Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Cinderella Man


Not sure how many of you have seen the movie Cinderella Man about about boxer Jim Braddock?

The man Braddock defeated for the heavyweight title was Max Baer. The movie made Baer seem like an animal. It seems in reality Baer was actually a very nice man. The movie tells how Baer killed a man named Frankie Campbell in the ring by knocking his brain loose from the connecting tissue, of course this made Baer look like a villain. What the movie doesn't say is that according to Wikipedia "This fatality shocked Baer; according to his son, Max Baer, Jr., he cried and had nightmares over the incident for decades afterwards. He was charged with manslaughter. Although he was eventually acquitted of all charges, the California State Boxing Commission still banned him from any in-ring activity within their state for the next year. He gave purses from succeeding bouts to Campbell's family, but lost four of his next six fights. He fared better when Jack Dempsey took him under his wing, and Baer put Campbell's children through college."

By the way you can read Hyperions review of Cinderella Man at Movie-Hype.

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