In 1933, Joe Louis won the Detroit-area Golden Gloves
Novice Division championship against Joe Biskey for the light heavyweight
classification. He later lost in the Chicago Golden Gloves Tournament
of Champions. The next year, competing in the Golden Gloves' Open
Division, he won the light heavyweight classification, this time also
winning the Chicago Tournament of Champions against Max Bauer. However,
a hand injury forced Louis to miss the New York/Chicago Champions'
cross-town bout for the ultimate Golden Gloves championship. In April
1934, he followed up his Chicago performance by winning the light
heavyweight United States Amateur Champion National AAU tournament
in St. Louis, Missouri.
By the end of his amateur career, Louis's
record was 50-4, with 43 knockouts.
Professional career
Joe Louis
had only three losses in his 69 professional fights. He tallied 52
knockouts and held the championship from 1937 to 1949, the longest
span of any heavyweight titleholder. After returning from retirement,
Louis failed to regain the championship in 1950, and his career ended
after he was knocked out by Rocky Marciano in 1951.
If Louis
were to rise to national prominence among such cultural attitudes,
a change in management would be necessary. In 1935, boxing promoter
Mike Jacobs sought out Louis's handlers. After Louis's narrow defeat
of Natie Brown on March 29, 1935, Jacobs and the Louis team met at
the Frog Club, a black nightclub, and negotiated a three year exclusive
boxing promotion deal. The contract, however, did not keep Roxborough
and Black from attempting to cash in as Louis's managers; when Louis
turned 21 on May 13, 1935, Roxborough and Black each signed Louis
to an onerous long term contract that collectively dedicate half of
Louis's future income to the pair.
Black and Roxborough continued
to carefully and deliberately shape Louis's media image. Mindful of
the tremendous public backlash Johnson had suffered for his unapologetic
attitude and flamboyant lifestyle, they drafted "Seven Commandments"
for Louis's personal conduct. These included:
- Never have his picture
taken with a white woman.
- Never gloat over a fallen opponent.
- Never
engage in fixed fights.
- Live and fight clean.
As a result, Louis
was generally portrayed in the white media as a modest, clean living
person, which facilitated his burgeoning celebrity status.
With
the backing of a major promotion, Louis fought thirteen times in 1935.
The bout that helped put him in the media spotlight occurred on June
25, when Louis knocked out 6'6", 265 pound former world heavyweight
champion Primo Carnera in six rounds. Foreshadowing the Louis-Schmeling
rivalry to come, the Carnera bout featured a political dimension.
Louis's victory over Carnera, who symbolized Benito Mussolini's regime
in the popular eye, was seen as a victory for the international community,
particularly among African Americans, who were sympathetic to Ethiopia,
which was attempting to maintain its independence by fending off an
invasion by fascist Italy. America's white press began promoting Louis's
image in the context of the era's racism; nicknames they created included
the "Mahagony Mauler", "Chocolate Chopper", "Coffee-Colored KO King",
"Safari Sandman", and one that stuck: "The Brown Bomber".
Helping
the white press to overcome its reluctance to feature a black contender
was the fact that in the mid 1930s boxing desperately needed a marketable
hero. Since the retirement of Jack Dempsey in 1929, the sport had
devolved into a sordid mixture of poor athletes gambling, fixed fights,
thrown matches, and control of the sport by organized crime. New York
Times Columnist Edward Van Ness wrote, "Louis is a boon to boxing.
Just as Dempsey led the sport out of the doldrums, so is Louis leading
the boxing game out of a slump." Likewise, biographer Bill Libby asserted
that "The sports world was hungry for a great champion when Louis
arrived in New York in 1935."