After losing heavyweight contender Al Costa to mob boss Florini fight promoter Knobby Walsh recruits small town boy Joe Palooka to take his place. First in the series.

Joe Palooka goes blind during a fight. An operation restores his vision, but he's told not to fight for a year. His trainer Knobby has picked up another fighter, but gangsters are pressing him to fix fights. Joe decides to risk his eyesight to save Knobby's honor.

Joe Palooka is a naive young man whose father Pete was a champion boxer, but his lifestyle caused Joe's mother Mayme to leave him and to take young Joe to the country to raise him.

Joe Palooka and two friends are taking hostage by three criminals.

The third of the Monogram series based on Ham Fisher's "Joe Palooka" comic strip, opens with Knobby Walsh, the manager of Joe Palooka trying to talk his way out of a traffic citation, and the story leading to that point is told in flashback as narrated by Walsh. Heavyweight champion Joe, after knocking out an opponent who later died in his dressing room, feels responsible and threatens to give up boxing. But the dead fighter's fiance thinks he died as the result of a drug that was given to him by a gang of gamblers, who made a rich haul betting on Palooka. Joe, Knobby and the police unite to run down the gamblers, but not before Joe also is nearly murdered by the same means...a poisoned mouthpiece. Elyse Knox is along as Joe's sweetheart Anne Howe, although Anne and Joe had long been married in the comic strip.

Gangsters frame Joe on a drunk charge and a murder rap so they can put their own fighter into a big event. Joe investigates in an attempt to prove his innocence.

Joe Palooka encounters gangsters and tries to alert the law.