My Pal the Gorilla Gargantua

Ken

JULY 28, 1938

Gene Tunney, you know, really believes he can beat that gorilla. In his public statements he suggests that any good heavyweight who is in training be given the chance to fight Gargantua. But in private you get the impression it’s Gene that can beat him. And he beats him with left and right hooks to the body.

You ought to see him turn those demonstration punches loose in the washroom of the Stork or in the wine cellar of the St. Regis. If that gorilla is smart he will get out of the country now before Gene catches up with him.

If he is not that smart, at least he should be smart enough to keep out of the washroom at the Stork, so Gene can’t back him up against one of those marble wash basins before he tears him in two with a left hook to the liver. And somebody should tell that gorilla under no circumstances to let Gene ever get him down into the wine cellar at the St. Regis where Gene can bull him back and crowd him up against one of those bins full of bottles before he doubles him up with a savage two-handed body attack and then knocks his head right back in there among the magnums.

We were having lunch down there in the wine cellar and Grantland Rice and I were sort of ribbing Gene about that gorilla. But Gene does not rib about that gorilla. For years he has resented Brisbane’s often published edict that a gorilla could whip both Dempsey and Tunney in the same ring at the same time and, although some of us have a feeling that it is just a little late, and that Brisbane is dead anyhow, Gene is now out to clear the honor of the human race.

I had a good friend who killed many gorillas in the Kameruns in what was then German West Africa. He told me that when you shoot a gorilla in the belly at 25 yards with a Springfield 30-06 (which, shooting a 220 grain bullet, has a muzzle striking energy of 2,940 foot pounds) the gorilla will grab his belly and moan and cry like a man. Even if he has been coming toward you he will stop, if you gut-shoot him, and go through that moaning and groaning act. Then, my friend explained, you could shoot him in a vulnerable place such as the heart, the neck, or the head, and kill him. I told this to Gene and he was delighted.

“He can’t take it in the body, Ernest,” he said. “That’s very interesting.”

Of course the difficulty in establishing a line of comparative performances here is that we have no record of how Gene himself would act if you shot him in the belly at 25 yards with a Springfield 30-06 throwing a 220 grain bullet with a muzzle energy of 2,940 foot pounds. Partisan though I am of the human race, sincere admirer that I am of Gene, I am afraid that he would go down. I have seen several people gut-shot at greater range than that and they usually went down, while the gorilla, that yellow animal, just beat his stomach and moaned and groaned.

Maybe Gene can beat that gorilla. If any man could, Gene could, because he would not be afraid, because he can hit to the body and because he is intelligent. But if he did beat him, then, in our progress back toward the gladiatorial combats of Rome, the next opponent for Gene, if he is really going to represent the human race as an all around champion, should be a local animal; the grizzly.

Now standing in one corner of a boxing ring with a .22 caliber Colt automatic pistol, shooting a bullet weighing only 40 grains and with a striking energy of only 51 foot pounds at 25 feet from the muzzle, I will guarantee to kill either Gene or Joe Louis before they can get to me from the opposite corner. This is the smallest caliber pistol cartridge made; but it is also one of the most accurate and easy to hit with, since the pistol has no recoil. I have killed many horses with it, cripples and for bear baits, with a single shot, and what will kill a horse will kill a man. I have hit six duelling silhouettes in the head with it at regulation distance in five seconds. It was this type pistol that the Millen boys’ colleague, Abe Faber, did all his killings with. Yet this same pistol bullet fired at point blank range will not even dent a grizzly’s skull, and to shoot at a grizzly with a .22 caliber pistol would simply be one way of committing suicide.

Stanley Ketchell, who could beat several chimpanzees, died from a .22 caliber bullet fired from a cheap Flobert rifle belonging to the hired man on a farm in the Ozarks. The rifle and the pistol are still the equalizer when one man is more of a man than another, and if that gorilla is really smart, he will not only keep away from the washroom of the Stork and the wine cellar of the St. Regis, he will get a permit to carry one and then drop around to Abercrombie and Fitch and buy himself a .22 caliber Colt automatic pistol, Woodsman model, with a five-inch barrel and a box of shells. I advise him to get lubricated hollow points to avoid jams and to ensure a nice expansion on the bullet. He might even get several boxes and practice a little.

Then if any representative of the human race, even Tony Galento, say, comes around to pick on Grantland Rice’s and my little jungle comrade, let the gorilla shoot the representative a couple of times in the body to bring his guard down and see if he would moan, and then give him the rest of the clip in the head. And listen, Gargantua, old pal, don’t let them try to play dead on you. Those human beings are tough. After whoever it is goes down, just push the pistol against the back of the neck, in the center, where the haircut stops, and give him one more for luck, for Grantland and for me. That will teach those human racers to pick on us gorillas.

The Louis-Schmeling thing was not pretty to watch. Louis stood in his corner, nervous and jumpy as a doped race horse. He came out fast, his hands high, hooked Schmeling twice with lefts and smashed a right against the German’s jaw. The fight was over then before it had started, but with Schmeling hung helpless on the ropes, glassy-eyed, unable to go down because the top strand was under his right armpit, swung half sideways toward Louis, the Negro swung, hooked, swung and hooked at him as though he were the big bag.

Donovan finally pushed Louis away and Schmeling staggered out to be dropped with a right in the first clean shot Louis had at his jaw since the first right that drove him against the ropes. Schmeling got up at three, still absolutely glassy-eyed, and Louis left hooked him, then put him down again with a right before the German ever knew where he was or what he was doing. This time Max got up without a count. He was unable to lift his left hand and Louis moved in on him, jabbed him with the left, hooked him with the left, hooked him again, feinted with his right, and then threw it against Schmeling’s jaw. The German went down on his face and you knew he would never get up.

Max Machon threw the towel in as Donovan was counting three. Donovan did not see it at first. Then as the count reached five, Donovan spread his arms wide and signalled that the fight was over. As a fight it had been over since the first right hand punch Louis landed.

Schmeling threw only three punches in the entire fight. One was a glancing right Louis ducked inside of. The other two were pitiful right hands that Schmeling pushed out of the fog.

There was no foul in the fight. The injury to Schmeling’s spine could have come from a punch Louis landed on his side as the German went sideways into the ropes after the first and decisive right, or from any one of half a dozen body punches Louis smashed in as Max leaned and hung helpless on the ropes. It was up to Donovan to push Louis away if he did not want him to keep on punching.

The foul was committed by those people who kept Schmeling from a chance to fight for the heavyweight title for two years while age caught up with him and his legs went. They got close to a million dollar gate out of it and Louis got a chance at the man who had beaten him when that man, who was past a fighter’s best age when he beat him, was a full two years older.

The wise boys say that Schmeling is from three to five years older than his official fighting age. That has often been true of foreign fighters. Try to find out how old Tom Heeney really was when he first hit New York for what he thought was to be a single fight on his way home across the country to New Zealand, a fight to get passage money home, but which turned out to be the first in a series which led to a chance to fight for the championship of the world.

The wise boys say there was a training camp secret about Louis’ change from a phlegmatic, nerveless, slow starter into a nervous, sweating, rageing attacker. Some of the secrets they suggest are too silly to mention. It is no secret that he worked two rounds in his dressing room to heat him up before he came in.

The wise boys all knew Schmeling’s legs were gone. They bet two to one on it and they were right.

Louis is still the fastest and hardest hitting heavyweight I have ever seen. Probably he punches faster and harder than any heavyweight that ever lived. But he still has that weak jaw although Schmeling could not tag it. If he goes out to kill the way he did against Schmeling every time he fights, and if he carries his left hand as high as he did on the night of June 22, few people will ever tag him. They will not have time.

He is in a position to tell Tunney’s gorilla, if he should ever challenge him, to go out and get a reputation. But if I were that gorilla I’d still go get me a gun.