Jim Braddock was born in June 1905 to Irish immigrants in New York City. The Braddocks were a large family of six boys and two girls, and soon found it necessary to relocate across the Hudson River to New Jersey. It was in Hudson County that Braddock would grow up and come to be identified with. As a teenager, he worked as a Western Union messenger, a teamster, and doing odd jobs at a print shop and a silk mill. It was during this time that young Jim Braddock discovered boxing. In 1925 and 1926, he won the amateur championship of New Jersey as a middleweight. This attracted the attention of his lifelong friend and manager Joe Gould, and at age 21 Braddock turned pro.
James Braddock was a tall, skinny fighter. He stood 6’2″ tall, but for his first fight he fought as a middleweight, roughly 160lbs. In many ways, Braddock was a limited fighter. Although he had a hammer right hand, his left was mediocre early in his career making him for all intents a “one-handed fighter.” Also, he had brittle hands, always a liability for a puncher. Still, a rangy fighter with a devastating right can go a long way, and Braddock did exactly that.
In 1926 and 1927, Braddock was a busy man and racked up a 23-0-3 record before meeting with his first defeat. Braddock soon moved up from middleweight to light heavyweight (175lbs), but typically he weighed in well below 170lbs and could easily have made the middleweight limit if he so chose. While acknowledging his power, many observers considered Braddock something of a one-trick pony, especially after being outpointed by four different fighters in the course of 1927 and 1928. However, he won more fights than he lost or drew, and many of those were by exciting knockouts. Braddock’s stock continued to rise.
Light Heavyweight Contender
The fight that really put Braddock on the map was his October 1928 bout with Pete Latzo. Latzo was 30-4-6 at the time, and had previously challenged the great Tommy Loughran twice for the light heavyweight title. Braddock, now a solid light heavyweight, broke Latzo’s jaw en route to a points win. Latzo was scheduled to fight 40-0 Tuffy Griffiths, but the loss and broken jaw put Braddock in his place. Griffiths was knocked down four times in the 2nd Round on the way to his first loss, and by knockout no less. The win was enough to get Braddock on the cover of The Ring magazine.
Coming off his two big wins, 1929 proved to be a very mixed year for Braddock. He fought contender Leo Lomski and lost a majority decision. Two months later he knocked out another contender, Jim Slattery. Finally, in July he met the legendary Tommy Loughran. Loughran was a masterful boxer, and invented some of the counter-punching techniques that are part of modern boxing’s core. He had studied the fearsome slugger carefully, and utilized his skills to avoid Braddock’s one-handed punching style. Loughran easily outboxed Braddock, who found himself unable to land his power, and making him look amateurish on the way to a clear points win.
Two months later, the Stock Market crashed and the Great Depression began. As the banks went under, Braddock lost everything.
On Skid Row
The loss to Loughran coupled with the trauma of his financial collapse clearly took a toll on Braddock. He began the Depression with a record of 36-6-6. Between late 1929 and 1933, Braddock lost 19 fights. Some of his opponents were men of great quality: John Henry Louis, Earnie Schaaf, Maxie Rosenbloom, and Leo Lomski again. However, Braddock was clearly a man in distress. Alternating between light heavyweight and heavyweight, Braddock was fighting to put food on the table for his family, and most likely deeply depressed by continuing difficulties.
In January 1930, he met Lomski in a rematch. He knocked Lomski down in the 2nd and 4th, but otherwise was outboxed by his rival. The fight was initially declared a draw, but this was reversed more than a week later when the referee claimed he has scored the bout in error. This stinky decision became infamous as “the 11 Day Decision.” In March 1933 Braddock was even disqualified for “not trying.” In April of that same year, Braddock broke his hand in the ring, and then aggravated the injury in a fight the next month. To rub salt in the wound, he lost both fights.
By all appearances, Jim Braddock, “The Bulldog of Bergen,” was all washed up. The pay for a fighter who loses isn’t very good, and Braddock had a family to feed. Furthermore, he couldn’t fight on his badly broken right hand. He left the ring behind and went to work on the docks. At one point he was reduced to seeking public relief assistance, a humiliating step for a man of Braddock’s pride and former stature as a promising professional athlete.
The Cinderella Man
In June 1934, Primo Carnera was set to defend his world heavyweight title against Max Baer at Madison Square Garden. Braddock’s manager begged to get him on the card. The opponent was John “Corn” Griffin. Contrary to the tenor set by the film The Cinderalla Man, Griffin was not a strong contender. He was 10-4-1 and only outweighed Braddock by 4lbs – hardly a world beater. What the fight was, however, was action-packed. Both men went down in the 2nd, with Braddock knocking Griffin out in the 3rd. Although the main event was a brutal knockdownfest, it was the Braddock fight that fans walked away talking about.
The buzz surrounding Braddock was enough to get him a November rematch with John Henry Lewis, 31-1-3 at the time. Braddock was different in two ways from their previous bout in 1932. First, as described in the film, Braddock had been forced to do all that work on the docks with his left hand, much improving his coordination. The one-handed fighter had developed a jab. Second, Braddock was determined and focused as never before. Also, Braddock was still a bona fide heavyweight, fighting at roughly 185lbs; Lewis was still a light heavyweight, fighting at below 175lbs. Braddock knocked down the great Lewis in the 5th Round, and won a solid points victory.
Next Braddock was matched with Art Lansky. At 197lbs, Lansky was a more credible heavyweight than either Braddock, a wiry former middlweight and light heavyweight, Griffin or Lewis were. Yet Lansky was also not quite the menace that the film made him out to be: his record against King Levinsky, Primo Carnera, and Steve Hamas (his three most credible opponents) was 1-1-2. According to The New York Times, Braddock beat Lansky “easily,” despite being the underdog. Against all odds, Braddock was now the #2 ranked heavyweight in the world.
The #1 ranked heavyweight was the German, Max Schmeling. Although not mentioned in the film, Gould proposed a match-up between Braddock and Schmeling, however Schmeling balked at the idea of fighting the #2 heavyweight when he should be fighting the champion. As it turned out, Baer did not want any part of Schmeling. Baer had already beaten Schmeling on his way up to the title, but was also 1/4 Jewish and wore the Star of David in the ring. He wanted no part of Schmeling, so instead Baer’s people started looking at Braddock as an easy title defense. In fact, Baer and his team thought so little of Braddock that one of them – probably Baer’s manager – called Braddock a bum.
“I may not be a great fighter, but I ain’t a bum” was Braddock’s response. However, even if no one in the press or public thought Braddock was a “bum,” few gave him any hope of victory against the powerful, 6’2″, 210lbs slugger Max Baer. He was bigger, stronger, had a longer reach, hit harder, was younger, had not been defeated in four years, and had killed two men in the ring. But what Braddock did have was his character. Baer didn’t take either Braddock or even boxing that seriously; Braddock came to fight.
When watching the fight, it is clear that Baer could have easily defeated Braddock, if only he had bothered to train and fought a serious fight from the outset. He pounded Braddock whenever he chose. Yet Baer let round after round slip away as he clowned for the crowd. Braddock, who never stopped coming on, slowly piled up the points. Baer’s corner begged him to get into the fight; Baer told them he could knock Braddock out whenever he felt like it. However, even after rallying, Baer wasn’t able to live up to his boasts. The fiercely determined Braddock simply would no go down. At the end of the night, the scorecards were read and Braddock, by unanimous decision, was the new heavyweight champion of the world. A 10-1 underdog, he had pulled off the biggest upset in heavyweight history.
The Champ Hangs Up the Gloves
The #1 and #2 contenders for Braddock’s newly-won crown were Max Schmeling and Joe Louis. No one thought Braddock could beat either of them. In his early 30s and undersized for a heavyweight, Braddock knew his time as champion was limited. He held out for the one big money fight that would secure his family’s future. However, Braddock did not want to fight Schmeling. Although Schmeling had knocked out Louis in 1936, securing his status as the mandatory challenger, Braddock did not want to risk the German winning his title and taking it back to Nazi Germany. Plus, Louis’s people promised Braddock more money, so Braddock froze Schmeling out of the title picture.
In June 1937 he fought the 23 year old Joe Louis. Even as champion, few thought Braddock would beat “The Brown Bomber;” betting odds were 5-1 against him. However, Braddock knocked Louis onto the canvas in the 1st Round with a crunching right uppercut. After that, though, it was all Louis. Between the 7th and 8th Rounds, Joe Gould wanted to stop the fight, but Braddock refused, saying “I want to go out like a champion. I want to be carried out.” In the 8th a hard left to the body, followed by a right on the chin, knocked Braddock out. It was the first time in his career, even with its many losses, that Braddock had ever lost by knockout. Braddock later said that after the left-right combination, he “could’ve stayed down on the canvas for three weeks.”
In January 1938, Braddock fought Tommy Farr and won a split decision. It was his last hurrah, fought so that Braddock could retire on a win. With a record of 51-26-7 with 26 KOs and 2 NCs, James Braddock hung up his gloves.
After Boxing
Part of the agreement between Braddock and Louis was that Braddock would receive 10% of Louis’s ring earnings for the next 10 years. Braddock received $300,000 for his fight with Louis, and then $150,000 between 1937 and 1939 in payments. In modern terms, this would be approximately $6 million. James Braddock ended the 1930s a wealthy man.
At the outbreak of World War Two, both Braddock and Gould enlisted in the US Army, and were eventually made 1st Lieutenants. After the war, Braddock worked as an Operating Engineer on the Verrazano Bridge project in New York, and also got involved in supplying surplus marine equipment. He and his wife Mae raised three children. He died in 1974 and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2001. His friend and manager Joe Gould passed away in 1950.
Sources: boxrec.com; James Braddock Official Web Site; New York Times; old You Tube footage; ESPN Classic Sports
