There were names and a number of big events, but no consistency on the championship level and suspicion rose while patience plummeted like the stock market. Everyone invested in heavyweight boxing was but a dopesick addict chasing the high they got from Dempsey’s two-round tango with “The Wild Bull of the Pampas,” Luis Ángel Firpo, back in 1923.

Nothing worked.

There can be no doubt that Dempsey’s successors nevertheless helped guide the sport through those dark years, as did the men behind the scenes. Tex Rickard, the American prototype for big-thinking fight promoters, engineered much of boxing’s grandeur in those days, down to custom-built venues and a huge investment in broadcasting. One of his employees for a time was Mike Jacobs.

Rickard financed the construction of the third Madison Square Garden in 1925 for the modern equivalent of about $90 million, and a decade later Jacobs signed a young, unbeaten Louis to an exclusive contract. Writers called the block across the street from the Garden “Jacobs Beach,” because one could periodically find boxing’s peddlers and dealmakers on the sidewalk in front of Jacobs’ ticket office or the hotel next door.

Louis’ rise to the throne was a symphony conducted by Jacobs. Louis did slip up once, and it came against former heavyweight champion Max Schmeling, who exploited a basic defensive oversight with a number of huge right hands to hand the young Louis a stoppage loss. One of Louis’ first tasks as champion was avenging his lone defeat, which he did in truly vicious style.

Apart from being only the second Black world heavyweight champion, Louis was incredibly busy, especially compared to Dempsey, who made five defenses in the seven years he held the title. Louis was in the ring so often, in fact, that multiple New York writers took to calling Louis’ string of opponents from 1939 to 1941 the “Bum of the Month Club.”

Louis matched Dempsey in 18 months and kept going. As he made a staggering 17 defenses in a little under four years, a clever Irish kid from Pittsburgh named Billy Conn captured the light heavyweight title vacated by the retirement of Louis’ old pal, John Henry Lewis.

Conn was a talented fighter with deft footwork, and in bygone boxing eras, being the European champion, the British champion or even a regional champion could be a pathway to a world title shot. If the contender field had been knocked thin, as was the case with Louis’ heavyweight division, even the division next door’s champion might do.

The obvious dilemma was convincing Jacobs and the team that Conn could hang with heavyweights. Thankfully, with a Louis fight one loss away from disappearing for him, Conn defeated a series of heavyweights and earned his shot on June 18, 1941 – 85 years ago today – at the Polo Grounds in New York City.

In the nearly 18 years since Dempsey-Firpo, the Polo Grounds hosted many notable world title fights, like Harry Greb’s storied defense of the middleweight championship over Mickey Walker. The big men never returned, though. Maybe Rickard never felt any post-Dempsey heavyweight champions deserved an appearance there, and maybe he would have been right. But the word around Jacobs Beach confirmed Louis’ stardom, as did the near-capacity crowd of 54,000 at the Polo Grounds.

Conn, on the other hand, was a heavy underdog. Ferdie Pacheco, once Muhammad Ali’s doctor and cornerman, wrote in his book “The 12 Greatest Rounds of Boxing,” years later: “Wise guys gave Conn those familiar two chances, slim and none, to win the fight.”

One of Louis’ mannerisms that helped Schmeling earn a win in their first fight was Louis’ tendency to drag his feet before planting them to punch. While Louis carried dynamite in both hands, he was one of boxing history’s best combination punchers. He needed his feet set to land them successfully, however, and a few of his opponents, like Abe Simon and Tommy Farr, stayed their execution and lasted rounds on toughness alone. Arturo Godoy employed an odd crouch that confused the champion in their first fight. And Schmeling timed Louis’ feet before landing right hands over Louis’ lazy jab.

At only 174 pounds and not even a puncher at light heavyweight, Conn didn’t have Schmeling’s power, though after the first handful of rounds against Louis, it looked like he may not even need it. Louis forced Conn to clinch in the first two rounds and most assumed Conn fought on borrowed time, surviving a typical early slow roll from the champion.

Then Conn’s trainer, Freddie Fierro, told his fighter to jab and move, so Conn did it like it was his religion. As Louis inched forth to whack the challenger around, Conn stuffed his jab into Louis’ face and angled away without a scratch on him, and this happened almost nonstop for more than ten rounds. Apart from round 5, when Conn ate about a dozen smashes to his body and walked to his corner hurt, Louis had no answer.

In rounds 10 and 11, Louis got Conn to stand still long enough to force exchanges, which roused the crowd. Conn got the worst of it in the 10th, but put Louis on the defensive in the 11th, and in round 12 he appeared ready to continue with his work and sail on to a decision win. Ahead on two cards, Conn dug in close and smothered Louis inside before hurting the champion with a pair of hooks. Louis visibly wobbled and both Conn and the crowd were sent into a frenzy. Conn landed another hook and Louis bobbled to his corner after the bell.

That old flickering flame of Dempsey-Firpo returned to the Polo Grounds. The tension in the atmosphere weighed a ton as everyone waited for the 13th round to begin, to see if the heavyweight champion could withstand this lunatic rush from a much smaller challenger.

Hype Igoe, covering the fight for The Ring, wrote: “It was when [Conn] moved in close [in round 13] that the Brown Panther clawed him. A little short right to the jaw rocked Conn and he never was able to shake it off or retreat out of the line of fire.”

Conn gambled that he could take Louis out and came up short. He tried to fight his way out of trouble before Louis timed a series of right uppercuts between body shots that staggered him around the ring. Finally, a six-punch combination punctuated by a right hand sent Conn to the canvas for the full count just short of the bell.

The challenger recovered enough to grin his way through celebrations with his team in his dressing room, while Louis carefully contemplated how he nearly lost the heavyweight title to a light-hitting cutie in the relative silence of his own dressing room.

“I knew I was losing and had to win by a knockout,” Louis quietly told reporters.

When asked about the fight, Conn said: “All I wanted to do was fight. And I did that, didn’t I? And I hurt him!”

With a gate of $450,000, both fighters and everyone involved in the business side of the fight wanted a rematch. Fans at the Polo Grounds and beyond wanted it, too. But in 1941, with the world teetering on the edge of ruin, Louis and Conn knew they could be called to serve in World War II at any point. And they both did the following year, making a quick rematch impossible.

Back in the fistic world, not even war could shake the public’s addiction to the heavyweights. Not the war that nearly broke up Louis’ reign, or the war that nearly broke the world.