I saw Max in the flea-bag hotel he favors just the other night. He talked about his boys. He had that “going to have a champ” look on his face. Then he showed me the picture of Billy Lee’s baby. Like all babies, it had the Winston Churchill look, but I said it was beautiful like you always do. In the picture, Len was holding it. He works on a construction job in the South.
But the main reason I came to see Max was to tell him about Gowal. Maybe I should have been able to tell Max that I had run into Stone Gowal selling neckties in some “cocktail-lounge” saloon.
But all I could give Max was Gowal’s message that he was thinking of retiring as champ and was thinking of going into the managing end and wondered if Max was too sore to make it a partnership deal. Ordinarily, you’d expect that Max Gleason would have spurned the offer.
But Max said, “Hey, with his name I could really get the bookings for my boys!”
So all you can say is that in the fight game the stories don’t always have the right and happy ending. It’s sometimes even hard to tell when the stories are over. But all I want is the ringside seat I had for this one.