BY JOHN ERARDI
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Billy Means nodded his head.
He had been summoned by trainer Jimmy Brown to head for the dressing room, where Ezzard Charles was wrapping his own hands with gauze-like cloth before Brown would seal it all with white adhesive tape and then put on the six-ounce gloves.
Billy, an 18-year-old former Cincinnati Gold Gloves and AAU lightweight champion who had been watching the preliminary bouts at the new arena called “The Cincinnati Garden” had checked on Ezzard earlier in the evening and found him on his back on the trainer's table, listening to soft, soulful jazz: Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Billy Eckstine.
Eckstine, a big fight fan, was a friend of Ezzard's. Last year, Eckstine had had lunch with his buddy, big-band leader Count Basie, and Ezzard at the 20th Century Cafe across from the Cotton Club on Fifth and Mound, just west of Central. Somebody had snapped a picture.
Means watched as Ezzard gave a few extra turns of the gauze around a callous on the knuckle at the base of his left ring finger. The left hook was Ezzard's dynamite punch, and he wanted his left hand to feel just right.
Ezzard and Means
Means' job this night would be to handle the ice-and-water buckets and the water bottles. It also would be to yell loudly the words that flowed from the mouth of Ezzard's soft-voiced trainer, who also had been Means' trainer.
Jimmy Brown is the man who had introduced Means to Ezzard. Ezzard, who was not a drinker but loved music, the night life and the ladies, was always after Murphy to join him on Friday and Saturday rounds of the Cotton Club and the Sportsman's Club in Newport. But Murphy almost always would answer: “Billy Means is fighting tonight.”
Finally, Ezzard asked: “Who is this Billy Means?”
“Come along, Ezz. We'll go see him fight.”
![[fight]](/editions/1999/02/21/fight_180x135jpg)
The Maxim-Charles fight went 15 rounds and ended in a split decision.
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And so they did, and that is how a friendship was struck. Ezzard took an immediate likely to the willowly Means, 5-foot-11 and 137 pounds, and soon they were doing road work together.
A year ago, Ezzard had paid the train fare and a week of hotel lodging for Murphy, Means, boxer Lloyd Gibson and another amateur to travel to New York, where Means intended to turn pro. He figured he could get work in the camp of a sensational young middleweight named Sugar Ray Robinson.
Earlier that year, Murphy had said to Robinson, he of the incredibly quick hands and snappy combinations and an unsurpassed ability for jumping rope as a training mechanism, “Sugar Ray, I got somebody who can out-jump you.”
“Bring him on,” Sugar Ray told Murphy.
That “somebody” was Billy Means.
Means spent a year with Sugar Ray and turned professional. Means would fight for small purses as often as three times a week in the fight-happy boroughs of New York just after World War II. Such frequency was outlawed by the boxing commissions, but youngsters like Means, in search a buck and some experience, would fight under the name of other boxers (handlers had a way of transferring photo-mugs to other fighter's boxing licenses). Once, Means fought under the name of an Italian-American fighter, Rocky Orlando.
After a year of that, Means returned to Cincinnati.
Ezzard had asked Means to work in his corner this night as the waterboy. Means felt good and looked the same. He knew his way around the ring. He straightened his dark-blue dress pants and his white satin jacket, the one with the black stitching on the back that read in flowing script: Ezzard.
It was a huge night for Ezzard Charles. He knew if he won, at worst he'd be fighting in an elimination tournament for Joe Louis' crown. Louis said he had intended to retire, although some people doubted him. At best, Ezzard would need only one fight to win the crown — by fighting Louis.
Either way, Ezzard intended to be the heavyweight champion.
But first he had to get by Maxim.
Taking a step up
Everybody in Ezzard's camp knew this was going to be tough fight.
Charles had beaten Maxim twice in 1942, when they were both middleweights. Both fights were tough. Maxim, an Italian-American whose real name was Antonio Berandinelle, was fast and clever, and his handsome, unmarked face bore testimony to his boxing skills.
Even Maxim's colorful trainer, Jack Kearns, who had been the trainer of heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey, had made reference to it in the newspapers earlier this week.
“He's better looking right now than many of the men in the movies, and he's been fighting more than 10 years and is only going on 27. The fact that this fight is 15 rounds will be in my boy's favor, too. He's got a good left hand, has plenty of moxie and can live under a punch which few heavyweights can do. He's fought 15 rounds before, a route which I understand Charles has never had to go.”
Kearns understood right.
Ezzard was well-conditioned, Means knew that.
He knew that because he ran at 5:30 every morning with Ezzard and another young fighter, Bud Smith, who had fought on the Charles' undercard this night and won his three-rounder, his third professional fight.
Sometimes, the three of them would run from Ezzard's house in the 900 block of Lincoln Park Drive to Music Hall and then to Union Terminal — 10 times. Brown, who lived next door to Charles, would watch them go by. Other days, they'd pile into Ezzard's 1947 powder-blue convertible Cadillac and head east, where they'd run the hills in Eden Park.
After the runs, Means would head home — he lived only 31/2 blocks from Ezzard's — and clean up to get ready for school. After school, he'd go to Ezz's gym at 14th and Vine and work out. Often, he'd eat a late lunch with his idol at Sky's at 5th and John on the West End. Ezz was fond of ham-and-egg-and-cheese double-deckers and would wash it down with a vanilla malt, with a raw egg blended into it. Sweet potato pie — oh, how Ezz loved that — was always dessert. Means would do the same.
Sundays, they'd both be at church, Calvary Methodist.
Ezzard was no night owl when he was training for a fight. But when he wasn't training, his home away from home was the Cotton Club. Its owner, Lula Belle Ferguson, was fond of Ezzard, and they'd share her private booth. Means would go off and listen to the music.
Sometimes, Ezz would sit in with the small jazz group of his personal secretary, Richard Christmas, and play bass.
At 2 a.m., Ezz would drive Billy home. If Ezz wasn't training, he'd stay out till dawn.
Ezz planned on staying out late if he won the fight tonight.
Dressed to the hilt
It was a mixed, integrated crowd of blacks and whites. Most everybody was dressed in jackets and ties; the ladies were in their Sunday finest. The Cotton Club crowd was here; so was the gambling crowd from Newport, Ky.
High up in the 14,000-seat Garden (11,000 was capacity for basketball and hockey games) sat Buddy LaRosa, who had recently graduated from Roger Bacon High School and was thinking about going off soon to join the U.S. Navy. Ringside sat Robert Elkus and his brother, Gene, sons of the late Max Elkus, of Max's Clothes on the West End, where Ezzard had worked since he was 15 years old.
Cincinnatian DeHart Hubbard, who worked for the city recreation commission and was the first African-American to win an Olympic gold medal in an individual event (long jump, 1924, Paris) had brought Ezzard into the store one day. Max's was one of the few fine clothing stores in town where African-Americans were free to browse and shop and try on clothes.
Also ringside was Christmas, Ezzard's secretary.
They all marveled at the wondrous new building. The Elkuses and Christmas had been all over the country with Charles, but this place was as good or better than any of them. Hadn't even the sportswriters from New York said the same thing in the morning paper?
“The New York Garden (Madison Square) may handle a few more thousand people, but it is nowhere near as fine an arena as this,” Al Buck and Ed Van Avery had said. “All the seats are good here.”
Also ringside was Freddie Miller, the only Cincinnatian ever to win a ring championship, the featherweight crown in 1931. Also, there were representatives of Madison Square Garden and of Joe Louis. Another top heavyweight contender, Lee Savold, was here to check out Charles.
“It's as close as he'll get to Ezzard,” said one scribe, noting how often Savold had been “ducking” Charles the past two years.
The fight crowd was here from all over, including Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, all of which Charles' business agents had to out-bid to get the fight for Cincinnati. They had been after Maxim's manager, Jack Kearns, for a couple of years to get this fight with Maxim in Cincinnati.
“Get back to me when you've got the seats,” Kearns had said.
And now they had it, and so, they had gotten the fight.
Struggle from the start
From the very start, it was an even bout.
Maxim used a dazzling left hand like the slide of a trombone in landing jab after jab to Charles' face. Even though Maxim wasn't a heavy puncher, and Charles was, Maxim was fearless because he was fast.
Maxim didn't have a great right hand — he had a chipped bone in his elbow, and couldn't extend his right arm to its full length — but he still was able to mix in it with deft combinations.
He jackhammered blow-after-blow to Charles' midsection, which Kearns believed to be his most vulnerable area.
Maxim continually kept Charles off-balance.
Ezz didn't look quite as fast as normal. Murphy knew why: the extra weight he had put on to make sure he'd be above the 175-pound weight limit (Charles was a natural light-heavyweight) was slowing him down.
“More jabs! More jabs!” Means yelled from the floor of the arena, just beneath Charles' corner.
“Left hook to the body!” he said, echoing trainer Brown.
Other times, Means yelled out “Three!” That meant for Charles to throw a left jab, right hand, left hook combination. Other times, Means yelled “Double One!” That meant back-to-back left jabs.
Charles, who always fought Brown's fight, did as he was ordered.
He was up against a dancing master — Maxim was in terrific shape — and before the fight was even half over, the crowd knew Charles was going to have to go all out to win this fight, even in his hometown.
Ezz had suffered a bloody nose midway through the fight. Maxim had squared the count. In the third round, a right-handed pot shot from Ezz brought blood from Maxim's right eye. In the closing rounds, Ezz drew a bead on that cut and hit it at every opportunity.
Unable to tag Maxim, but knowing he was in need of points, he continued to press the fight.
In the 13th round, Charles caught Maxim with a looping right hand that caught the Clevelander right on the button. The punch didn't buckle Maxim's knees, as Charles thought it might, but it took the starch out of him for a couple of seconds. He went into a clinch until his head cleared.
“Yeah!” Means rasped from his perch on the floor when the bell rang ending the 15th round and the fight.
He suddenly realized how tired he was. He had been punching along with his idol the entire fight. He was hoarse, his voice all but gone.
“We blew it,” Bob Elkus said to his brother, referring to a shot at the heavyweight championship. “We lost the fight.”
Means thought Charles had won. LaRosa knew it was close.
Then came the announcement: a split decision.
Charles had won.
Means hugged him in the corner of the ring.
“Wanna go out?” Ezz asked him.
“No, I'm going home,” Billy said. “I'm dead-tired.”
Ezz smiled and nodded his head.
So was he.
Epilogue
Charles went on to win the heavyweight crown that summer, beating Jersey Joe Walcott in Chicago. Even the powerful New York Boxing Commission recognized Charles as the champion when he beat his idol — Joe Louis, who came out of retirement — a year later at Yankee Stadium.
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![[charles]](/editions/1999/02/21/charles_224x600.jpg)
![[fight]](/editions/1999/02/21/fight_550x414.jpg)