with saliva dripping through their grins. They did not like regulation, but they did not mind the appearance of regulation—nor its confusing and chaotic replication. This was turf they could exploit, and the vultures were quick to land. Arnold Rothstein, the man rumored to have fixed the 1919 World Series with the help of the former world featherweight champion Abe Attell, would go to the fights then hold court at Lindy's, at Seventh Avenue at 53rd Street, a place where you could get bagels, booze, and the skinny on the next big fight. He would sit ringside at the Garden, handing out threats and favors to whoever he chose. In Chicago, Al Capone, a fight fan but bigger enthusiast of making money, bullied his way into the affections of promoters and managers.
Whatever arms were twisted for whatever result, there were still great fights at the Garden—such as the contest in 1922 between Harry Greb, who trained on sex and illegal liquor, and the upright Catholic intellectual Gene Tunney. Tunney, who liked to think of himself as a man of letters and who numbered George Bernard Shaw among his friends, was handed his only defeat by Greb, a man for whom reading and writing were not so much chores as irrelevant, except when filling out betting slips. It was a victory for the bad guys. There would be many more.
Young hoods rubbed shoulders with Babe Ruth, who'd moved to New York from Boston in 1920, and in April of 1923 hit a home run to open Yankee Stadium (within ten days of the opening of Wembley Stadium and the White Horse FA Cup Final). These were thrilling, dangerous days, full of adventure for anyone game enough to try their luck with the city's lowlife.
As Yankee Stadium was going up, Madison Square Garden II, White's gauche monument to a bygone age, was about to be reduced to rubble. America was moving on at a furious lick. Nothing was expected to last, except the myths. America lived for today, furiously. The sage Westbrook Pegler called it “the era of wonderful nonsense,” and much of it would be played out on the canvas stretched across the ring of all the Gardens.
The cream of New York's crime scene attended the last fight night at Garden II on 25th Street. It was May 5, 1925, an evening that dripped in schmaltz. Tiny Joe Humphries, the Michael Buffer of his day, wiped the traces of tears from his eyes, dragged down the overhead microphone, and intoned with all the solemnity he could muster (which was considerable): “Before presenting the stellar attraction in this, the final contest in our beloved home, I wish to say this marks the ‘crossing of the bar’ for this venerable old arena that has stood the acid test these memorable years. And let us pay tribute to Tex Rickard and the other great gentlemen and sportsmen who have assembled within these hallowed portals.”
Characterizing Rickard as “a great gentleman” stretched the sinews of old Joe's irony cells. Only three years earlier Tex had to draw on every smart friend he had, from politicians to lawyers, to extract himself from messy allegations that he'd pestered young girls. Old Joe soldiered on nevertheless. You could almost hear the violins from some celestial eyrie as he wound up: “Goodbye then, old temple, farewell to thee, oh Goddess Diana standing on your tower. Goodnight all . . . until we meet again!”
Cue thunderous reception—and on with the motley.
The closer that summer's night of 1925 brought together Johnny “The Scotch Wop” Dundee (he was born in Sciacca, Sicily, and grew up in New York as Giuseppe Carrora until his pro career started and he made an apparent nod toward a Caledonian constituency) and Sid Terris over twelve rounds at featherweight. Sid won on points.
When the tumult subsided, and the boxers gathered together their kit bags to leave that Garden for the last time, one John F. Mullins strode into the ring in the distinctive colors of the Fighting 69th, bedecked with his war medals, and played taps. Hallelujah!
This was the height of the roaring twenties, and Rickard's reign at Garden III, although it would be brief, was about to begin. The bootleggers, criminals, and various investors could hardly wait. Rickard, who'd promoted Jack Dempsey, co-opted the future New York State governor W. Averill Harriman to join his consortium of investors at the new establishment. In the hectic tempo of the decade, it took a mere 249 days to build the place on Eighth Avenue and 49th Street.
By most authoritative accounts, the first fighters to step into the new ring at Garden III were Paul Berlenbach and Jack Delaney, on Friday, December 11, 1925. Rickard was the promoter—alongside one Vince McMahon, the grandfather of the Vince McMahon known to wrestling fans today as the owner of and sometime participant in World Wrestling Entertainment.
Berlenbach and Delaney contested Berlenbach's light heavyweight title over the championship distance of the day, fifteen rounds, and, inevitably, not all was as it seemed. Some of the 17,575 customers who'd filed in from the speakeasies around Broadway that night no doubt imagined Delaney was Irish, a sure ticket-selling bonus in those days. Jack was, in fact, a French Canadian called Ovila Chapdelaine. So, for the purposes of commerce, the chap Delaine morphed into the chap Delaney. We can be reasonably sure Paul did not change his name to Berlenbach; most things German had little cachet after the Great War.
Whatever their real names or worth as fighting men, this is how the fight was recorded in the papers of the day: “Floored for a count of three in the fourth and punched groggy in the sixth and seventh, Berlenbach came back in the last six rounds with a stirring rally which saved for him the title he had wrested from Mike McTigue. His margin of victory was close, however, for newspapermen at ringside gave him only seven rounds, to six for the challenger, while two were even. . . . But the outstanding factor in his success was indomitable courage in the face of almost certain defeat.”
Rickard pushed that fight as the first in the new Garden. However, a disputed and little-known version exists that maintains the first fight in the new 1925 ring occurred three nights earlier, an amateur flyweight contest between Jack McDermott and Johnny Erickson. But no respected archivist has been able to confirm it took place.
What is not in dispute is that Rickard died on January 6, 1929, cut down at fifty-nine after an operation for appendicitis went wrong. It was nine months before the Wall Street Crash, not a bad time to check out. He left behind a string of memorable nights. The fighters who flocked to New York in the twenties, most of them performing at the Garden, most of them paid by Rickard, included Benny Leonard, Jack Dempsey, Jimmy Wilde, Ted Kid Lewis, Jack Kid Berg, Teddy Baldock, Georges Carpentier, Mickey Walker, Jack Britton, Irishman Mike McTigue, Pancho Villa, Luis Firpo, Harry Greb, Jimmy McLarnin, Jack Sharkey, Tommy Loughran, and Max Schmeling.
As the twenties closed, America was still “dry.” But citizens were tired of Prohibition, tired of big government, tired of being pushed around. The restrictions spluttered on until 1933, as the Depression wiped out jobs and hope. In the thirteen years of its life, Prohibition had given the Mob time to establish the sort of dominance it had dreamed of. The gangsters had control of the triple thrills of drinking, gambling, and fighting. Like the financial crisis sweeping the world, nobody knew how, where, or when it would end.
What everyone knew was the Garden was now the hub of boxing, the nation's, the world's most accessible and glamorous sports entertainment. The lights of Broadway had worked their magic yet again.
This was the state of the game when Mike Jacobs, now near fifty, aspired to step into Rickard's shoes. He'd hung in there, insinuating himself deeper into the upper reaches of the business's hierarchy. He knew every fighter, manager, and promoter in the business. He didn't necessarily like them, and most of those he did business with didn't much care for him. Surely, though, he would be the new Rickard.
Not straight away. The old power structure remained in place. The Garden was not there to be taken without a fight. It was in the hands of people who loved power, influence, and money just as much as Jacobs and his friends did. The expatriate Liverpudlian Jimmy Johnston was the matchmaker at the Garden and would remain so for a few years yet. But Jacobs was a patient man. And his associates had the sort of money that brooked no argument. His friendship with Damon Runyon, in particular, would prove crucial in the years to come.
Chapter 4
Owney Madden and Lucky Jim
A lot of desperate men resorted to earning a living with their fists when most of the legal options disappeared during the Great Depression. And, where there