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

Round 1: Fistic Carnival in Carson City

9 It was a bleak time when the Nevada Legislature convened for its biennial session in late-January 1897. The mining economy had been devastated by depletion of high-quality ore on the Comstock, and new mineral explorations were discouraged by federal policy that had demonetized silver. Additionally, surpluses of beef on national commodity markets had severely depressed the prices Nevada ranchers received for their cattle. The state’s population had tailed off to fewer than fifty thousand, and reports out of the nation’s capital carried the troubling news that powerful men in Washington were contemplating merging Nevada with Utah or even ignominiously returning Nevada to territorial status. Desperate times produce desperate measures, and so a group of legislators and Governor Reinhold Sadler opted to rescind the state’s antiprizefighting law to permit a heavyweight championship fight to take place in Carson City. In return for the promise of an economic stimulus, they were willing to accept the scorn that progressive-minded reformers would heap upon the state. They were equally unmoved by the ethical considerations regarding the blood sport that had led to its abolition across the United States. Nevada’s political leaders were also aware of the raging battle that had unfolded during the previous eighteen months over a proposed heavyweight championship fight between the popular James J. Corbett Mr. Stuart has never swerved from his purpose, though confronted with what to an ordinary individual would seem to be insurmountable obstacles. —Official Fight Program, March 17, 1897 Fistic Carnival in Carson City Round 1 10   The Main Event and a scrawny but resilient challenger by way of New Zealand, Robert Prometheus Fitzsimmons. If nothing else, the fight would settle the argument as to which man was actually the reigning champion. In November 1895 Corbett unofficially “resigned” his title and named journeyman fighter Irishman Peter Maher as his replacement; this was a not-so-subtle dig at Fitzsimmons, with whom he had been waging a heated war of words. “Ruby Robert” had defeated Maher handily three years earlier. In February 1896 Fitzsimmons once more defeated Maher in a bout held on a sand spit located in the middle of the Rio Grande— was it in Texas or in Mexico?­ —and was generally recognized as the new champion in this, the most unorganized of sports. Corbett’s fans demurred and insisted their man was still the champ. If nothing else, they wanted a meeting of the two that would settle this squabble in a boxing ring rather than in press releases. The controversy intensified the desire that the two men settle the issue the way real men should— with their fists. Actually, an effort to hold the bout had begun in 1895, but at every turn the promoter was outmaneuvered by the determined antiboxing crowd, creating a series of bizarre events that became fodder for journalists and sparks incredulity more than a century later. In one corner was the sporting set that wanted to see what they anticipated would be a closely contested brawl, but in the other corner stood a national coalition of high-minded progressive reformers who viewed prizefighting as a barbaric spectacle that dimmed the nation’s claim to be an enlightened democracy. Ever since the fight had first been proposed in the spring of 1895, the opponents had won every round by mobilizing religious and reform groups that pressured public officials to enforce existing—but often ignored—laws prohibiting exhibitions of the blood sport. Those determined souls uncomfortably recognized that public opinion, which had at one time been strongly on their side, was inexorably shifting away from their position due to growing interest in prizefighting. In particular, the widespread popularity of legendary bare-knuckle champion John L. Sullivan had stimulated a perceptible increase in public interest, and his promised presence at the proposed fight in Carson City added a greater sense of legitimacy. When a prominent Texan who had being trying, without success, to promote the match that “sporting men” everywhere wanted to see Round 1  11 first approached Nevada officials in late 1896 about the possibility of locating the fight in Nevada, he received an enthusiastic affirmative response. His long quest to identify an acceptable location where he would not be threatened with arrest or even bodily harm was finally over. Nevada’s First Prizefight Promoter Dan Stuart was obviously a man who would not be easily denied. But by the time...