Please leave the light on

By James Blears

The World Boxing Council has been the primary pioneer of safety over the years, making the sport more humane, especially for its hands on participants.

This has involved reducing world championship rounds from fifteen to twelve, life insurance for the competitors, a fourth rope to often save the head of a knocked down fighter crashing with heavy impact on the canvass, attaching the thumb to the rest of the glove to prevent gouging, brain scans, proper medicals, compulsory anti doping tests, graduated weigh ins, and careful ranking of fighters.

To understand boxing, we have to take on board and embrace its history and appreciate that without these changes and innovations, the sport would have remained savage with many fatalities and life changing/challenging  illnesses.  The Great Don Jose Sulaiman used to say that he was determined to prevent boxers ending up talking to walls and ducking away from imaginary blows in twilight years, and being left penniless.

The careers and the rivalry of all time greats Harry Greb and Mickey Walker epitomized this dilemma, and why Boxing had to evolve from the bad old days to the modern era.

On July 2^nd 1925 the two fought a rugged middleweight battle at New York`s Polo Grounds, which Harry won on points after fifteen grueling rounds. Way back then, the thumb was not attached to gloves. Afterwards the two happened upon one another in a speak easy.

By this time, both were well into their cups!  Mickey argued that he`d have won the fight if Harry hadn`t gauged him in the eye.  Harry took umbrage and asked Mickey if he wanted to start round sixteen outside. The two battled it out on the sidewalk and legend has it, they both ended up in hospital.

Their careers defy credibility, logic and gravity.  Harry who was born in 1894, and died just thirty two later, reputedly fought two hundred and ninety eight times over thirteen years.  His record is not easy to gauge, but In 1917, he fought thirty seven times, winning thirty four, which is a staggering record, that will stand forever…and a day!  In that fateful year, he beat ex light heavyweight champion Jack Dillon, leading middleweight George chip, and heavyweight Willie Meehan, who`d just defeated future heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey! Harry was fighting with such frequency that he hardly bothered to train in a gym.  He was known as the Pittsburgh Windmill for his nonstop action. But also as the Smoke City Wildcat.

With no mandatories in those days, Harry had to fool middleweight champion Johnny Wilson into accepting his challenge in the blazing August of 1923.  He achieved this by paying waiters to fill his glass with water instead of spirits and pretending to be fall down drunk in public places.

But Harry`s finest hour came  a year earlier, when he fought Gene Tunney for the first time, relieving Gene of his American light heavyweight crown, breaking his nose in two places and opening a deep gash above his left eye.  Harry pleaded with the Referee to stop the fight.  But the Ref was far too busy wiping blood off Harry`s gloves and was deceived by Gene sweetly smiling.  After this painful working over, Gene had to spend a week in bed The Ring Magazine declared it Fight of the Year for 1922.  Gene won a controversial rematch a year later and they fought a total of five times.

All the more remarkable, because in 1921 Harry had been gouged in the right eye by Kid Norfolk, and the resulting retinal tear meant that he went blind in that eye.  He only revealed this to family and close friends, memorizing the eye test charts to trick the medical teams. Following his retirement in 1926 his right eye was removed and replaced by a glass one.

The man who fought everyone and feared no one in the ring, started to ask his wife to leave the light on at night because he was frightened of the dark, as he knew that he could go completely blind.

Burned out and worn out from the fighting, Harry went into hospital for surgery on his nose and throat.  He died on the operating table.

Mickey “Toy Bulldog” Walker was also remarkable.  Born in Elizabeth New Jersey in 1901, he was welterweight and middleweight champion, and would have been light heavyweight champion but his fight against champion “Slapsie” Maxie Rosenbloom in 1934 was a non title bout.

Mickey fought one hundred and sixty three times and sixty of these were KO`s.  He lost twenty five times.  He boxed sixteen times in 1921.  He won the welterweight crown, outpointing Jack Britton a year later.  He wasn’t able to defeat Harry in 1925 to win the middleweight crown. But a year later he defeated Tiger Flowers for the middleweight crown, which he held on to for another five years.

Incredible to contemplate that although Mickey was only five feet seven inches or one hundred and seventy cms tall, he moved up to heavyweight and fought a draw with ex champion Jack Sharkey in 1931. Back to reality a year later against Max Schmeling, who stopped him, but it took eight rounds before he was saved!

Mickey was multi talented.  An accomplished artist, his work was exhibited in New York and London galleries.  He was a talented golfer, dragging manager Jack Kearns and family to the fairways at every opportunity.  Following his retirement, he opened up a hugely successful bar in New York.

But his boxing career eventually exacted a terrible physical toll on Mickey.  Found lying on a New Jersey street on a freezing night in 1974, cops and doctors thought he was fall down drunk.  Then on closer examination he was found to have Parkinsons, Arterialsclerosis and actute Anemia.  Admitted to the Marlboro Psychiatric Hospital, Mickey died on April 28^th 1981.  It had all started in New Jersey, where it finally and sadly ended.