3 weigh-ins on the day of the fight? Yep. It happened in this classic encounter.

[Tom Cruise]

The great promoter Tex Rickard was about to start his illustrious promoting career with the staging of a fight between world lightweight champion Joe Gans and the famous Battling Nelson. The fight was to take place in the boomtown of Goldfield, Nevada.

Nelson's manager Billy Nolan made every twist and turn to give his fighter the advantage.

Of the purse of $33,500 Nelson demanded $22,500. The champion Joe Gans got $11K.

The referee was to be George Siler who had been the ref. when Joe Gans threw a fight against Terry McGovern and he was prejudiced against blacks.

The last demand was the weigh-in. Nolan wanted to take advantage of Joe Gans's trouble of making the weight. When Gans asked that the weighing-in time be set at noon, three hours before the fight, Nolan countered with some requests of his own. He won them all. The men would weigh in three times on Labor Day (the day of the fight): at noon, at 1:30 and 3 o'clock, ringtime. The boxers would weigh in wearing their ring togs—shoes and trunks. If Gans was a fraction of an ounce overweight at any of the three weighins, Nolan threatened, he would claim a forfeit.

At noon the fighters weighed-in for the first time. The scales, set at 133 pounds, did not stir. It was the same story at the second weigh-in, at 1:30 p.m.

Gans had taken extraordinary precautions to keep within the limit: He had shaved practically every hair off his head, face and body and wore no socks. He had even tied his ring shoes with thin strings instead of shoelaces.

At 3 o'clock sharp, Gans stepped on the scales, and then Nelson, for the third time that day. Again the bar did not move.

Just before the fight started, Gans was handed a telegram from his mother. It's last four words immediately became a part of the common glossary in America. The wire read:

"JOE, THE EYES OF THE WORLD ARE ON YOU. EVERYBODY SAYS YOU OUGHT TO WIN. YOUNG PETER JACKSON WILL TELL ME THE NEWS AND YOU BRING HOME THE BACON."

And so it was on labor-day sep. 3 1906 in Goldfield Nevada. The rest is history.

Cool read.

Did that phrase genuinely come from this incident?

[Tom Cruise]

One field of endeavour in which one's body, that is, bacon, is the key to one's fortune is boxing, and it is in that sport that the expression first became widely used.

Bring home the baconJoe Gans and 'Battling' Oliver Nelson fought for the widely reported world lightweight championship on 3rd September 1906. In coverage of the fight, the New York newspaper The Post-Standard, 4th September 1906, reported that:

Before the fight Gans received a telegram from his mother: "Joe, the eyes of the world are on you. Everybody says you ought to win. Peter Jackson will tell me the news and you bring home the bacon."

Gans (on the right in the picture) won the fight, and The New York Times printed a story saying that he had replied by telegraph that he "had not only the bacon, but the gravy", and that he later sent his mother a cheque for $6,000.

A month later, in October 1906, The Oakland Tribune reported another boxing correspondent, Ray Peck, predicting the result of the impending Al Kaufmann/Sam Berger fight in California like this:

Kaufmann will bring home the bacon. [He did]

There are no newspaper records, or any other printed records that I can find, of 'bring home the bacon' dating from before September 1906, but there are many, most of them boxing-related, from soon afterwards. That's not exactly proof that the expression was coined by the good Mrs Gans, but we can say at least that she was the one who brought it into the public arena.

Well I'll be damned. Love that kind of thing