"Stinking Fight, Huh?"

Almost as soon as they touched gloves last week in Yankee Stadium, handsome Billy Conn, grinning hideously through his mouthpiece, moved in close to Joe Louis, muttered "Take it easy . . . we've got 15 rounds to go." By the third round, jeers began in the $30 seats, a half block away. In the $100 zone, Moscow's Andrei Gromyko (guest of Bernard M. Baruch) and Hollywood's Ann Sheridan were perhaps as disgusted, but more polite about it. In seven rounds, hardly a solid blow landed.

It happened in the eighth. Joe Louis closed in. He hit Conn's head with two short, paralyzing rights and a left hook. The three blows left Conn flat on his back, eyes open, listening to the referee's count. As soon as he came to, Conn put the thoughts of 45,266 cash customers into words: "It was a stinking fight, huh?"

Nobody blamed Joe Louis. It takes two to make a fight. Harlem, which had not seen its Joe defend his crown since 1941, began an all-night jamboree with a parade and ended it with two stabbings, three shootings. (The New York Sun headlined:

THREE DEAD IN HAPPY HARLEM). Shrewd

Promoter Mike Jacobs, who had a big reputation for knowing just how much to sock the public, counted up his $1,925,565 gate, and his estimated $163,000 profit.

Next day, the real fighting began. A rambunctious Congressman from Brooklyn, name of Donald O'Toole, who had watched tire fight by television, cried "Swindle." Critics blamed Billy Conn for not putting up a good fight, and asked why he had been allowed in the ring without a warm-up fight.

The answer was that Conn might have looked pretty good in a warm-up against the current crop of second-raters, and still flopped as badly when he got the main chance. He seemed to be suffering from an occupational disease that has afflicted many of Joe Louis' opponents--being scared to death.

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