BoxRec

I was thinking about a biography that Clay Moyle has just finished writing on Sam Langford and it's hard to believe that it has taken 100 years for a biography that that all time great to be written, but come to think of it...there are really very few greats of the past that have had biography’s written about them, which is shame because instead of covering something completely new and interesting, a writer will chose to write yet another book about Ali, or another book about Louis, which don't get me wrong, I'm glad that they get the recognition, but it's time that all of the other greats of the past get some recognition as well.

Who are some of the fighters that you would like to see a biography written for? I'd like to see a lot more of the old time greats have bio's written such as Dixie Kid, Joe Grim, Joe Gans, George Dixon, Abe Attell, “Mysterious” Billy Smith, Charles Ledoux, Ike Weir, "Barbados" Joe Walcott, George “KO” Chaney, Jack Dillon, Tommy Ryan, Sandy Saddler, Max Baer, Kid McCoy, Jimmy Barry, Ruben Olivares, Bob Satterfield, “Tiger” Jack Fox, Alabama Kid, George Godfrey (1920-1930s), Lew Jenkins, Danny Lopez, Peter Maher (There was a fellow that was writing a bio on Maher, but I hadn’t heard anything about it lately), Elmer Ray, Tom Sharkey, Battling Siki, Jack Blackburn and many, many more…a couple of the names that I mentioned have had small bio’s written, but nothing really major…that I know of and each one would be a very interesting career to uncover.

I've been putting a lot of material together on Terry McGovern of which I'm thinking very much about writing a bio on him, but it will be at least two years down the road before I even start to really try to put a book together, or before I really get serious about actually writing chapters out...I mainly just want to focus on getting every single piece of data and info that I can find for McGovern during the next two years and then start putting things together, but in all I'd like to spend between three and five years writing the book, so then I could almost certainly say that there was no rock that I left unturned on the career and life of Terry McGovern!

I would love to find out all I can regarding Joe Jeanette a guy who seemed to have Jack Johnson's number and only a few seem to give him due credit. Has that biography been written?

How would one go about writing a biography about someone who lived so long ago...an accurate biography that is...there are no living frames of reference...a lot of it would be guess work, wouldn't it? You couldn't interview anyone who saw him live...tough way to write, I think...

A friend of mine is a History Professor at a major New England University. Watching some of his work I can say you indeed are right it would not be an easy task, but there are some absolutely stunning records that can be found if one is obsessed enough with a subject.

In those days people were prolific writers on almost every subject, sort of like people today love to video tape, and much of this was saved. Problem is sorting it out and ferreting out the unique items that pertain to your chosen subject.

Another problem is piecing it together and assessing what the information really leads to. You have to connect a lot of dots. And almost every bit of work of this nature is challenged by folks who will say that the author was in fact not disinterested and perhaps had a tale to tell of their own which convoludes the outcome.

I have to say from what I have seen there might be some great nuggets of information regarding Joe Jeanette. The topic was interesting to many people and though the mainstream press did not pick it up that does not mean the written record was sparse.

In New England where I currently reside it's safe to say we are not a bastion of potential discovery on this subject. However down south I am sure a great record lives on regarding this entire quiet culture as yet to be discovered. If boxing were as big as football is today I would think someone would be on this.

Also I am not certain how much is on the record already, which is why I was asking what work has already been done on this subject.

It would not be an insurmountable task to take this to a new level for someone with the time and resources. But how many people really care? And how much resource is available to "mine" the goodies?

At any rate If I had the resources it would be a subject that I would fund If I happened to be one of the beautiful people.

The biggest problem with doing a biography on an old fighter today would be the personal life because not all fighters recieved as much word as others, but the professional boxing career of fighters is relatively easy to piece together because there was a ton of written material that has been printed and back in the era that I am most interested almost every newspaper had at least one boxing writer. Of course bigger cities that had a lot of boxing are easier to research because of several different newspapers and other printed sources, especially New York, Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Baltimore and Chicago to a good degree.

It's some of the more lesser known greats that are hard to really find a lot of material on, like Aurelio Herrera, or even Elmer Ray of the 30s and 40s. The personal life is difficult because a person cannot interview people of the time and people that personally knew the fighters, but the career in the ring is not much of a problem as long as the person really digs deep and gets every single clip of a fight that was printed, or at least attempts to get as much as humanly possible.

As to Joe Jeannette, there has never been any biography written about him...Nat Fleischer covered him in his Black Dynamite series, but really it's not much to go by. Kevin Smith's next volume about early colored fighters will probably have the best account of Jeannette yet written as his next book is over 1000 pages, so there will be some very, very good information about early African-American boxers in the next volume of his series. Jeannette is also another fighter that I am very interested in as well as Sam McVey another of the early greats that no bio has ever been written for...out of all the very good fighters that were active during that time, I'd say that there is only around 1% of good fighters that have biography's written. Guys like Ad Wolgast, who had a very interesting life and career also has never had a biography written about him. From that era, as with any era really, it is mostly just heavyweights that have been covered and very few of them, I mean hell, like I said not even the great Sam Langford has had a biography until Clay.

How about a fighter from the 30s-40s in California, middleweight or lightheavy. Maybe Jack Chase or Shorty Hogue, Eddie Booker or even a book about that era?

A couple of 30s & 40s California boxers, "Bandit" Johnny Romero would be an interesting book, as would Bert Colima, or like you say just a book on that era...Another fighter that I would like to know more about is Ray Actis. Actis stayed in Billy Conn's memory as Conn stated that Actis hit him harder than anyone ever did in his career...including Louis.

I would go with firstly Jack` Chappie` Blackburn.

Just the little I know on him tells a big enough story, top fighter who faced many of the days top fighters in various weights, a heavy drinker who lived up to the reputation that follows it and finally the trainer of the Greatest man who ever laced up.

Secondly and maybe an even better choice would be Yankee Sullivan, allright he was of the bareknuckle prizefighting days but what a story surrounds him.

I would love to see one on Jack Dempsey. no not the manaussa mauler. the "non-parail" dempsey was perhaps the best middleweight of his time, and he is often overlooked because he wasnt a heavyweight, it was so long ago, and another boxer, who happens to be one of the best and most popular ever, shares his name. i think the original dempsey deserves a little more respect, and publicity he was a great fighter

Yankee Sullivan would be a fantastic fighter to cover in depth...I think that there has been a couple of small bio's written about him. I'm pretty sure that Richard Fox wrote one, or it might have been Charles Fox, but I'm pretty sure that it was the same pocket-book size format that the Police Gazette Record Book Annuals were, which was 3" X 4 1/8".

Another reason you aren't going to see many of these...is publishing companies like to make money...the audience for some of these projected biographies is extremely small...

If you are running a publishing company...are you going to give the green light to a biography that will appeal to such a tiny audience?

Money makes the world go 'round...unfortunately....

You know SS you may have something there. Your right about the market being small but if someone wanted to do small articles here that could be picked up and published elsewere in the future that might be an interesting pursuit. Could get started in "small article" fashion. Perhaps in thread form. Not sure anyone would be interested in doing the research and work and posting for nothing but some things in life are a labor of love.

As usual I'm on a tangent.

Pretty much any book written about boxing will probably loose money, but that's where you get involved with historical socities and other organizations and there is also companies that publish nothing but biographies...even small biographies, but for books of this nature your audience that you probably want most is libraries instead of hoping for individual sales, and there certainly are a lot of libraries in the world....of course no one could ever get rich writing a book, or books about boxing and only someone naive would go into it thinking so, but the biggest percentage of boxing books are in fact a "labor of love."

Yeah, the market for such work is small, but it also happens that a large part of that market are the visitors to this site.

So... how about a new section in the BoxRec shop along with the t-shirts - the BoxRec Press.

Lots of eBooks on the ignored, the infamous, and the downright obscure.



They could be in .pdf format. Don't know the best way to guage the price though: by the page number, or by the popularity of the fighter?

EDIT: BTW barry, this was a really good thread!

Manos, your evolving this idea nicely. Hadn't thought about a "pay per view" aspect but am not against it. It would need some editing and qualifying before you can charge. If not people would be inclined to place fiction into the record vs fact. Since the latter is so much more difficult to achieve and costly to produce. And nothing wrong with a fiction sections as long as it is clearly identified.

It would have to pass some objective muster before qualifying as a "pay per view" event.

On the other hand King and Arum seem to produce a lot of "fiction" in the pay per view arena.

Forgive tangent humor hear. I really think this general idea has promise.

Yes, good point, any text would have to be passed around a group of editors to make sure no fiction gets in at all. That would be the worst thing that could happen.

The pricing I was thinking about was $3.50 for 10 pages, or so (and these can be downloaded and printed off). The main thing is getting the story out there... none of the editors on this site get paid anything for the huge amount of work they do, so maybe there shouldn't be any charges at all... saying that, some research requires travelling and the PPV price could reimburse that.

Maybe whether there's a price or not, should depend on what lengths the author has went to to find the information. And even then, it'd need to be a small amount so people would actually buy it.

It costs me over $20 for every day I go to the library, so I think a price is warranted in some instances. For example, sifting through info on the web should not require you being reimbursed the same as if you'd travelled far away, or actually went to do an interview with an old pro.

Some fighters that I'd like to see biographies written on are...

George Kid Lavigne
Owen Moran
Thomas 'Pedlar' palmer
Ad Wolgast
Joe Rivers
Young Griffo
Cocoa Kid
Eugene Criqui
Johnney Dundee
Kid Kaplan
Tony Canzoneri
Billy Petrolle
Tony Galenteno
Ezzard Charles
Manuel Ortiz
Al Brown
Kid Chocolate..... many of these fighters lived as interesting and colourful lives outside the ring as they did in it and its a shame that many of them seem to be fading into obscurity......

The original Boom Boom Mancini was a top fighter and a WWII hero. He would be a natural. An accurate portrayal of Jack Johnson as opposed to the politically correct Great White Hope would be great. And Stanley Ketchel was just about as colorful as you can get.

Galento and Kid Chocolate do have biographies written, although probably not very thourough...the Kid Chocolate bio is in Spanish, but both would really be very interesting reads. I am surprised that no one has written anything on Ezzard Charles as most of the other heavyweight champions have at least one biography and some have well over 10...I'd also really like to see something on Ad Wolgast and Kid Lavigne. On a side note, did you know that "Mexican" Joe Rivers was really of Spanish origin instead of Mexican?

As to a pay-per-view...I don't know how it would go, but it would be hard for anyone to put a price on some things because some things are a life long research project and when you do put a price on something you will get an overload of junk that tries to get passed off as legitimate and worthwhile. It's like knockout artists, I've been researching that brand of fighter almost daily for close to twenty years and I'd eventually like to get something in print on the subject, but it certainly won't be a money making venture, although that would be nice, it's just not likely to happen and I certainly want to have facts straight and if it is not certain whether, or not it is fact then it should be presented as such and the only way to get to the bottom is research, tons and tons of research.

Barry- In regards to Joe Rivers not being of Mexican
descent, I am not sold on that assertion. It was very
fashionable for some people of Mexican descent in
California to say that they come from a Spanish
background in California during the latter part of the
Nineteenth Century and the early part of the Twentieth
Century. Think of this.....there weren't that many
Spaniards who came to Mexico, a place where there
were millions of Indians.

- Chuck Johnston

Patrick "Packey" McFarland definitely deserves a bio. He still holds the longest unbeaten streak in boxing history surpassing even Robinson, Pep and Chavez. Between January 10 1905 and September 11 1915, when he lost a decision to future Hall of Famer Mike Gibbons after being inactive for nearly 2 years, he went 94-0-6 with 1 NC

Ezzard Charles defintiely should have a biog. It's criminal really and symptomatic of the alck of recognition.

Is there a Duran biography out there? How about Hagler?

Chuck--Rivers stated that he was Spanish in a book I use to have on California sports, but I don't recall the title of the book, It had a chapter on Rivers, which I failed to photocopy. I have no idea if he is Spanish, or not, of which I was going by that source, but you certainly have a lot more knowledge about California boxing and it's fighters than I do. I think Rivers had what was probably the biggest "raw deal" in history in his bout with Wolgast...Rivers should have been a world champion.

I don't think there are any bio's of Duran, or Hagler.

James Toney. Evander Holyfield. Sonny Liston.

Max Baer and Maxie Rosenbloom. May be same book since their after boxing lives were intertwined.

Fidel Labarba also.