Blockbuster film from 2005 Cinderellawho described the life of the world heavyweight champion James J. Braddock, was grossly unfair to present Braddock’s rival Max Baer, ​​from whom he won the title. In the film, Baer is depicted as a cruel sadist who threatens to kill Braddock in the ring and sleep with his wife. This is nonsense. It never happened. Real Max Baer was nothing like this hideous distortion from Hollywood.

“Madcap Max”, as he was known, was one of the most popular and popular fighters from the interwar period. In addition to his powerful blow (51 of his 66 wins came inside), Baer was a content joker whose contagious smile and antics resembling a clown brightened the game of fighting among the darkness of the great crisis.

Max had a Jewish father, but he did not practice faith himself. However, he proudly wore the star of David on his struggle shorts and was a hero of the Jewish people around the world.

In 1937, two years after he lost the World Crown with Braddock, Max and his brother, a Baer heavyweight colleague, everyone had two fights in Great Britain. Buddy won his two, but Max lost to Tommy Farr in his British debut at Harringay Arena, April 15. However, he did this, with a clear win over Ben Foord in the same place on May 27, hitting south Africa to defeat in the nine. But more unforgettable than the fight itself was the party that Max and Buddha received when they visited a few days later.

On May 31, Morry Bloom, the owner of the well -known Delicatessen in Brick Lane, Whitechapel, canceled Max’s victory event over his store. When the news in which Baer participated, residents, many Jewish people turned out to be in thousands to welcome the former world champion. Max and Buddy were to come to Bloom at 19:00, but the crowds began to gather a few hours earlier, and when the arrival of Baers approached the road, it was almost impassable, and the police tried to part the crowd to make room for movement. Every car that entered Brick Lane was hailed as the screams: “Max is coming!” And surrounded by extremely doping people.

At 20:00 the Baers car drew a view. “Travel from the summit of Osborn Street to the Bloom store – only 200 yards – lasted almost a quarter of hours,” said East End the Weekly Sporting Review. “Scenes of excitement, which meant their low journey, were indescribable; the local population became hysterical in crazy effort to take a look at the former world champion and his brother, Buddha.”

After taking through the crowd, the brothers found the way to the dining room above the store, where an excellent spread was arranged. But this did not stop the crowds outside – in fact they became enlarged, and there were persistent shouts “We want Max!”

She never disappointed the audience, there was the title of the world in a window with her brother, waving and smiling at a cheering crowd. Through the microphone Max thanked East Enders for their great welcome, and Buddy sang several songs, and the external audience joined the chorus.

Sid Nathan, a well-known judge-then a 14-year-old autograph hunter-was part of a huge crowd and remembered that Max and Buddhs were considered “like royal”.

Twenty -two years later, when Max died of a heart attack at a Hollywood hotel at the age of 50, the world of boxing was devastated after losing one of his most nice characters. Max believed that the world would be a better place with more laughter and did it his personal mantra.

Asked on the deathbed by the hotel staff, if he needs a home doctor, he reports that he joked: “NO. Take me a doctor!”
Forget about the unfair performance of Hollywood from 2005. It was a real Max Baer.

When we slowly move out of the whole series of blockades and professional boxing, both internal and external, they begin to gather again, it is not surprising that our little hall promoters are again demanding stage shows. September already looks like it will be a very busy month, and this is great news for the hordes of newborn boys, ticket sellers and journeymen, whose careers have been largely suspended over the last 18 months.

Over the past 40 years, the number of promotions taking place throughout Great Britain usually ranged between 200 and about 280 per year. The last year, in which over 300 professional tournaments took place, took place in 1955 and throughout the entire period in 1961–1976 there were fewer than 200 shows each year. Throughout the Second World War, there were never less than 400 shows, and in two years, 1940 and 1942, over 500. After the war there was a boom and often there were over 1,000 events taking place annually in Great Britain. This ended with the introduction of entertainment tax in 1953, when the promoters had to pay the government even a third of profit, which tried to fix the post -war economy with a cripple, and the boxing in a compact hall never really regained.

In the case of a truly astronomical number, you should return to the 1930s, and in particular years in 1930–1934. During this five years there have never been less than 4,000 shows a year, in 1931 and 1933. Over 5,000. It was possible to see two or even three professional tournaments taking place the same day in cities such as Preston, Sheffield, Leeds and Barnsley. In much smaller places, such as Ryton and Colne in Lancashire, in the same evening there were competing promoters regularly put to concerts towards a enormous and enthusiastic audience. Professional boxing could be seen throughout the UK, often in places that have been starved from sport for the last 70 years; Norfolk, Suffolk, Cornwall, Devon and Cumbria, in which he noticed little, were all habitats, with hundreds of newborn boys fighting at licensed tournaments in places such as Penzanka, Truro, Cirborne, Newton ABBOT, DIS, SPALDING, Lowing, Great Yarmouth, Whitehaven, Vormon and Vormon Penrth. In larger industrial areas, such as southern Wales and northeast, hundreds of tournaments were held a year, in Newcastle, in St James Hall, you could watch a professional boxing six nights a night a week in 1933 and 1934.

World economic depression, which began in 1929 and lasted in the 1930s, was responsible for this boom in sport in Great Britain. I used to talk to many warriors from this period and while most of them enjoyed a ring career, almost everyone told me that they boxed because they had to be so challenging. The handbags they fought for, often less than 1 £, at least helped put food on the table, and this period was not called “hungry thirty”. Nowhere was there so striking in the southern WALIA, where most coal mines tried to remain economically profitable, and tens of thousands of miners were released many times, professional boxing provided some kind of income of many newborn boys who spilled gloves, even if there were not so many people who could afford to arrive.

Now, when Pandemia finally goes back, it would be wonderful to see how boxing is subjected to another mini-booom and for this magical in total 300 programs that will be violated again, so everyone behind our organizers of compact apartments, so that it needs to happen because they need our support.

You will see Eugene Corri on materials shot at the National Sporting Club (NSC) in the London Garden Covent Garden, the headquarters of British boxing from 1891 to the twenties, where well dinner crowds watched incredible silence during the fight, when smoke with cigars spread around a compact decorative room. He usually sits the ring, assessing the fight from outside the ropes, just like the norm for British judges.

With his circle, his constantly forcing face, growing a mustache and an extravagant sense of his Corinthian coat and the highest hat of style worn by dollars of the regency-Corri period was a figure greater than life and a key figure in the early 20th century in British boxing. A simal, joyful man and engaging Grębnik, “Gen’s gene”, as he was known, had a wide circle of friends, from his peers to Pugilists. He loved cigars and was rarely seen without them; It is said that his consumption even exceeds Lord Lonsdale cigars. But under the living figure there was a strict way that made him one of the most severe judges in the game.

As a teenage man, Gene, he worked at Trogmorton Street at City of London, as a official of a securities broker, and later he became a partner in the company. He got involved in boxing in the 1880s, when he was 20 years ancient. After trying his hand in noble art, he moved to refereeing. When NSC was opened in 1891, he was one of its first members and became one of his regular judges.

During his long career, Corri dealt with fights with the participation of such legends like Carpentier, Tommy Burns, Sam Langford, Sam McVea, Jimmy Wilde, Jim Driscoll, Ted Kid Lewis, Freddie Welsh, Willie Ritchie, Pedlar Palmer, George Dixon and Mickey Walker. No wonder he had a wealth of stories from his time in boxing and shared them in four intriguing books.

For example, when distrustful burns insisted that distrustful burns insist, that his money for the world heavyweight title with Gunner Moir in NSc distrustful burns insists that his money from the purse would be placed in the hands of a judge. The NSC manager “Peggy” Bettinson properly agreed and gave Corri a huge disadvantage of notes, which he slipped into the internal pocket of the dinner jacket.

As the General Competition progressed, he was forced to enter the ring to take control of the action. Feeling the heat, he threw the jacket on the ring chair. Burns won the fight in 10 rounds, at which Corri remembered the disadvantages of the notes and threw himself to recover the coat. To his huge relief, cash was still there!

As a partner in the Stockbrokers industry, Corri was a wealthy man, counting the multimillionary Diamond Magnates Barney Barnato, Jack and Solly Joel and Sir Abe Bailey among his clients and intimate friends. But in the outbreak of World War I closed the company and entered the unfortunate scientific partnership. It was went bankrupt in 1921.

Now in the 1960s his status in the boxing world was unchanged, but he will fight financially for the rest of his days. After meeting with Corri to Fleet Street in the 1920s, the ancient friend of the journalist was shocked by his “Shabby with clothes and a general in appearance on the heel”, later writing: “When I contrasted his dignified poorer clothes with those whom he wore, when I saw him, I just didn’t believe in the eyes.”

But Corri remained cheerful and stoic despite his bad fortune. He has suffered from health in recent years, but he managed to publish his last memory, Fifty years in the ringin 1933. When he died in his home in Southend in December, the sports and national press were full of praise. The header spilled on the back Daily Mirror He captured his position in sport. He read: “Eugene Corri, king of boxing judges.”