19.08.04 – By MIKE DUNN: This was another of those all-too-familiar tales of the former champion who tries in vain to recapture the past. On October 7, 1932, the brilliant lightweight champion of the previous decade, Benny Leonard, squared off with one of the top welterweights of the day, 27-year-old Jimmy McLarnin, with predictable results.
It wasn’t ego that induced the 36-year-old Leonard back into the ring in 1931. It was financial hardship. Leonard had retired in 1925 with a sparkling ring log that showed 134 victories against just nine defeats. The New York-bred Jewish boxer who had thrilled thousands with his stylish moves and legendary battles against such formidable foes as Johnny Dundee, Ted”Kid” Lewis, Willie Ritchie and Lew Tendler, had a reported $700,000 in his bank account when he hung up the gloves.
That all changed, however, when The Great Depression hit in 1929. Leonard, like many others, suffered “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” In a startlingly short amount of time, he lost virtually everything. So, in 1931, he started an ill-fated comeback, against the advice of friends and fans who didn¹t want to see Leonard fall into the category of those old ring champions who stayed around too long and campaigned in their latter years as a mere shadow of their former selves.
Leonard tried to buck the odds nonetheless. He fought steadily and compiled an undefeated record against mostly third-raters. It was evident that he didn`t possess the skills of his youth, but when he was still Benny Leonard and that meant something. After he won 19 times and drew once in 20 encounters between October of 1931 and September of 1932, it added some credence to his challenge of the heavy-fisted McLarnin. People would still come to Madison Square Garden to watch the aging Leonard perform, and that was all the encouragement the promoters needed to make the match. And so, on October 7, 1932, Leonard bravely entered the ring to face the favored McLarnin as the cheers of 21,893 witnesses (the largest crowd of the year) cascaded down from the rafters of the Garden. McLarnin owned a 47-8-3 record and a well-deserved reputation as a champion-in-waiting. Less than a year later, McLarnin would wrest the welterweight crown from the head of Young Corbett III with a first-round KO.
On this night, though, he was playing the role of the young spoiler. It is inevitable in boxing that the young, hungry fighters overtake the older, more experienced fighters whose skills have declined by force of years. But it is never a pretty spectacle and this night would prove no exception. Leonard gave the crowd a brief moment of hope in the first round when he shook McLarnin a bit with a classic one-two combination. Before the end of the round, however, it was apparent which way this one was going. McLarnin was simply too young and too strong for Leonard and the veteran gladiator had been away from the game for too long.
In the second round, McLarnin decked Leonard with a stiff left hook. The proud New Yorker, known during his career as the Ghetto Wizard, knew he wasn¹t going to win, but he refused to take an easy exit. He gamely rose to his feet at the count of nine. McLarnin poured on the juice in succeeding rounds. Five seconds before the end of the sixth, referee Arthur Donovan
mercifully intervened to halt the proceedings. Leonard was bloodied and bruised by that point. Fortunately, it was nothing he wouldn’t recover from.
Leonard, who earned $25,000 for facing McLarnin, discovered that night what many ring greats only learn the hard way. He wisely terminated his comeback. Leonard’s final ring log shows 155 wins, 10 defeats and five draws. When folks remember the great Benny Leonard, it isn¹t the final loss to McLarnin that they talk about. They will more likely discuss his epic battle with hard-hitting Philadelphia lefty Lew Tendler with the lightweight title on the line. The comeback of 1931-32 is a chapter in the great fighter’s life which is best overlooked.
Mike Dunn is a writer and boxing historian living in Gaylord, Mich.