Author Topic: June 13th, 1935  (Read 1041 times)

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Offline trapeze

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June 13th, 1935
« on: December 06, 2013, 02:24:46 AM »
Just watched the movie, "Cinderella Man" again and decided to look up the actual fight film. This is one of the biggest sporting upsets in history where an average fighter who is past his prime is able to somehow defeat a younger and stronger champion.

Below is an uninterrupted version of the fight. This version is marred by a very annoying "play-by-play" narration by someone who very obviously wasn't there but pretends that they are there so you may want to mute the sound. There are other versions of this fight available where it is broken up into several shorter youtube vids and in those you don't have the idiotic commentary (The second vid is the first of these). For some reason the filmed fight seems to edit out some of the action from each round because it goes for 15 rounds and the total video is a half hour so that is roughly a full minute missing from each round. At least I assume that they had 3 minute rounds in the thirties as they do today.

The real fight film is much less dramatic than the Ron Howard Hwood version. I didn't see anything like was portrayed in the film as far as Baer taking cheap shots and low blows. Instead it seems to be a very "technical" fight in which Braddock simply out punches and out scores Baer for the majority of the rounds and that was enough for a unanimous decision at the end. Also of note is that Braddock just about identical to Baer in height, something the movie chose to change with Russell Crowe looking to be about six to eight inches shorter than the actor who portrays Baer. In fact, of the physical differences between the two, only weight is significant with Baer being the heavier fighter.

Another interesting point is the large and easily seen Star of David on Baer's trunks in the video. Baer was Jewish on his mother's side and was apparently quite proud of that heritage. He rubbed it in the face of the Nazis when he defeated their champion, Max Schmeling. The Star of David also makes it easy to tell who is who in the video because both opponents wear dark trunks. Ron Howard chose to either eliminate this element or de-emphasize it to the point where it is nearly invisible in the film. Howard also chose to make Baer a total asshole out of the ring and the historical record is otherwise.



If you want to see just how good Baer was (which contrasts with how bad he was against Braddock) you can see it in this fight:


Not taking anything away from Braddock who very obviously came to fight but Baer was not properly prepared and that made a huge difference, costing him the championship.
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Offline AmericanPatriot

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Re: June 13th, 1935
« Reply #1 on: December 06, 2013, 05:52:54 AM »
Thanks for sharing this, Trap
I was once quite the boxing fan but drifted away pretty much when the heavyweight division became irrelevant mostly after Ali.
I'll check these out.