The Battle of the Century

The Battle of the Century
Author: Jim Waltzer
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2011-05-04
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 031338245X

This exciting account of the 1921 heavyweight boxing title fight between champion Jack Dempsey and Frenchman Georges Carpentier relates how it originated and how it became a template for modern sports promotion. Immortalized as the battle of the century by Ring Lardner, the Dempsey-Carpentier heavyweight title bout marked America's first experience with the intersection of show business, high society, politics, and the underworld at a single sporting event. The Battle of the Century: Dempsey, Carpentier, and the Birth of Modern Promotion offers the definitive history of this landmark event's genesis and impact. To explain why the fight had such a far-reaching influence on mass entertainment and modern culture, newspaperman Jim Waltzer invites readers to travel the path to the 1921 heavyweight championship. Along the way, they will meet a cast of outsize characters, including the savage defending champion (and alleged World War I slacker) Jack Dempsey, French pretty-boy war hero Georges Carpentier, promoter Tex Rickard, Dempsey's slippery manager Doc Kearns, and Jersey City boss Frank Hague. As the tale unfolds, so does an understanding of the forces that shaped the Roaring Twenties and established promotional hype as the MO of business.

Jack Dempsey

Jack Dempsey
Author: Randy Roberts
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2003
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780252071485

A biography of Jack Dempsey, Heavyweight Champion of the World from 1919-1926.

The Main Event

The Main Event
Author: Richard O. Davies
Publisher: University of Nevada Press
Total Pages: 483
Release: 2014-04-21
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0874179386

Richard O. Davies won Foreword Reviews' INDIEFAB Book of the Year Bronze Medal in Sports for The Main Event: Boxing in Nevada from the Mining Camps to the Las Vegas Strip. Davies' book was chosen as one of the best indie books of 2014. As the twentieth century dawned, bare-knuckle prizefighting was transforming into the popular sport of boxing, yet simultaneously it was banned as immoral in many locales. Nevada was the first state to legalize it, in 1897, solely to stage the Corbett-Fitzsimmons world heavyweight championship in Carson City. Davies shows that the history of boxing in Nevada is integral to the growth of the sport in America. Promoters such as Tex Rickard brought in fighters like Jack Dempsey to the mining towns of Goldfield and Tonopah and presented the Johnson-Jeffries “Fight of the Century” in Reno in 1910. Prizefights sold tickets, hotel rooms, drinks, meals, and bets on the outcomes. It was boxing\--before gambling, prostitution, and easy divorce\--that first got Nevada called “America’s Disgrace” and the “Sin State.” The Main Event explores how boxing’s growth in Nevada relates to the state’s role as a social and cultural outlier. Starting in the Rat Pack era, organized gambling’s moguls built arenas outside the Vegas casinos to stage championships\--more than two hundred from 1960 to the present. Tourists and players came to see and bet on historic bouts featuring Sonny Liston, Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Sugar Ray Leonard, Mike Tyson, and other legends of the ring. From the celebrated referee Mills Lane to the challenge posed by mixed martial arts in contemporary Las Vegas, the story of boxing in Nevada is a prism for viewing the sport. Davies utilizes primary and secondary sources to analyze how boxing in the Silver State intersects with its tourist economy and libertarian values, paying special attention to issues of race, class, and gender. Written in an engaging style that shifts easily between narrative and analysis, The Main Event will be essential reading for sports fans and historians everywhere.

The Rube's Waterloo

The Rube's Waterloo
Author: Zane Grey
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 23
Release: 2014-02-27
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1609774299

Zane Grey (January 31, 1872 - October 23, 1939) was an American author best known for his popular adventure novels and stories that presented an idealized image of the American frontier, including the novel Riders of the Purple Sage, his bes selling book. This is one of his stories.

Game On

Game On
Author: David Bockino
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 287
Release:
Genre:
ISBN: 1496239350

Sport and the Color Line

Sport and the Color Line
Author: Patrick B. Miller
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 465
Release: 2004-06
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1135941173

The essays presented here examine the complexity of black American sports culture, from the organization of semi-pro baseball and athletic programs at historically black colleges and universities, to the careers of individual stars such as Jack Johnson and Joe Louis, to the challenges faced by black women in sports.

Tex Rickard

Tex Rickard
Author: Colleen Aycock
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2014-01-10
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0786490179

Whether opening saloons, raising cattle, or promoting sporting events, George Lewis "Tex" Rickard (1870-1929) possessed a drive to be the best. After an early career as a cowboy and Texas sheriff, Rickard pioneered the largest ranch in South America, built a series of profitable saloons in the Klondike and Nevada gold rushes, and turned boxing into a million-dollar sport. As "the Father of Madison Square Garden," he promoted over 200 fights, including some of the most notable of the 20th century: the "Longest Fight," the "Great White Hope," fight, and the famous "Long Count" fight. Along the way, he rubbed shoulders with some of history's most renowned figures, including Teddy Roosevelt, Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, John Ringling, Jack Dempsey, and Gene Tunney. This detailed biography chronicles Rickard's colorful life and his critical role in the evolution of boxing from a minor sport to a modern spectacle.

The Longest Fight

The Longest Fight
Author: William Gildea
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2012-06-19
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1429942800

Many people came to Goldfield, Nevada, America's last gold-rush town, to seek their fortune. However, on a searing summer day in September 1906, they came not to strike it rich but to watch what would become the longest boxing match of the twentieth century—between Joe Gans, the first African American boxing champion, and "Battling" Nelson, a vicious and dirty brawler. It was a match billed as the battle of the races. In The Longest Fight, the longtime Washington Post sports correspondent William Gildea tells the story of this epic match, which would stretch to forty-two rounds and last two hours and forty-eight minutes. A new rail line brought spectators from around the country, dozens of reporters came to file blow-by-blow accounts, and an entrepreneurial crew's film of the fight, shown in theaters shortly afterward, endures to this day. The Longest Fight also recounts something much greater—the longer battle that Gans fought against prejudice as the premier black athlete of his time. It is a portrait of life in black America at the turn of the twentieth century, of what it was like to be the first black athlete to successfully cross the nation's gaping racial divide. Gans was smart, witty, trim, and handsome—with one-punch knockout power and groundbreaking defensive skills—and his courage despite discrimination prefigured the strife faced by many of America's finest athletes, including Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, and Muhammad Ali. Inside the ring and out, Gans took the first steps for the African American athletes who would follow, and yet his role in history was largely forgotten until now. The Longest Fight is a reminder of the damage caused by the bigotry that long outlived Gans, and the strength, courage, and will of those who fought to rise above.

The Life and Teams of Johnny F. Bassett

The Life and Teams of Johnny F. Bassett
Author: Denis M. Crawford
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2021-01-29
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1476684324

One of the most influential sportsmen of the late 20th century, Johnny F. Bassett's marketing wizardry belied his impact on professional hockey and football. A Canadian showman with a Barnumesque flair for spectacle, Bassett challenged the orthodoxy of sports, building sporting utopias in the fatally flawed World Football League, World Hockey Association, and United States Football League. He catered to the common fan, demanded fair treatment of athletes, and forced the sporting establishment to change the way it did business, often to his own detriment. Drawing on archival research and interviews with Bassett's contemporaries, this comprehensive biography chronicles his life in and around professional sports: his quixotic attempt to compete with the Maple Leafs; his stunning coup in signing three members of the reigning Super Bowl champions for his WFL team; his battles with the Canadian government over American football; his audacious marketing of hockey in Alabama; and his rivalry with Donald Trump for the soul of the USFL.

Sports in America from Colonial Times to the Twenty-First Century: An Encyclopedia

Sports in America from Colonial Times to the Twenty-First Century: An Encyclopedia
Author: Steven A. Riess
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 2636
Release: 2015-03-26
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1317459466

A unique new reference work, this encyclopedia presents a social, cultural, and economic history of American sports from hunting, bowling, and skating in the sixteenth century to televised professional sports and the X Games today. Nearly 400 articles examine historical and cultural aspects of leagues, teams, institutions, major competitions, the media and other related industries, as well as legal and social issues, economic factors, ethnic and racial participation, and the growth of institutions and venues. Also included are biographical entries on notable individuals—not just outstanding athletes, but owners and promoters, journalists and broadcasters, and innovators of other kinds—along with in-depth entries on the history of major and minor sports from air racing and archery to wrestling and yachting. A detailed chronology, master bibliography, and directory of institutions, organizations, and governing bodies—plus more than 100 vintage and contemporary photographs—round out the coverage.