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At over six and a half feet tall and nearly 300 pounds, heavyweight champion Primo Carnera was a giant for his times, but today "the Ambling Alp" is too often written off as an unskilled oaf and a product of the mob dealings that plagued boxing during the 1930s. He may not have been a natural in the ring, but he worked as hard as any boxer to learn his craft, to be in top condition, and he repeatedly showed that he was tougher than nails. This biography details Carnera's early life and boxing career, his success as a fighter as well as accusations of fight fixing, his strengths and limitations in the ring, and his later career as a wrestler.
This book is dedicated to my grandfather, Clarence Middleton, who boxed while in the United States Army during WWI, and my Father, Dennis Middleton, who boxed while in the United States Navy during WWII. My first memories were watching my Dad workout when I was a young kid. He used Boxing and weight training routines as a way to exercise after the war.
For much of the twentieth century, boxing was one of America’s most popular sports, and the heavyweight champions were figures known to all. Their exploits were reported regularly in the newspapers—often outside the sports pages—and their fame and wealth dwarfed those of other athletes. Long after their heyday, these icons continue to be synonymous with the “sweet science.” In The Boxing Kings: When American Heavyweights Ruled the Ring, Paul Beston profiles these larger-than-life men who held a central place in American culture. Among the figures covered are John L. Sullivan, who made the heavyweight championship a commercial property; Jack Johnson, who became the first black man to claim the title; Jack Dempsey, a sporting symbol of the Roaring Twenties; Joe Louis, whose contributions to racial tolerance and social progress transcended even his greatness in the ring; Rocky Marciano, who became an embodiment of the American Dream; Muhammad Ali, who took on the U.S. government and revolutionized professional sports with his showmanship; and Mike Tyson, a hard-punching dynamo who typified the modern celebrity. This gallery of flawed but sympathetic men also includes comics, dandies, bookworms, divas, ex-cons, workingmen, and even a tough-guy-turned-preacher. As the heavyweight title passed from one claimant to another, their stories opened a window into the larger history of the United States. Boxing fans, sports historians, and those interested in U.S. race relations as it intersects with sports will find this book a fascinating exploration into how engrained boxing once was in America’s social and cultural fabric.
Paints an unvarnished picture of the 24 greats who have ruled the sport's most glamorous division - the Heavyweight Champions of the World. Tells all the inside stories of the great ring bouts, the men who fought those grueling rounds, and the men who made and managed the champs.
Discusses the origins and evolution of the sport of boxing, as well as memorable events and key personalities in the game's history.
For six decades the World Colored Heavyweight Championship was a useful tool of racial oppression--the existence of the title far more important to the white public than its succession of champions. It took some extraordinary individuals, most notably Jack Johnson, to challenge "the color line" in the ring, although the title and the black fighters who contended for it continued until the reign of Joe Louis a generation later. This history traces the advent and demise of the Championship, the stories of the 28 professional athletes who won it, and the demarcation of the color line both in and out of the ring.
The world heavyweight boxing championship once transcended the sport, conferring global renown. This book gives detailed coverage to five legendary championship bouts that captivated audiences worldwide. Coaxed out of retirement by the press, former champ James J. Jeffries challenged black titleholder Jack Johnson--universally despised by white audiences--in 1910, in hopes of returning the title to the white race. In 1921, dapper World War I hero and light-heavyweight champion Georges Carpentier hoped to upset heavyweight champ Jack Dempsey, widely considered a draft-dodger, in a fight that garnered the first "million dollar gate." In perhaps the most politically charged bout ever, "Brown Bomber" Joe Louis, popular with both white and black America, faced Nazi Germany's Max Schmeling--the first ever to win the title by disqualification--at a sold-out Yankee stadium in 1938. A relentless brawler, undefeated Rocky Marciano in 1952 sought to bludgeon the title away from the more experienced and savvier Joe Walcott, at 38 the oldest heavyweight champ in history. In a monumental clash of two undefeated world champions, Muhammad Ali--on the comeback trail after his title was stripped from him for refusing to be drafted during the Vietnam War--squared off with titleholder Joe Frazier in 1971.
When he died in 1933, James J. "Gentleman Jim" Corbett was honored by two distinguished groups of people: the professional boxing public, who celebrated him as America's greatest boxing champion, and the world of popular theater admirers, who revered him as one of Broadway's top vaudeville headliners. Corbett was uniquely instrumental in making boxing and popular theater both justifiable commercial enterprises, to be enjoyed by all classes of people. He became America's first national sports hero and went on to formulate the theater world's star system. This is the first definitive biography of the man who knocked out heavyweight champion John L. Sullivan, and who also knocked out audiences who flocked to see him in vaudeville and silent pictures. The focus herein is on the real man, the influences on his life, and the social and commercial environment within which he functioned. The author reveals that Corbett was a complex, driven, enigmatic man whose dedicated participation in popular entertainment changed American social values and mores, and at the same time reinvented the notion of a national hero.
Ingemar Johansson's right hand--dubbed "The Hammer of Thor"--was the most fearsome in boxing, and Johansson's three fights with Floyd Patterson rank among the sport's classic rivalries. Yet most fans know little about the Swedish playboy who won the world heavyweight championship with a shocking third round knockout of Patterson and held it for six days short of a year (1959-1960). During his reign, the raffish "Ingo" hit fashionable nightspots on two continents, romanced Elizabeth Taylor, and refused to kowtow to the mobsters who controlled boxing. This first-ever biography of Johansson chronicles his fistic triumphs as a Goteborg teen prodigy, his humiliating disqualification for "cowardice" at the 1952 Olympics, his storybook romances with Birgit Lundgren and Edna Alsterlund and his post-career life and tragic early dementia.