In front of a crowd of 54,487, Conn steadily built a lead on the scorecards. Louis looked unusually sluggish as Conn punched him repeatedly and controlled the pace. The challenger produced perhaps the fight’s biggest moment in the 12th round when he staggered Louis with a pair of left hooks, sending the crowd into a frenzy.
At the time of the stoppage, Conn was leading on two official scorecards, 7-5 and 7-4-1, while the third judge had the fight even at 6-6. The Associated Press scored it 8-4 for Conn.
Then came the 13th round.
Instead of continuing to box his way to a decision, Conn went looking for a knockout. Louis, who was told by trainer Jack Blackburn that he needed a stoppage to win, seized the opportunity. The heavyweight champion caught Conn with a counter strike and knocked him out at 2:58 of the round.
In the locker room afterward, Conn had no one to blame but himself.
“I lost my mind and a million dollars,” he said. When asked why he abandoned the strategy he had in mind, Conn offered another memorable line: “What’s the use of being Irish if you can’t be fat?”
The regret stayed with him for the rest of his life.
Years later, Conn admitted he won the fight before chasing the knockout. “I was a wise guy. I had him, and I let him get away,” Conn recalled. “If I hadn’t hurt him in the twelfth and tried to knock him out in the thirteenth, I would have beaten him.”
Near the end of his life, Conn suggested that he wasn’t sure the judges would have awarded him the decision against a champion as popular as Louis. Yet the fighter’s own reflections focused less on the scorecards and more on his decision to abandon a winning game plan.
Eighty-five years later, the lasting image remains the same: Billy Conn outboxing the great Joe Louis, only to have the victory slip away as he tries to finish the job too soon.
