"This is some story and Braddock was some man ... Excellent." - THE SUNDAY TIMES
In the depths of the Great Depression, a failed boxer with broken hands came off the welfare rolls for one more fight to feed his wife and three children. Four bouts later, Jim Braddock was the heavyweight champion of the world, in the greatest comeback in sports history. He inspired a nation through one of its darkest periods, and his extraordinary achievements led Damon Runyon to nickname him the `Cinderella Man.'
Once he had been a contender, a light-heavy with skill and guts. But hand injuries and the aftershock of the Wall Street Crash left him toiling in railway yards and on New Jersey's Hudson River docks to pay the rent. His dreams of a title were over, his ring earnings gone, and he could barely afford to feed his young family.
But one man never lost faith: his manager Joe Gould. The tiny, loquacious Jew and the tall, straight-talking Irishman made an unlikely but inseparable couple, and their belief in each other was unshakable even when Braddock entered the ring a 10-1 underdog against the feared champion Max Baer who had been blamed for the deaths of two men in the ring. How the family man with a simple cause triumphed over overwhelming odds became the stuff of legend.
Author Michael C. DeLisa lives in New York and Venezuela. A boxing historian, he was a consultant on the Oscar-nominated movie "Cinderella Man" starring Russell Crowe.
In the depths of the Great Depression, a failed boxer with broken hands came off the welfare rolls for one more fight to feed his wife and three children. Four bouts later, Jim Braddock was the heavyweight champion of the world, in the greatest comeback in sports history. He inspired a nation through one of its darkest periods, and his extraordinary achievements led Damon Runyon to nickname him the `Cinderella Man.'
Once he had been a contender, a light-heavy with skill and guts. But hand injuries and the aftershock of the Wall Street Crash left him toiling in railway yards and on New Jersey's Hudson River docks to pay the rent. His dreams of a title were over, his ring earnings gone, and he could barely afford to feed his young family.
But one man never lost faith: his manager Joe Gould. The tiny, loquacious Jew and the tall, straight-talking Irishman made an unlikely but inseparable couple, and their belief in each other was unshakable even when Braddock entered the ring a 10-1 underdog against the feared champion Max Baer who had been blamed for the deaths of two men in the ring. How the family man with a simple cause triumphed over overwhelming odds became the stuff of legend.
Author Michael C. DeLisa lives in New York and Venezuela. A boxing historian, he was a consultant on the Oscar-nominated movie "Cinderella Man" starring Russell Crowe.
