Is Bob Fitzsimmons Top 5 P4P?

I recall there was one fight in the 1880s, probably involving the Nonpareil Jack Dempsey, where the Associated Press freighted a train to bring them to nearby town with a telegraph office, so as to be the first to send their report of the bout that had just ended, half an hour to an hour before the rest of the newspaper reporters could send theirs. Although they rarely mentioned the names of their writers, but I could probably list a few for 1890-1910, who worked for the AP sporting bureaus in New York, Chicago, St. Louis.

 

I agree IF it is an actual first hand account with a verifiable byline. But if its an article about a fight that took place in New Orleans found in a newspaper in Appleton, WI. with no byline then the odds are 99.99% that the Appleton Post-Crescent didn't send a writer to that fight.

probably but here is the problem with that: If the AP wire picked up a story published for a fight in Philadelphia and that story originated from the Philadelphia Inquirer and you use as your sources for a fight the Philly Inquirer, the Philly Record, and the AP article appearing in the New York Times you've suddenly given one mans opinion (the writer for the Inquirer) more weight than it was worth. If you only use three sources and are trying to get a consensus you've suddenly given a false impression of how many on site writers voted for a certain fighter by counting one writer twice. I don't use wire reports unless I can verify the name of the writer and distinguish him from the other writers ringside. More often than not if you have a comprehensive collection of sources for a particular fight you can figure out which writers' article was picked up for the wire. Then you have the problem of the "beat em to the wire boys": managers or partisans for a certain fighter who would send their own report out over the wires to news agencies to be picked up and spread out over the country which were favorable to their fighter and gave a slanted view of the fight. A prime example of this is Harry Greb's bout in Syracuse with Bill Brennan where he dominated Brennan but Leo P Flynn put out a report over the wire saying Greb lost despite every Syracuse paper voted overwhelmingly for Greb.

This is correct but you have to read what he says closely: "If the story has a BYLINE..." Up until the late 1920s 99% of all wire reports had no byline and where taken from local writers employed by local papers who participated in or contributed to the AP, UPI, or whatever wire agency they associated with. The idea that the AP, UPI, etc had paid writers independent of local sources at all of these fights from which they derived their reports is absolutely incorrect.

 

Very interesting and useful feedback. I agree that if you have a comprehensive collection of sources you can figure out which writers article was picked up for the wire. Thanks for the input.

 

Where is your proof the referee said this? If the referee thought it was a fix why didn't he stop the fight or call off the bets? What proof did the referee have that it was fixed? You keep saying the referee said he thought it was a fix but have no citation to when he first made this claim. Where is your article link? Folks back then liked to claim nearly every fight was fixed, but anyone can claim anything. Where is the proof? Where is your proof the referee even made this claim? Usually if something looked fishy you would have one or more writers or experts making the claim to sell more newspapers, especially with all the yellow journals back then. Yet, no one even hinted at it, including the referee.

So I question whether you have a specific source for the referee making the claim, proof of when the ref first made the claim if he indeed made the claim, and any proof that the claim is backed up by any facts whatsoever, or is he just talking out of his ass as a lot of boxing people often do. If there was this alleged article as you claim, where is the citation from the article of a source? What is that article's primary source? It wasn't an interview it did with Graney 35 years ago, because given that Graney was born in 1868, I'm pretty confident he was dead 35 years ago (1979), so I don't think the writer did an interview.

There has been a lot of rubbish published in magazines, but until you track down the source, don't go around claiming that Fitz's victory over Gardner should be discounted because you claim that you read in some sourceless article that Graney allegedly claimed at some much later date that he suspected it was fixed. Woop dee do. Fitz's legacy deserves better than that.

 

Whoever wins this spat, will be the Bob Fitzsimmons of this forum.

 

Oh, and there were some suspicions of a fix of the 1919 Black Sox World Series both before and right after it happened.

Rumors were swirling among the gamblers prior to the series. According to Tom Meany in his chapter on the 1919 Reds in "Baseball's Greatest Teams," (1949) "Cincinnati money was pouring in" even though the White Sox were regarded as the overwhelming favorite.

Immediately after the Series ended, rumors were rife from coast to coast that the games had been thrown. Journalist Hugh Fullerton of the Chicago Herald and Examiner, disgusted by the display of ineptitude with which the White Sox had "thrown" the series, wrote that no World Series should ever be played again.

Hence an investigation ensued and the fix was proven and dealt with within a couple years.

Payne, Shaun. "Hugh Fullerton and the Press’s Revealing Coverage of the Black Sox Scandal, 1919-1921". Historic Baseball.

 

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I give little credence to secondary sources written in 1979, writing about events that took place in 1903, WHEN THEY FAIL TO CITE SOURCES. In my books I cite the sources - the newspapers and the dates - so folks can check and see for themselves.

But for the sake of argument let's say Graney said what he is alleged to have said. What he actually is quoted to have said in that article was that he wondered at times whether it was on the square. He didn't say it actually was fixed. He allegedly said he was tempted to call off the bets, but did not, and tempted to call it no contest, but did not. That was simply because he thought it was a poor contest.

So what? A lot of Bernard Hopkins fights are snooze fests but that doesn't mean they are fixed or that he doesn't get credit for victory. And at least Fitz scored several knockdowns throughout, so it couldn't have been any worse than a lot of so-called world championship fights today. Again, not seeing how what Graney said discounts a 40-year-old's title victory over a much younger man who had just beaten the highly respected Jack Root and was a 10 to 6 favorite over Fitz. It still is a big win. People were so spoiled by Fitz always KO'ing guys that since he fought cautiously and just outboxed him and decked him here and there, they call it a poor fight. I think he gets even more credit for showing his boxing skill and versatility even at an advanced age against a man favored to beat him. If it was a fix then why go the full 20 rounds and take some brutal blows and get decked several times and have a cut and puffy face, but keep trying and have your best two rounds at the end? Why not just go down early? This fight was no fix.

 

This is like Fitz-Ruhlin II.

Dubblechin is Ruhlin. Adam is Fitz.

 

Pollack's book on Fitz effectively ends with the victory over Corbett.

As good a writer that he is, it can't be the definitive biography on him as it covers neither Jeffries fight, nor the Gardner, O'Brien, Johnson bouts etc

 

I stand wirlth adam on this. as someone who has spoken to goldman, and spojen to gis contemporary historians (who have little faith in his quality) i can say id do a damn sight more research than just quoting some b.s. article he wrote 35 yrs ago to try to prove my point.

 

True. Yet, my Fitz book is over 450 pages. I do cover Fitz's later fights in subsequent books in my heavyweight championship series.

 

I strongly disagree with your assertions. Fitz was an excellent trap setter. If you read In the Ring With Bob Fitzsimmons I am certain you will come away with a new appreciation for the traps Fitz set to obtain several knockouts. He was awesome at setting guys up for knockdown and knockout blows.

 

To boot he was neither a deadly nor accurate puncher.

And for a little guy moving up you would think he would learn to body punch.