Check this out.
This was when boxing was the No. 1 or 2 sport in America.
Heavyweight champ was THE biggest title in sports.
Mix in USA vs Hitler, and the fact that this fight was a rematch (Schmeling won the first fight when neither was a champion), and this Joe Louis vs Max Schmeling fight in Yankee Stadium might have actually been THE fight of the 20th Century, next to the first Ali-Frazier fight. Maybe.
And it didn't last a round.
My dad used to tell me that when he grew up they would huddle around the radio and listen to Joe Louis fights. My dad grew up in a little Italian settlement in the coal mining mountains, and they rooted like crazy for Louis.
Radio was king back then. So was boxing.
Mix those together, with the theater of the mind, and imagine being on the edge of your seat listening to something this big, this important, all being settled in under two minutes.
This was when boxing was the No. 1 or 2 sport in America.
Heavyweight champ was THE biggest title in sports.
Mix in USA vs Hitler, and the fact that this fight was a rematch (Schmeling won the first fight when neither was a champion), and this Joe Louis vs Max Schmeling fight in Yankee Stadium might have actually been THE fight of the 20th Century, next to the first Ali-Frazier fight. Maybe.
And it didn't last a round.
My dad used to tell me that when he grew up they would huddle around the radio and listen to Joe Louis fights. My dad grew up in a little Italian settlement in the coal mining mountains, and they rooted like crazy for Louis.
Radio was king back then. So was boxing.
Mix those together, with the theater of the mind, and imagine being on the edge of your seat listening to something this big, this important, all being settled in under two minutes.
