The Battle Royals: It doesn't get anymore racist then this; even the commentary is obnoxious

[APerno]

Can anyone put a circa date on this? It doesn't look as old as it should, which is disconcerting; I thought this level of disrespect and exploitation was confined to the 19th Century.

[APerno]

Can anyone put a circa date on this? It doesn't look as old as it should, which is disconcerting; I thought this level of disrespect and exploitation was confined to the 19th Century.

[Tuan_Jim]

This is awesome!

[Caractacus]

The film footage is real.
The contempory'voice-over' seems fake to me
and recently dubbed.

[Caractacus]

How far do "battle Royals" go back anyway ?
I'm guessing back to Medieval Times.

[Caractacus]

All it is really is a usual Saturday Night Saloon Fight at the Bowrey confined in a ring with a paying audience to watch it.

[Caractacus]

Could this have possibly been held at the Missouri State Prision in 1951 ?
That looks like a young Sonny Liston with the suspenders on.
( at 0:21 and 0:33 seconds of the clip)

[wouter]

in 1951 ?
That looks like a young Sonny Liston with the suspenders on.
( at 0:21 and 0:33 seconds of the clip)

I thought it was Harry Greb at Blackpool.

Seriously though, as late as the 1930s Battle Royals were often held as the opening attraction of boxing cards in the Southern U.S.

[APerno]

in 1951 ?
That looks like a young Sonny Liston with the suspenders on.
( at 0:21 and 0:33 seconds of the clip)

I thought it was Harry Greb at Blackpool.

Seriously though, as late as the 1930s Battle Royals were often held as the opening attraction of boxing cards in the Southern U.S.

Audience dress looks right for the '30s - I felt like the B&W film looked later, like the 40s.

[Caractacus]

Why didn't thay put the footage into its proper context by showing what preceeded it and followed it
from whatever their source for it was.

[APerno]

Why didn't thay put the footage into its proper context by showing what preceeded it and followed it
from whatever their source for it was.

It came to me as a you tube 'suggested video'; it's not to say the original source didn't give an explanation.

I never heard of the Boxing Hall of Fame of Las Vegas, Nevada. -- Like you said the announcer seems to have come on board later, probably connected to the Hall of Fame of Las Vegas. It doesn't seem to be a news article (Movietone), but instead an amateur film, a home movie with good equipment; which makes the prison setting possible; prison also would explain the small crowd. But I have no clue what it actually is.

[Caractacus]

They use to do Battle Royals in England..and for free !

[Caractacus]

Jack Johnson had written that his first Battle Royal occured in April 1899 when he was 21 years old.
He was Hoboing and stopped off in Springfield Illinois in the RR roads when he heard of an event
at that was happening at the Senate Bar there in Springfield.
he was fatiqued from hunger so he entered.
It was a Five man contest including himself.
The four others(who apprently knew one another) got together and rushed him,he knocked 2 out cold from rights to the jaw
and hit the third in the mid-section and he dropped to his knees,
the fourth ran to a corner and Jack Johnson chased him and knocked him out there.
He got 30 sandwiches and a dozen beers as well as the winner take all prize money.
This event was important because it convinced him that he could make a career out of pugilism.
Johnnie Conners who was promoting it became his manner and took him to Chicago a few weeks later to fight Klondike.
The referee for it was George Siler 9boxing editor for the Chicago Tribune

[Caractacus]

As HW Champion Jack Johnson himself referred a Battle Royal,that happened at the Broadway Theater in NYC
December-16-1909.
12 Black amateur boxers entered with the cash prize of 'winner Take all".
apparently one took a swing a Jack Johnson in the heat of battle and Jack Johnson knocked him out of the ring with a uppercut.

[Caractacus]

Joe Gans and Beau Jack both got their starts in Battle Royals.

[Caractacus]

Light-weight Champion Beau Jack got his start in boxing with Battle Royals in Augusta Georgia in the mid-1930's.
check out this article.

https://www.golf.com/tour-and-news/boxe ... a-national

[oogiebe]

That is some crazy shit

[Kalan]

There could be any number of contestants but there had to be at least 5... They wanted to start with an uneven number so it wouldn't degenerate into 3 or 4 or 5 boxing matches in the same ring... You were certain to see an engaged fighter hit upside the head from a blindside by somebody who had no opponent..

It doesn't pay to be the biggest, strongest fighter in a battle royal... Two or more guys will gang up on you.... If the big guy gets clobbered out they'll go after the next biggest guy... When there's only 2 battlers left it's starts to get boring...

Or maybe not... When there's only 2 left, at least you're getting closer to a winner... At that point did they start scoring rounds? It might take 20 more rounds to come up with a KO winner once the last 2 survivors start fighting each other.

[evrenb]

Why didn't thay put the footage into its proper context by showing what preceeded it and followed it
from whatever their source for it was.

It came to me as a you tube 'suggested video'; it's not to say the original source didn't give an explanation.

I never heard of the Boxing Hall of Fame of Las Vegas, Nevada. -- Like you said the announcer seems to have come on board later, probably connected to the Hall of Fame of Las Vegas. It doesn't seem to be a news article (Movietone), but instead an amateur film, a home movie with good equipment; which makes the prison setting possible; prison also would explain the small crowd. But I have no clue what it actually is.

The Boxing Hall of Fame Las Vegas is run by Steve Lott the 'keeper' of the legendary fight film collection of Jim Jacobs and Bill Cayton. After Jacobs died, Cayton sold the collection to ESPN for millions. ESPN also purchased other collections.
A lot of the old films were overdubbed in the 1960s and 1970s as they were produced for video and they wanted to have continuity in the commentating/sound. That of course and many of the older films had no sound or poor quality audio.
Steve Lott posts videos almost daily ..showing fights from the past that happened that particular date.
If a film of this age isn't shown in its entirety that doesn't mean there is a longer version; it may be that this was all that was filmed. Especially something like this. And it doesn't mean that if there is overdubbed commentary there was an original soundtrack. Most likely this is silent and the commentary is added to give the viewer some editorial information.

[BitPlayer]

Looks a bit reenactmenty to me, could be wrong though.

Wasn't Jack Johnson meant to have done some of these when he was young?

[BitPlayer]

How far do "battle Royals" go back anyway ?
I'm guessing back to Medieval Times.

We only really have records of boxing going back to Fights amphitheatre (apart from ancient sources). Though there is a newspaper reference in the late 1600's.

There was something vaguely similar in mideivil Russia but it was two teams in a line

[HomicideHenry]

Battle Royals go back to the ancient times, though it'd be more appropriate to call it "team fights" where a couple of groups would all be in a big free for all to the death.

Battle Royals weren't just "black entertainment" as depicted, some whites were involved in such things too, though certainly in the Jim Crow era it was almost always black fighters.

The worst of the battle royals were "last man standing" with blindfolds. That truly was disgusting.... But if I'm not mistaken, in certain parts of the country, up until the 1960s there was such boxing matches though extremely rare.

For instance, if one looks at the career of LaMar Clark he often fought on cards that were a mix of both boxing and wrestling and some of his matches were under hybrid rules; some of those cards had both boxing battle royals as well as wrestling battle royals, but whether they were actually on the level or not is up for question.

[Caractacus]

Light-weight champion Joe Gans got his start in Battle Royals in Baltimore around 1886.
he did them with 3 other opponents at the Monumental Theater in Baltimore.
after he won his second Battle Royal there he then started doing individual bouts.
A local politician named Al Hereford who promoted the Battle Royals there
became his manager.

[Caractacus]

not sure if this is a tradition in their village in Russia or if they saw it on the TV and decided to have one of their own.

[BroughtonRulesRefuge]

- Perno, if a raciest cries out racism, does it really matter?

If we live in an idealistic world where we are all equal, aren't we all equally guilty and complicit?

When the great Broughton first opened up his amphitheater for exhibitions in 1743, one of the card's headliners was Buckhorse against a giggle of unnamed probably drawn from the crowd as a Battle Royal, so if the posters of the day used language in wide use, the term easily goes back to the 16th Century or beyond. If not racist then, then when did Battle Royals become racist?

We used to have some wild ones as kids. We weren't allowed to fight, but we could throw down. This one snooty kid moved into our working class neighborhood, so his mom kept him on a tight leash. One day we has just started one when he came running over asking if he could join us. We were in the 8-9 year old stage, and sure and he had a blast tossing us around, but then I got him thrown in his first downing, OK, no problem as he got up, but then he put his fingers to his face and pulled out the dog mess he landed in. Oh to see the look of horror as he slowly melted into bawling tears to run back to his mommy. We never saw him again and presumably they moved to a more gentile neighborhood.

Here's the tale of baseball HOFer Ty Cobb often cited as racist. He started the most recorded fights on the field than anyone in history, were they racist? Off field he probably had as many, but most weren't recorded. On the field he was fighting fellow whites, and off the field he was fighting, say 98% whites and none called him out for his racism, however the few fights he had with blacks, the eastern press made it a racial matter. Why was that? Because he was a southerner who believed in white supremacy?

He played an exhibition against a black team in Cuba as a player with no incidences, and then refused to play any more against black players in spite of dozens of barnstorming MLB teams making good money against barnstorming black teams as they packed in the fans everywhere they went. The most battle prone black player was Oscar Charleston, built like the human stump Hack Wilson of the Cubs, but called the black TY Cobb by his people because his fisticuffs reminded them of Cobb. Was that racist of them?

In 1930, Cobb throw out the ceremonial first pitch to dedicate the new park built for the Detroit black league, so do you really think the black league would have invited Cobb to such a high profile affair as their guest of honor if he was really racist?

The whole concept of racism is completely modern, so just when did this racism thing begin and when is it going to end and whats the official name of the committee that started it and will stop it?