The Main Event: Boxing in Nevada from the Mining Camps to the Las Vegas Strip

The Prelims

1 On the evening of September 23, 1926, more than 120,000 spectators jammed into Philadelphia’s Sesquicentennial Stadium to watch Jack Dempsey defend his heavyweight-boxing crown against the stylish Gene Tunney. The New York Times reported that the enormous throng included some 2,000 millionaires, many of whom were decked out in formal wear and accompanied by women in elegant evening dresses. The iconoclastic journalist H. L. Mencken was moved to write that the attendees were “well-dressed, good-humored and almost distinguished .” Indeed they were. Sitting at ringside were such political figures as Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, financiers Charles Schwab and W. Averill Harriman, publishing giants William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, and many sports and motion picture stars, including Babe Ruth, John McGraw, Charlie Chaplin, and Tom Mix.1 That this enormous crowd included so many of the rich, famous, and powerful vividly confirmed that major changes had occurred in the public perception of prizefighting. Just one decade earlier, law enforcement officials would have not permitted the event to take place in the City of Brotherly Love, arresting the major participants if necessary. Reflecting a stunning reversal in public opinion, several state legislatures had legalized prizefighting and created commissions to oversee the sport. The popularity of prizefighting was evidenced in the public I saw how different boxers are from other athletes. They are at significant physical risk. The courage to box is beyond anything I can understand. —Howard Schatz, sports photographer, At the Fights (2012) The Prelims 2   The Main Event acclaim for the charismatic Dempsey, who had been made a heavy favorite by professional gamblers. Dempsey’s vast popularity during the 1920s attested to the dramatic change in public perception that occurred with the blood sport of prizefighting, prompting historian Randy Roberts to conclude that the charismatic Dempsey was an “appropriate symbol” for the decade of the Roaring Twenties.2 Detailed coverage of the fight dominated the nation’s newspapers the next day. The New York Times splayed a large headline across the front page proclaiming that Tunney, who professed to be a “scientific” boxer rather than a slugger like Dempsey, had won a surprisingly easy unanimous decision. The Times, once a leading crusader against the blood sport, dedicated seven pages to the event. The fight was promoted by George Lewis “Tex” Rickard, the maverick entrepreneur who enjoyed celebrity status during the 1920s as a promoter of prizefights and served as general manager of the recently opened third iteration of Madison Square Garden, the nation’s largest indoor sports and entertainment venue. On that early-autumn evening in Philadelphia,prizefighting emerged fully from its dubious past into the mainstream of American life. Only after the Great War did the sport emerge from the shadows into widespread public acceptance, in part because the US Army had incorporated boxing into its training regimen for recruits being prepared to do battle in the trenches of France. Rickard was no novice when it came to staging prizefights because he had honed his promotional skills in the sparsely populated state of Nevada during the first decade of the new century. The affable Tex made no record of the thoughts that may have gone through his mind on that glorious evening as he surveyed the grand scene as Tunney flummoxed Dempsey with his deft footwork and stinging counterpunches. It is likely that at some point Rickard reflected back upon his sensational promotions in Goldfield and Reno that helped establish a strong boxing tradition in Nevada. After a roller-coaster ride of good and bad luck as a gambler and saloon owner in the gold-crazed Yukon Territory, Rickard had been inexorably drawn to the gold mining boom that had erupted amid the sagebrush and rock-strewn hillsides of Esmeralda County in 1905. The heart of this boom was the rapidly growing mining camp of Goldfield , located some one hundred miles north of the tiny railroad settlement of as yet unincorporated Las Vegas. There the thirty-five-year-old The Prelims  3 Rickard opened a popular saloon that catered to hard-rock miners and mining executives alike. In 1906 Rickard assumed the leadership of a group of local businessmen who wanted to promote a championship fight between the lightweight champion Joe Gans, the first African American champion, and the infamous brawler and master of low blows and other nefarious ring tactics Oscar “Battling” Nelson. Their purpose was not...