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BOXING.
Term Paper ID:28129
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Essay Subject:
Corruption in boxing 1876-1917. History of the sport. Impact on big business.... More...
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11 Pages / 2475 Words
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Paper Abstract:
Corruption in boxing 1876-1917. History of the sport. Impact on big business.
Paper Introduction:
Boxing is on one level simply an athletic contest between two persons, each of whom uses the fists to try to knock the other unconscious or to inflict enough punishment to cause the opponent either to quit or to be judged beaten. A boxing match is conducted under established rules and procedures and has a referee, judges, and timekeeper -– all conventions instituted to make the sport more like a sport and less like a fight and to insure that the participants are not permanently harmed.
The history of boxing has been in more or less equal parts violence, strength, the attempt to redefine violence instead of strength as the essential quality for an athlete and corruption, for boxing has almost always had a fair amount of money floating around it. It is perhaps inevitable that any sport that includes both money and violence must also be corrupted by extralegal forms
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and the changing demographics and settlement patterns of the UnitedStates during those decades in which the frontier would be closed and thepeople leave their ancient calling of farming for a life in the cities. While there is some betting on amateur fights, there is relativelylittle money involved and college boxing -- like college wrestling -- has amuch cleaner and more civilized reputation than its professionalcounterpart.[9] The era of boxing that was probably the most corrupt -- in terms offights being thrown and money ending up where it shouldn't have gone -- wasushered in by Richard Kyle Fox, who rose from being an impoverishednewspaper employee to being the owner of the National Police Gazette in twoyears when he added a sports section to the financially troubled scandalsheet. 9).[3] Michael Isenberg, John L. Theseencounters were illegal, but remunerative for Sullivan, who declined Fox'sinvitation to a business partnership, for which the fighter saw noneed.[1 ] Sullivan and Fox began to spar outside of the ring, as Sullivan workedto provide a cleaner, more gentlemanly image for boxing and Fox sought tomake as much money as possible from his version of the sport, whichcontinued to border on both the absurd and illegal. The younger Beecher, along with Thomas Wentworth Higginson andEdward Everett developed and promoted a positive sporting ideology thatjustified the playing of certain sports -- among them boxing -- as apositive alternative to the vices that children would otherwise be likelyto fall into and as a way of training young bodies and young minds for therigors of adult working life[5] Their opinions reflected to a large degree the emerging spirit ofEnglish "muscular Christianity" with its emphasis on the importance of eachindividual's reconciling a robust physical life with an inner life based onChristian morality, humility and duty. The history of boxing has been in more or less equal parts violence,strength, the attempt to redefine violence instead of strength as theessential quality for an athlete and corruption, for boxing has almostalways had a fair amount of money floating around it. Black fighterslike Jack Johnson were treated far different in the courts and by policeagencies than were white fighters, and the fairness of any fight involved ablack and a white boxer had to be questioned. Hopewell, New Jersey: EccoPress, 1994. While boxers still presented themselves (and in somecases still were) as individual entertainers, by the 188 s they wereincreasingly being promoted by corporate interests who made their money onside bets more than on gate receipts. Under the London Prize Ring rules, the boxer had toreach scratch (a mark located in the middle of the ring) unaided within 8seconds after the 3 -second time lapse; and a round ended when a boxer wentdown. By the 182 s and 183 s, with theincreasing urbanization of the country, the demand for accessibleentertainments increased, and the influx of immigrants from countries whereboxing and other amusements had had little regulation all made for a morereceptive atmosphere for boxing[4]. Early, Gerald. The Culture of Bruising. Corbett in New Orleans, Louisiana, on September 7, 1892. Plimpton, George. Boxing began in America in the 18th century, but only as a looselyregulated and rather disorganized sport. 13.[13] Ibid., p. Urbana: University of Illinois,1988.-----------------------[1] Elliott Gorn, , The Manly Art: Bare-knuckle Fi Prizefighitng inAmerica, (Ithaca: Cornell University), 1989,[2] George Early, The Culture of Bruising, (Hopwell, NJ: Ecco Press, 1994),p. p. Jack Dempsey won theheavyweight championship in 1919 and defended his title in 1921 against theFrench fighter Georges Carpentier, in what was the first fight with amillion-dollar gate. Americans began to be tired of jibesfrom European visitors and commentators both on the state of American sportand on the state of the American man as weak and untrained, and manypolitical groups saw the possibility of raising the reputation of both theAmerican athlete in particular and the American male in general byencouraging the sport of boxing. A boxing match is conducted under established rules andprocedures and has a referee, judges, and timekeeper -- all conventionsinstituted to make the sport more like a sport and less like a fight and toinsure that the participants are not permanently harmed. Giventhat the promoters made their money from side bets rather than from ticketsales, it was often to their advantage to have a heavily favored fightertake a fall. But to do this, boxing had to overcome oneof its most important legal hurdles, which was that it was considered moreof a crime than a sport under English common law. The fact thatboxing was shadowed by illegality in the first half of the 19th century hadsignificant implications for the second half of that century and thebeginnings of the last century. Dempsey. In 1881, Fox met John L. Sammons, Jeffrey. Boxing is on one level simply an athletic contest between two persons,each of whom uses the fists to try to knock the other unconscious or toinflict enough punishment to cause the opponent either to quit or to bejudged beaten. The rules also stipulated that matches be conducted in a roped-insquare, called a ring, measuring 24 feet on a side. 7.[11] Isenberg, op. Liebling, A.J. Rather, those fighters and those promoterswho wished to continue with business as usual in general simply pickedthemselves up and moved either South or West. Amateur boxingrefers to bouts in which prize money is not at stake, although in boxing asin all other sports in contemporary America, the lines between amateur andprofessional status have become increasingly blurred. cit., p. Liegling, A. By the second half of the 19thcentury and into the beginnings of the 2 th century -- the era with whichwe are concerned -- this doctrine of muscular Christianity was wellestablished in both the United States and in England and was the backgroundfor both the scandals that occurred in the boxing world in the period thatwe are concerned with and the means and impetus to many of the reforms thatwere instituted in boxing in the years after World War I.[6] Boxing as a popular sport in the later decades of the 19th century wasmade more so because of the historical alliance in the United Statesbetween nationalism and Protestantism. Fighting with gloves under the Queensberryrules, the popular Sullivan lost the world heavyweight boxing championshipto James J. If the boxer failed to square off, that fighter wasconsidered beaten. Boxing remains a troubled sport in some ways, still perilously closeto the illegality of battering, still subject to the whims of ethicallychallenged promoters, still shot through with racism. Boxing would actuallyprobably have been a cleaner sport in the last decades of the 19th centuryif reformers seeking to ban it entirely had not driven this popular form ofamusement farther from the social mainstream and away from cultural andpolitical bodies that could regulate it.[12] Another important aspect of boxing changed during the 188 s and 189 sand in the first decade of the 2 th century: Big business moved in,significantly altering the way the sport was played and doing very littleto improve the laissez-faire attitude that abounded that allowed fans to becheated and boxers permanently injured for the sake of quick andsubstantial profits. 17-2 .[15] Ibid., p. New York: Praeger,1997. The conduct of both fighters was less thangentlemanly. Emphasizing boxing skill rather than wrestling and agility overstrength, the Queensberry rules helped to undo the popular image of boxingas a savage, brutal brawl. Not only were these fights considered brutal, but the competitors had difficulty confining their pugilistic pursuits to the ring. Although in the rather furious action of a fight there may seem to belittle coordinated action, in fact there is a single primary goal to eachmatch, which is to strike blows to the head and torso of the opponent thatwill knock down and render the boxer incapable of rising to a standingposition and defending himself within 1 seconds.[1] Originally the term prizefighting was used when money was at stake,but the term professional boxing now bears the same meaning. Liebling, A Neutral Corner (Boston: North Point Press, 1996), p.27).[1 ] Sammons, op. The fight was also extremely popular, and this battle-almost-to-the-point-of-murder aspect of fighting would be celebrated over the nextseveral decades. Boxers found that theycould no longer arrange their own fights and so had to go through promotersto do so. Bibliography Birtley, Jack. With their livelihood in the hands of professional big-moneypromoters, fighters also found themselves in the position of having tothrow fights if they were asked to -- at least if they wanted to remain inthe stable of that particular promoter and so see any future work. 22.[4] George Plimpton, Shadow Box (New York: G.P. TheQueensberry rules have remained the code governing the conduct ofprofessional boxing. Under the Queensberry rules, matches were divided into 3-minuterounds with 1-minute intervals of rest between them. The audiencesto his fights often came to fight themselves and were not the upscalecrowds that Sullivan hoped to attract to the sport.[11] However, Fox finally drew Sullivan into a fight with one of Fox'sboxers -- a fight that Sullivan could not avoid without seeming to be acoward to his fans -- and so in July 1889 in New Orleans he fought JakeKilrain in a fight that lasted 75 rounds and was illegal under a number ofdifferent Louisiana laws. In these regions of thecountry, boxing would continue on very much as it had before, with fixedfights and simply too much money sloshing around in the hands of thepromoters to do anyone any good.[14] The first decades of the 2 th century saw a new kind of corruptioncreeping into the world of boxing in the form of racism. Sullivan, a fighter known as theBoston Strongboy, who had been touring the vaudeville circuit offeringfifty dollars to anyone who could last four rounds with him. Moreover, the character of many fight enthusiasts was objectionable, and gambling frequently led to riots among the spectators.[7] While this period predates the one under consideration here, it isessential to consider it to understand the culture of boxing later in the19th century, for if it had had a different birth then it would have beenless likely to have been so compromised by scandal later on. A contestant whoremained down, either recumbent or on one knee, after 1 seconds lost thematch. Dempsey, Jack. Shadow Box. during the 189 s and early 19 s. 2 ).[7] Jeffrey Sammons, Beyond the Ring (Urbana: University of Illinois,1988), p. Under the Broughton rules, a downed man was allowed 3 seconds to square off at a distance of one yard from the opponent, aided byhandlers if necessary. A Neutral Corner. 13.[9] A.J. 43. In addition to all the otherproblems that boxing faced, it now had the federal government entering intothe fray, actively punishing black fighters and trying to prohibit theinterstate transfer of fight movies.[15] These layers of corruption in boxing were cleaned away in largemeasure after World War I by the after the Walker law initiated thelegalization and regulation of boxing. Isenberg, Michael. Beyond the Ring. These rules were drafted in 1857 by aboxer, John Graham Chambers, under the auspices of John Sholto Douglas, 8thmarquis of Queensberry[2]. Gloves are of greater weight than those ofprofessional boxers, and often protective devices such as headgear areworn. The Manley Art: Bare-knuckle Prize Fighting in America.Ithaca: Cornell University, 1989. The first boxer to be recognized as a heavyweight champion was JamesFigg, in 1719. J. The Tragedy of Randolph Turpin. This paper examinedcorruption in boxing between the years 1876 and 1917. Sullivan and His America. In the UnitedStates, amateur boxing is controlled by such bodies as the USA AmateurBoxing Federation, National Collegiate Athletic Association, and GoldenGloves Association of America. When Boxing Was a Jewish Sport. Sullivan and His America (Urbana: Universityof Illinois, 1988), p. Look at any typicalboxing audience today and you will see white men -- fans, promoters,bookies -- making money off the legalized battery of black and brown men.Lots of money. American heavyweight champions were among the mostcelebrated athletes in the sport and inspired awe and respect for theirpunching power, both domestically and internationally. Boston: North Point Press, 1996. Amateur boxing,which has been a feature of the Olympic Games since 19 4, is conductedgenerally in accordance with international Olympic codes. 14.[14] Ibid., pp. Money that is cleaner now than it was a century ago, butcertainly not clean enough. 6.[8] Jack Dempsey, Dempsey (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), p. It should be noted before continuing that the kind of boxing beingdiscussed in this paper is prizefighting or professional boxing -- boxingfor which there are cash rewards of at least a modest sort, for without thepresence of money boxing would (like any other human endeavor into whichmoney does not figure) have been a much cleaner sport. Even as courts in differentjurisdictions began to accept the legality of boxing in the decades afterthe Civil War, that hint of corruption -- or at least corruptibility --hung over the sport making it subject to accusations of rigged fights andloose accounting practices that would follow it through the first couple ofdecades of the 2 th century[8]. The accompanying table lists heavyweight championshipbouts, fought under Queensberry rules, in which the title changed hands[3]. New York: Viking, 1956. Gorn, Elliott. New York: Putnam and Sons, 1977. The culture that grew up around boxing andthat included not only the boxers themselves but also their trainers, thepromoters, people who provided arenas and other areas for fighting, thejournalists who began to specialize in writing about fights, the fans andthe whole complex business about gambling over fights was created andnurtured under the shadow of illegality. The Sweet Science. The last bare-knuckle heavyweight champion was the American John L.Sullivan, who fought and won the last sanctioned bare-knuckle fight in1889, against Jake Kilrain. And given the changing nature of the world of boxing, it wasoften in the boxer's interest as well to take that fall.[13] It was the overt greed of the commercial interests involved in boxingmore than the physical brutality of a sport that was sometimes but oftennot fought according to Queensberry rules that prompted a wave of boxingreform in the Eastern U.S. Bodner, Allen. Los Angeles: NewEnglish Library, 1975. In ancient Rome, boxers often worethe cestus, a metal-studded leather hand covering with which they maimedand even killed their opponents, sometimes as part of gladiatorialspectacles from which the sport in some essential ways developed -- andfrom which it may well have garnered its association with corruption. Before beginning to look at this particular and rather troubled periodof boxing's history, a brief summary of what boxing is and how it developedinto a sport up to the end of the 19th century will be helpful to put thatera of boxing into context as sport. It is hardly surprising that in suchcases the level of corruption in boxing would rise. The new rules prohibited barefisted fighting,wrestling, hugging, hitting opponents while they are helpless, and fightingto the finish. 81.[12] Sammons, op.cit., p. Thesport declined in popularity after the fall of the Roman Empire. By 185 , the sport of boxing in the United States had found what inretrospect seems like an odd champion in the form of a group of New Englandclerics lead by Nery Ward Beecher, the son of the Calvinist minister LymanBeecher. New York: Harper and Row, 1977. In the18th century, boxing was revived in London in the form of bare-knuckleprizefights in which the contestants fought for money and the spectatorsmade wagers on the outcome. However, thesport was not simply cleaned up. 31.[6] Jack Birtley, The Tragedy of Randolph Turpin (Los Angeles: New EnglishLibrary, 1974), p. Putnam's Sons, 1977), p.37.[5] Allen Bodner and Budd Schulberg, When Boxing Was a Jewish Sport (NewYork: Praeger, 1997), p. Bouts are no longer than three rounds,usually of 2 to 3 minutes each. These reformsdid take hold to some extent, and they also had the result of making boxinglegal in most areas because of clarifying court decisions. Throughout the early 188 s the devotees of the sport bribed and dodged police, sneaked off to some anchored barge, wooded glade, or barn to witness a fight but keeping ever alert to a possible raid by authorities. For the culture of boxing in thedecades between the Civil War and the end of World War I did not arise outof a vacuum but was the product of very particular historical and socialcircumstances, including English common-law definitions of battery, thePuritan heritage of the United States, changing definitions of bothmasculinity and Protestantism in the United States, the changing worldposition of the United States with regards to Europe, race relations in theU.S. John L. Fox not only wrote about sporting events, but he aggressivelypromoted them - to ensure that he would have enough material to write aboutin his columns. Modificationsknown as the Revised London Prize Ring rules were drawn up in 1853, andthey controlled the sport until the end of the 19th century, when theQueensberry rules came into use. The sport continued to grow inpopularity in the United States but now did so almost entirely in the open,where neither greedy promoters nor racist FBI agents had as much power asthey once did. This served only todrive boxing more firmly into the hands of those who were interested inmaking as much money as possible off of fights with little regard for thesafety of the boxers or the fairness of the fights. cit. Fox's arranged fightswere often rumored to be fixed, and even when they were fair the match-upswere often sufficiently lopsided that they were hardly fair. In 1743 a later champion, John Broughton, formulated a setof rules standardizing some practices and eliminating others, such ashitting opponents when they are down or seizing opponents by the hair.Broughton's rules governed boxing until 1838, when the Original LondonPrize Ring rules, based on those of Broughton, were devised. Boxing is also oftenreferred to as pugilism, taken simply from the Latin pugil, meaning "aboxer." In ancient Greece, boxing was a popular amateur competitive sport andwas included in the first Olympic Games. Urbana:University of Illinois, 1988. It is perhapsinevitable that any sport that includes both money and violence must alsobe corrupted by extralegal forms of violence as well. The brutality of this particular fight did as much to make boxingpopular as it did to inspire opponents to the sport to try to make itillegal under criminal statutes that forbid people in almost every othercircumstance of committing battery against each other.
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