Please list any interesting Boxing facts, trivia, legends, stories, etc.

Living in Toronto, we hear a lot about George Chuvalo up here. I think that most of you probably already know this, but Chuvalo is famous for two things: having the best chin in combat sports, and for having a very rough personal life outside of the ring.

Chuvalo had four sons and a daughter. In 1985, his son Jesse committed suicide. In 1993, his son Georgie (George Jr) died from a drug overdose. Also in 1993, his wife committed suicide. In 1996, his son Steven died from a drug overdose.

His other son and daughter are still with us.

Chuvalo now spends his time as a public speaker with his wife, speaking out against the ills of drug use.
 
Don't know the reliability or whatever, but this is from a biography of The Cinderella Man that I'm reading, although the quote is about Max Baer and Primo Carnera on the set of "The Lady and the Prizefighter"

Poor Carnera was forced to endure Baer's relentless practical jokes, which the crew helped him carry out. As Baer mocked Carenera's accented, broken English and belittled him to amuse the rest of the people on the set, Carnera simmered with resentment. Finally one day he snapped and charged after Baer. Somehow the fighters were separated before anyone was hurt. Meanwhile, as they were rehearsing and filming in the ring, Baer was carefully measuring Carnera, who he thought couldn't fight at all.
 
There was also the 'common man' photo-op he did (dressing up as a miner, I believe) to try and get some of the 'Slacker!' image off him.... too bad he was wearing stylish shoes that were clearly noticeable. :icon_lol:

I recall that,he had shiney leather shoes sticking out of his pants,with dirt all on his face and a real serious look on his face.
 
There's a cool little story about Jack Dempsey knocking "Two Ton" Toney Galento out cold during a sparring session.



Dude must have been well into his forties at the time, too. Jack has lots of cool little stories, really. Product of his times, I guess - might try to throw them all together into one thread at some point.
that'd be great.
 
- Gene Tunney, 1949
"The laugh of the twenties was my confident insistence that I would defeat Jack Dempsey for the Heavyweight Championship of the World. To the boxing public, this optimistic belief was the funniest of jokes. To me, it was a reasonable statement of calculated probability, an opinion based on prize-ring logic.

The logic went back to a day in 1919, to a boat trip down the Rhine River. The first World War having ended in victory, the Army was sending a group of A.E.F. athletes to give exhibitions for doughboys in the occupation of the German Rhineland. I was light-heavyweight champion of the A.E.F. Sailing past castles on the Rhine, I was talking with the Corporal in charge of the party. Corporal McReynolds was a peacetime sports writer at Joplin, Missouri, one of those Midwestern newspapermen who combined talent with a copious assortment of knowledge. He had a consummate understanding of boxing, and I was asking him a question of wide interest in the A.E.F. of those days.

We had been hearing about a new prizefight phenomenon in the United States, a battler burning up the ring back home. He was to meet Jess Willard for the Heavyweight Championship. His name was Jack Dempsey. None of us knew anything about him, his rise to the challenging position for the title had been so swift. What about him? What was he like? American soldiers were interested in prizefighting. I was more than most--an A.E.F. boxer with some idea of continuing with a ring career in civilian life.

The Corporal said yes, he knew Jack Dempsey. He had seen Dempsey box a number of times, had covered the bouts for his Midwestern newspaper. Dempsey's career had been largely in the West.

"Is he good?" I inquired.

"He's tops," responded Corporal McReynolds. "He'll murder Willard."

"What's he like?" I asked.

The Corporal's reply was vividly descriptive. It won't mean anything to most people nowadays, but at that time it was completely revealing to anyone who read the sports pages. McReynolds said: "He's a big Jack Dillon."

I knew about Jack Dillon, as who didn't thirty years ago? He was a middleweight whose tactics in the ring were destructive assault--fast, shifty, hard-hitting, weaving in with short, savage punches, a knocker-out, a killer. Dillon even looked like Dempsey, swarthy, beetle-browed, and grim--a formidable pair of Jacks.

I thought the revelation over for a moment, and recalled: "Jack Dillon was beaten by Mike Gibbons, wasn't he?"

"Yes," replied the corporal. "I saw that bout. Gibbons was too good a boxer. He was too fast. His defense was too good. Dillon couldn't lay a glove on him."

Mike Gibbons was the master boxer of his time; the height of defensive skill, a perfectionist in the art of sparring.

I said to the Corporal: "Well, maybe Jack Dempsey can be beaten by clever boxing."

His reply was reflective, thought out. "Yes," he said, "when Dempsey is beaten, a fast boxer with a good defense will do it."

This, coming from a brainy sports writer, who knew so much about the technique of the ring and who had studied the style of the new champion, aroused a breathless idea in me. My own ambition in the ring had always been skillful boxing, speed and defense--on the order of Mike Gibbons.

As a West Side kid fooling around with boxing gloves, I had been, for some reason of temperament, more interested in dodging a blow than in striking one. Fighting in preliminary bouts around New York, I had learned the value of skill in sparring. In A.E.F. boxing I had emphasized skill and defense--the more so as during this time I had hurt my hands. Previously I had been a hard hitter. Now, with damaged fists, I had more reason than ever to cultivate defensive sparring.

Sailing down the Rhine, I thought maybe I might be a big Mike Gibbons for the big Jack Dillon. It was my first inkling that someday I might defeat Jack Dempsey for the Heavyweight Championship of the World, which all assumed Jack was about to acquire.

This stuck in mind, and presently the time came when I was able to make some observation firsthand. I was one of the boxers on the card of that first Battle of the Century, the Dempsey-Carpentier fight. I was in the semifinal bout. This place of honor and profit was given to me strictly because of my service title. The ex-doughboys were the heroes of that postwar period, and the light heavyweight championship of the A.E.F. was great for publicity. I was ballyhooed as the "Fighting Marine."

Actually, I had no business in the bout of second importance on that occasion of the first Million Dollar Gate. I was an A.E.F. champ, but we service boxers knew well enough that our style of pugilism was a feeble amateur thing, compared with professional prizefighting in the United States. The best of us were mere former prelim fighters, as I was. There were mighty few prominent boxers in Pershing's A.E.F. In World War II you saw champs and near-champs in uniform, but the draft was not so stern in such matters during the war against the Kaiser's Germany.

In the semifinal bout of the Dempsey-Carpentier extravaganza, I, with my bad hands, fought poorly. Nobody there could have dreamed of me as a possible future conqueror of the devastating champ--least of all Jack himself, if he had taken any notice of the semifinal battlers. I won on a technical K.O. from my opponent, but that was only because he was so bad--Soldier Jones of Canada, who, like myself, was in the big show only because he too had an army title--the war covering a multitude of sins.

After the bout, clad in a bathrobe, I crouched at one corner of the ring, and watched the Manassa Mauler exchange blows with the Orchid Man of France. As prize-ring history records, the bout was utterly one-sided; the frail Carpentier was hopelessly overmatched. But it afforded a good look at the Dempsey style.

The Corporal on the boat sailing down the Rhine had been exact in his description of Dempsey. The Champ was, in every respect, a big Jack Dillon--with all the fury and destruction implied by that. No wonder they called him the Man Killer. But, studying intently, I saw enough to confirm the Corporal's estimate that when Dempsey was defeated it would be by a skillful defensive boxer, a big Mike Gibbons. Correct defense would foil the shattering Dempsey attack.

This estimate was confirmed again and again during subsequent opportunities. I attended Dempsey fights, and studied motion pictures of them. More and more I saw how accurate defense could baffle the Man Killer's assault. The culmination was the Shelby, Montana, meeting of Dempsey and Tom Gibbons, the heavyweight younger brother of Mike. Tom, like Mike, was a consummate boxer, and Dempsey couldn't knock him out. For the first time in his championship and near-championship career, the Man Killer failed to flatten an opponent. The public, which had considered Tom Gibbons an easy mark, was incredulous and thought there must have been something peculiar about it. For me there was nothing peculiar, just final proof that good boxing could thwart the murder in the Dempsey fists. There was a dramatic twist in the fact that the final proof was given by a brother of Mike Gibbons."

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Perhaps someone can clear this up for me.

My old trainer who has been around the block told me this one and I'm not sure I beleive it.

Apparently Marciano was a very stingy man, but also a very paranoid one who refused to put his money in banks out of fear that it would go missing or be stollen.... apparently instead he hid a lot of his money somewhere and never told anyone where it was. When he died later suddenly, no one ever knew where he had hidden the money and it basically was never found. This is one of the reasons his familly went into poverty so quickly following his death.
 
Perhaps someone can clear this up for me.

My old trainer who has been around the block told me this one and I'm not sure I beleive it.

Apparently Marciano was a very stingy man, but also a very paranoid one who refused to put his money in banks out of fear that it would go missing or be stollen.... apparently instead he hid a lot of his money somewhere and never told anyone where it was. When he died later suddenly, no one ever knew where he had hidden the money and it basically was never found. This is one of the reasons his familly went into poverty so quickly following his death.

Yeah, Marciano did hide most of the money from the various biographies and articles I've read; he was (likely) afraid of another bank run scenario like the one during the Great Depression. I believe his daughter may have been in and out of jail and become a drug addict (or something like that) - I don't have any of the books relating to his life specifics on hand.
 
Probably a bit of both.
He was just standing around (wearing a Hawiian shirt).
I walked up to him, shook his head, thanked him for alot of great fights and then asked "when are you going after the belt again" and he flipped out on me.
Started marching me down (I'm only 5'8).
I put my hands up saying "no, no, no.... you misunderstood me" and he said,
"put your fuckin hands down, bitch". So I complied.
He said, "I'm tired of fuckers telling me what I need to do" (paraphrased).
"I don't have to prove myself to no one".
He was balling his right fight up and jabbing me in my chest with the index finger on his other hand.

Eventually a security guard ran out and pushed him back.

Crybaby McCall made you his bitch :icon_lol:
 
Rocky Marciano's unbeaten record is tainted by him being in the pocket of the Mob. He got matched against some outright patsies in the latter part of his career, sad to say.
 
ezzardcharles.jpg


Ezzard Charles is a criminally underappreciated fighter.

This guy embodied the sweet science.

The Fourth God Of War: Ezzard Charles

The Fourth God Of War: Ezzard Charles

By Springs Toledo


“He has shown you, o man, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”
~ Micah 6:8

Baroudi had never been stopped in any of his fifty-two previous bouts. He was fighting out of a crouch in the tenth round when Ezzard landed three hard shots to the head which caused his eyes to glaze. A left to the body sent him down. He was carried out of Chicago Stadium on a stretcher and died five hours later. The boxer who did it was distraught.

The day after the fight a middle-aged man arrived in Chicago from Akron, Ohio to claim the body. It was Baroudi’s father. “This was a terrible accident,” he told Ezzard, “our family bears no bitterness at all towards you. Don’t give up on your career.” A charity match was set up at Ezzard’s request and a certified check of $15,880 was given to the Baroudi family. Ezzard donated his entire purse.

Reluctantly, the number-one light heavyweight contender continued with his career, but he would never again compete in his natural division. He’d only fight heavyweights, as if afraid of injuring men his own size. A.J. Liebling got the impression that he suffered from emotional blocks in the heat of battle, and saw in him an “intuitive aversion to violence” that would “set in like ice on a pond.” Once feared for his “black-out” punches, his clean KO percentage of 44% before the Baroudi fight dropped to 28% after it.

His popularity dropped with it.

Ghosts, guilt, and the evaporation of the ‘killer instinct’ –these are symptoms almost every boxer deals with after their hands kill an opponent. For Ezzard Charles the symptoms were acute.

He was named after Dr. Webster Pierce Ezzard, the obstetrician who delivered him in 1921, and was raised by his grandmother Maude Foster and a great grandmother named Belle Russell who was born a slave. They taught him to pray, to read the Bible every day, and place no value on human applause.

Ezzard had a smile that was radiant enough to melt ice, but he wasn’t raised to be charismatic. As the press found out soon enough, a conversation with him could be about as mutual as brushing your teeth. He wasn’t raised to avoid a challenge either, and he didn’t, though others failed to extend him the same courtesy. He was ducked for years by the same light heavyweight champions who ducked Archie Moore despite the fact that he cleaned out the contenders, including Moore. His prime ended with no laurels and no belts; it ended with Sam Baroudi’s last breaths.

Ezzard is most remembered for the beatings he took in two wars against Rocky Marciano. The stand he made was unexpected; he fought hammer and tong, even giving up reading his books because they had become “a distraction.” “Rough and crude,” he told Budd Schulberg, “I gotta be rough and crude.” After the first fight, photographs of his face were presented in eighteen different degrees of contortion at the end of Marciano’s fists in LIFE. “This Is What Charles Took” proclaimed the title.

By 1955, symptoms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) were becoming evident. “Looking back now,” recalled Ray Arcel, who watched him train at Stillman’s gym, “it’s easy to see that Ezzard was in the early stages of the illness that eventually killed him. But at the time I just thought he was getting older. He wasn’t able to do the things he’d always done. He’d get tired. His coordination wasn’t there.” It affected his legs first, which explains why this once versatile technician struggled with stumblebums as his career waned. The crowds booed.

Sportswriters picked up on his childhood nickname of “Snooky” and started calling him “Snooks,” but with disdain, not affection. Television audiences missed his prime. Most never saw what he was –what he was before the face of Sam Baroudi looked at him behind every opponent’s guard, what he was before his body began to betray him. They saw only an aging fighter struggling to hold on to his dignity and perhaps win more than he lost, and that is the image that has persevered for decades.

That image is a false one and should be undone. At his best, this unpretentious man was one of history’s supreme boxer-punchers. In his capable hands, ‘the manly art of self-defense’ was baptized by fire into something godly …and this is his transfiguration.


INHERITING THE EARTH
It was the summer of ’42, Ezzard Charles had come of age, and managers were hiding under their hats. It took fellow-great Jimmy Bivins to alleviate anxieties with a decision win; and then Lloyd Marshall cooled him off with an eighth round stoppage.

Within two years the “School Boy” would evolve into “The Cincinnati Cobra” and strike through his natural habitat like no one ever had before or probably ever will again. Atop the heap of casualties was a mongoose: Archie Moore could neither outslug nor outwit this cobra despite three desperate tries. Ezzard also avenged his losses to Jimmy Bivins (four times) and Lloyd Marshall (twice, by knockout).

In a ten year span he faced down a platoon of ring generals in three divisions eighteen times, and then dethroned an idol whose color photograph was tacked to his bedroom wall –Joe Louis. The newspapers were forced to finally acknowledge something insiders always knew, that Ezzard Charles was a “much better fighter than the world had thought he was.” And that wasn’t all. When Ezzard won a decision over Louis, he became universally recognized as the linear heavyweight champion. It was September 27th 1950.

Sixty-five-year-old Maude Foster’s phone rang that night. On the other end was Ezzard:

“Grandma, I won it for you and the Lord.”

“God made you a champion,” she said, “and don’t forget to thank Him out loud.”

He didn’t forget.

DAYS OF GRACE
As his undiagnosed debilitation began to cripple him a few years later, Ezzard Charles’ win-loss ratio tilted sharply for the worse. His last professional bout was in the summer of 1959, the very summer that Lou Stillman closed up his legendary gym on Eighth Avenue.

“Oh, it’s tough all right,” Ezzard said as his health trials began, “not being able to walk like I used to or talk so well. It’s a feeling you sort of have, of being all by yourself. That no one can help you.”

Ironies abounded. His doctors told him that boxing may have actually benefitted his health by delaying the progression of a disease that had begun to develop in his childhood. Long after his days of war, Ezzard found himself doing sit-ups and struggling again with the existential loneliness of a man who fights alone. Only now the sit-ups were an agonizing part of physical therapy, and the garish lights of the arena were turned off.

A police officer and friend named John McManus turned those lights back on.

With the help of Joe Kellman and Ben Bentley he organized an event to raise money and defray the mounting medical bills of the ex-champion. “The Ezzard Charles Appreciation Night” was held on November 13th 1968 in the Grand Ballroom of Chicago’s Sherman Hotel. For $15 the guests were treated to a sit-down dinner and fight films that they themselves could request through the Chicago Daily Tribune. Many bent noses were in the crowd of 1300 –several of them bent by the guest of honor. Rocky Marciano, whose nose he split into a canyon, was a featured speaker. “I never met a man like Ez in my life,” he said as he turned and looked into the eyes of his old foe, “Ez, you fought me about the very best of anybody. I couldn’t put you down and I don’t believe anybody can put you down. You’ve got more spirit than any man I ever knew.”

It was a glorious night. The benefit would raise about $15,000 for Ezzard. It was almost the same amount to the dollar that Ezzard raised for the Baroudi family after that tragedy twenty years earlier.

Boxing made a triumphant return into Ezzard’s life and like a good corner man in a tough fight, it gave him a lift off the stool.

His stool was a wheelchair now. As he struggled to stand up at the podium, Marciano and Archie Moore rushed to his side and lifted him to his feet. “This is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me,” he could only whisper, “I just want to say ….thank you. Thank you...”

Eventually the disease silenced him. Then it paralyzed him. He lay on his back for fifteen months in the Veteran’s Administration Hospital as his body wasted away. He had his memories; Grand memories that only former fighters are privileged to have, other memories that only the cursed among them must endure. Less than a mile north was Chicago Stadium, where the image of Sam Baroudi collapsed again and again.

As leaves fell to the ground outside the window during the last autumn of his life, the man whose photograph once hung on his wall appeared at the door of room B-804. Joe Louis stood for a moment, and then walked over to the bed. “I could lick you now, champ,” he said gently, “…I could lick you now.”

Ezzard Charles smiled. The radiance of it filled the room.
 
The Christmas Fight that made Miske a Legend

By JOHN COFFEY - The Press

MIRACLE MAN: Billy Miske figured there was not much difference between dying in bed and dying in the ring.

Boxing provides many of sport's most heartwarming and most tragic tales. The story of Billy Miske fits into both categories and is most suitably recalled at this time of the year.

Nicknamed the St Paul Thunderbolt, William Arthur Miske fought and beat many of America's finest boxers in a professional career which started as a middleweight in 1913 and ended as a heavyweight a decade later.

He fought more than 100 times. Over half of them were no-decision bouts, when newspaper journalists were left to tell their readers who they believed was the winner. Officially, he lost only twice, to champions Jack Dempsey and Kid Norfolk, and he twice drew over 10 rounds with the legendary Harry Greb.

In an era when title-holders notoriously avoided menacing black fighters they also sidestepped "white" Billy Miske. The only times he was knocked down was in the third round of his challenge for Dempsey's world heavyweight title in 1920. Dempsey later said he put Miske away as quickly as possible because he did not want to punish him any more.

They had fought twice in 1918, the year before Dempsey won the title. Dempsey needed all of his power and aggression to survive the first time, when four of the eight journalists at ringside gave the verdict to Miske or called it a draw, but was won more convincingly in the second.

It was also in 1918 that Miske, then only 24, learned he had Bright's disease, a kidney ailment, and was given five years to live if he retired from the ring. He briefly did that while he underwent hospital treatment. Legend has it that Miske figured there was not much difference between dying in bed and dying in the ring. There was also the shame of a $US100,000 debt from a failed car distributorship.

Keeping the news of his illness to himself, Miske decided to continue fighting and pay back what he owed even though he knew those who owed him money were never going to front up. The condemned man boxed about 30 times after being given his death sentence.

Dempsey feared he had killed Miske when he hit him flush on the heart and a baseball-sized purple welt emerged from his chest. But Miske climbed off the canvas at the count of nine and was put out of his misery less than a minute later.

"I knocked him out because I loved the guy," said Dempsey in his autobiography. "He was dying of Bright's disease. I didn't know how bad his condition was. All I knew was that he begged me for the fight."

"He was broke and needed a good pay day so that he could rest and regain his health. But there was never any question that it was a legitimate match. In one of our two previous fights he had held me to a draw and he had clouted me real good in the other."

The $US25,000 cheque went towards paying off Miske's debts, but he was still in financial strife. He kept on boxing in 1921 and 1922 before retiring after scoring a first-round knock-out win over Harry Foley in January 1923. By the autumn Miske was fading rapidly. He was too weak to work out, let alone fight. But what he knew would be his last Christmas was fast approaching and he was thinking of wife Marie and their children, Billy jun, Douglas and Donna.

Miske approached longtime manager and friend Jack Reddy, one of the few people who knew the seriousness of his illness, and asked him to arrange one more fight.
"I don't like to say this, but if you went into the ring now, in your condition, you might get killed," said Reddy. It was then that Miske made his famous reply, "What's the difference? It's better than waiting for it in a rocking chair."

Reddy tried to loan him money and then sought a compromise, saying he would find him an opponent if Miske resumed training and got back into something like fighting nick. Miske admitted that was impossible, pleading he had one last fight in him but nothing more. Reddy weakened and arranged a November bout in Omaha against "K. O" Bill Brennan, a heavyweight who had gone 12 rounds with the great Dempsey.

In the days leading up to the fight Miske survived on chicken soup and boiled fish, rarely making it out of bed. He got himself to Omaha and after four rounds with Brennan went home with a cheque for $2400. Miske bought back the furniture they had been forced to sell and went shopping for Christmas. The Miske kids woke on Christmas morning to a decorated tree and a stack of presents, and there was a piano for Marie. It was a day of laughter, singing and feasting.

Next morning Miske called Reddy and whispered, "For god's sake, Jack, come and get me. I'm dying." The secret he had kept from Marie for five years came out as she held him in the back of Reddy's car.

Reddy rushed him to St Mary's Hospital, but there was to be no miracle. Billy Miske, aged 29, died on New Year's Day 1924 of kidney failure. It would have been too much to expect two Christmas miracles.

You see, Billy Miske, the St Paul Thunderbolt, had already got the finish he wanted
 
ttttttttttttt

You ought to go back to the Heavyweights or wherever the f*<k you came from with your useless drivel posts after nonsensical post, stinkin' up the Boxing forum.

Post-whoring at its worst.


.
 
Most first round knockouts in a carrer:
1.Young Otto (42)
2. Tiger Jack Fox (30)
3. Jack Dempsey (26)
4. Sean O'Grady (24)
5. Buddy Baer (23)
 
Youngest pro debut by a fighter.
1. Baby Arizmendi age 10
2. Teddy Baldock age 14
3. Al McCoy age 14
4. Battling Nelson age 14
5. Georges Carpentier age 14
 
Lennox Lewis was asked why he did not sign a contract with Don King after
won the Olympic Gold medal, his responce "How can you trust a man who can
talk for 5 minutes and you cant understand a sentence of it?".
 
Most first round knockouts in a carrer:
1.Young Otto (42)
2. Tiger Jack Fox (30)
3. Jack Dempsey (26)
4. Sean O'Grady (24)
5. Buddy Baer (23)

Youngest pro debut by a fighter.
1. Baby Arizmendi age 10
2. Teddy Baldock age 14
3. Al McCoy age 14
4. Battling Nelson age 14
5. Georges Carpentier age 14

Wow at Sean O'Grady, didn't know, good stuff.

Damn, 10 years old. Kid must've been tough.
 
Some says the toughest man to ever step into the ring.

Oscar "Battling" Nelson
callis5.jpg



Nelson talked sometimes of his ring career and told such stories as "I got jobbed in my fight with Eddie Santry" at Chicago in November 1901, because Eddie talked the referee into thinking he was supposed to win (a fixed fight); Mike Walsh, a 6-foot middleweight, blurted "I'm not here to lick kids" when he saw the slender Nelson come into the ring December 1901 in Chicago. "That's good," said Bat, "'cause I ain't no kid." Walsh ended up on the floor with his head across the ropes.

On June 16, 1903, in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, every time Bat knocked Young Scotty down ("about half a dozen times"), the lights in the building went out. "His head hit the floor with such force it jarred the building and I guess turned off the electric light switch." He encountered a setup in Michigan City, Indiana, on August 26, 1903, against Eddie Sterns. Nelson said he knocked his man down frequently and, each time, he was given about 15 seconds to rise instead of 10. Bat was told by the referee that if he kept it up, he would be disqualified -- and he was.

Against Kid Sullivan in Baltimore on June 2, 1905, Nelson had won the first three rounds, but something was smeared on Sullivan's gloves prior to Rounds 4 and 5. It hurt Bat's eyes and he had trouble seeing. Just to make sure, before the last round, more "stuff" was slathered on the gloves, and Bat said he was almost totally blind and could not tell Sullivan from the referee.

Then there's the story of how Bat's father talked with him in 1901 about not fighting anymore. Bat told him he'd think it over. They went downtown to a bar, where someone was praising a fighter by the name of Frankie Colifer, from Pullman, and declaring that no one in Hegewisch (Nelson's town) could fight, whereupon Bat's dad yelled out that he'd bet $1,000 his son could beat Colifer (see Heinz, 1961, pp.303-304). They fought on January 13, 1902, and Nelson knocked Colifer out in five rounds.


NELSON-WOLGAST II: "THE
DIRTIEST FIGHT EVER"

On February 22, 1910, Nelson and Ad Wolgast met in a grudge battle "most foul," as Shakespeare would say. Fouls galore were the order of the day, and they were permitted -- why not? Two bad boys were tangling in a contest that would wear out any referee.

They had met once before, in 1909, in a 10-rounder that most observers thought Wolgast had won. They would meet again in 1913 in another 10-round contest with a similar result. But this 1910 encounter was a war. Both men were never-say-die gladiators who were ready, willing, and able -- and durable. Wolgast was younger by nearly six years. In addition, The Tacoma Daily News reported he had fought 69 bouts while Nelson had engaged in 92. The wear and tear was piling up on Bat while Wolgast was yet a warrior at his best.

The fighting was fierce. Defense was tossed out the window. Aggression was the order of the day. Bat was better during the early rounds but the younger, relentless Wolgast took it all and gradually turned the tide his way with some stiff punching. In the face of concerns by the referee, Nelson insisted on staying in the fight, round after round. But by Round 42 his eyes were so swollen that he could hardly see, and the battle was stopped.

Suster reported: "It was the dirtiest fight ever held for a world championship under the Queensberry Rules, which both men disgraced in an obscene orgy of eye-gouging, rabbit-punching, elbow-thwacking, and ball-busting. The bout was bloody and brutal" (1994, p.31).

Bat got the worst of this one but complained when referee Ed Smith stopped the fight. Ringsider W.O. McGeehan wrote, "For concentrated viciousness, prolonged past 40 rounds, this was the most savage bout I have ever seen" (see Suster, 1994, p.32).


WAIL! | The CBZ Journal | February 2006
 
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