Happy as Larry was a aussie champ Bring home the bacon came from Joe Gans mother Sunny Jim was a promoter who held his fights at midday The real mccoy etc There's loads of phrases you hear today directly related to boxing,football commentators every week say "there on the ropes" Anymore?
Good stuff. I always wondered, where when & why did the word "bum" get used to indicate low quality fighters?
And why do we call boxers who will lose the match but fights for money a journeyman and not a jobber?
People mis-use the term 'journeyman' these days. It should mean someone who is a good craftsman, but not a master craftsman.
That is the great Larry Foley in fact. http://www.cyberboxingzone.com/boxing/LarryFoley.htm http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/4915428 http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/120297039 Great more for services to boxing like being very important in modernising boxing by being a strong believer in using gloves and for being the trainer of Fitzsimmons, Jackson and Griffo and Slavin... he was also undefeated in the ring apparently.
I was wrong In the United States, the phrase became associated with boxer Kid McCoy.[6] Quinion notes that "It looks very much – without being able to say for sure – as though the term was originally the real Mackay, but became converted to the real McCoy in the US, either under the influence of Kid McCoy, or for some other reason."[4] This claim is dubious, however, as Kid McCoy was only nine years old when "the real McCoy" appeared in The Rise and Fall of the "Union club."[5]