BOXING

The Heyday of Boxing

The 1940s were the heyday of American boxing. Champions included featherweight Willie Pep, who won sixty-two fights in a row before he was beaten by lightweight Sammy Angott and then seventy-one more (with one draw) before Sandy Saddler took his title on 28 October 1948. When the decade closed, Pep was champion again, having defeated Saddler in the rematch. Among the lightweights, there was Beau Jack, the popular "Georgia Shoe Shine Boy," who fought a series of championship fights with another southerner, Bob Montgomery. After the war Ike Williams won the championship and ruled the division for the rest of the decade. Among the welterweights, there were Henry Armstrong, who had moved up in weight, Fritzie Zivic, Red Cochrane, and Marty Servo. All except Cochrane were beaten by the best fighter in the division, Sugar Ray Robinson. Jake La Motta had similar problems in the middleweight division, which included champions Tony Zale and Rocky Graziano, who knocked Zale out in the sixth round on 16 July 1947 to win the title in all states but New York, which had suspended Graziano's license to box. Impressive Frenchman Marcel Cerdan held the championship for one fight before he lost to La Motta on 16 June 1949 and then had his career cut short by a plane crash. Billy Conn was the best of the light heavyweights before the war, but he gave up his title to fight for bigger purses as a heavyweight. He left the division in the hands of Gus Lesnevich, who lost the title to Englishman Freddie Mills, who was, in turn, stopped in his first defense by the champion who dominated the division into the next decade, Joey Maxim. Among the heavyweights there was only one memorable champion—Joe Louis. He held the title from 1937 until he retired in 1948. Ezzard Charles won the vacated title on 29 June 1949 in a contest with "Jersey" Joe Walcott, the other top contender.

The Bum of the Month Club

Throughout the term of his championship Louis was a popular fighter with an untainted reputation. A Louis fight was guaranteed to generate interest, partly because he was so admired among blacks and partly because boxing aficionados admired his skill. Even when Louis was fighting what Jack Miley of the New York Post called members of the "Bum of the Month Club," he reliably attracted boxing fans and press coverage. A major factor in the popularity of Louis and boxing in general was radio and, late in the decade, television broadcasts. It was claimed that only President Roosevelt, in the most successful of his "fireside chats," attracted more radio listeners than a Joe Louis fight. "The fists of Joe Louis are the megaphones and microphones of his race on the nights that he defends his championship," Ed Sullivan observed in his "Little Old New York" column in the New York Daily News. Surveys showed that about two-thirds of radio listeners tuned in to Louis's fights. That meant an audience of as many as 50 million in the early 1940s, and such an audience meant advertising revenue and a healthy income to the promoter.

The Kingmaker

Joe Louis had been the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world for two and a half years by the beginning of 1940. He had defended his title eight times, and he had provided the foundation for one of the most powerful sports empires in history. Louis's fights were promoted by Mike Jacobs, owner of the Twentieth Century Sporting Club. Jacobs had begun his career as a ticket scalper and a protégé of the famed Tex Rickard, promoter for boxing events at Madison Square Garden. When Rickard died in 1929 and Jacobs was denied the opportunity to promote fights at the Garden, he entered into a silent partnership (because their professions prevented boxing promotions) with newsman and short-story writer Damon Runyon; Edward Frayne, sports editor of the New York American; and Bill Farnsworth, sports editor of the New York Journal, to promote Louis and compete with the Garden for top fights. By 1940 Jacobs, who had promoted Louis since the mid 1930s, had squeezed out his partners and used his control of the champion's fights to force binding promotions contracts with most of the good fighters of the day. To fight Louis, boxers had to sign with Jacobs. By 1940 Jacobs had also secured the right to promote all fights at Madison Square Garden; to fight at any of the other major arenas in New York, including Saint Nicholas Arena and Yankee Stadium, where Jacobs had exclusive leases for boxing events, a fighter had to sign with the Twentieth Century Sporting Club. He got at least 10 percent of the fighter's purse and some percentage of the gate, in addition to whatever subsidiary deals he was able to make. He often lent fighters money while they were training, for example, and he exacted a fee and frequently a percentage of the boxer's future earnings in exchange. When fight revenues were unexpectedly low, Jacobs reduced the fighters' guarantees, leaving them without recourse, except to voice cautious complaints on Jacobs Beach, as the sidewalks outside his Broadway ticket office and headquarters were called. In 1940 Jacobs controlled the championship fighters of every major weight class in boxing, and his domination was unchallenged by other promoters.

Frankie Carbo, the Superintendent

Criminal interests were attracted to boxing from its beginnings. People bet on boxing matches, and gamblers figured out early on that there was money to be made by controlling fighters and fixing fights. With Louis's popularity and the huge revenue boxing matches produced, organized criminals paid increased attention. During the 1940s boxing was ruled by a gangland boxing czar, a cohort of Jacobs in control of the boxing commissions and virtually every fight held on the East Coast. He was Frankie Carbo, a professional killer whose first arrest for murder was in 1924 when he was twenty. In 1939 Carbo was alleged to be the triggerman in the Hollywood killing of Harry Schacter (also know as Harry Greenberg), which led to his indictment for murder, along with Bugsy Siegel and Louis Lepke, and to the breakup of Murder, Incorporated. Carbo was released when the star defense witness, Abe Reles, fell to his death from the window of the hotel where he was being held under protective custody. His guards said he jumped; knowledgeable observers thought otherwise. Carbo bragged—even testified under oath—that he controlled Jacobs, and thus he controlled boxing.

Questionable Title Bouts

Carbo and Jacobs's domination of boxing had little effect (except financially) on the heavyweight championship. Louis was so popular that the bosses wanted him to remain champion, and he was such a good fighter that he needed no help from fight fixers to retain his championship. Only two of his seventeen title defenses during the 1940s ended in controversial decisions, and there was no suggestion that either was fixed. On 23 May 1941 Louis fought Buddy Baer, the younger brother of former champion Max Baer. The challenger fought more fiercely than anyone had predicted, knocking Louis out of the ring in the first round. By the end of the seventh the crowd at Madison Square Garden was cheering wildly, and Louis did not hear the bell that ended the round. He hit Baer after the bell had rung and knocked him out. When the challenger was unable to answer the bell for the eighth round, his handlers argued that Louis should be disqualified for hitting Baer after the seventh round had ended. Instead, referee Arthur Donovan, a former Jacobs employee, disqualified Baer for not being ready to begin the eighth round. Objections to the decision were to its form, not its substance. No one doubted that Louis was the better fighter.

Another Questionable Decision

The second questionable decision came in the next to last fight of Louis's career, on 5 December 1947 against "Jersey" Joe Walcott. The challenger was a few months older than the thirtythree-year-old champion and had been beaten by two of Louis's "Bums of the Month." He was a heavy underdog, but he knocked the champion down in the first round and again in the fourth. As the fight progressed, it was clear that Louis was on the decline as a fighter. In an attempt to protect his advantage, Walcott went on the defensive, backpedaling through the last rounds, and that tactic may have cost him the victory. When the fight was over, Louis left the ring dejectedly before the decision was announced; referee Ruby Goldstein had given the fight to Walcott. But the judges disagreed and handed Louis a split decision. Six months later in the rematch, Louis was behind on points when he knocked Walcott out in the eleventh round.

AN EYE FOR AN EYE

Light-heavyweight boxer Sam Baroudi won twenty-three of his forty-five fights by knockout, including one in 1947 troni which killed his opponent, Glen Smith, in the ring. Baroudi's fortysixth fight was in 1948 against heavyweight contender Ezzard Charles. In the last round of that bout, Baroudi suffered the only knockdown of his career; Charles's head punches caused a hemorrhage in Baroudi's brain, which killed him.

Rocky Graziano

Boxing in the lower weight divisions was not as simple. There was no crowd favorite comparable to Louis. Among middleweights, for example, and there were several able contenders—Tony Zale, Ken Overlin, and Billy Soose before the war; Zale, Rocky Graziano, La Motta, and Cerdan after the war. As a result, the promoters, who always had the upper hand in fight negotiations, could easily stage fights on their terms. Fixes were commonly used to set up promotable championship matches, and the fighters had to accept them if they wanted their careers to progress. Graziano testified in January 1947 that he was offered $100,000 to throw a fight late in 1946 against underdog Ruben Shank. Zale had knocked Graziano out in the sixth round of their September 1946 championship bout, and Graziano, who was the leading challenger with thirtyeight wins before the championship fight, was unwilling to compromise his reputation with a dive to a fighter of Shank's caliber. He was also unwilling to defy Carbo and Jacobs, so he feigned a back injury and withdrew from the contest. Nonetheless, shifting betting odds made New York Attorney General Frank Hogan, a crusader against boxing corruption, suspicious. His attention forced an inquiry by a grand jury. Graziano told them he had been offered bribes three times since May 1945—once to throw a fight against Al Davis and twice to lose against Shank. In addition, there were allegations that an overweight match between Graziano and welterweight champion Marty Servo was fixed when Servo went from an underdog to a 10-1 favorite the day of the fight. Graziano refused to cancel the match and beat Servo badly, breaking his nose before knocking him out in the second round. After his testimony before the grand jury, the New York State Athletic Commission revoked Graziano's license to box, placing his rematch with Tony Zale in jeopardy. But boxing was ruled by state commissions, with no central control. So the Zale-Graziano fight was moved to Chicago (outside the control of Mike Jacobs), where the Illinois state boxing commission took a more lenient attitude toward the challenger's failure to report the attempts to bribe him. Graziano won the world middleweight championship on 16 July 1947 with a sixth-round knockout in a fight that drew an indoor-fight record $422,918. New York continued to recognize Zale as champion. The success of that fight marked the beginning of the end of Mike Jacobs's control of the sport. In 1948 Graziano and Zale fought again, this time in Newark, New Jersey, just across the river from Manhattan and within range of the New York fight fans. Zale won this time with a knockout in the eighth round.

The Raging Bull

Jake La Motta (who had learned to box in the same reform school as Rocky Graziano) was a particularly anxious middleweight contender who often fought as a light-heavyweight during this time. He was offered $100,000 to throw a fight against Tony Janiro in June 1947. He replied that he would do so only if he were guaranteed a championship fight. The bosses refused, and La Motta (weighing 155 pounds) took out his frustration on the good-looking Janiro, beating him mercilessly for ten rounds. A few months later, La Motta was offered his championship bid and, again, $100,000 if he would throw a fight against light-heavyweight contender Billy Fox, whose reputation was being bolstered for a challenge to Gus Lesnevich's light-heavyweight championship. La Motta (fighting at 170 pounds) accepted the deal and staged a lifeless fight against Fox for four rounds before the referee stopped the match and awarded Fox a victory. La Motta claimed his poor performance was the result of a broken rib he had suffered in training, but the New York State Athletic Commission was not convinced. They fined him $1,000, suspended his license, and kept his and Fox's purses for seven months before they rescinded their penalty under threat of a lawsuit. Finally, on 16 June 1949, La Motta got his middleweight title shot against Marcel Cerdan, the Frenchman who had taken the title from Zale the year before. To get the fight, La Motta had to pay Carbo and his associates $20,000. His purse was $19,000, but he made his money by betting $10,000 on himself to win. The rematch, which promised to be a big payday for La Motta, was canceled after Cerdan died in a plane crash on his way to the United States to train. (Fox was beaten twice by Lesnevich for the light-heavyweight title, after which he retired.)

Sweet as Sugar

Sugar Ray Robinson was one of the most active boxers in the history of the sport. He turned professional in 1940 at the age of twenty, having won all of his eighty-five amateur bouts and sixty-nine of them by knockout (forty of which were in the first round). His first professional fight was on 4 October 1940. Between that time and 31 October 1941 he fought twenty-six times, winning all his fights and twenty of them by knockout. Of his six decisions, three came in ten rounds, one against lightweight contender Sammy Angott five months before Angott won the lightweight championship; one against Fritzie Zivic three months after Zivic lost the welterweight championship to Red Cochrane; and one against Marty Servo, who became champion just after the war by beating Cochrane. By 1942 Robinson was being called the best fighter pound for pound in boxing (except for Louis, of course), and by the end of the decade the qualification was dropped. Robinson suffered his first loss in his fortieth fight, on 5 February 1943, fighting out of his weight class against Jake La Motta, whom he had defeated four months earlier. He did not lose again for eight years. He became welterweight champion on 20 December 1946, beating Tommy Bell for the title vacated when Servo had his championship stripped because he refused to fight Robinson. When in 1947 he reported a bribe related to an attempt to arrange a fight with Servo, Robinson had his license suspended for thirty days. At one point he said he had been offered money to show up overweight at the weigh-in for a fight with Servo; at another point he said he had been offered money not to fight. The commission punished him for seeming to change his story.

A Champion's Attitude

After he became champion Robinson became a deficit spender. He drove flashy cars, including a pink Cadillac; he traveled with an entourage that rivaled Joe Louis's and included a golf partner, a hairdresser, and a dwarf mascot. His flamboyance cost him. The gangsters who ran boxing disapproved of him and gave the best fights to others first. Robinson could not make enough to pay his debts, and by midcareer he was in debt, despite good investments and a steady fight schedule. He was in the 88 percent tax bracket and had little left after his purses were distributed to meet his huge expenses. The need for money kept Robinson boxing until 1965 when he was forty-five years old. When he retired he had fought a total of 202 fights with eighteen defeats.

Louis and Conn

In the view of many fight fans, the fight of the decade and the most anticipated fight of the decade were the two matches between Billy Conn and Joe Louis, the first match six months before Louis joined the army and the second just after he was released from duty. Billy Conn was a handsome white fighter from a family of tough boxers. He won the light-heavyweight title in September 1939 from Melio Bettina and held it until June 1941, when he vacated the title to fight Louis. Fifty-five thousand fans showed up at the Polo Grounds in New York on 18 June 1941 to see the 170-pound contender take on the champion, who had trained down to 199 1/2 to avoid seeming too overpowering. Louis had fought six times since the end of January. He was tired and unprepared for the fighter who entered the ring with him that night. Conn took Louis's best punches, danced away, and countered with his own barrages for twelve rounds. Conn was clearly quicker than Louis, and he showed the stamina to slug with the champion. By the tenth round the fight seemed clearly to be Conn's, and Conn built on his lead in the eleventh and twelfth rounds. His corner advised him to fight defensively for the last three rounds, but he wanted to knock Louis out. In the thirteenth the two fighters traded punches evenly until the end of the round, when Louis slipped a punch and hit Conn with an overhand right followed by a left jab, a right uppercut, a left hook, and a right cross, in succession. Conn fell, and the referee began his count to ten. Two seconds after he finished counting Conn out, the bell rang to end the round.

TELEVISION AND BOXING

In 1941 television became a factor, though telephoto lenses were not advanced enough to make boxing an attractive television sport until after World War II. Even so, there were some closed-circuit matches broadcast to limited receivers set up in public venues. The first such telecast was of the Ken Overlin-Billy Soose middleweight championship fight on 9 May 1941 at Madison Square Garden (in which Soose beat the champion in fifteen rounds). The fight was telecast to 1,400 paying fans at the New Yorker Theater, heralding a prominent role tor television broadcasts in fight promotion. By 1948 the technical problems had been solved and there was a potential television audience of 1.75 million viewers. The stakes, which were already high, increased, as people who did not own their own sets were invited to bars and hotels to watch important events, such as championship boxing matches, on television.

Boxing and the War

Professional boxing was curtailed but hardly eliminated during the war, though its character changed. Big matches were promoted as war benefits. All major titles were frozen in 1941, and competition for them did not resume until early 1946. Four thousand professional boxers joined the military, including five world champions. Jacobs arranged for Louis to fight a benefit for the war effort with Buddy Baer, which ended in a one-round knockout. A further attempt to arrange a rematch of Louis's most exciting fight of the decade, against Conn, was aborted when Jacobs was criticized for negotiating to reserve for himself all seats in the first twenty rows of the arena so he could scalp the tickets. Amid plaudits for his patriotism, Joe Louis volunteered for the army on 10 January 1942 at the peak of his career "to fight them Japs…who are all lightweights, anyway," he told the press. His observation that "We will win because we are on God's side" became a popular patriotic slogan. At the end of March 1942 Private Louis defended his title in Madison Square Garden against Abe Simon, whom he knocked out in the sixth round. As a show of patriotism, Louis bought $3,000 worth of tickets for servicemen and donated his purse to the Army Emergency Relief Organization. It was the last heavyweight championship fight until 1946. The total of Louis's donations to war-relief organizations in 1942 was $111,082, an amount the IRS later ruled was taxable at a rate of 90 percent. Louis and other champions staged exhibitions during the war and fought at military benefits, but professional boxing was at a virtual standstill until the war ended.

Louis-Conn II

There was not enough time before the war-related suspension of championship boxing to arrange a rematch between Louis and Conn, but the appetite for that fight increased with time. By 1946 Mike Jacobs was promoting the most anticipated match of the era. Ringside seats sold for an all-time high of $100, and total revenue was just under $2 million. The live audience of 45,266 saw Louis beat Conn decisively with an eighth-round knockout. The fight was a disappointment, and though Conn's performance was criticized by the press, they were impressed by the size of Louis's purse. The numbers have been variously reported, but it is clear that although Louis earned a record $625,916 for the fight, after the proceeds were divided he was left with little to show for his effort. He owed Jacobs $170,000 for money lent him during the war; he had borrowed $41,000 from his manager, John Roxborough. He owed the IRS $115,992 in back taxes and an additional $247,056 in taxes on his fight earnings. He had recently divorced his wife, Marva, and he owed her a $25,000 settlement. That is a total debt of $598,048, leaving Louis some $28,000 to cover his expenses, which included the support of twenty-three people in his entourage. His biggest payday was not big enough.

Tournament of Champions and the IBC

In 1946 professional boxing was revived, and Jacobs remained king, a position he maintained until poor health forced him into semiretirement at the end of 1947. By that time Madison Square Garden revenues alone were $1.25 million per year. In mid 1947 a rival promotional organization, Tournament of Champions, was established with backing from Columbia Broadcasting System. At about the same time, Joe Louis decided to retire after a near defeat by the lightly regarded "Jersey" Joe Walcott, and with substantial backing the champion formed Joe Louis Enterprises to orchestrate the succession of the title. Joe Louis Enterprises bought the rights to promote the four major contenders for the heavyweight title. Louis fought once more, a rematch with Walcott in June 1948 that ended in an eleventh-round knockout, then he stepped down. By 1949 Joe Louis Enterprises had merged with Tournament of Champions to form the International Boxing Club (IBC) and had bought out Jacobs's rights to promote at Madison Square Garden. After the merger Louis was left with a 20 percent share of the IBC (which was worth little because his partners owned the facilities where IBC fights were held and skimmed off most of the profits in rent) and a $20,000-per-year employment contract to work for the organization. In 1950 the IBC controlled half of the championship bouts in the United States, and, in the words of sports historian Jeffrey T. Sammons, "the dominant individual entrepreneur…gave way to the faceless corporation."

Sources:

Joe Louis Barrow, Jr., and Barbara Munder, Joe Louis: 50 Years an American Hero (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1988);

Jake La Motta, Raging Bull: My Story (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970);

Chris Mead, Joe Louis: Black Hero in White America (New York: Scribners, 1985);

Jeffrey T. Sammons, Beyond the Ring: The Role of Boxing in American Society (Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988).

BOXING

Boxing Decline

The sport of professional boxing seemed to be in decline at the beginning of the 1960s. Boxing had been the most frequently televised sporting event during the 1950s because it was easy to produce: the action between two men in a small ring could be captured easily and cheaply by a single camera. By the end of the 1950s fights appeared routinely on television; Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer sponsored the Wednesday night fights on ABC, and Gillette sponsored the Friday night fights on NBC. Televised fights used up fighters and distorted an already-corrupt sport.

Television and Boxing

Television imposed a level of commercialism on fighting that the sport had never confronted before. Television audiences, and thus television sponsors, demanded more glamour and more drama than the sport could deliver, There were not enough white hopes or inspiring role models in boxing to supply televised fights at least two nights every week and more nights most weeks. Moreover, there was increasing evidence that television boxing was corrupt. The International Boxing Club, controlled by mobster Frankie Carbo, monopolized the promotion of fights for television, and Carbo was under investigation at the beginning of the decade. By December 1960 he had been sentenced to a prison term for what amounted to the rest of his life for violation of the Hobbes Act, which prohibited inter-state extortion. Television no longer needed boxing by 1960—the networks had developed the technical proficiency to televise other sports action—and NBC was the first network to announce cancellation of its weekly fight programming in September 1960, Audience share had fallen to about 10 percent from a high of 30 percent in the mid 1950s. The other networks followed suit, and the big-money boxing matches were given over to producers of closed-circuit, pay-per-view broadcasts.

Scandals

The image of boxing during the early 1960s was tarnished by testimony before the Senate Anti-trust and Monopoly Subcommittee in December I960, chaired by Sen. Estes Kefauver, in which mob interests in boxing were thoroughly examined. Two deaths in the ring caused escalated expressions of outrage at what critics called the barbarity of the sport. On 24 March 1962 Emile Griffith met Benny ("Kid") Paret for the world welterweight championship at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Before a live television audience Griffith beat Paret to death, pounding the defenseless champion against the ropes in the twelfth round. Paret was taken from the ring unconscious, and he died a week later in the hospital. In 1963 featherweight champion Davy Moore fought Sugar Ramos for the world title. Moore fought gamely through nine and a half rounds; then Ramos unleashed a two-fisted attack that ended with Moore falling into a corner and striking the back of his head against a ring post. Moore died two days later, and the call to ban boxing resumed.

Heavyweights

The heavyweight division dominated boxing interest during the 1960s, and with good cause. It was the decade of Muhammad Ali, a talented boxer and a remarkable sports personality capable of taking full advantage of the expanded arena provided by the media. Cassius Clay won the gold medal in boxing at the 1960 Olympics in Rome, and he promptly turned pro. He was handsome, skilled, fast, and flashy. He seemed to enjoy himself both in and out of the ring, and he had a brash yet engaging personality, in stark contrast to the sullen and silent Sonny Liston, who had been a gangland enforcer and looked the part, or the shy, self-effacing champion Floyd Patterson, who brought disguises to his second and third fights against Ingemar Johannson so he could slip out of the boxing arena without embarrassment should he lose.

The Bear

After Patterson hung on to the championship by beating Johannsen in their second (a fifty-round knockout on 20 June 1960) and third fights (a sixth-round knockout on 13 March 1961), it was Liston's turn. He was 25 pounds heavier than Patterson, who weighed only 189 pounds for the fight, and he had a ferocious attitude enforced with a devastating left jab and left hook. In their first fight in Chicago on 4 December 1961, Liston knocked Patterson out in two minutes, six seconds of the first round before a live audience of 18,894 and a closed-circuit audience of more than 700,000. It was the third fastest knockout in heavyweight championship history. In their rematch on 23 July 1963 Liston took two minutes, ten seconds to knock out Patterson before a live audience of 8,000 fans and closed-circuit audiences in some 160 locations throughout the nation who paid over $2 million to view the action.

TWO BOXERS OUT OF THE RING

It was commonly held during the 1950s that boxing attracted a bad element. At the beginning of the decade about one-third of all active fighters had criminal records. Boxing is not for choirboys, defenders argued.

Oscar Bonavena was not a choirboy. He was a brawling heavyweight from Argentina who was good enough to give Muhammad Ali a tough fif-teen-round fight in December 1968 and to knock Joe Frazier down twice, but he fell short of championship caliber. Like many professional boxers, he had a giant sexual appetite that was not ternpered by good sense. Bonavena liked the girls at the Mustang Ranch, the legal brothel near Reno, Nevada, especially the owner's wife, Sally Con-forte. Her husband Joe, described as a "proud Sicilian" by his friends and as a mobster by the police, was not prudish when it came to his wife's liaisons with other men, but Joe Conforte did not like Bonavena.

On 16 May 1969 someone broke into Bonavena's trailer and stole some of his personal papers. Apparently believing that Joe Conforte had arranged the break-in, the hot-tempered Bonavena showed up at the Mustang Ranch six days later and demanded to see the owner, or else. One of Conferte's men, a former con, chose the latter option: he shot Bonavena in the chest with a .30-06 rifle and killed him. The gunman, Willard Rose Brymer, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and served two years in prison.

Bob Foster was light heavyweight champion from 1968 to 1974. He won the title and proved his worthiness of it by being the first man to knock out Dick Tiger. Foster went on to defend the title a record fourteen times. His first defense against Frankie DePaula, a five-to-one underdog, was meant to be routine. DePaula came out swinging in the first round and with his first flurry knocked the new champion down. Fostergot up and started to work. He knocked DePaula down three times before the round was over. The referee stopped the fight, awarding Foster a TKO.

DcPaula had been a respectable fighter before his match with Foster, but afterward training, which had never been his strong point, seemed to be too much trouble, especially when there was better money to be made outside the ring. In May 1969 DePaula was tried for hijacking $ 75,000 worth of copper ingots from the Port Newark docks. He was acquitted on charges of theft and possession of stolen property, but the jury was unable to reach a verdict on the charge of conspiracy. While awaiting retrial in June 1970, DcPaula was shot and killed in his girlfriend's apartment. He had apparently bought some drugs from a local hood and refused to pay. "He was the kind of kid you knew from the beginning was gonna end up like Swiss cheese/mused his trainer, Al Braverman. "By that I mean, he had to get shot. He was that kind of crazy, crazy human being."

Source:

Nigel Collins. Boxing Babylon (New York: Citadel, 1990).

Liston and Carbo

Liston was an unpopular champion. He had a criminal record and was known to have connections with organized crime. Indeed, Frankie Carbo owned a 50 percent interest in Liston's boxing career and promoted his fights indirectly from jail. As a result of his criminal connections, Liston was denied a license to fight in many states. Liston was also functionally illiterate and felt uncomfortable among reporters, unlike his first challenger after Patterson, Cassius Clay.

The "Louisville Lip."

Clay, called the "Louisville Lip" after his hometown and his loquacious manner, was given no chance against Liston by outsiders. He was young, innocent by contrast with his opponent, and seemed hysterical before the fight. Liston was supremely confident and apparently prepared himself to go no more than four rounds. Clay had calmed by fight time, and when the bell rang he delivered on his prefight promise to "float like a butterfly and sting like a bee." He proved himself a superior boxer, dancing rings around Liston and frustrating the champion's attempts to land a haymaker left. By the end of the third round Liston was exhausted, and in the corner he asked his manager for the secret weapon, eye-stinging liniment that was rubbed on his gloves. At the end of the fourth round Clay was blinded by the liniment, and he continued the fight only at the urging of his manager. He danced through the fifth round, and Liston was unable to capitalize. In the sixth Clay was back in full form, punishing the champion. Liston sat on the stool in his corner for the seventh, a mouse under his left eye but otherwise unmarked. He was too tired to go on. Liston's handlers sought to counter charges that the fight was fixed or that their fighter was a quitter by claiming Liston had torn a muscle in his left arm early in the fight, but it was a story believed only by those who wanted an excuse.

Down and Out

In a rematch in Las Vegas on 25 February 1964 Liston went down in the first minute of the first round the first time he was hit. Clay stood over him, gesturing and daring him to get up, but Liston stayed down for a long count. Because Clay would not retreat to a neutral corner, the referee did not begin marking Liston's time on the canvas for nine seconds. But Liston wanted no more. In subsequent years he continued to fight and had more brushes with the law. He died under mysterious circumstances in 1970, perhaps of a drug overdose.

Muhammad Ali

After his first fight with Liston, Cassius Clay announced that he had joined the Nation of Islam, known as the Black Muslims, and that he had abandoned his slave name Clay. He called himself Cassius X briefly until Muslim leader Elijah Muhammad changed his name to Muhammad Ali. Boxing fans were outraged, but Ali had only begun his assault on white culture. After the second Liston fight he was classified 1-A by his draft board. Claiming exemption because of his religion and because he was a conscientious objector, Ali refused to accept the authority of the government to draft him. "Keep asking me, no matter how long. / On the war in Viet Nam, / I sing this song / I ain't got no quarrel with the Viet Cong" was All's statement on the matter. He fought what he called his bum-of-the-month schedule (inviting comparison with Joe Louis, who first used the phrase), dispatching Eddie Machen, George Chuvalo (twice), Floyd Patterson, Henry Cooper, Doug Jones, Brian London, Karl Mildenberger, Cleveland Williams, Ernie Terrei, and Zora Foley in a two-year period before the federal courts challenged him. On April Fools' Day 1967 Ali was formally ordered to report for induction into the armed services. He refused, and on 20 June he was found guilty of draft evasion.

Frazer's Rise

The appeals process took nearly three years, and during that time Ali was banned from the ring. He was still champion in the view of most fight fans though. While many considered his behavior obnoxious, clearly Ali had a magnetic charm uncommon among boxers. Joe Frazier was the dominant heavyweight during the last years of the decade, but he had to wait for Ali's return before he was accepted as a great boxer, and he had to beat Ali before he was considered a champion.

Sources:

Sam Andre and Nat Fleischer, A Pictorial History of Boxing (Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel, 1987);

Jeffrey T. Sammons, Beyond the Ring: The Role of Boxing in American Society (Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988).

BOXING

The Next Most Popular Sport

Boxing was Americas second most popular sport, next to baseball, in the 1930s, though much of the attraction had a lot to do with the heavy gambling that accompanied the bouts. But if a fight were going to be a sensational one—even in the lean years of the Depression—fans tried to scrape up good money to see it. The Depression did hurt gate receipts, but radio also cut into profits as more and more Americans tuned in to ringside coverage. The career of Joe Louis paralleled the rise of boxing on the wireless and contributed significantly to the popularity of other sports reported over the new medium.

Revolving Champions

With the retirement of Gene Tunney the heavyweight title remained vacant from August 1928 to June 1930, while a series of elimination bouts to determine the new champion were fought. Max Schmeling won the championship when Jack Sharkey was disqualified for a foul in the finals of the elimination tournament. In the next seven years the title changed hands four times: Jack Sharkey beat Schmeling in 1932; Primo Camera beat Sharkey in 1933; Max Baer beat Carnera in 1934; and James J. Braddock beat Baer in 1935. Joe Louis took the title from Braddock in June 1937 and retained the championship until he retired in 1949,

Would-Be Heavyweights

The best of the light heavyweights gave up their titles to compete as heavy-weights. Maxey Rosenbloom was a skillful fighter, but he lacked a punch. He made up in experience for what he lacked in power. A veteran of 285 bouts between 1925 and 1939, Rosenbloom held the title from 1930 to 1934, when he was outpointed by Bob Olin, In 1935 Olin lost a punishing fifteen-round decision to John Henry Lewis, who defended twice before vacating the title in 1938 for a chance at Joe Louis. Lewis was knocked out in the first round. Melio Bettina won the elimination tournament to determine a successor to Lewis in February 1939 and held the title for seven months before he was outpointed by Billy Conn, regarded as one of the best light heavy-weights in history. He promptly resigned to prepare for a fight with Louis in which he acquitted himself well before the champ knocked him out in the thirteenth round. That 1941 match, the first of two championship fights between Louis and Conn, was considered one the most credible challenges to Louis's title,

Middleweights

In 1931 Mickey Walker resigned the middleweight championship he had held since 1926, claiming he could no longer make the 160-pound weight limit; the next month, fighting at 169 pounds, he fought a fifteen-round draw with heavyweight contender Jack Sharkey, and in the next year he won four of six heavy-weight fights, all against legitimate contenders. In a confusing tournament to determine Walker's successor, Gorilla Jones was recognized as the National Boxing Association (NBA) champion, and Ben Jeby was recognized as the title holder in New York. Jones was disqualified for a foul in the eleventh round of a fight against Frenchman Marcel Thil in Paris, and although Thil defeated the British and German champions in due course, he was stripped of his title by the NBA for inactivity. Ben Jeby then emerged as champion by the end of 1932, though he was recognized in the United States alone. In a volatile division, Lou Brouillard (1933), Vince Dundee (1933), Teddy Yarosz (1934), Babe Risko (1935), Freddy Steele (1936), Al Hostack (1938, 1939), and Solly Krieger (1938) were all heirs to Jeby's suspect crown. Fred Apostoli, one of the strongest fighters in the division during the 1930s, further complicated matters. He had beaten Thil in 1937, when the Frenchman was regarded as champion outside the United States. Apostoli also beat Steele in 1937 in an overweight match, and, when Steele refused a rematch for the championship, the New York Commission awarded Apostoli its version of the championship. Apostoli was knocked out by Ceferino Garcia in 1939 for the New York title.

Welterweights

Tommy Freeman (1930), Young Jack Thompson (1931), Lou Brouillard (1931), Jackie Fields (1932), and Young Corbett III (1933) all held the welter-weight championship in a division that lacked excitement until Jimmy McLarnin and Barney Ross arrived at the top. Hard-hitting McLarnin, whose punishment of lightweight Poncho Villa in 1925 had caused the Filipino fighter's death, took the title from Corbett with a first-round knockout in June 1933. Eleven months later in a well-promoted match, Barney Ross, who had given up his lightweight championship to campaign as a welter-weight, took the title in a fifteen-round decision. That was the first of three fifteen-round fights between Ross and McLarnin; in September 1934 McLarnin regained his title, but in May 1935 Ross took the title and held on to it for the next three years, while McLarnin retired after three more fights against other contenders. In May 1938 Ross was defeated by Henry Armstrong, who was also the reigning featherweight champ and who won the light-weight championship in August. Armstrong held the welterweight title for two years.

Lightweights

Among the lightweights, the stars of the division were Tony Canzoneri, Lou Ambers, Ross, and Armstrong. When in 1935 Ross vacated the title he won from Canzoneri in 1933, Canzoneri regained the championship in a hard fifteen-round match with top contender Ambers, but in a 1936 rematch Ambers prevailed. Armstrong took his title in 1938 before 18,340 fans at Madison Square Garden, but Ambers won a rematch in August 1939 with a fifteen-round decision.

Below the Belt

Early in the decade the heavyweight crown was tainted by many scandals. Max Schmeling of Germany won the title in 1930 on a questionable below the-belt punch from Jack Sharkey. Sharkey won on points in a long, uneventful rematch two years later. Sportswriters quipped that Schmeling had won the title lying down and lost it standing up. The Italian Primo Camera, a boxer of questionable skills, became the next heavyweight champion in June 1933, due largely to his underworld connections (gangster Owney Madden owned him). All of Camera's fights leading up to the heavyweight match were fixed, and some believed Sharkey took a fall, though most boxing writers turned their heads to the fraud. In June 1934 Max Baer dropped Camera to the floor eleven times in eleven rounds to put the title in legitimate hands, finally.

Emergence of Joe Louis

Joe Louis, a black fighter from Detroit, won twelve of his fights in 1934, his first year as a professional, knocking out ten of his opponents. He was the most exciting heavyweight boxer of the day. Jim Braddock, a boxer, in the words of sports historian John Kieran, with "a broken past and a dreary future … a washed-up fighter on his way out," upset Baer in June 1935 and sat on his title for two years. Louis, Baer, and Schmeling all vied for the opportunity to challenge Braddock. Louis won fight after fight and got to meet Carnera, who had at least learned a little during his spotted career. He outweighed Louis considerably; but Louis brought him down in the sixth round in June 1935. Baer was also sitting down, bruised and dazed, when he took the count in the fourth round in his fight with Louis in September 1935. Schmeling knocked out an over-confident and undertrained Louis in twelve rounds in June 1936, but he never got a title match with Braddock.

Second Louis-Schmeling

After defeating jack Sharkey (August 1936), Louis earned a match with an aging Braddock, who finally realized that his career was slipping away. Though Braddock knocked Louis down for a two count, Louis put him away easily in the eighth round of the championship fight in Chicago on 22 June 1937, Schmeling, who once employed a Jewish manager but now had joined the Nazi Party, finally agreed to meet Louis after two years. The grudge match occurred on 23 June 1938, and it was clearly over from the minute it started. Louis flattened Schmeling three times in two minutes and four seconds before eighty thousand fans at Yankee Stadium. Wrote James P. Dawson of The New York Times—in a few carefully chosen words—"The German exchampion threw exactly two punches. That is how completely the Bomber established his mastery in this second struggle with the Black Uhlan."

Sources:

Sam Andre and Nat Fleisher, A Pictorial History of Boxing, revised edition (Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel, 1987);

Allison Danzig and Peter Brandwein, eds.? The Greatest Sport Stories from the New York Times (New York: Barnes, 1951).

BOXING

The Champ

During the 1970s the sport of boxing was Muhammad Ali, and Ali was boxing. At the beginning of the decade, on 20 June 1970, Ali's five-year jail sentence for his refusal to join the army was reversed, and in September of that year his boxing license was restored. Ali came back from his three-year exile having been stripped of his heavyweight championship but loudly proclaiming himself "The People's Champion." It was no idle boast: Ali's extraordinary popularity cut across racial lines. Many whites saw in Ali the reincarnation of Joe Louis, the great heavyweight champion who during his reign seemed to move easily and comfortably among white fans. Yet unlike Louis, Ali brought to his public-relations campaign an eloquence rarely seen among athletes practicing such a brutish sport. His desire to speak out on issues of race did not seem to pose a threat to the white community, for Ali attached wit to everything he did both in and out of the ring; many whites simply tuned out the controversial Ali and chose to instead tune in Ali the funnyman—his ring predictions issued in rhyme and his constant clowning with sportscaster Howard Cosell. To African-Americans, however, Ali was a leader and a spokesman. He preached a Black Muslim message of revolutionary change within the African-American community, and he became a kind of unofficial statesman representing the interests of the American black community during his visits to African and Muslim countries. As he had in the late 1960s, he loudly denounced the Vietnam War and publicly questioned why a disproportionate number of ghetto blacks were carrying the burden of fighting the war. Surrounding Ali was not only the sound of fans applauding his skill but also the shrill voices of students, Black Muslims, and white bigots demonstrating in favor of or against the pronouncements of Ali. No other high-profile athlete addressed the social controversies and politics of his era in such an outspoken fashion as did Ali.

Stars

In the ring Ali returned the heavyweight division to lofty heights, remaking it boxing's premier weight division. The heavyweight division was deep in talent and, with Ali in one corner, put on some of boxing's most memorable fights: "The Fight of the Century," "The Rumble in the Jungle," "The Thrilla in Manila." Black athletes continued to dominate the division, with the likes of Joe Frazier, Ken Norton, and George Foreman. The white boxing fan's "Great White Hope" during the early part of the decade was Jerry Quarry. In Ali's 26 October 1970 return to the ring, however, Ali knocked out Quarry in the third round. He bloodied the face of the Great White Hope again in a 1972 Las Vegas bout.

The Fight

In 1971 Ali got his title shot against reigning heavyweight champion "Smokin"' Joe Frazier of Philadelphia. Frazier, unlike the dancing and jabbing Ali, came straight at his often-taller opponents with devastating punching power and a furious determination to fight toe-to-toe. The prefight hoopla was extraordinary, and both fighters were guaranteed an unprecedented $2.5 million each to face off in what was being billed as "The Fight of the Century." It took place in New York's Madison Square Garden on 8 March, and from the first round on the fight met nearly everyone's expectations. Through much of the fifteen-round bout Ali used his superior mobility to evade Frazier. In the eleventh round, how-ever, Frazier caught up to Ali and took control of the fight; in the final round Frazier floored Ali—the first time in Ali's career he had been knocked down. Frazier won the fight in a unanimous decision, but both fighters, having taken severe beatings, ended up in the hospital.

Foreman

Coached and advised by Joe Louis and Archie Moore and trained by former featherweight great Sandy Saddler, George Foreman in 1973 challenged Frazier for the championship. Foreman was the strongest, most devastating puncher of his era, and he was also a popular challenger. Middle America remembered Foreman as the fighter who during the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City waved a small American flag inside the ring. Unlike Ali, Foreman went punch-for-punch against Frazier in the January 1973 bout fought in Kingston, Jamaica, and knocked the champion down six times before the fight was stopped in the second round. Two months later, on 31 March, Ken Norton beat Ali, breaking his jaw and taking a twelve-round decision. The heavyweight division had become a rumble in which two of the best the sport had ever seen—Ali and Frazier—had been reduced to challengers. The two men met once again in a 28 January 1974 bout held in Madison Square Garden, Ali dancing, jabbing, and outpointing Frazier to win "The Fight IF in twelve rounds.

Rumble in the Jungle

Once again the number one challenger, Ali in January 1974 met champ George Foreman in a title fight held in Kinshasa, Zaire. Called "The Rumble in the Jungle," the fight guaranteed Ali a career-high payday of $5,450,000. Yet sportswriters prior to the fight had begun to question whether Ali had the will—and the jaw—to stand up to Foreman's punching power. Few believed that this time around Ali could back up his bravado, and fans wondered whether perhaps this would be a career-ending fight. Through most of the fight Ali stayed on the ropes, covering up as Foreman unloaded with heavy hitting. Ali's strategy, which he called the "ropadope," was to wait on the ropes until Foreman had turned punch-weary and then go on the attack. In the eighth round Ali emerged from the ropadope cover-up and flattened Foreman with a long right. This fight more than any other established Ali as "The Greatest," for it erased all doubt concerning Ali's punching power and his ability to stand up under heavy hitting.

Three-Time Champ

On 30 September 1975 Ali faced Frazier for the third time in what was called "The Thrilla in Manila." Ali took the fight to Frazier in this memorable bout, and in the fourteenth round Frazier's corner ended the fight. Ali had taken on the appearance of being invincible, and his superman image was furthered by his seeming desire to take on and beat all comers. From 1976 to 1977 Ali defended his belt a grueling eight times in nineteen months. By 1978, however, these bouts—many of which were televised by ABC-TV and commentator Howard Cosell—were beginning to wear on Ali. In February 1978 Leon Spinks upset Ali in a fifteen-round decision. Ali, however, reclaimed his crown eight months later by outpointing Spinks, winning the championship an unprecedented three times. Ali retired afterward, but in 1980 he launched another comeback that proved unsuccessful—and unpopular among boxing fans who preferred to remember Ali in his heyday, rather than the overweight, punch-drunk fighter he had become.

Leonard

With Ali out of the picture, heavyweight boxing in America lost much of its allure. Attention once again was focused on lighter-weight classes. Welter-weight Sugar Ray Leonard had created a sensation with his gold-medal performance at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, and by the end of the decade fight fans were anticipating a matchup between him and Panama's Roberto Duran, in 1980 considered to be, pound-for-pound, boxing's greatest. The Leonard-Duran wars of the 1980s kept interest in boxing alive, while an up-and-comer in the middleweight division, Marvin Hagler, was emerging as U.S. boxing's new hope. Many of the sport's fans, however, were gradually being alienated as network-television coverage of boxing decreased and more and more of the great fights were being shown on closed-circuit and cable television.

BOXING

The Rise in Popularity

Throughout all weight divisions, from flyweight to heavyweight, the 1920s produced splendid boxers, including two of the greatest fighters of all time: heavyweight Jack Dempsey and light-weight Benny Leonard. Before World War I, boxing in the United States had been largely regarded as disreputable, practiced by rough characters in saloons and attracting spectators of uncertain character. After the war many of the laws that had banned boxing were rescinded, and the sport was brought under the control of commissions intended to reduce the undesirable criminal and gambling elements so often associated with it. With legal impediments lifted, boxing spread rapidly throughout the country and became one of the popular athletic spectacles for both the privileged classes and the common man.

Dempsey's and Rickard's Long Shadows

Jack Dempsey was one of the most compelling boxers in the ring and thus contributed to the rising interest in the sport during the decade. Promoter Tex Rickard helped elevate the financial rewards for boxers and bring a new glamour to their matches. The undisputed champion of boxing promoters, he produced the first million-dollar gate in the Dempsey-Georges Carpentier fight and then set up later matches that generated even more revenue. For the second Dempsey-Gene Tunney fight in 1927 the gate was more than $2 million, with Tunney receiving the record sum of $990,445 as his cut. Rickard's efforts increased the "take" of fighters in general as well as turning boxing into a sport that drew larger and larger crowds throughout the decade.

The Lighter Weights

In the flyweight class (not over 112 pounds), Frankie Genaro, Pancho Villa, and Fidel LaBarba, a gold medalist in the 1924 Paris Olympics, were three standout fighters. Among the bantamweights (not over 118 pounds) Panama Al Brown, Pete Herman, and Joe Lynch were three of the best. The featherweight class (not over 126 pounds) was loaded with talent: Johnny Dundee, Eugene Criqui (a Frenchman), Louis "Kid" Kaplan, Benny Bass, and Christopher "Battling" Battalino, who won the title in September 1928 and held it until March 1932. In the lightweight class (not over 135 pounds) Benny Leonard is ranked as one of the greatest fighters of all time. On 28 May 1917 at age twenty-one, Leonard won the world lightweight championship by knocking out Freddie Welsh at the Manhattan Athletic Club in the ninth round. Leonard held onto his title for the next seven years and retired undefeated. Among his most memorable bouts were those with lefthander Lew Tendier. They first fought on 27 July 1922 at Boyle's Thirty Acres in Jersey City. Tendier buckled Leonard's knees with a smashing left in the eighth round, nearly knocking him out. Leonard, struggling to maintain his feet, held on to his opponent and asked if that was as hard as he could hit. Tendier, evidently surprised by the remark, did not take advantage of his opportunity, and Leonard won by a decision. In their next bout in 1923 Leonard won easily. The welterweight division (not over 147 pounds) included several excellent fighters. Edward "Mickey" Walker won the title in a fifteen-round decision over Jack Britton in New York in 1922. Four years later, on 20 May 1926, Pete Latzo decisioned Walker for the welterweight crown in Scranton, Pennsylvania, only to lose on 3 June 1927 to Johnny Dundee in New York. In 1929 Jackie Fields took the title from Dundee in Detroit.

The Middleweights and Heavier

Among the middle-weights (not over 160 pounds) were Tiger Flowers, Mickey Walker (who had moved up from the welter-weight division), and Harry Greb. Flowers, the first black to hold the title, defeated Greb for the championship in February 1926, successfully defended against Greb in August in a fifteen-round decision, and then lost in Chicago to Walker on 3 December 1926 in a controversial ten-round decision. In addition to Gene Tunney—who relinquished his light-heavyweight crown on 23 February 1923 to enter, in 1925, the heavyweight division—the light-heavyweight division (175 pounds) featured memorable fighters. Mike McTigue defeated the Senegalese Battling Siki for the crown on 17 March 1923 (Saint Patrick's Day) in Dublin, Ireland. The light-heavyweight title passed from McTigue to Paul Berlenbach to Jack Delaney to Tommy Loughran, who won it in New York on 7 October 1927 and retained it for nearly two years until he moved up to the heavyweight division.

The Heavyweights

The heavyweights have always had more crowd appeal than boxers in other weight classes, and Dempsey and Tunney were the dominant figures of the decade. Dempsey was heavyweight champion from 4 July 1919 until 23 September 1926, a remarkable seven years. Tunney beat Dempsey twice and, defending his title only once, retained the heavyweight crown from 23 September 1926 until his retirement in August 1928. Jack Sharkey became the third heavyweight champion of the decade when, on 27 February 1929, he won a ten-round decision over William L. "Young" Stribling. The Golden Age of boxing was over.

RECEIPTS AND ATTENDANCE FOR DEMPSEY'S MAJOR
CHAMPIONSHIP FIGHTS

DEMPSEY-WILLARD

Official gross $1,188,603

4 July 1919, Bay View Park Arena, Toledo, Ohio

Dempsey's share (including movies)—$509,000

Scheduled for Twelve Rounds

Firpo's share $156,250

RESULT: The bout ended when Willard could not answer the bell for the fourth round.

Promoter Tex Rickard

Official attendance 19,650

DEMPSEY-TUNNEY

Official gross $452,224

26 September 1926, Sesquicentennial Stadium, Philadelphia

Willlard's share $100,100 guarantee

Scheduled for Ten Rounds

Dempsey's share $27,500 guarantee

RESULT: Tunney won a ten-round decision.

Promoters Tex Rickard and Frank Flournoy

Official attendance 120,757

DEMPSEY-CARPENTIER

Official gross $1,195,733

2 July 1921, Boyle's Thirty Acres, Jersey City, New Jersey.

Dempsey's share $717,000

Scheduled for Twelve Rounds

Tunney's share $200,000

RESULT: Dempsey knocked out Carpentier in the fourth round.

Promoter Tex Rickard

DEMPSEY-TUNNEY

Official attendance 80,183

22 September 1927, Soldiers Field, Chicago

Official gross $1,789,238

Scheduled for Ten Rounds

Dempsey's share (guaranteed) $300,000

RESULT: Tunney won a ten-round decision.

Dempsey's share (from movies) $4,000

Official attendance 104,943

Carpentier' share (guaranteed) $200,000

Official gross $2,658,660

Promoter Tex Rickard

Dempsey's share $425,000, plus $25,000 from film rights

DEMPSEY-FIRPO

14 September 1923, Polo Grounds, New York

Tunney's share $990,445

Scheduled for Fifteen Rounds

Promoter—Tex Rickard

RESULT: Dempsey knocked out Firpo in second
round.

Official attendance - 82,000

Source:

Nat Fleischer, Jack Dempsey (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington Houce, 1972).

Sources:

James P. Dawson, "Boxing," in Sport's Golden Age, edited by Allison Danzig and Peter Brandwein (New York: Harper, 1948), pp. 38 85;

The Encyclopedia of Sports, fourth edition, edited by Frank G. Menke (New York: Barnes, 1969).

BOXING

Boxing's Brutal Legacy

In the 1900s boxing, or prizefighting, still held much of its nineteenth-century character. For much of the century pugilists had fought under the London, or Broughton, Rules, with bare fists, battering each other through endless rounds until only one combatant remained standing. Offended by the sport's brutality and its association with blood sports such as cockfighting, as well as crime, gambling, drinking, and prostitution, Victorian society instituted strict prohibitions against it. Although illegal, prizefights were held in back rooms of saloons, on secluded riverboats, and in isolated frontier towns. In 1890 New Orleans legalized prizefighting under the rules formulated in 1867 by the marquess of Queensbury, an English aristocrat and sportsman. Aimed at reducing boxing's brutality, these rules required the use of gloves, prohibited wrestling holds, limited rounds to three minutes, and provided for ten-second knockouts. In 1892 New Orleans held the first heavyweight championship under these rules between James J. Corbett and John L. Sullivan, who had held the heavyweight title since 1882. Corbett knocked out Sullivan in the twenty-first round and became the first heavyweight champion under the Queensbury Rules. With Corbett's victory the bareknuckle era in prizefighting came to an end. Adoption of the Queensbury Rules, however, did not immediately curb boxing's brutality, since the rules did not limit the number of rounds in a bout. The sport remained illegal in most of the country until the 1920s.

Heavyweights

In the 1900s, as throughout boxing history, the heavyweight division garnered the most attention from aficionados. In 1897 Corbett lost the title to Robert Fitzsimmons, a lean but powerful Englishman, who held the title until 1899, when James J. Jeffries, a former Ohio iron worker, knocked him out in eleven rounds at New York's Coney Island. The bout was Jeffries's thirteenth professional fight; no fighter before him had won the heavyweight crown with less ring experience. On several occasions between 1900 and 1903 Jeffries defended his title against challenges from both Corbett and Fitzsimmons. In 1904 Jeffries retired from boxing, vacating the heavyweight crown. On 3 July 1905 Marvin Hart, the son of a Kentucky farmer, defeated Jack Root, the former middleweight champion, for the heavyweight crown. Denied recognition as the world heavy-weight champion by sportswriters because he had not defeated the previous titleholder, Hart fought the leading contender, Tommy Burns, in 1906. Burns, a French Canadian, won a twenty-round decision.

African Americans Enter the Ring

Prior to 1900 several African Americans had gained notoriety as bareknuckle fighters; the most outstanding of these pugilists was Tom Molyneux, a freed Virginia slave, who had defeated the English champion Tom Cribbs in 1810. The leading white prizefighters refused to confront their counterparts of African heritage in the ring. Sullivan, for example, successfully avoided fighting Peter Jackson, a powerful African Australian, who was considered the leading heavyweight contender. In 1903 Jack Johnson emerged as a contender for the heavyweight title, but Jeffries, and later Hart, refused to fight him. Burns, however, fought Johnson on 26 December 1908 in Sydney, Australia, where the African American won a fourteen-round decision to become the first world heavyweight champion of African descent. For most white American boxing fans, a black heavyweight champion was intolerable, and they began looking for an able white contender. On 4 July 1910 Jeffries came out of retirement, only to become one of several "Great White Hopes" to fall victim to Johnson's powerful blows. Johnson would hold the title until suffering a twenty-six-round knockout by Jess Willard on 5 April 1915 in Havana, Cuba.

Joe Walcott, Joe Gans, and the Dixie Kid

The 1900s witnessed the rise of other champion African American pugilists. Joe Walcott, Aaron "Dixie Kid" Brown, and Billy "Honey" Mellody dominated the welterweight division. Walcott, a West Indies emigrant who began boxing professionally in 1890, established himself as a leading contender for the world welterweight title with wins over former titlist Billy Smith. On 18 December 1901 Walcott captured the world welterweight title by knocking out defending champion Rube Ferns. On 30 April 1904 he lost the title to the Dixie Kid on a disqualification after twenty rounds. Twelve days later they fought to a twenty-round draw, and the Dixie Kid retained the title. Later in the year Brown vacated the welterweight title, having surpassed the 147-pound weight limit. Walcott, the top contender, assumed the welterweight crown and fought Joe Gans on 30 September 1904. Since the bout ended in a draw, Walcott remained the champion. In 1906 he lost the title to Mellody, who lost to Mike Sullivan the following year. Although he failed to win the welterweight title, Gans, reportedly the son of African American baseball player Joseph Butts, held the lightweight title from 1902 to 1908. In 1905 he contracted tuberculosis but successfully defended his title until suffering a seventeenth-round knockout by Oscar "Battling" Nelson on 4 July 1908 in San Francisco. Gans retired from the ring in 1909.

Other Divisions

In 1903 Lou Houseman, a Chicago newspaperman and boxing promoter, suggested the creation of the light heavyweight division with a weight limit of 175 pounds. He advocated this new division because Jack Root, whom he managed, had outgrown the middleweight division but was still too light for the heavyweight division. On 22 April 1903 Houseman arranged for Root to fight Charles "Kid" McCoy to determine the first titleholder of the new weight class. Root defeated McCoy easily and held the light heavyweight title until relinquishing it on 4 July to George Gardner, who knocked him out in the twelfth round. Gardner held the title five months, when former heavyweight champion Fitzsimmons won on points after twenty rounds. On 20 December 1905 Jack O'Brien knocked Fitzsimmons out in a thirteen-round bout and held the title until 1912. Tommy Ryan dominated the middleweight division for much of the 1900s, holding the title from 1897 to 1907. Upon his retirement in 1907 Ryan vacated the title, and Stanley Ketchel fought and defeated Billy Papke to claim it. Abe Attell, also known as the "Little Hebrew," dominated the featherweight division from 1905 to 1912.

Sources:

Nat Fleischer and Sam Andre, A Pictorial History of Boxing, revised edition (New York: Carol, 1993);

Elliot J. Gorn, The Manly Art: Bareknuckle Prize Fighting in America (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986);

Jeffrey T. Sammons, Beyond the Ring: The Role of Boxing in American Society (Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988).

boxing Forget the euphemistic ‘noble art of self-defence’; boxing is a human bloodsport in which the intention is to hurt one's opponents by delivering blows to their body and ultimately knocking them unconscious. It sanctions injury in the name of sport.

That said, modern boxing appears almost genteel alongside its prizefighting predecessor in which bareknuckled pugilists fought to exhaustion, with fights often lasting several hours. A round ended only when one combatant was floored; he then had half a minute's respite before placing his toe on a line scratched across the centre of the ring and resuming battle. Not until one fighter failed ‘to come up to scratch’ was a result declared: no wins on points in those days, just the objective test of an inability to continue. Early rounds were often hard slogging contests but the real physical damage came in the later stages when tiredness slowed defensive reflexes. Imagine too the state of even the winner's hands, protected only by having been soaked in brine.

With their combination of boxing and wrestling moves, early contests were literally ‘no holds barred’; grappling, punching, tripping, and throwing all being used to floor an opponent. The widely-adopted Broughton's Rules of 1743 eradicated some of the barbarism by outlawing the hitting of a man when he was down, and the seizing of hair or the body below the waist, but they still permitted butting. Yet it was not the brutality of the prize-ring which brought its demise, but the corruption with which it became associated.

The revival of the sport as boxing in late Victorian Britain saw several changes designed to render it more civilized. Although some of the old practices continued for a while — even the famous Queensbury Rules initially allowed endurance contests — by the turn of the century the general picture was one of boxing in gloves, limited-time rounds, points decisions after a fixed number of rounds had elapsed, and weight divisions, though the latter have accentuated problems of dehydration as fighters struggle to ‘make the weight’.

For much of the twentieth century the history of boxing has been one of crumbling resistance to changes intended to protect further the brains and bodies of participants. Between 1984 and 1993 eight boxers had died soon after fights in the UK; bantamweight Bradley Stone was added to the list in 1994. Following a report from a medical working party, which included neurosurgeons, the British Boxing Board of Control subsequently introduced mandatory annual magnetic resonance imaging scans for all boxers to replace the less sophisticated computerized tomography which had been compulsory only for those fighting eight rounds or more. Additionally, any boxer knocked out must wait 45 days (previously 28) before he again enters the ring competitively, and he must also have a hospital check. Ringside doctors may advise referees on a fighter's condition between rounds and may recommend that the contest be stopped. Doctors also examine each boxer at the conclusion of fights and paramedic teams must be on hand at all boxing bills.

The medical profession in several countries has increasingly adopted an anti-boxing stance, citing irreversible brain damage as its major objection to the sport. This is a key point for, in absolute terms of deaths and serious injuries, other sports such as horseracing, mountaineering, rugby, and even cricket appear more dangerous, but in none of them is deliberate and repeated striking of an opponent part of the rules of the game. In contrast a boxer has a licence for physical assault. The evidence is clear that repeated pummelling to the head can cause cumulative damage to the brain: here time is no great healer. Occasionally, acute brain injury can occur during a fight. The greatest danger comes towards the end when a tired man with a loose neck has his head flipped back rapidly by a punch. This can tear a vein outside or inside the brain, which then leaks blood, causing pressure on the brain and eventually leading to a coma. Only if the clot is removed rapidly can the fighter survive. Fighters now train harder; their bod-ies are fitter — but their brains are no more resilient than in the past. Some nations, notably Sweden, have already banned boxing on medical grounds.

So far the British government has been reluctant to follow the Swedish lead and since 1981 five private members' anti-boxing Bills proposed in parliament have failed to reach the statute books. Most schools, both state and public, however, have dropped boxing from their physical education curriculum. Yet it should be noted that amateur boxing is exceptionally well regulated: not more than four rounds are fought, headguards are worn, and the referee is allowed to stop a fight to prevent serious injury. However, headguards, whilst absorbing energy from punches, present an even larger target to be hit and thus the number of blows striking home may well increase. Indeed, studies have shown that non-boxing sportsmen outperform even amateur fighters in neurological tests and, notwithstanding the safety precautions, three amateur fighters have suffered serious brain injury in British rings since 1988.

For centuries boxing has been the epitome of overt masculinity, a demonstration of manliness and its embodying characteristics of courage, toleration of pain, and self-discipline. Women were merely ornaments displaying the round cards. This continues, but women have successfully demanded equal rights in the ring. In Britain, girls from the age of 10 are now allowed to spar in amateur boxing gyms, and recently professionalism, too, has been recognized for women — significantly later than its acceptance in the US where fights for women have appeared on the undercard of world championship events.

The moral dilemma of boxing is that it provides an honest opportunity to escape poverty, but it also means for some a legal beating and for all the threat of permanent damage. Hitting below the belt is outlawed to protect the genitals, but surely the brain deserves even more protection, by reducing the concussive power of the boxing glove, developing safer headgear, excluding the head as a target — or by banning the sport altogether. The issue is not how hazardous boxing is but whether the hazards are acceptable.

Wray Vamplew

Bibliography

BMA (1993). The boxing debate. British Medical Association, London.

BOXING

Boxing's Allure

In many ways boxing in the 1950s had changed little since the era of John L. Sullivan: it was a sport that drew its participants from mostly urban lower-class black, Italian, and Irish neighborhoods—yet was avidly followed by both the poor and the blue bloods. The American public celebrated boxing's champs as the true sports kings, the ultimate athletes competing in the most violent sport. Yet sportswriters and fight fans, who looked to the heavyweight division to determine boxing's king of kings, feared that there was no one fighter among the ranks to assume the lofty place that Joe "The Brown Bomber" Louis had held in the 1940s.

After Joe Louis

In the immediate post-Louis years Ezzard Charles and Jersey Joe Walcott fought three times for the heavyweight championship, with Walcott taking the crown from Charles in their third fight in June 1952. The public was unimpressed. Neither man had the punching power and ring savvy that had made Louis in his prime the greatest ringmaster since Jack Dempsey. Jersey Joe held on to his title for only three months before being knocked out in Philadelphia's Municipal Stadium on 23 September by the Brockton Blockbuster, Rocky Marciano. But boxing pundits were quick to point out that Rocky was no Joe Louis, either. Marciano was slow and clumsy looking. His punches were powerfully thrown, but without finesse—or accuracy—to speak of. He had a short reach and often would have to lunge at his opponent in order to score. He led with his face. As if sensing that his absence had created a void that no other fighter could hope to fill, Joe Louis attempted a come-back, and on 26 October 1951 in Madison Square Garden was knocked out by the Rock in the eighth round. The victory did not win Marciano any more respect from the fans, who felt only pity for the aged Louis. The Rock would go on to compile a 49-0 record and retire an undefeated champ. But fight fans began to look to other weight divisions in their search for the new king of kings.

Sugar Ray and Those Fabulous Middleweights

The most talked-about fighter during the decade was a middleweight. Sugar Ray Robinson, in his time called "pound for pound the greatest fighter who ever lived," had it all: speed, toughness, devastating punching power, ring smarts. On 14 February 1951 Robinson took the middleweight championship from Jake "The Bronx Bull" LaMotta. The last fight in a series of six classics fought between the two hard hitters, it lasted thirteen rounds before the referee stopped it, Robinson having left a bloodied, swollen-faced LaMotta hanging on the ropes. During the decade, Robinson lost and regained the middleweight crown four times, winning the crown five times in all. Talent and fan attention flocked to the middle-weight division. Robinson, Rocky Graziano, Gene Fullmer, Randy Turpin, Bobo Olson, and Carmen Basilio generated millions fighting in what was the decade's premier weight division.

Televised Fights

Not every fan, however, could make it to Madison Square Garden to watch the fights, so companies looking to cash in on boxing's popularity brought the fight to the fans. In 1944 the Gillette Company had signed a contract with Madison Square Garden to sponsor weekly televised matches. By the mid 1950s in many viewing areas a fight fan could find a match on the television set any night of the week except Sunday. Televised bouts also meant better guaranteed pay for the fighters. Even the journeymen and stiffs who landed a spot in Gillette Friday night boxing's main event were paid $4,000 minimum. Phillies Cigars' Saturday night fights and Pabst Blue Ribbon's Wednesday night bouts also paid well. Before television cameras were brought into the smoke-filled fight clubs, a $40 bout, as one fighter put it, "was hitting the real jackpot." Many boxing purists, however, feared that television would ruin the sport. Television money, they argued, drew too many with too little talent into the ring. Small-time local fight promoters who had once made a comfortable living matching up bums and has-beens also took it on the chin, as many fans stayed home to watch big-name bouts.

Sources:

Sam Andre and Nat Fleischer, A Pictorial History of Boxing, revised edition (Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1987);

"Buildup to a Fight—TV Makes a Difference," Business Week (27 February 1954): 113-119.

Boxing

Boxing, traditionally a sport of the least advantaged, proved a requirement for working class youth, who often settled ethnic, religious, and racial rivalries with their fists. African-American slaves who fought for the pleasure of their masters were among the first professional prizefighters. Even after Emancipation black youths were often forced or coerced into battles royal or group fights, sometimes blindfolded, while a surrounding cordon of white onlookers offered money to the winner.

By the latter nineteenth century boxing gained a slight measure of respectability as the sport became more organized with weight class championships under the sponsorship of Richard Kyle Fox, publisher of the National Police Gazette. More importantly, boxing offered a cloak of masculinity for men during this period who perceived an increasing feminization of American culture.

Working class youths saw the sport as an opportunity for social mobility as middle-class athletic clubs, newspapers, and even religious groups supported amateur teams and tournaments in the twentieth century. Successful fighters often progressed to the professional ranks where a series of ethnic immigrant groups enjoyed success. Irish, Jewish, and Italian champions won fame and symbolized a greater degree of assimilation in American culture.

Boxing was a controversial sport, and for a time was banned in many states. New York only legalized the sport in 1920. Three years later the Chicago Tribune sponsored a major boxing tournament, eventually known as the Golden Gloves, to challenge the New York team. Both cities became centers for the sport. By 1930 the Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) joined the ranks of national boxing enterprises. The CYO team proved especially popular during the Depression, as it supplied its members with a full suit of clothes as well as medical and dental care. CYO fighters who opted for the professional ranks received guidance from program affiliated management teams. Others got jobs through the Catholic social and commercial network.

While the CYO and individual municipalities invoked age restrictions, usually age sixteen, professional boxing had (and still has) no age limitations. Wilfredo Benitez won a world championship at age seventeen. Teenage boys became heroes on local, civic, national, and international teams, often finding the esteem and recognition denied them in other spheres of life. The amateur bouts produced members of the Olympic teams and the professional ranks for the remainder of the twentieth century.

By the 1930s African-American boxers began to displace the white ethnics atop the ranks, joined by Hispanic fighters at mid-century. Girls, too, joined the amateur boxing ranks by the 1980s in training programs offered by park districts, police athletic associations, and private gyms. While most engaged in the activity in pursuit of personal fitness, a very visible minority joined the annual Golden Gloves tournaments for competition, with a select few attaining professional status in televised bouts. Though few have found material success in the pastime, boxing has assumed both historic and symbolic value in the physicality and toughness required and admired by working-class youth.

See also: Organized Recreation and Youth Groups; Sports.

bibliography

Gorn, Elliott J. 1986. The Manly Art: Bare Knuckle Prize Fighting in America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Sammons, Jeffrey T. 1990. Beyond the Ring: The Role of Boxing in American Society. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Gerald R. Gems

Boxing

Bothered and Bewildered

The sport of boxing, never tidy, was complicated and confusing during the 1990s. Much of what was not mystifying—for example, Mike Tyson biting off part of Evander Holyfield's ear during a 1997 bout—was deplorable. People began to compare professional boxing with professional wrestling, an image not helped when Tyson agreed to "referee" a wrestling match in Boston. The state of Washington broke another precedent when it sanctioned a boxing match between a man and woman—she won. It was a decade in which even boxing enthusiasts had a hard time finding positive things to say about their sport. Richard Hoffer, of Sports Illustrated, complained of the "forgettable seasons in boxing" and "unearned dollars for unexciting fights." In a fit of editorial pique, Hoffer wrote, "Holyfield zipped up to New York to meet Akinwande who had earned this title shot by … well, no one could say how." Tim Graham, writing for ESPN.com, argued that the final year of the decade with regard to boxing was "an all-time low.… [It] was rife with larceny, tragedy, gluttony, stupidity. They're all ingrained aspects of the sport, but such heavy doses of them all were enough to choke a goat." Part of the problem, in 1999, was the indictment of International Boxing Federation (IBF) president Robert W. Lee Sr. and three others for accepting bribes and soliciting payments to alter rankings and arrange fights. It was hardly a decade to inspire confidence in fans of boxing.

Unclear Titles

Part of the confusion in boxing was the result of seventeen principal weight divisions (with fighters often moving back and forth among them) and three different sanctioning bodies. Producing a chart to show the current champions required fifty-two names. In addition to the IBF there was also the World Boxing Federation (WBF) and World Boxing Council (WBC). "Undisputed" titles were rare because getting the required matches arranged were difficult. Not only did both boxers have to be ready to fight at the same time in the same ring, their promoters had to have no conflicting engagements, commitments, or contracts, and the television sponsors needed to be in concert. If one boxer was signed exclusively with Home Box Office (HBO) and another was marketed through Showtime, then that became just one more obstacle to a title bout.

In the Ring

In spite of all these impediments, some good boxing did take place. At the start of the decade, Tyson, Holyfield, Canadian Lennox Lewis (all heavy-weight fighters), Pernell Whitaker (a lightweight who moved up to welterweight), and Oscar de la Hoya (starting at lightweight, then a super lightweight and welterweight) all showed signs of having great potential, but the results were mixed. Tyson got in trouble with the law too often. De la Hoya could not decide whether to fight or run in the ring. Roy Jones Jr., however, became a fighting force; with a 14-1 record in championship fights, ranging from middleweight to light heavyweight, he was considered the best pound-for-pound boxer in the world. The decade ended with Holyfield as WBF and IBF heavyweight champion and Lewis as WBC champion in the same weight class. They fought to a draw on 13 March 1999 in Madison Square Garden, but Lennox won the undisputed championship in a rematch on 13 November, the first such unified champion since Riddick Bowe in 1992.

Sources:

ESPN.go.com, Internet website.

Sports Illustrated 1999 Sports Almanac (Boston: Little, Brown, 1998).

boxing Sport of fist fighting between two people wearing padded gloves within a roped-off ring. Boxers are classified in eight divisions according to weight: minimumweight (under 48kg/105lb), fly, bantam, feather, light, welter, middle and heavyweight (more than 88kg/195lb). Professional bouts are scheduled for four to 15 rounds of three minutes' duration. A fight is controlled by a referee in the ring, and ends when there is a knock-down (a boxer is unable to get to his feet by a count of ten) or a technical knockout (one fighter is seriously injured). If both boxers finish the scheduled number of rounds, the winner is determined by a ringside referee or three judges. Boxing developed from bareknuckle fighting when the Marquess of Queensberry's rules introduced timed rounds and padded gloves in 1866. Despite worldwide popularity, boxing is under increasing pressure to introduce further safety measures or be abolished, with brain damage, comas and deaths becoming worryingly regular. The international sport is now controlled by three major rival organizations: the World Boxing Association (WBA), the World Boxing Council (WBC), and the International Boxing Federation (IBF).

boxing developed from uncontrolled encounters, in which wrestling, kicking, gouging, biting, hair-pulling, and kicking opponents when down were practised. Early prize fights went on until one of the combatants could not continue: Mendoza fought Henry Lee over 53 rounds in 1806. James Figg in the 1720s was hailed as the champion of All England and his protégé Jack Broughton tried in the 1740s to introduce some elementary rules, such as rounds. By 1838 London Prize Ring rules were in use, with a roped-off ring. The Queensberry rules from 1867 onwards took some time to establish themselves: they included padded gloves, 3-minute rounds, and a 10-second knock-out. Weight divisions were gradually introduced where previously heavyweights had dominated. The Amateur Boxing Association was set up in 1880 and boxing was brought into the Olympic Games in 1904. In professional boxing, the British Board of Control has supervised since 1919, though international authorities have proliferated. The introduction of radio and then television has vastly increased the purses which boxers can command.

J. A. Cannon

boxing developed from uncontrolled encounters, in which wrestling, kicking, gouging, biting, hair‐pulling, and kicking opponents when down were practised. Early prize fights went on until one of the combatants could not continue. By 1838 London Prize Ring rules were in use, with a roped‐off ring. The Queensberry rules from 1867 onwards took some time to establish themselves: they included padded gloves, 3–minute rounds, and a 10–second knock‐out. The Amateur Boxing Association was set up in 1880 and boxing was brought into the Olympic Games in 1904. In professional boxing, the British Board of Control has supervised since 1919, though international authorities have proliferated.

55. Boxing

See also 26. ATHLETICS .

pancratiast

a person skilied in the art of boxing or wrestling. —pancratiastic , adj.

pugilism

the art or practice of fighting with fists; boxing. —pugilistic , adj.

pugilist

a person who flghts with his flsts; prizeflghter.

box·ing / ˈbäksing/ • n. the sport or practice of fighting with the fists, esp. with padded gloves in a roped square ring according to prescribed rules.