Tex Rickard Planted the Dempsey – Willard SuperFight in Toledo: Here’s Why

Published

2 years ago

June 30, 2019

Tex-Rickard-Planted-the-Dempsey-Willard-SuperFight-in-Toledo

This coming July 4^th marks the 100^th anniversary of the Dempsey-Willard fight. More than a big fight, Dempsey vs. Willard came to be seen as the first big bang in the Golden Era of Sports, an era that eventually became synonymous with the Roaring 20s.

The fight was the handiwork of George “Tex” Rickard. America’s first great boxing promoter, Rickard had come to the fore in Nevada, first in 1906 in the boomtown of Goldfield where he was the chief architect of the lightweight title fight between Joe Gans and Battling Nelson, and then four years later in Reno where he manufactured (and refereed) a more historic event, the heavyweight championship fight between Jack Johnson and former title-holder James J. Jeffries.

Rickard’s third successful promotion was the March 25, 1916 heavyweight title fight between Jess Willard and Frank Moran at Madison Square Garden. Willard had dethroned Johnson the previous year, stopping the Galveston Giant in the 26^th round at a thoroughbred track on the outskirts of Havana. The gate receipts for Willard-Moran, Willard’s first title defense, were $151,254, the second-highest on record (surpassed only by Johnson-Jeffries at Reno), earning Rickard and his partners a tidy profit.

The fight would have produced an even larger gate if not for legal restraints. For one thing, the law then in effect in New York restricted fights to 10 rounds and outlawed official decisions. There were no judges and the referee lacked the authority to declare a winner. Bets were decided by designating a scorekeeper – typically a ringside reporter for a local paper – in the event that both combatants were still standing at the final bell.

The no-decision rule was hardly indigenous to New York. It was implanted in many other places during the first decade of the century when a wave of reform swept the land, devitalizing if not outright banning such “vices” as prizefighting and horse racing. Among other things, the rule was an incentive for champions to lollygag through title defenses as they could only lose their belt in the event of a knockout. Title fights were too often snoozers, an irritant that prevented boxing from reaching its full potential as a spectator sport.

After defeating Frank Moran, Willard sat on the title for three years, raking in big bucks in personal appearances that were often arranged in conjunction with a Wild West show. White folks flocked to see the champion pugilist of the world, the Kansas cowboy who had given the reviled Jack Johnson his comeuppance. And late in Willard’s decampment, Jack Dempsey shot out of the West like a comet, turning heads with a slew of fast knockouts. The high point was a 23-second blast-out of favored Fred Fulton on July 27, 1918 at a ballpark in New Jersey. Fulton, the Minnesota Plasterer, out-weighed Dempsey by 20 pounds.

It was clear that a fight between Willard and Dempsey would be a much bigger event than the Willard-Moran fight. But where to put it?

Ideally, it would bubble forth in a heavily populated area but New York was out as were Chicago and Philadelphia as the law in both jurisdictions mandated no-decision bouts no longer than six rounds. Forget San Francisco or, for that matter, anywhere else in California. In 1914, the voters approved a referendum that placed all boxing, amateur and professional, on the amateur plane, thereby restricting pro fights to four rounds.

The last remnant of old-time gloved fighting in the U.S. was found in New Orleans where the ceiling was 20 rounds. Rickard briefly considered placing Willard-Dempsey there but backed off because of climatic considerations; it figured to be awful hot and humid in New Orleans on the 4^th of July. True, the weather figured to be hot almost everywhere (and, as it turned out, it would be wickedly hot in Toledo), but Rickard was playing the percentages.

—

A community that wanted to host an important prizefight had to satisfy certain conditions. Foremost, the local organizers had to be willing to defray some of the promoter’s expenses. A big fight was a shot of adrenaline for a stagnant economy. Fight goers were conventioneers, of a sort, and had shown themselves to be the best kind of conventioneers; free spenders.

The spearhead of Toledo’s local organizing committee was Addison Thatcher. A gym operator and small-time boxing promoter, Thatcher had a thriving business that salvaged scrap metal from ships that went down in Lake Erie. A future Toledo mayor (running under the slogan “Feed the Poor and Don’t Ask Any Questions”) and a future failed candidate for Governor of Ohio, Thatcher was a man with considerable clout.

Through his sway, the city fathers agreed to put a 60-acre municipal park at Rickard’s disposal for his big wooden open air arena, leveling the ground where necessary to eliminate some of the prep work for Rickard’s construction engineers. (Addison Thatcher wasn’t motivated entirely by a sense of civic duty. He planned to cash in on the big fight by converting an empty warehouse into a dormitory and purportedly purchased 1,500 cots for this purpose.)

Equally important if taking a big fight into the hinterland (and from the standpoint of a New Yorker, anything west of Philadelphia was the hinterland), the place had to be easily accessible by rail. Chicago was America’s railroad hub and Rickard would eventually plant a big fight there (after the Illinois boxing law was liberalized to allow 10-round fights), but Toledo wasn’t too far behind. In fact, by some accounts, Toledo – roughly 55 miles from Detroit, less than 100 miles from Cleveland, and less than 200 miles from Cincinnati or Indianapolis — ranked second only to Chicago in passenger rail traffic. There were also ferries connecting Toledo to various points in Ohio and Michigan and to Windsor, Ontario, Canada, a short hop across the lake.

Another pre-condition, although this less overt, had to do with the culture. No out-of-town promoter would risk planting a big prizefight in a city with a distinct Victorian tone as he would inevitably butt heads with a strong anti-prizefighting lobby. Toledo wasn’t as libertine as New Orleans, or Denver for that matter, but it was relatively wide open, housing the most notorious red light district in all of Ohio. In the words of Ohio journalist Vince Guerrieri, Toledo appealed to Tex Rickard for its “moral flexibility.”

—

The Willard-Dempsey promotion turned a profit, but it was far less than what Rickard and his backers anticipated. The paid attendance was 19,650 in an arena built to house four times that number. The national heat wave and reports of price gouging by Toledo’s hotels and restaurants served to depress the turnout. But Jack Dempsey, a cruiserweight by today’s standards, slaughtered the six-foot-six, 245-pound Willard in such a spectacular fashion that he increased his stature a thousand-fold and Tex Rickard was off and running, soon to piggyback Dempsey into great spectacles that gripped the nation. (To illustrate what a big star Dempsey became, both of New York’s National League baseball teams postponed their home games on the day of Dempsey’s first fight with Gene Tunney in deference to it. An estimated 50,000 New Yorkers made the trek to Philadelphia to see the fight in person.)

It was the Golden Era of Sports, the Age of Wonderful Nonsense, and it dawned in the city of Toledo 100 years ago this Thursday. And let me take this opportunity to wish everyone a happy 4^th of July.

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Arne K. Lang

Related Topics:Addison Thatcher Arne K. Lang Boxing Frank Moran Fred Fulton Galveston Giant Jack Dempsey Jack Johnson Tex Rickard The Sweet Science Toledo Ohio TSS

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Michael Coffie vs. Darmani Rock Smacks of Joe Joyce vs. Daniel Dubois

Published

13 hours ago

January 20, 2021

Arne K. Lang

Michael-Coffie-vs-Darmani-Rock-Smacks-of-Joe-Joyce-vs-Daniel-Dubois

Although it wasn’t a world title fight, the match between Joe Joyce and Daniel Dubois which took place in London on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, attracted a lot of buzz. Only one heavyweight bout in 2020 was more eagerly anticipated, that being the rematch in February between Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder.

Joyce vs. Dubois was that rare pairing of two undefeated heavyweights who were roughly at the same stage of their career. Dubois was 15-0 (14 KOs) heading in; Joyce was 11-0 (10).

And that brings us to the crossroads fight on Jan. 30 at the LA Shrine Expo between Darmani Rock (17-0, 12 KOs) and Michael Coffie (11-0, 8 KOs). Unlike Joyce vs. Dubois, this is not a well-marinated showdown, but yet there are some parallels, most notably it’s a match between unbeaten heavyweights in which the victor will undoubtedly make a big jump in public esteem and the loser, more than likely, will be pushed back into the shadows.

There was a big age gap in the Joyce-Dubois fight. The 35-year-old Joyce was the older man by 12 years. Likewise, Rock vs. Coffie features a young old-timer vs. an opponent who is merely young.

Michael Coffie, 34, came to boxing late after serving eight years in the Marine Corps. He entered the New York City Golden Gloves tournament on a whim and with virtually no formal training and yet he succeeded in reaching the finals.

When Coffie (pictured) turned pro, his manager was none other than Randy Gordon, the former chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission who has kept his hand in boxing as a journalist and radio personality, co-hosting a boxing-themed talk show on Sirius FM with Gerry Cooney. Gordon knows more than a little about heavyweights, having been involved with Bonecrusher Smith who was briefly (very briefly) the WBA world heavyweight champion.

“(Bonecrusher) was not anywhere near the fighter that Mike is,” Gordon told Hall of Fame boxing writer Bernard Fernandez on the occasion of Coffie’s pro debut in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. On that night, Coffie needed only 61 seconds to dismiss his opponent, ending the contest with a short right hand. The sacrificial lamb, wrote Fernandez, “went down like an anvil dropped in the ocean.”

In his most recent fight, on Nov. 7, Coffie was matched against Minnesota veteran Joey Abell, a noted spoiler. Abell would have been a good measuring rod for assessing Coffie’s progress, but unfortunately the bout was over almost before it started. Early in the second round, Abell suffered a biceps injury while throwing a punch and couldn’t continue.

The “A” side in this fight, however, isn’t Coffie but the other guy. Darmani Rock, 24, had an outstanding amateur career, winning several important tournaments including the 2014 Youth World Championships in Sofia, Bulgaria. Rock was upset in the finals of the 2016 Olympic Trials and then turned pro, signing with Roc Nation, the deep pockets sports management company founded by Jay-Z.

Darmani Rock on the right

Questions have been raised, however, about Rock’s dedication. He weighed 278 pounds in his last fight, 30 pounds more than in his pro debut. (Coffie’s fighting weight also hovers around 270 and he is the same approximate height – both are listed at 6’5” — but Coffie has always been big.) Moreover, Rock has been inactive for 15 months and may have trouble shaking off the rust.

Darmani Rock hails from Philadelphia; Michael Coffie from Brooklyn, more fodder for the tub-thumpers. Philadelphia was the stomping grounds of Smokin’ Joe Frazier. The City of Brotherly Love has arguably produced more good prizefighters per capita than any city in the country. Brooklyn spawned Mike Tyson, Riddick Bowe, and Shannon Briggs, all of whom bubbled out of gritty Brownsville which also happens to be the neighborhood where Michael Coffie spent much of his youth until he was spirited away to a less threatening environment by foster parents.

I don’t want to get carried away with the Joyce-Dubois analogy. Joe Joyce had a stronger amateur pedigree than Darmani Rock. Daniel Dubois had a spectacular run leading up to his match with Joyce including a one-sided triumph over well-regarded Nathan Gorman. Moreover, neither Joyce nor Dubois had ever fought an opponent with a losing record. The same can’t be said of Coffie and Rock who have built their records on the backs of the usual suspects. Darmani Rock’s last two opponents were both 42 years old.

Moreover, Coffie vs. Rock isn’t the main attraction on the PBC card. Top billing goes to Caleb Plant’s 168-pound title defense against Caleb Truax.

As we recall, the Joyce-Dubois fight produced a major upset. Dubois was understood to be faster on his feet and more heavy-handed – considered more likely to turn the tide with a single punch – but youth was not served on that night at the historic Church House in Westminster. Joyce methodically peppered Dubois with his jab which caused a big lump to develop over Dubois’s left eye. The eye eventually shut completely and the fight ended in the 10^th round with Dubois taking a knee and allowing himself to be counted out. Joyce’s victory elevated him to #2 in the WBO rankings, a notch below Oleksandr Usyk who is potentially his next opponent.

One doesn’t know what will transpire when Coffie fights Rock, but as Michael Buffer would say, “someone’s ‘O’ will have to go.” Fights of this nature are inherently intriguing and that goes double when the combatants are heavyweights.

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“One Night in Miami”: Film Review by Thomas Hauser

Published

1 day ago

January 19, 2021

Thomas Hauser

On February 25, 1964, Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. defeated Charles “Sonny” Liston in Miami Beach over the course of six remarkable rounds to claim the heavyweight championship of the world. Late that night, the new champion found himself in a room at Hampton House (a black hotel in segregated Miami) with Malcolm X, several other followers of Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad, and football great Jim Brown. Soul singer Sam Cooke (a friend of Clay’s) had been at the fight, but there’s no historical record of his being in the hotel room with the others at that time.

One Night in Miami is built around imagining what transpired in that room amongst Malcolm X, Cassius Clay, Jim Brown, and Sam Cooke. Directed by Regina King from a screenplay by Kemp Powers, it’s available on Amazon Prime.

The film fits into the genre known as historical fiction. Dramatic license was taken. Viewers should understand that, at times, it’s allegorical rather than an accurate factual recounting. The larger question is whether the film is impressionistically honest. The answer is “yes.”

One Night in Miami begins with the 1963 fight between Clay and Henry Cooper in London. It then segues to Cooke being treated rudely by an all-white audience at the Copacabana, followed by Jim Brown (the greatest running back in National Football League history) being reminded by a patronizing southern gentleman that he’s just a “n—–.” Next, we see Malcolm as the Nation of Islam’s most charismatic spokesman, after which the scene shifts to Liston-Clay I.

Thirty-four minutes into the film, the drama moves to Hampton House.

Malcolm X, Cassius Clay, Jim Brown, and Sam Cooke were prominent in different ways. Each was young, black, and famous. But Malcolm was a social and religious figure of considerable intellect while the other three were known as entertainers.

The dialogue between the four men is light at first and then turns serious.

Malcolm is played by Kingsley Ben-Adir. On what should have been one of the greatest nights of his life, his world is slipping away. His deadly rupture with Elijah Muhammad is almost complete. Soon, Clay will abandon him. Ben-Adir comes across as a bit weaker and more tentative than one might expect, although Malcolm’s intellect is evident in his performance.

It’s hard to imagine anyone playing Cassius Clay well except the young Muhammad Ali. But Eli Goree bears a resemblance to Clay and is pretty good in the role.

Jim Brown was an intimidating physical presence. Aldis Hodge lacks this physicality but his performance is solid.

Leslie Odom Jr, who plays Sam Cooke, has star quality. He’s the only one of the four major actors who has the charisma and presence of the man he’s portraying. But as a result, Cooke has a stronger on-screen persona than Malcolm. That’s a problem as tensions between the two men boil over.

Toward the end of the film, Malcolm reveals that he intends to leave the Nation of Islam because of differences with Elijah Muhammad and will found a new organization.

“Who’s gonna be in this new organization?” Clay asks.

“I think lots of people will follow me over,” Malcolm answers. “Especially if you come with me.”

Clay, of course, didn’t follow Malcolm. He sided with Elijah Muhammad. One year later, he and Jim Brown were the only participants from the hotel room gathering as portrayed in the film who were still alive. Sam Cooke was shot to death in a California motel on December 11, 1964. On February 21, 1965, Malcolm was assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem.

One Night in Miami cautions us that our icons are flesh and blood human beings with strengths and flaws. In its best moments, the film is a powerful reminder that the issues of self-respect, black empowerment, and racial equality are timeless.

Pictured left to right: Aldis Hodge (Jim Brown), Kingsley Ben-Adir (Malcolm X) Leslie Odom Jr (Sam Cooke) Eli Goree (Cassius Clay)

Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His most recent book – Staredown: Another Year Inside Boxing – was published by the University of Arkansas Press. In 2004, the Boxing Writers Association of America honored Hauser with the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism. In 2019, he was selected for induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

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Crossover star Holly Holm Adds New Dimensions to Claressa Shields

Published

2 days ago

January 18, 2021

Kelsey McCarson

Crossover-Star-Holly-Holm-Adds-New-Dimensions-to-Claressa-Shields

She laughs about it now, but back then it wasn’t all that funny.

Boxing champion Holly Holm was competing in her first professional MMA fight, and all her years of training inside the ropes as a world champion boxer had just taken over her entire body.

Holm had kicked her opponent down to the ground, so she did what any well-schooled boxer would do. She pivoted away from her fallen prey and headed over to the neutral corner.

All of that was wrong.

“What are you doing?” her coach yelled from cageside. “Finish her!”

It was Holm’s first big mistake in moving over from boxing to MMA, but she was lucky that night. It turned out that Holm’s opponent was finished whether she had run over there or not, so it was a lesson she could learn without much consequence.

But the instruction of that moment stands true today, so it’s just one of the many things Holm has shared with 25-year-old boxing champion Claressa Shields as the two-time Olympic gold medalist attempts to follow in her footsteps.

“I was thinking yeah, that will definitely happen to me!” Shields said.

After Shields signed a three-year promotional deal in December with the Professional Fighters League (PFL), the first thing Shields needed to do was look for the right gym.

Shields found that place at Jackson Wink MMA Academy in Albuquerque, New Mexico, one of the most famous MMA gyms in the country, and the one most recognized among the masses as the home gym of former UFC women’s bantamweight champion Holm and pound-for-pound king Jon Jones.

Holm remains the only fighter (male or female) to have won legit world championships in both boxing and MMA, and Shields said Holm welcomed her to Jackson Wink with open arms.

“She’s been super great and very nice to me. We both come from the same background…and she actually turned out to be a world champion [in MMA], actually turned out to be really good,” Shields said.

But Holm’s funny story about her first MMA fight is something that points to just how large a hill Shields has decided to climb.

Whereas pop culture has just recently started to realize the power of habits through the work of writers such as Charles Duhigg and James Clear, it’s something professional fighters have known for a long time now.

“Oh, you’re going to have a habit of this because you used to box.”

That’s something Holm tells Shields almost every time they work together, and there are just so many examples.

In fact, just watching the 25-year-old boxing champion trying to learn to do all these new things in a different way is exhausting.

That Shields practically lives inside the gym for weeks at a time so she can train four or five times a day for all the kinds of things she never had to worry about before as a professional boxer is a testament to her seriousness and her courage.

But perhaps the most amazing part of the entire story is that Shields still plans on boxing.

While Holm won world championships in both sports, she achieved those things separately. Meanwhile, Shields said she wants to do the same thing Holm did but at the same time.

So, while I’m standing there with her inside an MMA cage in New Mexico, Shields is plotting fights in both sports. On one hand, she’s talking to me about a title unification bout in boxing against Marie-Eve Dicaire. On the other, she’s talking about future superfights in MMA against the likes of UFC champ Amanda Nunes.

“I’m trying to separate the two,” Shields said specifically about her training that day but she might as well have been talking about her whole life right about now.

It’s arguably the most amazing storyline right now in combat sports.

Shields started boxing when she was just 11 years old. She earned her first gold medal at the Olympics at 17 and her second four years later.

Today, Shields is a three-division world champion, and she says she’s not nearly finished adding to her growing number of boxing belts.

But all those years and all those successes have built so many habits. Ducking and slipping is great for boxing, but both become considerable detriments to defense when you suddenly have to worry about things like knees and kicks.

And what about wrestling and jiu-jitsu?

But all that stuff together is exactly what makes Shields’ epic decision to dare to be great at both sports at the same time so amazing in the first place.

Look, Shields might never accomplish the same amazing feat Holm did when she shocked Ronda Rousey in 2015 for the UFC women’s bantamweight championship.

But she’s aiming to eclipse that incredible mark anyway, and with Holm and many others offering Shields ideas about what she needs to think about as she climbs up the steepest hill she can find, she’ll definitely have her best chance at doing it.

Kelsey McCarson covers combat sports for Bleacher Report and Heavy.

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