The Great Depression

Heavyweight boxing has an uncanny habit of mirroring the socio - economic circumstances of the day. From the early days of the championship, in the aftermath of the American Civil War, during which the newly - emancipated African Americans were denied by a reluctant white America the right to fight for the title, through the reformation of the Ku Klux Klan in 1915, which led, at least in part, to the absence of a black heavyweight challenger until 1937 ; the rise to prominence of Schmeling and Carnera at the same time as Mussolini weighed in on the Spanish Civil War and the Nazis were on the rise in Germany ; onward, through WWII and into the Civil Rights movement of the sixties, during which Clay became Ali and wrote his own inimitable chapter in boxing history, and finally into today, when in the aftermath of the fall of communism, fighters from the erstwhile Soviet Bloc sit atop the flagship division.

The time of the Great Depression was no exception.

Many analysts trace the beginnings of the Great Depression to 1929, just a few short months after the brilliant but unpopular Gene Tunney had bade farewell to boxing, leaving the heavyweight title vacant. For the next eight years a succession of fighters would play pass the parcel with the Richest Prize In Sport as though nobody particularly wanted it, and the result is that a decade which produced three heavyweights who arguably had the talent to be, even today, knocking at the door of a top fifteen heavyweight list, is instead remembered as being a period which represents the heavyweight division's very own version of the Great Depression.

Just how good could Schmeling, Sharkey and Baer have been, and how much more fondly might we regard the heavyweight division of the thirties had one of them grabbed the division by the scruff of its neck ?

Well, context is everything. It's not a scrap of good assessing these men simply on the basis of their records, since it's precisely the disparity between their perceived talents and their records which makes this such a perplexing issue. The same could be said for the brilliant Jersey Joe Walcott, who wasn't far around the corner, but in Walcott's case we can, at least, attribute some of the anomalies to poor management leading to his own disillusion with the fight game. We need to dig a little deeper if we are to better understand our trio of Great Depression under achievers.

Max Schmeling was Nat Fleischer's idea of the most under rated heavyweight champion of them all. Fleischer placed Schmeling a notch above Marciano when he published his ratings in 1958 and, as late as 1971, didn't see fit to change his mind. Few, of course, would place Schmeling in a top ten today, ( though modern day historian Herb Goldman has Schmeling at fifteen, ) but what were the qualities which Ol' Nat saw in Schmeling which persuaded him to overlook Max's inconsistency and sit him on so lofty a perch ?

Well, to start with, we know for certain that Schmeling possessed a tremendous straight right hand. In his day, the Schmeling right was considered to be as potent a weapon as Max Baer's thundering, roundhouse right, and when Ingemar Johansson burst Patterson's bubble in 1959 one of the first questions fight insiders began to ask was whether or not Ingo's Bingo was as good as Schmeling's straight right. The Schmeling right hand was very fast, and often followed up by pretty quick combos. Max was also phenominally fit, very strong for a 190lb. man, and possessed marvellous stamina. He also, notwithstanding the second Louis fight, had an excellent chin. By way of evidence we need only watch the Baer v Schmeling fight, in which a truly inspired Baer - probably in his best ever performance - emerged from a sleepy start to suddenly explode and rain all of his arsenal, both legal and illegal, on the hapless Schmeling in a sustained beating. To his eternal credit, Max stayed on his feet. Schmeling was also a ' thinking ' fighter who, like Tunney, would meticulously study his opponents, seeking out weaknesses. The celebrated victory over Joe Louis is the classic example, but it was part and parcel of Schmeling's routine preparation. Top all the foregoing off with an awkward, crouching style, left hand extended in the manner of a smaller Jim Jeffries, and we have a very good fighter who surely might have achieved more than he did. One fight reporter wrote that on the night that he beat the great Young Stribling to a pulp in his only successful defence of the title, neither Dempsey nor Tunney could have beaten Schmeling. Bit of a stretch, of course, but it still gives us an idea of how highly he was regarded.

Somebody once described Jack Sharkey as being ' the best heavyweight of all time from the neck down.' Certainly, Sharkey would be seen by many as being the single greatest waste of talent the heavyweight division had seen and would see until Mike Tyson would implode sixty years later. Interspersed with some moments of true brilliance were shocking performances which, by way of example, saw a disinterested Sharkey labour to a draw against middleweight legend Mickey Walker, commit a rookie mistake by turning to the referee to complain over a foul while handily up on the cards against Jack Dempsey, and being promptly kayoed for his trouble, and surrendering his heavyweight crown to Carnera, whom he had easily beaten first time out, in what many consider to have been a blatant dive. If we factor in his refusal to throw body shots during his winning effort in the second Schmeling fight ( as a juvenile protest at his DQ loss first time out ) we can see that Jack, for all his marvellous talent, could be accused of being a sandwich or two short of a picnic.

So, what about that talent ?

John Durant, author of ' The Heavyweight Champions ' had this to say about Sharkey's performance in the first Schmeling fight :

"This was one of those nights when Sharkey was at his brilliant best. His jabs, hooks, and uppercuts were working to perfection, completely baffling the dark-browed Schmeling. Jack kept throwing leather so fast and accurately that Max could not get set to throw his big gun. . . . Sharkey had the German groggy in the 4th round and was battering him all over the ring. Then, trying to shift inside one of Max's feeble leads, he brought a hook to the body. Instantly, Max doubled up and clutched his groin as if fouled. . . . Referee Jim Crowley had seen no foul and started the count. . . . Although Max wore a type of protector which had been proved to withstand the hardest blow without harm to the wearer, he went into a grimacing act that would have drawn applause from the Barrymores . . . . Was Schmeling really fouled? A careful study of the movies by unbiased observers later revealed that the blow was not low. It was on the beltline, close to foul territory perhaps, but certainly not in the groin."

Despite Scmeling's protestations, referee and sole judge, Gunboat Smith, was also in no doubt that Sharkey had been the better man in the second encounter :

"From the first till the tenth or eleventh, Jack Sharkey wins every round. The other fellow did nothing but dance. . . . [Schmeling] got the last four rounds, but how could I give him the decision when he won only four rounds? . . . I give it to Sharkey. Eleven to four, I've got to do it."

Sharkey also handily beat the two leading black heavyweights of the day in Harry Wills and George Godfrey, and pole axed the great lightheavies, Tommy Loughran and Jack Delaney.

John D. McCallum, author of ' The World Heavyweight Boxing Championship - A History, ' described Sharkey thus :

"Jack’s repertoire of punches was something to behold. When he first started out, his only weakness was a looping right that he’d toss as though he were pegging an indoor baseball. After painstaking study, he developed the short lethal jolt that begins at the chest and travels only a foot.

There are no more than eight real blows in boxing - the left jab, left hook to the head, left rip to the body, right cross to the chin, straight right to the body and right uppercut. If you wish, you might ring in the left and right inside uppercuts. Few heavyweights past or present could deliver them all, and no one but Sharkey could deliver each one with devastating effect.

Jack’s left jab was no flickering thing like Tommy Loughran’s but a solid smash with his whole shoulder behind it. Tunney had it, but he never had Sharkey’s whizzing left hook that could separate a man from his senses as quickly as his right. Sharkey would step in with his right under the heart just like Tunney, but then he’d risk a right cross to the chin, which was not for Gene. Tunney preferred to reach with the punch - it was safer."

Perhaps historian Stanley Weston summed Sharkey up best :

"Throughout his career, Jack Sharkey was an enigma. He had everything going for him: dazzling speed, size, the artistic boxing moves of a Jim Corbett and the knockout power of a Bob Fitzsimmons. He also possessed a braggart's confidence. If it lived and breathed, Sharkey was sure he could bust it apart. Most experts would have agreed were it not for one failing: Sharkey’s short temper. . . . if Jack Sharkey had been able to keep his cool under pressure, he would almost certainly be rated among the elite heavyweight champions, with Dempsey, Joe Louis and Jack Johnson."

Just about everybody knows the Max Baer story. Built like a Greek god, pretty much the same size as George Foreman, blessed with a wonderful chin and a right hand from Hell, Baer was heralded as the new Jack Dempsey when he burst onto the heavyweight scene, and seemed a certainty to occupy a berth among the greatest heavies of all time. His liking for clowning and his disdain for taking anything seriously saw Baer fritter away his title and his potential, to the extent that few, today, find a spot for him in their top twenty heavies. It could have been so much different.

Do you folks agree that the thirties could have been a mini ' golden era ' for the heavyweight division, and that these three should have been knocking on the door to a top fifteen heavies list ? Also, which of them do you consider to have been the best ?

Over to you.

Excellent article Windy and hard to argue against any of it. Personally for me would whole heartedly agree Sharkey is probably the biggest waste of talent of the three because as you rightly say everything I have read of him suggests he was a guy with just about every physical attribute you would want a havyweight to be blessed with except the bit between the ears. I actually think Carnera is a little better than often portrayed but he sure as hell ain't a top tier guy and is a guy Sharkey has no business losing to.

Would also have to agree with Schemling, is always hard to know with Max because living and surviving in Germany around that time can't have been easy and can hardly have led to a mental state conducive with heavyweight boxing but even allowing for the fact Loe was not the fighter he would become a win over the version of Louis Max beat is very impressive and it was not a lucky punch kind of victory, it was a tactically perfect exploitation of a stylistical weakness that suggests both a good boxing brain and a discipline to actually get in there and execute it.

As an aside it does pose an interesting question why the heavyweights seem to produce so many of these guys who seem to have all the natural physical requirements but have such a mental fragility because from a more recent vintage we could probably add the names of Golota, Bowe and even Buster douglas amongst others

Thanks, jeff, both for the props and the input.

Agree with you about Carnera, by the way. Little doubt that, early on, he was given a lot of ' help ' up the ladder, but behind the scenes he was being taught to box during the period, and he ended up possessing decent enough fundamentals and a jab of which even Joe Louis professed to having been wary. It's often forgotten that Carnera was actually the betting favourite going into the Louis fight. Granted, it was Louis' first ' big ' fight, but notwithstanding it does point to the fact that Carnera wasn't quite so hopeless as we tend to think today.

I agree that Golota and Bowe certainly belong among Schmeling, Sharkey and Baer, also.

Another top-notch article Windy, you’re in fine form today.

I think you’ve hit a key word in your article, Windy; context. Ultimately, the ‘Depression’ era Heavyweights, even if one had dominated for a few years, were always doomed to suffer in comparison to what went just before, and what came immediately after. Like Larry Holmes falling between the golden era of Ali, Foreman and Frazier and the ‘rebirth of Heavyweight boxing’ or the ‘boom’ created by a young Mike Tyson, it’s unfortunate for the likes of Schmeling, Sharkey and Baer to find themselves between the glorious ‘roaring twenties’ of Dempsey / Tunney and the emergence of Joe Louis, who as champion set a standard which had never been seen before. Throw the bleak backdrop of the times and the fact that the prohibition to depression era was the time that the mob started seriously getting their claws in to the sport, and it’s inevitable that our views of the Heavyweight scene back then is going to be a little skewed.

Think I’m more inclined to agree with Fleischer, mind you. For me, Schmeling was the best of the lot, and was certainly the most ‘hard done by’ out of the group. I think Sharkey is only a smidgen behind though, with a similarly thin margin separating him and Baer. As masterful as Sharkey had been before the ‘foul’ in the first fight with Schmeling, I can’t forget their second fight which, to my mind at least, was an outrageously unjust verdict and a very, very lucky one for Sharkey. I think 1-1 is a fair reflection for both fighters, but the irony is that their wins against each other came in the ‘wrong’ fights.

The reason I say that Schmeling is hard done by, so to speak, is because unlike Sharkey and Baer, who both showed nowhere near as much application and focus as they had talent, he is not really to blame for the perceived shortcomings of his career. As much as we all love Joe Louis, we can’t get away from the fact that his leapfrogging of Schmeling to fight for Braddock’s title was a shady piece of boxing politics engineered by Mike Jacobs, and while it seems simplistic, the fact of the matter remains that Schmeling was simply punished for being German at a time when tempers between his homeland and the States were simmering, to say the least. I have little doubt that Schmeling would have done away with Braddock and, for that matter, the men who Louis subsequently went on to defend against prior to serving in WWII. Ironically, it would have been only Louis himself who would have posed a serious threat to Schmeling, as demonstrated in their second bout.

I think I remember you touching on this a few months back, Windy, but let’s assume that Schmeling had been given the opportunity to fight Braddock for the title (which he deserved) after knocking Louis out first time round. He’d have (probably) been the first man to regain the title and, given the number of successful defences he’d have very possibly racked up, Fleischer’s assertion that Schmeling was the ninth greatest Heavyweight of them all probably wouldn’t be looking so strange. Would it have been a shame for Joe Louis to have been given a reduced window in which to showcase his greatness? Yes. But at the same time, it’s just as much of a shame that Schmeling was robbed of what would have been a fairer placing in history due to the ideologies of a certain Mr. Hitler – ideologies which Schmeling himself didn’t believe in but was merely a puppet for, no less. I think the Schmeling who systematically dismantled Louis in 1936, or the one who practically shut out the criminally underrated Stribling, is a nightmare for any Heavyweight who ever lived, though I would add that Stribling fought a very uncharacteristically tentative and negative fight when he took on Schmeling.

As you say, the talent was there in the ‘Depression’ era, but it’s simply a case of context. Falling between the two aforementioned generations, of course, didn’t help at all. But looking back, the ‘caretaker champions’ of 1930 to 1937 were, if anything, simply misunderstood for the most part.

Great article.

Thanks very much, Chris, on all counts.

Your points, particularly those augmenting the Schmeling outline, are excellent, and add some more context to the era. I can understand why you plump for Schmeling as the best of the three, also, and you argue persuasively, though I have always believed that Sharkey was the best of the bunch.

Either way, the three of them could have and should have notched up careers more befitting ATGs than footnotes.

Just came across this late ,Windy. Terrific piece. I have a Bert Sugar book that has a chapter on the 30s entitled "Bring on the clowns", and does indeed give the guys short shrift.
I also have mentioned that I think Carnera has been way too maligned, and Max Baer was pretty darned handy.It's just that you could see it in his demeanor that he did not take being the champion very seriously!Schmeling was rematched by Louis when he was getting on in years-mid to late thirties, if memory serves.The gameplan to beat Joe, first fight,was indeed masterly.
It IS funny how eras seem to be reflected with the heavyweight champs , Tyson representing the harsh old 80s,Ali the rebellious 60s, and the thirties seem obliged to be called "turbulent times".
Sounds like there's a good case for Sharkey, but based on what I have seen, I give Baer the tip as the most naturally talented.
Anyhow, thanks for giving me something to feast on Windy,away from the devil's avocado hores d'erve that has been served up of late!

Thanks, in turn, for your kind words and excellent input, andy.

Interestingly, then, we have votes for all three as being the best of the bunch, and a couple of us doffing the cap to Carnera as not being quite the buffoon as which he is sometimes portrayed.

Interesting responses, fellas. Thanks to you all.

Got to say Fleischer is one of those guys I just dont really rate. Not a fan of his methods of rating or evaluating a fighter at all so I dont put much stock in his opinions.

With Baer and Sharkey you could say there was waste of potential perhaps, but Schmelling? Wouldnt have really thought Schmelling lacked application or the traits of the other two. I would have said that the fact Schmelling did not go on and dominate was simply because he wasnt good enough to rather than anything else. I understand he gets shafted with the Braddock situation but I certainly dont see him being a dominant or long reigning heavyweight.

I would say its harder to say with Sharkey and Baer. I wouldnt have a vast amount of knowledge accumulated on either but I understand the arguments that neither really fulfilled as they could have.

I have always viewed it as a period where there was no real standout heavyweights though rather than one of underrated or underappreciated heavyweights.

manos de piedra wrote:
I have always viewed it as a period where there was no real standout heavyweights though rather than one of underrated or underappreciated heavyweights.

With the exception of Carnera, whom I believe IS under rated, I'd agree with your sentiment, manos. The point isn't so much that these guys are under rated ( despite Fleischer's appraisal of Schmeling, ) but, rather, that they under achieved. If we watch Sharkey in the first Carnera fight, for example, or in the early going against Dempsey, we can see what a superb fighter he was when he was ' on.' Likewise Baer, in the Schmeling fight.

HumanWindmill wrote:

manos de piedra wrote:
I have always viewed it as a period where there was no real standout heavyweights though rather than one of underrated or underappreciated heavyweights.

With the exception of Carnera, whom I believe IS under rated, I'd agree with your sentiment, manos. The point isn't so much that these guys are under rated ( despite Fleischer's appraisal of Schmeling, ) but, rather, that they under achieved. If we watch Sharkey in the first Carnera fight, for example, or in the early going against Dempsey, we can see what a superb fighter he was when he was ' on.' Likewise Baer, in the Schmeling fight.

I wouldnt say Schmelling underacheived. I just dont think he was all that great or at least not great enough to be a standout or long reigning champion.

Baer is harder to say. Would add that the death of a fighter at his hands seemed to have a bad effect on him and his record and performancs after that incident seemed to indicate his career was falling apart. Seems to take him several years to get over that.

Im not hugely familiar with Sharkey so wouldnt be able to comment accurately on how far short of his potential he fell. Given how mediocre his overall career and record ended up, and the suspicious nature of his second Carnera fight though which raises the question of whether he was not above taking a dive, he would probably be the most wasteful of the three. At least Baer had a genuine tragedy to deal with which theres strong evidence to say affected him quite badly.

Ultimately I cant really say if they underacheived or not. On one hand you could say they didnt always fight at their best, but on the other hand had there been a genuine top ten heavy around then they may never have got their hands on the title at all. I consider it pretty much a weak era so if the trio were around in many other eras they probably acheive even less.

I have a copy of the Baer v Braddock bout.Although it's by no means a classic, or even that exciting,EVEN with the under-achieving fighters,a championship bout still carried a clout I don't think we come close to these days...
I guess it's the lack of colour, the sound difference, the lack of advertising(and the ring announcers!)-all these things probably enhance my enjoyment...I guess Azania would say they alter my perception!.Even though I'll support a modern British heavy in challenging for the belt, I'll still get more enjoyment over the years watching Carnera, Baer and Schmeling.
I know it's been said to death, but the one champ/one belt idea simply works-when that went, so too did a lot of the inherent drama.