How Tex Rickard Raised Purses For Championship Fights

Taranaki Daily News, 16 April 1935, Page 12

How Tex Rickard Raised Purses For Championship Fights

DREAM OF MILLL

rpHE crowds which thronged the mighty arenas erected by “Tex” Rickard for his series of heavyweight title fights, all billed as the “Battle of the Century,” are no more. Perhaps America will see again those vast gatherings which paid over millions of dollars for single fights. But it all seems just as much a dream again as it was back in 1906, when Rickard was at the head of the syndicate which put up the then unprecedented amount of £6OOO ■ for the lightweight championship fight between Battling Nelson and Joe Gans at Goldfield, Nevada, a little mining camp (writes Claude Corbett, in the Sydney' “Sun”). Recently I read again the romance of that promotion, written eight years ago by W. O. McGeehan. Goldfield had never been heard pf beyond its own State. It had one real mine, the Mohawk. and a fair amount of high-grade ore was being taken’out of it: All afbund were acres of sagebrush which promoters were anxious to sell as prospective bonanzas. At a meeting, of citizens the question of ways and means of getting Goldfield on the map was taken up; The camp intellectual said: “Get the Gans-Nelson fight, no matter what it costs; and the minute you sign the men the name of Goldfield will be in every newspaper in the United States and a good many in Europe.” The suggestion was accepted, and Rickard, who was in nartnership in a saloon known as the Northcan, was appointed to carry out negotiations and ' with full power to act. The $30,000 offer outstripped all chasers after fight, and McGeehan, representing a San Francisco paper, was first newspaper representative on the field. Candidly, he admits, he was sent to blow out the story, but Rickard showed him two pyramids of $2O gold pieces stacked in the open window of the bank. The larger one was marked “For Battling Nelson,” and the smaller “For Joe Gans.” The story was put over, and soon newspaper correspondents were pouring into Goldfield from all parts of the United States. Goldfield was on the map! Rickard, with his great vision, saw the huge possibilities in fight PrOmOtiOn. . -r Next came the Johnson-Jeffries fight at Reno, staged for the purpose of enabling the big. boilermaker to bring back the title, which Tommy Burns had lost in Sydney, to the white race. Jeffries failed miserably, but Rickard went on to mightier things. There was £54,150 in that gate, and everybody be-

N-DOLLAR GATES

lieved the limit had been reached. ‘Tex” moved on to New York, promoted the Jess Willard-Frank Moran fight, which drew only £30,310. All the same, that was more than ever had been taken for a prize-fight in New York.

Along came Jack Kearns with his budding champion, Jack Dempsey, and he convinced Rickard, and Dempsey fought Willard, who had won the title from Johnson in Cuba, at Toledo, Ohio. Willard got £20,000, Dempsey £5400, and it was conceded that he was being overpaid. However, the gate-records were £90,500, setting a record. Dempsey emerged from that fight hailed as the greatest fighter of all time and the best drawing card in the game. Dempsey fought Georges Carpentier in the arena specially built for the contest on Boyles Thirty Acres, Jersey City Ninety thousand people saw tne Frenchman quickly battered down. Rickard had to guarantee Dempsey £60,000, and Carpentier £40,000. A week before the fight £lOO,OOO in cash had been taken, and by the eve of the battle an even £200.000 was in the Rickard coffers.

This was added to by a further £llO,OOO. Firpo fought Dempsey in front of another million-dollar gate, but the peak was reached when Gene Tunney wrested the title from Dempsey at the Sesquicentennial Exhibition, at Philadelphia, when there was an intake of a round £400,000. That epitomises the rise of the man who, but for the suggestion to put a little mining camp on the map, may never have been heard of as a fight promoter. Rickard had packed up over the trails of the Chilkoot Pass, up in the Arctic Circle. He knew nothing about fighters. But was a showman with vision!