A HISTORY OF BOXING/DVD
Imagine my surprise when – of all places in my dustbin area – I saw lying around this 2 part DVD produced by Marks and Spencer entitled A History of Boxing.
I had posted on boxing very recently but this enabled me to see footage of the golden age of heavyweight boxing from Joe Louis (1938) to Muhammad Ali.
It concentrated on the heavyweight division but due reference and reverence were afforded to Henry Armstrong – the only pug to hold three titles at different weights concurrently – and Sugar Ray Robinson, widely regarded as the finest the Noble Art ever saw.
There is very little footage of old-fashioned bare knuckled pugilism.
John L Sullivan (“The Boston Strongboy”) straddled that and the modern era.
There was some footage of Jack Johnson, a controversial figure and the first black champion. Jack Dempsey, I learned, was not popular with public for failing to enlist in World War One and was beaten by one of the most underrated fighters who did – Gene Tunney – who was undefeated as heavyweight.
We were then into the thirties when peromo carnera, Jack Sharkey, Maxie Baer, James Braddock and Max Schmeling all held the heavyweight diadem till Joe Louis put his glove on it for sometime.
The DVD – narrated by Reg Gutteridge – committed a common mistake of over-associating Max Schmeling with the Nazis. He had a Jewish manager and spirited the Jewish Louwen Brothers,who became successful Las Vegas hoteliers, out of Germany as little boys inthe Nazi era personally in the back of his car.
After the war he became President of Pepsi Cola and paid off Joe Louis’ tax debts, but was burdened in his 99 years by crimes he never committed. A Great Man.
Post World War 2 was the time of Jersey Joe Walcott, Ezzard Charles, Ancient Archie Moore – another undefeated champion Rocky Marciano – Floyd Patterson and the mean Sonny Liston, till the Louisville Lip aka Cassius Clay.
After his famous fight with Henry Cooper, when he opened up his eggshell eyebrows, Clay in an interview said he was upset to see Cooper bleed like that and the referee should have stopped it earlier.
I will not repeat myself on the comparisons between boxing in its golden ages and the present.
But one aspect of the DVD you would not hear now. In the Jack Johnson commentary reference was to a”negro” several times and Henry Cooper used the word “coloured”.
One should mention that Cooper gave a substantial amount of money to anti-fascist causes so I’m not remotely inferring he was a racist, just that he used terms that would not be acceptable now.
The second DVD takes us up to the modern era. There is no date of release but I guess it was around 1995.
Footage of fights was once a big business now I guess made redundant by YouTube.
Nonetheless in these times of virtually no live sport I spent an enjoyable couple of hours watching this.
