Billy Conn

Armed Forces Personnel

• Born: October 8, 1917
• Birthplace: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
• Died: May 29, 1993
• Place of death: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Sport: Boxing

Early Life

William David Conn, Jr., was born on October 8, 1917, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His parents were William David Conn, a steam fitter at a Westinghouse plant, and Margaret Conn. At the age of thirteen, Billy began to take boxing lessons from Johnny Ray, a former boxer who ran a nondescript gym for fighters in East Liberty, a working-class neighborhood of Pittsburgh. In exchange for the lessons, Billy swept up and did other jobs around the gym.

Ray saw that Billy had the potential to become a professional boxer, and he began to tutor Billy carefully. As Billy grew older, he spent hours each day working out and sparring at the gym. He also watched many fights while at Ray’s side. Never a good student, Billy dropped out of the parochial school he had been attending to concentrate on becoming a professional boxer. This seemed to make sense to Billy and his parents, given the depressed economic conditions of the 1930’s. Billy made his professional debut at Fairmont, West Virginia, in January, 1935; Billy’s share of the $2.50 purse was fifty cents.

The Road to Excellence

Billy fought more than three dozen times in 1935 and 1936, rarely traveling more than two hundred miles from Pittsburgh for a match. He lost six of his first fourteen professional fights, but he continued to work hard and developed an accurate jab, a great left hook, and a decent right cross. Realizing that Billy did not have a knockout punch, Ray especially wanted Billy to work on his combination punching and footwork.

Only six months after his professional debut, Billy began a twenty-seven-bout undefeated streak that stretched from August, 1935, to August, 1937. As Billy matured physically, he moved up from the lightweight to welterweight and then to the middleweight ranks, often fighting men four or five years older. On December 28, 1936, Billy beat Fritzie Zivic, who later won the welterweight crown; in 1937, he took on such quality middleweights as Teddy Yarosz, Young Corbett, and Solly Krieger, all three of whom made Ring magazine’s list of top-ten middleweights in either 1937 or 1938. Billy lost to Corbett and Krieger the first time he fought them, but he beat each man in a rematch.

Except for one match each year in San Francisco, Billy continued to fight in Pittsburgh in 1937 and 1938. His success against such opponents as Krieger, a popular New Yorker, attracted the attention of the prominent New York promoter Mike Jacobs, who booked Billy for a fight on January 6, 1939, in the famous Madison Square Garden. There, Billy beat Fred Apostoli, recognized as the middleweight titleholder by the New York State Athletic Commission, in a thrilling nontitle bout before nearly eleven thousand fans. Only five weeks later, in what he regarded as his hardest fight ever, Billy won an even more exciting fifteen-rounder against Apostoli.

The Emerging Champion

Jacobs took a liking to Billy and believed that he could become an attraction at the box office. To sharpen Billy’s image, Jacobs saw that the young fighter dressed well and met the right people, including show-business celebrities. Nicknamed the “Pittsburgh Kid,” Billy did not let his growing prominence distract him from his mission of becoming champion. On July 13, 1939, Billy, who had outgrown the middleweight class, claimed the light-heavyweight title in a fight with Melio Bettina.

After defeating Bettina in a rematch, Billy defended his title in two memorable fights against top challenger Gus Lesnevich. Billy gained decisions over Lesnevich in a fifteen-round fight in New York on November 17, 1939, and in another fifteen-round battle in Detroit on June 5, 1940.

Billy, who was named fighter of the year in 1940, then stepped up to the heavyweight class, boxing’s most publicized division and the only one where big money—perhaps $100,000 for a title match—could be earned. Ray and Jacobs both wanted to see Billy challenge the heavyweight champion, Joe Louis, who had held the title since 1937 and who so dominated the division that one writer referred to Louis’s victims as members of the “Bum-of-the-Month Club.” Fan interest in the heavyweights was declining, and Billy could revive it by challenging Louis, thought Ray and Jacobs.

Broad-shouldered and just more than 6 feet in height, Billy rarely weighed as much as 175 pounds, the light-heavyweight limit, but for heavyweight fights his weight was usually announced as close to 180 pounds. Before he could fight Louis, Billy had to vacate his own light-heavyweight title. After beating rated heavyweights Lee Savold and Bob Pastor, he outclassed four consecutive opponents early in 1941. He met Louis for the title on June 18, 1941, at the Polo Grounds, a baseball park in New York City that could seat more than fifty thousand spectators.

Earlier in his career, Billy had sometimes been careless about his conditioning, but he had since learned to keep in good shape. Billy rarely won by a knockout, but he consistently went the distance to win his fights on points. He had never been knocked out. Although he was the underdog against Louis, several experts believed that Billy could outpoint the bigger, stronger Louis if he fought intelligently and took advantage of his nimble feet and remarkably quick hands.

The Polo Grounds was jammed for the contest, and for twelve rounds, Billy gave spectators and millions of radio listeners all the excitement they could want, taking seven rounds on points. Billy’s cornermen told him to keep using his hit-and-run tactics and combination punching, but Billy, who had been dominating the fight since the eighth round and had nearly knocked the champion down in the twelfth, thought that Louis was weakening. Billy abandoned the tactics that had been working to try for a knockout. Billy’s decision was a mistake, for Louis, who had won more than 80 percent of his fights by knockout, staggered him with several hard blows. Billy went down for the count just before the end of the thirteenth round. In tears as reporters interviewed him after the fight, he said, “I lost my head and a million bucks.”

To fans, however, Billy’s near-upset of the champion enhanced his popularity. His curly hair and “toothpaste ad grin” made him perfect for Hollywood and earned him a contract soon after the Louis fight to star with actress Jean Parker in The Pittsburgh Kid, a 1941 film about boxing in which he played himself.

Many assumed Billy and Louis would soon fight again, and fan and media anticipation of a rematch was high. In December, 1941, however, the United States entered World War II, and both Billy and Louis enlisted in the armed forces. On February 13, 1942, he took a twelve-round decision from Tony Zale, the “Man of Steel,” in Billy’s last fight before entering the Army.

Continuing the Story

In the service, Billy visited hospitals for military personnel and led a group of boxers who fought exhibition matches to entertain the troops. In June, 1944, he led his group of boxers to England and around European battlefronts. While in Italy, Billy and some army companions helped to rescue an American pilot from a flaming plane that had crashed near them. He later toured military bases in France with several popular entertainers headed by film star Bob Hope.

In 1945, both Louis and Billy were discharged from the U.S. Army. Billy resumed training and fought two exhibitions before fighting Louis for the heavyweight title in New York’s Yankee Stadium on June 19, 1946. In their first battle, Billy had given fight fans much more than they had expected, but in the second, he gave them less. Neither man had recaptured his 1941 form, but at one time in his Army service, Billy had put on close to 25 pounds. For the fight with Louis, Billy could slim down only to 182 pounds, nearly 10 pounds above his normal prewar fighting weight. He could not regain the speed and timing that had been essential to his success. Billy realized this and tried to stay away from the champion; some disappointed fans in the capacity crowd booed. Louis knocked Billy out in the eighth round.

Billy no longer had the desire and the reflexes that had made him a great boxer. He did not fight at all in 1947, and had only a handful of bouts in 1948. After an exhibition match with Louis in December, 1948, he retired with a career record of sixty-three wins, eleven defeats, and one draw.

Billy, who had invested his earnings wisely, lived comfortably in Pittsburgh after his retirement, occasionally appearing as a referee at a boxing or wrestling match and, for a while, taking a job as a greeter at a Las Vegas casino. He was named to Ring magazine’s Boxing Hall of Fame in 1965. In 1993, he died in Pittsburgh at the age of seventy-five.

Summary

Billy Conn is remembered more for his 1941 loss to Joe Louis than for the dozens of victories he earned in the ring with his deft footwork and quick hands. Win, lose, or draw, the “Pittsburgh Kid” was a popular fighter who dazzled the boxing world with his brash but appealing personality and prowess in the ring. Long after he retired, Billy was still considered one of boxing’s immortals.

Bibliography

Blewett, Bert. The A to Z of World Boxing. London: Robson Books, 1996.

Kennedy, Paul F. Billy Conn: The Pittsburgh Kid. Bloomington, Ind.: AuthorHouse, 2007.

Mullan, Harry, and Bob Mee. The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Boxing. London: Carlton, 2007.

O’Toole, Andrew. Sweet William: The Life of Billy Conn. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007.

Sugar, Bert Randolph. Boxing’s Greatest Fighters. Guilford, Conn.: Lyons Press, 2006.