The Art of Manliness - #386： The Rise and Fall of the American Heavyweight

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00:00:56.200 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. With boxing on

00:01:13.420 the way in America for the past 20 some odd years, it's easy to forget how much of a cultural juggernaut

00:01:18.700 it was for much of the 20th century. Boxing was not only a common recreational pastime and athletic

00:01:23.140 pursuit for young men and a wildly popular spectator sport, it was a metaphor for manhood

00:01:27.560 and other American cultural struggles as well. When two men stepped in the ring, it wasn't just

00:01:31.520 two men fighting. The bout could become a battle of white versus black, nativist versus immigrant,

00:01:35.960 or democracy versus fascism. My guest today, Paul Bestin, explores the cultural history of the

00:01:40.320 heavyweight boxer in his latest books, The Boxing Kings, When American Heavyweights Ruled the Ring.

00:01:44.900 Paul and I begin our conversation discussing the man who created the archetype of the American

00:01:48.700 heavyweight John L. Sullivan, the Boston Strongboy. From there, Paul takes us on a vivid historical

00:01:53.160 tour of many of boxing's all-time greats, including Jack Johnson, Jack Dempsey, James Braddock, Joe

00:01:58.080 Lewis, Muhammad Ali, and Mike Tyson. Along the way, Paul provides insights on how each of these heavyweight

00:02:03.340 greats became conflicted symbols of masculinity in America. We enter a conversation discussing why

00:02:08.060 boxing has declined in America, what Paul has learned about being a man from writing about boxing.

00:02:13.560 Even if you think you're not interested in boxing, you're going to find this show is fascinating.

00:02:17.040 After it's over, check out the show notes at aom.is slash Boxing Kings. Paul joins me now via clearcast.io.

00:02:33.080 Paul Bestin, welcome to the show.

00:02:35.520 Thanks, Brett. Great to be with you.

00:02:37.380 You got a book out, The Boxing Kings, When American Heavyweights Ruled the Ring. The heavyweight

00:02:42.480 boxer is sort of like this archetype of manliness. In fact, we've got, you know, our logo, The Art of

00:02:48.460 Manliness is based off of the very first American heavyweight boxer, John L. Sullivan. And what I love

00:02:56.000 about this book, not only is the stories of these individual boxers are interesting and fascinating,

00:03:01.200 but boxing says a lot. You can learn a lot about American culture, the evolution of it,

00:03:06.200 by studying or reading about the lives of these American boxers. So let's start off with the very

00:03:11.700 first one, John L. John L. Sullivan. How did he set the archetype of what we think about when we

00:03:17.740 think of a heavyweight boxer? Yeah, John L. Sullivan, who was champion from 1882 to 1892,

00:03:24.940 I call him in my chapter on him, the George Washington of boxing. And that's certainly in the

00:03:29.880 United States. And that's really what he became because he just as Washington kind of created the

00:03:35.820 office of the presidency. John L. Sullivan really creates the office of heavyweight champion. There

00:03:41.280 had been champions, a few champions before him, but they didn't reach anything like the kind of

00:03:46.040 recognition that he reached. Boxing was an illegal sport. It would remain illegal during his time.

00:03:53.400 But what was different during Sullivan's career is that his fights were covered in, you know,

00:03:58.980 the equivalent of the mainstream media. They were covered in newspapers and some of them were even

00:04:02.760 covered internationally. And he just became a figure known far and wide, known all around the

00:04:08.040 United States, and is really one of the most famous Americans of the Gilded Age. The previous

00:04:12.680 champions, such as they were before Sullivan, didn't have anything like that kind of notoriety. It was

00:04:19.100 really a kind of back alley affair. And, you know, the champions attained a certain fame among the

00:04:25.880 fighting fraternity. But Sullivan just completely transcended the fighting fraternity, became a figure in songs

00:04:31.500 and literature and art, and a great hero to Irish Americans. He was a son of Irish immigrants. He was born

00:04:39.680 in Boston in 1858. So his career, you know, it traces kind of the whole second half of the 19th century

00:04:46.940 with the post-Civil War and the rise of the cities and the mass wave of immigration, especially the Irish,

00:04:53.780 and also the rise of modern commercial sports, which he has a huge role in bringing about.

00:04:59.340 Yeah, I mean, he was really like one of America's first big celebrities, really. I mean, he sort of

00:05:04.220 birthed American celebrity culture.

00:05:06.980 That's right. He really did. And he's really the first sports star. I mean, baseball was getting

00:05:10.980 going during his career. You know, the Major League National League started, I think it's 1876 or so. But

00:05:17.000 he is, you know, he's really the guy who pioneers this whole idea of stardom. And celebrity itself in

00:05:23.460 America was just coming into being in the way that we would think of it. You know, these figures who

00:05:30.440 are sort of equally adulated and reviled, you know, because he was a very controversial figure,

00:05:38.080 too, because of his personal life. He was a terrible alcoholic, and he had all kinds of

00:05:44.820 misadventures. And so he had as many people hating him as loving him. And, you know, we're very familiar

00:05:50.300 with that dynamic today, you know, with celebrities and with athletes. And so he's really at the

00:05:54.660 forefront of all of that. And he just, because of the force of his personality and the force of his

00:06:00.680 fighting skill, he makes the heavyweight championship this prominent thing that even

00:06:05.640 people who don't follow boxing know about. And it had not been that before. He really kind of

00:06:10.760 comes into a void and he leaves behind a whole world.

00:06:13.960 Yeah, what I love when you talk about his personality, and the force of his personality,

00:06:18.520 the guy was a character. So like, you know, he'd walk into rooms, sometimes, and he was known to say,

00:06:24.360 you know, I can lick any son of a bitch in the house.

00:06:26.840 Right.

00:06:27.240 And he like,

00:06:27.700 Right.

00:06:28.580 And he meant it. And, or you talk about how, whenever he, he would just be talking,

00:06:33.600 you know, to people. And whenever he finished what he said, he would say, yours truly,

00:06:38.920 John L. Sullivan. And he would sign his name in the air.

00:06:41.420 That's right. Yeah. He had this great thing about himself. He'd like to always say,

00:06:46.860 always on the level, John L. Sullivan, you know, yours truly, John L. Sullivan, always on the level.

00:06:52.300 And yeah, he had, I mean, one of the things I try to get at the book too, is that he,

00:06:55.880 and all these guys really will, will show, especially the great figures, is that somewhere

00:06:59.740 along the line, they develop this notion of themselves, you know, and that's, you know,

00:07:02.940 you see that in all, a lot of, you know, great celebrities and great figures in history,

00:07:06.900 somewhere along the line, they develop a notion that they have something,

00:07:10.140 and have something special. And there's some reason that the world should pay attention to

00:07:13.460 them. And I think what's unique about Sullivan is that he seems to decide this when he becomes

00:07:18.600 champion. And, and again, there had been no precedent for thinking that before, you know,

00:07:24.680 these other guys just kind of, again, like I said, sort of a back alley thing. These guys were not

00:07:28.960 huge, prominent figures, but he decided when he won that title, that this was a big deal and that he

00:07:33.520 was a big deal. And he proceeded to then make it a big deal through his own, his own career.

00:07:39.300 So we've been talking a lot about his personality. What was he like as a fighter? Was, was he really,

00:07:43.560 really good?

00:07:45.360 Well, you know, it's in today's world, you know, we, we have this age of advanced athletics and we're

00:07:51.200 always looking back at these, you know, I see this a lot on, on the internet and, you know,

00:07:54.700 it's always kind of comparing former, you know, athletes from, from earlier eras. And it's very easy for us

00:07:59.860 in our, in our age to look back at some of these, you know, black and white images of baseball or

00:08:05.220 football players and think, well, gosh, you know, they, they couldn't have been very good. Look at,

00:08:08.720 look at the way they move or look at the bodies, you know, they're not as big and not as strong.

00:08:12.220 They don't look like they're as fast, but of course we'd have to project those guys into the present

00:08:16.920 day with all of the advantages we have today. And, and so all you, all any athlete can ever do is be

00:08:23.940 great in his own time. And when Sullivan came along there, there had never been anything like him.

00:08:29.260 You know, the boxing, I should say was, I mentioned that it was illegal, but it was also

00:08:34.160 when he first started out was largely still being fought with the bare fists under what was called

00:08:39.300 the London, the London prize ring rules. And it was just starting to move into using gloves,

00:08:44.020 which Sullivan supported. But so there was two different sets of rules. There was the,

00:08:48.020 the gloved rules, which was the beginning of what we know today, modern boxing, but there was also

00:08:52.300 this bare knuckle style of fighting, which was rather different. And in some ways is kind of a

00:08:56.880 precursor to mixed martial arts because you could do wrestling holds and you, you know,

00:09:01.460 you, you, you could take a guy down similar to in wrestling. You could do headlocks while also

00:09:06.140 punching. So he, he was adept at both in, in both of these styles of fighting. And he just had a level

00:09:13.040 of aggression and his right hand punch that people, you know, people who had been watching this for a

00:09:17.680 long time had not seen before. And he, he always had this line, something that from the moment the

00:09:22.200 bell rings, I'm out to win, you know, from the, I go into win, when I must and when I shall.

00:09:27.260 And it was that kind of electricity that he brought to it that, that hadn't been there before. So,

00:09:32.080 you know, how would he stack up against today's modern fighters? Who knows? I'll say this. I

00:09:36.580 wouldn't want to fight him in one of those fights to the finish where there's no time limit that,

00:09:40.680 you know, that would be daunting. Yeah. And that was another thing I didn't realize about

00:09:44.960 boxing, bare knuckle boxing. Like there weren't, there were rounds, but like, you only got like,

00:09:50.420 I think how long, like 30 second break or it was something not that.

00:09:54.440 That's right. Yeah. There were 30 seconds between rounds instead of 60 seconds today.

00:09:58.360 And the rounds ended only when one man went down, what they called a fall. And that fall could be

00:10:04.000 from a punch, could be from a wrestling toss, could be just taking a knee on your own volition. So a

00:10:09.520 round could be 10 seconds long, but it could also be 15 minutes. And some of them were. So these,

00:10:14.700 these fights would go on for, you know, we would say 60 rounds, 70 rounds, 80 rounds. And of course,

00:10:18.380 that sounds like, my God, that must be unbearable. But again, I mean, to be fair,

00:10:21.380 some of the rounds were very, very short. On the other hand, you're out there for a long time

00:10:24.860 and the rest periods are shorter. So there is no way to, there's no judge. There's no judges and

00:10:30.440 scorecards and all those controversial decisions that boxing fans rue, you know, every year,

00:10:36.160 you didn't have to deal with that. The fight only ended when one man could no longer continue,

00:10:40.460 whether he was counted out, you know, count of 10, or he just couldn't fight anymore.

00:10:44.600 So he wins the heavyweight championship. Let's talk about this. This is interesting because I

00:10:49.680 think this will help, help listeners with the rest of the discussion. Like who determines who is the

00:10:54.860 heavyweight champion? Like how did, how did we, how did people decide that John L. Sullivan was the

00:10:59.560 heavyweight champion of the world? And how do we figure that out today? Cause there's like three

00:11:04.380 different, you know, branches of boxing out there. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'll answer the older question

00:11:10.060 first. Cause it's easier today is really a mess, but you know, Sullivan won his title by defeating

00:11:17.000 a man named Patty Ryan, who was called the champion. Patty Ryan was called champion because he'd beaten

00:11:22.640 the fighter, you know, previous to him. And, and it was kind of, again, boxing was in a legal sport.

00:11:28.720 It didn't have a commission or organizing body. So it was, you know, who was the champion? The champion

00:11:33.220 was essentially by acclimation by the people who organized the fights, people who were competing in it.

00:11:39.060 And then, you know, at some point you, there came to be a recognized champion. And once that guy was

00:11:43.480 recognized generally by consensus, then it would be pretty easy to determine who the next champion

00:11:48.000 was. Cause it would be whoever would beat him. And that's the traditional way in boxing. Of course,

00:11:52.880 you know, you become champion by beating the champion. You don't become champion by saying you

00:11:57.420 are, or having some, some shady organization say that you're a champion without having done that.

00:12:03.440 So that's, there's an old saying in boxing, they call it the man who beat the man who beat the man.

00:12:07.760 And that's kind of a, what they call today, the lineal title. In other words, it can be traced

00:12:12.760 backwards in time through all the guys who held it. So once Sullivan had really established this

00:12:18.300 and made this a prominent thing, and he lost his title in 1892 to a guy named James J. Corbett.

00:12:24.140 Well, then James J. Corbett was the heavyweight champion. And from there, the whole story unfolds

00:12:28.180 in a pretty straight line through most of my book. Fortunately, it doesn't get too confusing

00:12:32.920 until near the end of my book when multiple organizations, sanctioning organizations begin

00:12:38.820 to come into the sport starting around the early sixties, but really taking off in the seventies

00:12:43.400 and eighties. And, you know, when I got into boxing in the seventies as a kid, even then there were two

00:12:48.180 champions in each division, but that looks like a golden age compared to now, because now there's

00:12:53.720 three, sometimes four champions in each division. And that's because these, these sanctioning

00:12:57.940 organizations all name their own champions. And they, they tend to be jealously guarded about

00:13:04.440 making sure they don't fight the other guy's champion because they don't want to lose theirs.

00:13:07.700 They want to keep the title under their tent. So it's a very, it's a very unsatisfying arrangement.

00:13:13.020 Boxing fans have been complaining about it forever. It didn't reach the heavyweights for a while

00:13:17.360 because the heavyweights were so prominent and they had such giant figures like Muhammad Ali.

00:13:22.280 It was very hard to imagine the public accepting, you know, two heavyweight champions,

00:13:26.180 but eventually it did trickle down to the heavyweight trickle up, I should say to the

00:13:30.220 heavyweight division as well. And today there's, I think there's three guys who claim, claim some

00:13:34.800 piece of the heavyweight title, which is, I mean, what I compare it to, to friends is imagine if there

00:13:39.400 were two or three football teams walking around saying that they were the Superbowl champion.

00:13:43.260 I mean, nobody would take that seriously.

00:13:44.980 Right. And then I mean, we'll get into that later talking about sort of the decline of the,

00:13:47.820 the heavyweight in American culture, you know, going back to Sullivan, right.

00:13:51.680 He was both celebrated and reviled and this guy, yeah, he, he lived a hard life.

00:13:56.180 Yeah.

00:13:56.540 Drank a lot, lost a lot of money, had a whole bunch of, I mean, he was married a couple times,

00:14:01.940 divorced. And what was interesting, like he would get incredibly out of shape, but he would somehow

00:14:07.700 muster up some sort of willpower to get into fighting condition and try to win another fight.

00:14:13.000 Yes. And he was quite good at that. You know, the, the drinking was a big part of, of the boxing

00:14:18.140 culture, you know, from the beginning. I mean, it was, um, you know, it was, this was very much a

00:14:23.240 working man's subculture and immigrant, heavily immigrant. And, and, you know, the Irish were,

00:14:28.880 were just very, very prominent in the early days of boxing. And there's a lot of drinking in Irish

00:14:32.940 culture. And so these guys, it was very often that former fighters would just really end up in the

00:14:39.020 gutter, essentially as drunks and usually quite poor. So Sullivan kind of fit right, right in there.

00:14:45.100 And he did, he had, you know, kind of Olympian appetites for food and, and booze, and he would

00:14:50.460 get grossly overweight between, between fights. And a few fights, he came in, into the match,

00:14:56.160 clearly terribly hung over and he couldn't even perform. So as I was saying earlier, his public

00:15:00.560 reputation was, it was huge and it was large, but it was also, you know, conflicted and complex because

00:15:06.520 there are as many people criticizing him sometimes as cheering him. But when he got motivated,

00:15:11.860 he would get himself into shape. And the thing that you could surely motivate him with most of all

00:15:16.240 is suggest, even suggest that you could beat him, that you were somehow the rightful champion.

00:15:22.600 You get his goat. He had a pretty strong temper. If you got his, his goat, get him motivated. He was

00:15:28.740 going to work himself into shape. And then, you know, you're going to have quite an opponent on your

00:15:32.520 hands. So, you know, he said you, he only lost one fight, I believe that was against Corbett or he lost

00:15:38.360 a couple. Yeah. Did he lose any, I thought he was undefeated except for Corbett. He was,

00:15:42.740 he was undefeated except for Corbett. He had another match that, that ended essentially in

00:15:47.100 a draw and was kind of demoralizing to him, but it was not a, not a defeat. So yeah, he, he,

00:15:52.080 the only fight he lost was the last one of his career to Corbett and that's where he lost the

00:15:55.620 heavyweight title. And did he fight after that? He fought exhibitions. He off for many years on and off.

00:16:02.300 And then there was a kind of miraculous thing that happened in 1905 where he actually got back in the

00:16:06.440 ring and it was late forties and grossly overweight against a, a plausible professional fighter,

00:16:12.200 a young man and knocked him out with one punch in the second round. And the, this was in Grand

00:16:17.860 Rapids, Michigan. And the place just went crazy. It was almost like a, just like a bolt from the

00:16:22.680 past, but you know, he, no, his career was essentially over after he lost to Corbett.

00:16:27.640 And I thought it's funny, even when he lost to Corbett, he gave this con sort of conciliatory

00:16:31.140 speech and ended it with yours ever, always John L. Sullivan.

00:16:36.900 That's right. And I also said in that speech, I think is interesting is that he was, he was,

00:16:40.340 if he had to lose, he was glad he would, he could lose it to an American. And so that was very

00:16:43.680 important to him. Of course, Sullivan didn't see, didn't tend to include blacks in the description

00:16:49.400 of Americans. And of course that's, that's one of the clouds over his career because he,

00:16:53.240 he is the man who drew the racial color line in heavyweight boxing and refused to give

00:16:58.280 black challengers a shot. So that shadows his career and his accomplishments, but he was very

00:17:04.200 proud of being an American and he wanted, he very much saw the title as something that Americans

00:17:08.980 should possess and be proud of. Sounds like Dolda Butcher from

00:17:12.760 Kings of New York. We're going to, we're going to talk about the color line here in a bit,

00:17:18.080 but I thought it was interesting too. You know, yeah, he had this sort of life of just right as

00:17:21.320 living, but it seemed like he kind of tempered out in old age and got his act together a bit.

00:17:26.660 Oh, he did. You know, I think that's something frankly under remarked about him. And I was

00:17:32.700 really struck by it again recently because as we're recording this, tomorrow is the 100th

00:17:38.460 anniversary of his passing, actually, February 2nd, 1918. And so I was, I was looking up some

00:17:44.220 things and writing a few things about it. And his, his late in life turnaround is, is pretty

00:17:49.400 remarkable. You know, I mentioned that, that miraculous fight he had in 1905, where he just

00:17:53.820 had this bolt from the blue. Not long after that, he's sitting in a hotel bar with a glass

00:17:59.080 of champagne and he's just suddenly said, announces out loud, this is it. I'm not drinking anymore.

00:18:04.680 He pours it into a, into a spittoon and you know, his friends kind of chuckle. They've heard this

00:18:09.780 before, but he means it and he never drinks again. And he winds up becoming a temperance lecturer

00:18:16.220 and he remarries an old childhood friend, woman named Kate Harkins. They, uh, take in a young

00:18:23.200 orphan boy who they really dote on. They start this small farm in, uh, in Massachusetts. He becomes

00:18:30.000 very popular around town and little children love to come and play on the farm. And he really does end

00:18:35.040 his life. I think in a, in a place of, of peace, some, you know, some redemption.

00:18:39.260 So let's get back to the color line. I think oftentimes we think of American sport. We often,

00:18:44.140 in the color barrier and breaking it, we often think of baseball and Jackie Robinson, but

00:18:48.520 boxing actually led the way in racial integration in sports. So when did we first start seeing

00:18:55.560 integrated fights in America? Well, they actually go back pretty far. They, they weren't very common,

00:19:02.880 which I, I will get to in a second, but there were, you know, there, there were, um, there were

00:19:07.700 black champions in the lower weights. There was a fighter named George Dixon who won the featherweight

00:19:13.260 title, uh, in the 1890s. And then in the very early 1900s, there was, uh, the great, uh, Joe Gans,

00:19:19.680 who was a lightweight champion and is still regarded today as one of the greatest, maybe the greatest

00:19:24.180 lightweight who ever fought. So it would happen sometimes at the lower weights, but there were,

00:19:29.860 it was always a conflict around it because of the, uh, the racial environment at the time,

00:19:34.080 there was a lot of, of discomfort about seeing black men and white men get in the ring together.

00:19:38.860 And, and, you know, some people would say, well, it's going to cause tensions between the races or

00:19:43.260 it's going to cause trouble. But, you know, the underlying fear really was what happens if the

00:19:47.900 black guy wins there? That was a real fear. This is a time of, uh, not only tremendous racism and,

00:19:54.320 uh, you know, Jim Crow had gone into effect in the South, but also, you know, those, these quote,

00:20:00.160 unquote, scientific theories of, of racial superiority of the Anglo race and the inferiority

00:20:05.980 of, of the African races. And some of this was also directed at, uh, other ethnicities such as

00:20:11.920 the Irish, but obviously it was the worst of all for, for blacks. So there was just a lot of

00:20:17.240 discomfort about that, that getting the two, two races in the ring together was going to lead to

00:20:22.280 nothing but, but trouble. So it didn't happen that often, but on the other hand, blacks did probably

00:20:28.060 have more opportunity in boxing than they had elsewhere. And in a funny way, boxing's illegality

00:20:33.380 probably, you know, helped them in that sense, because again, it had this kind of informal,

00:20:37.880 uh, nature to it, unlike a major league baseball, which was already banning blacks by,

00:20:43.400 you know, by the 1880s. So they kept them out of the heavyweights. That was the big thing that the,

00:20:49.200 the prize that the sort of citadel that blacks were not to approach was the heavyweight title.

00:20:54.600 And of course that again, goes back to Sullivan drawing that color line. He would have had a lot

00:20:59.440 of support for that, but he, he did sort of take it upon himself to declare that. And it's

00:21:03.840 fascinating to wonder what, how history might've gone differently if he had not done that,

00:21:08.080 but he did. And so it was a very powerful bar to blacks having any chance at the heavyweight title

00:21:14.580 for the early history of the championship. And when did you start seeing African Americans

00:21:20.640 fighting for the heavyweight championship? It just happened, uh, out of the blue in 1908 with

00:21:28.060 the arrival of, of Jack Johnson, who had been an outstanding challenger for a while. And,

00:21:32.640 you know, there, there'd been outstanding black challengers before him and people like Sullivan

00:21:36.500 and others had, had denied them a title shot, but Johnson came along. He used the outstanding

00:21:42.360 challenger. He had some support in the press. And the main, the biggest thing was that they found a

00:21:48.680 promoter who could offer the white champion at the time, a guy named Tommy Burns, who said, you know,

00:21:53.720 I'm not going to fight a black fighter, but if you give me $30,000, I will. And lo and behold,

00:21:58.960 they came up with the $30,000. So they finally made the match and it wasn't really the result of any

00:22:04.460 great change in social attitude. In fact, it was the opposite because the match was, was condemned by

00:22:10.220 many people, including Sullivan, who thought that Burns shouldn't have, shouldn't be doing this.

00:22:15.100 Johnson goes on and just, just takes Burns apart and beats him decisively and becomes the first

00:22:20.840 man to win the black, that first black man, that is to win the heavyweight title. And, and we're

00:22:26.160 really off to the races because now you've got a black man at the top of the top of the heavyweight

00:22:30.300 division, which has already by 1908 become, you know, the heavyweight championship has already

00:22:34.920 become a prize of, of real value and, and symbolism to Americans. Again, going back to Sullivan

00:22:42.080 and his successors really seeing it as a kind of symbol of, of national power and manhood.

00:22:47.920 And when they say manhood, they mean white manhood. So Johnson, you know, instantly enters the pages of

00:22:54.300 boxing history because his whole career is going to be a mirror of the country's racial situation.

00:23:00.040 And it's, it's not a, not a happy picture.

00:23:02.500 What's interesting though, is that Johnson sort of, even though he broke the color line that

00:23:06.220 Sullivan set in place, he followed Sullivan and sort of fitting himself to the archetype of sort

00:23:12.220 of this bigger than life character that a heavyweight champion, like this guy, he lived larger guy was

00:23:17.560 just a, he, a lot of personality would be a good way to say it.

00:23:20.980 Yeah. It's funny. They're, they're kind of kindred spirits. And, uh, in a funny way, they,

00:23:24.960 I think Sullivan came to actually like Johnson. He came to spend a little bit of time with him.

00:23:29.360 And in 1910, when, when Johnson was engaged in the biggest match of his career against the former

00:23:36.040 champion, James J. Jeffries. And this was a fight that became the biggest fight in the history of

00:23:40.560 boxing at the time. It was on July 4th, 1910. Jeffries was a former heavyweight champion.

00:23:46.320 He was white. He was, this is where the phrase, the great white hope comes from. Uh, he was seen by

00:23:52.380 millions of whites as their chance to take this title back and prove once and for all the races are,

00:23:57.860 are not equal that the white man is rightfully on top. And it's just a fight loaded with so much

00:24:04.320 social tension and significance. And, you know, the heavyweight title has meant a lot to people

00:24:09.960 for a long time. Certainly during the history I talk about in the book, but there are a couple

00:24:13.980 points in the history where it means a little too much. It means more than, than any athletic

00:24:18.640 contest should. And this was one of those times in 1910, there's just too much riding on this.

00:24:24.380 It's not healthy. And Johnson wins the match easily. And, uh, after the fight is over in

00:24:30.580 the days subsequent, there's race riots across the country, terrible race riots and the deadliest

00:24:36.400 in the country before the 1960s. So it's really, uh, again, as I said, I really, a mirror of where

00:24:42.380 things were at that time. And they're the, the fear, the tremendous fear that Johnson tapped into

00:24:47.520 among whites of, of blacks, uh, showing ability in, in this area. But back to Sullivan real quickly,

00:24:54.580 he, he ends up on a train with Johnson riding home from the fight. And he was also the first man to

00:25:00.860 step between the ropes and shake his hand when he won the fight. So it's, it's interesting. He's,

00:25:04.900 it's, it's interesting seeing his reaction to Johnson.

00:25:08.120 And what's interesting about when you read about Johnson was that, okay, obviously white America

00:25:13.500 was not a fan of them, but there was also a lot of people in the African-American community that

00:25:17.780 didn't really care for him either. What was the dynamic between Johnson and, and African-Americans?

00:25:24.860 Yeah, I think there's two reasons for that. I mean, one reason is, you know, he's, he's so

00:25:31.120 unpopular that there's a fear among blacks that he was really just going to make things harder for

00:25:35.580 them, which was a perfectly reasonable fear to have. And in fact, subsequently after his career,

00:25:41.920 it's a long time, 20 plus years before another black fighter gets a chance at the heavyweight

00:25:46.720 title. And that was the shadow of Johnson. So, you know, boxers had black boxers didn't regard

00:25:51.320 him very fondly at all in the years after it's really been more recently since the sixties that

00:25:56.500 we've looked at Johnson and seen him and celebrated him more, but he was really looked upon a little

00:26:01.840 bit more notoriously in the early stages of his career. And, and part of this also is because he,

00:26:07.560 he was not someone who's exactly leading an exemplary life. He, he was kind of like Sullivan.

00:26:13.720 He loved, you know, he loved the sensual life. He was, uh, loved nightclubs. He loved fast cars.

00:26:19.480 He loves alcohol. And his particular fondness was not just for lots of women, but for prostitutes.

00:26:25.500 His, uh, many of his consorts were prostitutes. He married prostitute. And this was, you know,

00:26:31.160 that kind of behavior would have been scandalous for a white champion to some degree, but for a black

00:26:35.700 champion, this just made Johnson such a lightning rod for every conceivable kind of criticism. So

00:26:42.200 yeah, some blacks were really worried that he was setting a bad example for the race, but others,

00:26:47.820 of course, certainly admired him and celebrated him, the guy going into the ring and, and beating,

00:26:52.540 beating white fighters. So he was a complicated figure.

00:26:56.200 Definitely. And I thought it was kind of adding that complication, you know,

00:26:58.840 he even had his own color line. He wouldn't fight other African-Americans for some reason.

00:27:03.860 Well, he, yeah, that's right. As champion, he did not coming up. He fought black fighters all the

00:27:09.200 time, including several great boxers who are still remembered in boxing history, black fighters who

00:27:14.920 didn't get their chance. So he fought them repeatedly because that's kind of who they could

00:27:19.080 fight. They'd sometimes couldn't get matches with white fighters because they were too good.

00:27:22.900 But once he became champion, he saw no reason to give those guys a chance. You know, he was a

00:27:27.220 businessman. There's one, there's one thread that runs through the title that all these guys will have

00:27:31.300 in common. It's, you know, this is a business and you get that title, you're going to hold onto it

00:27:35.780 with all that you've got. And so Johnson saw no reason to give them a chance also because they

00:27:40.520 wouldn't be economic, it wouldn't be economically very appealing because the racism in the country

00:27:45.520 at that time, two black men fighting for the title had no appeal at all. Near the end of Johnson's

00:27:50.880 title career, he does give another black challenger a shot, but it's not one of those top guys I

00:27:56.120 mentioned. It's a pretty mediocre fighter. Right. And just to give you an idea of like how

00:28:01.660 entwined boxing was in American culture, like the guy who came up with that, the great white hope

00:28:06.320 phrase, that was Jack London, the novelist. I guess he wrote a newspaper article asking about that.

00:28:12.280 So I mean, like literature was like tied in, like everyone was keyed in on boxing during this time.

00:28:17.420 Yeah, it really was. And it would stay that way, you know, through most of the period that I

00:28:22.220 chronicle through my book. I mean, that's one of the most remarkable things about the story is how

00:28:28.000 much it extended out beyond the ring, you know, not just these political and social things that

00:28:33.600 we were just talking about, but how many writers were drawn to this, drawn to the ring and drawn

00:28:38.980 to the figures of the ring and going well forward into the 30s and 40s and figures like Richard Wright

00:28:45.180 and later on James Baldwin. And obviously Norman Mailer wrote a lot about boxing and the writers just go

00:28:50.840 through the history of it. And, you know, there's a lot of kinship between writers and boxers. I think

00:28:55.620 this is the solitary nature of what they have to do. Yeah. And it started with Sullivan as well. I

00:29:00.320 mean, Sullivan was a figure of fascination from the very beginning. We're going to take a quick

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00:31:23.640 So speaking of Jack London, you say that one of the next big heavyweights, there were some other

00:31:29.740 ones, but like the next one that really had a big cultural impact on America was a guy you said

00:31:34.460 came straight out of a Jack London novel. That's Jack Dempsey. What was it about Jack Dempsey

00:31:39.020 that made him so captivating to Americans? Well, I think he, he is kind of the next figure

00:31:46.400 from Sullivan in that sense of bringing something new to the style of fighting. And he brought a speed

00:31:54.860 of attack and aggressiveness to boxing that it had not just hadn't seen before. And there's something

00:32:00.640 very symbolic about it. It's just at the era when, when we're moving into the 1920s and all this

00:32:05.920 technology is going to start coming in the radio and motion pictures are still fairly new. And Dempsey,

00:32:12.300 it's the, the real analog for Dempsey later on in history is Mike Tyson. And, you know, a lot of

00:32:17.560 listeners will have associations to Mike Tyson are old enough to remember when he first came along in

00:32:22.660 the eighties, how exciting that was and how people would say, you know, get the Tyson fight on in the

00:32:28.140 first round. Cause there may not be a second round. That was kind of what Dempsey was like when he came

00:32:33.100 along. He had a whole string of knockouts in the first round, second round, he attacked from the

00:32:38.900 opening bell. He presented himself in this, he would come in, you know, with this, this, what they

00:32:43.860 call the hobo haircut. He looked very rough. He was a guy from the West. He had had a tough wandering

00:32:49.240 life before he, before he ended up as champion. And so he tapped into a lot of, I think kind of

00:32:55.120 archetypal images that have, that have endured in boxing ever since. And it was his, it was his

00:33:01.680 aggressive style that captured people just at the point in the roaring twenties when sports was going

00:33:05.900 to explode, you know, when, when Babe Ruth was going to start hitting home runs and, and the radio

00:33:11.460 was going to come in to be able to bring sports to people in mass numbers. Dempsey comes along and

00:33:16.740 he's not a defensive fighter. He's not a cautious fighter. He just puts it all out there in every

00:33:22.260 fight, in every round. And it makes him, you could still argue the greatest draw in the history of

00:33:28.560 boxing, because while the pay-per-view receipts of recent years, you know, exceed everything in

00:33:34.320 dollar value, Dempsey was bringing bodies into the seats, a hundred thousand, a hundred and twenty

00:33:39.500 thousand, a hundred and fifty thousand people come into these fights and traveling on trains from

00:33:44.820 different cities to get there. So this guy really got people's interest.

00:33:49.700 And did he try to take that fame he gained in the boxing ring out in, you know, to other areas of

00:33:55.620 the light, start other businesses tapped with that celebrity?

00:33:59.400 Sure. Yeah. You know, that's a great, a great point. And that, that also starts with, with Sullivan

00:34:04.360 is this whole idea that you can take this title and the real value of the title in a way is outside

00:34:10.180 the ring, because when you've got that title, it's your, it's your calling card to get you into

00:34:14.760 a whole kinds of, all kinds of other ventures. And, you know, in Sullivan's day, it was the

00:34:19.180 stage in vaudeville and Jack Johnson did that too. Jack Johnson was a pretty good musician.

00:34:23.800 He kind of conducted his own little jazz band and he performed on vaudeville stages and all

00:34:29.240 the champions did, even if they didn't have any performing skills, they would show up on vaudeville

00:34:32.900 and they would just talk. They might just recite something, or they might just explain how they

00:34:37.780 won their last fight. They would get them out there to do something so that people could come

00:34:41.680 and see them. And Dempsey has the good fortune of not just having that, but in the twenties,

00:34:45.820 of course, Hollywood is, is really blooming. And so he gets all kinds of work in Hollywood and silent

00:34:51.640 films. And he starts making more money outside the ring than he does inside of it. And, and that's

00:34:57.180 one reason why as his title years wound on, uh, he's fought less and less. He's just making so much

00:35:03.680 money doing other things. Yeah. And he started like people would make movies just for him to be in.

00:35:08.520 Um, yeah, that's right. Like a bit line. That's right. Just, yeah. I just play a good guy,

00:35:14.240 saving, saving the girl, you know, just very, very, uh, stock sort of plots, but people wanted

00:35:19.700 to see him, you know, and, and he went on the stage with that kind of stuff as well. I think

00:35:23.520 at one point he said, I think I almost destroyed the American theater. So he was always pretty

00:35:28.060 self-deprecating about his talents, but he was in demand. Right. Yeah. The same thing with

00:35:32.440 Sullivan, like he played a blacksmith in some play then it was really bad. Supposedly it

00:35:36.720 wasn't that great of a play, but he would, he would, he would say his line, then do a

00:35:40.740 little boxing exhibition and then you make a ton of money. Yeah. And when he would say

00:35:45.880 his lines and they would cheer and applaud in the middle, he would start over.

00:35:52.900 But so some of these boxers, they, they, they boxed and they became, you know, theater or movie

00:35:58.640 stars, but there were some actual legitimate thespian boxers like James Corbett. I think he

00:36:04.520 was, he was an actor, like a legitimate actor. And there were some guys who they were actors.

00:36:09.200 They got into boxing and then they went back to acting. Tell us about some of these like

00:36:12.820 famous thespian boxers. Well, Corbett is definitely the most accomplished. You're exactly right.

00:36:18.100 He really was good at it. Again, he did, he first parlayed it from boxing. I mean, he saw the title

00:36:24.660 as his way to get into this, but his acting career lasted for the rest of his life. And it wasn't just

00:36:31.060 like bit parts. It was a working career and it wound up encompassing, you know, plays,

00:36:38.640 comedies, vaudeville, even some silent films. And there are a number of biographies on him.

00:36:43.920 And one of them focuses entirely on his, on his performing career, non-boxing that is. So he,

00:36:51.180 this is, he died in 1933. So you're talking about a 40 year career in theater. He, he helped form an

00:36:56.880 actors union in Broadway. He really had a very distinguished career. He was pretty, pretty good.

00:37:02.060 Most of the other guys were not of that caliber. You know, a guy who probably could have been a star

00:37:08.100 and certainly thought he should be and wanted to be instead of a boxer was a champion who was a very

00:37:14.700 brief champion, Max Baer from the 1930s. One of my favorite characters in the book, because he's just

00:37:21.040 such a, a lovable character and he's, he's just richly funny, a terrific sense of humor. And that

00:37:27.900 was the problem for him as a boxer is he was too busy making people laugh and didn't really have

00:37:31.940 the killer instinct that a great champion needs. But he was, he was a real cut up and he made one

00:37:37.840 movie with Myrna Loy in 1933 called The Prizefighter and the Lady. This is actually quite, quite good.

00:37:43.660 It's a romantic comedy and he, he sings in that, not, not very well, but he's very captivating.

00:37:48.700 He has a great screen presence. And, uh, I think he saw the heavyweight title as his way to get into

00:37:52.940 that kind of career, but it didn't quite pan out. Although a little sequel to that is his son,

00:37:57.300 Max Jr. wound up becoming a star on the Beverly Hillbillies. So whenever I mentioned Max Baer,

00:38:02.040 that's what people seem to remember is, is, uh, is Max Jr.'s Jethro. So, uh, and you know,

00:38:07.760 these guys, they always took the, later on, uh, would take their shot at singing. Singing became a big

00:38:12.700 thing. So, uh, even Muhammad Ali, uh, if you go on YouTube, you can hear him sing. And when he's

00:38:18.560 still known as Cassius Clay, a pretty passable version of, uh, Stand By Me, it's not bad. He was

00:38:24.380 hanging out with Sam Cook. So Sam was helping him out there. And Joe Frazier had a long singing

00:38:28.880 career. He'd grown up singing in the church in South Carolina. And, you know, sometimes he sounds

00:38:33.800 a little rough. Other times he sounds pretty good. So they did always see this title as some way to

00:38:39.380 get into, into another life. And even right up to the present day, we've got Mike Tyson, who's got a

00:38:44.860 whole second career now as a performer. Right. I mean, how do you think this, this connection to

00:38:50.120 showmanship influenced boxing? Did they bring that to the ring or like how they entered the ring or

00:38:55.880 their, their boxing persona? Yeah, I think that's a, it's a great question. Boxing is, I just,

00:39:02.520 boxing is by far the most theatrical sport. I just think the two things go together like bread and

00:39:08.280 butter. You know, it's, it's just, I have a friend who, who actually writes about this quite a bit.

00:39:13.040 And, and, you know, he points out that, that boxing and the theater are really,

00:39:17.760 really cousins to one another. You know, the, the, the stage and the ring lighting is very

00:39:22.360 important. The action takes place in a limited space. You've got two, you got your attention

00:39:27.160 focused on two players. Even great matches often seem to have a kind of play structure to them

00:39:33.640 sometimes, even, even before the match, all the stuff that goes into setting them up and all the,

00:39:37.560 the sort of side stage dramas about how the fights get made. And then there's just that

00:39:42.440 whole element of the really great theatrical element in every boxing match, even if the

00:39:46.940 match turns out not to be good, is that, that entry into the ring, up that aisle that each guy

00:39:52.600 makes. And you can't get much more theatrical than that. And then the disrobe, you're taking

00:39:57.320 the robes off and all your guys are going to, all your supporters are going to step through the

00:40:00.760 ropes and leave you there alone to make your case, you know, against your opponents. So I think

00:40:06.780 that, that the boxers had a natural inclination to pursue the stage because in many ways they

00:40:12.680 already were on stage. They were, they were performers and much more than, than other athletes

00:40:17.120 who play on teams. And, you know, sometimes they're just a cog in the wheel, you know, boxers are used

00:40:21.620 to being the star. Yeah. So after Dempsey, we move into the depression. How did, how did the great

00:40:29.260 depression affect boxing? It was actually, you know, most histories of the sport really regard

00:40:36.080 the depression in a way as a golden age because economically things were obviously very hard. And

00:40:41.640 if you look at the, the gate receipts of the big heavyweight fights, especially in the early parts

00:40:46.680 of the thirties, they're, they're way, way, way down from, you know, what Jack Dempsey was pulling

00:40:51.260 in, in the twenties. And that's really reflecting the, the economic climate, but, you know, the promoters

00:40:56.880 started cutting, cutting ticket prices some. And the biggest thing was that boxing was kind of like

00:41:02.040 the movies in the thirties. It was one of those tonics, one of those few tonics that people had

00:41:06.280 to divert them from, from the other hardships that were going on in the country. And it was also a time

00:41:11.240 of just incredible ethnic diversity in boxing. The Irish were still on the scene, but the Italians

00:41:17.680 were now becoming very prominent. Black fighters, of course, were, were still in the mix and eventually

00:41:23.220 going to get their crowning glory in the mid thirties when Joe Lewis shows up at the heavyweight

00:41:27.600 level. So there was tremendous interest in boxing. Radio was now fully established and the thirties,

00:41:33.680 I think is the thirties and the forties. It doesn't get much better than that for boxing. Everything

00:41:38.020 since then, it's pretty much a slow, slow, steady trickle downward from that peak. Boxing and baseball

00:41:44.320 were the top sports in the country. Football, the NFL was, you know, it existed, but it wasn't anything

00:41:50.280 like what it was today, the NBA, these things were not on the scene. They were not factors. Boxing was a

00:41:55.640 major league sport, a mainstream interest. Yeah. And it seems like the depression added to the, the drama

00:42:00.580 of the sport. Cause you have like, you know, the Cinderella man, like, you know, James J. Braddock, like

00:42:04.580 that. That's an amazing story. Yeah, it really was. And it just, it just connected with people

00:42:10.100 everywhere. And, you know, that was really a, you know, the heavyweight title, the, the great champions

00:42:16.340 like a Dempsey or Sullivan or Johnson, they, they do tend to be, even though they come from usually

00:42:21.580 pretty common circumstances, they, they tend to be elevated and they, at some point they become

00:42:26.700 kind of godlike, but in the thirties, it was much more approachable. And again, it was just that,

00:42:31.580 that, that sense of the depression, you know? And so James J. Braddock, the Cinderella man, he's a

00:42:36.380 great, he really literally is the guy next door. I mean, he was a fighter. He was a longtime fighter

00:42:40.540 in a good one, but he had fallen on very hard times, just like everybody else. He'd lost a

00:42:46.200 whole bunch of fights and he'd been written off years before then until he made this incredible

00:42:51.100 rally, which is, uh, which is pretty well portrayed in that movie with, with Russell Crowe, which

00:42:56.040 the great thing about that story is I always tell people is it's actually true.

00:43:01.000 Right. Yeah. And I thought it was amazing. A lot of these boxers went like, including Braddock,

00:43:04.660 like once they made their winnings, they would go back to the welfare agency where they used to

00:43:09.100 support them and they would pay them back. There was that, you know, that sense of dignity that

00:43:12.840 they wanted to regain. Yeah. That's a famous part of Braddock's story. And one of the,

00:43:17.620 the most exciting surprises for me in writing this book was that I discovered two other guys who did

00:43:23.020 it as you were just alluding to. I had no idea that Joe Lewis had done the same thing. You know,

00:43:28.060 Joe Lewis is remembered for so many other things. It's, it's no wonder that, that, that details kind

00:43:33.000 of lost. And Jersey Joe Walcott, who was a champion briefly in the, in the early fifties,

00:43:37.740 had also been on relief with his family and also paid the agency back. So it does really tell you

00:43:44.860 a little bit about those times and the way people saw things like that.

00:43:48.680 So speaking of Joe Lewis, the Brown bomber, this, this is another boxer where his race embedded his

00:43:54.820 career with a lot of, a lot of meaning, you know, sort of under, underneath the fight. And what was

00:44:00.980 interesting about Joe Lewis compared to Jack Johnson, he became sort of this symbol of American democracy

00:44:06.380 for both African-Americans and whites. Tell us about his rise to sort of this sort of symbol

00:44:12.760 of America during World War II.

00:44:16.700 Yeah. Joe Lewis is, uh, is really a giant of the story, uh, a giant of the, the whole history of the

00:44:22.440 heavyweight title. When you look at those top 10 lists that people love to make, it's anybody who is

00:44:27.900 knowledgeable. It's usually two guys are at the top two spots. It's Muhammad Ali and Joe Lewis. And

00:44:32.780 sometimes the order is reversed, but it's always those two guys. And Joe Lewis for the longest time

00:44:38.040 was regarded as, as the undisputed greatest heavyweight ever. So as a boxer, his, he has very

00:44:43.560 few peers. When he came along in the early thirties, as we were talking about, blacks hadn't had a shot

00:44:49.220 at the heavyweight title since Johnson had lost it. And Johnson lost it in 1915. So it was going on 20

00:44:55.580 years when, when Joe Lewis showed up, but Lewis's talent was just off the charts. I mean, it was off the

00:45:01.220 charts as an amateur and as an early pro. He was born in Alabama, but he, he grew up from around the

00:45:07.300 age of 12 or so in Detroit. So he was fighting out of Detroit and that's where he discovered boxing

00:45:12.500 when he was supposed to be taking violin lessons. Another one of those great details. Um, and he, uh,

00:45:19.060 you know, once his, once his potential was, was clear to his management team, they became determined

00:45:24.720 to really pull off the impossible, which was get him a shot at the heavyweight title. And

00:45:29.440 one thing they realized is that that would not even be possible at all. If he, if he struck any

00:45:37.020 chords that reminded people of Jack Johnson. So they famously drew up a set of rules about how he was to

00:45:43.080 conduct himself in public. And some of those rules included never being seen with a white woman,

00:45:48.920 but also never doing other things that Johnson had done such as gloat over opponents. Again,

00:45:54.560 especially white opponents, but really any opponents not to be seen out in nightclubs,

00:45:59.280 you know, by himself or with, with another woman, you know, that kind of stuff. And so there's a whole

00:46:03.360 bunch of different things. He was not to, to raise his, you know, boast over opponents. The thing

00:46:07.840 that's funny about those rules, people make a lot of those rules that make a lot of those today and

00:46:12.360 they, they are important, but the thing is Joe Lewis's personality was perfectly consistent with

00:46:19.020 those rules. Anyway, he was a soft-spoken person. He was not like Jack Johnson. It would never have

00:46:24.500 occurred to him to boast over an opponent anyway. So the rules fit him pretty nicely. It wasn't like

00:46:30.200 any great effort for him to pull that off. He certainly had his female liaisons, but he was

00:46:35.720 discreet about it. So he, he's, he makes his way up. He's knocking out everybody in sight. And you know,

00:46:41.580 that he just became impossible to deny. And they, he finally got his chance at the title against

00:46:46.080 Braddock, who we were just talking about and, and knocks him out in 1937 to become heavyweight

00:46:51.580 champion. Second black man to win the heavyweight title, first one in 22 years. And there's still

00:46:57.320 a ton of racism directed at him. There's, there's more goodwill than there was for Johnson. But one

00:47:03.720 of the things that really stood out for me in working on Lewis was reading the old newspaper articles

00:47:08.120 and the language that's used, especially by writers who are nominally on Lewis's side,

00:47:13.700 they, they, they think that they're praising him, you know, that they, they mean to praise him,

00:47:18.000 but they're using all kinds of condescending and, and, and racist language to talk about him.

00:47:22.780 So that was, that was the climate. Two things really send his career into, into the next realm.

00:47:29.940 First is that he has this great rivalry with Max Schmeling from Germany, who becomes Adolf Hitler's

00:47:37.700 favorite fighter. We're in the 1930s, remember. So Schmeling is adopted by the Nazi regime as a

00:47:44.080 symbol of Aryan supremacy and strength. And in his first match with Lewis, he knocks Lewis out,

00:47:49.940 Lewis's first loss as a professional and a huge upset, not expected. Through a series of

00:47:56.500 complicated moves, Lewis gets a shot at the title before Schmeling. And so he's the champion.

00:48:02.260 Schmeling comes back to the United States two years later in 1938 to have a shot at the title

00:48:06.860 against Lewis, the big grudge match. This is a match on the levels of the other one I was mentioning

00:48:11.980 before, Jeffries and Johnson. It's just one of those times the title might mean almost too much.

00:48:17.340 You've got Hitler buying into it. The Nazis see their whole racial theory riding on Schmeling.

00:48:23.240 Meanwhile, Americans are rooting for Lewis. Certainly Blacks, certainly Jews want to see

00:48:28.860 Lewis win. But one of the transforming turning points in the story is that more and more whites

00:48:34.940 come to root for Lewis because they see him as the American fighter, not as the Black fighter.

00:48:41.840 And so that's not to say that there weren't plenty of whites also rooting for Schmeling.

00:48:45.080 There certainly were. But they show down and they confront one another in Yankee Stadium in June

00:48:50.760 38. And Lewis, with the pressure of the world on his shoulders, really, I think more than any

00:48:56.360 athlete has ever faced, just destroys Max Schmeling in two minutes. And it's on YouTube. You can watch

00:49:01.820 it. It's kind of an amazing thing to watch. So he wins that fight. It makes him a huge hero. Among

00:49:08.700 Blacks, he's at a level that is, I mean, there's just nobody more celebrated in Black America than

00:49:15.340 Joe Lewis. Time Magazine calls him the Black Moses. And he just goes on this long, long championship

00:49:21.340 reign. He holds it for longer than any other champion, defends it against more challengers

00:49:26.520 than any other champion. And then the final page in the saga, the war comes along and he suits up

00:49:32.060 for the U.S. Army. And again, this wins enormous goodwill from whites who just start to see this guy

00:49:39.400 as an American, as a fellow citizen, as a hero. And he even donates purses from two of his fights

00:49:47.540 to the armed forces. So he just reaches a level of kind of nobility and dignity that very few

00:49:55.080 athletes have ever had. And by the end of his life, the end of his career, I should say, he's

00:50:00.040 fighting white opponents and white people at ringside are rooting for Joe Lewis. So by the time

00:50:06.220 his career ends, there's still a very long way to go on race relations, needless to say.

00:50:11.800 But all of the legacy that he left behind, as best I can tell, is just entirely positive. It's an

00:50:17.700 amazing career. Yeah. And speaking of Max Schmeling, he and Joe Lewis become really good friends

00:50:23.740 later in life, which is another interesting story. Yes, they did. Schmeling lived a very long

00:50:31.040 life. He lived till nearly 100. And after he served in the German army, and then after the war

00:50:36.700 and post-war of Germany, he eventually made his way to the United States. And he really wanted to

00:50:40.960 connect with Lewis. He wanted to kind of go over the past with him and connect with him and that

00:50:47.960 bitter fight that they'd had. And they make the connection. Lewis has no ill feelings, and they did

00:50:53.780 become good friends as older men. So after Lewis, there was a series of heavyweight champs that we

00:51:00.040 could talk about. There's Rocky Macciano. But we can't, in this conversation, we can't

00:51:04.520 not talk about Muhammad Ali. The greatest, right? As he said. Yeah.

00:51:10.080 What was it about Ali that made him such... I mean, he, again, he's filling that archetype that

00:51:15.140 Sullivan said, that you're going to be larger than life. It's going to be about you. But something

00:51:21.560 about Ali, he had this really big impact, not just on boxing, but on culture in America. So how did

00:51:28.400 Ali change boxing? But then also, how did he change sport and celebrity in America?

00:51:34.240 Yeah. He was the... When I was growing up as a kid in the 70s and just stumbling into boxing,

00:51:39.720 he was the champion at the time. And it was kind of a blessing and a curse on the one hand. It's,

00:51:45.000 boy, that's exciting to grow up with him as your first champion. On the other hand,

00:51:47.940 who's ever going to be able to... What encore is ever going to follow that? So he was a huge figure.

00:51:55.360 I remember in school, people would just get in arguments about him and he was ubiquitous. He

00:52:00.020 was on commercials and he was just everywhere. And he just seemed like he'd been around forever.

00:52:06.060 And of course, as a young kid, I didn't realize his earlier career and how contentious it was.

00:52:11.980 But yeah, I think it's just... It starts and ends with this 100 megawatt personality. I mean,

00:52:18.740 there's just... There've been great personalities in boxing before, but there's just nothing like this

00:52:23.360 guy. I mean, you can watch stuff of his now on YouTube and he can still make you laugh.

00:52:30.160 And when he came along, I think what's easy to forget now, because we're so used to athletes being

00:52:36.020 showmen and being boasters and braggarts and dressing outrageously and trying to draw attention

00:52:41.640 to themselves, is that before he came along, athletes did not act like that for the most part.

00:52:47.620 You look at old clips of old football or baseball and the guy hits the home run. They don't pound

00:52:53.400 their chest. They don't point to the sky. They don't pump their fist even. They just kind of

00:52:58.220 cross home plate and shake hands and move on. And boxing and football and all the sports were

00:53:03.840 really like that. And Ali came in when he landed in the early 60s. It really was like a visitor from

00:53:09.140 another planet. It probably was a little bit like how people felt when Elvis Presley showed up on

00:53:14.440 their TV screens in the 50s. Who is this guy? Where did he come from? And he converged with what

00:53:22.660 was about to happen in the culture. That's another key aspect of his career. So when he wins the title

00:53:27.560 for the first time, he's still known as Cassius Clay at that time. In February 1964, that's the same

00:53:34.000 month that the Beatles land in America. And these two actually have a meeting. They have a photo op

00:53:39.840 together. And they're seen by most of the press, both of them, Clay and the Beatles, as just sort

00:53:46.800 of flavors of the month. Clay's going to get his head handed to him by Sonny Liston, the heavyweight

00:53:52.160 champion. And the Beatles are going to be popular for a month or two. And then they're going to vanish

00:53:56.140 the way most of these things do. Of course, that doesn't turn out to be the case. And they really

00:54:00.360 turn out to be heralds of the youth culture that we all know about from the 60s. So Ali came in at

00:54:05.920 kind of the perfect time. But he had such a huge impact because sports had always been such a

00:54:12.640 preserve of stoicism, usually. I was just talking about Joe Lewis. And Joe Lewis was a great stoic

00:54:21.280 publicly. He would never gloat or boast or anything. And Ali was really blowing that whole world apart.

00:54:27.480 And not everybody liked it. And then the second thing, of course, is that he converges with is

00:54:33.840 the politics. And so that has two pieces. One is the racial politics. He's coming on right at the

00:54:40.440 peak of the civil rights movement. But he does not adopt the civil rights movement. He instead joins

00:54:45.600 the Nation of Islam, which actually rejects the civil rights movement and openly confronts whites as

00:54:51.660 racist and, in fact, racially inferior to blacks. So he really puts himself out on the edge

00:54:57.140 with his politics. And then he steps out even further when he refuses induction into the armed

00:55:02.560 forces during these Vietnam years. So between the racial politics and the war politics, Ali,

00:55:11.040 by the late 60s, although he's looked upon today, people revere him. And when he died,

00:55:16.040 he was celebrated. In the late 60s, there were very few people in American life more divisive and more

00:55:21.460 argued about than Muhammad Ali. So it's a huge arc of his career that then comes full circle from the

00:55:28.640 70s and 80s when he becomes more popular. And in certain ways, the history helps him because

00:55:34.780 American people turn against the Vietnam War in much larger numbers. So people begin to look at him

00:55:40.520 a little bit differently. But his legacy on sports, I think, you know, is probably those two pieces.

00:55:46.780 One is, it's as relevant as the NFL national anthem protests. It's bringing overt politics and often

00:55:56.680 tinged with racial concerns into sports. And it's the showmanship. It's the kind of ego celebration.

00:56:05.120 I should be frank and say, you know, I probably have a minority view on both of these things at this

00:56:09.400 point in history. Because I think, you know, on balance, a lot of this has not really worked out

00:56:14.800 so positively. I don't think that, you know, I don't think that the political aspect of sports

00:56:19.660 is working out that great for people. I think you see that in the NFL ratings. I think people want

00:56:24.800 sports to be, you know, kind of a refuge from the world. They don't want it to be another ground in

00:56:29.020 which we're all fighting with one another. So I think, you know, it's complicated. And the second

00:56:33.060 aspect about the showmanship, it's like a lot of originals. Ali could be just delightful as a

00:56:38.140 showman. But when you've got everybody acting like that, it can be a bit tiresome, you know. And I

00:56:43.600 find sports today with all the chest thumping and self-celebration to be a bit wearisome.

00:56:49.980 Don't really mean to lay that all at his door, but, you know, you do get imitators. And he certainly

00:56:56.220 has had many imitators.

00:56:57.920 So who do you think, this was like the 70s, 60s, 70s when he was fighting. His career eventually ended.

00:57:04.140 Who do you think was the last great American heavyweight boxer? Like when can we say like,

00:57:10.800 okay, the age of American heavyweights ended? Who was that guy?

00:57:15.120 Well, in a pure boxing sense, I'd say the last great heavyweight was Larry Holmes, who came right

00:57:22.720 after Ali in the late 70s and was champion for much of the 80s, but is largely forgotten today because

00:57:27.440 he's sandwiched between two giants, Muhammad Ali and then Mike Tyson, who followed him just on pure

00:57:34.440 boxing. Because I think that Holmes accomplished more in Tyson's boxing accomplishments while

00:57:38.340 impressive. You know, it kind of fell short because his career kind of flamed out a lot earlier than

00:57:43.580 people expected. And we weren't quite able to see all that he was, that he might've been capable of.

00:57:48.820 But in terms of the last great figure, you know, in terms of like the way I wrote the book and the

00:57:53.600 figures that really reached out beyond the culture, it's certainly Tyson. Mike Tyson is,

00:57:58.820 he's the end of this story more or less, because there hasn't been a figure since Tyson on the

00:58:07.320 American side, who's had that kind of impact and that kind of sort of universal recognition.

00:58:13.520 Yeah. And, you know, Tyson was the guy, the champion when I was a kid. I remember 87,

00:58:17.880 I think I was like five or so. Like, you know, you were playing Mike Tyson punch out on Nintendo.

00:58:22.180 I remember when the big fight was going on that summer. I pretend I was Mike Tyson. I remember

00:58:27.600 I smacked my brother in the, my two-year-old brother in the face. I walloped him. I got in

00:58:33.440 trouble for that. But my brother was a bum. He was not a good fighter. A two-year-old. But what I,

00:58:40.120 what I didn't know about Mike, because now he's sort of this, I don't know, he's sort of lampooned

00:58:45.040 right today. He plays, and he's kind of, he understands that and he plays these characters where,

00:58:50.520 you know, kind of people kind of poke fun at him. But I didn't, what I didn't know about him was

00:58:55.140 how he was first a talent. He was strong. He was fast, but he was also very cerebral about his

00:59:01.000 boxing. Like he would just sit and watch old films going back to the thirties. And he would read about

00:59:07.260 John L. Sullivan. And, you know, whenever he would try to imitate some of the great boxers,

00:59:12.100 like his haircut was inspired by Dempsey and he walked out like Dempsey without a robe on.

00:59:16.360 And tell us a little bit more about that side of Tyson that people don't know about.

00:59:20.320 Yeah. I've always thought that that's one of the, the really alluring and poetic aspects of Tyson's

00:59:26.600 story. And, you know, I was a pretty big boxing fan by the time he came along in the eighties. So

00:59:31.300 I remembered that even then, and cause they would, they would spotlight it when they would do stories

00:59:36.060 on him. And it was kind of like the thing you'd script, you know, it's like, let's, let's,

00:59:40.340 let's make up a story about a boxer who's not only great, but he, he loves the history. I mean,

00:59:45.260 oh, come on, that's not going to happen. These guys don't care about the history. They just want

00:59:48.460 to, you know, they're focused on their fights, but Tyson really did. He really did watch these

00:59:52.680 films. And, and of course that's largely because he was spending, he spent from about the age of 13 on

00:59:58.660 in the house of Cus D'Amato, a great trainer who trained not just Tyson, but before him,

01:00:05.080 Floyd Patterson, a heavyweight champion. And D'Amato had French friends and associates with

01:00:11.420 Jim Jacobs, who was the great fight film collector who had the greatest collection of fight films

01:00:17.420 in, in known possession. And those have now been bought up by, by ESPN. And that's, that's why

01:00:23.560 you're able to see them all. But back then, you know, you couldn't just watch fight films. We

01:00:27.820 didn't have the internet. We didn't have YouTube. So it was, it was hard to get them. He had them in

01:00:32.540 his possession. And this young kid was just wanted to know everything about boxing. There was a library

01:00:39.500 of boxing books as well in the D'Amato house. And Tyson was reading those books as well. And not

01:00:44.940 just about heavyweights, about fighters from all divisions. And when he became champion, he started,

01:00:50.580 he started doing these little tributes that nobody would really notice except someone who was really,

01:00:56.020 really a boxing geek. He would start mimicking poses that he had seen in these old 60, 50, 60,

01:01:03.240 70 year old films. And one guy who knocked out an opponent and stood over him with his hands on his

01:01:08.340 hips, you know, staring down at him. And Tyson said, I like that. I like that stance. I'm,

01:01:12.900 I'm going to do that next time I knock a guy out. And he did. And so he had this great reverence

01:01:18.760 for the history and for the title that he was trying to get. And it really added a kind of

01:01:24.920 depth and weight to him, which he already had because his story was, you know, pretty,

01:01:30.860 pretty harrowing story of his, his upbringing in Brownsville, Brooklyn and a broken home and,

01:01:36.420 uh, life of crime as a very young boy. So he had a lot going on, but this, this element of history

01:01:42.880 really did add some fascination to him. It made it seem as if he was destined to hold this title,

01:01:49.160 you know, like this was all scripted. This is the person who should hold it, you know? So it,

01:01:53.120 it did add a lot of luster to him.

01:01:55.040 And yeah, like, like a lot of the other heavyweight champs from past decades, he was one of those

01:01:59.900 characters who's both celebrated and reviled. I mean, the guy had a really bad personal life,

01:02:04.500 you know, he went to jail for rape, had some other troubles as well. So again, that, that he's

01:02:09.240 continuing that trend of, of a boxer who we both simultaneously celebrate for their, I don't know,

01:02:15.220 manly, virile martial ability, but also the same time disdain.

01:02:20.960 Yeah, for sure. I mean, so, uh, I'm sorry, Tyson was going to say Sullivan. It's because

01:02:24.520 I've really been, been thinking lately about how parallel their career and life, uh, arcs turned out

01:02:30.660 to be because, uh, they really did, you know, whether it was drinking or Tyson with, was more

01:02:36.020 of a drug, drug problem than just his, his personal demons. They really became notorious in the media.

01:02:42.760 I mean, Tyson took it to a new level. I mean, the rape convictions, it was an awful episode. And then

01:02:47.360 when he got out of jail, there was these other episodes with biting, uh, Evander Holyfield's ear,

01:02:52.460 which is just, even by boxing standards is an infamous, was an infamous moment, you know?

01:02:57.800 And you just saw him at the end of his career, 12, 13 years ago. And you just thought to yourself,

01:03:03.280 well, I know how this story is going to end. You know, we know how the story is going to end

01:03:07.900 and it's not going to be pretty, but he, like Sullivan before him surprised us and showed that

01:03:14.100 he had a different, he had a different plan and he had a different, uh, he had another chapter to

01:03:19.040 write. And, uh, and it's, it's really heartening to see it. Um, it's really turned his life around

01:03:25.120 in really similar ways to, to Sullivan. In fact, they even both, you know, one man shows. I mean,

01:03:30.440 that's what Sullivan was doing. He was, when he was giving his temperance lectures, he was kind of

01:03:34.400 telling the story of his life and how he reformed himself. And that's, it's more or less what Tyson

01:03:39.220 does in that, in that one man show of his. So it is an interesting parallel. It's an interesting

01:03:44.640 how it comes full circle. I'm sure Tyson would appreciate it too.

01:03:48.860 Right. So if he's the last one, okay. What do you think led to the demise of the,

01:03:54.860 the heavyweight boxer being sort of this just giant in American culture? What do you think?

01:04:00.980 So we've mentioned like, so there's the multiple governing, governing bodies, each claiming,

01:04:05.080 each lane claim to being the holder of the heavyweight title. That was one facet, but what

01:04:10.660 else is going on? Yeah, several things. I mean, one is, is certainly the rise of other sports.

01:04:17.500 That's, that's one factor. It's not, not the whole story by any stretch, but it's certainly

01:04:21.180 a part of it. As I was saying before, you know, in the real heyday of boxing, really through the

01:04:25.640 era of Joe Lewis, which takes you right to mid-century, boxing doesn't have that much

01:04:30.320 competition other than baseball and baseball's, baseball's a national game. You don't have to

01:04:34.520 worry. It's just, it just is what it is, you know, but besides baseball, boxing was, it was,

01:04:39.380 didn't really have any rivals. And that began to change. The NFL really took off in the late

01:04:44.240 fifties. You know, the NBA would soon take off as well. And other sports started to come in.

01:04:49.020 And then the rise of television came in, which originally helped boxing a lot because it was

01:04:53.620 very popular on television. And people from a certain generation still remember it, the Friday

01:04:58.380 night fights, as they called them. But boxing had so many different problems. It didn't have

01:05:03.240 any leadership. It didn't have any commission or coherent structure. It had a terrible corruption

01:05:09.620 problem, including for one period in particular, massive mafia influence. It was essentially run by

01:05:16.380 the mob for the late forties through most of the fifties. And these things start to catch up with

01:05:21.300 it. You know, indictments, antitrust suits, the corruption of managers and promoters, deaths in the

01:05:27.880 ring, which was always a presence in boxing. But they begin, it begins to bother people more than they

01:05:32.820 did in the past, including fights that were shown on TV where the fighter died. It's kind of like the

01:05:37.920 Vietnam effect that people talk about. You know, Vietnam was the first war shown on TV that started to

01:05:42.240 really alarm people and traumatize them in a way that other wars had not. And when a few of these

01:05:47.840 things happened with boxing, that became a real issue. Also economically, you know, boxing, of all

01:05:53.900 sports, is the sport that draws from the lowest economic strata because it's a very tough thing to

01:06:00.160 do to be a fighter. And if you could be a baseball player instead, or a basketball player, or an attorney,

01:06:06.700 you know, maybe that would be better. And so the stock of young men desperate enough to try this

01:06:15.000 starts to be a little bit less, less robust than it was, say, 1900, even though there's still plenty

01:06:21.000 of them. You know, the standard of living in the United States from 1900 to now is, has multiplied

01:06:26.000 several times over. So you've just a lot of different forces, but the corruption and chaos of

01:06:31.680 boxing's organization really can't be stressed enough from what we were talking about with the

01:06:36.180 championships. Because, you know, with all the problems that sport had, when you add the problem

01:06:41.960 that nobody even knows who the champion is anymore, what is the reason that a casual fan wants to

01:06:47.120 wants to bother with this? You know, so it began to lose fans. And finally, for me, I remember,

01:06:52.540 because I lived through this, it left television. It used to be on regular television. And then the

01:06:57.500 fights increasingly moved to cable and then to pay-per-view. And that was great for the fighters fighting in

01:07:03.280 those bouts because they made a lot of money. But it wasn't very good for getting the sport

01:07:07.980 into the mainstream. When you show up at work on Monday, Monday morning and talking at the coffee

01:07:13.300 machine about what you watched that weekend, it wasn't boxing. Because, you know, in the old days,

01:07:18.000 people would have seen that fight on Saturday afternoon on ABC. And that was a big part of my

01:07:23.060 growing up. Boxing was on Saturday afternoons almost all the time. And there were big fights,

01:07:27.840 championship fights. And that's how I found the sport. So it kind of cordoned itself off

01:07:32.920 into this premium pay model. And along with its many other problems, it just slowly kind of

01:07:40.700 marginalized itself. And then we just didn't have another American heavyweight who would come along.

01:07:44.960 I think all of that probably could have been dealt with one way or the other if you had another Tyson

01:07:49.260 come along, because figures like that do capture people. But the sport began to really decline in the

01:07:56.240 United States in such a way that the heavyweights, which had always been an American thing, by the

01:08:01.280 turn of the 21st century, you woke up and all of a sudden, all the contenders were in Europe,

01:08:06.520 most of them anyway. And these two brothers from Ukraine, the Klitschko brothers held the title

01:08:11.000 for a decade and a half between them before these new guys, Anthony Joshua, British fighters have now

01:08:17.580 taken over. So it's kind of come full circle because boxing really starts, modern boxing starts in

01:08:22.860 Great Britain. And now we've got the heavyweight title over in Great Britain again. So whether it

01:08:27.320 can come back or not, it's hard to say, but there are a lot of forces behind what happened to boxing.

01:08:34.640 And I should say, not all of it was really boxing's fault. I think some of it was inevitable.

01:08:40.460 I'm curious, after you researched and wrote about these guys, because in boxers, there's sort of this

01:08:46.000 archetype of American manliness. Did you learn anything about being a man by studying these really

01:08:51.820 complicated figures who were both celebrated and reviled at the same time?

01:08:59.000 Yeah. When I was writing the book, one question I tried to keep in my mind to see if I could answer

01:09:05.280 was that I thought might really anchor me in exploring these guys was, what was it that drew

01:09:12.020 me to them in the first place when I was a kid? I mean, you get drawn to lots of things when you're a

01:09:16.860 kid. Why did they seize my imagination so much and really never let go? What was it about them?

01:09:23.180 Or what was it about boxing? And I think as best I can tell what it was, and that relates to your

01:09:29.020 question about manliness, is that I think what got through to me as a kid that I didn't realize

01:09:35.140 consciously at the time was that the experience of the boxer is such a solitary one. You know,

01:09:40.400 they have their support systems and their trainers and sparring partners and all that. But at its

01:09:46.380 heart, the endeavor is a solo one. And that's really dramatized with that walk down the ring that

01:09:51.340 I talked about. And it's dramatized by all your guys leaving you alone in the ring to face your

01:09:57.120 opponent. And I think it was Joyce Carol Oates who wrote that the opponent is you. You know,

01:10:03.220 the opponent is you. It's your reflection. And there's nowhere to hide. If you're unprepared,

01:10:10.880 it will show. If you're not in physical shape, it will show. If you lose your fortitude at the moment

01:10:16.820 of truth, it will show. And there's nowhere to hide behind a teammate. You know, in other sports,

01:10:23.700 you can hope that Tom Brady will bail you out. And he probably will. But there's nowhere to go in

01:10:30.360 boxing. You're left to your own resources. And I think looking back as a kid, it was the starkness

01:10:35.980 of that confrontation, which really got through to me. I remember as a kid feeling this knot in my

01:10:42.420 stomach when I would watch the fighters walk up the aisle to the ring because I was putting myself

01:10:47.180 in their shoes and thinking about what it must have felt like to face this test. And, you know,

01:10:54.040 we all face our tests. We all face fears. But most of us don't have to face them in an arena

01:11:00.100 full of thousands of people, you know, in a contest where, you know, victory could bring

01:11:05.480 glorification, but failure could mean destruction or humiliation. And I think it was the way they

01:11:11.780 handled that. You know, ultimately, you can only face that kind of thing with courage, which doesn't

01:11:18.180 mean not feeling fear. It means dealing with fear and with some form of stoicism. And fighters

01:11:25.740 really have to have that. And whatever else they did in their lives and however uneven the rest of

01:11:31.060 their personal lives may have been, they kind of know the answer to the question about themselves that

01:11:36.680 most of us outside of the military are probably still wondering about.

01:11:41.760 Paul, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about your book?

01:11:45.060 There's a lot more information about the book on my website, which is paulbestin.com. And it's

01:11:50.500 got a blog on there too, where I write about other things about these guys. And, you know,

01:11:54.300 the best place to buy the book is on Amazon.

01:11:56.060 Fantastic. Well, Paul Bestin, thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure.

01:11:59.100 Thank you, Brett.

01:12:00.040 My guest name is Paul Bestin. He's the author of the book, The Boxing Kings,

01:12:03.060 When American Heavyweights Ruled the Ring. It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere.

01:12:07.080 You can also find out more information about Paul's work at paulbestin.com. Also check out our

01:12:11.960 show notes at aom.is slash Boxing Kings, where you can find links to resources,

01:12:15.920 where you can delve deeper into this topic.

01:12:25.640 Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,

01:12:30.000 make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. If you enjoyed

01:12:33.320 the podcast, I've gotten something out of it. I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to give us a

01:12:36.680 view on iTunes or Stitcher. It helps out a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you so much.

01:12:40.080 Please share the show with a friend or family member who you think would also enjoy it. As always,

01:12:44.900 thank you for your continued support. And until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay

01:12:48.420 manly.

The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

#386： The Rise and Fall of the American Heavyweight

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