Classic American West Coast Boxing

[kikibalt]

In the Mississippi Delta, B.B. is king
A museum honoring the blues legend will soon open -- one of many sites in the Delta devoted to the music born of hard times.

By Kay Mills, Special to The Los Angeles Times

He started out here 60 years ago, singing the blues on a street corner for dimes. Now, less than three blocks from that corner, the legendary B.B. King will soon have his own museum.

The B.B. King Museum & Delta Interpretive Center is set to open Sept. 13, three days before his 83rd birthday. The museum honors the man who Rolling Stone magazine says "is universally recognized as the leading exponent of modern blues."

It is but one in a surprisingly long list of attractions in the Mississippi Delta -- surprisingly long only if you've never visited the region.

Visitors can see where the blues developed and where it's still played; where people risked their lives -- and sometimes lost them -- in the name of civil rights; where the designs of a Smithsonian-caliber embroiderer have captivated viewers; where the state's famous clay is turned into pottery.

At first glance, the Mississippi Delta seems stark. Its flat-as-a-tabletop landscape occupies the northwestern section of the state, stretching from Memphis in neighboring Tennessee to Vicksburg, from the Mississippi River to the Yazoo River. Yet this ordinary land has spawned extraordinary creativity and courage.

The town of Indianola, smack in the middle of the Delta, wanted to honor King not just for his musical genius but also for his influence on scores of other musicians, including blues guitarist Buddy Guy and Beatle John Lennon.

I toured the museum this spring (it was still under construction) with Connie Gibbons, the museum's executive director. I saw where the guitar studio would be located, where visitors can learn basic chord structures. Gibbons told me about the displays that would depict "what it was like to leave the small world of the Mississippi Delta and go to Memphis," where King got his own radio show in the late 1940s.

The museum complex also incorporates a brick cotton gin where King worked as a young man, when cotton was king in the Delta. Today, silos holding corn to produce ethanol have replaced most of the gins. But in years past, cotton grew on large plantations such as Dockery Farms, between Cleveland and Ruleville north of Indianola.

Dockery was a company town of about 400 families at its zenith in the 1920s. "There were three churches," Luther Brown said as he led a tour of college students from Texas. "It had its own doctor, post office, telegraph office, commissary and even used its own money -- Dockery dollars," said Brown, an associate dean at Delta State University in Cleveland.

A blue sign -- blue for the Blues Trail -- near the weathered old buildings describes the influence of Charley Patton, a sharecropper at Dockery Farms before becoming an itinerant musician. He's called the "father of the Delta blues," and his guitar style has been described as "percussive and raw." Another musician once said he sang as though someone were choking him.

His marker at Dockery is one of 120 that the Mississippi Blues Commission is erecting around the state (http://www.msbluestrail.org). The website also contains a list of regular gigs and special blues events in Mississippi.

While I was with the students at Dockery Farms, I ran into blues fan Chris Rogers of Brighton, England, and his wife, Louise. They were launching a tour of Delta landmarks "to feel part of" the music Chris loves. On their agenda: Clarksdale, 48 miles north of Indianola, to visit the Delta Blues Museum, where one exhibit includes remnants of the cabin in which bluesman Muddy Waters lived as a sharecropper, as well as actor Morgan Freeman's Ground Zero Blues Club and the Riverside Hotel (once a hospital), where blues diva Bessie Smith died in 1937 after a car crash.

"The room where Bessie died is never occupied," Rogers said, "but if you ring the front doorbell, ask for Rat, then he's happy to show you around."

Mississippians are obliging that way.

HISTORY LESSON

You can't come to the Delta without running headlong into Mississippi's past. That was what the students from Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, had come to explore. Along with professors John Strait and Jim Tiller, they were on a field trip that Strait called an exploration of "race, blues, rock 'n' roll and the geography of the Mississippi Delta." I tagged along for a day.

After we left Dockery, we stopped in Ruleville at the grave of civil-rights champion Fannie Lou Hamer, whom I had interviewed for a series of newspaper articles in 1973 and later wrote a book about. Even though she was in ill health then -- she died in 1977 -- she was still a commanding presence who spoke eloquently about the evils of racism.

In 1962, Hamer went to Indianola to try to register to vote, earning her such enmity from residents and law enforcement that she received death threats. Arrested in 1963 for trying to desegregate a Mississippi bus station, Hamer was beaten so savagely that she was permanently disabled.

When I interviewed her 10 years after that attack, neither of us could have imagined that Indianola would one day erect markers saying, "Home of Fannie Lou Hamer," but it has.

After revisiting history, the student group headed out for Po' Monkey's, a noted juke joint six miles north of Cleveland. A few of these road houses survive from the days when they were among the few places that black field workers could go to drink and dance.

The building is an old sharecropper's shack in which every available inch inside is plastered with posters and stuffed animals. When I asked Willie Seaberry, who runs the place, why it was called Po Monkey's, he replied, " 'Cause I'm po'."

GOOD EATS

Exploring the Mississippi Delta means exploring its food scene.

Doe's Eat Place in Greenville, 26 miles west of Indianola, is a must. Its ambience is what Michael Stern of RoadFood.com describes as "at least a few degrees this side of 'casual.' " Newcomers, he added, "may be shocked by the ramshackle surroundings, but Doe's is easy to like once the food starts coming." There are tamales, big salads, French fries and shrimp, but carnivores go to Doe's for the steaks, huge and delicious.

In Greenwood, 30 miles east of Indianola, the Viking Range Corp. has transformed a decrepit 1917 hotel into a 50-room boutique hotel called the Alluvian. At its restaurant, Giardina's, I had a fine steak, onion rings and a tasty bread pudding on a visit last year.

Not far away, Lusco's, which opened in 1933, is older and funkier than the Alluvian, partly because it's in a shabbier part of town. But the food is abundant and delicious. One night, my friends Cynthia and Jim Abbott and I sat in one of the curtained booths, stuffing ourselves with delicate-tasting pompano.

In Indianola, the Crown has long been the place where everyone eats at lunchtime. Specialties are catfish or chicken, in a gratin of Parmesan cheese, butter and green onion sauce. Owner Evelyn Roughton displays local artists' paintings on the restaurant walls.

Beyond the artistry of the food, there's also artistry in crafts, including Mama's Dream World, a small museum in Belzoni, 23 miles south of Indianola. Ethel Wright Mohamed's creative and delicate embroidery of scenes from family life -- and even a few dreams -- covers virtually every wall of her former home.

Folk-art fans will enjoy the descriptions that Carol Ivy, Mohamed's daughter, gives as she guides you through the rooms. Scouts from the Smithsonian Institution liked Mohamed's work so much that one of her pieces is now part of its permanent collection.

Mississippi's famed clay becomes works of art in the hands of its potters. McCartys in Merigold, 24 miles north of Indianola, is tricky to find -- no signs, a common occurrence in the Delta -- so follow the directions on its site (http://www.mccartyspottery.com). Be sure to visit the lush courtyard gardens behind the shop. Peter's Pottery (see http://www.peters-pottery.net), started by four brothers, is in nearby Mound Bayou, a historically all-black town.

It's the intangibles, though, that make the Delta irresistible.

Jamie Kornegay of Turnrow Book Co. in Greenwood likes to encourage people to take the back roads and often sends them down the road to Money. I took his advice.

"You cross the Tallahatchie River, and you're in the country," Kornegay said, and you end up at the crumbling remains of the general store where Emmett Till, a black teenager, allegedly flirted with a white woman in 1955 and was killed for it. "It is the quintessential Delta drive. Sort of a haunted drive.

"History is right up in your face here."

[dagosd2000]

( L to R )
Tony Baltazar, Hedgemon Lewis and Rodolfo "Gato" Gonzalez

Hedgemon Lewis would pal around with Kenny Norton a lot. Bill Slayton was training both of them. It kind of looked fuuny. Norton was a huge man and Hedge was 147 pounds. Lewis was one of the most polite guys you'd ever meet. Works in the corners once in a while now. I told this before,but I'll make it short. A buddy of mine wanted to see a fight. We went down to the Coliseum. Well we're both a little drunk. We get our tickets and we wind up sitting in back of Lewis and Ken Norton. I guess it was the style then,but these two are wearing shoulder purses. I'm about to tap them on the arm to say"hello" when my drunk friend says,"Since when do grown men wear ladies purses?"
I thought fast and said,"I'm going for a beer. Want one?"
I didn't wait for my friend to answer. I was out of my seat and headed for the snack bar. When I got back to my seat,there was my friend munching on a bag of popcorn. i figured Lewis and Norton didn't hear him becauise he couldn't have chewed on that popcorn without his teeth.

[dagosd2000]

( L to R )
Devin Phelps, Chanelle Baltazar, Tony Baltazar and Nakojua Baltazar, the Baltazar girls are Tony's daughters

Frank
They say Latin men are proud of their sons. They want a boy.Yes,I will show him how to be a man. But there are conditions. I'll teach you how to be a man,but not more of a man than me.I think a father wants to have both.I know Latin mothers give their sons special treatment. But the son is only in good standing if he's a "notch" below his father in prestige.He can compete,but the father will want his son just a step behind him. "I'm still the man of the house." This often leads to conflicts. But the daughters know they don't want to compete with their fathers. Maybe for attention,but that only makes a father feel more like a man.If I'm a little unclear on this,look at the picture.

[Randyman]

( L to R )
Devin Phelps, Chanelle Baltazar, Tony Baltazar and Nakojua Baltazar, the Baltazar girls are Tony's daughters

Frank
They say Latin men are proud of their sons. They want a boy.Yes,I will show him how to be a man. But there are conditions. I'll teach you how to be a man,but not more of a man than me.I think a father wants to have both.I know Latin mothers give their sons special treatment. But the son is only in good standing if he's a "notch" below his father in prestige.He can compete,but the father will want his son just a step behind him. "I'm still the man of the house." This often leads to conflicts. But the daughters know they don't want to compete with their fathers. Maybe for attention,but that only makes a father feel more like a man.If I'm a little unclear on this,look at the picture.

Rog, about Latin men and their sons, I can probably answer that as well as or better than anyone. I am someone that takes a lot of pride in my ethnicity. I don't push it on anyone but in many ways it guides my life. The woman that I love, the food I eat, the way I walk and talk, all driven by who I and what I am. Of course, my take on it is as a Chicano or Mexican American. We are proud of our American roots and our Latino roots. Even when we downplay it, machismo finds its way into our minds and hearts. That has a lot to do with our success in the ring. Some of us would die fighting, but we are not alone in that.

I raised my son to be better than me and he is. He won't say it but he is. I grilled it into him since he was a little boy. Be better than your father. My father did the same thing. I used that term "I'm still the man of the house" many times, so did my father, and rightly so, any man should Latin or otherwise. How else would a son learn to be a "Man of his House". When any man raises a son who turns out to be a better man than he is, he has done his job. I'm proud of my son.

Regarding daughters. I just did my best to spoil them with out ruining them. They treat me like a king. About anything else, I'm about as clueless as any man.

[raylawpc]

Don't know if I have posted the above article before, either way, some of the new guys probably haven't see it or read it. so its for them.

Thanks for reposting that article by Greg. How is Hap doing these days? I think last time I asked, you told me he was having some problems. I hope he's doing better.

[bennie]

Sean O'Grady had those eyes, you know. The coldest eyes. He was some fighter, too.

Yeah, but outside the ring, Sean fit Carlos Ortiz description of most prizefighters - a "cupcake." Really a sweet kid.

Yeah, I wasn't being facetious, Ray. It was just something a British boxing reporter once mentioned to me. He said O'Grady had the coldest eyes he ever saw. He also mentioned that O'Grady told him he had slept with every single cheerleader for the Oklohoma Cowboys, which I can well believe. The Green Machine was a pretty boy. Indeed, he and Watt looked like a couple of male models at ringside a few years after they retired. O'Grady's sisters were pretty, too. I seem to recall Monte Masters cherry-picked one.
Tell you. When Sean did a number on Kenty not long after the Watt bloodbath, everybody in Britain was happy.

[bennie]

Randy & Pug . . . We have a lot in common regarding our grandfathers and Jack Dempsey. Like you two, I was raised on stories of the great Dempsey, as well as Mickey Walker. Roberto Duran is also my favorite fighter all-time. When I was ten, I wrote a letter to JAck Dempsey. Not having his address, I just wrote on the envelope: to JAck Dempsey, Heavyweight Cahmp, New York, N.Y. Two weeks later I receieved an autographed 8x10, "to Rick . . . Lots of luck, pal, signed JAck Dempsey". I still have that photo.

Rick, that is amazing. What a class act.

Jack Dempsey, to me, was the first heavyweight champ who didn't look dated in pics.
The man is timeless.

Bennie, I'll dig the photo out of storage and forward it to Frank to post. The face shot of Dempsey Frank posted recently comes via my friend John Bardelli, son of WBHOF inductee "Young Firpo".

-Rick

Cheers, Rick. Let's hope Frank doesn't stick it on ebay.

(British humour, Frankie.)

[bennie]

Believe it or not, Sean was just ten days or so past his 17th birthday when he fought Danny Lopez.

All the more amazing. A 17 rear old kid having the stones to step into the ring with Danny Lopez. Now there's a story for the grandkids.

I always thought his old man had even bigger stones for putting him in there with Lopez.

In all seriousness, Sean was a pretty remarkable kid in many ways. I wish I had stayed in contact with him over the years.

Is he still doing TV work? He carved out a nice career in that line (apart from when he tried to interview Corrie Sanders between rounds).

[bennie]

Greg is a friend of mine, who is also a very, very good writer, this article is from the 2006 CBHOF

California Boxing Hall of Fame Induction Luncheon

By Greg Beyer
Photos by Frank Baltazar, Sr.

Former boxing great Bobby Chacon (left) and highly acclaimed trainer, Freddie Roach, smile for the camera


STUDIO CITY, Calif., August 19, 2006 – Songwriter Singer Willie Nelson once said in a song that his heroes have always been cowboys. For me, they have always been fighters.

For me, boxing is the highest form of athletic endeavor. Former professional boxer Frankie Baltazar told me at the California boxing hall of fame luncheon this weekend that, just like me being in little league or any other kid being in soccer, that boxing was just the sport that he took up. He was raised in it and to him it seemed natural. A statement of that kind helps me realize why I have idolized fighters for so many years.


In a baseball game, in football, basketball, sometimes athletes are injured. In boxing it is a guarantee. These fighters that enter a ring to do combat, to put their courage and fighting hearts on display to an arena filled with fans are in essence the most amazing of all athletes. We watch them, we cheer them on while they are still young enough and able enough to compete in this violent sport and then to most of us they disappear. For me, since they were all heroes of mine, I wondered about them after they have left the arena for good. Are they okay? Do they have regrets? Has life awarded them in any way for the fact that they had the guts to put it all on the line for a bit of glory, for meager pay and the endless suffering they endured just to be able to compete in a sport so few would ever consider entering into.

This past Saturday at the Sportsmen’s Lodge in Studio City, California, a selected group of these courageous souls were honored for their achievements in the world of professional boxing in the state of California.

Meeting the Baltazar brothers along with their father, trainer, manager and CBZ stalwart Frank Baltazar, Sr. was a special treat for CBZ editor Stephen (“The Bucket”) Gordon and myself. We flew down from Washington State to finally get a chance to meet and honor the entire Baltazar family on their well-deserved day of glory. I have to say here how impressed I was with the beauty and graciousness of Frankie and Tony as well as their entire family. Seated a few tables away form us, they made a special effort to come over and speak to "The Bucket" and I and we appreciated their courtesy and good-natured conversation immensely.

From left to right: former WBC Lightweight Champion Rodolfo "El Gato" Gonzalez, Frank Baltazar, Sr. and Baltazar's son and former pro fighter, Tony Baltazar

In the non-boxer category another CBZ regular being inducted into the hall was none other than the venerable former Hollywood legion stadium matchmaker Gabriel "Hap" Navarro. Pictured in the program was "Hap" in a circa 1950s photo showing a dashing young Hispanic in the mold of a Rudolf Valentino. While this stunning photo lit up that page of the program I suddenly realized it would make it hard for us to search out "Hap" in the crowd before the ceremony began. This dilemma was alleviated when none other than another of my life long idols Rodolfo "El Gato" Gonzalez came up to us and said "Hap wants to meet you guys" and took us to his table where "Hap", eyes tearing up, said how proud he was to finally meet us and how glad he was that we made the trip down. My heart swelled when he asked how long it had been since I had left my hometown of San Pedro, California. How wonderful that he remembered where I was born. What a day!

Danny "Little Red" Lopez and his wife, Bonnie

Former boxing promoter Don Fraser who sponsored this event put on an excellent show, which was evidenced by the huge crowd, filled with many respected and formerly honored boxing greats. Among them was my personal all-time favorite, Danny "Little Red" Lopez, and his lovely wife and life-long friend Bonnie. What a joy it was to be able to tell Danny that I followed his entire career and how glad I was to see that Danny, after all those wars, is still the same fine gentleman that I saw stepping into the ring to face Steve Frajole at the Olympic auditorium in his very first pro fight so many years ago.

What a particular joy it was for "The Bucket" and I to be able to hug and shake hands with our own Rodolfo "el Gato " Gonzalez and his wonderful Barbara. For them to be so glad to meet us was a heart rendering experience I will never forget.

These great fighters and wonderful people I met Saturday. They are well. They survived. What a beautiful day it was to see that so many of my heroes made it through that tough arena and that "the Bucket" and I were there to share this special day with them.

I got back to Washington early Sunday morning with memories confirming what I have always known...my heroes have always been fighters.

From left to right: Stephen "The Bucket" Gordon, Frank Baltazar, and Greg Beyer

Nice shot of three 'clued up' guys.

[kikibalt]

Don't know if I have posted the above article before, either way, some of the new guys probably haven't see it or read it. so its for them.

Thanks for reposting that article by Greg. How is Hap doing these days? I think last time I asked, you told me he was having some problems. I hope he's doing better.

The last time I talk to Hap (via email) was about 3 weeks ago and he told me he was getting ready to move into a rest home.

[kikibalt]

Bennie, I'll dig the photo out of storage and forward it to Frank to post. The face shot of Dempsey Frank posted recently comes via my friend John Bardelli, son of WBHOF inductee "Young Firpo".

-Rick

Cheers, Rick. Let's hope Frank doesn't stick it on ebay.

(British humour, Frankie.)

Oh! I will,I will....

[kikibalt]

BATTLING NELSON

For sheer courage and stamina, Battling Nelson stood in a class all by himself. His classic battles with Jimmy Britt, Ad Wolgast and the incomparable Joe Gans constitute a glorious chapter in ring history. But the stories of those Nelson fights have been told time and again. Here, for the first time, is an intimate, heartwarming account of the fascinating, little-known incidents in the life of this fabulous old champion.

MUMBLING INCOHERENTLY, the shriveled little man shuffled into the charity ward of Chicago State Hospital. The doctors looked at him with a mixture of pity and awe. His eyes were blank and his once muscular 133-pound frame had wasted away to a mere 80 pounds. A brash young attendant said callously: "Huh! Another derelict. We're sure getting a lot of them these days." An elderly attendant shot him a cold look. "Do you know who that 'derelict' is?" he snapped angrily. "That 'derelict' is Battling Nelson, one of the greatest fighters who ever lived."
Old Bat, who had licked immortals like Aurelio Herrera, Young Corbett, Jimmy Britt, Terry McGovern and the incomparable Joe Gans, was 71 years old when he was ruled insane and committed in January of 1954. The psychiatrists' diagnosis had been chillingly brief: "Incurable senile dementia." Nobody will ever know what went on in Nelson's tortured mind as he dribbled away his last days amid alien surroundings. Occasionally a flicker of interest would light up his lustreless eyes and he would try to talk. But the words trickled out in a jumble of meaningless phrases. Those familiar with the ex-champion's spectacular career could pick out place names here and there and link them with some of the famous battles that had earned him riches beyond his dreams. Names like Colma... Goldfield... Point Richmond... But what could they make of such mystifying phrases as electric lights... cracks in the floor... sheets of snow... my seven dollar suit...? It was hard to make any sense of this babbling because Nelson, in his wild hallucinations, was conjuring up the broken images of a past less concerned with his great triumphs than with the vivid fragments of memory that often overshadow the important events in a man's life.
One such fragment came glimmering out of Fond du Lac, Wis., early in his career: a strange bout with a crude battler named Young Scotty. Strange because everytime Nelson floored Scotty the electric lights would go out! The Bat was puzzled. Scotty's head had been slamming the floor with a jarring crunch. Was it possible, Nelson wondered, that the impacts were in some way disrupting the makeshift wiring? After six knockdowns - and six blackouts - it suddenly dawned on the Battler that he was being hoodwinked. By that time, however, Young Scotty had managed to last the eight-round route, robbing Bat of a well-deserved kayo victory.
Nelson never forgot the incident Another that stuck in his mind involved two bouts with rugged Harry Fails two years earlier, in May of 1901. Nelson, only 18 at the time, had fought 25 bouts - some of them for as little as a $2.50 purse. This was peanuts even in those days, but comparatively good money to a boy who had made only 15 cents a day as an ice cutter in his home town of Hegewisch, Ill. Both Nelson and Fails were dissatisfied with their showing in the first bout, a six-round No Decision contest held in Omro, Wis. Eager to settle matters, they quickly agreed to a rematch, for which the promoter promised to sweeten the purse (Bat had gotten $5 for the first fight). They ran into their first trouble when the local sheriff threatened to arrest them. "Hey," one fan yelled after much futile planning, "how about going over to Rhinelander?" Rhinelander was just across the county line. On the morning of May 18, they set out for the new battle site. It was bitter cold and snowing hard. The fighters were offered a ride but chose to walk instead. As they slogged along, Nelson was worried. Not about the storm nor the bout. He had visions of some trigger-happy constable springing out of nowhere and hauling him off to jail. But even this dread possibility didn't faze him as much as the fact that the snow was ruining his $7 suit. Poor Bat loved that suit even more than the green trunks ("my lucky color") which he had bought for his third bout. The suit was part of a "swell-looking outfit" that included a $1 derby, a $1.50 pair of knickers "and the prettiest green necktie you ever saw in your life." Bat almost cried when he plucked at his sodden suit after stamping into the freezing old goat barn selected for the 10-round fight. The sports quickly chose the referee - a tall, lanky fellow. "How come they picked him?" Nelson asked. "Him?" someone replied. "'Cause his daddy owns this here barn." At the end of ten brutal rounds, both fighters were still fresh and raring to go. But the referee refused to let them continue and, hoisting their right hands, declared it a draw. If Nelson was apprehensive about money (there was no purse), he needn't have been. The sports were so satisfied with the action that they showered $300 in coin all over the wooden floor. There was a wild scramble as Nelson and Fails raced around picking up the money. Some of the coins had rolled into large cracks in the boards The boys made sure they didn't miss any by prying up the planks with a crowbar. Nelson felt like a millionaire with his half of the take - the largest he had ever received When he got back to town, he headed straight for a fancy clothing store. He stacked $12.50 in coins on the counter and told the clerk with a big grin, "Gimmie the best suit in the house!"

Bat could be as big a sport as the next guy! But he never forgot his folks. A hefty portion of his winnings always went to his mother, Mary.
Nelson's top purse was the $23,000 he received for his first title fight with the great Joe Gans. It was a gruelling match. But then, so was the one with Joe Hedmark in September of 1900. He got only $15 for that battle, his eleventh, yet considered it "one of my hardest." Nelson managed to score five knockdowns during the blazing six rounds. But Hedmark in turn floored him 17 times. "I was licked thoroughly, fairly and squarely," said Bat. It was one of the few times he ever admitted defeat.
He always insisted: "I have lost several fights, but I have never been beaten. Sounds rather paradoxical, doesn't it? But it's true. The reason for my 'defeats' is that I am not a 'short distance' or 'parlor' boxer. I believe that all fights should be fought to a finish to determine which is the better man..." Of course, Nelson said this before he lost his crown to Ad Wolgast, the "Michigan Wildcat," in one of the most savage contests in ring history. But even then he refused to quit.
Though Nelson denied he had ever been beaten, there was one fellow "I never could lick," Mickey Riley, a clever boxer from Wisconsin. Bat had a lot of respect for Riley. Though they met four times, the Durable Dane, as Bat was called, never got the satisfaction of beating him "and clearing up my old record."
Nelson remembered the first Riley bout with particular vividness because of the silver dollar incident. The bout was held in Milwaukee on April 19, 1901. Milwaukee was a Jinx town to Bat and he often referred to it as "Hoodooville" or "Jonahville." After he lost a decision to the slippery Riley, Nelson's rooters hooted the decision and called on him to make a speech. Bat paled. He had always been "ready and willing to fight anybody, even if it was for only a ham sandwich." But the very thought of making a speech terrified him. Finally, besieged by his supporters, he began, "Gentle..." That was as far as he got. A silver dollar came spinning through the air and landed right in his mouth. He almost swallowed it. Bat chuckled whenever he recalled that incident. President Teddy Roosevelt, he liked to say, earned a dollar a word writing magazine articles about lion hunting. But he, a poor Danish boy from Copenhagen, had bested Roosevelt's record by getting $1 for just half a word!
The Riley bout made a businessman out of Nelson. Fighters of that era frequently passed the hat around to scrape up a living. But more often, the fans would show their appreciation, if any, by tossing coins into the "ring." Many of these coins rolled into cracks or were filched by stickyfingered camp followers. So when the spectators started raining money into the roped area, Nelson quickly whispered to his seconds "I'll give you fellows 10 percent of all you find." Scrambling around, the seconds scooped up $109.23 from coppers to silver dollars, of which Bat pocketed $98.31, plus the $35 purse he got from the club. The next morning, he sent his mother $100.
Bat's other bouts with Riley were all fought within 35 days during the summer of 1903. In the third fight, sandwiched between two draws, Nelson was close to a 11th round knockout when the police intervened. They then shifted to the old copper district of Hurley, Wis., for their final match only to find, at gong time, that they had no boxing gloves. A couple of emissaries were sent out to pick up any old mitts they could find. They did just that, returning with the seamy gloves that John L. Sullivan and Paddy Ryan had used in training for their classic match at Mississippi City, Miss., 21 years before.
All told, Bat fought Riley 38 rounds and got a total of $484.23. Nelson, who loved to make comparisons, later noted with pride that only some two years after the fourth Riley bout, he earned $18,841 plus a 10,000 side bet for kayoing Jimmy Britt, the pride of the West Coast, in 18 rounds. He relished this achievement even more because it included the socalled "white" lightweight championship claimed by Britt (Joe Gans held the world title).
By that time, of course, Bat was a national figure, celebrated for his concrete jaw and phenomenal stamina. And T. A. Dorgan, the famous newspaper cartoonist known as "TAD," was affectionately caricaturing Nelson as a country rube with square teeth, a thatch of scraggly hair and a happy-go-lucky smile.
Though Nelson reveled in his big victories - such as the ones over Britt and Gans - he found his early battles even more memorable because they were related to the wonderful growing-up period when everything seemed like an adventure and life was just one big Christmas stocking.
The Battler's stocking, however, was stuffed with its share of coal. One lump represented a ferocious-looking fighter with Wallace's Circus, then visiting Hammond, Ind., only a few miles from Nelson's hometown. The pug was billed as the "world's renowned prizefighter, Wallace's Unknown" - and he was all of that because nobody knew anything about him. The circus was offering one dollar to anyone who could last three rounds with this "maneater." Nelson, who had changed his job from ice cutter to meat cutter, was only 14 years old when he dared to challenge the Unknown one September night in 1896. Though unnerved by the throng, the roaring beasts and the flaming lights, Bat (the "Packing-House Pride") pulverized his foe in the first round while the band played "Down Went McGinty," a popular ditty of that era. But Nelson never got his dollar. The circus manager refused to cough up. Instead he craftily offered to pay Bat $50 a week plus expenses to replace the Unknown. Bat's folks, insisting he was needed at home and, besides, was too young to go gallivanting around with a circus turned the proposition down cold. Actually, however, they didn't want him to become a fighter. On top of this dissapointment, Bat discovered that during the excitement some circus roustabouts had made off with his coat and vest, including $5.40 (his week's pay as a meat cutter) and "a dandy Waterbury watch."
This bitter experience, coming as it did in his very first "professional" fight, remained fresh in Nelson's memory long after he had retired. In the tidy summary of ring earnings which he included in his autobiography, Nelson listed the dollar with the notation "Robbed."
Nelson's faith in human nature took another beating a few years later after a bout with bruiser Joe Percente. He had been promised $17.50 win, lose or draw. But though he won on a foul (Percente even jumped on top of him!), the Dane, was short-changed by $2.50. When he protested, the promoter snapped: "If you had lost, I'd have given you only $10." Commented Nelson bitterly: "I didn't understand how men could be so dishonest."
His disillusion, however was mild compared with the deal he got in his fight with Eddie Santry in Chicago's famous old Pyramid Athletic club. The record books say he lost. But according to Bat Santry was down and all but out in the final sixth round when the referee awarded him the decision. Nelson was dumfounded to learn that Santry, the old fox, had cornered referee Jimmy Bardell before the bout and whispered that everything had been "fixed" - the Dane was to stay the limit to win a reputation, but Santry was to get the verdict.
Santry indirectly involved Bat in still another raw deal when Eddie was taken ill and pulled out of a 10-round match with Eddie Sterns in August of 1903. Nelson was rushed in as a substitute. On arriving in Michigan City, Ind., he was incensed to learn that Sterns, obviously over the limit, refused to weigh in. Bat's manager, Teddy Murphy, disgustedly waived the forfeit. Seconds after tearing out of his corner, Nelson floored Sterns with a booming right. "He was given at least 15 seconds to get to his feet," Bat squawked later, adding that while he was repeating the process for eight rounds, the referee kept warning him about "foul" blows. In the ninth, the Dane doubled Sterns over with a smashing right to the belly and down he went. "His seconds and the referee carried him to his corner and he was given the decision!" Nelson recalled, noting sarcastically that his foe apparently won "for taking more knockdowns than I did." As if that wasn't enough, the Michigan City, Ind., promoters had another stinger in store for Bat. He had been promised $125 win, lose or draw, plus rail and hotel expenses. All he got was $50 and a stern warning to get out of town "or we'll throw you in jail."
That did it. Nelson had had two prior unpleasantries in Indiana - both in Hammond. One involved the Wallace's Circus theft; the other a bout with Billy Hurley. Anticipating a raw deal, Bat had demanded his $50 in advance. He got it but was furious when he also got a draw decision instead of what he felt was a clear-cut victory over Hurley. The Sterns fiasco, however, was too much and Bat lumping Indiana with Milwaukee as "Hoodooville," squealed: "The promoters there would have put Jesse James to shame." Nelson promptly swore that he'd never fight in Indiana again. He broke his promise only once - nine years later - when he was all washed up.
Humor occasionally bubbled up out of such grim setbacks. A week after the Sterns bout, Nelson took on an actor named "Dare Devil" Tilden, whose specialty was high diving into a tank of water on a bicycle. They '"fought" in a Chicago dance hall before about one hundred actors and actresses. The women, shocked by the sight of blood - Tilden's - started screaming. When one of them yelled "Police!" the lights went out and everybody scurried into an anteroom. After a hushed interval, they emerged. Nelson drew more blood and again the women screamed and someone cried "Police!" The referee wisely stopped the bout, but ruled it "No Decision." Later, the Battler discovered who had yelled for the cops. It had been Tilden's girlfriend, desperately trying to save her intended husband from what seemed certain death. All Bat got out of that scary midnight episode was $7.50 - quite a comedown from the hundreds he had been making. At times like this, he felt a flash of regret that he had not obeyed his folks orders to quit fighting.
He remembered the childish note he had left after they had argued over his second pro fight: "Going away, ma, to seek my fortune." He was all of 15. He came back about a year later but, though his folks welcomed him with open arms, they kept after him to quit. Nelson "compromised" by resuming his studies and training secretly at night. Bat considered himself a good student, especially in math. His passion for figures was reflected in the meticulous records he kept of all his fights and earnings. He also was an unmanageable student ("I was always getting into trouble and being suspended for fighting.") Nelson, who had been christened "Oscar Battling Matthew," liked to boast that he had been born fighting.
And so he had. He put up such a fuss after letting out his first Squawk on June 5, 1882, that his dad, Nels, promptly named him "Battling." His mother, Mary, tacked on "Matthew" in honor of a temperance leader: who served as a model for the abstemious fighter.
It wasn't until Nelson's 34th bout that his dad finally softened. 1901 had been a bad year for the wanderer and he had hurried home to spend Christmas with the folks and the "kids" - his sister and six brothers. Said Bat: "Every Christmas as regular as a clock I hang up my sock, and my good old mother never fails to see that Santa Claus puts something in it." During this mellow period, his dad again pleaded with" him to "stop this fighting business." Bat promised to "think it over." Then someone from the neighboring town of Pullman bragged about a local fighter "who can lick anybody in Hegewisch." Intense rivalry existed between the two towns. Pullman workers, who manufactured fancy sleeping cars, looked down on the "lowly" Hegewisch men who made only "working (flat and freight) cars." The boast got under Nels Nelson's skin. Forgetting his son's promise, Nels cried: "You tink dey got boy over dere vot can beat my boy - vot? Vell, ve'd lack to see him." The old man got so worked up, in fact, that he wildly offered to bet "von tousand dollars" that his boy would win. Bat grinned. Now he just had to uphold his town's honor! Hegewisch took a holiday when Nelson met. Frank Colifer in a West Pullman barn on Jan. 13, 1902. For the first time since Bat had beaten their pride, Ole Olson, the local Swedes rooted with the Danes for a Nelson victory. Bat didn't disappoint them, kayoing Colifer in the fifth round. As he leaped out of the ring, he heard his dad chuckle "An' dey tink dey can leek my boy, vot!"
Nelson's most momentous victory in 1902 was a shattering K.O. over William Rosser, another Pullman pride, who had been defeating every Chicago fighter who invaded his territory. When one of Bat's local detractors asked if he could beat Rosser, Nelson retorted: "Why, I'll knock him out in one round." The fellow sneered: "I've got $40 to your $4 that says you can't." Bat wasn't a man to ignore odds like that. On his way to Harvey, Ill., for the bout, he racked his brain for a trick that would insure a quick kayo. It wasn't until he had jumped into the ring, however, that he found it. He waited until the referee had finished his instructions. Then, instead of returning to his comer, he stepped toward Rosser's corner. As a result Nelson was practically on top of his foe even before the bell had stopped ringing. He fired a right hand smash to the jaw and Rosser, his face frozen with surprise, slumped to the canvas. The whole action had taken just two seconds. Rosser didn't recover for an hour. Nelson's dad, overcome by pride, later took him aside and said, "Go ahead, veen the champeenship."
That was all Bat needed. With high hopes, he hopped a southbound freight for Hot Springs, Ark. To tide him over until he got some bouts, he landed a $3-a-week job as a waiter in the "Ironside" restaurant, So called because of its tough 15-cent steaks. Only a few days later, Bat quit in fury when the manager, a hulking six-footer, abusively accused him of stealing 15 cents. Nelson "peeled him a beaut on the jaw" during a violent battle in which the boss attacked him with catsup bottles and a four-gallon milk pitcher. Narrowly escaping a jail Sentence, Nelson got another waiter's job and became the talk of Hot Springs when he mangled several local fighters while working out in various gyms around town. The upshot was a bout with a tough, 142-pound headwaiter named Elmer Mayfield, whom the Bat beat decisively.
The Dane concluded 1902 with a 17-round knockout of Christy Williams. "Of all the Negroes I fought, William's gave me the hardest battle ... I was punished more than I was in all the three long fights I had with Joe Gans."
Nelson considered 1903 the turning point in his career. It was also the year he suffered his first business reversal. With the $350 proceeds from one fight, he bought out his boss, the owner of the Turf Cafe in Hot Springs, and let a partner run it while he hustled for fights. The Turf was a shaky proposition and Bat had to get some money fast to keep it going. He fought a No-Decision bout and was chagrined when he was given only $5 for his efforts. As glum as he was, Nelson felt even worse when he got back to the cafe and learned that his partner had "vamoosed with everything in sight." The Bat was forced to sell meals at bargain prices to pay off the waiters.
After closing down the cafe, he was about to hunt for another job when he got a telegram from Milwaukee offering him a bout with Cyclone Johnny Thompson, a fast-rising star whom he had beaten previously. Down to his last $5, Bat was compelled to ride the rods to keep his engagement. As he rocked precariously beneath the train, he reflected on the irony of his situation. There he was, Battling Nelson, the "hero" of almost half a hundred battles, reduced to risking his neck under a mail train because he didn't have the price of a ticket! The Bat never forgot that nightmarish ride. Exhausted after dashing to catch the train, he fought desperately to stay awake. But despite his cramped position he couldn't help dozing off. The moment he did, his foot slid off the trucks, struck one of the track ties and bounced up against the belly of the speeding car. The jolt almost knocked him off his perch. Shuddering at his close brush with death, he got no more sleep that night.
After beating Thompson, Bat kept barnstorming around the midwest piling up $2,307.50 in 17 bouts by the year's end. Now, he felt, he was ready to make some real money ... In quick order, he polished off three classy boxers - Artie Simms, Jack O'Neill and Spider Welsh - and mowed down top-ranking Martin Canole and Eddie Hanlon. Then he astounded. the fight world by beating Aurelio Herrera, a rock-fisted Mexican who trained on cigars and whiskey. Nelson's ability to take punishment was dramatically demonstrated in that bout. He was well aware of Herrera's tremendous power, having sparred with him a year before. Fighting cautiously, he managed to stay out of danger until the fourth round. Then he ran into a sledge-hammer right. Bat turned a complete somersault and fell flat on his back, his head smacking the canvas first. Yet he came slashing back to win.
Nelson salted away his $2,100 purse and looked for bigger stakes. He got them by stopping Young Corbett, for $2,700 and then, lost a controversial decision to Jimmy Britt which was salved only by a $5,600 purse, bringing his 1904 earnings to $13,303. But the Bat's wounded feelings weren't salved for long. The day after the Britt fight, Teddy Murphy, his 42-year old "Boy Manager," vanished with boxer Eddie Santry, who had worked in Nelson's corner. With him, Murphy had taken Bat's $5,600 purse. The Battler, who had intended to send his mother $5,000 as a Christmas present, broke down and wept when he learned of the treachery. He said ruefully: "I guess mother is right after all ... this is a bad business to be in." Murphy was arrested a few days later. After listening to a long lament from his errant manager, Nelson agreed to drop charges pending a "settlement." Though he never disclosed its terms, one thing was clear: Murphy was through.
In a way this was a break for Bat because he took on Iron Jaw Billy Nolan, who had promoted the Herrera bout, as his new manager. Under Nolan's tutelage in 1905, Bat fought only five times but boosted his take to $25,591, including $3,500 for knocking out Young Corbett again and a whopping $18,841 for stopping his hated rival Jimmy Britt in a bloody brawl at Colma, Calif. Sandwiched in with these bouts was a slashing No-Decision six-rounder with Abe Attell.
The Nelson-Nolan alliance lasted two years, right through the first Joe Gans fight late in 1906. But it started crumbling long before that - just prior to thie second Britt bout of September, 1905 - when the Bat grumbled about the 50 percent cut demanded by Nolan. Nelson compromised by agreeing to give Billy 35 percent of all his earnings. The compromise left a sour taste in his mouth and Nelson lost no opportunity to express his low opinion of managers in general. Up to the time he had taken on Nolan, he said, he had acted as his own manager, secretary and treasurer and he regretted that he had not followed that policy because Nolan had turned out to be a $50,000 luxury. (Teddy Murphy, it developed, was just a nominal manager.)
While chasing Joe Gans for a title match, Bat took on "Terrible" Terry McGovern in a No-Decision affair. The great McGovern was at the end of the line but he gave Nelson six hard rounds though Terry seemed nervous and clinched frequently. Nelson later disclosed that the nervousness had not been accidental. He knew McGovern was easily upset and figured he could take the sting out of him by putting him on edge. So he kept Terry waiting in the cold ring while he slowly taped his hands. After 15 minutes, Terry impatiently put on his overcoat and fidgeted in his corner. Finally, he shivered over to Bat and grumpily asked why he was taking so much time to get ready. "Don't worry, Terry," Nelson said, "you'll get yours soon enough." Terry boiled and his managers complained but Nelson just laughed at them. After 45 mintutes, having also replaced a "broken" shoelace, Bat was finally ready. "Poor Terry," he recalled, "shook with fright and nervousness as he stepped back to his corner to await the bell ... We had hardly fought 30 seconds when I could tell that I had his goat ..." Bat earned $11,771.50 for the bout.
Six months later, Nelson finally caught up with Joe Gans at Goldfield, Nev., on Sept. 3, 1906. Millions of words have been written about that classic battle, which marked Tex ("Million-Dollar-Gate") Rickard's debut as a fight promoter and netted Nelson his biggest purse, $23,000. Bat lost on a controversial 42nd round foul but insisted to his dying day that he had beaten Gans fairly. He made up for the loss in 1908 by knocking out Gans twice in the space of two months. Few knew it at the time but Cans had been wasting away with tuberculosis.
Despite his condition, Gans had punished Nelson severely in their three bouts. Yet he admitted that while "I hit him blows with which I have knocked out many heavier men ... they had no effect other than to snap Bat's head back. He is simply impervious to punishment."
Bat himself liked to gloat, "I ain't human." Doctors who examined him seemed to agree. They were amazed by his "quiet" nervous system, his abnormally low heart beat, his phenomenal recuperative powers.
These qualities were put to the supreme test when Nelson met Ad Wolgast, the Michigan Bearcat, in a title match at Point Richmond, Calif. In losing his crown to the younger man, Nelson proved every inch a champion. When referee Eddie Smith stopped the slaughter in the 40th round, the blood-smeared Battler begged that he be allowed to continue. "I can beat him," he protested. But the Bat couldn't even find Wolgast. Just before the end, he had squared off menacingly against a ringpost.

Nelson was never the same after that murderous mauling. When he retired in 1917 at the age of 34 (he squeezed in two exhibitions in 1923), he found life a tougher opponent than any he had ever faced in the ring. He divorced his first wife, Fay King, a writer and artist and gradually saw his half-a-million dollar fortune, built mostly on real estate investments, slip down the drain. By 1943 the man who had boasted that he wouldn't need any benefits in his old age was broke and living in a dreary Chicago hotel room with his second wife, Edna. Luckily he landed a wartime job in the post office. But he was fired when the Government ended the temporary posts. He then tried to get a $90-a-month pension for his short service in the Spanish-American War. The Veterans Administration turned him down because he could not produce discharge papers. Bat said he had misplaced them after losing his home in Hegewisch.
In January, 1954, about a week after his wife died, he was ruled insane and committed. A psychiatrist described him as "a man out of contact with the world." He had wound up in the same dream world that had enveloped Ad Wolgast not long after Ad lost his crown to Willie Ritchie.
Wolgast outlasted Nelson, dying on April 14, 1955, at the age of 67, still training for a mythical championship bout. For Oscar Battling Matthew Nelson, the end came on Feb. 7, 1954, at the age of 71. The cause: lung cancer. The Durable Dane was human after all.

From: Boxing International, Dec. 1974

[raylawpc]

Sean O'Grady had those eyes, you know. The coldest eyes. He was some fighter, too.

Yeah, but outside the ring, Sean fit Carlos Ortiz description of most prizefighters - a "cupcake." Really a sweet kid.

Yeah, I wasn't being facetious, Ray. It was just something a British boxing reporter once mentioned to me. He said O'Grady had the coldest eyes he ever saw. He also mentioned that O'Grady told him he had slept with every single cheerleader for the Oklohoma Cowboys, which I can well believe. The Green Machine was a pretty boy. Indeed, he and Watt looked like a couple of male models at ringside a few years after they retired. O'Grady's sisters were pretty, too. I seem to recall Monte Masters cherry-picked one.
Tell you. When Sean did a number on Kenty not long after the Watt bloodbath, everybody in Britain was happy.

I know you weren't. My yeah was really "yes, indeed."

[dagosd2000]

BATTLING NELSON

For sheer courage and stamina, Battling Nelson stood in a class all by himself. His classic battles with Jimmy Britt, Ad Wolgast and the incomparable Joe Gans constitute a glorious chapter in ring history. But the stories of those Nelson fights have been told time and again. Here, for the first time, is an intimate, heartwarming account of the fascinating, little-known incidents in the life of this fabulous old champion.

MUMBLING INCOHERENTLY, the shriveled little man shuffled into the charity ward of Chicago State Hospital. The doctors looked at him with a mixture of pity and awe. His eyes were blank and his once muscular 133-pound frame had wasted away to a mere 80 pounds. A brash young attendant said callously: "Huh! Another derelict. We're sure getting a lot of them these days." An elderly attendant shot him a cold look. "Do you know who that 'derelict' is?" he snapped angrily. "That 'derelict' is Battling Nelson, one of the greatest fighters who ever lived."
Old Bat, who had licked immortals like Aurelio Herrera, Young Corbett, Jimmy Britt, Terry McGovern and the incomparable Joe Gans, was 71 years old when he was ruled insane and committed in January of 1954. The psychiatrists' diagnosis had been chillingly brief: "Incurable senile dementia." Nobody will ever know what went on in Nelson's tortured mind as he dribbled away his last days amid alien surroundings. Occasionally a flicker of interest would light up his lustreless eyes and he would try to talk. But the words trickled out in a jumble of meaningless phrases. Those familiar with the ex-champion's spectacular career could pick out place names here and there and link them with some of the famous battles that had earned him riches beyond his dreams. Names like Colma... Goldfield... Point Richmond... But what could they make of such mystifying phrases as electric lights... cracks in the floor... sheets of snow... my seven dollar suit...? It was hard to make any sense of this babbling because Nelson, in his wild hallucinations, was conjuring up the broken images of a past less concerned with his great triumphs than with the vivid fragments of memory that often overshadow the important events in a man's life.
One such fragment came glimmering out of Fond du Lac, Wis., early in his career: a strange bout with a crude battler named Young Scotty. Strange because everytime Nelson floored Scotty the electric lights would go out! The Bat was puzzled. Scotty's head had been slamming the floor with a jarring crunch. Was it possible, Nelson wondered, that the impacts were in some way disrupting the makeshift wiring? After six knockdowns - and six blackouts - it suddenly dawned on the Battler that he was being hoodwinked. By that time, however, Young Scotty had managed to last the eight-round route, robbing Bat of a well-deserved kayo victory.
Nelson never forgot the incident Another that stuck in his mind involved two bouts with rugged Harry Fails two years earlier, in May of 1901. Nelson, only 18 at the time, had fought 25 bouts - some of them for as little as a $2.50 purse. This was peanuts even in those days, but comparatively good money to a boy who had made only 15 cents a day as an ice cutter in his home town of Hegewisch, Ill. Both Nelson and Fails were dissatisfied with their showing in the first bout, a six-round No Decision contest held in Omro, Wis. Eager to settle matters, they quickly agreed to a rematch, for which the promoter promised to sweeten the purse (Bat had gotten $5 for the first fight). They ran into their first trouble when the local sheriff threatened to arrest them. "Hey," one fan yelled after much futile planning, "how about going over to Rhinelander?" Rhinelander was just across the county line. On the morning of May 18, they set out for the new battle site. It was bitter cold and snowing hard. The fighters were offered a ride but chose to walk instead. As they slogged along, Nelson was worried. Not about the storm nor the bout. He had visions of some trigger-happy constable springing out of nowhere and hauling him off to jail. But even this dread possibility didn't faze him as much as the fact that the snow was ruining his $7 suit. Poor Bat loved that suit even more than the green trunks ("my lucky color") which he had bought for his third bout. The suit was part of a "swell-looking outfit" that included a $1 derby, a $1.50 pair of knickers "and the prettiest green necktie you ever saw in your life." Bat almost cried when he plucked at his sodden suit after stamping into the freezing old goat barn selected for the 10-round fight. The sports quickly chose the referee - a tall, lanky fellow. "How come they picked him?" Nelson asked. "Him?" someone replied. "'Cause his daddy owns this here barn." At the end of ten brutal rounds, both fighters were still fresh and raring to go. But the referee refused to let them continue and, hoisting their right hands, declared it a draw. If Nelson was apprehensive about money (there was no purse), he needn't have been. The sports were so satisfied with the action that they showered $300 in coin all over the wooden floor. There was a wild scramble as Nelson and Fails raced around picking up the money. Some of the coins had rolled into large cracks in the boards The boys made sure they didn't miss any by prying up the planks with a crowbar. Nelson felt like a millionaire with his half of the take - the largest he had ever received When he got back to town, he headed straight for a fancy clothing store. He stacked $12.50 in coins on the counter and told the clerk with a big grin, "Gimmie the best suit in the house!"

Bat could be as big a sport as the next guy! But he never forgot his folks. A hefty portion of his winnings always went to his mother, Mary.
Nelson's top purse was the $23,000 he received for his first title fight with the great Joe Gans. It was a gruelling match. But then, so was the one with Joe Hedmark in September of 1900. He got only $15 for that battle, his eleventh, yet considered it "one of my hardest." Nelson managed to score five knockdowns during the blazing six rounds. But Hedmark in turn floored him 17 times. "I was licked thoroughly, fairly and squarely," said Bat. It was one of the few times he ever admitted defeat.
He always insisted: "I have lost several fights, but I have never been beaten. Sounds rather paradoxical, doesn't it? But it's true. The reason for my 'defeats' is that I am not a 'short distance' or 'parlor' boxer. I believe that all fights should be fought to a finish to determine which is the better man..." Of course, Nelson said this before he lost his crown to Ad Wolgast, the "Michigan Wildcat," in one of the most savage contests in ring history. But even then he refused to quit.
Though Nelson denied he had ever been beaten, there was one fellow "I never could lick," Mickey Riley, a clever boxer from Wisconsin. Bat had a lot of respect for Riley. Though they met four times, the Durable Dane, as Bat was called, never got the satisfaction of beating him "and clearing up my old record."
Nelson remembered the first Riley bout with particular vividness because of the silver dollar incident. The bout was held in Milwaukee on April 19, 1901. Milwaukee was a Jinx town to Bat and he often referred to it as "Hoodooville" or "Jonahville." After he lost a decision to the slippery Riley, Nelson's rooters hooted the decision and called on him to make a speech. Bat paled. He had always been "ready and willing to fight anybody, even if it was for only a ham sandwich." But the very thought of making a speech terrified him. Finally, besieged by his supporters, he began, "Gentle..." That was as far as he got. A silver dollar came spinning through the air and landed right in his mouth. He almost swallowed it. Bat chuckled whenever he recalled that incident. President Teddy Roosevelt, he liked to say, earned a dollar a word writing magazine articles about lion hunting. But he, a poor Danish boy from Copenhagen, had bested Roosevelt's record by getting $1 for just half a word!
The Riley bout made a businessman out of Nelson. Fighters of that era frequently passed the hat around to scrape up a living. But more often, the fans would show their appreciation, if any, by tossing coins into the "ring." Many of these coins rolled into cracks or were filched by stickyfingered camp followers. So when the spectators started raining money into the roped area, Nelson quickly whispered to his seconds "I'll give you fellows 10 percent of all you find." Scrambling around, the seconds scooped up $109.23 from coppers to silver dollars, of which Bat pocketed $98.31, plus the $35 purse he got from the club. The next morning, he sent his mother $100.
Bat's other bouts with Riley were all fought within 35 days during the summer of 1903. In the third fight, sandwiched between two draws, Nelson was close to a 11th round knockout when the police intervened. They then shifted to the old copper district of Hurley, Wis., for their final match only to find, at gong time, that they had no boxing gloves. A couple of emissaries were sent out to pick up any old mitts they could find. They did just that, returning with the seamy gloves that John L. Sullivan and Paddy Ryan had used in training for their classic match at Mississippi City, Miss., 21 years before.
All told, Bat fought Riley 38 rounds and got a total of $484.23. Nelson, who loved to make comparisons, later noted with pride that only some two years after the fourth Riley bout, he earned $18,841 plus a 10,000 side bet for kayoing Jimmy Britt, the pride of the West Coast, in 18 rounds. He relished this achievement even more because it included the socalled "white" lightweight championship claimed by Britt (Joe Gans held the world title).
By that time, of course, Bat was a national figure, celebrated for his concrete jaw and phenomenal stamina. And T. A. Dorgan, the famous newspaper cartoonist known as "TAD," was affectionately caricaturing Nelson as a country rube with square teeth, a thatch of scraggly hair and a happy-go-lucky smile.
Though Nelson reveled in his big victories - such as the ones over Britt and Gans - he found his early battles even more memorable because they were related to the wonderful growing-up period when everything seemed like an adventure and life was just one big Christmas stocking.
The Battler's stocking, however, was stuffed with its share of coal. One lump represented a ferocious-looking fighter with Wallace's Circus, then visiting Hammond, Ind., only a few miles from Nelson's hometown. The pug was billed as the "world's renowned prizefighter, Wallace's Unknown" - and he was all of that because nobody knew anything about him. The circus was offering one dollar to anyone who could last three rounds with this "maneater." Nelson, who had changed his job from ice cutter to meat cutter, was only 14 years old when he dared to challenge the Unknown one September night in 1896. Though unnerved by the throng, the roaring beasts and the flaming lights, Bat (the "Packing-House Pride") pulverized his foe in the first round while the band played "Down Went McGinty," a popular ditty of that era. But Nelson never got his dollar. The circus manager refused to cough up. Instead he craftily offered to pay Bat $50 a week plus expenses to replace the Unknown. Bat's folks, insisting he was needed at home and, besides, was too young to go gallivanting around with a circus turned the proposition down cold. Actually, however, they didn't want him to become a fighter. On top of this dissapointment, Bat discovered that during the excitement some circus roustabouts had made off with his coat and vest, including $5.40 (his week's pay as a meat cutter) and "a dandy Waterbury watch."
This bitter experience, coming as it did in his very first "professional" fight, remained fresh in Nelson's memory long after he had retired. In the tidy summary of ring earnings which he included in his autobiography, Nelson listed the dollar with the notation "Robbed."
Nelson's faith in human nature took another beating a few years later after a bout with bruiser Joe Percente. He had been promised $17.50 win, lose or draw. But though he won on a foul (Percente even jumped on top of him!), the Dane, was short-changed by $2.50. When he protested, the promoter snapped: "If you had lost, I'd have given you only $10." Commented Nelson bitterly: "I didn't understand how men could be so dishonest."
His disillusion, however was mild compared with the deal he got in his fight with Eddie Santry in Chicago's famous old Pyramid Athletic club. The record books say he lost. But according to Bat Santry was down and all but out in the final sixth round when the referee awarded him the decision. Nelson was dumfounded to learn that Santry, the old fox, had cornered referee Jimmy Bardell before the bout and whispered that everything had been "fixed" - the Dane was to stay the limit to win a reputation, but Santry was to get the verdict.
Santry indirectly involved Bat in still another raw deal when Eddie was taken ill and pulled out of a 10-round match with Eddie Sterns in August of 1903. Nelson was rushed in as a substitute. On arriving in Michigan City, Ind., he was incensed to learn that Sterns, obviously over the limit, refused to weigh in. Bat's manager, Teddy Murphy, disgustedly waived the forfeit. Seconds after tearing out of his corner, Nelson floored Sterns with a booming right. "He was given at least 15 seconds to get to his feet," Bat squawked later, adding that while he was repeating the process for eight rounds, the referee kept warning him about "foul" blows. In the ninth, the Dane doubled Sterns over with a smashing right to the belly and down he went. "His seconds and the referee carried him to his corner and he was given the decision!" Nelson recalled, noting sarcastically that his foe apparently won "for taking more knockdowns than I did." As if that wasn't enough, the Michigan City, Ind., promoters had another stinger in store for Bat. He had been promised $125 win, lose or draw, plus rail and hotel expenses. All he got was $50 and a stern warning to get out of town "or we'll throw you in jail."
That did it. Nelson had had two prior unpleasantries in Indiana - both in Hammond. One involved the Wallace's Circus theft; the other a bout with Billy Hurley. Anticipating a raw deal, Bat had demanded his $50 in advance. He got it but was furious when he also got a draw decision instead of what he felt was a clear-cut victory over Hurley. The Sterns fiasco, however, was too much and Bat lumping Indiana with Milwaukee as "Hoodooville," squealed: "The promoters there would have put Jesse James to shame." Nelson promptly swore that he'd never fight in Indiana again. He broke his promise only once - nine years later - when he was all washed up.
Humor occasionally bubbled up out of such grim setbacks. A week after the Sterns bout, Nelson took on an actor named "Dare Devil" Tilden, whose specialty was high diving into a tank of water on a bicycle. They '"fought" in a Chicago dance hall before about one hundred actors and actresses. The women, shocked by the sight of blood - Tilden's - started screaming. When one of them yelled "Police!" the lights went out and everybody scurried into an anteroom. After a hushed interval, they emerged. Nelson drew more blood and again the women screamed and someone cried "Police!" The referee wisely stopped the bout, but ruled it "No Decision." Later, the Battler discovered who had yelled for the cops. It had been Tilden's girlfriend, desperately trying to save her intended husband from what seemed certain death. All Bat got out of that scary midnight episode was $7.50 - quite a comedown from the hundreds he had been making. At times like this, he felt a flash of regret that he had not obeyed his folks orders to quit fighting.
He remembered the childish note he had left after they had argued over his second pro fight: "Going away, ma, to seek my fortune." He was all of 15. He came back about a year later but, though his folks welcomed him with open arms, they kept after him to quit. Nelson "compromised" by resuming his studies and training secretly at night. Bat considered himself a good student, especially in math. His passion for figures was reflected in the meticulous records he kept of all his fights and earnings. He also was an unmanageable student ("I was always getting into trouble and being suspended for fighting.") Nelson, who had been christened "Oscar Battling Matthew," liked to boast that he had been born fighting.
And so he had. He put up such a fuss after letting out his first Squawk on June 5, 1882, that his dad, Nels, promptly named him "Battling." His mother, Mary, tacked on "Matthew" in honor of a temperance leader: who served as a model for the abstemious fighter.
It wasn't until Nelson's 34th bout that his dad finally softened. 1901 had been a bad year for the wanderer and he had hurried home to spend Christmas with the folks and the "kids" - his sister and six brothers. Said Bat: "Every Christmas as regular as a clock I hang up my sock, and my good old mother never fails to see that Santa Claus puts something in it." During this mellow period, his dad again pleaded with" him to "stop this fighting business." Bat promised to "think it over." Then someone from the neighboring town of Pullman bragged about a local fighter "who can lick anybody in Hegewisch." Intense rivalry existed between the two towns. Pullman workers, who manufactured fancy sleeping cars, looked down on the "lowly" Hegewisch men who made only "working (flat and freight) cars." The boast got under Nels Nelson's skin. Forgetting his son's promise, Nels cried: "You tink dey got boy over dere vot can beat my boy - vot? Vell, ve'd lack to see him." The old man got so worked up, in fact, that he wildly offered to bet "von tousand dollars" that his boy would win. Bat grinned. Now he just had to uphold his town's honor! Hegewisch took a holiday when Nelson met. Frank Colifer in a West Pullman barn on Jan. 13, 1902. For the first time since Bat had beaten their pride, Ole Olson, the local Swedes rooted with the Danes for a Nelson victory. Bat didn't disappoint them, kayoing Colifer in the fifth round. As he leaped out of the ring, he heard his dad chuckle "An' dey tink dey can leek my boy, vot!"
Nelson's most momentous victory in 1902 was a shattering K.O. over William Rosser, another Pullman pride, who had been defeating every Chicago fighter who invaded his territory. When one of Bat's local detractors asked if he could beat Rosser, Nelson retorted: "Why, I'll knock him out in one round." The fellow sneered: "I've got $40 to your $4 that says you can't." Bat wasn't a man to ignore odds like that. On his way to Harvey, Ill., for the bout, he racked his brain for a trick that would insure a quick kayo. It wasn't until he had jumped into the ring, however, that he found it. He waited until the referee had finished his instructions. Then, instead of returning to his comer, he stepped toward Rosser's corner. As a result Nelson was practically on top of his foe even before the bell had stopped ringing. He fired a right hand smash to the jaw and Rosser, his face frozen with surprise, slumped to the canvas. The whole action had taken just two seconds. Rosser didn't recover for an hour. Nelson's dad, overcome by pride, later took him aside and said, "Go ahead, veen the champeenship."
That was all Bat needed. With high hopes, he hopped a southbound freight for Hot Springs, Ark. To tide him over until he got some bouts, he landed a $3-a-week job as a waiter in the "Ironside" restaurant, So called because of its tough 15-cent steaks. Only a few days later, Bat quit in fury when the manager, a hulking six-footer, abusively accused him of stealing 15 cents. Nelson "peeled him a beaut on the jaw" during a violent battle in which the boss attacked him with catsup bottles and a four-gallon milk pitcher. Narrowly escaping a jail Sentence, Nelson got another waiter's job and became the talk of Hot Springs when he mangled several local fighters while working out in various gyms around town. The upshot was a bout with a tough, 142-pound headwaiter named Elmer Mayfield, whom the Bat beat decisively.
The Dane concluded 1902 with a 17-round knockout of Christy Williams. "Of all the Negroes I fought, William's gave me the hardest battle ... I was punished more than I was in all the three long fights I had with Joe Gans."
Nelson considered 1903 the turning point in his career. It was also the year he suffered his first business reversal. With the $350 proceeds from one fight, he bought out his boss, the owner of the Turf Cafe in Hot Springs, and let a partner run it while he hustled for fights. The Turf was a shaky proposition and Bat had to get some money fast to keep it going. He fought a No-Decision bout and was chagrined when he was given only $5 for his efforts. As glum as he was, Nelson felt even worse when he got back to the cafe and learned that his partner had "vamoosed with everything in sight." The Bat was forced to sell meals at bargain prices to pay off the waiters.
After closing down the cafe, he was about to hunt for another job when he got a telegram from Milwaukee offering him a bout with Cyclone Johnny Thompson, a fast-rising star whom he had beaten previously. Down to his last $5, Bat was compelled to ride the rods to keep his engagement. As he rocked precariously beneath the train, he reflected on the irony of his situation. There he was, Battling Nelson, the "hero" of almost half a hundred battles, reduced to risking his neck under a mail train because he didn't have the price of a ticket! The Bat never forgot that nightmarish ride. Exhausted after dashing to catch the train, he fought desperately to stay awake. But despite his cramped position he couldn't help dozing off. The moment he did, his foot slid off the trucks, struck one of the track ties and bounced up against the belly of the speeding car. The jolt almost knocked him off his perch. Shuddering at his close brush with death, he got no more sleep that night.
After beating Thompson, Bat kept barnstorming around the midwest piling up $2,307.50 in 17 bouts by the year's end. Now, he felt, he was ready to make some real money ... In quick order, he polished off three classy boxers - Artie Simms, Jack O'Neill and Spider Welsh - and mowed down top-ranking Martin Canole and Eddie Hanlon. Then he astounded. the fight world by beating Aurelio Herrera, a rock-fisted Mexican who trained on cigars and whiskey. Nelson's ability to take punishment was dramatically demonstrated in that bout. He was well aware of Herrera's tremendous power, having sparred with him a year before. Fighting cautiously, he managed to stay out of danger until the fourth round. Then he ran into a sledge-hammer right. Bat turned a complete somersault and fell flat on his back, his head smacking the canvas first. Yet he came slashing back to win.
Nelson salted away his $2,100 purse and looked for bigger stakes. He got them by stopping Young Corbett, for $2,700 and then, lost a controversial decision to Jimmy Britt which was salved only by a $5,600 purse, bringing his 1904 earnings to $13,303. But the Bat's wounded feelings weren't salved for long. The day after the Britt fight, Teddy Murphy, his 42-year old "Boy Manager," vanished with boxer Eddie Santry, who had worked in Nelson's corner. With him, Murphy had taken Bat's $5,600 purse. The Battler, who had intended to send his mother $5,000 as a Christmas present, broke down and wept when he learned of the treachery. He said ruefully: "I guess mother is right after all ... this is a bad business to be in." Murphy was arrested a few days later. After listening to a long lament from his errant manager, Nelson agreed to drop charges pending a "settlement." Though he never disclosed its terms, one thing was clear: Murphy was through.
In a way this was a break for Bat because he took on Iron Jaw Billy Nolan, who had promoted the Herrera bout, as his new manager. Under Nolan's tutelage in 1905, Bat fought only five times but boosted his take to $25,591, including $3,500 for knocking out Young Corbett again and a whopping $18,841 for stopping his hated rival Jimmy Britt in a bloody brawl at Colma, Calif. Sandwiched in with these bouts was a slashing No-Decision six-rounder with Abe Attell.
The Nelson-Nolan alliance lasted two years, right through the first Joe Gans fight late in 1906. But it started crumbling long before that - just prior to thie second Britt bout of September, 1905 - when the Bat grumbled about the 50 percent cut demanded by Nolan. Nelson compromised by agreeing to give Billy 35 percent of all his earnings. The compromise left a sour taste in his mouth and Nelson lost no opportunity to express his low opinion of managers in general. Up to the time he had taken on Nolan, he said, he had acted as his own manager, secretary and treasurer and he regretted that he had not followed that policy because Nolan had turned out to be a $50,000 luxury. (Teddy Murphy, it developed, was just a nominal manager.)
While chasing Joe Gans for a title match, Bat took on "Terrible" Terry McGovern in a No-Decision affair. The great McGovern was at the end of the line but he gave Nelson six hard rounds though Terry seemed nervous and clinched frequently. Nelson later disclosed that the nervousness had not been accidental. He knew McGovern was easily upset and figured he could take the sting out of him by putting him on edge. So he kept Terry waiting in the cold ring while he slowly taped his hands. After 15 minutes, Terry impatiently put on his overcoat and fidgeted in his corner. Finally, he shivered over to Bat and grumpily asked why he was taking so much time to get ready. "Don't worry, Terry," Nelson said, "you'll get yours soon enough." Terry boiled and his managers complained but Nelson just laughed at them. After 45 mintutes, having also replaced a "broken" shoelace, Bat was finally ready. "Poor Terry," he recalled, "shook with fright and nervousness as he stepped back to his corner to await the bell ... We had hardly fought 30 seconds when I could tell that I had his goat ..." Bat earned $11,771.50 for the bout.
Six months later, Nelson finally caught up with Joe Gans at Goldfield, Nev., on Sept. 3, 1906. Millions of words have been written about that classic battle, which marked Tex ("Million-Dollar-Gate") Rickard's debut as a fight promoter and netted Nelson his biggest purse, $23,000. Bat lost on a controversial 42nd round foul but insisted to his dying day that he had beaten Gans fairly. He made up for the loss in 1908 by knocking out Gans twice in the space of two months. Few knew it at the time but Cans had been wasting away with tuberculosis.
Despite his condition, Gans had punished Nelson severely in their three bouts. Yet he admitted that while "I hit him blows with which I have knocked out many heavier men ... they had no effect other than to snap Bat's head back. He is simply impervious to punishment."
Bat himself liked to gloat, "I ain't human." Doctors who examined him seemed to agree. They were amazed by his "quiet" nervous system, his abnormally low heart beat, his phenomenal recuperative powers.
These qualities were put to the supreme test when Nelson met Ad Wolgast, the Michigan Bearcat, in a title match at Point Richmond, Calif. In losing his crown to the younger man, Nelson proved every inch a champion. When referee Eddie Smith stopped the slaughter in the 40th round, the blood-smeared Battler begged that he be allowed to continue. "I can beat him," he protested. But the Bat couldn't even find Wolgast. Just before the end, he had squared off menacingly against a ringpost.

Nelson was never the same after that murderous mauling. When he retired in 1917 at the age of 34 (he squeezed in two exhibitions in 1923), he found life a tougher opponent than any he had ever faced in the ring. He divorced his first wife, Fay King, a writer and artist and gradually saw his half-a-million dollar fortune, built mostly on real estate investments, slip down the drain. By 1943 the man who had boasted that he wouldn't need any benefits in his old age was broke and living in a dreary Chicago hotel room with his second wife, Edna. Luckily he landed a wartime job in the post office. But he was fired when the Government ended the temporary posts. He then tried to get a $90-a-month pension for his short service in the Spanish-American War. The Veterans Administration turned him down because he could not produce discharge papers. Bat said he had misplaced them after losing his home in Hegewisch.
In January, 1954, about a week after his wife died, he was ruled insane and committed. A psychiatrist described him as "a man out of contact with the world." He had wound up in the same dream world that had enveloped Ad Wolgast not long after Ad lost his crown to Willie Ritchie.
Wolgast outlasted Nelson, dying on April 14, 1955, at the age of 67, still training for a mythical championship bout. For Oscar Battling Matthew Nelson, the end came on Feb. 7, 1954, at the age of 71. The cause: lung cancer. The Durable Dane was human after all.

From: Boxing International, Dec. 1974

Frank
That was an amazing story. Where do you find that stuff? Guys like Nelson,Wolgast,McGovern,and Nelson have always fascinated me. We have their records,but the stories behnd these guys are a mystery. I've always wanted to know what were the lives like of these guys who fought so many times in such brutal fights. Ad Wolgast is a fighter I know bits and pieces about. Do you have similar stories about "The Michigan Assassin"? Keep these posts coming on an era where fighting really was almost a matter of life and death Dagos

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Happy to report that Chuck Bodak is out of the hospital and doing well for a young 92 year old cutman. You can send Chuck your best wishes to Vasil ‘Chuck’ Bodak, B &B Country Manor IV, 26711 Valpariso, Mission Viejo, CA. 92691. I know he appreciates all the prayers and well wishes.

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Ad Wolgast

Extremely aggressive, Ad Wolgast rose to the top of the lightweight ranks with little concern for defense and a great ability to take a punch. Tragically, he paid a terrible price for too many blows to the head. Wolgast first saw a pro fight in Petoskey, Michigan. When he didn't have enough money for a ticket, Wolgast told the promoter he was a promising young amateur and found himself being matched with Kid Moore. Wolgast won the fight in a six-round decision -- though Moore outweighed him by 27 pounds.
Wolgast fought his first two years as a pro primarily in Grand Rapids and Milwaukee before moving on to fight in California. There, he knocked out two opponents, but largely fought no-decision bouts. On July 13, 1909, Wolgast, now dubbed the "Michigan Wildcat," met Hall of Famer and lightweight champion Battling Nelson in Los Angeles for a no-decision, non-title fight. The newspaper decision in the bloody brawl went to Wolgast.

On February 22, 1910, Wolgast and Nelson met again in a "distance" title fight scheduled for 45 rounds. Nelson had the advantage in the early round, but by the 40th his vision was so impaired that he took his fighting stance opposite one of the ring posts, and the referee stopped the fight. Wolgast was the new world champion.

Wolgast made his fifth title defense against Mexican Joe Rivers. He managed to force Rivers into accepting as referee Jack Welch, who was known to encourage the wild brawling- style fight that favored Wolgast. Rivers began well, and a discouraged Wolgast nearly did not answer the bell for the 13th, coming out only when his cornerman threatened him with a bottle. Wolgast unleashed a hard left to River's groin, while Rivers smashed him with a right-left combination to the jaw. Both fighters fell, Wolgast on top of Rivers, and Welch started a count on Rivers while helping Wolgast back to his feet. When his count reached 10, Welch raised Wolgast's arm in victory, then hurriedly fled as a mob rushed the ring. Wolgast retained his title in this notorious "double knockout" fight.

His next title defense came against Willie Ritchie on November 28, 1912. Wolgast came out fighting, but in the 16th Ritchie landed a long wild right to the jaw, spinning Wolgast round and nearly sending him down. Braced with one fist on the canvas, Wolgast launched two low blows to Ritchie, and referee Jim Griffen stopped the fight, awarding the victory to Ritchie on a foul.

Wolgast's all-attack fighting style resulted in numerous injuries, including broken arms, hands, and ribs, cauliflowered ears and extensive brain damage. In 1917, Wolgast fought just once and was knocked out in the second round. He fought only one more bout, in 1920, Jack Doyle, a boxing promoter in Vernon, California, was appointed as Wolgast's guardian, and allowed him to "train" for nonexistent fights. By 1927, Wolgast was institutionalized and remained so for the rest of his life.

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BATTLING NELSON & AD WOLGAST:

By P.N. Ehrmann

Fay King and Mildred Wolgast were both strong-willed, independent women who also happened to be married to two former lightweight boxing champions of the world. Something else they had in common was that their husbands thoroughly detested each other.
To Mrs. King's husband, Battling Nelson, Ad Wolgast was a "cheese champion" and "beyond a doubt the cheapest man I ever met." And of Nelson, Ad Wolgast said, "I have no more use for him than church folk have for a rattlesnake at a revival meeting."
Four-handed bridge was therefore out of the question, but as one newspaper explained, "... through the bombardment of expletives the petite members of the two families are the best of friends. Mrs. Nelson opines that Mrs. Wolgast is a 'peacherino,' while Mrs. Wolgast confidently affirms that 'Fay is awfully sweet.'" And on September 13, 1913, the chums got together in Portland, California, to announce agreement on another matter: "Our husbands no more shall fight as long as we both shall live."
It was a stunning feminist manifesto in an era when there was no female sufferage and barely female sufferance. But given the nature of the time and of the husbands in question, what happened next was no big surprise.

Defending lightweight champion Nelson (left) and challenger Wolgast square off before their historic title bout in Richmond, California, on February 22, 1910. It was Nelson's fifth championship defense.

"I have just wired Battling Nelson," announced Ad Wolgast on September 14, "that I will be glad to fight him in Milwaukee on October 28."
If Fay and Mildred put their feet down or felt a sudden chill of mortality, it was lost in the clamor of anticipation from boxing fans around the country, to whom the prospect of another war between Battling Nelson, "The Durable Dane," and Ad Wolgast, "The Michigan Wildcat," was perfectly peacherino.
They had clashed twice before. Nelson was lightweight champion when he and Wolgast fought a bloody 10-round, no-decision fight - in which the newspapers adjudged the underdog Wolgast the winner - on July 13, 1909. That introduction laid the foundation for their mutual hatred and set the stage for a rematch, held on February 22, 1910. I went 40 rounds, and the bitter enemies punched, pushed, fouled, and even bit one another. Finally the referee intervened to save Nelson after he had, in the words of one newspaper account, "recieved a beating such as old-time ring followers maintain never before was seen in the ring." Nelson, who couldn't even see anymore, vehemently protested the stoppage, and eight years afterward was still insisting that he was the reigning lightweight champion because the referee had never actually counted him out in the Wolgast fight.
For a couple of fellows who hated each other so, Battling Nelson and Ad Wolgast were amazingly alike, inside the ropes and otherwise, and thier lives followed an eerily parallel course from start to finish. Both came out of the Midwest. Although born in Copenhagen, Denmark on June 5, 1882, Battling Nelson was raised in Hegewich, Illinois. Ad Wolgast was born on February 8, 1888, in Cadillac, Michigan. Nelson was one of eight children; Wolgast was one of seven. And both got their real starts on the road to boxing fame and fortune in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which almost a century ago was a major fight center.
Nelson arrived there broke in 1901, and headquartered at Paddy Dorrell's Beanery in the town's bowery district. He trained in the backroom gym, and lived on Paddy's famous beans. His manager was Teddy Murphy, a former Milwaukee fighter.
They had gone west almost three years before Ad Wolgast arrived in Milwaukee in 1907, and like Nelson, trained and ate at Paddy Dorrell's. After establishing himself as a fistic attraction, Wolgast too, headed west under the management of Milwaukeean Frank Mulkern.
If both fighters were certain of anything, it was that absolutely nothing could hurt them. Early in his career, Nelson had actually engaged in a headbutting contest with a man in Hegewich, both having their hands tied behind their backs and ramming craniums like billy goats. After several head-on collisions, Bat's foe retired with a gaping wound on his skull; Nelson himself was unmarked and unfazed.
Wolgast was equally confident and proud of his ability to withstand any kind of blow. Before his title fight with Nelson, he offered to let Wolgast "put a horseshoe in each of his gloves and ... bet him $2,500 that he can't knock me out."
From a purely statistical standpoint, their claims were unassailable. In 132 recorded fights, Battling Nelson failed to go the distance just twice.
Ad Wolgast fought 135 times, and was also stopped just twice, with one of those due to a broken arm.
But by 1913, their face-first style had taken a toll that their wives could only worry about, and when they met in the ring for the third time on October 17 - it had been moved up from the original date - both were far from the fighters and physical specimens they had been. Wolgast had lost the title to Willie Richie on a 16-round foul the year before, and when he lost a newspaper decision to Joe Azevado on September 1, 1913, had seemed to acknowledge the inevitable.
"I would rather quit altogether than spend my time training and boxing around like a sideshow man," he said afterward. But then Fay and Mildred went public with their conclusions about their husbands' futures, and the 5'7½" Nelson and the 5'4¼" Wolgast showed who wore the pants in their families by pounding each other throughout 10 rounds in Milwaukee.
"They may be Ex-Champs And Down And Out, But These Two Warriors Surely Put Up A Grand Battle," headlined the Milwaukee Journal the next day.
Wolgast won the newspaper decision and resumed his career full-force. Nelson, whose ring contests included some of the most brutal fights in boxing history, announced that he was retiring from boxing to enter politics. But within a year he voted to fight again, and said he'd continue as long as his battered hands held up.
"I ain't human," Nelson often boasted, referring to his incredible endurance and ability to absorb punishment. When he launched his comeback, the Milwaukee Journal (whose sports department the Battler would visit before every local fight to an-nounce, "This ain't going to be any pink tea,") reported, "Doctors who examined him said he was of subnormal nervous organism [sic], meaning his nerves were less sensitive than those of the ordinary man, and did not carry shock to the brain in the normal way."
However, the physical effects of Nelson's beatings stood out like neon advertisements of his profession. As early as 1905, before he won the lightweight title and with more than half his ring career ahead of him, the Journal wrote that Nelson "resembles a martyr who has been broken on the wheel."

Wolgast jolts Nelson's head back with a vicious uppercut in the 40th round of their 1910 clash. Moments after the photo was taken referee Ed W. Smith stopped the bout to save Nelson from further punishment, and Wolgast was crowned the new lightweight champ.

As for Wolgast, after he broke his right arm in a 1914 fight with Freddy Welsh, a newspaper printed the high points of his medical resume: 1906 - left ear cauliflowered; 1907 - right ear cauliflowered; 1908 - bones in hands cracked; 1910 - broken arm and rib; 1911 - appendicitis; 1912 - bones in both hands broken; 1913 - ribs cracked; 1914 - two broken arms.
In 1916, Nelson decided to try retirement again, but it was too late to mollify Fay King. She announced that she was divorcing the ex-champ. In a poignant effort to regain her good graces, the battered Battler, who'd denigrated former lightweight champion Jimmy Britt as "The Dude" for the latter's concern about protecting his features in the ring, had his spectacularly cauliflowered ears, crushed nose, and mashed lips remodeled by a plastic surgeon. And, according to a news account, he also hired "a social tutor, a mentor of deportment, and a dancing instructor" to give him "lessons in terpsichord, French, and grammar."
While it was later reported that "the doctor has not beautified the Dane to any great extent," the results of his physical overhaul, at least, were startling enough to cause Nelson a problem when he tried to get in to see the Ever Hammer-Joe Welling fight in Racine, Wisconsin, on November 22, 1916. When the boxing inspector failed to recognize the remodeled Nelson and refused to believe that it was the former champion, he was arrested for trying to impersonate himself.
While far from a dude himself, Wolgast himself had tried plastic surgery of sorts a few years earlier, with less spectacular results. According to the January 17, 1913, Journal Ad had had his flattened nose injected with parafin and reshaped. But then occurred a tragedy that probably deserves enshrinement in the annals of dermatology: "The other day a pimple appeared on Ad's nose. It bothered him. He squeezed it. He kept on squeezing it. And when he finally finished, his nose sagged in the middle. All the parafin had leaked out through that pimple."
When then-heavyweight champion Jess Willard drove Ad to St. Mary's Hospital in Milwaukee on February 27, 1917, however, it wasn't for treatment of what boxing had done to his physiognomy. The little Dutchman had tried to quit the ring several times, but was always drawn back by the memories of what had been. "You just can't quit, that's all," he said plaintively after one attempt at retirement in 1916. "They say a criminal is drawn back irresistibly to the scene of his crime. Well, so is a fighter drawn back to the old rings, to the old crowd, and the old excitement. Why not let the ex-champs have their little pipedreams?"
The initial explanation for Wolgast's hospitalization in Milwaukee was that he suffered a "nervous breakdown." But on April 4, 1917, two psychiatrists told a Milwaukee court that the former champion was mentally incompetent and that there was "hardly a chance for [him] to regain his health." Control of his ring earnings, said to amount to about $200,000, was given to Mildred, who was then herself in the process of suing for divorce.

Wolgast, shown working in a Vernon, California pool hall.

Meanwhile Nelson, his improved countenance and social graces having failed to sway Fay from dissolving their marriage, announced that he would return to the ring.
Wolgast, only 30 but physically and mentally decrepit - "A glance at Wolgast's head," wrote a Milwaukee newsman, "is enough to show what he had gone through" - spent more than a year in Milwaukee sanitoriums. The day after his release, on April 18, 1918, he called the Journal to announce that he wanted to fight lightweight champion Benny Leonard in a 20-round bout. Fighting was all he knew. But no state would license him to box, and the Wildcat ended up, for the time being, working on a farm in northern Wisconsin, from where he wrote to a friend in October 1918, begging "for a dime or so."
He wasn't the only one with problems. After finally retiring at the age of 34, Nelson had toured with a circus and then tried, unsuccessfully, to enlist in the U.S. Army as a boxing instruc-tor. It was the height of World War I, and Bat was equally unlucky trying to interest the military in purchasing rights to the "Nelson Dummy," a punching bag he invented that was fashioned in the likeness of the Kaiser. In the fall of 1918, Batt was felled by the influenza epidemic that swept through the country and around the world, killing thousands. He was hos-pitalized in Chicago, and in October, the man who made even more money than Wolgast, and spent it even faster, had to make his own appeal for funds.

In April 1918, Nelson proudly displays his "Nelson Dummy," designed to look like Germany's despised Kaiser, and to be used as a punching devise for American soldiers during the first World War.

"I am not asking for charity," insisted the Dane. "All I would like is some of the money I loaned out... It may be unbelievable, but the total amount I now have outstanding ... will run close to $250,000." Four days later, newspapers reported that the Battler had been moved from "Millionaires' Row" in St. Luke's Hospital to a ward for the indigent. Nelson wrote about the difference to his one-time manager, Teddy Murphy: "Last night oyster patties for supper; this morning, hash. Just now, old-timer, we had stew that once flirted with a cow."

Nelson in his Hegwisch, Illinois, home, points to a photo of his title-fight win over Joe Gans.

It took seven years, but Battling Nelson finally rebounded into solvency in l925, when his father died and left him $150,000, most of which came from ring earnings the Battler had giv-en him. But within 10 years the former champ was dead-broke again, and this time it wouldn't get better. He lived in flea-bag hotels and worked occasionally. In January 1954, a month before his death on February 7, "The Durable Dane" was admitted to the charity ward of Chicago State Hospital. He was, according to a wire service report, "a wasted, incoherent little man without a penny to his name." The diagnosis was "incurable senile dementia." A press account said that the 71-year-old fighting machine spent the last weeks of his life babbling nonsensically about boxing events that had occurred decades before.

Nelson recieves a charity check on his 71st birthday from the editor of a Chicago newspaper.

The news that he had oulasted his bitterest enemy might have consoled Wolgast if he had been in any condition to comprehend it. After drifting out to California in 1918, and even fighting once or twice more, the Wildcat's benumbed brain ceased forever to function normally. He was committed to a California asylum, and for many years trained there in a makeshift gym to defend the lightweight crown that, in what was left of his own tortured mind, he had never lost. When he died on April 14, 1955, Ad's mind was a total blank, and he had spent more than half of his 67 years in mental institutions.
For Battling Nelson and Ad Wolgast, life inside the ring and out had been a brutal endurance contest, and right to the sad end, the notion that they could ever lose was just an old wives' tale.

[dagosd2000]

Ad Wolgast

Extremely aggressive, Ad Wolgast rose to the top of the lightweight ranks with little concern for defense and a great ability to take a punch. Tragically, he paid a terrible price for too many blows to the head. Wolgast first saw a pro fight in Petoskey, Michigan. When he didn't have enough money for a ticket, Wolgast told the promoter he was a promising young amateur and found himself being matched with Kid Moore. Wolgast won the fight in a six-round decision -- though Moore outweighed him by 27 pounds.
Wolgast fought his first two years as a pro primarily in Grand Rapids and Milwaukee before moving on to fight in California. There, he knocked out two opponents, but largely fought no-decision bouts. On July 13, 1909, Wolgast, now dubbed the "Michigan Wildcat," met Hall of Famer and lightweight champion Battling Nelson in Los Angeles for a no-decision, non-title fight. The newspaper decision in the bloody brawl went to Wolgast.

On February 22, 1910, Wolgast and Nelson met again in a "distance" title fight scheduled for 45 rounds. Nelson had the advantage in the early round, but by the 40th his vision was so impaired that he took his fighting stance opposite one of the ring posts, and the referee stopped the fight. Wolgast was the new world champion.

Wolgast made his fifth title defense against Mexican Joe Rivers. He managed to force Rivers into accepting as referee Jack Welch, who was known to encourage the wild brawling- style fight that favored Wolgast. Rivers began well, and a discouraged Wolgast nearly did not answer the bell for the 13th, coming out only when his cornerman threatened him with a bottle. Wolgast unleashed a hard left to River's groin, while Rivers smashed him with a right-left combination to the jaw. Both fighters fell, Wolgast on top of Rivers, and Welch started a count on Rivers while helping Wolgast back to his feet. When his count reached 10, Welch raised Wolgast's arm in victory, then hurriedly fled as a mob rushed the ring. Wolgast retained his title in this notorious "double knockout" fight.

His next title defense came against Willie Ritchie on November 28, 1912. Wolgast came out fighting, but in the 16th Ritchie landed a long wild right to the jaw, spinning Wolgast round and nearly sending him down. Braced with one fist on the canvas, Wolgast launched two low blows to Ritchie, and referee Jim Griffen stopped the fight, awarding the victory to Ritchie on a foul.

Wolgast's all-attack fighting style resulted in numerous injuries, including broken arms, hands, and ribs, cauliflowered ears and extensive brain damage. In 1917, Wolgast fought just once and was knocked out in the second round. He fought only one more bout, in 1920, Jack Doyle, a boxing promoter in Vernon, California, was appointed as Wolgast's guardian, and allowed him to "train" for nonexistent fights. By 1927, Wolgast was institutionalized and remained so for the rest of his life.

Frank
My pal you are here for all of us. God Bless You My Friend.

[dagosd2000]

THE TIRE SHOP

When Denny Moyer came down to fight in San Diego ,Ronnie Wilson's drnking got worse. Moyer could out drink Ronnie so that meant when Ronnie drank with Denny ,it would be lights out. Both of them were only fighting to pick up a paycheck. 500 in Vegas. 500 at the Coliseum. Even less in places like Stockton or Fresno. They were stepping stones. They knew it. They didn't care. If Flarhety would line them up with something,they'd go to Sid's training camp up in Jamul in the mountains for a week and try to dry out. Fleherty had a boxing camp up there with Johnny Rodriguez who was the trainer. Mostly Mexican fighters. Funny,those two Irish bums up there with all those Mexican fighters. Ronnie and Denny never socialized much with those fellas'. No hot sauce for them. No "Aprendo the lingo" neither. A peculiar thing about that camp. It was also a kennel. Sid and Danny made more money selling those Malamute dogs than cashing in on their stable of fighters.

Ronnie was working at B.F Goodrich downtown. My pal Pat was working with Ronnie at the time. In fact Ronnie was staying with Pat because Ronnie was having problems with the wife again. Well I get the invite to go out with them after work to hit the various sailor bars downtown. Being all Catholics,I figured the Father would have his work cut out for him during Confession on Friday.

I get to the tire shop around 7 o'clock. I go to the back and there's Ronnie ,Pat,and Moyer passed out in the warehouse. There's tires thrown all over the place. It looked like a bomb had hit it. Empty booze bottles are everywhere. I looked close. Those boys were out cold. They weren't goin' anywhere.

I got to thinkin'. Moyer could always out drink Ronnie until he passed out. Now both of them are sleeping it off. I wondered if "Irish" Bob Murphy had arisen from the grave and found out two Irishmen were drinking without him.

[bennie]

Cheers, Frankie. I like the way Tony has come inside Montes' left hook to land that hurtful-looking body shot.

Bennie, I always taught Frankie and Tony how to slip punches and get inside, and throw those short punches, Frankie could do it better then Tony, not too many here have seen Frankie fight, Frankie could throw beautiful short punches inside with both hands.
My friend Tom (raylawpc) and Randy have DVd's of Frankie's fights and they can tell you without bias, I think, that Frankie was a world class fighter....

I'm sure, Frankie. We heard about Frankie Jnr in Britain when he was fighting, so he must have been top class.

[bennie]

Frankie, do you anything about Rudy Zavala, who was hit by a car and killed in California in 1998?

[Rick Farris]

Some L.A. Boxing Trivia . . .

Aileen Eaton (Olympic Aud. promoter), Jimmy Jacobs (mgr./historian), and Allen Malamud (Sports writer) have all passed on, and all have been inducted into the World Boxing Hall of Fame. What else do these three boxing figures have in common????

(answer in following post)

-Rick Farris

[Rick Farris]

Some L.A. Boxing Trivia . . .

Aileen Eaton (Olympic Aud. promoter), Jimmy Jacobs (mgr./historian), and Allen Malamud (Sports writer) have all passed on, and all have been inducted into the World Boxing Hall of Fame. What else do these three boxing figures have in common????

(answer in following post)

All graduated from Los Angeles High School.


-Rick Farris

[kikibalt]

Frankie, do you anything about Rudy Zavala, who was hit by a car and killed in California in 1998?

No, Bennie, don't know much about him, I did see him fight a few times, at the start of his career he looked like a real good up and coming fighter, then something went wrong and he started losing and the little I know about that, is that he couldn't handle the losing, he started drinking I was told and that led to his fatal accident, which btw happened close to my house.

[Rick Farris]

AD WOLGAST . . .

I haven't yet had time to read the above stories posted on Ad Wolgast and Battling Nelson (and will later today when time permits), however, as a kid in Jr. High School, I read an interesting story on Wolgast, a story that written by a true boxing writer from the past, a guy who could paint a brilliant picture with his words (in other words, something we no longer see from boxing journalists.)

I will share this one part of the story, which tells of Wolgast's mental challenges after his retirement.

Wolgast had been commited to a rest home for the mentally impaired and would often sneak out of the place, like a boxer breaking training and escaping camp. Upon discovering the former boxing champ was gone, the hospital staff would notify authorities who would attempt to find him. A couple days after one of Wolgast's disappearances, the home receieved a phone call from a L.A. hospital, reporting that that Ad had arrived via ambulance to the emergency room early that morning.

It seems that Wolgast had been run over by a street car while running down Spring Street, in downtown Los Angeles, breaking both of his legs. When a reporter heard of the accident, he visited the punch drunk ex-fighter in the hospital, and asked him what he was doing in the middle of the street at 5am.

"I was doing roadwork for my fight with Battling Nelson, and this time I'm going to knockout the sonofabitch!"

The fight had taken place ten years earlier.


-Rick Farris
World Boxing Hall of Fame- Director/Historian