1920-1940: The "Golden Age" of American Boxing?

[Ric]

I now have spent over three years researching newspapers of the American Pacific Northwest, circa 1908-1940. (And a little bit of some other papers, such as The New York Times.) After all this research, I believe that the period of 1920 to 1940 has to be the "Golden Age" of boxing in American history, if not the World in general -- in terms of popularity of the game among the general population and the number of "greats" who emerged during this era.

From what I can piece together all these years later, prior to World War I, bouts were conducted sporadically. And they generally were of longer durations -- 15, 20 or more rounds. (During the 20s and 30s, there were hundreds and hundreds of thousands of four and six rounders conducted.)Further, it appears most jurisdictions outlawed the sport prior to WWI. (Afterward, many more places permitted some form of professional or "semi-professional" boxing.)

During WWI, boxing was employed by the American military to help men get in shape both physically and morally (yes, morally), and to occupy and entertain the troops, among other uses. Many soldiers and sailors learned the sport of pugilism during the war. It was not uncommon during the War for local military camps to offer boxing shows pitting soldiers against sailors, or soldiers/sailors against civilian boxers, and so forth. Thus, boxing gradually became quite popular among both the troops and civilians as the war dragged on.

WWI did not officially end Nov. 11, 1918, Armistice Day. That was the day of a world-wide cease-fire only. The countries at war spent another year negotiating the terms of the surrender. So, these countries -- and the U.S. in particular -- kept a large contigent of men in their military, just in case. But after the "peace treaty" was finalized in late 1919, the U.S. discharged most of the men from its forces.

Anyway, after the War ended, millions of these former soldiers throughout the world, and in the U.S. in particular, demanded the boxing they had enjoyed during their service. They wanted to witness more boxing as entertainment, or decided to become boxers themselves. ("Screw the local laws prohibiting boxing as brutal," many of them said. "Make it legal. Hey! More boys die each year playing high school or college football than while boxing. Tell me which is more brutal.") Other people throughout the United States eventually "got the bug" and became infatuated with boxing.

By the very early 1920s, boxing had become perhaps the second most popular sport in America, behind baseball -- in terms of the number of people who came to see or engaged in the sport. Boxing cards were frequently being held in not only the major cities, like New York, but seemingly in every little town of every state. And there was major coverage of boxing in the newspapers of even the smallest community. Papers of the day made boxing results a priority.

Further, many great boxers emerged from this era of 1920-1940. They are too numerous to list here. Of course, Jack Dempsey comes to mind. But the "economy" boxers -- the "little guys" were hugely responsible for the rise in boxing's popularity. While you might see a Dempsey fight once or twice a year, you got to enjoy a smaller guy fight more frequently. These old-timer "little guys" fought quite frequently. If you were a fan of three of four of these local lads, for example, you count on seeing at least one them fight each week. Sometimes twice on one evening. As someone once said to me, it seemed these guys "slept with their gloves on."

As I said in 1998 in my "From Norway to New York" web page, devoted to old-timer bantamweight boxer Pete Sanstol (my grandfather -- so that is how I became interested in this era):

"Heavyweights have always received the most attention, but the 1920s and 1930s produced the lion's share of the greatest bantamweight boxers who ever lived -- particularly the class of 1920-1929. Every town and hamlet throughout the world had its own standard-bearing bantamweight. The rings were overrun with them. They were the most popular weight-division of boxers in the United States during this era. They are often referred to as the Golden Bantams from the 'Golden Age' of professional bantamweight boxing that ended in 1940 when Cleveland's Georgie Pace and Brooklyn's Lou Salica held a title bout in New York. 'Back in those days, there was so much action among these little guys that by themselves they kept boxing interest high throughout the country.' The Ring magazine, December 1953 issue, pp. 12-13.

In the early 1970s, the long-respected boxing manager Charley Rose (1886-1974) lamented: 'Things have changed in this country. The heavyweights have swallowed up the game. If you aren't a heavy, you don't belong. Some of the oldtime little guys contributed heavily to the fame and fortune of the game. Now they shoo them down to the Forum in the Garden.' The Ring, March 1975, p. 72."
http://www.geocities.com/boxofdaylight/Moi.htm


Then, there grew an extraordinary chapter of boxing history in Australia and the Philippines during the 20s and 30s. That's a whole another story in itself. By the early 20s, American boxers were arriving by the boat-loads in the southern Pacific Ocean to fight there. Then countless Filipino boxers came to the American Pacific Coast
to fight. (Fellow BoxRec Editor and IBRO member Chuck Johnston wrote a great article about that history of California Filipino boxing history in a recent IBRO Journal.) That is such a huge chapter in and of itself.

When World War II came along, the focus of the people turned elsewhere, understandably. After that war ended, those who had been involved in boxing before did other things. (Take the Filipino boxers, for example. Before the war, boxing was one of the few ways they could earn good "change." During the war, with the shortage of American men -- who were otherwise in the military -- they were employed in the various industries. After the war, many Filipinos were still employed in decent jobs; so there were not as many who got into boxing to earn a buck.)

Now, I admit and confess that I have not researched the day-to-day papers of the 1940s and beyond, but from what I gather, although boxing was still relatively popular after WWII, the numbers of people who came to see boxing shows or who became boxers themselves gradually diminished. I dunno. But today, boxing is nowhere near the heights of popularity it enjoyed 1920-1940 -- the years which surely must have constituted the "Golden Age" of boxing in the World.

What do you think? I'd love to hear your thoughts, opinions, remarks.

[crooked nose]

Conventional wisdom says that TV killed boxing in the 50s - people didn't go see the fights if they had it right in their living rooms. But it was more than TV. Post-war America offered a lot more options for leisure. Other pro sports began to pay better, so athletic kids gravitated toward football & basketball. Look at Ken Norton - what did his son do for a living? Sure didn't box. Hell, Max Baer's kid became a TV Hillbilly.
So, there's no longer such a quantity of boxing, but arguably more quality. Boxing has had to rely on the rare stars - Ali especially - to pump interest back in the game. Promoters are always looking for the new "Golden Boy".
In some ways, boxing is bigger than it ever was. Very few of the old timers could have dreamed of today's mega-bucks.
I really think that today we have fewer fighters, but a higher skill level among the smaller number of practitioners.

[Chuck1052]

I agree that there were other factors in boxing's decline in popularity besides the advent of television. There was more competition from other sports and alot of people were moving to the suburbs from the areas where there were fight venues.

However, boxing was VERY popular in the the United States during the late 1940s. After the advent of television, lots of boxing clubs were shutting down. Moreover, alot of people don't remember that professional baseball was also hit hard by the advent of television. Major
League baseball didn't fully recover from that blow until the 1970s.

I consider the advent of television the most significant event in professional boxing during the 20th Century. Yes, the rapid increase of popularity and the loosening of legal restraints of boxing after World War I were significant, but one has to remember that there also was alot of professional boxing activity in the United States before World War I.

- Chuck Johnston

[barry]

I suppose my favorite era of fighters is the 1895-1920 lightweight class. It was said that there was "at least one good lightweight on every street corner in every city of America," during the time and of course featherweights often fought at lightweight also, so the best of two, or three divisions were always fighting one another. As for boxing today, it may be striving, but unfortunately we will never see it back to the popularity that was enjoyed from the 20s through about the middle 60s. What I feel has hurt boxing the most and really damaged the integrity of the sport is all of the damn sanctioning organizations and the promoters and managers that mingle within those circles. With all of the different organizations operating they selfishly want more ways to make money from the sport, so they come up with the idea of new weight divisions, which really cheapens the status of “World Champion,” and honestly makes me sick to my stomach. With all the different divisions, there are tons of fighters that gain the title of “World Champion,” when in reality, if there were 8 divisions and only one belt, those who cheaply gain champion status would never make it to a title shot because they would then have to fight the best and only the best would challenge for a title shot, which should completely eliminate such mismatches, like Gabe Ruelas .vs. Jimmy Garcia, which ended in tragedy and others. I would absolutely love to see a national commission govern boxing and clean up all of the shit that we so often see; like judges that judge a fight like they know nothing at all about the sport, and have the national commission to assign a committee of the very best boxing experts to make a weekly, or monthly “Top Ten” rankings list for the divisions, and then require a tournament to be held between the best of each division to sort out all of the contenders and eliminate the pretenders, but most of all, to crown only one true “World Champion,” who could only lose that title in the ring, or by retirement, or by moving up in weight. The sad thing is that I’m a realist, so I know nothing of the sort will ever happen, but if it ever did…boy would boxing be great again, or what?

[Matt]

Barry,

You are completely correct about Featherweights and Lightweights. Their glory days as far as numbers even lasted through to the 30's, I would say. If you fought between 126 and 135 you could fight in any town you wanted, most every town big and small had a decent lightweight. I think you'll find that those guys could be developed gradually locally and then emerge regionally, and finally nationally.

Some of the other divisions, I think had a lot smaller representation. Middleweights and Light Heavyweights, it seemed we're always traveling constantly looking for fights. Of course guys in the big fight centers like Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia didn't have to travel as much.

I find it interesting to watch how fans would kind of latch on to a fighter who would sort of be the big light heavy in town. They would bring in opponents to beat him, until someone finally did the trick. Then that guy would be the headliner, and the process would continuously repeat itself.

[Simonpure]

The late 1940`s were considered my some to be the golden age of Chicago boxing. At one period during 1948-49 professional cards were offered every night of the week at seven different venues. Fights were scheduled reguarly at the Chicago Stadium, Coliseum, International Amphitheater, Rainbo Arena, Marigold Gardens and the White City and Roseland ballrooms. Unfortunately the good times didn´t last for long.

[crooked nose]

Chicago Stadium is gone and replaced by United Center. I don't think UC has ever hosted a boxing card. Coliseum and Amphitheater are gone. Marigold Gardens is a church. Rainbo Arena later became the Kinetic Playground and hosted all the great rock acts of the 60s and 70s. Then served as a roller rink until torn down just in the last couple of months. Any boxing shows in Chicago these days are at Rosemont or DePaul.