"Still a Good Man"

Any time after the second round of his ten-round exhibition fight with Pat Valentino in Chicago last week, Joe Louis could have knocked his stumbling opponent out. Instead, the retired champion nursed the mop-haired San Franciscan along with blood-drawing lefts until the clock showed 2:45 of the eighth round. Then, as if on cue, he hit Valentino with a vicious left hook and a chopping right, neatly dropping his victim in front of the ringside seat of new N.B.A. Heavyweight Champion Ezzard Charles. Murmured Charles, who had finished Valentino in eight rounds himself last October, "Man, that Joe looks awful good; he sure is still a good man."

Champion Charles could have made it even stronger. At 35, for all the quarter-inch of fat that bulged over his purple trunks, Joe Louis still looked like the best heavyweight on two feet. Nursing a scuffed eyelid in his dressing room after the match, he was noncommittal when sport-writers asked him whether he was testing himself for a comeback, perhaps in a championship go against Charles next summer.

But faced with a lien of $61,221 on back federal income taxes, Joe could well use the $300,000 or so (before taxes) a comeback fight might bring him. Charles was willing, if not enthusiastic. Said he: "Well, now, I'd like to see him stay what he is--a great champion and a great man. But if they want to fix it up for me to fight him, I'll sure fight him."

At least one observer thought the whole question was academic. The day after the Louis-Valentino exhibition, Manager Tex Sullivan withdrew his fighter, Lee Oma, from a scheduled ten-round match with Louis in Detroit. Complained Sullivan: "Those aren't exhibitions, they're real wars . . . Louis isn't planning a comeback, he's already back."

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