The Blow That Hurts

A PUNCH in the nose might seem to be an intensely personal thing — much more so, for example, than pushing the queen’s rook’s pawn on a board of checkered squares. Yet I have been astonished to hear of enmities and feuds in the game of chess, that epitome of abstract combat. The queen’s rook’s pawn seems to have occasioned a surprising lot of rancor and fury. I find it difficult to understand, but then I have been merely a boxer, a devotee of one of the most noted of all physical-contest sports.

Some years ago a great international chess tournament was staged in New York, with an imposing array of the grand masters of the game. Newspaper files will reveal that this tournament made the front pages in a spectacular way, though chess is hardly of headline popularity. The tournament was ornamented by the presence not only of Capablanca, then at the height of his genius, but also of Dr. Emanuel Lasker, the venerated adept who for so many years was the champion. Dr. Lasker had a peculiarity — he loved strong black cigars and smoked them always. Other grand masters charged that when they played him he would blow clouds of acrid and noxious smoke across the board and into their faces, thereby disconcerting them and throwing them off their game. Foul play, they roared. This state of affairs was only exacerbated by the popularity and honored regard that the almost legendary chess master enjoyed in New York. His admirers, knowing his love for strong black cigars, sent him many gifts of them — the strongest and the blackest. In consequence, the Doctor had an abundance of acrid and noxious smoke to blow into the faces of his opponents. The more deeply he became absorbed in profound combinations at the chessboard, the harder he would puff away and the more wrathfully other chess masters would protest to the officials. As for the merits of the case, I surely am not one to adjudicate at this late day, but I’d suppose that where there’s smoke there’s fire—or at any rate some heat.

By way of contrast, take prize fighting. Few human beings have fought each other more savagely or more often than Harry Greb and I. We punched and cut and bruised each other in a series of bouts, five of them. In the first Greb gave me a ferocious beating, closed both eyes, broke my nose, chipped my teeth, and cut my lips to pieces. He did everything but knock me out. In our last fight I beat him about as badly, so badly that he was helpless in the latter rounds. He seemed like a dead-game fighter, wanting to be spared the indignity of being knocked out. Pain meant nothing — he didn’t want the folks back home to read of his being knocked out. From the beginning of our first to the end of our last bout, Greb and I went through the ferocious gamut of giving and taking, hitting and being hit. We were always the best of friends; never any ill will or anger. You see, we were not chess players.

Harry was bitter about one fight, our fourth. I won the decision, and this enraged him. He was sure he had beaten me, felt to the depths of his soul that he was the victor. It was one of those newspaper-decision affairs of the period, sports writers giving the verdict in their stories. Cleveland was the place; and Regis Welsh of the Pittsburgh Post, one of Greb’s best friends, in his newspaper story the day after the fight gave the decision to me, putting my photo on the front page with the caption ‘Too Much for Our Roy.’ Greb never spoke to him again. They were enemies ever after. All the bitterness the battle had stirred in Greb was directed, not against me, not against the antagonist who had been in there hitting him, but against his newspaper friend who had merely tapped a few keys on a typewriter. He didn’t resent the physical pain of being murdered, he resented losing — losing unjustly, as he thought.

It isn’t physical pain that hurts so much, it’s the blow to one’s vanity. But what is vanity? What are we most proud of? A whole lot of things, among which physical prowess in a fight is by no means the most important. Intellectual pride, as any theologian will tell you, is the most damning; and the vanity of artists is famous in the literature of history and comedy alike. As a boxer I should say that it’s in the realm of the intellectual and artistic that a blow is the most painful, where feelings are hurt the most. For example, I think the man I hit the hardest in my whole boxing career was onetime heavyweight champion of Europe, Erminio Spalla, but I never hurt Spalla’s feelings. Yet I might have — I’m sure I could have turned him into a rancorous enemy, but he remains an excellent friend. I knocked him out in a bout at the Polo Grounds back in 1924. He was no boxing master; he was crude, but he could hit. I didn’t want him to lay that powerful right of his on my chin — it might be uncomfortable, and so it was when it eventually landed. After being hit I boxed him carefully, waiting for a decisive opening, and then hit him with every ounce of strength I had. I knocked him out with what I imagine was the hardest blow I ever struck. But, as I have remarked, I never hurt his feelings.

One day last fall I was having dinner in New York at Christ Cella’s place of unceremonious hospitality, and heard a couple of Italian waiters chattering about Spaila. He had been Italy’s pride, and my presence made them recall him. But they were by no means talking about boxing — their topic was opera, the newest operatic star in Italy. They were discussing what they had read in their Mulberry Street newspapers — that prize fighter Spalla, former champion of Italy and all Europe, had just made a resounding success in his debut at La Scala in Milan singing ‘Amonasro’ in Verdi’s Aïda. This did not surprise me a bit, because the very point on which I remembered I had never hurt Spalla’s feelings was his singing.

Several years before I fought him, he and I had trained together with other boxers in the same quarters in New Jersey —and he was always singing. He told me he was studying baritone, and when we were not sparring in training bouts he was caroling operatic arias. He had a rich and beautiful voice, and I used to ask him to sing for me, which he did with a lusty good will — Pagliacci and Trovatore. After we fought and the knockout brought Spalla’s pugilistic career to an end, he went back to Italy. Later on he wrote to me, and told me that with the money he had earned in the prize ring he was pursuing his studies for an operatic career. I suspect he was grateful because that hardest punch I ever hit finished him in pugilism. We corresponded on and off, and he kept me informed how he was getting along with the arias and the high notes. Then came a letter in which he told me that he was soon to make his debut at La Scala — which he did with first-rate success.

Just a few days ago I had a letter from my old prize-ring antagonist. It’s worth quoting: ‘Dear Gene: Following the hostiliti between America and Italy in the cinema world I was urgently called by the La Scalla Film Company to play the role in many of their films. And so to quote the old proverb—“It is an ill wind that blows, etc. etc.” I am enclosing my autographed fotograph, and I trust you will send me yours, as I always want to see you in the best of health. My wife has had another son and so I am the father of five. And how is your family progressing?’ Quite nicely, Erminio, quite nicely.

What I am quite sure of is this — if, instead of hitting Spalla so hard, I had made disparaging comment about his singing, he would have hated me. Remarks about faulty production, vibrato and flatting on the top notes — that’s the sort of thing which creates those embittered vendettas in opera companies. I liked Spalla’s singing, but even if I hadn’t I should never have told him so. I would have punched him in the nose instead, for I don’t like to make enemies.

Among people who have no contact with the boxing tradition of the Englishspeaking world, a blow in the face is a deadly insult — while a wound with a sword may be taken with equanimity. Our boxing tradition has ameliorated the innate combativeness of man, has taken much of the homicide out of fight and physical clash. The fistic exchange has become conventionalized. It’s not good sportsmanship to resent with abiding rancor a punch in a fight. So a prize fight, being the epitome of the boxing tradition, is decidedly impersonal — a thing of abstraction.

I recall a scene the morning after my first fight with Jack Dempsey as one of the strangest I ever experienced. It had me disconcerted, as well as considerably embarrassed.

After that bout in the rain in Philadelphia it seemed to me proper to go and pay my respects to Jack. He had been severely punished, and must feel pretty blue after losing the championship. The next afternoon I went to his hotel. He had a suite of rooms, and when I got there Jack was in an inside bedroom. In the outer room were gathered the Dempsey entourage of manager, handlers, trainers, and disappointed followers. They greeted me with an instant bristling of hostility. I was the focus of scowls and angry, sullen glances. Gene Normile was in tears. Jerry the Greek came to me, shook his fist, and mumbled hoarsely, ‘You can’t licka the “Chump,” you can’t licka the “Chump.”’ Jack Dempsey always inspired loyalty, and this was it. They bitterly resented my defeating him.

I had the nervous feeling of being in the camp of the enemy, surrounded by smouldering hatred. I had only one impulse — to get in there to Jack. I found him sitting on a bed, and then I realized how badly he had been battered in that downpour the night before. He put out his hand, and said, ‘Hello, Gene.’ It was as if we were visiting casually, in the course of commonplace acquaintance. Before that Jack and I had never been friends particularly. In fact, I think he rather resented me as a challenger. But after we had fought and I had defeated him for the championship — Jack was the only friend I had in the camp of the enemy.

Of all the sports, it is my opinion that boxing, though the most physically injurious, is the most impersonal. I indulge in golf, tennis, squash rackets, and shooting, and can conscientiously say that my resentment in defeat in any of them is far greater than anything I ever felt or experienced in a long career of boxing. There is a subconscious mutuality of respect engendered by the give-and-take of the prize fight that has a certain spiritual quality to it which leaves no room for rancor, resentment, or jealousy. It is true that prize fighting seems sheerly physical and elemental, but what other sport or art has as little bitterness or envy among its devotees? Could the answer be that the more elemental we become in sport and art, the closer to the spiritual we get?