Cinderella Man by Marc Cerasini Page B

Jim couldn’t. His opponent rushed him, raining solid punches in stinging one-two rhythms. Jim tried to counter, but Gould was right—he just didn’t have a left-hand punch. Worse, his right couldn’t even block anymore, and his boxing shoes felt like they’d been dipped in lead. As Feldman landed blow after blow, Braddock was practically standing still, a defenseless six-three bag of sand for Feldman to punch at will.
    Time usually slowed for Jim under the broiling hot lights, but now it was hurtling forward in a violent frenzy, a breakneck merry-go-round that turned Feldman into a blur of unpredictable movement.
    Desperate, Braddock began to throw out his left again and again. His wild jabs missed, but he managedto send one serious uppercut to Feldman’s chin. Abe was still hurting from the right cross Braddock had fed him in the last round, and the uppercut did some damage.
    Both boxers fell into another clinch. They swayed in a drunken dance, back and forth across the canvas, and the gallery began to jeer again, hurling insults and catcalls.
    â€œPay attention!” Gould shouted.
    The faces in the irate crowd were a whirling blur in Jim’s pain-racked vision—
    â€œYou stink!”
    â€œGo home!”
    â€œNo good—”
    Suddenly Jim decided maybe he had one more right cross in him.
    â€œBum!”
    Yeah , thought Jim, one more —
    Jim cocked back and let fly. He struck Feldman on the sweet spot, and the boxer reeled, but beneath Jim’s glove, beneath his tape, his broken hand had completely shattered.
    As Jim braced against white-hot convulsive spasms, Feldman counterpunched with a vicious right. Jim’s head snapped back. He staggered, pulling Feldman into yet another pitiful clinch, holding onto his opponent like the intoxicated host of a party, desperately trying not to pass out. Feldman didn’t look much better. His arms wrapped around Braddock, and once again the two waltzed across the canvas.
    Gould barely heard the bell over the booing.
    Â 
    â€œAn embarrassment! That’s what it was. An embarrassment.”
    Gritting his teeth, Joe Gould forced himself to stand quietly and listen to the rantings of Jimmy Johnston, the big-suit promoter whose balls he’d squeezed to get Braddock that Tuffy Griffiths shot, not to mention the world title match against Tommy Loughran in Yankee Stadium.
    Barely thirty minutes ago, the referee had stopped the fight. Announcing “enough was enough,” he’d declared it a “no contest,” and threw any further rulings into the hands of the state boxing commissioners, which meant Joe Gould’s worst-case scenario had just come true.
    â€œWhere’s the purse?” asked Gould, trying like hell to hold his temper in front of this makeshift tribunal, which included Johnston, the ref from tonight’s bout, and two state commissioners who’d been in the audience.
    â€œI wouldn’t have to tell you that if you gave a shit about your fighter,” Johnston said.
    Sitting behind the table with his fellow commissioners, Johnston sucked on his cigar and blew out a fat white puff, like Zeus making clouds for the mortals below him. It joined the smoke already hanging in the armory’s backroom office. Mount Olympus on the cheap.
    â€œOkay,” said Gould. Time to beg. He opened his fists, held his palms to the gods. “So he’s fighting hurt. Maybe you got fighters who can afford to rest a month between fights.”
    â€œChrist, he hardly gets a punch in anymore. Fights getting stopped by referees…He’s pathetic.”
    Gould closed his open palms, made two angry fists. Johnston had always thought Braddock was a bum, that he’d never amount to much. Now the prick had his validation. With his own eyes, Johnston had witnessed the lowest moment in Jim’s career. That still didn’t give him the right to call his friend pathetic. Gould was about to tell