Jimmy's Last Fight

Under a paralyzing blow to the jaw, Jimmy Doyle's body stiffened, and he fell backwards as though his heels were hinged to the floor. With what was left of instinct he fumbled blindly for the ropes, brushed them with clumsy gloves, and lay still. The bell rang and the round ended as the referee's count reached nine. Jimrny Doyle's handlers went to work with cold water and smelling salts. But Boxer Doyle fought no more.

In the ring's center, Sugar Ray Robinson, making his first defense of the welterweight championship, took the victor's bow, but he did no victor's dance: his opponent lay in a coma, and a doctor was examining him. Later, in his dressing room, Robinson asked: "Is the kid up yet? The punch only traveled six inches, I think." Almost as he spoke stretcher-bearers were taking Jimmy Doyle from Cleveland's Arena. A few fans recalled the words that the Cleveland Press's Columnist Franklin Lewis wrote earlier that day about how things would be "after the remains of Jimmy Doyle are toted gently away from the Arena's warm ring this evening."

Twice on a Stretcher. Fifteen months before, Boxer Doyle had been carried from 'the same ring. He woke up in St. Vincent Charity Hospital and his head hurt; he had been hit a terrific wallop by Brooklyn's Artie Levine. The doctors said he had a brain concussion. Although he was only 21, Doyle had never been quite the same after that. Punch-drunk Jimmy wandered back home to Los Angeles, where his friends called him by his real name--Jimmy Delaney.

His family noticed that Jimmy did not go dancing as he once did, and no longer bounced around the house sparring and roughhousing. Instead he sat for hours reading books, and talked as though he would never again enter a ring. But after nearly nine months of retirement, he began to stir again. He told a friend: "I have to prove I wasn't hurt . . . that I'm a man." Manager Paul Doyle lined up a few bouts, and Jimmy breezed through the first five, against second-raters.

One More Fight. Before he stepped into the ring against Sugar Ray, Jimmy promised his father that it would be his last fight--unless he won. He wanted enough money to go into business in California, managing and training other fighters. Last week, 17 hours after Champion Robinson flattened him, 22-year-old Jimmy Doyle died of a cerebral hemorrhage, the first death in a championship fight in modern U.S. boxing history.

Next day at the inquest the Cleveland coroner asked Sugar Ray Robinson if he noticed whether Doyle was in trouble during the fight. Said Sugar Ray, giving him the best answer a professional boxer could: "Getting him in trouble is my business as a boxer and a champion."

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