Top Boxing Writer Ever?

[Willie Pep 229]

Did you see that they pulled down the false offer that Queenie kept bringing up from that link he provided? Just a generic mention of boxing promoting now.

https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/harry-frazee/

Probably because of you writing to them and showing that it was incorrect. Good work!

Queenie is still claiming the offer was from 1920....when he isn't claiming that it's somehow from 2020

No I have not looked I forgot about it. I will look. I remember I told them that it was likely a typo because they had the correct month (March) and the correct date (4th or 5th, I not sure anylonger.). So I suspect they did their homework originally but must have lost faith in themselves and took it down. Lol

But yes, they originally had the 1920 date but the month and day was for the 1922 article. So I questioned them about it. I cited the NYTimes article for them but I guess it was just easier to rewrite it with a vague statement.

The article is still available on the NYTimes archive. Search Frazee;Dempsey for 1922 and you will find it.

P.S. They had the correct figure as well, $350,000.

[Willie Pep 229]

Did you see that they pulled down the false offer that Queenie kept bringing up from that link he provided? Just a generic mention of boxing promoting now.

https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/harry-frazee/

Probably because of you writing to them and showing that it was incorrect. Good work!

Queenie is still claiming the offer was from 1920....when he isn't claiming that it's somehow from 2020

I just read it - I can't believe the Henry Ford letter (actually I can).

"One article, in particular, excoriated Frazee, attacking him for promoting boxing matches featuring “Negro” fighters, . . ."

I'll bet that was the Wills-Dempsey offer Ford was referring to.

[travestyny]

I just read it - I can't believe the Henry Ford letter (actually I can).

"One article, in particular, excoriated Frazee, attacking him for promoting boxing matches featuring “Negro” fighters, . . ."

I'll bet that was the Wills-Dempsey offer Ford was referring to.

Good find! Man....Henry Ford's weekly anti-Semitic newspaper? Who knew? I certainly didn't.

[QueensburyRules]

Some conjecture on the Frazee offers . . .

Dempsey made just over $100,000 for each Miske and Brennan.

Tex Rickard then shocked the world by offering Dempsey $300,000 for the Carpentier fight.

Rickard offered Kearns either the 300K or a percentage of the gate, Kearns insisted on the flat 300K. After the fight drew 75K plus, the sports writers did the math and Dempsey would have made $427,000 had he taken the percentage.

Kearns had egg on his face . . . and both the sports wags and Tex Rickard didn't hesitate to bring it up.

While Frazee's first offer of $350,000 in 1922 makes sense, that he would go 50K over the Carpentier guarantee, Kearns who was trying to redeem his image kept making noise that he wanted a $500,000 flat fee for Dempsey.

After Kearns turned down several other guarantee for less, Frazee then stepped up and made Kearns the 500K offer he was demanding.

- - Of course none of this has anything to do with boxing writers thanks to our resident cut and white paste eating ADD 3rd grader trying for the consecutive longevity record of 3rd grade years completed.

Much of the myth and tragedy of Frazee had to do with Henry Ford's virulent anti ***ish views he published in a weekly paper. Frazee doesn't appear to be ***ish by record, but I'd gather by looks and theater associations compounded by being in league with the Yankee owner, they opposed the new baseball commish, the regrettable Judge Landis who never met a man he didn't want to toss into the clink, so Frazee becomes baseball's punching bag.

Nonetheless, Frazee was a natural promoter with the venue first in Boston and then NYC for Wills/Dempsey as I provided in my links. Boxing was guaranteed $$$ in the bank compared to boom or bust theater productions.

[QueensburyRules]

- - Getting back to Sammons, he breaks down the details of the Ali Supreme Court decision that had Ali out and about earning money while on bond that infuriated Vet groups.

Needless to say with race riots burning and more to come, the hot poker was booted back to lower courts for another look twice. Finally Doomsday arrived and they were ready with a 5-3 verdict to uphold the Ali conviction when Judge Harlan's youthful aides begged him to read autobios of Malcolm(my copy in my library) and Elijah, so by vote time it was a 4-4 tie with Thurgood Marshall recusing because he had been the Solicitor General who brought the case to the Feds to begin with.

The tie upholds the conviction without an opinion of the court that all were against, rightly fearing the national backlash and their own tepid legacies, so one justice found a minor technical error that they all jumped on to release Ali from his conviction. The case featured FBI wiretaps of Ali conversations with MLK that were rightly not admitted into court probably because they were illegal.

But, of course, you owning the book already knew this...

[The Old LefHook]

Has any writer devoted a book of short stories exclusively to boxing and its environment?

[The Old LefHook]

Here is something right here. Looks like an anthology. Haven't tried it yet. Don't know if you actually have to pay.

https://www.shortstoryguide.com/boxing-short-stories/

[The Old LefHook]

Here is an old one from the public domain, lads. From the author who created Conan the Barbarian. I haven't read it yet. Don't know if it is any good, but a great title.

https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0609081h.html

[HOUDINI563]

Very hard not to rate Fleischer very highly. He watched live from ringside every heavyweight champion in their prime from Johnson to Frazier. He was also an amateur boxer himself so he knew the sport not just write about it.

[The Old LefHook]

I see expertise as different from proficiency. Fleischer was centrally placed to have great impact, and for his opinion to be meaningful. The literary worth of his writing depends only on the writing itself. It has significant historical worth even if it had no literary worth. I could have divided the question into literary writing and journalistic. It is probably not possible to find anyone as historically significant to boxing writing as Fleischer, since he published many authors and penned articles himself.