The Last Heavyweight
July, 1986
The month of June marked the 45th anniversary of the last heavyweight-championship fight. Let me rephrase that. It's been 45 years since the last heavyweight-championship fight that meant anything. To me. That I cared about. Are we straight? Fine. I refer to the night of June 18, 1941, "outdoors in the ball park," as Terry Malloy would say, when a flashy young Billy Conn made an unbeatable Joe Louis look stunningly beatable by outboxing him for 12 smart rounds. As we know, it was in th...
