The sweet science goes back a long way in Minnesota history
(Editor’s note: Part five of a seven-part series about local, area, and state amateur and professional boxing.)
By RODNEY HATLE
Contributing Writer
Boxing history in Minnesota has deep roots. The fight game was planted previous to 1910, when the first famous St. Paul brothers, Tommy and Mike Gibbons, were young pros. That was 40 years before Del and Glen Flanagan.
One of the nationally ranked fighters of the 1940s was Jackie Graves from nearby Austin. Publicity prone media writers called him “The Austin Atom” when at age 22 he was 128 pounds. Ranked No.2 during only his second year as a pro, he got his chance at the world featherweight title in 1946. Champion Willie Pep was a year older. Pep’s lifetime record would become 229-11-1 over 26 years.
“The fight itself shook the walls of the Minneapolis Auditorium. Graves sent Pep to the canvas twice [in the sixth]. Pep dropped Graves nine times [total], winning by TKO in the eighth round.”
Graves broke his left hand in the second round.“Pep said Graves was the hardest puncher he ever faced.” (Boxing News 24 Forum, 2006)
Mike Gibbons, a middleweight and welterweight, won 112 of 133 bouts from about 1910 to the mid-1920s.
Heavyweight Tommy Gibbons was nearly undefeated in 106 bouts, winning 96 while losing five. The other five were draws. One of his losses was in 1923, “the fight of their lives,” meaning both he and the great Jack Dempsey for the world heavyweight championship.
Gibbons went the full 15 rounds with “the star athlete of the era” who was earning “$500,000 a year compared with Babe Ruth’s $80,000.”
Another of Gibbons’ losses was in 1925 to Gene Tunney, who became heavyweight champ the next year by defeating Dempsey.
In a 1949 Twin Cities radio interview, Gibbons admitted he was not a great puncher. “I learned the technique of hitting a fellow where it was most vulnerable – a left hook, under the arm, the liver, the center of all nerve centers.” That sapped the strength of an opponent.
These are among the best boxers who fought professionally a dozen years and more. While they were experts at protecting themselves better than most, there was always a concern about neurological damage associated with the sport.
In all sports, both good and bad aspects are worth a look.
For instance, in boxing of the 1930s: “There weren’t many regulations ... no mandatory medicals, no requirement that fighters lay off for a month after suffering a knockout. Boxers fought too often, for too long,” admitted Jim O’Hara, former Minnesota heavyweight champion and boxing administrator in a 1999 interview. “A lot of fighters ... had cauliflower ears and busted noses. I saw a lot of broken people ... when they were through with boxing...” (“The Ring Cycle,” City Pages, 1999)
Nowadays, those who box in college and university athletic programs, which is a rarity, wear soft but sturdy protective headgear. Baseball eventually came to require hard helmets. As for football, during its earliest years it did not require helmets and, believe it or not, players let their hair grow long for at least that much protection. Hockey’s history is similar.
For a few decades, more than a few colleges and universities had intercollegiate boxing teams as part of their athletics. Boxing was variously started and discontinued at academic institutions. Currently, if there is boxing at that level, it is likely part of intramural programs.
Boxing began as “the manly art of self-defense” that soon enough became a sporting challenge. Bare-knuckle bouts date to the early 1700s in England, where “sometimes gloves were worn” which were for hand-protection, therefore small and tight. More than 150 years later, that kind of challenge became part of American sports in the late 1800s. That fight style, with the addition of kickboxing, which is a Japanese creation of 1960, is a part of the current trend to “ultimate” sports. (The Boxing Register)
Boxing is as fascinating as any athletic competition that requires mental and physical skills for endurance. Certainly, abuses become a part of it just as in team sports as well as individual and duel events.
Sports that survive do so because there is satisfaction and thrill in participation. Sometimes professional money, too.
On the January and February 1948 sports pages about the amateur Golden Gloves Tournaments in Minnesota are headlines competing with basketball, hockey, wrestling, swimming, diving and preparations for the coming baseball season – local, area, and major league.
But it was the Donoso progress in boxing that New Richland and area fans were following. He was winning in the tough and crowded welterweight division.
He was fighting all the way from District 17 to the Upper Midwest Championship in Minneapolis and on to the nationals in Chicago.
(To be continued)