Clown into Champion

The heavyweight champion of the work can, by rights, beat anyone who will fight him without weapons. There were last week possibly half a dozen men in the world capable of beating Champion Primo Carnera but it seemed unlikely that Max Adelbert Baer was among them. An exuberant young pugilist who enjoys night life more than fighting, Baer had trained so nonchalantly that a member of the New York State Boxing Commission threatened to have the fight cancelled because the challenger was in such pooi physical condition. Even after a committee of physicians had examined Baer's 210-lb. hulk, pronounced it hale, it seemed improbable that he would be a match for a champion who weighed 50 Ib. more, and stood 4 in. taller than he. Camera had trained with characteristic solemnity. Six weeks of roadwork, six daily rounds of boxing and a Spartan diet made his muscles swell with awesome health when he clambered into his corner of the ring at the Madison Square Garden bowl in Long Island City. When the bell rang for the first round, he lumbered earnestly out of his corner and pushed his left fist inquisitively into Baer's grinning face.

To the crowd of 60.000 Baer's reaction was amazing. With a blow of his right hand, which he swings as if it still held the meat axe with which he used to butcher heifers, he knocked Carnera down.

He knocked Carnera down twice more before the round ended. In the second, he knocked him down three times, made the champion so groggy that when he fell he dragged Baer down with him. In the next seven rounds, Carnera pulled himself together sufficiently to keep his feet on the ground and his guard up. Baer took to walking in with his hands down, laughing at friends in ringside seats, chatting in the clinches. In the tenth round, Baer stopped his clowning and started to floor the champion some more. When Carnera had twice hoisted his monstrous frame to its shaky feet Referee Donovan saw that he was dazed and stepped between the men. Before he could stop the fight, the round was over.

Carnera came out for the eleventh round still groggy and dazed. His huge sad face was covered with blood. He lurched on a twisted ankle. When he reached the centre of the ring, Baer smashed him in the face. A cowardly fighter would have dropped to the floor and stayed there. A wise one would have rested until the referee counted nine. Camera heaved himself up at the count of two, floundered toward his opponent like an enormous hurt animal. This time Baer hit him three hard cracks before he went sprawling again. The courage which made Carnera get up once more gave dignity to the end of an otherwise brutal comedy. To the referee he mumbled something which he later denied was a request to stop the fight. The referee stepped in front of him, raised Baer's hand in victory. Max Baer was born in Omaha in 1909. His 6-ft. father was a Jew of Alsatian stock. His 200-lb. mother was Scotch-Irish. By the time Max was old enough to work after school. Jacob Baer had advanced from butchering cattle for Swift & Co. to running a small ranch and meat-packing plant of his own in Livermore, Calif. Timid Max Baer went home from school by a three-mile detour because his schoolmates had threatened to thrash him. His timidity was replaced by exaggerated confidence after his first fight. Max Baer's first manager, Hamilton Lorimer, matched him with an Indian named Chief Cariboo whom Baer knocked out in two rounds. After 19 easy victories, Baer fought Frankie Campbell in San Francisco, knocked him out in the fifth round. Campbell failed to recover consciousness, died the next day. Baer was suspended for a year. When he returned to the ring, he had a new manager, Ancil Hoffman, and the reputation of being the hardest hitter since Jack Dempsey. After a year in which he lost fights to Ernie Schaaf, Tommy Loughran, Johnny Risko and Paulino Uzcudun he began to justify that reputation. In a return fight with Ernie Schaaf, he gave his opponent a terrific drubbing, knocked him unconscious for three hours. A year ago Baer won his right to fight Carnera by thrashing Max Schmeling.

Outside the ring, Max Baer played the part of a merry Andrew. During the year of his suspension, he bought two 16-cylinder Cadillacs, soon lacked money to run them. In Reno, he met and married a Dorothy Dunbar with whom he has since quarreled and made up seven times. When he left Reno for New York, he had with him a chauffeur, a valet, a dietitian and a present from Dorothy Dunbar, Emily Post's Book of Etiquette, which he read when he was supposed to be doing roadwork. Like Carnera, Baer has been sued by a waitress, one Olive Beck, whose claim of $250,000 for breach of promise he settled for $5,500. Last year he was divorced from Dorothy Dunbar. After defeating Max Schmeling, Max Baer played in vaudeville, was master of ceremonies in a nightclub, performed on the radio, acted in MGM's The Prizefighter and the Lady in which he engaged in a bout with Carnera. The bathrobe he wore into the ring last week was the one he wore in that cinema; on its back was the name of the hero, Steve Morgan.

Of the $500,000 which he has earned in the last two years, Baer has nothing left. Of the $40,000 which he made from last week's fight, he owes most to his first manager. To newshawks who interviewed him after his victory, Baer last week revealed his plans: "I want to get a dark coat and a checked pair of pants, you know, Hollywood style. ... I want to end up with a little trust fund. ... I don't want to end up with the toy balloon concession in some insane asylum or other. . . . The only sweetheart I have now is my mother. . . . She won't sue me. . . ."

Taken to a hospital after his defeat, Carnera was found to be suffering from a chipped ankle bone. His $125.000 purse was attached by creditors including the U. S. Government to which he owes $33,000 for income taxes. Wrote Columnist Westbrook Pegler: "He comes to the end of his career a bankrupt, fleeced by thieves of the American underworld and picked clean by litigants and lawyers, an unfortunate stranger in a puzzling country, with only his hurts to show for his years of striving."

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