By Brent Matteo Alderson
In contemporary MTV culture, the term “pimp” rarely carries its original connotation of “one who solicits customers for a prostitute or brothel,” and has evolved to denote a type of excellence and accomplishment. Today the term is commonly used as a colloquialism to convey success.
This contemporary definition is grossly more positive than the word’s original meaning and is based on the one positive thing associated with its original definition; the implication that pimps have a special aptitude for dealing with women.
So now that the word has been defined in a contemporary setting, let me evoke its new meaning by declaring that Max Schmeling was a P.I.M.P.
Max grew up in Germany during the impoverished years after the first World War when the treaty of Versailles was negatively impacting Germany’s recovery. He began boxing and wrestling in the early 1920’s.
Then in 1925, Schmeling had a chance to meet Jack Dempsey on one of the champ’s European tours and the Manassa Mauler told him that someday he “could be the heavyweight champion of the world.”
Schmeling came over to the United States in 1928 and hooked up with the famous Jewish fight manager Joe Jacobs. Gene Tunney had retired and the heavyweight championship was vacant and the New York State Athletic commission scheduled Schmeling and Jack Sharkey to fight for the heavyweight title in June of 1930.
Well Sharkey man-handled the German for the first four rounds then towards the end of the fourth, he reportedly landed a low blow before the bell. Max was on the floor in agony and his manager, Joe Jacobs, jumped into the ring and insisted that Schmeling be declared the winner.
After the one minute rest period, the bell had rung for the fifth round and Max was still on the floor. The commissioners didn’t want to reward the vacant heavyweight title on a foul and the referee, Jim Crowley, one of Notre Dame football’s original Four Horsemen from the famous 1924 championship team, wasn’t sure what to do, but had witnessed a foul.
After three minutes had elapsed, one of the judges informed Crowley that he also saw the foul so the referee awarded the fight along with the heavyweight championship of the world to Schmeling in what is the only time in history that the title changed hands on a foul.
In a contradictory report, John Durant wrote in his 1961 book, The Heavyweight Champions, that the editor in chief of the Hearst Newspapers told the officials that he would start a crusade against boxing if the bout was not called a foul.
None the less Schmeling was regarded as the heavyweight champion of the world and defended the title against Young Stribbling a year later and then lost the title in June of 1932 to Jack Sharkey by controversial decision. Sharkey had dominated their first fight leading up to the foul, but the second time around, the resounding sentiment throughout the sports world was that Schmeling had been robbed.
The Black Uhlan of the Rhine continued on in the fight game and in a highly publicized bout knocked out a 23-0 Joe Louis to become the division’s top contender in 1936. Louis ended up getting the first shot at the title in 1937 and the two fought again in a title bout in 1938 and Louis viciously knocked Schmeling out in the first round - in a bout that was symbolic of the war between Nazi Germany and most of the free world.
When I talk about Schmeling’s extraordinary accomplishments and contributions to humanity, I’m not only talking about his ring endeavors. He wasn’t a great champion like Louis, but Max was an honest to goodness heavyweight champion and knocked out a close to his prime Louis.
The thing that separated Max from most world championship boxers is that unlike the vast majority of them, he didn’t end up broke or disenfranchised. Instead he excelled in numerous facets of life long after his boxing career was over.
This resiliency is evident by how he rebounded from the savage beating he took from the Brown Bomber in their second fight, even though it was the impetus for him having to jump out of an airplane over enemy territory as a paratrooper for embarrassing Nazi Germany.
Although the humiliation of the loss was difficult to endure, Schmeling’s class as a human-being always shined through during hard times. In a 1975 interview, Schmeling commented “Looking back, I’m almost happy I lost that fight. Just imagine if I would have come back to Germany with a victory. I had nothing to do with the Nazis, but they would have given me a medal. After the war I might have been considered a war criminal.”
Everyone in Germany knew Schmeling wasn’t a Nazi. He had refused to join the Nazi party, he had a Jewish manager, and years later it came out in the journal, History Today, that the boxer had concealed two young boys of the Jewish faith from Nazi capture in November of 1938.
That’s the kind of guy Schmeling was and his reputation proceeded him, and as a result ,when an executive of Coca-Cola who had been the New York state athletic commissioner was looking for someone to operate the company’s branch in the post-war Germany, he contacted Schmeling.
Even before he landed Germany’s Coca-Cola concessions, Max lived a life that most men can only dream about. In 1932 he married the German film star Anny Ondra and the couple was the toast of Berlin and enjoyed a fame similar to that of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.
Schmeling was so revered that even Hitler’s girlfriend, the film star Eva Braun, was madly in love with the charismatic young athlete.
In her 1935 diary that was discovered by the CIA, Eva wrote that she “waited for three hours in front of the Carlton, and had to watch him buying flowers for Ondra and inviting her to dinner.”
Max may have been a man of the ladies in his younger days, but later on, he lived a long and productive life. Schmeling stayed married to Ondra for 54 years until her death in 1987 and became one of Germany’s richest citizens and one of its greatest philanthropists. And to top it all off, he lived past his 99th birthday, longer than heavyweight champion in history - during a life span where he exuded dignity and class. In fact, in 1980 he paid Joe Louis’s funeral expenses and was held in such high regard that the German people named an arena after him in 1996 and in 1991 he was the first German to be inducted into the International Boxing Hall of fame.
In the late 1990’s when the Klitschko brothers moved to Germany to embark on professional careers, they were drawn to Schmeling and developed meaningful relationships with the former champion.
The brothers aren’t like most boxers, their father had an elite position in the Soviet military and thus their family had a position in Soviet high society which allowed the boys to grow up in an intellectually and culturally stimulating environment. That’s why they seem eager to develop their psyches and have learned to speak Russian, English, and German, and have sought out higher degrees.
Thus when the Ukrainian giants arrived in Germany, they quickly realized that Schmeling was special and forged a bond with the German icon.
Really could the Klitschko’s have found a better mentor?
Seriously how many boxers have become one of their nation’s most successful businessmen after retiring from prize fighting and lived to be almost 100 years old, all while living a life that embodied decency and class?
And the Klitschkos recognized Max Schmeling’s status as a real P.I.M.P. and Vitali honored the former heavyweight champion of the world by naming his son Max in April of 2005, a couple of months after Schmeling’s death. "Max Schmeling was my idol and one of the greatest human beings I will ever meet in my life," Vitali commented on the day of his son’s birth. "This was our way of paying homage to him, not just for what he did as a boxer, but for his many outstanding accomplishments outside the ring. I cannot wait until he gets older to tell Max what a great humanitarian and person Max Schmeling was.”
Notes:
Favorite Quote: In one of the world’s more famous quotes, after Sharkey received the decision in the return match with Schmeling, the German’s manager Joe Jacobs yelled, “We wuz robbed,” into the radio.
I can’t wait until April for the “Tyson” documentary to hit theatres.
I’m leaning towards Juan Diaz in the Marquez fight. Nate Campbell has his flaws, but he’s probably the hardest hitter in the lightweight division and Juan has a pretty porous defense, but Marquez isn’t a big puncher and I’m not so sure he can outwork Diaz in his hometown.
Margarito is a good fighter, but it bugged me how everybody was saying he was the sport’s most avoided fighter ever since Mayweather turned down Arum’s offer to fight him. Give me a break; people were talking like Margarito was Charles Burley or Jimmy Bivins.
Paul Williams is the guy that everybody is avoiding. Come on, he has to fight Winky Wright, a tricky southpaw with a granite chin who last fought as a light-heavy.
I don’t know what’s going to happen in the Wright-Williams fight. I don’t have a clue. All I can say is this is the match between the men that have been the sports two most avoided southpaws since the world’s top middleweights were acting like Marvin Hagler was Black Death. And this assertion is based on historical analysis and not on the opinions of some members of the media that hang out with his manager.
Advice to Andre Ward; Stay away from Glen Johnson, at least for the moment.
Brent Matteo Alderson, a graduate of UCLA, has been part of the staff at BoxingScene.com since 2004. Alderson's published work has appeared in publications such as Ring Magazine, KO, World Boxing, Boxing 2008, and Latin Boxing Magazine. Alderson has also been featured on the ESPN Classic television program “Who’s Number One?” Please e-mail any comments to BoxingAficionado@aol.com
