin lessons, she simply said,
08:34be the very best.
08:35At 18, Lewis began his amateur career in the Brewster Recreation Center.
08:40When it became clear that he was championship material, Joe had won 50 of 54 bouts.
08:46He was schooled by his two black managers to behave in a way that white America could accept.
08:52Lewis came along with this very carefully crafted public image to make him acceptable to the white public.
08:59For almost 25 years after Jack Johnson became heavyweight champion, blacks got no shot at a heavyweight championship.
09:11They knew the public remembered the reign of Jack Johnson, how Johnson had been flamboyant, how Johnson had openly gone
09:20around with white women, things which were resented by white America at that time.
09:26Jack Johnson drove the white establishment nuts.
09:30He was cocky, he was arrogant, he was everything that would give white America a stroke.
09:37They knew they had to have Lewis behave, at least publicly, in a very, very different way.
09:44His trainers and managers gave him a written list of things he could and could not do.
09:50They were all based on him not replicating the public conduct of Jack Johnson.
09:57No braggadocio, no white women, no taunting particularly of white contenders.
10:06Go in, take care of your business in a workmanlike fashion and get out.
10:12He was to operate at all times as a black man with dignity.
10:16He wouldn't even eat watermelon and be photographed eating it, which was his favorite food, for fear it would feed
10:24the stereotype.
10:25Joe Lewis was not a vocal person, but he understood his role in terms of breaking down the barriers in
10:31this country.
10:33Using Johnson as a model of what not to be, Lewis developed a persona straight out of the Boy Scout
10:39manual.
10:40He was kind, considerate, polite and self-effacing.
10:44He'd knock a guy out and he'd get on the radio afterwards and say, another lucky night.
10:48He wasn't lucky about it, he'd kill the guy.
10:51I had a tough fight and I fought a tough man.
10:54And he was a very good fighter.
10:57He understood the impact he was having.
10:59He also understood that he was giving hope when he would walk through the ghettos of the society
11:04and people would walk up to him and shake his hand and tell him, thank you champ.
11:10Those were the things that meant so much to my father.
11:12While Joe Lewis championed black America, there was another fighter who bore the banner of the struggling and the oppressed,
11:19of the Irish and the gritty working class.
11:22He was boxing's Billy the Kid.
11:25I see.
11:2641, was born in Pittsburgh.
11:30Billy Conn arrived on October 8th, 1917.
11:33He was fiercely proud of his hometown, a city that a 19th century journalist described as hell with the lid
11:40taking off.
11:42It was a steel town then of course, steel mills, laboring people, you know, blue collar workers.
11:48With the mills, you had to change your shirt two or three times a day if you were wearing a
11:53white shirt,
11:54because it would be black in a few hours.
11:55The culture in Pittsburgh was not a melting pot at all, but it was a smorgasbord.
12:02The Irish were in Greenfield.
12:04The Germans were up in Troy Hill.
12:06The Polish were on the south side.
12:08The Jewish were in Squirrel Hill.
12:10East Liberty was Irish and Italian when Billy Conn was growing up.
12:16He lived on Shakespeare Street.
12:18And he'd stand on the corner and he'd tell the kids he'd be a professional fighter and he'd be a
12:24champion.
12:25And they scoffed at that.
12:30You either fought or you watched others fight.
12:33Boxing in Pittsburgh was totally unique.
12:36Aside from New York, it was the second most popular boxing city in the United States.
12:42And the most popular sport in Pittsburgh by far.
12:45It was just a natural for Pittsburgh.
12:47Rough town.
12:48Blue collar town.
12:49Boxing was everything.
12:50You had fights going on two, three times a week.
12:53Professional cards I'm talking about.
12:55The bigger fights were held at a place called Duquesne Garden, which was a converted cardboard.
13:02It was one of the best fight towns in the country.
13:05Between 1939 and 1941, five Pittsburgh fighters were world champions.
13:13The future that Conn's father envisioned for his son was not in the ring, but in a place just as
13:18frightening.
13:19When he was at the age of about 13, his dad took him to the steel mills and told him,
13:25this is where you're going to spend the rest of your life, working in one of these steel mills.
13:28Oh, really?
13:29That scared the hell out of me.
13:32And he said, Tom, right then he knew there'd have to be an easier way to make money.
13:37So, he loved boxing.
13:39That was the one way to get out of the ghetto.
13:41And that was one way to be successful and make money.
13:44And he figured that out.
13:45He knew he could do it.
13:46When Billy was 13, he appeared uninvited at Johnny Ray's gym in East Liberty.
13:54He said that he wanted to be a fighter.
13:56And Johnny said, grab that broom and start sweeping.
14:01That's the first thing you do.
14:02Johnny Ray was an alcoholic.
14:06He said Johnny was always better when he was drunk, when he was teaching me.
14:11And he taught Billy how to fight.
14:14Johnny Ray was an ex-lightweight fighter.
14:17He told him never to fight as an amateur because he said, the amateurs don't know any more than you
14:21do.
14:22And you'll never learn from an amateur.
14:24He said, the only way you'll get better in this sport is to learn from fighters that are better than
14:28you.
14:29Without so much as a single amateur tune-up, Billy Conn had his first fight for money in Fairmont, West
14:35Virginia.
14:36He was 16.
14:37He lost.
14:39His purse was $2.50.
14:41And after the fight, Ray handed him four bits.
14:46And Conn said, where's the rest of it?
14:49And Ray said, well, you had something to eat, didn't you?
14:53And besides, you lost.
14:55Billy lost five of his first 13 fights.
15:00And then he started rolling and hardly ever lost from then on.
15:04The first real tough match was against Fritzie Zivik.
15:07And that was a local rivalry.
15:09And Fritzie was like the top fighter in Pittsburgh.
15:11And there were 5,000 people at the fight in the Duquesne Gardens.
15:15And there were 3,000 that couldn't get in.
15:17And they had a riot outside because people couldn't get in to see the fight.
15:21And my dad won a very close decision.
15:23He asked if he could be paid in $5 bills because it would look like more money to him.
15:32Conn's career accelerated.
15:34And in 1937, he beat four former world champions.
15:37But those fights were in Pittsburgh.
15:39He needed a larger stage on which to display his considerable skills and spread his reputation.
15:45You had to make it in New York and you had to make it in Madison Square Garden in those
15:50days.
15:50That's the mecca of boxing.
15:52And you had to fight there and win there to make it real big.
15:55They matched him against Fred Apostoli in New York in Madison Square Garden.
16:00He was practically unbeatable.
16:02And they didn't get that much of a chance.
16:04Apostoli was a great middleweight champion.
16:07And Conn basically shuts him out.
16:09And he's got the people like aghast.
16:10This is an amazing fighter.
16:12Where was this guy?
16:12The fight fans in New York really liked him.
16:15He was good looking.
16:16He had a real flashy style.
16:18He had that New York kind of thing.
16:20You know, that swagger.
16:22And that, uh, knock this off my shoulder kind of a thing.
16:25A genuine tough guy.
16:27Yeah, he beat him a second time five weeks later.
16:32In the summer of 1939, the promising young fighter ran into a knockout outside the ring.
16:38Her name was Mary Louise Smith.
16:41He was 21.
16:42She was 15.
16:44My father was an ex-Major League baseball player.
16:48And he was in the sports world.
16:50He met Billy and took a Viking to him and invited him down to my father's summer home in Ocean
16:58City, New Jersey.
16:59And that's where I met Billy.
17:00He said, someday I'm going to marry you.
17:03And I looked down like, wow, are you crazy?
17:06Who are you?
17:07And my father found out about it.
17:09He didn't bargain on all that.
17:11He said, no, you're not going to marry my daughter.
17:13He just figured I was just a little girl.
17:16And Billy was a big sports celebrity.
17:18And, you know, it just didn't seem to enter his mind that it would ever turn into be a romance.
17:26Soon after meeting Mary Louise, Khan stepped up to the light heavyweight division, where he promptly took the title away
17:33from Melio Bettina.
17:34After three successful title defenses, Khan trained his crosshairs on the Brown Bomber.
17:41He said to his manager, we have to go into the heavyweight division because that's where the money was.
17:48Well, that was also where Lewis was.
18:01Nobody's doing that right now.
18:07Lewis established himself as the heavyweight champion with his victory over Max Schmelly in June of 38.
18:14Now come a string of defenses.
18:22At that point, there's nobody who's within a ten to one shot of beating Joe Lewis.
18:27So we can't do something for him qualitatively.
18:29We'll do something quantitatively.
18:31And he starts fighting like every three weeks, every four weeks.
18:35It became known as the bum of the month club because he's now fighting every month.
18:40And few, if any of them, gave him any resistance.
18:44Meanwhile, there was a light heavyweight champion.
18:48Never been knocked out, Billy Khan.
18:51My dad was one guy that they were grooming to fight him because he had the style to beat him.
18:55So he abandoned the light heavyweight division.
18:58He was interested in beating Joe Lewis.
19:00My dad had no fear of him at all.
19:05After defeating Gus Lesnovich for his third light heavyweight title defense.
19:09And he fought him like it.
19:11In June of 1940, Khan decided to go for the most coveted title in sports.
19:17He told Gus Lesnovich in the shower room after their second fight.
19:21He said, Gus, you can have this title if you want it.
19:24And he said, what do you mean, Billy?
19:25He says, because I relinquish in it tonight.
19:26To get a title shot, you have to beat the top heavyweights.
19:29And he beat all of them.
19:30Every one of them.
19:31And he was outweighed by 20, 25 pounds.
19:34And he just toyed with them.
19:36Billy Khan was an excellent boxer.
19:38And then he started fighting heavyweights, which was kind of his good and bad moves.
19:43In that he started to feel like a puncher.
19:46He's fighting as a heavyweight.
19:49And knocking out heavyweights.
19:52Including Bob Pastor, who went the distance with Joe Lewis.
19:56Mike Jacobs decided this is a hell of a fight.
19:59I'll promote this one.
20:02And so he did.
20:05Carnival Barker fanfare.
20:07The contract was signed.
20:09Anticipation was instant and sustained.
20:12It was something the public wanted.
20:14Mike Jacobs' office really pounded the drums and publicized the fight like crazy.
20:20Carn built up a great crowd of people.
20:23The publicity was quite great.
20:26The odds were 2-1, 3-1 that Lewis would beat him.
20:30But the crowd, the people who just loved fighting.
20:34Those people wanted to see Carn win.
20:38You never expected Joe Lewis to lose.
20:40You didn't bet against US Steel or Joe Lewis.
20:43There were 25 New York boxing writers at the training camp in Pompton Lakes.
20:48Out of the 25, 18 picked Lewis to win.
20:52My father said, you guys have to be crazy.
20:55He said, picking Lewis.
20:57He says, I'm not only going to beat him, there's a good chance I'll knock him out.
21:00The weigh-in scales revealed that Conn was giving away a staggering 32 pounds.
21:05But promoter Jacobs slyly manipulated those numbers.
21:09At the weigh-in, Lewis was 2-0-1.
21:12My dad was 1-69.
21:14So Mike Jacobs, the promoter, felt that that would scare some people away who hadn't already bought their tickets.
21:22They announced the weights, my dad at 174 and Lewis at 199.
21:28They gave him a 5-pound weight.
21:30Despite the enormous weight discrepancy, fight fans streamed into the polo grounds, convinced they would see a two-fisted corker
21:37of a show.
21:38Hundreds of people from Pittsburgh went to New York for the fight.
21:42They had the ham and cabbage special, they called it.
21:47Oney McManus, who owned the saloon in downtown Pittsburgh, would charter a train and serve the passengers' ham and cabbage
21:55down the way.
21:56A Joe Lewis fight created a lot of interest, him alone.
22:00But now he was up against one of the great boxes of the game.
22:05And what is he going to do against one of the great boxes of the game?
22:09The mood before any heavyweight championship fight in those days, anywhere, was very festive.
22:16It was like the build-up to the Super Bowl.
22:19This was going to be the big event of the year.
22:23Yes, sir.
22:24A heavyweight king from Detroit, Michigan, weighing 199 and a half, he's wearing black trunks, Joe Lewis.
22:40People would listen to fights, you know, on the radio. They'd have house parties.
22:43People would come over, like you have a big pay-per-view event today, or the Super Bowl Sunday.
22:48In those days, if there was a fight like that coming on the radio, we'd gather on one kid's porch
22:53all around the radio.
22:55When Joe Lewis would fight, you could hear a feather drop, not a pin.
23:01Nobody talked.
23:03Prostitutes did not work the street.
23:05You could go into a bar or a tavern, and nobody would be arguing.
23:08Everybody would be pinned to the radio.
23:10In the Lewis-Kahn fight in 1941, that fight was in the polo grounds, which meant the Giants were on
23:17the road.
23:18The Giants happened to be in Pittsburgh, at Forest Field, playing the Pirates, and Pittsburgh was Kahn going down.
23:25From Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the very capable challenger, Billy Kahn.
23:35They stopped the game at the end of the third inning, so they could put the broadcast of the fight
23:41on the public trust system,
23:43and held the game for 45 minutes, until the fight was over.
23:50Before a crowd of 54,000, Lewis entered the ring better than a 3-1 favorite.
23:56Look at his favorite.
23:57Looked like every bit the hesitant, unsure underdog.
24:00When the fight started, I guess Billy must have been nervous. He slipped.
24:05He fell down.
24:06I saw him.
24:07Oh!
24:10And everybody said, oh, we don't want to watch this. This is going to be terrible.
24:14He's going to get killed.
24:15My dad, in the first round, looked like he was running for his life.
24:19Second round, we were the same thing.
24:21You know, then Lewis started to hit him with some really good shots, and people were just out.
24:26It's a matter of time.
24:27It's just another one of his fights, you know, another bum of the must.
24:30Lewis went on the offensive, and actually hurt him.
24:35He hit him with some good body punches and shook him up.
24:37Could have been knocked out in that second round, because Lewis really came after him.
24:40Lewis is in, jabbing a left. He hooks a left to Kahn's skin.
24:43Drives him out of the rope. He's pummeling.
24:45Went right to the left. Kahn tries to hold on.
24:51Kahn won rounds three and four, evening the fight.
24:55A left and a right to the body by Lewis.
24:57And Kahn fights back with a left and a right to the jaw.
24:59A left and a right to the jaw.
25:00A left and a left to the jaw by Kahn.
25:01The crowd is screaming.
25:03Lewis was doing his usual, moving forward step by step and crouching low and looking for short punches.
25:11Kahn took control of the fight after the first three or four rounds completely.
25:17He used Lewis as if Lewis was a bull.
25:21And from side to side and sliding around and jab, jab, jab.
25:25He felt he was faster than Lewis.
25:27He could beat him to the punch and he could move in and move out.
25:31And kept trying to keep his left in Lewis's face and not slug it out with him.
25:34And just beat him to the punch and not boxing. That was his plan.
25:37Lewis had trouble with boxing.
25:39Kahn was just quick and nervy and would throw his punches and either fall in the clinch or get out.
25:46Every time he just wanted a punch, he would move.
25:49He was very, very smart.
25:51In the fifth round, Lewis dug brutally into Kahn's body, trying to take away the quicker man's legs.
25:57And he slashed open two cuts on Kahn's face as well.
26:00Lewis went after him and did catch him with some good punches.
26:03He cut him in the right eye. He opened a cut over his nose in that round.
26:07Lewis won the sixth round, lost the seventh, and in the eighth, lost his biggest gun.
26:14Lewis threw a right uppercut and bruised his wrist very badly on Kahn's head.
26:20And he didn't have the power, then, to do any knockout punching.
26:25Because his knockout punches were in the right hand.
26:28After that seventh and eighth round, it became fairly obvious to people watching.
26:34Well, gee, I think Lewis is tatted.
26:36In the ninth round, he said to Lewis, you're in for a tough fight tonight.
26:39And Lewis says, I know it.
26:40In the tenth round, Lewis, always the sportsman, was too chivalrous for his own good.
26:46Even though he was behind on two cards, he could not bring himself to take advantage of an opening.
26:51Billy Kahn slipped his throw, and he didn't jump on it.
26:54Once again, and very gentlemanly, Lewis doesn't even try to land a blow.
26:59Jack Dempsey, or Mike Tyson, or a lot of heavyweight champions would have exploited that moment.
27:06But Joe Lewis instinctively, even though his title is slipping away, takes a step back and lets Billy Kahn recover
27:14his balance.
27:15After losing the tenth round, Kahn came on in a fury in the eleventh.
27:20The crowd is really going mad.
27:21A left hook to the body by Billy Kahn.
27:23Lewis goes into a clinch and doesn't land a blow.
27:26He finally hooks the left to Kahn's body.
27:29Kahn ties him up and hits his own right to Lewis's head.
27:31The eleventh, actually, he was hitting Lewis from all angles.
27:34Lewis was not retaliating.
27:36He was missing.
27:37Kahn comes back with a right to the body, another right to the body, and a left hook to the
27:40body by Kahn.
27:41A right to the body, a left hook to the jaw.
27:43Another right, and Kahn is still swinging.
27:46And Lewis has a land of the blow on this flurry.
27:48A left hook to the body, a right hook to the jaw.
27:50And Lewis is worried.
27:51He's a body head, body head.
27:56I can remember the Lewis and Kahn fight.
27:59All the neighbors who came over,
28:01the tension in the room growing,
28:04and the guy knocked over a glass,
28:05and he said,
28:05Don't bother cleaning it up.
28:06Just shut up.
28:07I stayed at the Waldorf with my aunt,
28:09and listened to the fight on radio.
28:14And my aunt said,
28:16Don't worry.
28:17She said,
28:17He's winning.
28:18He's winning.
28:18He's going to be the next heavyweight champion of the world.
28:21The fight was very close at that point.
28:23With the heavyweight title,
28:24Lewis was the champion.
28:26Kahn the challenger.
28:27They got into the 12th round.
28:29A left hook to the body,
28:30is blocked by the challenger.
28:31Lewis is staggering.
28:32A left hook.
28:33Kahn staggers Lewis.
28:34Lewis is really around and holding on.
28:37A left hook to the jaw,
28:38followed by a right hook.
28:39And the champion is hurt.
28:41Lewis didn't go down,
28:42but Kahn was now winning the fight.
28:45A left hook to the jaw by Kahn.
28:47Goes over the header.
28:48Lewis.
28:49Lewis is trying to hold on.
28:50Kahn is burying him.
28:51With a left and a right.
28:53Lewis is dancing around.
28:54In the center of the right time,
28:55hooks to the left hook to the jaw.
28:57Another left hook to the jaw.
28:58Kahn fires a mark.
28:59And he's wild.
29:00Then he tries to knock him out.
29:01Lewis is hurt.
29:02Makes no mistake of that.
29:03It was just unfortunate for Billy Kahn
29:06that he staggered Lewis.
29:09He had been winning the fight on points.
29:12Now he was not satisfied,
29:14being Irish,
29:15he was going to win by a knockout.
29:17When he came back,
29:18after the 12th round,
29:20he held his fist up like this,
29:22and he said,
29:22I got him.
29:24He goes back to his corner,
29:25and he says,
29:26he's ready to be taken out.
29:28And Johnny said,
29:29Hey, Billy,
29:29this is Joe Lewis.
29:30You don't make mistakes against him.
29:33Johnny Ray pleaded,
29:34No, don't.
29:34He said,
29:35Stay away from it,
29:35and box him.
29:36You're a head on point.
29:37You'll win.
29:37And he said,
29:38No, I'm going to knock him out.
29:39And Johnny Ray's last words to him were,
29:42Okay, you're on your own.
29:43Everybody started yelling at the ringside,
29:45Stay away from him, Billy.
29:46Stay away from him.
29:47And Billy's just sitting there,
29:48waiting to go.
29:49The people that were for Joe
29:50were yelling to him as much.
29:52Get him.
29:53Hang in there.
29:53You can get him.
29:54You can do it.
29:54There was great concern in the Lewis corner
29:56between the 12th and the 13th round.
29:58The man had just been rocked.
30:00His foot lifted off the ground.
30:02It wasn't just Khan pity-patting him anymore.
30:05Khan was rocking him.
30:07His trainer, Jack Blackburn,
30:09was saying,
30:10Champ, you got to do something.
30:11Come on.
30:11You got to do something.
30:13He's taking it away from him.
30:15And here's round 13.
30:16How do you respond?
30:16Wonderful would be unlucky
30:18for either of these two great fighters.
30:20They stood toe-to-toe.
30:21My dad threw like an 18-punch combination.
30:23It was unbelievable.
30:24For the right to left to the body.
30:26Another right to right to the body.
30:27Up to the jaw by Khan.
30:29A right to the jaw.
30:30Two more right.
30:30Then I got vicarious.
30:32He threw caution to the wind.
30:34Lewis kept noticing
30:35that he was dropping his right hand.
30:38Joe hit him on the right cross.
30:40Unbelievable.
30:42And it just stunned him.
30:44The left down to the jaw on the right cross.
30:46Well.
30:46Joe Lewis is the greatest finisher in the past.
30:50Khan is staggering.
30:51But he wants to down.
30:53There's Lois grabbing a left hand.
30:54And he's uppercutting his right to Khan's head.
30:56Khan busts the left hook.
30:58He's railing around the ring.
30:59Four, five, six.
31:01And he's on.
31:07And Khan is down on the right cross of the jaw.
31:11He's taking the count.
31:12Two, four, five, six, seven.
31:16He's on his back.
31:17Eight, nine.
31:19He's getting up at the count.
31:21Oh!
31:22He says it's all over.
31:24He just missed the count.
31:29The winner by America.
31:32And still the world's heavyweight champion, Joe Lewis.
31:40After the fight in the dressing room, Jesse Edgison of the New York Herald Troop, pen in hand,
31:49pad out.
31:50He says, Billy, Billy, what happened to you?
31:52Why'd you go after him in the thirteenth?
31:54You had to fight one.
31:55Billy Khan, true to his character, said, what's the sense of being Irish if you can't be stupid?
32:05I guess I had too much to win for tonight, and I tried to knock him out.
32:10Otherwise, I don't want it easy.
32:11Billy.
32:11He cried in the dressing room.
32:13He just sat there and stared into space.
32:15And he's just like, I can't believe it.
32:16I can't believe it.
32:17I had to fight now.
32:18I could be the world champion.
32:19And he got up, took a shot, and walked ten or twelve blocks by himself to where my mother
32:26was staying.
32:28He had told me that he would call me right after the fight.
32:32So I waited for the call.
32:34There was a knock at the door.
32:35And it was Billy.
32:36There were tears in his eyes.
32:38And he said, I tried my best.
32:41And I said, it's okay.
32:44You shouldn't have tried your best.
32:46That's what happened.
32:52Going into the 13th round, Billy Conn had been ahead on two cards and even on the third.
32:57So the question hung in the air like steel mill smoke.
33:00Had the kid from Pittsburgh been incredibly brave or simply foolish?
33:04If you have a fight or hurt, your instincts are to go after him, not to box.
33:08And maybe that was in his mind that he had Lewis hurt.
33:11He wanted to go after him and knock him out.
33:13It was fatal to lose your head against somebody like Lewis.
33:16As Conn put it, he said, I never knocked out anybody in my life and I had to try to
33:22knock
33:22him out.
33:23Lewis may have caught up with him.
33:25Even if my dad was a little more cautious.
33:27You don't know.
33:28My guess he just lost his head.
33:31You know, he often said, I forgot who I was in there with.
33:35The question always was, if Conn hadn't gotten his Irish up, as the Irish like to say,
33:41why short, he'd elect Lewis.
33:43The fact was, Joe just turned it up another notch.
33:46And it was more than Billy could go.
33:49The defeat did not dissuade Conn from his matrimonial plans.
33:54Billy Conn KO's Kid Cupid and presents the proof.
33:58His bride, the former Mary Louise Smith.
34:01Billy Conn's the boy who nearly beat Joe Lewis.
34:04The newlyweds are guests of promoter Mike Jacobs and would rather not talk about the rumored
34:09objections to the marriage coming from Mary's father.
34:12The fight was June the 18th.
34:15We were married July the 1st.
34:17Had a little church in Philadelphia.
34:21My father wouldn't accept that.
34:23He didn't even speak to me for a long time.
34:27Conn had his gal and now he yearned for another shot at the man who had gotten away.
34:32A rematch with Lewis was scheduled for 1942 as an Army-Navy relief benefit.
34:37But Conn ended up in another fight instead.
34:40My father liked to argue. Billy didn't.
34:43My father hit Billy. Billy hit him and broke his hand.
34:48That did the fight in.
34:50And the million dollar gate went out the window because of that altercation with his father-in-law.
34:56Then the war really went into full force and the fighters were barred from fighting each other until it was
35:01over.
35:02Conn marched off to war, taking with him that desperate desire for redemption against Lewis.
35:07He had a feeling the war would never end.
35:10The war went on and on and on.
35:12He just lost the physical edge that he had.
35:15His desire was gone after the Lewis fight.
35:18I mean, it really made him lose the desire to box, I think.
35:21When he came out of the Army, when he was discharged, he wasn't the same.
35:26And he looked different.
35:27Although he was only 28, he was like an old 28.
35:30That four-year layoff hurt tremendously.
35:33So he really had nothing left as a fighter.
35:35With the war finally at an end, the long-awaited Lewis-Conn rematch was set for June 19, 1946.
35:42The rematch was going to be the greatest fight of all time in people's eyes.
35:46It was a fight they waited four or five years to get.
35:49Now they look in the ring and here's Joe Lewis, who was slow and not what he was.
35:53And across the ring, they sent a sharp, quick-moving, white light heavyweight into the service.
35:59And they brought back a fat alderman.
36:01He peaked the night he boxed Lewis.
36:04The second fight was five years later, 1946.
36:10And he was all through.
36:12He knew it.
36:24As for his strategy against Conn the second time around, Lewis responded with one of the most memorable lines in
36:30the history of sports.
36:32He can run, but he can't hide.
36:34Now fight fans were drooling in anticipation.
36:38The public really demanded it.
36:39It was the Super Bowl of Super Bowls then.
36:42They were waiting for it for five years.
36:44They actually were able to get away with charging 100 hours a ticket for the first time at Yankee Stadium.
36:49Billy was afraid of the moment.
36:52The fight had become so big between the two wars that the moment was bigger than he could handle emotionally.
37:01He turned to my grandfather in the dressing room.
37:05He said, yeah, this could be the worst fight you've ever seen.
37:14And I got back to the New York Sun where I worked and copy-desk editor in the sports department
37:21said,
37:21Did anybody ask Conn when he first realized he was pitching a no-hitter?
37:25Ha!
37:28Ah!
37:33Probably the worst heavyweight championship fight fought by either of them if not ever in history.
37:39They had nothing.
37:40Timing was off.
37:42Timing was off less for Lewis than for Conn.
37:45But for 1941, these two men were at their prime and gave 140% of it.
38:02Though Lewis won the rematch with an eighth-round knockout,
38:06neither man was able to duplicate what he had been in the first fight.
38:09Conn retired in 1948, having won 63 of his 75 fights.
38:15Lewis would end up beloved, but pitied.
38:17What each of them had was one another, linked forever by one memorable night in June of 1941.
38:24My father always made Lewis laugh, and he liked to be with him.
38:29I knew when they both worked together in Las Vegas,
38:32he always would seek him out and want to hang out with him and be with him.
38:36My father was at Caesar's Palace, and Billy Conn went down to visit with him once,
38:41and my father said, Billy, let me have a hundred bucks.
38:43So Billy gives him a hundred bucks and goes to the table.
38:45Billy, I lost, he gave me about three hundred bucks.
38:48Billy gives him another three hundred bucks.
38:50Comes back, he's another five hundred bucks.
38:52So my father stays away for about half an hour, forty-five minutes.
38:55He comes back, and Billy sees him walking through the casinos at Caesar's,
38:58and runs behind the slot machines, and says,
39:02well, tell Joe I've gone, I don't have any money.
39:05So my father says, where's Billy?
39:06I said, well, he left.
39:08He says, well, that's too bad, I want $4,000, I want to pay him back.
39:11Billy kind of walks around from behind the slot machines, and says,
39:14Joe, I'm here, where's my money?
39:16Sometimes in sports, you can lose and still emerge a winner.
39:20Such was the serendipitous fate of Billy Conn.
39:23It wasn't just another fight, it was like the impossible dream.
39:27It was David and Goliath type of thing.
39:30David looked like he won, and that's why people remember it, I think.
39:34He had the prize in his hand, and he refused it.
39:37He wanted the ultimate victory.
39:40He paid the prize.
39:42You can...
39:46Oh, he fought Joe Lewis.
39:48They don't say, well, he was the light heavyweight champion,
39:50he was undefeated as champion, and he beat nine world title holders.
39:53No, the Joe Lewis fight got him into the Hall of Fame.
39:56To be great in boxing, you must rub up against other greatness,
40:00as an Ali did of Frazier, and a former one.
40:05Joe Lewis rubbed up against Billy Conn.
40:08So while Conn is thought of, and defined by this loss,
40:13he too rubbed up against greatness, and some of it rubbed off on him.
40:17The fact that he was outweighed by that much,
40:20and that it still had it in his head that he could knock Lewis out
40:23by being outgunned and outweighed by 30 pounds,
40:26captured the public's imagination, and that will always be remembered by all fight fans.
40:31One night, Conn and Lewis appeared at a union hall in Pittsburgh.
40:38Conn brought the film of their first fight in a shopping bag.
40:42Well, there must have been a hundred people in the crowd.
40:45They all sat down and turned on the projector, and Lewis went into a little ante room.
40:51Every couple of rounds, Lewis would stick his head out the door and say,
40:57have we got to the 13th round yet?
40:59The 13th came on, and when Conn went down, Lewis shouted,
41:03goodbye, Billy.
41:05Then the lights came on, and Conn wasn't in the crowd.
41:09Then afterward, I was walking with Conn through the lobby.
41:14He had the film of the shopping bag, and he says,
41:17I fought 11 champions 20 times, and here I am walking through a hotel lobby with a shopping bag.
41:25He said, nobody's ever going to see this film again.
41:31Hmm.
41:33While I'm seeing it right now.
41:34All Billy Conn ever wanted to be was, in his words,
41:37the heavyweight champion of the world.
41:39He came tantalizingly close.
41:41He almost reached the end of the 13th round, but could wait no longer.
41:46Winning alone was not enough.
41:48He wanted a knockout.
41:49This was one time when a man's reach shouldn't have exceeded his grasp.
41:54For ESPN Classics Battle Lines, I'm Rich Isaac.
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