Showman (1937)

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SHOWMAN up the job of developing a heavyweight champion as casually as I did, seeing as how I was a stranger to the business of handling fighters. But showmanship is the major part of handling a fighter— and besides I was no stranger to the world of sports in general. In my career at the Press Club I'd got in on the inside of the sporting life of the day, seen all the big sporting events, picked up spare change by writing sporting squibs for the papers. And I knew something about fighting on my own hook. We fought all the time on the Bowery, not only rough-and-tumble impromptu brawls, but formal, stand-up matches too, with seconds and waterbuckets and regular rules— the old, grueling, London Prize Ring rules in my time. On one occasion, I remember, a German boy and I fought fifty rounds in Washington Mews. It's a prettified and prosperous little street now, full of studios and polite conversation, but in my day it was all stables and the favorite spot for secluded milling. After all, you see, the psychology of fighting is much the same whether the fighters are professionals or kids having it out with each other. The psychology we used for the New Orleans fight wasn't exactly deep stuff, but it worked. What with one fiendish device and another we had Sullivan completely buffaloed, licked before he stepped into the ring. About a week in advance I had the main railway lines to New Orleans sown with screeching lithograph posters announcing in foot high letters that James J. Corbett, champion of the world, would appear at Madi 98