Astonishingly, within ten months, Beau’s knee seemed ready for action. Beau resumed training in September and announced he was eager to return to boxing. Beau was optimistic about earning a chance to take Sugar Ray Robinson’s welterweight title. Robinson claimed the welterweight title on December 20, 1946, when he defeated Beau’s stablemate, Tommy Bell, and boasted an incredible record of 81–1–1. Moreover, Robinson hadn’t lost a bout in more than five years.
First things first. Beau’s knee had to pass the examination of Dr. Vincent Nardiello, the NYSAC’s physician that operated on his knee. In early October, following Beau’s light training at Stillman’s Gym, Dr. Nardiello inspected Beau’s knee. Nardiello declared Beau as ready to go on October 10. As Dr. Newman had certified before the Janiro bout, Nardiello declared that Beau had fully recovered from his kneecap operation and would be ready to enter the ring within four to six weeks. The NYSAC was not so sure. The Commission required Dr. Nardiello to continue watching Beau train for six weeks before it agreed to provide Beau the necessary license to resume his boxing career.
Even after his terrible injury and loss to Tony Janiro, the public still yearned to watch the “Georgia Windmill” in action. After announcing his comeback. Chick Wergeles commented, “I got letters and telegrams that high on my desk,” he orated. “Everybody wants Beau Jack. Everybody. Everybody.”1
Not long after that, Beau was signed to fight Humberto Zavala, a southpaw from Mexico City, Mexico. Wergeles figured Zavala would make a good tune-up opponent for Beau and test for his knee. A journeyman fighter, Zavala had a record of 13–28–4 and had suffered defeat in 17 of his last 18 fights.
Promoter Hans Bernstein set the bout for November 3 at Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis, Missouri. It was Beau’s first fight west of the Mississippi River. Prior to entering the ring against Zavala, Beau needed the blessings of the Missouri Athletic Commission. Commissioners Dr. Frank Cleary and William Herring met with Beau to ensure that his knee was fit for action. First, they had Beau run up and down stairs over a dozen times. Then, they conducted a pre-fight x-ray, before declaring that Beau’s knee “had healed perfectly and that there was nothing to indicate the boxer would not have full use of that left knee, in the future.”2
Arriving at Union Station in St. Louis on Friday, October 31, Beau was walking proud when he departed the train. He sought to demonstrate to everyone that his knee had mended. “Knee feels all right,” he said, explaining that he had been testing it in workouts for the last six weeks. When asked about his upcoming bout with Zavala, Beau, “smiling pleasantly from beneath his pork-pie hat” stated, “‘I’m going to be doing my best.”3
Humberto never had a chance. Jack gave the Mexican lightweight a brutal beating, knocking him down eight times. Within 35 seconds after the opening bell, Beau landed a thunderous right to Zavala’s head sending him to the canvas. The embarrassed Zavala bravely jumped back up. Knocking Zavala down three more times, Jack continued his slaughter in the second stanza. In the third, Beau connected with a left to Zavala’s jaw, whacking him down once again, this time for a tally of nine. Seconds later, Beau floored him for an eight count. A courageous Zavala kept getting up and coming in for more punishment. In the fourth, Zavala went down yet again. With ten seconds to go in the round, Beau finished Zavala off with a right to his jaw. Zavala laid flat on his back in the middle of the canvas as the referee counted to ten. Finally, after seven knockdowns, Humberto’s punishment session was over. It was a joyful return to the ring for Jack, knocking Zavala out at the end of the fourth round.
All was not well though. Sportswriters, such as W. J. McGoogan of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, noted significant concern for Beau’s left knee during the fight. Even though Beau looked good with his punching, he had slipped down twice without being hit. “You could see the play of muscles in his right leg,” McGoogan wrote. “They stood out like whipcord while the left looked as flat as a broomstick and Beau seemed to drag his left leg at times.”4 W. Vernon Tietjen of the St. Louis Star and Times expressed similar apprehension. Who could come back from a knee injury? It ruined the careers of numerous athletes.
Not your average athlete, Beau was not going to let his knee prevent him from boxing. A little over a month later, on December 16, Beau returned to action at the sold-out Hartford Auditorium in Hartford, Connecticut. His opponent was Frank Vigeant (1924–2015) of Thomaston, Connecticut. Twenty-two-year-old Vigeant had 36 professional bouts under his belt and had served 29 months on a Navy submarine in the Pacific. His record was 25–5–3. Most of his matches were in the Hartford area, so fans knew him well. He was a good fighter but suffered from a tendency to be cut around his eyes. Although he was ahead on the scorecards in his last two fights, ultimately, he lost the bouts due to blood flowing into his eyes from cuts on his forehead. He sought to ensure he was prepared for Jack and trained for three weeks, sparring with Willie Pep.
Following the best undercard in weeks, the sellout crowd of 2,530 was hollering for action. The Thomaston boxer started off well against the former champion, winning two of the first three rounds. Then Vigeant, who had a 5½ pound weight advantage, inexplicably went into a defensive back-peddling mode for the rest of the bout.
Beau, wearing an elastic support around his left knee, chased the back-peddling Vigeant from pole to pole trying to make contact and land solid punches. In fact, sportswriter Bill Lee estimated that Jack missed his target on one hundred and one of his attempts. Notwithstanding, Beau connected with several powerful windmill punches. Jack’s best round was the sixth when he scored several stinging right uppercuts. He also opened up a bloody cut on Vigeant’s cut-prone forehead, just above his left eye in the eighth round. Although the fight went the distance, Beau easily defeated Frank Vigeant on points, winning seven of the ten stanzas, with a final score of 47–40. Unfortunately, the gate was a miserable $427.70.
Davey Andrews of Lowell, Massachusetts was announced as Beau’s next opponent, but before the fight, Billy Kearns (1926–2013) from Hartford, Connecticut was substituted. Kearns was 21 years old, five years younger than Beau, and had a record of 34–16–4. He had won six of his last nine contests. The two met in a ten-round welterweight battle at the Rhode Island Auditorium in Providence, Rhode Island on December 29, 1947. Built in 1926, the auditorium had seating for 5,300 spectators. The half-capacity crowd of 2,479 produced a gate of $4,429.
Kearns fought courageously and appeared willing to mix it up with Beau but had to struggle to stay in the fight. Beau sent Kearns to the canvas for seven counts in the third and eighth rounds. For good measure, Beau floored him two more times for nine counts in the ninth round. Kearns held on desperately in the final two rounds to endure the storm and avoid a knockout. Once again, Beau won an easy unanimous decision.
Notwithstanding his victories, Beau still seemed to have problems with his left leg. It didn’t appear that it was completely healed. His thigh above his scarred left knee looked flat or thin from the lack of exercise, while his right thigh looked muscular and powerful. At times Beau would drag his limb. Other times he would slip or fall when trying to pivot on his leg.
A week after his victory over Kearns, Beau was back in the ring. Jimmy Collins (1923–1991), the “Baltimore Slugger,” was the fourth straight opponent to taste defeat on Beau’s comeback tour. Irishman Jimmy Collins had a record of 40–13–3 but was rapidly fading. He had lost seven of his last eight contests. The 10-round welterweight bout was held at the Arena in New Haven, Connecticut on January 5, 1948. Collins stood two inches shorter than Jack, at 5'3½" tall, but had a 3½ pound weight advantage, weighing in at 143½ pounds to Jack’s 140 pounds.
If you arrived at the bout late, you missed it. In the first stanza, Beau floored the slugger to the mat for a nine count. In the second round, Beau finished him off, winning by way of knockout. It was Jack’s fourth-straight victory since he broke his knee in the Janiro contest and his third victory in three weeks.
Beau was looking for his fifth straight victory when he battled Johnny “Honeyboy” Bratton (1927–1993) of Chicago at Chicago Stadium on January 23, 1948. Bratton started boxing at the age of 14 and was a flashy young fighter with a professional record of 27–10–1. At 20 years old, he stood 5'10" tall.
Opened in 1929, the “Stadium” was an all-purpose indoor venue with seating for 20,000. Events held at the “Stadium” included hockey, boxing, basketball, midget car racing, and an occasional political convention. In fact, Franklin D. Roosevelt was announced as the Democrats’ nominee for president on the stadium floor at the 1932 Democratic Convention.
In his first Chicago bout, Beau was boxing before his largest crowd since losing to Tony Janiro. A group of 13,066 patrons paying a gate of $57,499 entered through the turnstiles to watch the action. In the first seven of ten rounds, Bratton controlled the “savagely fought battle” by way of his left and right crosses. The 20-year-old also took advantage of his faster speed. Johnny’s best punch came in the fourth, when he smacked Beau with a hard right, sending his head through the ropes. In the eighth round, however, Beau landed a crashing punch flush on Bratton’s jaw. Wrenching in pain and his lower jaw visibly sagging, Bratton appealed to Referee Johnny Behr to stop the fight. Following a quick examination, Behr ran over and raised Jack’s hand in victory.
At ringside, Dr. E. C. Small, a dental surgeon, confirmed that Bratton’s jaw was fractured. Subsequently, Bratton went to the hospital for x-rays, which revealed that Bratton’s jaw had been broken in two places. “I felt it snap in the fifth round,” Johnny said. Bratton went on to win the NBA welterweight title in 1951 and finished his career with a 60–24–3 record.
Excitement filled the air at Madison Square Garden on Friday night, February 20, 1948. Beau was making history once again. It was Jack’s 26th appearance, setting an unsurpassed new record. Lightweight Tony Canzoneri (1908–1959) previously held the record, appearing at the Garden 25 times. More significant to Beau, he was returning to Madison Square Garden after a year’s absence.
In his previous Garden bout, Jack suffered a broken kneecap in his battle with Tony Janiro. Originally scheduled to fight Billy Graham, a shifty New York fighter, Beau was matched with Terry Young after Graham broke his left hand in a tune-up fight with Patsy Brandino. In 1942, Beau had defeated Young in a brutal battle at St. Nicholas Arena. Since their first meeting, Young had rattled off 15 victories (nine by knockout), with four losses and one draw. Jack’s record since his first encounter with Young was 23–5–2.
The stakes were high. The winner would be in line for a potential lightweight championship bout with titleholder Ike Williams. The fight contract required the contestants to weigh no more than 140 pounds. The question of the day was whether Beau would be able to make weight. To challenge Williams, he was required to come in at the agreed upon weight.
Apparently, Beau’s team failed to tell him that the contract called for him to fight at 140 pounds. Even worse, Beau’s trainer, Sid Bell, had also forgotten the weight limit and allowed Beau to eat a “mess of eggs and drink a quart of milk for breakfast.”5 Initially weighing in at 142 pounds, Beau tried to shed weight by shadowboxing. The best he could do was get down to 141¼ pounds. Young weighed 137½ pounds. Thus, before the fight began, Beau suffered an automatic 30-day suspension to take effect after the fight for coming in over the contracted weight. Irrespectively, the crowd of 14,923, which produced a gate of $66,317, got their money’s worth.
Young jumped out to a significant advantage in the first round, dropping Beau for a two count with a sharp left hook to the jaw. In the second round, Beau, wearing an elastic support over his left knee, came blazing back against Young in what some described as the “fight of the year.” It was a gruesome match with constant action and punching after the bell in three rounds. The ferocious battle had the fans roaring on their feet throughout. Even though Young injured his hand in the fifth round, he persisted to back Beau into the ropes and belt him with brutal punches. In the sixth round, Young unleashed a furious barrage of punches from both hands as he penned Beau in the corner for thirty seconds. In the final four rounds, Jack appeared to have the edge. Regardless, by the end of the duel, Beau was bleeding from his nose and mouth and his left eye was practically swollen shut. He looked the part of a beaten fighter.
In a fight that could have easily been a draw, Young won a tight split decision victory. Judge Charley Shortell scored the fight five to four in favor of Young. Judge Harold Barnes scored the fight five to four for Beau Jack. Referee Frank Fullam scored the contest in Young’s favor by one point, six to five, after voting five rounds for each. By the slimmest margin of one point, victory and a chance to fight Ike Williams for the lightweight crown was received by Terry Young. Young finished his career with a record of 70–28–5. Unfortunately, Young met an early death. At age 46, Young was found shot to death with his body face down in the doorway of the 13th Street Playboy Social Club.
This was Beau’s first contest in which the NYSAC’s point system was utilized. In 1945, Colonel Eddie Eagan (1898–1967),6 Chairman of the NYSAC, began requiring the use of the point system to declare winners of boxing matches. Previously, matches were scored by rounds, but that didn’t take into account knockdowns, etc. Eagan also saw the point system as a way to lessen the number of draws or even decisions. According to the point system, the boxer who wins the round is given the maximum points, and the loser is given one less point. So, employing a ten-point system, the winner of the round receives ten points and the loser nine points. If a boxer wins the round by a large margin or knocks his opponent down, the loser may get less than nine. Usually, it would be scored a 10–8 round. At the time, the NYSAC required the winner to be the combatant that won the most rounds. However, if the rounds were judged even, then the point system would be used to break the tie.
Defeated, Beau appeared to be losing a little of his vigor. His previous knee injury was evidently inhibiting him from his full potential. Jack wore a basketball-type pad over his left knee when he entered the ring with Young but discarded it after the fifth round. Sportswriter Tommy Holmes opined that Jack could have won the contest, but for his previous knee injury.
Apparently, surgery has patched up Beau Jack’s knee cap which was fractured a year ago, but his knee is still stiff and the Beau couldn’t get the necessary leverage to punch hard with his left hand. He fought an aggressive, boring-in battle but took considerable punishment around the face as he piled in. With his old legs he would have gotten to close quarters fast enough to have escaped a lot of Young’s blows that he blocked with his classic features.7
Beau’s knee was undeniably diminishing his effectiveness in the ring. Beau, however, wasn’t going to let his trick knee hold him back. He just kept plodding along, seeking another title bout.
On March 12, promoter Raul Goddout announced that he had signed Beau to face Montreal’s Johnny Greco on April 9 at the Montreal Forum. The Forum, located on the corner of Atwater and Ste-Catherine West in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, operated from 1908 until 1996. Often referred to as the “most storied building in hockey history,” it had initial seating for 9,300 spectators.
It marked the third battle between Greco and Jack. They fought to a draw in their first fight, but Jack had won the second fight. With the Canadian welterweight title under his control, Greco came into the ring 6¾ pounds heavier than Beau and was also fighting before a home crowd of 10,394 fans. Excelling before a home crowd, Johnny had won fifteen of sixteen contests in the Forum, leading oddsmakers to favor Greco 7–5.
Both men came out slugging at the opening bell, throwing savage punches through the first two rounds. Greco, however, won the early rounds of the fight with his herding style and hard infighting, but Beau altered the battle in the sixth round. Beau backed up and began jabbing with light lefts until he set Greco up for a mammoth right. Using a sharp counter-punching defense, Jack hurt Greco with left crosses to the head and several wind-up bolo punches. It was a high-energy slugging match. After bouncing Beau off the ropes with a solid left in the eighth round, however, Johnny began to tire.
At the end of ten rounds, the contest went to the scorecards. Judge Johnny Gow scored the bout in Beau’s favor five to four, with one round even. Judge Leo Germain gave Beau five rounds, Greco three, and two even. Finally, Judge Rene Ouimet scored the contest even, with both men winning four rounds and two even. Beau was victorious, winning on two of the three judges’ scorecards. In his second fight in a row, Beau made history. The contest produced a gate of $51,832, an all-time high gate for a boxing match in Canada.
On April 26, 1948, promoter Goldie Ahearn of the Liberty Athletic Club announced that he had signed Jack and Tony Janiro to a rematch on May 17 at Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C. Payback was on Jack’s mind as he faced Janiro a second time. Janiro defeated Beau 16 months earlier in the Garden when his knee collapsed. Ahearn said the demand was so high that he turned down three impressive offers from other fight towns to relocate the bout to their venue. For instance, Madison Square Garden offered $7,000 to transfer the fight there, but Ahearn adamantly refused all offers.
Beau, along with his manager Chick Wergeles and trainer Sid Bell, arrived in Washington on Thursday, May 13th to begin final preparations for the contest. After the fighters weighed in on May 17, the District of Columbia Boxing Commission at the request of Goldie Ahearn postponed the fight for a week, due to inclement weather and rain showers. Beau stayed in Washington, while Janiro went back to New York for a couple of days. By fight time on the 24th, Beau was a seven to five favorite.
Facing off in a driving rainstorm, Beau’s knee would be profoundly tested. Even with the downpour, 9,178 spectators showed up for the outdoor match, producing a gate of $27,473. Since they last met, Janiro had won nine of eleven contests and Beau had won six of seven matches.
A downpour greeted the contestants as they entered the ring. As in their first meeting, Beau started fiercely, throwing punches from all different angles, bewildering Janiro. He looked like his old self with his “jitterbug” footwork and wind-up bolo punches. With both fighters slipping on the slick canvas and falling on top of each other, at times the fight looked more like a wrestling match. The two men eventually took their socks and shoes off and kept fighting. Janiro’s best round was the fourth. He shook Beau with a bombardment of punches, driving him into the ropes. Both combatants tasted the canvas in the fifth when they slipped on the wet, slick canvas after throwing simultaneous wild rights. Beau, however, was the aggressor most of the night, belting Janiro around the ring and putting him on the brink of a knockout three times after staggering him with looping rights. Revenging his previous loss, Jack won a unanimous ten-round decision over Janiro.
The next day, Beau confidently announced he was ready to drop weight and fight for another lightweight title. In a surprising turn of events, it just so happened that he would get that chance. Three years after his discharge from the Army and one and a half years after he broke his kneecap, Beau appeared in his fifth title bout against the undisputed lightweight champion, Ike Williams.
1. “Beau Jack Kicks Up His Heels on Arrival Here, Says His Knee’s Okay,” St. Louis Star and Times, October 31, 1947, 28.
2. “Beau Jack’s Knee Okay, X-Ray Shows,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 4, 1947, 14.
3. “Beau Jack Kicks Up His Heels on Arrival Here, Says His Knee’s Okay,” St. Louis Star and Times, October 31, 1947, 28.
4. W. J. McGoogan, “Beau Jack’s Punch Is Snappier Than His Leg; Zavala Knocked Out,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 4, 1947, 28.
5. Lawton Carver, “Fair or Foul,” Courier-Gazette, February 24, 1948, 6.
6. Eagan was a former boxer himself. Before being appointed as the Chairman of the NYSAC in 1945, Eagan had won the National Amateur Heavyweight Championship and Olympic Gold in the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium. He served as Chairman of the NYSAC for six years.
7. Tommy Holmes, “Scatter Shot at the Sport Scene,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, February 23, 1948, 11.