Sport: Championship Business

Like all businessmen, prizefighters must move toward success up a stairway of “connections,” working up from one friend who can be useful to another who can be more useful. Inevitably this involves to some extent the faculty of forgetting those who have been useful in the past, but sometimes a fighter’s past catches up with him. Last week in a Manhattan courtroom James Joseph (“Gene”) Tunney, retired heavyweight champion of the world, defended himself against a suit brought by Timothy J. (“Big Tim”) Mara, sports promoter, for approximately $500.000 back pay. Day by day the testimony showed the intricate process by which champions are made.

The issue between Mara and Tunney was simple enough. Mara claimed 10% of Tunney’s pay for fighting Dempsey in 1926, and 25% of all his earnings thereafter. He had proof that Tunney offered him the 25%, but was vague about what it was for. Tunney claimed that he hired Mara to arrange the fight in New York and that Mara failed. But the private altercation was of small interest compared to the figures, publicly detailed for the first time, of how much money an important heavyweight makes. Tunney, who had been a shipping clerk at $18 a week in 1918, later a Marine private at $30 base pay a month, and still more recently a professional fighter glad to get a few hundred dollars for a fight, revealed his earnings:

1926, from Sept. 23 to Dec. 31

Motion picture rights Tunney-Dempsey bout $4,687.50

Advertising 8,000.00

Theatrical engagements 28,000.00

Newspaper articles 7,173.75

1927

Tunney-Dempsey bout at Chicago $990,445.54

Training camp exhibitions. . . . 4,711.25

Advertisements 12,000.00

Theatrical engagements 63,000.00

Motion pictures 7,500.00

Radio 2,500.00

Newspaper articles 32,809.00

Phonograph records 7,500.00

1928

Heeney bout $525,000.00

Motion pictures 25,875.00

Advertisements 23,080.00

1929

No proceeds

Total $1,742,282.04

Even before he made much money. Tunney wrote of “the battle you fellows are having back there trying to overcome certain angles.” Letters from Billy Gibson, Tunney’s manager, also spoke of “straightening out angles”; of getting people, many of them well known in Manhattan and national politics, “lined up” or “in our corner” and of “working on” others.

The trouble was that certain Manhattan politicians owned shares in Harry Wills, Negro heavyweight contender. The New York State Boxing Commission had decreed that Dempsey must fight Wills before fighting anyone else. Meanwhile the late Tex Rickard was trying to arrange for Tunney to fight Dempsey. He was telling Tunney that the champion was sick, weak, “full of boils,” telling Dempsey that Tunney would be an easier match than Wills; telling both to keep quiet about what he told them. At last the Tunney-Dempsey fight was arranged in Philadelphia and Tunney won the title. Then came further services from Agent Mara — the ballyhoo.

“I arranged to have Tunney received at the City Hall. That was to help build him up. Then I arranged a banquet in Tunney’s honor at the Biltmore, attended by newspaper writers and officials. That was a promotion proposition. I arranged it and I paid for it.”

According to Mara in a few days Tun ney called on him and told him he was “out of the contract.” “I asked him what he meant and he said: ‘How can I afford to pay you 25% and Billy Gibson 25% and that 25% that Gibson tied me up for in Philadelphia? Here I toil and sweat up in the mountains. . . .’ He ran his hands through his hair and said in a loud voice ‘I don’t know what this is all about.’ ‘”

The 25% Tunney got “tied … up for in Philadelphia” was sued for in 1927 by Max (“Boo-Boo”) Hoff, potent Philadelphia racketeer. Hoff is reputed to have been promised $200,000 for supplying Tunney with a mysterious sort of “protection.” That suit never went to trial.