Ringside: A Treasury of Boxing Reportage With an Introduction by Hugh McIlvanney
by Budd Schulberg
Summary
In this bountiful collection, Budd Schulberg takes his fans all the way back to an epic bare-knuckle contest in England two hundred years ago, brings fans up to date in the careers of the great names of recent decades—Tyson, Holyfield, De La Hoya, Corrales, and much more.
Excerpt
Tom Cribb vs. Tom Molineaux: The First International Championship Fight
Prizefighting in the old bare-knuckle days was a basic, brutal business, highly unlike the stuff you see being dispensed on your television sets today. Fighters then didn’t rely on the critical judgment of boxing “experts” with intricate scorecards. They fought round after round, sometimes hour after hour, until one or the other was unable to come off his second’s knee and stagger back to the line of scratch. It was not twelve three-minute rounds to a decision but as many rounds and as much time as it required for one man to knock another man completely senseless. And yet even rules as decisive as these could lead to controversy when the stakes were high and feelings even higher. There have been disputed title fights in our own country—was the Johnson-Willard fight on the level and did Dempsey really knock Tunney out in that “long count” affair in Chicago? But a vare-knuckle fight for the heavyweight championship of the world in 1810 is probably the most controversial fight in the history of the division. It was certainly one of the most thrilling.
The rivals were Tom Cribb, the celebrated champion of England, and Tom Molineaux, an underrated ex-clave from Virginia. Molineaux was the first of a gallant line of African-American boxers to win worldwide acclaim. And his fight with Cribb was the first international match for the heavyweight championship. Today their names come alive only for historian of the old prize ring who treasure the pages of Pierce Egan’s eyewitness accounts in that ebullient if sometimes inaccurate masterpiece, Boxiana. But in the nineteenth century, when fight fans by the thousands cheerfully waded through muddy lanes and across miles of open fields to wager and cheer on their favorite bruisers, Tom Molineaux’s threat to English boxing supremacy provoked a national crisis and an international incident. The first napoleon might have been more feared throughout England than this American challenger, but to read the sports pages of that day you would not think so. A victory for the ex-slave from Virginia over the mighty Cribb was widely considered a no less tragic prospect than a successful Napoleonic invasion.
In these days when press agents are as essential to prizefighters as to movie stars, Tom Molineaus surely would have been tagged the first “Cinderella man.” He came from a fighting family on the Molineaux plantation in Virginia. Boxing was not yet an organized sport in America, but plantation owners used to pit their slaves against each other for side bets, and Tom’s father Zachariah was a local champion. Tom grew to bull-like proportions. Although his full height was only five feet eight, he weighed two hundred pounds. He succeeded his father as the plantation’s best bare-knuckle man and is said to have won his freedom as a reward for knocking out a rival plantation champion.
Reprinted with permission of Ivan R. Dee Publishers http://www.ivanrdee.com
Reviews
“Throughout, Schulberg exhibits a boxing IQ matched by his wit”--Booklist
”There’s an operatic, carnival-barker quality...that reflects the high-low vertigo of the best sports writing”—The Atlantic Monthly
”Brims with fascinating stories.... Essential reading for all serious students of the sweet science”—The New York Times
Author's Biography
Budd Schulberg has written about boxing for more than sixty years. He is also the author of What Makes Sammy Run?, The Harder They Fall, The Disenchanted, On the Waterfront (play and screenplay), and Moving Pictures: Memories of a Hollywood Prince. He lives in Westhampton Beach, New York.