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EPISODE: Episode 1
Prepare for a captivating journey through the golden era of San Francisco’s boxing scene in the early 20th century in the upcoming episode of Ring Talk with Lou Eisen. We are thrilled to have renowned author and sociologist Arne K. Lang as our special guest. Arne’s seminal book, “The Nelson-Wolgast Fight and the San Francisco Boxing Scene, 1900-1914,” is a masterful exploration of this fascinating period in boxing history.
Arne K. Lang’s extensive career includes teaching at prestigious institutions such as the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, the University of Nebraska, and Tuskegee University. However, his true passion lies in the history of boxing and American sports gambling. From his base in Las Vegas, Nevada, he has become a leading authority in these fields.
In this episode, we’ll delve into the pages of Arne K. Lang’s book and explore the iconic match between “Battling” Nelson and Ad Wolgast, which drew a crowd of more than 15,000 spectators on a chilly, rainy February night in 1910. Learn about the larger-than-life characters, the dramatic narratives, and the grand spectacles that defined San Francisco’s boxing heyday.
Whether you’re a boxing aficionado, a history buff, or simply a fan of engaging storytelling, this episode promises to be a treat. Join us on Ring Talk with Lou Eisen as we celebrate the rich tapestry of boxing history and the work of a true historian.
Don’t miss this opportunity to uncover the untold stories of San Francisco’s boxing scene with Arne K. Lang. Like, comment, and share this episode to honor the legacy of this bygone era in the world of sports.
Transcribed
[, Music, ] hi, I’m Lou Eisen boxing writer, author podcaster historian, all around schmuck, and I I am – I I’m gon na turn my phone off there.
Today we have a special guest on ring.
Talk.
We have Arie K Lang.
I love Arie K.
Lang, anytime, you speak any boxer or any excuse me any author in the world of boxing and you’re writing book.
They say the same thing if you want to know how to write a book read Arie Lang because he knows how to write a book.
People put out 1200 page books, 800, page books, Arie puts out these magnificent books and they’re absolutely perfect.
There’S not a wasted comma.
Our letter he’s the best boxing writer on the planet.
My favorite book until I got his new one, was the Nelson wolgast fight in the San Francisco boxing scene.
This book was magnificent, and so I I had to research, Arie and arie’s, a sociologist.
He taught at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas University of Nebraska and the Tuskegee University he’s also they say a leading Authority.
Uhuh he’s the leading Authority on the history of boxing and American Sports gambling he’s the leading Authority on the planet.
He lives and writes in Las Vegas he’s also the editorinchief of the sweet science online.
If you haven’t read that you haven’t read anything about boxing and um, it mentions the other credits which I just said, and this is his fifth book Clash of The Little Giants to fight between Canada’s George Dixon and Terry mcgaven.
And it’s it’s an extreme.
It’S an incredible privilege and pleasure to have the wonderful and magnificent Mr Arie K lying on Arie, welcome, you’re being too generous, but thank you Lou.
That’S I’ve never had an introduction quite like that, but I appreciate it well.
They should all be like that.
I mean I’m telling you every author.
I can name them all you.
If you want to know how to write about a boxing book read Arie Lang.
He he knows what to do.
There’S no excess verbiage.
He gets all the facts in it’s written entertainingly.
You learn and you love, and you know that you can’t say anything better than that um.
Well.
Of course, we we both share an interest in in uh boxing in the old days in the early days of Queensbury boing I’ve.
My my main interest when I write books is the uh era around the that that straddles the beginning of the of the 20th century.
You know the early 1900s late 1890s, it’s a fascinating era.
Uh, you know the sport was, you know, hadn’t found its footing yet uh.
There was a lot going on and and and it was really a very interesting era and the people that fought back then I’m not sure how good they were in terms terms of could they beat Terrence Crawford today.
I’D rather suspect not, but these were tough rugged, guys, uh and and very very interesting characters yeah it’s.
You know it’s great, that you say that I love that era too, and these guys and you do this better than anyone on Earth they deserve to be remembered.
So you put the Flesh on the bones and you make them real people, and when I, when I read this book your most recent book, I just thought after reading, I thought it’s criminal people don’t know Terry MC.
They don’t know how great he was he and when I Angelo Dundee, my mentor was friends of Charlie Goldman, who trained him uhuh and Charlie.
As you know, better than anyone was idolized.
Terry McGovern, yeah Charlie, was a small guy too.
He was smaller than Terry.
Mcgovern fought in the lowest weight classes, but yeah he was Marciano’s trainer and he could talk about Terry McGovern for hours.
He he patterned his hair after Terry McGovern.
He know that yeah and he said to Angelo.
There never was a fighter like him.
He said you you, you could only.
He said film can’t do him Justice, he said not even Dempsey was like him.
He he called him, and I used this in my book – an elemental force in nature.
He said he came at you like he was shot out of a cannon yeah.
What what you know, I’m actually less interested in in Terry McGovern’s, style of fighting and so forth.
Uh then I am the reaction of people to him and in his Heyday it was a very brief Heyday, but in his Heyday there was no uh athlete more admired in Brooklyn than Terry McGovern.
The the only the one I can think of it maybe was was Gil Hodges of the Dodgers when the Dodgers finally won the World Series.
For a time there, Gil Hodges was sainted and the Irish Community of Brooklyn in Terry McGovern’s day, sainted him too, and deservedly so I mean when you talk about you know versus Bud Crawford the more I read about John El suvin and ber sugar mentioned that you Know he said suvin: wasn’t he wasn’t a guy who stood there and and a lot of Fighters and looked, you know fainted and looked for shots? He said solvin was basically a barroom brawler.
The guy just came in looking to take you out with one shot.
So it’s incredible that anyone would have thought he had a chance against a guy like Corbett, but McGovern had skills right.
Mcgovern knew what to do.
He was taught well and he had a brother that fought too didn’t he uh yeah.
He did have a brother who wasn’t uh nearly as distinguished as he was.
He actually had two brothers, I believe uh, the other one also dabbled in boxing and then the the brother referencing was good enough to be a main event fighter, but he wasn’t nearly in Terry McGovern’s class is.
Is it fair to say that Fighters like McGovern or turootti uh? They have exciting Fighters, but short shelf lives? Yes, um, obviously uh.
Well, of course we we don’t know if Gotti would have had dementia, but he certainly uh.
You know had all the preconditions that that we associate with dementia.
It’S dementia is funny for some people that strikes in late middle age and for just about every boxer who fights a lot of rounds uh.
It creeps on up on them very late in life and gets comingled with other kinds of ailments and so forth.
So we really can’t attribute their demise to dementia, but it happens in so many cases.
We know uh that punches to the Head uh over a long period of time.
Uh.
You almost inevitably means that that that someone’s, you know just not going to die the way in with the kind of dignity we all hope to die with right.
I ferie Pacho wrote in his book how Ally would lay against the ropes and he would say to um Ali would say to well I’m toughening up my brain and he said Muhammad.
You can’t toughen your brain and your organs like your fingers when you’re learning guitar body Muhammad Ali there.
You know he was interviewed in two different uh issues of Playboy magazine uh many years apart and in the second interview I don’t know the exact year, but Ali would say the same thing he would say when I Spar when I Spar, I lean against the ropes And I let my opponent hit me in the head, because I’ve got to toughen that muscle, but what that’s not a muscle, that’s you know, and and and certainly a uh, you know.
Looking back, it was inevitable almost that Muhammad Ali, this great great human, being, was going to die in such dire circumstances.
Yes and you, you know it’s interesting, you say that because I spoke to my neurologist and I asked him about Ali and he said well, I can’t make a diagnosis in any fighter unless I examine them, but he said from the last time you mentioned it to Me I looked up some statistics.
You know from from six from when1 to title to when first left in 67 he was getting hit, maybe 20 times a fight in the head.
If that he said after that he’s getting hit 300 times a fight, maybe 120 times in the head times, 40 fights, he said the brain can’t take that that’s right and, and it didn’t no yeah with with McGovern his his descent from great fighter into dementia, was A lot quicker, it was similar to ad wgas, yes, similar style, but who you wonderfully describe in the you know in in your other book.
It was similar to him right, whereas Dixons was more played out or drawn out over a long period of time.
Yes, and and that’s, and in most cases like I say, uh, Dementia or CTE or Parkinson’s, whatever you want to call it most cases, it uh for a boxer.
Who’S fought a lot of rounds, it happens later in life and it sort of creeps up on him and uh.
But in the case of Terry McGovern and walgast, it happened quite you know it.
Actually, you could see the symptoms of it while they were still fighting in their 20s yeah, and I guess would you that has to be attributed to their to their style.
That yeah and also obvious ly, there’s a genetic factor involved here.
You know the the strangest thing is I uh many years ago, I I did a radio show here in Las Vegas for quite a long time, and one time I had Archie Moore, he actually came with George Foreman Archie Moore.
If you look at his record, he had over 200 fights.
He answered the bell for an enormous number of rounds when he was on my radio show he was probably in his early 70s and he was still sharp.
He.
He had good recall that he didn’t slur.
There was no indication of any cognitive disorder, and so obviously it’s uh, some people are, you, know, kind of like people, we’ve known in our generation, who’ve Smoked Cigarettes well into their 80s, with with no discernable lung problems.
Well, that happens, but of course it’s in a very small minority.
That’S right! I, when I had my heart attack, I asked my my cardiologist.
I said I have a friend and he’s 6’2 350 pounds.
He smokes six cigars a day and she said how old are his.
When did his grandparents die? I said they’re still alive, yeah hundreds.
He said she said it’s genetics, you don’t have that on the side yeah.
You know when you look at someone like George chavalo, he’s in a very bad shape now, but it didn’t hit him till his 80s.
Yes, like I knew him, but he doesn’t know where he is or who he is.
But yes didn’t happen till he was 82 81 and up until then he was fine.
But it’s just Angelo dundy said no.
One gets out of the sport on Skate and I guess would you agree that Dixon had it, but because of was fighting style.
It took longer to afflict him.
Of course, the alcoholism didn’t help either yeah.
Well, both George Dixon ter McGovern died in there.
They were both 37 years old and and uh uh.
You know so their situations were atypical, but I think in the case of George diction it was the accumulation of rounds more than anything else.
Uh you, you know that you know, and and and also the fact that being a you know being a black fighter.
In that era, he was exploited like all black Fighters and so when, when he could no longer make a living with his fists, he had nothing to fall back on financially to a you know to to to uh.
You know smooth his transition into uh.
You know his golden years, that’s you know, and partly Tom oor who who slapped him around at times and treated him like and same with Al Herford and Joe Gans.
I mean they.
They blackball you and there’s nothing.
You could do about it.
Yes, Al Herford from what Al Herford was a Baltimore man and gan’s pretty much Joe gan’s manager for his entire career.
They did have a period of Separation, but but uh Al Herford came back to Joe gan’s toward the end of gan’s career.
But from what I’ve read about Al Herford, he was, he was just not a good person, he was no.
I mean he was a dir that good yeah there’s no other way.
To put it, I mean he had.
He had other uh, among other things, uh uh.
He was was the head of the bookmakers that operated at the racetrack there in Baltimore, and so he would collect their.
You know if if they had a what they called a pitch, if they were allowed to come on the racetrack and take bets, they had to pay off Al Herford.
You know because he was the gatekeeper so to speak, and then uh uh, you I’m sure he exploited those people or took advantage of them, just as he did the boxers who fought of this club yeah Dixon said he never once got what he was promised in A contract from Al Herford and it’s nothing he could do about yeah and, of course Al Herford is not here to defend himself, but I’m sure that’s true uh.
I I know one of chapters of my book.
I have the the Gans McGovern fight, which you know very well.
You know better than anyone and you know where Gans took a dive and what I’ve read was that Herford said Frank: ER won’t fight you again for the lightweight title.
Unless he thinks he can beat you, and I mean that doesn’t make sense, because he still had to wait two or three years to get him again, even though he deliberately took a dive and nothing happened to mg govern the only one who suffered was was uh.
Ganss well, I’m not sure anything should have happened to McGovern.
My opinion is a lot of fights and box ing history that are thought to have been fixed weren’t.
Maybe that’s.
I’Ve lived too long in Las Vegas, but, however, it’s pretty hard to think that Gans McGovern was not a fake and the fault was Gans and his manager Al Herford.
The fight was in 1910.
You could fight only six rounds back then uh in Illinois and the fight was in Chicago.
But despite the uh small number of rounds, it was a big big event.
It was really a real Mega fight uh and it got the whole fight fans all over.
The country talking and gan’s performance was so limp uh that that a either he was drugged or B uh.
You know he did what he was supposed to do, which was lose intentionally, and it often has been said that Fighters is good as ganss who are really smooth and clever and Shifty and so forth that those people don’t know how to take a dive.
Well, if you follow not an actor yeah yeah, you know it’s when they don’t fight full boore.
It’S just obvious for some reason when you’re that when you’re that good, you just uh, you know to revert to someone uh uh, fighting under WS or whatever is just not easy to do.
No, and that was common with him one of the few times they say Ry cell got angry is they said.
I we heard that Benny Leonard and Jack Johnson and ganss and and and Dixon and McGovern, had a lot of fixed fights and ourselves said not in the way you believe it.
He said it’s not that their fights were fixed is that people were so afraid of them that unless they promised not to kill them immediately, they wouldn’t get in the ring with them yeah, and that was especially true of black Fighters.
Back in that era who uh you know who were told, don’t take this guy out quick because the paying customers will be disappointed.
Uh, please let this fight go rounds.
Um before you before.
You start fighting full boore yeah.
Let let him bloody your nose a bit or your lip and make it look like he has a chance.
I mean yeah, you know the story of Dixon where someone said to him, you never fight on the ropes and you always fight in ring Center and he pulled his pant leg up and and many of you even been in your your book and he had gashes In his leg, because people from his his opponent’s, trainers and fans of his opponent would hit him in the leg with things with implements, I am you know.
I found a newspaper reference from uh Dixon’s manager, uh Tom oor, which indicated that that of and when Dixon fought ringsider would hit him in the ankles of reach through the ropes and hit them.
But yet I’m very skeptical of that.
I’M really very very skeptical.
We uh, you know, had a private conversation.
We talked about the N fler five-part series on the black athlete going back by the way to the bare knuckle days in England and bringing it all the way forward to the uh to Joe Lewis and uh.
There’S so much in there that I in those books that I consider just lure, not facts but lure they make for good stories.
They.
They uh n fler understood that uh that for these books to make any money they had to appeal to young readers, uh readers who would otherwise turn to Adventure novels and uh.
He put a lot of fiction into his books and even though Tom oor once said that Dixon uh uh got whacked in the lower extremities as he was fighting when he got on the ropes in certain locals.
I still take that with a grain of salt.
I just have trouble believing it yeah I I would be afraid to approach a fighter any fighter and I think that fear would go back to even then you you’d have to be incredibly stupid to go up and do something like that to a professional yeah.
I just it just uh you I I just have trouble leaving it.
Okay, you know.
So you know I’ve never seen.
I was going to say you you, you, you have and the Nelson wolgast book you have and Lennox Lewis, when I showed this to him, was blown away.
You have the single greatest boxing photograph I’ve ever seen in my entire life, including the alley standing over Liston.
You have the photograph of of the three of them of of of uh uh Dixon Walcott, Barbados, Joe and Joe Gans uh standing sitting.
You know I’ll show this on camera yeah and that to me, is the most remarkable piece of Not Just Sports history, but but American and world history.
That incredible and I wanted to say I’m not sure I wanted to ask you the man in between Dixon and Barb and Walcott with the white hat, because you have it unknown.
It looks a bit like buyers, George buyers, but I’m not sure if that is could be.
You know, but that’s that’s.
A remarkable photo.
Yeah Dixon came out of uh uh.
You know Eastern Canada, Prince Edward Island, Halifax SC so forth, as did George buers, as as did a lot of uh lford black fighters, who found their way to Boston around the turn of the century.
George Godfrey Sam Langford, it was it was quite a colony and and um most of those, not all, certainly but a good number of those outstanding and long-forgotten black boxers actually were born in Nova, Scotia or Prince Edward Island.
One of the Eastern provinces of Canada, yeah buyers and and Godfrey were first cousins, and when I, when I tell when I’ve tried to pict this as a documentary and to Canadian Post Office for a stamp, I always tell them.
The the black population in PEI today is infantism, but in the 1880s it was half of infantism and to produce two outstanding worldclass Fighters.
Yeah in such a small area, yeah is is just unheard of yeah and, of course, they had to go to the United States to hone their skills and almost invariably that meant Boston back then yeah, and I I mean I, you know one thing I get asked All the time, why did Gotti go to AR teral Gotti go to New Jersey? Why? Why did Art hay go to San Diego? Why? Because there’s nothing up here, they don’t have the world class trainers and they don’t have world class sparring and yeah, and you know George Chalo said said to me I’ll.
He said about himself he’ll, be the Canadian heavyweight champion 50 years after he’s dead.
So he said you know saying that you’re the champion at Canada.
He said it’s nice, but really it counts for nothing.
So if you want make it as a boxer or as a comedian like Jim Carrey or as a writer, you got to be in the states.
That’S just the way it is and larger scale more people, yeah Dixon, when, when he when he came down, I mean when, when he fought McGovern the first time he was already on the downside of his career.
Wasn’T he yes um? I it’s it’s.
A lot of people think that Dixon actually uh some people, in fact, there’s a book about George Dixon, which actually ends when George Dixon goes to New Orleans and performs on that on that triple header down there with topped by John El Sullivan Corbett.
They were, they were, you know, was called a boxing Carnival.
It was a three night affair with title fights on each night, culminating with the big shebang, John El Sullivan and Corbett, and some people actually think that that was the peak.
Even though George Dixon didn’t fight.
Somebody who was going to give him much of a a fight, a guy named Jack, Skelly uh, some people think that was the peak of Dixon’s career and then there was a slow descent after that, and of course he didn’t fight mcover until sometime after that.
Why? I mean Skelly was basically an amateur, but amateurs back then had he was yeah had more respect than professionals.
You know yes well back, then there were a lot of amateurs who were uh.
It was it was.
I mean I mean the the ranks of amateur boxers were very, very deep, uh back circa 1900.
There were many many many more amateur boxers than pros and some of the best amateurs uh could hold their own with established professionals uh.
They thought that of Jack, Skelly uh, but and and Skelly probably could hold his own with a run-of-the-mill professional.
He beat some pretty good Pros, but against George Dixon he was out of his League George Dixon George Dixon was just on a different level than his contemporaries.
In his weight class, the I I know, James J Corvett, you know fought as an amateur and wouldn’t turn professional until until he was offered these great sums of money that he yeah yeah, just just couldn’t turn down.
So on the on the Carnival Champions.
The first night was, I think, Dixon right and then actually that was the middle fight.
As my understanding first fight was Jack, mlli Jack mlli, who is the lightweight champion Napoleon of the prize ring? Pardon me the Napoleon of the prize ring yes, Jack mccul, who retired undefeated.
He was the first uh uh fight and then the Dixon Skelly was the middle fight and then, of course the big one was the was Sullivan Corbett.
They were three successive knights in New Orleans and he also mcof also fought a tronan named Harry Gilmore, who who W, who gave him a good fight, didn’t win but gave him a good fight.
Canadian can considered the lightweight champion of Canada, but maybe best known for the boxing club he operated in Chicago right, which turned down a wealth of great fighters in the smaller white classes, uh around 1900, 1905 and so forth.
It’S interesting when I read about his comments about wgas and Mexican Joe rivers, and he said I’m sorry that everyone feels this way, but I was ringside.
I wasn’t fourth row.
I was ringside and I didn’t see ad wal gas land, a punch that was foul and of course the other people said.
Well then, maybe you need glasses, because you know the punch was definitively foul, but then again on the film of the fight, you can’t tell fil yeah, you know so.
Dixon fights, mcgoverin and mcgoverin at that point was still at the top level of his career.
Yes, Dixon was on the way up, and I mean I’m sorry.
Mcgovern was on the way up.
George Dixon was on the way down and which is the nature of boxing by the way right and Terry McGovern was an anomaly in that he he wasn’t racist like a lot of managers and Fighters.
He genuinely liked Joe Gans.
He had black friends Goldman Jewish friends.
I mean he, he didn’t, he didn’t discriminate against people right.
I don’t know I go to gyms in this town.
I live in Las Vegas and I go to local gyms uh quite a bit.
It’S I’ve, hopefully I’ll stumble on a good human interest story and frequently I do and I don’t know any white fighters who are racist.
I mean if, because I I think, there’s a mutual respect among fighters of different ethnic groups that wipes away a lot of the Prejudice you see in the general Society right.
Okay, if I’m I’m, you know, I’m not Jewish, but if I was a boxer and and back in the 30s, where every third fight was against a Jewish opponent, I don’t see how I could possibly be anti-semitic because uh, you know, there’s there’s a bond.
That’S formed between priz Fighters and uh.
You know that tends to wipe away a lot of that nonsense.
That’S a good point.
You know.
Uh Angelo gave me Jimmy mcclaren’s phone number.
I waited my whole life to meet him and, yes, I got to speak to him briefly.
This is like a year or two before he died and I asked him about Benny Leonard and he Saidi.
I didn’t want him to take the fight.
He was my idol.
Didn’T want to hurt him yeah and I I would I would have given him the money, but he said he didn’t want it.
He didn’t want charity, so he said he said.
I don’t know if you’re aware of this son, but I sued the New York papers because they called me the Jew killer, the Hebrew Scourge and he said I went to them and he said these are my friends: it’s not personal yeah, just a fight.
He said.
I still go out when I’m in New York for dinner, with Benny Leonard three or four times a week, I’m still friends with Sid Terrace, I’m still friends of I’m.
You said I’m great.
I was great friends of Barney Ross.
We spoke every single night with whom he had three classic fights right and, and he said it, it wasn’t personal.
I thought I won the third fight, he got it, but I’m not angry at him.
You know and when when he had his drug problems, I tried to help him these and just as you said, we’re we share an experience.
No other two people on Earth shared, so he said the racism.
Doesn’T it can’t enter into it? You know but mcgoverin and in particular, when he was fighting on the way up.
I mean he he didn’t.
He never drew the color line when he was Champion.
Like John El suvin did he fought anyone and everyone? You know, and he was great.
What was the turning point that put him on the downside? Was it the young? Was it too much acting the ring, or was it the Corbett fight Corbett just took it out of yeah the F? That’S a good question.
Um you mentioned acting back in Terry McGovern’s day and in George Dixon’s day uh, a boxer would make more money traveling a country with vaille troops.
He would have a little skit a little stick and be part of a vaudville troop and the most prominent boxers.
Actually, that was their major source of income until the arrival of fight films.
Now you ask funny thing about Terry McGovern.
Is that uh he’s one of those Fighters that seemed to have grown old overnight uh when he fought uh young Corbett II in Connecticut on Thanksgiving day uh? I think 1902 and was knocked out early in a robust fight um and it was a real shocker.
It was one of the biggest upsets ever up to that point in time, but it was like you had grown old overnight and we’ve seen that in the case of some boxers, we have’t in terms of their ring a cumin and in in McGovern’s case.
You could build a case that he spent too much time on the road uh with vaille troops.
I mean if you’re uh, going on the road you’re, not keeping good hours because uh uh, you know these are evening performances and when you should be in Aug boxer.
Should be going to bed, you know so so that was uh.
It was theorized that that Tera McGovern’s Hollow performance against young Corbett II was a result of the fact that he had spent too much time on the road with vaudville troops, and so he just wasn’t in the right mind, frame mentally and physically.
He just wasn’t trained.
Well enough, yeah, you know what yes and also I think he had some domestic problems.
I I saw one illusion.
I didn’t put it in my book, but I saw one illusion which suggested that uh his wife may have cheated on him and he might have discovered it and that messed with his mind.
But I didn’t put that in the book.
Maybe I shouldn’t even say it, but, and it wasn’t in a boxing book by the way – pardon me I said it was not in a boxing book by the way was, but that would be enough to crush someone that you would go out and not care.
You know, but, but in your book you you mentioned how he he just rushed right at him, which was a foolish strategy.
You know, because with mcgoverin there was no feeling out rounds, that’s correct, he did not.
He did not.
He was that that’s true.
He charged right at his opponent was that just the only the r pardon me was that the only style that I mean it didn’t occur to him.
The think I haven’t fought him, so maybe I should have see what he has or he didn’t care.
I can’t.
I can’t put myself in his mind, but okay, okay, but he was you know Mike Tyson was sort of the same way.
There was no fancy Dan about him right.
You know you know so so so, who knows when, when McGovern’s uh to me is marquee wi? Didn’T come against because they were in different stages of development, but against an English boxer called pedler Palmer called box of Tricks.
They fought uh up in Westchester County about a 30 minute train train ride from Manhattan and uh uh.
The Govern just blew right through him and took him out in the opening round, and pom was a considered, especially by people in England to be the cleverest fighter on the planet, but but cleverness uh, you know can’t stop a hurricane.
No! It’S funny because I’ve read about that you’re, the the way you mention that in your book is wonderful and just how people, the British at ringside and even some the Americans were saying well, this could go 15 or 20 and Palmer’s gon na do this, and do That yeah Bell Rings bang out.
They said the same thing about Le about Michael Spinx when he fought Mike Tyson, then in Atlantic City, that you know every expert says well the longer the fight goes, the more the better chance Michael Spinx has of defeating Tyson.
Well, I theoretically, I guess that was true, but of course Mike Tyson didn’t let you know didn’t let U.
You know Michael Spinx have a second of rest and took him out what 91 seconds or something yeah.
So so all that theory went out went out that out with the garbage this my favorite story about the word.
Theoretically, yes, I just finished a book by Doris Karns Goodwin about Franklin and Elanor Roosevelt in the home during the second world war, and they said two of Franklin, Roosevelt’s cabinet members, uh uh, Harry Hopkins and Harold icks were talking and Harold XS was against against FDR Programs and Welfare help people and he said, it’ll toughen them up and theoretically, they’ll be tougher and better in the future and Harry Hopkins said the problem: is people don’t eat? Theoretically they eat every day and I had to laugh.
But I thought that’s a good point.
You know, theoretically the fight’s supposed to go, but that doesn’t mean anything yeah.
So yeah I mean.
Are there more films of McGovern that that we know we’re taking other than the fight with Dixon? Because I haven’t seen any you know: I’m not a fight film collector and I’m not the person to ask really um.
You know the late Bill.
Kon and Jim Jacobs had that wonderful Storehouse of old films and some of which have popped up on YouTube nowadays.
But I’m not aware, I I really I’m not qualified to answer your question.
Well, I spoke with Steve lot who worked with them the late Steve lot? Yes and he was saying the problem with the films from that era.
I’Ll fight films were owned by the mafia, so he said we could get them and buy them from the mafia for a lot of money and still had to keep paying and paying, but he said they own them all and so yeah, not they.
They didn’t own.
The originals, but they came to own if, especially if there had been only one copy right, they came to own it.
You know.
Obviously, the word mafia didn’t exist back in the days of John El Sullivan and whatever right, but but the the few fights of his and his contemporaries Corbett and so forth.
The original fight films, uh yeah I’ve I’ve read that they originally fell into the hands of gangsters and uh.
They weren’t going to let him go without a pretty penny.
Steve lot told me a story where Bill Kon sent him somewhere in the Bronx, the pay guy.
He said it was a fight foot, two old Jewish man in his 90s.
He invites Steve lot in.
He has his Jamaican caretaker make some cookies for him and they’re talking and the guy says to Steve you’re a nice boy.
Uh Steve gives him a check.
Here’S the box of films and when they get back to the office Steve said he almost had a stroke, because there was an article on this guy that bill kton gave him.
The guy was uh one of the top murder Incorporated killers and he Steve said he looked like a little little nebbish in account.
He said he was that’s.
Why no one feared him when he walked up.
You wouldn’t expect.
He said.
Why was any trial because it came out a year ago and he’s 92? What are they gon na? Do I mean they not g to put him in jail now and he only killed gangsters, but this guy had incredible films and Steve said the most valuable film.
If you want to retire is we know there were films of Harry greb, but they’ve never been found so so yeah, my friend Jason W winders, who wrote a book on Dixon, correct um, which you’re aware of yeah, who I alluded to before his book, really ends.
Uh for all practical purposes, when Dixon is in new orans as part of that that right triple header that Festival of Champions and he found the book, Dion wrote at the University of Windsor in Ontario just by fluke.
He he just volunteered one weekend to help, go through old, dusty boxes and out, I think, OB.
Obviously, it’s obvious to me that book was ghostwritten yeah, oh yeah, sure and most uh uh boxing Memoirs of antiquarian priz Fighters were all ghostwritten and you know which is understandable.
I mean I mean even today was you know when you know when, when Michelle Obama comes out with her Memoir, she didn’t just sit down by herself in a private room and write that out in long hand.
Obviously she had the assistance of a oh yeah of a professional Ghost Writer Angel told me once I was telling him how I bought the book The Greatest, and he said the great thing about that book.
Ally never wrote it, nor did he read it yeah.
He said it was written by Richard Durham from the Nation of Islam and he nothing in that book is of Truth yeah.
He said never through his metal in the river.
He just lost it right.
He loses a lot of things because Hees care about material.
You know so so McGovern and Dixon McGovern are, does McGovern still have relatives that are alive today.
I’M not aware you would think so um because his he he he no.
He should.
Let me put it this way.
We know that his wife – he was only married once and we know that uh they had a uh one son uh, and we know that both are deceased, and so he would not have any immediate relatives.
But of course he had brothers and nephews and cousins, and I’m I’m sure there are some uh people in his family tree still around, but I I wouldn’t know how to find them.
I know that uh his son died at 38.
You said his son died at a very young age.
Yeah, do we know what from oh boy? You know, I knew it one time and I I don’t think it was uh.
I I forget, to be honest: I forget, if you got 20 minutes I’ll, go, find a copy of the book and thumb through it, and maybe I can dig it out, but I’m sorry, I don’t want to put that through you with with George Dixon.
We know that he was married to Tom oor’s sister Kitty.
Yes, and I don’t know if he had any children or not I’m not aware he did okay and that and that marriage there have been some who have questioned whether or not that was Tom, oor’s sister.
Although it’s generally agreed that she was, he was married to a white woman.
That’S that’s true um, but I don’t know that marriage eventually dissolved, but I couldn’t find out when or what the circumstances were.
But when George Dixon finally died, he died alone, uh in a in a in basically in a boarding house uh in her room.
Very, very, very sad.
So oh excuse me, okay, yeah.
He let me let me stop that.
I’M sorry! No problem, excuse me! Well, I guess that’s not how they do it on the major networks.
I apologize we’re not a major Network by any any means.
I was GNA say I I have tried with the help of Tony G, the British boxing historian track Kitty aor and I’ve gone on ancestry.
com.
She just fell off the face of the earth.
I found little bits and pieces and one or two lines alluding to her from from British newspapers that Tony sent me, but there’s no there’s no record.
George Dixon has a a great great grand nephew.
That’S a school teacher in Toronto that I speak to occasionally, and so I speak to him and he goes.
You know, there’s stories about this.
I like to hear them.
He said: well, let’s go out to a fight, there’s no fights going on here! Better! Go to Montreal couple of promoters, as you know, in Montreal who oh yeah whove been pretty active and also I’ve been in touch with Roslin buyers, who’s, a great great grand niece of George buers.
Okay, so she’s had an interesting story stories um about him, but it would great it would be great to find a a living relative of um, Terry McGovern.
The poster of the Vaudeville thing is such a gorgeous poster yeah him and it’s hard for people today to realize how big a star he was, how many thousands of people lined up to see him everywhere.
He went well yeah they.
You know.
I said you had to be part of bville troops they actually built plays around Terry McGovern uh.
So it wasn’t just I mean some of the boxing vilans.
Basically, they would do a little sparring session and uh maybe invite someone out of the audience usually plant to come up and – and you know and spar with, and maybe Sugar Ray Robinson has stick where he was jump rope.
He was just incredible jump roper, but they actually built plays around Terry McGovern.
He was that big and and and or they they took, plays that that were successful and they made him the lead – and that was a very unusual for for boxers back in those days to to to you know to to get that kind of role.
Uh that went you know that went beyond the fact, uh that you know that made them something more than the occupation they had, that of a price fighter.
Was it it? Was it McGovern’s not just his success in the ring, but his his fact that he was so charismatic? This was a goodlook greatl.
Looking young charismatic young man yeah, it was a, he was uh.
I you wouldn’t call him a mat Idol, but he was yeah.
He was.
He was a good-looking Irish kid.
You know and uh the constituents for boxing back in McGovern’s day were overwhelmingly Irish uh.
It helped to be Irish and and most of the fighters back most of the white Fighters.
Cir 1900, not only the fighters, but the seconds the managers, the promoters were Irish Tom oor, all those guys yeah yeah yeah.
He he because they said John ulvin did the same thing, but he couldn’t Act and the only one who was good was was James, J Corbett, who actually had a little bit of skill at it.
I’Ve read there were people who thought James.
J Corvett was as good an actor as anyone else on the stage back then wow you’re right that he was a great actor with John L Sullivan his routine when he went on tour was usually blacksmithing like uh, like Bob Fitz Simmons, you know, they’d have a Little you know he’d have a little thing.
He forged something, but but as far as acting no no, he that that was not his Forte.
No there’s a great story.
I read about him and I had I had to ask it might have been in Andrew eisenberg’s book um, jonal suvin and the Irish in America.
I had to ask someone: I I didn’t know what it meant where he went on stage once because he was a notorious drunk and he said hi, I’m John El solvin, I’m I’m I’m drunker than a Fiddler’s [ __ ] and I didn’t know what that meant.
Until I looked it up – and I asked people and someone said back in in in those times, Fiddlers in saloons would play the fiddle and people to say thank you would send them drinks, but they couldn’t take the drinks because they’d get drunk and stop playing.
So they had to have their wife take the drink and then their wife would get hammered.
So he said I’m drunker than a Fiddler’s [ __ ].
That’S I’ve never heard that before in my life, that’s fascinating.
Neither of I I mean it’s.
This uh podcast has been very educational for me now um, I’m trying to remember what I wanted to ask you about.
Uh, yes, uh, so MCG McGovern didn’t draw the line about fighting fight, whoever he would fight.
He would fight and Dixon certainly didn’t have the uh.
The ability to do that, Dixon, F Walter ederton right, the Kentucky, rose, bud and knock, and the roseb knocked him out, but then wasn’t Dixon suffering from a fever and they agreed to just bar and roseb took advantage of it or it was a legitimate knockout.
Apparently it was a legitimate knockout and we should point out that uh uh uh they kept fighting after Dixon was allowed time to recover, which you never see today.
Uh Walter ederson was, along in a tooth black fighter from Philadelphia, had a big reputation there in the so-called City of Brotherly Love and he and Dixon spart several times on on bville stages and after Edon knocked him out.
There was a move of foot to put them together in a real prize fight, but that for some reason that that died on the vine but EDT and Dixon fought several times and at least at at least one occasion, ederon knocked them out and Yeah Tom oor Said that Dix this was by the way a charity, fight and Dixon fought a lot of fights where a good portion of the proceeds would go to some charity um, this particular fight with ederton and Philadelphia.
As I recall, H um, I believe there was a strike there of of people working in uh factories that produce some sweaters or something like that, and it was a prolonged strike and the uh.
The proceeds were earmarked for the strikers and their families.
And U Dixon from what we’ve read.
Uh normally would not have taken this, but he didn’t want to disappoint the people who would benefit from it, and so he went into the ring with a fever perhaps and got himself knocked out.
One of the things I think I read it in your book is that what appeared in the paper about fights, often dependent on What fighters manager got to the phone first, that yeah that came, that that line came from a book by an old boxing manager called Dan Morgan Dum Dan Morgan, they called him.
He was so talkative that they called him dumb Dan and he said yeah out in the herlands.
You know where, where they did you, the fight wasn’t big enough to have a telegrapher at ringside, so you had to get to the telegraph office where ever the telegraph office was and and and in the Hinterlands.
You know there might not be any boxing uh writers present.
Okay, so the result of the fight uh, you know, depended on who got to the telegraph office first and sent the dispatch back to New York or wherever, and so you know.
Obviously, whoever got to the telegraph first had a biased opinion of what had actually just transpired which, but that that frustrates and and you being a historian would know this.
It’S the most frustrating thing and it’s actually the most fascinating thing is you read reports of old fights in different papers and the discrepancies are huge.
I mean I mean it’s, it’s you can see you can you can see that somebody’s lying? If not both you know what I mean and, and it and it’s it’s frustrating, but that, but then it sends us off to try and find the real truth and that’s and and so that’s why we actually like it too.
It’S fuel for uh, an author.
Well, that’s one of the thousands of things I love about your book and and and in this one in particular, you mentioned that you, you said you know either this happened, but another newspaper reported this happened and, and it drives you, nuts reading it thinking.
Yes, they can’t both have happened, I mean, isn’t there a, but it’s it’s unbelievable and and, and you have to wonder who was watching the fight.
I mean.
Are you that Pro that fighter, that you can’t be honest but, like you said it leaves you going to try to do a deeper dive, yes and and into what happened? So yes um, you know in my book the first fight that I cover is from 1772 and the one that we not categorically, but we can pretty much say it was a fixed fight.
There have been other fixed fights in Britain, but it’s hard to really say for sure it was.
This is the one where all evidence pointed to it, and Tony was just showing me the different uh reports, but he said, if you really do your work.
You’Ll find Contemporary reports.
Yes, that that will tell you what happened and then you can draw you know from that.
What actually happened? Yeah one of the uh.
Nowadays there are so many old newspapers on the web.
I’M talking about newspapers that have long died.
You know, and and uh there’s so much material now on the internet, that you know I remember going to college and when it was time to write a term paper at then a trip to the library and scrolling through these clunky microfilm machines in the library.
When I went to University of Nebraska, the only old newspapers I remember on microfilm were the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, The Wall Street Journal n, maybe the LA Times and, of course, the local paper.
Whatever that, so you didn’t, you know, you had to depend upon what was in these papers and some of these papers were high tone, and so they didn’t cover the sporting Spectrum like like the uh tabloids, the burgeoning tabloids did.
There were no tabloids in the on microfil Library, no old issues of the New York Post or any of these papers, and so you got a very narrow perspective historically, when it came to the sphere of sports, but now there’s so much cool stuff on the web.
It’S amazing yeah, it’s I you know when I I started University in 1978 and same as you I would say: well that’s another eight hours I’m going to be spending in the reference library, that’s great and when I look up Fighters you know Harry Gilmore, Carl tumain, Different Fighters, I would think um, especially with Gilmore, there’s nothing on them it in the two main papers.
And yes, one of the Librarians said those are the two main papers that exist today.
They existed then, but there were other smaller papers.
Oh sure – and I didn’t realize that – and she gave me a list of like 20 of them and I had to go through each one and go.
Oh okay.
Here’S a good art article on on that yeah, with with Carl taine who was born in listo onario.
There’S very little of them on the internet at all.
We know he was from.
He was Canadian and then Steve Canton wrote something about how that he was actually Italian and half his family lived in in in um, uh, Detroit and then Cleveland and the other half lift here, because they were too big to all live together and so the family.
In Detroit says, you know he he and he had his career in Cleveland, but um when I SP to family members in Canada.
They said: that’s completely false yeah, so they said, we’ve read the article, there’s no trueu.
So it’s hard to find you know at times, based on what you see yeah, you know you can only go by what they have so doing.
An article on Joe Grim was not difficult because there were so many hundreds of things on him, whereas other Fighters, you know, especially with the coverage in in in Canada but mcover and Dixon, were covered all over the world.
I mean these were World figures yeah and after his career went South and his skills had dulled that George Dixon spent the better part of three years in England uh and had a ton of fights over there 514 rounds.
You said fought pardon me, you said he fought 514 rounds.
That could be, I I forget, the exact number it comess within like a three year.
Three three and a half year span.
Wow, I mean that’s amazing, some of those rounds by the way in England, circa 1900 were two- minute rounds, so we should put that in perspective which ones were and which ones weren’t.
I can’t wasn’t able to narrow it down that that tightly and did Dixon, Dixon’s lack of money did that come from the fact that he was a gambler and a drinker as well.
He spent it quickly and as well as as Tom oor uh, you know ripping him off.
I guess it’s hard to say many boxers in Dixon’s era were degenerate.
Horse players.
That was it’s well for one thing.
Horse racing was so big back then, but but so many uh boxers young Corbett.
The second, for example, and Terry McGovern, blew a lot of money at the RAC track.
That’S that’s where the uh boxers would go in their downtime.
Actually, there was a lot of overlap between the boxing gym and the racetrack racetrack you’d meet the same people in both places right yeah, that’s it still happens.
Today I mean people, you know back back, then entertainers lost fortunes at at the racetrack too.
They just couldn’t resisted at the racetrack and in what we called pool rooms which were Off Track Bedding places which at one time were all over the country all over the United States, the movie, The Sting that wonderful comedy.
I love that movie so much uh their depiction of the uh Off Track Bedding facility in Chicago is spoton from what I’ve read.
It’S just it’s that’s exactly what they look like uh, with the results being read off a ticker by a person with a you know, a microphone or megaphone or whatever, and and it was and all controlled by the Mafia, the mob controlled.
All all of those things.
Uh they control some fast.
Well, I mean the betting part.
You got think about that because they were all over the country.
There were a lot of M and pop places.
That’S true, but I mean the major places in LA and New York, Lansky and luchano had that and and yeah.
So a lot of that well yeah when, when sport uh, when horse players bet on the telephone, instead of going to a bing shop, uh yeah, the guy at the other end of the telephone had some connection to organized crime by and large, that’s true, but the Actual physical Place uh, you know and like like I say, the United States was honeycombed with Off Track Bedding parlors, the actual physical place.
A lot of them were bombing pop operations.
Uh.
The mafia may have had its fingers in such things as the wallboards, which showed the races around the track and and and you know, maybe even the chalk – that was used to put the odds on the Blackboard.
U, but a lot of those were kind of momand Pop operations run by local people yeah the mob.
Didn’T it really get involved in boxing until the dempy K, ponche fight, because the million dollar gate they looked at it and thought there’s money to be taken here where it’s before, even for burns Johnson, 30 grand it it.
I read where someone said it it.
They would be paying out more to their thugs than they would taking the money in, so it wasn’t until the million dollar Gates were thought.
Okay, we can control this.
That kind of made sense.
It’S generally agreed that the uh, the Mobsters were thickest in the sport of professional boxing during the Depression years, yeah with with um uh on the killer, Madden and George Shalo knew him and and uh I didn’t really.
I knew carbo and PLO were involved in it.
Frankie car Mo and B palmo – I didn’t thought they got involved to the mid late 40s and Chris dunde said no.
No, no, they were there in the early 30s.
They they were right there and he said back.
Then there was no.
The only thing you wanted to hear they wanted to hear was yes, sir, and there’s nothing you could do about it and black Fighters once again had nothing got ripped off by them, and Chris D D said.
The only fighter who probably wasn’t touched was Jimmy McLaren, because his manager pop Foster had actually grew up in England, beside Oni Madden and so no one screwed with McLaren.
But I don’t know if I agree because yeah he was going to retire after he won the title um when he rewind the title yeah uh from Ross and when he defended against Ross in the third fight.
He said if I win this, I’m gone and what I’ve been read or been told is that you know the depression he’s the biggest money owner in boxing that couldn’t let him go.
You know you know.
As I say, this podcast is very educational for me.
Okay, I I know the people you reference, but I don’t know the minute details the way you do well, you you heard of the F the fight with barbos Walcott and kid LaVine.
Yes, sir Frisco right where gamblers told that wild CAU You Got ta Lose yeah.
Well, that was yeah.
You know that wasn’t uncommon back then, either where understanding that, if a a fight went the distance, uh uh, you know it was a pre-arrange draw or even uh right, uh telling a fighter you.
The only way you can win this fight is by knockout.
If it goes the distance you lose right and the difference between them and the mafia, of course, was the mafia made it National Organization.
These were local guys in different cities, yeah it it’s just it.
I know that FL wrote a book on mg govern I just.
Why hasn’t there it’s hard to say why there hasn’t been a movie.
I mean he had such an incredible life and he was such a meteor bursting through the sky.
Transcribed
[, Music, ] hi, I’m Lou Eisen boxing writer, author podcaster historian, all around schmuck, and I I am – I I’m gon na turn my phone off there.
Today we have a special guest on ring.
Talk.
We have Arie K Lang.
I love Arie K.
Lang, anytime, you speak any boxer or any excuse me any author in the world of boxing and you’re writing book.
They say the same thing if you want to know how to write a book read Arie Lang because he knows how to write a book.
People put out 1200 page books, 800, page books, Arie puts out these magnificent books and they’re absolutely perfect.
There’S not a wasted comma.
Our letter he’s the best boxing writer on the planet.
My favorite book until I got his new one, was the Nelson wolgast fight in the San Francisco boxing scene.
This book was magnificent, and so I I had to research, Arie and arie’s, a sociologist.
He taught at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas University of Nebraska and the Tuskegee University he’s also they say a leading Authority.
Uhuh he’s the leading Authority on the history of boxing and American Sports gambling he’s the leading Authority on the planet.
He lives and writes in Las Vegas he’s also the editorinchief of the sweet science online.
If you haven’t read that you haven’t read anything about boxing and um, it mentions the other credits which I just said, and this is his fifth book Clash of The Little Giants to fight between Canada’s George Dixon and Terry mcgaven.
And it’s it’s an extreme.
It’S an incredible privilege and pleasure to have the wonderful and magnificent Mr Arie K lying on Arie, welcome, you’re being too generous, but thank you Lou.
That’S I’ve never had an introduction quite like that, but I appreciate it well.
They should all be like that.
I mean I’m telling you every author.
I can name them all you.
If you want to know how to write about a boxing book read Arie Lang.
He he knows what to do.
There’S no excess verbiage.
He gets all the facts in it’s written entertainingly.
You learn and you love, and you know that you can’t say anything better than that um.
Well.
Of course, we we both share an interest in in uh boxing in the old days in the early days of Queensbury boing I’ve.
My my main interest when I write books is the uh era around the that that straddles the beginning of the of the 20th century.
You know the early 1900s late 1890s, it’s a fascinating era.
Uh, you know the sport was, you know, hadn’t found its footing yet uh.
There was a lot going on and and and it was really a very interesting era and the people that fought back then I’m not sure how good they were in terms terms of could they beat Terrence Crawford today.
I’D rather suspect not, but these were tough rugged, guys, uh and and very very interesting characters yeah it’s.
You know it’s great, that you say that I love that era too, and these guys and you do this better than anyone on Earth they deserve to be remembered.
So you put the Flesh on the bones and you make them real people, and when I, when I read this book your most recent book, I just thought after reading, I thought it’s criminal people don’t know Terry MC.
They don’t know how great he was he and when I Angelo Dundee, my mentor was friends of Charlie Goldman, who trained him uhuh and Charlie.
As you know, better than anyone was idolized.
Terry McGovern, yeah Charlie, was a small guy too.
He was smaller than Terry.
Mcgovern fought in the lowest weight classes, but yeah he was Marciano’s trainer and he could talk about Terry McGovern for hours.
He he patterned his hair after Terry McGovern.
He know that yeah and he said to Angelo.
There never was a fighter like him.
He said you you, you could only.
He said film can’t do him Justice, he said not even Dempsey was like him.
He he called him, and I used this in my book – an elemental force in nature.
He said he came at you like he was shot out of a cannon yeah.
What what you know, I’m actually less interested in in Terry McGovern’s, style of fighting and so forth.
Uh then I am the reaction of people to him and in his Heyday it was a very brief Heyday, but in his Heyday there was no uh athlete more admired in Brooklyn than Terry McGovern.
The the only the one I can think of it maybe was was Gil Hodges of the Dodgers when the Dodgers finally won the World Series.
For a time there, Gil Hodges was sainted and the Irish Community of Brooklyn in Terry McGovern’s day, sainted him too, and deservedly so I mean when you talk about you know versus Bud Crawford the more I read about John El suvin and ber sugar mentioned that you Know he said suvin: wasn’t he wasn’t a guy who stood there and and a lot of Fighters and looked, you know fainted and looked for shots? He said solvin was basically a barroom brawler.
The guy just came in looking to take you out with one shot.
So it’s incredible that anyone would have thought he had a chance against a guy like Corbett, but McGovern had skills right.
Mcgovern knew what to do.
He was taught well and he had a brother that fought too didn’t he uh yeah.
He did have a brother who wasn’t uh nearly as distinguished as he was.
He actually had two brothers, I believe uh, the other one also dabbled in boxing and then the the brother referencing was good enough to be a main event fighter, but he wasn’t nearly in Terry McGovern’s class is.
Is it fair to say that Fighters like McGovern or turootti uh? They have exciting Fighters, but short shelf lives? Yes, um, obviously uh.
Well, of course we we don’t know if Gotti would have had dementia, but he certainly uh.
You know had all the preconditions that that we associate with dementia.
It’S dementia is funny for some people that strikes in late middle age and for just about every boxer who fights a lot of rounds uh.
It creeps on up on them very late in life and gets comingled with other kinds of ailments and so forth.
So we really can’t attribute their demise to dementia, but it happens in so many cases.
We know uh that punches to the Head uh over a long period of time.
Uh.
You almost inevitably means that that that someone’s, you know just not going to die the way in with the kind of dignity we all hope to die with right.
I ferie Pacho wrote in his book how Ally would lay against the ropes and he would say to um Ali would say to well I’m toughening up my brain and he said Muhammad.
You can’t toughen your brain and your organs like your fingers when you’re learning guitar body Muhammad Ali there.
You know he was interviewed in two different uh issues of Playboy magazine uh many years apart and in the second interview I don’t know the exact year, but Ali would say the same thing he would say when I Spar when I Spar, I lean against the ropes And I let my opponent hit me in the head, because I’ve got to toughen that muscle, but what that’s not a muscle, that’s you know, and and and certainly a uh, you know.
Looking back, it was inevitable almost that Muhammad Ali, this great great human, being, was going to die in such dire circumstances.
Yes and you, you know it’s interesting, you say that because I spoke to my neurologist and I asked him about Ali and he said well, I can’t make a diagnosis in any fighter unless I examine them, but he said from the last time you mentioned it to Me I looked up some statistics.
You know from from six from when1 to title to when first left in 67 he was getting hit, maybe 20 times a fight in the head.
If that he said after that he’s getting hit 300 times a fight, maybe 120 times in the head times, 40 fights, he said the brain can’t take that that’s right and, and it didn’t no yeah with with McGovern his his descent from great fighter into dementia, was A lot quicker, it was similar to ad wgas, yes, similar style, but who you wonderfully describe in the you know in in your other book.
It was similar to him right, whereas Dixons was more played out or drawn out over a long period of time.
Yes, and and that’s, and in most cases like I say, uh, Dementia or CTE or Parkinson’s, whatever you want to call it most cases, it uh for a boxer.
Who’S fought a lot of rounds, it happens later in life and it sort of creeps up on him and uh.
But in the case of Terry McGovern and walgast, it happened quite you know it.
Actually, you could see the symptoms of it while they were still fighting in their 20s yeah, and I guess would you that has to be attributed to their to their style.
That yeah and also obvious ly, there’s a genetic factor involved here.
You know the the strangest thing is I uh many years ago, I I did a radio show here in Las Vegas for quite a long time, and one time I had Archie Moore, he actually came with George Foreman Archie Moore.
If you look at his record, he had over 200 fights.
He answered the bell for an enormous number of rounds when he was on my radio show he was probably in his early 70s and he was still sharp.
He.
He had good recall that he didn’t slur.
There was no indication of any cognitive disorder, and so obviously it’s uh, some people are, you, know, kind of like people, we’ve known in our generation, who’ve Smoked Cigarettes well into their 80s, with with no discernable lung problems.
Well, that happens, but of course it’s in a very small minority.
That’S right! I, when I had my heart attack, I asked my my cardiologist.
I said I have a friend and he’s 6’2 350 pounds.
He smokes six cigars a day and she said how old are his.
When did his grandparents die? I said they’re still alive, yeah hundreds.
He said she said it’s genetics, you don’t have that on the side yeah.
You know when you look at someone like George chavalo, he’s in a very bad shape now, but it didn’t hit him till his 80s.
Yes, like I knew him, but he doesn’t know where he is or who he is.
But yes didn’t happen till he was 82 81 and up until then he was fine.
But it’s just Angelo dundy said no.
One gets out of the sport on Skate and I guess would you agree that Dixon had it, but because of was fighting style.
It took longer to afflict him.
Of course, the alcoholism didn’t help either yeah.
Well, both George Dixon ter McGovern died in there.
They were both 37 years old and and uh uh.
You know so their situations were atypical, but I think in the case of George diction it was the accumulation of rounds more than anything else.
Uh you, you know that you know, and and and also the fact that being a you know being a black fighter.
In that era, he was exploited like all black Fighters and so when, when he could no longer make a living with his fists, he had nothing to fall back on financially to a you know to to to uh.
You know smooth his transition into uh.
You know his golden years, that’s you know, and partly Tom oor who who slapped him around at times and treated him like and same with Al Herford and Joe Gans.
I mean they.
They blackball you and there’s nothing.
You could do about it.
Yes, Al Herford from what Al Herford was a Baltimore man and gan’s pretty much Joe gan’s manager for his entire career.
They did have a period of Separation, but but uh Al Herford came back to Joe gan’s toward the end of gan’s career.
But from what I’ve read about Al Herford, he was, he was just not a good person, he was no.
I mean he was a dir that good yeah there’s no other way.
To put it, I mean he had.
He had other uh, among other things, uh uh.
He was was the head of the bookmakers that operated at the racetrack there in Baltimore, and so he would collect their.
You know if if they had a what they called a pitch, if they were allowed to come on the racetrack and take bets, they had to pay off Al Herford.
You know because he was the gatekeeper so to speak, and then uh uh, you I’m sure he exploited those people or took advantage of them, just as he did the boxers who fought of this club yeah Dixon said he never once got what he was promised in A contract from Al Herford and it’s nothing he could do about yeah and, of course Al Herford is not here to defend himself, but I’m sure that’s true uh.
I I know one of chapters of my book.
I have the the Gans McGovern fight, which you know very well.
You know better than anyone and you know where Gans took a dive and what I’ve read was that Herford said Frank: ER won’t fight you again for the lightweight title.
Unless he thinks he can beat you, and I mean that doesn’t make sense, because he still had to wait two or three years to get him again, even though he deliberately took a dive and nothing happened to mg govern the only one who suffered was was uh.
Ganss well, I’m not sure anything should have happened to McGovern.
My opinion is a lot of fights and box ing history that are thought to have been fixed weren’t.
Maybe that’s.
I’Ve lived too long in Las Vegas, but, however, it’s pretty hard to think that Gans McGovern was not a fake and the fault was Gans and his manager Al Herford.
The fight was in 1910.
You could fight only six rounds back then uh in Illinois and the fight was in Chicago.
But despite the uh small number of rounds, it was a big big event.
It was really a real Mega fight uh and it got the whole fight fans all over.
The country talking and gan’s performance was so limp uh that that a either he was drugged or B uh.
You know he did what he was supposed to do, which was lose intentionally, and it often has been said that Fighters is good as ganss who are really smooth and clever and Shifty and so forth that those people don’t know how to take a dive.
Well, if you follow not an actor yeah yeah, you know it’s when they don’t fight full boore.
It’S just obvious for some reason when you’re that when you’re that good, you just uh, you know to revert to someone uh uh, fighting under WS or whatever is just not easy to do.
No, and that was common with him one of the few times they say Ry cell got angry is they said.
I we heard that Benny Leonard and Jack Johnson and ganss and and and Dixon and McGovern, had a lot of fixed fights and ourselves said not in the way you believe it.
He said it’s not that their fights were fixed is that people were so afraid of them that unless they promised not to kill them immediately, they wouldn’t get in the ring with them yeah, and that was especially true of black Fighters.
Back in that era who uh you know who were told, don’t take this guy out quick because the paying customers will be disappointed.
Uh, please let this fight go rounds.
Um before you before.
You start fighting full boore yeah.
Let let him bloody your nose a bit or your lip and make it look like he has a chance.
I mean yeah, you know the story of Dixon where someone said to him, you never fight on the ropes and you always fight in ring Center and he pulled his pant leg up and and many of you even been in your your book and he had gashes In his leg, because people from his his opponent’s, trainers and fans of his opponent would hit him in the leg with things with implements, I am you know.
I found a newspaper reference from uh Dixon’s manager, uh Tom oor, which indicated that that of and when Dixon fought ringsider would hit him in the ankles of reach through the ropes and hit them.
But yet I’m very skeptical of that.
I’M really very very skeptical.
We uh, you know, had a private conversation.
We talked about the N fler five-part series on the black athlete going back by the way to the bare knuckle days in England and bringing it all the way forward to the uh to Joe Lewis and uh.
There’S so much in there that I in those books that I consider just lure, not facts but lure they make for good stories.
They.
They uh n fler understood that uh that for these books to make any money they had to appeal to young readers, uh readers who would otherwise turn to Adventure novels and uh.
He put a lot of fiction into his books and even though Tom oor once said that Dixon uh uh got whacked in the lower extremities as he was fighting when he got on the ropes in certain locals.
I still take that with a grain of salt.
I just have trouble believing it yeah I I would be afraid to approach a fighter any fighter and I think that fear would go back to even then you you’d have to be incredibly stupid to go up and do something like that to a professional yeah.
I just it just uh you I I just have trouble leaving it.
Okay, you know.
So you know I’ve never seen.
I was going to say you you, you, you have and the Nelson wolgast book you have and Lennox Lewis, when I showed this to him, was blown away.
You have the single greatest boxing photograph I’ve ever seen in my entire life, including the alley standing over Liston.
You have the photograph of of the three of them of of of uh uh Dixon Walcott, Barbados, Joe and Joe Gans uh standing sitting.
You know I’ll show this on camera yeah and that to me, is the most remarkable piece of Not Just Sports history, but but American and world history.
That incredible and I wanted to say I’m not sure I wanted to ask you the man in between Dixon and Barb and Walcott with the white hat, because you have it unknown.
It looks a bit like buyers, George buyers, but I’m not sure if that is could be.
You know, but that’s that’s.
A remarkable photo.
Yeah Dixon came out of uh uh.
You know Eastern Canada, Prince Edward Island, Halifax SC so forth, as did George buers, as as did a lot of uh lford black fighters, who found their way to Boston around the turn of the century.
George Godfrey Sam Langford, it was it was quite a colony and and um most of those, not all, certainly but a good number of those outstanding and long-forgotten black boxers actually were born in Nova, Scotia or Prince Edward Island.
One of the Eastern provinces of Canada, yeah buyers and and Godfrey were first cousins, and when I, when I tell when I’ve tried to pict this as a documentary and to Canadian Post Office for a stamp, I always tell them.
The the black population in PEI today is infantism, but in the 1880s it was half of infantism and to produce two outstanding worldclass Fighters.
Yeah in such a small area, yeah is is just unheard of yeah and, of course, they had to go to the United States to hone their skills and almost invariably that meant Boston back then yeah, and I I mean I, you know one thing I get asked All the time, why did Gotti go to AR teral Gotti go to New Jersey? Why? Why did Art hay go to San Diego? Why? Because there’s nothing up here, they don’t have the world class trainers and they don’t have world class sparring and yeah, and you know George Chalo said said to me I’ll.
He said about himself he’ll, be the Canadian heavyweight champion 50 years after he’s dead.
So he said you know saying that you’re the champion at Canada.
He said it’s nice, but really it counts for nothing.
So if you want make it as a boxer or as a comedian like Jim Carrey or as a writer, you got to be in the states.
That’S just the way it is and larger scale more people, yeah Dixon, when, when he when he came down, I mean when, when he fought McGovern the first time he was already on the downside of his career.
Wasn’T he yes um? I it’s it’s.
A lot of people think that Dixon actually uh some people, in fact, there’s a book about George Dixon, which actually ends when George Dixon goes to New Orleans and performs on that on that triple header down there with topped by John El Sullivan Corbett.
They were, they were, you know, was called a boxing Carnival.
It was a three night affair with title fights on each night, culminating with the big shebang, John El Sullivan and Corbett, and some people actually think that that was the peak.
Even though George Dixon didn’t fight.
Somebody who was going to give him much of a a fight, a guy named Jack, Skelly uh, some people think that was the peak of Dixon’s career and then there was a slow descent after that, and of course he didn’t fight mcover until sometime after that.
Why? I mean Skelly was basically an amateur, but amateurs back then had he was yeah had more respect than professionals.
You know yes well back, then there were a lot of amateurs who were uh.
It was it was.
I mean I mean the the ranks of amateur boxers were very, very deep, uh back circa 1900.
There were many many many more amateur boxers than pros and some of the best amateurs uh could hold their own with established professionals uh.
They thought that of Jack, Skelly uh, but and and Skelly probably could hold his own with a run-of-the-mill professional.
He beat some pretty good Pros, but against George Dixon he was out of his League George Dixon George Dixon was just on a different level than his contemporaries.
In his weight class, the I I know, James J Corvett, you know fought as an amateur and wouldn’t turn professional until until he was offered these great sums of money that he yeah yeah, just just couldn’t turn down.
So on the on the Carnival Champions.
The first night was, I think, Dixon right and then actually that was the middle fight.
As my understanding first fight was Jack, mlli Jack mlli, who is the lightweight champion Napoleon of the prize ring? Pardon me the Napoleon of the prize ring yes, Jack mccul, who retired undefeated.
He was the first uh uh fight and then the Dixon Skelly was the middle fight and then, of course the big one was the was Sullivan Corbett.
They were three successive knights in New Orleans and he also mcof also fought a tronan named Harry Gilmore, who who W, who gave him a good fight, didn’t win but gave him a good fight.
Canadian can considered the lightweight champion of Canada, but maybe best known for the boxing club he operated in Chicago right, which turned down a wealth of great fighters in the smaller white classes, uh around 1900, 1905 and so forth.
It’S interesting when I read about his comments about wgas and Mexican Joe rivers, and he said I’m sorry that everyone feels this way, but I was ringside.
I wasn’t fourth row.
I was ringside and I didn’t see ad wal gas land, a punch that was foul and of course the other people said.
Well then, maybe you need glasses, because you know the punch was definitively foul, but then again on the film of the fight, you can’t tell fil yeah, you know so.
Dixon fights, mcgoverin and mcgoverin at that point was still at the top level of his career.
Yes, Dixon was on the way up, and I mean I’m sorry.
Mcgovern was on the way up.
George Dixon was on the way down and which is the nature of boxing by the way right and Terry McGovern was an anomaly in that he he wasn’t racist like a lot of managers and Fighters.
He genuinely liked Joe Gans.
He had black friends Goldman Jewish friends.
I mean he, he didn’t, he didn’t discriminate against people right.
I don’t know I go to gyms in this town.
I live in Las Vegas and I go to local gyms uh quite a bit.
It’S I’ve, hopefully I’ll stumble on a good human interest story and frequently I do and I don’t know any white fighters who are racist.
I mean if, because I I think, there’s a mutual respect among fighters of different ethnic groups that wipes away a lot of the Prejudice you see in the general Society right.
Okay, if I’m I’m, you know, I’m not Jewish, but if I was a boxer and and back in the 30s, where every third fight was against a Jewish opponent, I don’t see how I could possibly be anti-semitic because uh, you know, there’s there’s a bond.
That’S formed between priz Fighters and uh.
You know that tends to wipe away a lot of that nonsense.
That’S a good point.
You know.
Uh Angelo gave me Jimmy mcclaren’s phone number.
I waited my whole life to meet him and, yes, I got to speak to him briefly.
This is like a year or two before he died and I asked him about Benny Leonard and he Saidi.
I didn’t want him to take the fight.
He was my idol.
Didn’T want to hurt him yeah and I I would I would have given him the money, but he said he didn’t want it.
He didn’t want charity, so he said he said.
I don’t know if you’re aware of this son, but I sued the New York papers because they called me the Jew killer, the Hebrew Scourge and he said I went to them and he said these are my friends: it’s not personal yeah, just a fight.
He said.
I still go out when I’m in New York for dinner, with Benny Leonard three or four times a week, I’m still friends with Sid Terrace, I’m still friends of I’m.
You said I’m great.
I was great friends of Barney Ross.
We spoke every single night with whom he had three classic fights right and, and he said it, it wasn’t personal.
I thought I won the third fight, he got it, but I’m not angry at him.
You know and when when he had his drug problems, I tried to help him these and just as you said, we’re we share an experience.
No other two people on Earth shared, so he said the racism.
Doesn’T it can’t enter into it? You know but mcgoverin and in particular, when he was fighting on the way up.
I mean he he didn’t.
He never drew the color line when he was Champion.
Like John El suvin did he fought anyone and everyone? You know, and he was great.
What was the turning point that put him on the downside? Was it the young? Was it too much acting the ring, or was it the Corbett fight Corbett just took it out of yeah the F? That’S a good question.
Um you mentioned acting back in Terry McGovern’s day and in George Dixon’s day uh, a boxer would make more money traveling a country with vaille troops.
He would have a little skit a little stick and be part of a vaudville troop and the most prominent boxers.
Actually, that was their major source of income until the arrival of fight films.
Now you ask funny thing about Terry McGovern.
Is that uh he’s one of those Fighters that seemed to have grown old overnight uh when he fought uh young Corbett II in Connecticut on Thanksgiving day uh? I think 1902 and was knocked out early in a robust fight um and it was a real shocker.
It was one of the biggest upsets ever up to that point in time, but it was like you had grown old overnight and we’ve seen that in the case of some boxers, we have’t in terms of their ring a cumin and in in McGovern’s case.
You could build a case that he spent too much time on the road uh with vaille troops.
I mean if you’re uh, going on the road you’re, not keeping good hours because uh uh, you know these are evening performances and when you should be in Aug boxer.
Should be going to bed, you know so so that was uh.
It was theorized that that Tera McGovern’s Hollow performance against young Corbett II was a result of the fact that he had spent too much time on the road with vaudville troops, and so he just wasn’t in the right mind, frame mentally and physically.
He just wasn’t trained.
Well enough, yeah, you know what yes and also I think he had some domestic problems.
I I saw one illusion.
I didn’t put it in my book, but I saw one illusion which suggested that uh his wife may have cheated on him and he might have discovered it and that messed with his mind.
But I didn’t put that in the book.
Maybe I shouldn’t even say it, but, and it wasn’t in a boxing book by the way – pardon me I said it was not in a boxing book by the way was, but that would be enough to crush someone that you would go out and not care.
You know, but, but in your book you you mentioned how he he just rushed right at him, which was a foolish strategy.
You know, because with mcgoverin there was no feeling out rounds, that’s correct, he did not.
He did not.
He was that that’s true.
He charged right at his opponent was that just the only the r pardon me was that the only style that I mean it didn’t occur to him.
The think I haven’t fought him, so maybe I should have see what he has or he didn’t care.
I can’t.
I can’t put myself in his mind, but okay, okay, but he was you know Mike Tyson was sort of the same way.
There was no fancy Dan about him right.
You know you know so so so, who knows when, when McGovern’s uh to me is marquee wi? Didn’T come against because they were in different stages of development, but against an English boxer called pedler Palmer called box of Tricks.
They fought uh up in Westchester County about a 30 minute train train ride from Manhattan and uh uh.
The Govern just blew right through him and took him out in the opening round, and pom was a considered, especially by people in England to be the cleverest fighter on the planet, but but cleverness uh, you know can’t stop a hurricane.
No! It’S funny because I’ve read about that you’re, the the way you mention that in your book is wonderful and just how people, the British at ringside and even some the Americans were saying well, this could go 15 or 20 and Palmer’s gon na do this, and do That yeah Bell Rings bang out.
They said the same thing about Le about Michael Spinx when he fought Mike Tyson, then in Atlantic City, that you know every expert says well the longer the fight goes, the more the better chance Michael Spinx has of defeating Tyson.
Well, I theoretically, I guess that was true, but of course Mike Tyson didn’t let you know didn’t let U.
You know Michael Spinx have a second of rest and took him out what 91 seconds or something yeah.
So so all that theory went out went out that out with the garbage this my favorite story about the word.
Theoretically, yes, I just finished a book by Doris Karns Goodwin about Franklin and Elanor Roosevelt in the home during the second world war, and they said two of Franklin, Roosevelt’s cabinet members, uh uh, Harry Hopkins and Harold icks were talking and Harold XS was against against FDR Programs and Welfare help people and he said, it’ll toughen them up and theoretically, they’ll be tougher and better in the future and Harry Hopkins said the problem: is people don’t eat? Theoretically they eat every day and I had to laugh.
But I thought that’s a good point.
You know, theoretically the fight’s supposed to go, but that doesn’t mean anything yeah.
So yeah I mean.
Are there more films of McGovern that that we know we’re taking other than the fight with Dixon? Because I haven’t seen any you know: I’m not a fight film collector and I’m not the person to ask really um.
You know the late Bill.
Kon and Jim Jacobs had that wonderful Storehouse of old films and some of which have popped up on YouTube nowadays.
But I’m not aware, I I really I’m not qualified to answer your question.
Well, I spoke with Steve lot who worked with them the late Steve lot? Yes and he was saying the problem with the films from that era.
I’Ll fight films were owned by the mafia, so he said we could get them and buy them from the mafia for a lot of money and still had to keep paying and paying, but he said they own them all and so yeah, not they.
They didn’t own.
The originals, but they came to own if, especially if there had been only one copy right, they came to own it.
You know.
Obviously, the word mafia didn’t exist back in the days of John El Sullivan and whatever right, but but the the few fights of his and his contemporaries Corbett and so forth.
The original fight films, uh yeah I’ve I’ve read that they originally fell into the hands of gangsters and uh.
They weren’t going to let him go without a pretty penny.
Steve lot told me a story where Bill Kon sent him somewhere in the Bronx, the pay guy.
He said it was a fight foot, two old Jewish man in his 90s.
He invites Steve lot in.
He has his Jamaican caretaker make some cookies for him and they’re talking and the guy says to Steve you’re a nice boy.
Uh Steve gives him a check.
Here’S the box of films and when they get back to the office Steve said he almost had a stroke, because there was an article on this guy that bill kton gave him.
The guy was uh one of the top murder Incorporated killers and he Steve said he looked like a little little nebbish in account.
He said he was that’s.
Why no one feared him when he walked up.
You wouldn’t expect.
He said.
Why was any trial because it came out a year ago and he’s 92? What are they gon na? Do I mean they not g to put him in jail now and he only killed gangsters, but this guy had incredible films and Steve said the most valuable film.
If you want to retire is we know there were films of Harry greb, but they’ve never been found so so yeah, my friend Jason W winders, who wrote a book on Dixon, correct um, which you’re aware of yeah, who I alluded to before his book, really ends.
Uh for all practical purposes, when Dixon is in new orans as part of that that right triple header that Festival of Champions and he found the book, Dion wrote at the University of Windsor in Ontario just by fluke.
He he just volunteered one weekend to help, go through old, dusty boxes and out, I think, OB.
Obviously, it’s obvious to me that book was ghostwritten yeah, oh yeah, sure and most uh uh boxing Memoirs of antiquarian priz Fighters were all ghostwritten and you know which is understandable.
I mean I mean even today was you know when you know when, when Michelle Obama comes out with her Memoir, she didn’t just sit down by herself in a private room and write that out in long hand.
Obviously she had the assistance of a oh yeah of a professional Ghost Writer Angel told me once I was telling him how I bought the book The Greatest, and he said the great thing about that book.
Ally never wrote it, nor did he read it yeah.
He said it was written by Richard Durham from the Nation of Islam and he nothing in that book is of Truth yeah.
He said never through his metal in the river.
He just lost it right.
He loses a lot of things because Hees care about material.
You know so so McGovern and Dixon McGovern are, does McGovern still have relatives that are alive today.
I’M not aware you would think so um because his he he he no.
He should.
Let me put it this way.
We know that his wife – he was only married once and we know that uh they had a uh one son uh, and we know that both are deceased, and so he would not have any immediate relatives.
But of course he had brothers and nephews and cousins, and I’m I’m sure there are some uh people in his family tree still around, but I I wouldn’t know how to find them.
I know that uh his son died at 38.
You said his son died at a very young age.
Yeah, do we know what from oh boy? You know, I knew it one time and I I don’t think it was uh.
I I forget, to be honest: I forget, if you got 20 minutes I’ll, go, find a copy of the book and thumb through it, and maybe I can dig it out, but I’m sorry, I don’t want to put that through you with with George Dixon.
We know that he was married to Tom oor’s sister Kitty.
Yes, and I don’t know if he had any children or not I’m not aware he did okay and that and that marriage there have been some who have questioned whether or not that was Tom, oor’s sister.
Although it’s generally agreed that she was, he was married to a white woman.
That’S that’s true um, but I don’t know that marriage eventually dissolved, but I couldn’t find out when or what the circumstances were.
But when George Dixon finally died, he died alone, uh in a in a in basically in a boarding house uh in her room.
Very, very, very sad.
So oh excuse me, okay, yeah.
He let me let me stop that.
I’M sorry! No problem, excuse me! Well, I guess that’s not how they do it on the major networks.
I apologize we’re not a major Network by any any means.
I was GNA say I I have tried with the help of Tony G, the British boxing historian track Kitty aor and I’ve gone on ancestry.
com.
She just fell off the face of the earth.
I found little bits and pieces and one or two lines alluding to her from from British newspapers that Tony sent me, but there’s no there’s no record.
George Dixon has a a great great grand nephew.
That’S a school teacher in Toronto that I speak to occasionally, and so I speak to him and he goes.
You know, there’s stories about this.
I like to hear them.
He said: well, let’s go out to a fight, there’s no fights going on here! Better! Go to Montreal couple of promoters, as you know, in Montreal who oh yeah whove been pretty active and also I’ve been in touch with Roslin buyers, who’s, a great great grand niece of George buers.
Okay, so she’s had an interesting story stories um about him, but it would great it would be great to find a a living relative of um, Terry McGovern.
The poster of the Vaudeville thing is such a gorgeous poster yeah him and it’s hard for people today to realize how big a star he was, how many thousands of people lined up to see him everywhere.
He went well yeah they.
You know.
I said you had to be part of bville troops they actually built plays around Terry McGovern uh.
So it wasn’t just I mean some of the boxing vilans.
Basically, they would do a little sparring session and uh maybe invite someone out of the audience usually plant to come up and – and you know and spar with, and maybe Sugar Ray Robinson has stick where he was jump rope.
He was just incredible jump roper, but they actually built plays around Terry McGovern.
He was that big and and and or they they took, plays that that were successful and they made him the lead – and that was a very unusual for for boxers back in those days to to to you know to to get that kind of role.
Uh that went you know that went beyond the fact, uh that you know that made them something more than the occupation they had, that of a price fighter.
Was it it? Was it McGovern’s not just his success in the ring, but his his fact that he was so charismatic? This was a goodlook greatl.
Looking young charismatic young man yeah, it was a, he was uh.
I you wouldn’t call him a mat Idol, but he was yeah.
He was.
He was a good-looking Irish kid.
You know and uh the constituents for boxing back in McGovern’s day were overwhelmingly Irish uh.
It helped to be Irish and and most of the fighters back most of the white Fighters.
Cir 1900, not only the fighters, but the seconds the managers, the promoters were Irish Tom oor, all those guys yeah yeah yeah.
He he because they said John ulvin did the same thing, but he couldn’t Act and the only one who was good was was James, J Corbett, who actually had a little bit of skill at it.
I’Ve read there were people who thought James.
J Corvett was as good an actor as anyone else on the stage back then wow you’re right that he was a great actor with John L Sullivan his routine when he went on tour was usually blacksmithing like uh, like Bob Fitz Simmons, you know, they’d have a Little you know he’d have a little thing.
He forged something, but but as far as acting no no, he that that was not his Forte.
No there’s a great story.
I read about him and I had I had to ask it might have been in Andrew eisenberg’s book um, jonal suvin and the Irish in America.
I had to ask someone: I I didn’t know what it meant where he went on stage once because he was a notorious drunk and he said hi, I’m John El solvin, I’m I’m I’m drunker than a Fiddler’s [ __ ] and I didn’t know what that meant.
Until I looked it up – and I asked people and someone said back in in in those times, Fiddlers in saloons would play the fiddle and people to say thank you would send them drinks, but they couldn’t take the drinks because they’d get drunk and stop playing.
So they had to have their wife take the drink and then their wife would get hammered.
So he said I’m drunker than a Fiddler’s [ __ ].
That’S I’ve never heard that before in my life, that’s fascinating.
Neither of I I mean it’s.
This uh podcast has been very educational for me now um, I’m trying to remember what I wanted to ask you about.
Uh, yes, uh, so MCG McGovern didn’t draw the line about fighting fight, whoever he would fight.
He would fight and Dixon certainly didn’t have the uh.
The ability to do that, Dixon, F Walter ederton right, the Kentucky, rose, bud and knock, and the roseb knocked him out, but then wasn’t Dixon suffering from a fever and they agreed to just bar and roseb took advantage of it or it was a legitimate knockout.
Apparently it was a legitimate knockout and we should point out that uh uh uh they kept fighting after Dixon was allowed time to recover, which you never see today.
Uh Walter ederson was, along in a tooth black fighter from Philadelphia, had a big reputation there in the so-called City of Brotherly Love and he and Dixon spart several times on on bville stages and after Edon knocked him out.
There was a move of foot to put them together in a real prize fight, but that for some reason that that died on the vine but EDT and Dixon fought several times and at least at at least one occasion, ederon knocked them out and Yeah Tom oor Said that Dix this was by the way a charity, fight and Dixon fought a lot of fights where a good portion of the proceeds would go to some charity um, this particular fight with ederton and Philadelphia.
As I recall, H um, I believe there was a strike there of of people working in uh factories that produce some sweaters or something like that, and it was a prolonged strike and the uh.
The proceeds were earmarked for the strikers and their families.
And U Dixon from what we’ve read.
Uh normally would not have taken this, but he didn’t want to disappoint the people who would benefit from it, and so he went into the ring with a fever perhaps and got himself knocked out.
One of the things I think I read it in your book is that what appeared in the paper about fights, often dependent on What fighters manager got to the phone first, that yeah that came, that that line came from a book by an old boxing manager called Dan Morgan Dum Dan Morgan, they called him.
He was so talkative that they called him dumb Dan and he said yeah out in the herlands.
You know where, where they did you, the fight wasn’t big enough to have a telegrapher at ringside, so you had to get to the telegraph office where ever the telegraph office was and and and in the Hinterlands.
You know there might not be any boxing uh writers present.
Okay, so the result of the fight uh, you know, depended on who got to the telegraph office first and sent the dispatch back to New York or wherever, and so you know.
Obviously, whoever got to the telegraph first had a biased opinion of what had actually just transpired which, but that that frustrates and and you being a historian would know this.
It’S the most frustrating thing and it’s actually the most fascinating thing is you read reports of old fights in different papers and the discrepancies are huge.
I mean I mean it’s, it’s you can see you can you can see that somebody’s lying? If not both you know what I mean and, and it and it’s it’s frustrating, but that, but then it sends us off to try and find the real truth and that’s and and so that’s why we actually like it too.
It’S fuel for uh, an author.
Well, that’s one of the thousands of things I love about your book and and and in this one in particular, you mentioned that you, you said you know either this happened, but another newspaper reported this happened and, and it drives you, nuts reading it thinking.
Yes, they can’t both have happened, I mean, isn’t there a, but it’s it’s unbelievable and and, and you have to wonder who was watching the fight.
I mean.
Are you that Pro that fighter, that you can’t be honest but, like you said it leaves you going to try to do a deeper dive, yes and and into what happened? So yes um, you know in my book the first fight that I cover is from 1772 and the one that we not categorically, but we can pretty much say it was a fixed fight.
There have been other fixed fights in Britain, but it’s hard to really say for sure it was.
This is the one where all evidence pointed to it, and Tony was just showing me the different uh reports, but he said, if you really do your work.
You’Ll find Contemporary reports.
Yes, that that will tell you what happened and then you can draw you know from that.
What actually happened? Yeah one of the uh.
Nowadays there are so many old newspapers on the web.
I’M talking about newspapers that have long died.
You know, and and uh there’s so much material now on the internet, that you know I remember going to college and when it was time to write a term paper at then a trip to the library and scrolling through these clunky microfilm machines in the library.
When I went to University of Nebraska, the only old newspapers I remember on microfilm were the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, The Wall Street Journal n, maybe the LA Times and, of course, the local paper.
Whatever that, so you didn’t, you know, you had to depend upon what was in these papers and some of these papers were high tone, and so they didn’t cover the sporting Spectrum like like the uh tabloids, the burgeoning tabloids did.
There were no tabloids in the on microfil Library, no old issues of the New York Post or any of these papers, and so you got a very narrow perspective historically, when it came to the sphere of sports, but now there’s so much cool stuff on the web.
It’S amazing yeah, it’s I you know when I I started University in 1978 and same as you I would say: well that’s another eight hours I’m going to be spending in the reference library, that’s great and when I look up Fighters you know Harry Gilmore, Carl tumain, Different Fighters, I would think um, especially with Gilmore, there’s nothing on them it in the two main papers.
And yes, one of the Librarians said those are the two main papers that exist today.
They existed then, but there were other smaller papers.
Oh sure – and I didn’t realize that – and she gave me a list of like 20 of them and I had to go through each one and go.
Oh okay.
Here’S a good art article on on that yeah, with with Carl taine who was born in listo onario.
There’S very little of them on the internet at all.
We know he was from.
He was Canadian and then Steve Canton wrote something about how that he was actually Italian and half his family lived in in in um, uh, Detroit and then Cleveland and the other half lift here, because they were too big to all live together and so the family.
In Detroit says, you know he he and he had his career in Cleveland, but um when I SP to family members in Canada.
They said: that’s completely false yeah, so they said, we’ve read the article, there’s no trueu.
So it’s hard to find you know at times, based on what you see yeah, you know you can only go by what they have so doing.
An article on Joe Grim was not difficult because there were so many hundreds of things on him, whereas other Fighters, you know, especially with the coverage in in in Canada but mcover and Dixon, were covered all over the world.
I mean these were World figures yeah and after his career went South and his skills had dulled that George Dixon spent the better part of three years in England uh and had a ton of fights over there 514 rounds.
You said fought pardon me, you said he fought 514 rounds.
That could be, I I forget, the exact number it comess within like a three year.
Three three and a half year span.
Wow, I mean that’s amazing, some of those rounds by the way in England, circa 1900 were two- minute rounds, so we should put that in perspective which ones were and which ones weren’t.
I can’t wasn’t able to narrow it down that that tightly and did Dixon, Dixon’s lack of money did that come from the fact that he was a gambler and a drinker as well.
He spent it quickly and as well as as Tom oor uh, you know ripping him off.
I guess it’s hard to say many boxers in Dixon’s era were degenerate.
Horse players.
That was it’s well for one thing.
Horse racing was so big back then, but but so many uh boxers young Corbett.
The second, for example, and Terry McGovern, blew a lot of money at the RAC track.
That’S that’s where the uh boxers would go in their downtime.
Actually, there was a lot of overlap between the boxing gym and the racetrack racetrack you’d meet the same people in both places right yeah, that’s it still happens.
Today I mean people, you know back back, then entertainers lost fortunes at at the racetrack too.
They just couldn’t resisted at the racetrack and in what we called pool rooms which were Off Track Bedding places which at one time were all over the country all over the United States, the movie, The Sting that wonderful comedy.
I love that movie so much uh their depiction of the uh Off Track Bedding facility in Chicago is spoton from what I’ve read.
It’S just it’s that’s exactly what they look like uh, with the results being read off a ticker by a person with a you know, a microphone or megaphone or whatever, and and it was and all controlled by the Mafia, the mob controlled.
All all of those things.
Uh they control some fast.
Well, I mean the betting part.
You got think about that because they were all over the country.
There were a lot of M and pop places.
That’S true, but I mean the major places in LA and New York, Lansky and luchano had that and and yeah.
So a lot of that well yeah when, when sport uh, when horse players bet on the telephone, instead of going to a bing shop, uh yeah, the guy at the other end of the telephone had some connection to organized crime by and large, that’s true, but the Actual physical Place uh, you know and like like I say, the United States was honeycombed with Off Track Bedding parlors, the actual physical place.
A lot of them were bombing pop operations.
Uh.
The mafia may have had its fingers in such things as the wallboards, which showed the races around the track and and and you know, maybe even the chalk – that was used to put the odds on the Blackboard.
U, but a lot of those were kind of momand Pop operations run by local people yeah the mob.
Didn’T it really get involved in boxing until the dempy K, ponche fight, because the million dollar gate they looked at it and thought there’s money to be taken here where it’s before, even for burns Johnson, 30 grand it it.
I read where someone said it it.
They would be paying out more to their thugs than they would taking the money in, so it wasn’t until the million dollar Gates were thought.
Okay, we can control this.
That kind of made sense.
It’S generally agreed that the uh, the Mobsters were thickest in the sport of professional boxing during the Depression years, yeah with with um uh on the killer, Madden and George Shalo knew him and and uh I didn’t really.
I knew carbo and PLO were involved in it.
Frankie car Mo and B palmo – I didn’t thought they got involved to the mid late 40s and Chris dunde said no.
No, no, they were there in the early 30s.
They they were right there and he said back.
Then there was no.
The only thing you wanted to hear they wanted to hear was yes, sir, and there’s nothing you could do about it and black Fighters once again had nothing got ripped off by them, and Chris D D said.
The only fighter who probably wasn’t touched was Jimmy McLaren, because his manager pop Foster had actually grew up in England, beside Oni Madden and so no one screwed with McLaren.
But I don’t know if I agree because yeah he was going to retire after he won the title um when he rewind the title yeah uh from Ross and when he defended against Ross in the third fight.
He said if I win this, I’m gone and what I’ve been read or been told is that you know the depression he’s the biggest money owner in boxing that couldn’t let him go.
You know you know.
As I say, this podcast is very educational for me.
Okay, I I know the people you reference, but I don’t know the minute details the way you do well, you you heard of the F the fight with barbos Walcott and kid LaVine.
Yes, sir Frisco right where gamblers told that wild CAU You Got ta Lose yeah.
Well, that was yeah.
You know that wasn’t uncommon back then, either where understanding that, if a a fight went the distance, uh uh, you know it was a pre-arrange draw or even uh right, uh telling a fighter you.
The only way you can win this fight is by knockout.
If it goes the distance you lose right and the difference between them and the mafia, of course, was the mafia made it National Organization.
These were local guys in different cities, yeah it it’s just it.
I know that FL wrote a book on mg govern I just.
Why hasn’t there it’s hard to say why there hasn’t been a movie.
I mean he had such an incredible life and he was such a meteor bursting through the sky.
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