And Schmeling secretly harbored Jewish friends in the 1930s. Yankee Stadium's 80,000 spectators and a radio audience of millions placed upon him the mantle of unofficial representative of the free world. It was democracy vs. dictatorship. Louis had taken the title from Jimmy Braddock in 1937 and had successfully defended it three times. But there was the matter of the only man to have beaten him.
Sport is sport in Germany, nothing more.
Germans are the fairest people in the world. Besides, he said, he was not worried about Louis. He's the kind who always holds a man who has beaten him in some sort of superstitious fear. Told this, Louis smiled and said nothing. The fight lasted 124 seconds.