The Boxing Monopoly Puts On The Squeeze

From the Marquis of Queensberry to the Golden Gloves, the sport of boxing has enjoyed some highly respected and respectable sponsorship. And why shouldn't it? It is a natural sport: the joke about the brand-new father arriving at the cribside with a pair of boxing gloves is a caricature founded on recognizable truth. The exploits of a Babe Ruth or a Red Grange have their enduring greatness, but it has always been—until lately—the heavyweight boxing champion who wore a unique glory, who somehow stood above the leaders of all sports as the champion of champions. The old names come easily to memory: John L. Sullivan, Jim Corbett, Bob Fitzsimmons, Jim Jeffries, Jack Johnson, Jess Willard, Jack Dempsey, Gene Tunney, Joe Louis. They were household names, folk-heroes.

Yet today, when TV has made boxing a truly national spectator sport and a pair of fairly good middleweights have an audience a hundred times the capacity of Boyle's Thirty Acres, boxing is immersed in scandal.

Last weeks SPORTS ILLUSTRATED showed how leaders of the International Boxing Club, which controls the leading arenas and fighters, and the underworld boxing syndicate headed by killer and hoodlum Frank Carbo, work together to dominate the sport. It was seen that James D. Norris, president of the IBC, has close personal ties with members of the underworld, including Carbo, and that a boxer lacking sponsorship from the "inside" finds it hard to get matches in IBC arenas or with affiliated promoters.

The question remains: how thorough is this control? Suppose, for instance, that one of this year's CYO tournaments or the Golden Gloves produces a boy with the makings of greatness. Suppose that he is a boy of high personal morality and that, having heard of the influences at work in professional boxing, he is determined to avoid them and yet reach the top. What chance does he have? The answer is that the odds are 100 to 1 against him.

This situation could not have developed without the cooperation of James D. Norris, nor could it survive except with his approval. But this is not surprising. Norris, who has had a life-long predilection for the company of hoodlums, could hardly have been shocked to find some of these erstwhile friends "cutting-in" on fighters and freezing-out their legitimate managers. For Norris—although he claims that he never has managed any fighter—had done the same thing himself, and evidently learned the technique early.

To show how the freeze-out works, and why even the best intentioned managers can not ordinarily survive except by submitting to Norris and his friends, we will examine this week the case histories of three managers. Their experiences are typical of many others. Each has given SI a signed and sworn statement that what he says is true. The first example, which dates Norris' propensity for "acquiring" fighters long before the IBC was born, is the short, sad story of Charles H. Caustin:

"I was born and raised in St. Charles, Ill. and have lived here all my life. I'm a mason contractor. I started boxing when I was about 15, and have been monkeying around with the gloves ever since. About 1925 I started an outdoor gym in St. Charles. Boys and young men used to flock to it from miles around. They'd hang around and watch the boxing in the ring. If I saw a boy there just watching, I'd say, 'What are you doing there?' He'd say, 'Just looking.' Then I'd ask, 'Do you want to learn to box?'

"If he said yes, I'd tell him, 'Well, go down to the basement and change. You'll find some spare equipment.' When the boy came back up, he'd get a chance to spar. The best thing about it was I never charged a fee. This was my hobby—and the boys enjoyed it too.

"One day in the early 1930s I noticed a boy with a pretty good build hanging around, watching what went on. I asked him the usual question, and he said he'd like to learn to box. His name was Bill Treest and he was about 18. He had some natural talents, but he didn't know how to handle himself. I even had to show Bill how to guard himself in the ring, and how to use his feet and fists. He was a slow learner, but a steady one. He had a good punch, both a straight right and a left hook, and I taught him how to use them for knockouts. Bill won the middleweight title in the Golden Gloves the same year Joe Louis won the light heavyweight.

"After the Golden Gloves, Bill wanted to turn pro and get me to act as his manager. We never signed a fighter-manager contract because he was still under age. I'd brought him along from the start, so I told him that if he played fair with me, I'd play fair with him. I was Bill's manager for over a year, and he made good progress.... The only trouble was that Bill did too well. He never lost a fight under me, and other people began wanting him bad enough to steal him.