• U.S.

Sport: Rickard’s Heirs

5 minute read
TIME

“Know all men by these presents that I, George L. Rickard, being of sound and disposing mind … do hereby make. . . .”

Thus, with a familiar and ironic boast began the last will and testament of Tex Rickard, famed fight promoter, dead of an operation for appendicitis. When it was read last week, it was discovered that Tex Rickard had left his estate, amounting to between one million and three million dollars, to his wife Maxine and to his daughter, Maxine Texas Rickard.

The body of Tex Rickard was laid in the exact centre of Madison Square Garden, the arena which he built, enclosed in a glass-topped coffin, through which 35,000 members of the migratory public peered at his face—waxed to a semblance of life.

Finally, a funeral ceremony was held; Rickard was praised, sung over, paraded through the streets and put into the ground, at Woodlawn Cemetery near Manhattan. Two nights later, in the exact centre of Madison Square Garden, there was a prizefight and a ceremony. The ceremony was simple: Jack Dempsey climbed through the ropes; the announcer, red-faced Joe Humphreys, made a gesture; the lights went down; a bugler played taps. Presently the lights went on and Jimmy McLarnin, of Vancouver, Wash., beat Joe Glick, Brooklyn tailor.

The ceremony, however, was far more important than the prizefight, and to understand why, it is necessary to know something about the present conditions of the prizefight industry.

The first flop that Rickard promoted was the Tunney-Heeney fight in The Bronx last summer. Right afterward, Tunney retired, still heavyweight champion. Since it is regarded as essential that there should always be a World’s Heavyweight Champion, it was necessary to discover immediately who this should be. On investigation, it appeared that there was no one good enough to fill the position adequately. Dempsey who, judged by the eminently suitable criterion of gate receipts, had never lost the heavyweight championship, was reconsidered for the honor. Frantic and slow elimination contests were held, meaning nothing. Tex Rickard, having made professional boxing into a sport more spectacular than any since the wild animal shows of the late Roman Empire, was faced with a far more difficult task, that of preserving its pomp and magnitude.

Accordingly, he went south to Miami Beach, Fla., where in some hope of booming his own and friends’ real estate properties, he began arrangements for a bout between Jack Sharkey and Young Stribling, the winner to meet Jack Dempsey for the championship. Just before negotiations had crystallized into contracts, Tex Rickard died, bequeathing, to heirs unspecified in his will, a dreadful situation in the boxing business. Now there were two tasks of almost insurmountable difficulty to be encompassed. First, there must be found an heir for Tex Rickard’s problems; next, an heir to Gene Tunney.

In the last years of his career, Promoter Rickard had surrounded himself with a powerful corporation, mainly to insure financial security. It seemed likely that whoever was elected president of this, would inherit the responsibilities, if not necessarily the talents, of Tex Richard. A much discussed candidate was Vice President William F. Carey, Wall Street contracting engineer, builder of the new Manhattan and Boston Madison Square Gardens, onetime Rickard Partner in Paraguayan cattle-ranchholdings. Jack Dempsey refused to consider it officially; before any announcement had been made by the Garden Corporation, William F. Carey entrained with Prizefighter Dempsey for Boston and persuaded Jack Sharkey, who had lapsed into his habitual recalcitrance, to sign papers for the Stribling fight. Then Dempsey went to Miami, arranged details of a fight on the night of Feb. 27.

Thus it appeared that some sort of working arrangement had been secured to keep boxing, temporarily at least, in expensive arenas or stadiums and out of barges and border towns where it had been when Rickard began to operate.

However, for promoters to be successful, they must have something to promote and unless Promoter-Pugilist Dempsey should arrange a match between himself and the winner of the Sharkey-Stribling bout, there seemed to be no further work for Rickard’s successor to do until a prospective heavyweight champion appeared. Of these, only one had shown the vaguest possibility of becoming satisfactory. This was Maximilian Siegfried Victor (“Mocks”) Schmeling who was once the champion of Germany, who has fought twice in the U. S., who is 23 years old, who looks like Jack Dempsey and is being taught to fight like him.

While the stock-market is happy and the motor industry hale, there will be plenty of people who want to go to U. S. prizefights, however wretched they may be. It is not probable therefore that Max Schmeling, if he becomes heavyweight champion, will be expected to defend his title in the back rooms of speakeasies, like John L. Sullivan, or on a barge, like James J. (“Gentleman Jim”) Corbett. The other champions,* of whom Tex Rickard made a list before he died, are as well off as ever. But perhaps million-dollar gates are now definitely in the past; perhaps to produce them it was necessary to have the assistance of the man with the cigar, the cane and the brown felt hat who lay last week in the middle of the enormous house he had built, enclosed in a $15,000 coffin.

*The list in part as compiled for The Ring International boxing magazine:

Heavyweight: Gene Tunney, New York City.

Light Heavyweight: Tommy Loughran, Philadelphia.

Middleweight: Mickey Walker, Elizabeth, N.J.

Welterweight: Joe Dundee, Baltimore.

Junior-Welterweight: Jimmy McLarnin, Vancouver, Wash.

Lightweight: Sammy Mandell, Rockford, Ill.

Junior-Lightweight: Tod Morgan, Seattle.

Featherweight: Andre Routis, France.

Bantamweight: Fidel La Barba, California.

Flyweight: Emile Pladner, France.

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