Boxing was most popular in the 1910's/1920's?

"Want to compare audience. Bareknuckle fights in England had 10-30 thousand of spectators on a regular basis, even relatively minor fights gathered thousands of spectators. You wouldn't get such numbers in 1910-1920's."

I don't really understand this. Attendences of 30,000 were reached in bareknuckle fights in England (remarkable under the conditions of the era) but such numbers were far surpassed in the 1920's.

Official attendences of selected 1920's bouts taken from Ring Record Book and Boxing Encyclopedia 1976:

Dempsey-Tunney 1927---105,000
Dempsey-Tunney 1926---120,000
Dempsey-Carpentier 1921---80,000
Dempsey-Firpo 1923---82,000
Dempsey-Sharkey 1927---75,000
Firpo-Wills 1924---70,000
Firpo-Williard 1923---80,000
Schmeling-Uzcudun 1929---65,000

And below heavyweight

Leonard-Tendler 1923---58,000
Greb-Walker 1925---40,000
Leonard-Tendler 1922---54,000
Berlenbach-Stribling 1926---55,000
Berlenbach-Delaney 1926---49,000
Greb-Moore 1924---45,000
Walker-Shade 1925---32,000
Dundee-Criqui 1923---33,000
Herman-Lynch 1921---30,000

Some other attendences prior to 1976

Louis-Baer 1935---88,000
Louis-Schmeling 1938---70,000
Robinson-Turpin 1951---61,000
Marciano-Moore 1955---61,000

 

Which minor fights between third-raters, and who were not on the undercard of big fights, attracted thousands of spectators in 1910-1920's?

 

Why should huge crowds gather for "minor" fights when they are so many "major" fights? Give an example of the sort of minor fight from the bareknuckle era you are talking about. If it drew crowds similar to the crowds for, let's say, Cribb-Molyneaux or Sayers-Heenan, why? One would certainly expect major fights to draw greater crowds in any era. Perhaps these minor fights you speak of were not viewed as minor at the time.

 

I quoted several minor fights and their attendance in one of my posts in this thread. Why do you need more examples? I'm not even talking about chances to gather such huge crowds as you listed in conditions English people had to go through to attend the fights. Tex Rickard declined Goldfield's $200K offer for Johnson-Jeffries in favour of Reno's $120K because he was afraid that fewer people (one or two thousands less) would agree to additional 12 hours to travel to Goldfield, through the heat and the railroads not as developed in Goldfield as in Reno.

 

Most of the fights you quoted featured men I am familiar with and I'm no historian of the bareknuckle era. Specifically, whom do you consider minor? They may have been very well known fighters in that era at their weights.

The major fights of the 1920's drew as much as four times more patrons as the major fights of the bareknuckle era. There was intense interest in the bareknuckle era, remarkable considering the lack of modern mass communication, but I am just probing for why you consider the evidence convincing that there was more interest than in the 1920's when you had up to 120,000 at big fights.

 

You certainly don't know who one "Irishman" (without a name) was. You may have heard William Steven's name, but I doubt you have ever heard of Jacob Taplin, Crabbe the Jew or Tyne the taylor.

What was the attendance of the 40,000 arena built for Dempsey-Gibbons?

 

From New Series of Boxiana, volume II:

1822-11-05 Barlow vs Tootle
"Upwards of two thousand persons mustered upon this occasion".

1826-07-25 Jem Burn vs Magee
"But the Races at Derby and Knutsford, and the Nottingham Cricket Match, might have operated as great drawbacks to the spectators at the fight. Nevertheless, it is supposed not less than six thousand persons were present."

1828-04-08 Philip Sampson vs Thomas Brown
"The number of spectators could not have been less than 25,000--some persons guessed their numbers at 40,000--of these, at least 15,000 were unable to see the 24-feet ring, and were consequently continually pressing forward."

1825-10-10 Boscoe vs M'Gee
"At least eight thousand persons were present, although the thing was kept snug."

1825-08-09 Gilmore vs Bill Hall
"and the number of spectators, about two thousand".

1822-03-26 Pat Halton vs Johnson
"in a glen between two hills, which afforded an excellent view of every thing wished to be seen, near Scanlara's. The spectators did not fall short of fifty thousand."

 

Stevens was actually a champion. I have never heard of Taplin or Crabbe the Jew, but Taplin must have been somebody to have been matched with Stevens. Tom Tyne twice defeated former champion George Meggs and later lost to Daniel Mendoza. If that is who they are referring to, he was not obscure.

They drew 8,000 for Dempsey-Gibbons, but have you been to Montana today let alone back in 1923? I wonder if the population of the whole state was more than 50,000 back then. Once you hit the Dakotas you can drive for miles and miles without seeing anything more than a coyote. It was quite a trip for anyone to get out to where Gibbons and Dempsey were fighting. No wonder it flopped. It is something like holding the Klitschko-Peter fight on Wrangel Island.

By the way, within a week of the flop at Shelby, Willard-Firpo drew 80,000 paid with an extra 20,000 gatecrashers at Boyle's Thirty Acres.

Your point, though, that the attendences at some of the bareknuckle fights is amazing considering the travel conditions of the time and bespeaks a great intensity of interest is well taken.

 

Yes, Stevens was a claimant of the title. But he upset Slack only after the fight I quoted, he was a complete unknown before his match with the champion. So Taplin was unknown also.
Tyne met Meggs some 25 years after the latter had lost his title in first defense, Stevens and Meggs were part of epoch everyone forgot about quickly, so ugly and poor it was because of fixed fights. But glad to see that you have heard about Tyne, I'd guess maybe 1 non-historian out of 100 boxing fans will recall his name and who he fought without googling his name.

I heard of 7 thousands attendance. Montana had been part of boxing geography for over two decades by then, although mostly concentrating near Butte. Not the most popular state, but certainly not devoid of boxing events either.

 

There are two seperate issues being discussed here.

The following of boxing and the depth of the talent pool.

A big public following dose not guarantee a deep talent pool.

what the 1920s had pleanty of was active profesional fighters and scheduled boxing matches.

 

So had the previous three decades. At the turn of the century Philadelphia sometimes had 4 or 5 boxing shows on the same night, New York City had 3-4. Anyway, what I'm saying is I see no reason to single out 1910's or 1920's over other decades.

 

I feel the 40's were boxing prime the talent pool was so deep and there were stars in every division.

 

Except that attendences at major bouts were off the chart compared to earlier decades. Sullivan-Corbett fought before less than 5,000 fans. Johnson-Jeffries before less than 20,000 (about 15,700 paid). That is nowhere near what the major bouts of the twenties drew.

The largest gate prior to 1919 was $270,000 for Johnson-Jeffries. The live gate for Dempsey-Carpentier was considered almost beyond belief.

By the way, boxing clearly DID NOT draw anywhere near the largest crowds of the turn of the century era. Dan Patch paced before 93,000 fans at the Minnesota state fair in 1906.