Читать книгу Jacobs Beach. The Mob, the Garden and the Golden Age of Boxing онлайн

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Whatever their real names or worth as fighting men, this is how the fight was recorded in the papers of the day: “Floored for a count of three in the fourth and punched groggy in the sixth and seventh, Berlenbach came back in the last six rounds with a stirring rally which saved for him the title he had wrested from Mike McTigue. His margin of victory was close, however, for newspapermen at ringside gave him only seven rounds, to six for the challenger, while two were even. . . . But the outstanding factor in his success was indomitable courage in the face of almost certain defeat.”

Rickard pushed that fight as the first in the new Garden. However, a disputed and little-known version exists that maintains the first fight in the new 1925 ring occurred three nights earlier, an amateur flyweight contest between Jack McDermott and Johnny Erickson. But no respected archivist has been able to confirm it took place.

What is not in dispute is that Rickard died on January 6, 1929, cut down at fifty-nine after an operation for appendicitis went wrong. It was nine months before the Wall Street Crash, not a bad time to check out. He left behind a string of memorable nights. The fighters who flocked to New York in the twenties, most of them performing at the Garden, most of them paid by Rickard, included Benny Leonard, Jack Dempsey, Jimmy Wilde, Ted Kid Lewis, Jack Kid Berg, Teddy Baldock, Georges Carpentier, Mickey Walker, Jack Britton, Irishman Mike McTigue, Pancho Villa, Luis Firpo, Harry Greb, Jimmy McLarnin, Jack Sharkey, Tommy Loughran, and Max Schmeling.