Max Baer:Boxing's Wise Cracking Champion
Max Baer was known affectionately to boxing fans (or frustratingly to his trainers and handlers) as the 'Clown Prince' of the sport, and it manifested itself right up until his final moments in this world; as he clutched at his chest and began to keel over from the heart attack that would kill him, Baer was asked by a hotel porter if he needed the house doctor - to which Baer replied, "No, I need a people doctor!"
Such a comment was typical of Baer, who had always used comedy as a bolthole from all the problems and tragedies in his life. Baer's descendants complained, with plenty of justification, that the way in which
he was depicted in the 2005 movie 'Cinderella Man', a feature on the life of James Braddock (who would usurp Baer as Heavyweight champion) was little short of disgraceful, and indeed the idea that Baer was an intimidating and festering character does him less than justice.
Rather, Baer was mischievous, first and foremost. He knew how to get himself talked about and noticed, and used this gift to a tee when he was able to convince most of the boxing press for many years that he was a practicing, fully-fledged Jew. Boxing in the 1930s hinged heavily on pitting rival ethnic groups against each other; if you were a Jew, Irish-American or Italian-American, you had some extra gravity with the promoters. Though his father was reported to have come from a Jewish family, he'd earned a living farming pigs, and Max (whose mother was of Scottish and Irish descent) was raised in a household with no religious affiliation. But wearing the Star of David on his shorts, and flaunting his supposed Jewishness, helped make him one of the biggest attractions in the sport from the late twenties to mid thirties.
He was also a venomous puncher, accumulating 51 knockouts in his 66 career wins - and sadly with awful outcomes from time to time. Between 1930 and 1932, Baer was at the centre of an almost unimaginable double tragedy. In August 1930, Baer battered Heavyweight contender Frankie Campbell in to submission inside of five rounds - Campbell lost consciousness after Baer's final brutal assault, and never regained it, being pronounced dead the next day. If the official coroner is to be believed, the ferocity of Baer's punches had been enough to knock Campbell's brain loose from his skull. In September 1932 Baer, clearly fighting within himself as he often had been since the death of Campbell, was good enough to win a decision over Ernie Schaaf - but when Schaaf was killed in the ring against the Italian giant Primo Carnera five months later, evidence in part suggested that the damage inflicted upon him by Baer in their bout had been just as responsible for the horrific outcome as the punch of Carnera had.
Whether he wanted it or not, the tag of being a 'killer' of sorts now rested on Baer's head. But his reputation and standing amongst Americans (and particularly the two million New York Jews who were so vital in the administration and running of professional boxing in the USA) was given a timely boost when he