On the eve of their wedding, twenty-year-old Jack Fleming arranges a secret ringside seat for his sweetheart to view her only rival: the 'game.' Through Genevieve's apprehensive eyes, we watch the prizefight that pits her fair young lover, 'the Pride of West Oakland,' against the savage and brutish John Ponta and that reveals as much about her own nature, and Joe's, as it does about the force that drives the two men in their violent, fateful encounter.