Baer turned professional in 1929, progressing steadily through the
Pacific Coast ranks. His career was not without setbacks; in 1930 he lost a decision to seasoned heavyweight Les Kennedy in Los Angeles. Even so, Baer built a strong record and scored victories over several more experienced fighters. His growing popularity stemmed largely from his aggressive fighting style. Although he lacked refined technical skills, he compensated with relentless offense, repeatedly charging his opponents and wearing them down with powerful punches. As a result, many of his matches ended in
knockouts.
Frankie Campbell Baer fought
Frankie Campbell on August 25, 1930, at San Francisco's
Recreation Park for the unofficial title of Pacific Coast champion. In the second round, Campbell clipped Baer and Baer slipped to the canvas. Campbell went toward his corner and waved to the crowd, thinking that Baer was getting the count. In response, Baer got up and flew at Campbell, landing a right to Campbell's turned head which sent him to the canvas. After the round, Campbell said to his trainer "Something feels like it snapped in my head", but he went on to handily win rounds 3 and 4. As Baer rose for the 5th round, Tillie "Kid" Herman, Baer's former friend and trainer, who had switched camps overnight and was now in Campbell's corner, savagely taunted and jeered Baer. In a rage and determined to end the bout with a knockout, Baer soon had Campbell against the ropes. As he hammered him with punch after punch, the ropes were the only thing holding Campbell up. By the time referee Toby Irwin stopped the fight, Campbell collapsed to the canvas. Baer's own seconds reportedly ministered to Campbell, and Baer stayed by his side until an ambulance arrived 30 minutes later. Baer "visited the stricken fighter's bedside", where he offered Frankie's wife Ellie the hand that hit her husband. She took that hand and the two stood speechless for a moment. "It was unfortunate, I'm awfully sorry", said Baer. "It could have been you," she replied. She forgave him. At noon the next day, with a lit candle laced between his crossed fingers, and his wife and mother beside him, Frankie Campbell was pronounced dead. Upon the surgeon's announcement of Campbell's death, Baer broke down and sobbed inconsolably. Brain specialist Dr. Tilton E. Tillman "declared death had been caused by a succession of blows on the jaw and not by any struck on the rear of the head" and that Campbell's brain had been "knocked completely loose from his skull" by Baer's blows. In 1930, Baer was charged with
manslaughter. He was ultimately cleared of criminal charges, but the
California State Athletic Commission suspended him from boxing in the state for one year. Following Campbell's death, Baer stepped away from boxing for several months. Upon returning, he lost four of his next six bouts, in part due to a hesitancy to press the attack. One of those victories came at the hands of future Hall of Famer
Tommy Loughran, who observed that Baer was looping and telegraphing his punches. Former heavyweight champion
Jack Dempsey later worked with Baer to shorten his punches and remained interested in his development throughout the rest of his career.
Ernie Schaaf The Campbell incident earned Baer the reputation as a "killer" in the ring. This publicity was further sensationalized by Baer's return bout with
Ernie Schaaf, on August 31, 1932. Schaaf had bested Baer in a decision during Max's Eastern debut bout at
Madison Square Garden on September 19, 1930. An Associated Press article in the September 9, 1932, sports section of the
New York Times describes the end of the return bout as follows:Two seconds before the fight ended Schaaf was knocked flat on his face, completely knocked out. He was dragged to his corner and his seconds worked on him for three minutes before restoring him to his senses... Baer smashed a heavy right to the jaw that shook Schaaf to his heels, to start the last round, then walked into the Boston fighter, throwing both hands to the head and body. Baer drove three hard rights to the jaw that staggered Schaaf. Baer beat Schaaf around the ring and into the ropes with a savage attack to the head and body. Just before the round ended Baer dropped Schaaf to the canvas, but the bell sounded as Schaaf hit the floor. Schaaf complained frequently of headaches after that bout. Five months after the Baer fight, on February 11, 1933, Schaaf died in the ring after taking a left jab from the Italian fighter
Primo Carnera. The majority of sports editors noted, however, that an autopsy later revealed Schaaf had
meningitis, a swelling of the brain, and was still recovering from a severe case of
influenza when he touched gloves with Carnera. Schaaf's obituary stated that "just before his bout with Carnera, Schaaf went into reclusion in a religious retreat near
Boston to recuperate from an attack of influenza" which produced the meningitis. The death of Campbell and accusations over Schaaf's demise profoundly affected Baer, even though he was ostensibly indestructible and remained a devastating force in the ring. According to his son, actor/director
Max Baer Jr. (who was born seven years after the incident):My father cried about what happened to Frankie Campbell. He had nightmares. In reality, my father was one of the kindest, gentlest men you would ever hope to meet. He treated boxing the way today's professional wrestlers do wrestling: part sport, mostly showmanship. He never deliberately hurt anyone.
Max Schmeling On June 8, 1933, Baer fought and defeated German heavyweight and former world champion
Max Schmeling at
Yankee Stadium, by technical knockout. Schmeling was favored to win and was
Adolf Hitler's favorite boxer. The Nazi tabloid
Der Stürmer publicly attacked Schmeling for fighting a non-Aryan, as Baer's father was Jewish, calling it a "racial and cultural disgrace." Although the
Great Depression, then in full force, had lowered the income of most citizens, sixty thousand people attended the boxing match., wore trunks which displayed the
Star of David, Columnist
Westbrook Pegler wrote about Schmeling's loss, "That wasn't a defeat, that was a disaster", while journalist
David Margolick claimed that Baer's victory would come to "symbolize Jewry's struggle against the Nazis." Film star
Greta Garbo considered Baer's defeat of Schmeling to be a "mini victory" over Nazism, and she invited Baer to visit her while she was filming
Queen Christina in Hollywood. However, Baer's presence on the set was considered a "sacrilege" in Hollywood, as even MGM studio's head,
Louis B. Mayer, wasn't allowed on Garbo's set, since she demanded total privacy while acting. Their friendship led to a romance, which lasted until he returned to New York to train for his next match against
Primo Carnera. Baer, ever the showman, "brought gales of laughter from the crowd with his antics" the night he stepped between the ropes to meet Braddock. As Braddock "slipped the blue bathrobe from his pink back, he was the sentimental favorite of a Bowl crowd of 30,000, most of whom had bet their money 8-to-1 against him." Braddock took heavy hits from Baer but kept coming at him until he wore Max down. At the end of 15 rounds Braddock emerged the victor in a unanimous decision, outpointing Baer 8 rounds to 6 in the "most astounding upset since
John L. Sullivan went down before the thrusts of
Gentleman Jim Corbett back in the nineties." It was learned weeks later that Baer fought Louis with a broken right hand that never healed from his fight with James J. Braddock. Max was virtually helpless without his big right hand in the Louis fight. In the first televised heavyweight prizefight, Baer lost to
Lou Nova on June 1, 1939, on
WNBT-TV in New York.
White Heavyweight Champ Baer was awarded a belt declaring him the "
White Heavyweight Champion of the World" after he scored a first-round TKO over Pat Cominsky in a bout at Roosevelt Stadium in
Jersey City, New Jersey, on September 26, 1940, but it was a publicity stunt. The fight was not promoted as being for the white heavyweight championship, and Cominsky would not have won the belt had he beaten Baer. The belt was a publicity stunt dreamed up by boxing promoters who were trying to pressure promoter
Mike Jacobs into giving the ex-world heavyweight champion a rematch with current champ
Joe Louis. Jacobs did not give Baer another bout with Louis. Baer retired after his next fight, on April 4, 1941, when he lost to Lou Nova on a TKO in the eighth round of a scheduled 10-rounder at Madison Square Garden. Nova did get a shot at Joe Louis, losing to the champion by TKO in the sixth round of a scheduled fifteen-round bout held at the Polo Grounds in New York.
Career statistics Baer boxed in 84 professional fights from 1929 to 1941. In all, his record was 71–13. Fifty-three of those wins were knockouts, making him a member of the exclusive group of boxers to have won 50 or more bouts by knockout. Baer defeated the likes of
Ernie Schaaf, Walter Cobb,
Kingfish Levinsky,
Max Schmeling,
Tony Galento,
Ben Foord and
Tommy Farr. He was Heavyweight Champion of the World from June 14, 1934, to June 13, 1935. Baer was a 1968 inductee into
The Ring magazine's
Boxing Hall of Fame (disbanded in 1987) and was inducted to the
International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1995. He was inducted to the
International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 2009. The 1998 Holiday Issue of
Ring ranked Baer #20 in
"The 50 Greatest Heavyweights of All Time". In ''Ring Magazine's 100 Greatest Punchers'' (published in 2003), Baer is ranked number 22. ==Boxing style==