John: Boxer: :060629 moved to Human:60629: Pagemove by bot

2007-08-18T09:51:50Z

Boxer: :060629 moved to Human:60629: Pagemove by bot

← Older revision	Revision as of 09:51, 18 August 2007
(No difference)

Unknown user at 00:00, 1 January 2005

2005-01-01T00:00:00Z

New page

Managed Rene Devos. http://boxrec.com/boxer_display.php?boxer_id=17902
Along with Tex Rickard, Biddle judged the Dempsey vs. Willard July 4, 1919, Heavyweight World Title bout.
Father of the United States Ambassador:
http://www.politicalgraveyard.com/bio/biddle.html
The play and movie - "The Happiest Millionaire" - based on the book ("My Philadelphia Father") written by his daughter, Cordelia, is about him:
http://video.barnesandnoble.com/Search/product.asp?ean=13131080735
Notorious for using boxing and boxers to illustrate Bible stories.

Biddle, a Philadelphia socialite who fancied himself a boxer, took Philadelphia Jack O�Brien on visits to Sunday School classes at Philadelphia�s Holy Trinity Church. Founder of an Episcopalian movement called Athletic Christianity that eventually boasted 300,000 members, Biddle loved telling the children how Christ had been an athlete who "had gone into the jungle for forty days to train for a match with the Devil." Biddle also hosted boxing teas at his home. His guests included many of the best white pugilists in the country. The guests first sparred a few fast rounds with the host, then ate dinner with the family. ("May the good God �elp us to eat all wot�s on the tyble," is how Cordelia Drexel Biddle recalled Bob Fitzsimmons�s prayer.) Most guests were well-behaved, and only the California heavyweight Al Kaufmann ever sparred him seriously. (Kaufman knocked Biddle out with his first punch.) Biddle�s boxing teas started �Philadelphia � Jack O�Brien to thinking about how to teach middle-aged businessmen to box without pain, a program he established in New York City during the 1920s. (You couldn�t learn boxing without pain, explained O�Brien, but you could teach it without pain.) Biddle, meanwhile, joined the Marine Corps in 1917 as a 41-year old captain. He toured British and French training camps in 1918, and then convinced Headquarters Marine Corps to make boxing part of Marine Corps recruit training. (This was essentially English-style amateur boxing. Although said to closely resemble rifle-bayonet fighting methods, the boxing was useful mostly for increasing recruits� physical self-confidence.) After the war, Biddle stayed in the Marine Corps Reserve. In 1919 he exhibited rifle-bayonet fencing before the Willard-Dempsey prizefight (to the general derision of the crowd). Unconcerned by the thoughts of the helots, he taught close combat to FBI agents during the 1930s, a job he owed to a relative who was Franklin Roosevelt�s Attorney General. Biddle�s book -- "Do or Die, Military Manual of Advanced Science in Individual Combat" -- was published in Virginia in 1937. It is still read and available. While the boxing tips from Bob Fitzsimmons were good, and the self-defense techniques cribbed from W.E. Fairbairn were passable, the rest of the book showed considerable ignorance of practical fighting. Recalled to active duty during World War II as a close combat instructor for the Marine Corps, Biddle died in 1948 at the age of 73.

Human:60629 - Revision history

John: Boxer: :060629 moved to Human:60629: Pagemove by bot

Unknown user at 00:00, 1 January 2005