The phone rang. It was my 94-year-old Uncle Joe. “I hear that I’m in the opening scenes of the movie ‘Resurrecting the Champ’ about Chicago boxer Bob Satterfield,” he said. A longtime executive sports editor and boxing writer for the Chicago Daily News, my uncle covered the sport during the bustling era of the 1940s and ’50s.
The scene in the film was the heavyweight bout between former champion Ezzard Charles and Satterfield, a top contender, on Jan. 13, 1954, at the Chicago Stadium. The fight was broadcast nationally in prime time on CBS’ “Fight of the Week,” sponsored by “What’ll You Have? (Pabst Blue Ribbon),” and it was orchestrated by the International Boxing Club, which was run by Chicagoans Arthur Wirtz and James Norris. The boxing club held fights not only at Chicago Stadium, but also at the storied Madison Square Garden.
At the time, the boxing scene was part of Chicago’s identity, and for those of us watching bouts on television all over America, it represented power and bravado. There were professional fights in Chicago three nights a week at now forgotten places such as the South Side’s White City and the North Side’s Marigold Gardens. The Chicago post-World War II boxing fan was usually male. Events at the Chicago Stadium, for example, were usually a mix of smells: hot dogs, beer, Chesterfield cigarettes and Dutch Master cigars. At the championship fights, there were many gabardine suits, Harris tweed coats and a handful of young mistresses clad in mink coats escorted by gray-haired patrons.
Boxing was a premier sport in Chicago and throughout America’s big cities and small towns. It was far more popular than pro basketball, and pro football was still consolidating its national television presence. Only pro baseball was comparable in national impact. The amount of money that boxers could amass in a major fight often exceeded the incomes of movie stars and chief executive officers, although sometimes they had a hard time receiving or keeping it. But this golden age didn’t last, as the 1950s were the beginning of the end for the boxing industry. America was becoming more mobile, affluent and suburban, changing the sports environment. At the same time, a series of scandals and subsequent legal investigations helped set into motion boxing’s decline. Rumors of fixed fights, damaged and mauled fighters who never should have been in the ring in the first place, and boxing officials and state licensing commissions who were accused of looking the other way at numerous violations all conspired to bring boxing down. The media reported these problems and the post-World War II movie industry made classic films of corruption in the boxing world such as “Body and Soul,” “The Champion” and “The Harder They Fall.”
These spiraling events did not end boxing as a top attraction, as in the 1960s and ’70s, the heavyweight and middleweight divisions continued to prosper with headliners such as Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard. But these were the exceptions, as the underlying foundation of boxing — the neighborhood fight clubs and training gyms — began to disappear. The young athletes, who in the past may have become fighters, started playing other sports. The infrastructure of boxing had been taken out from underneath the sport, and it is still on life support.
The rise and fall of boxing reminds us that no sport can take the public for granted. In an age where scandals in sports are occurring as frequently as events themselves, asking fans for forgiveness has become standard operating procedure for sports leagues, teams and stars. The recent trials and tribulations of Tank Johnson, Tim Donaghy and Michael Vick are only the latest examples of a long list of credibility problems that the sports world faces. Performance-enhancing drug scandals, criminal behavior, multimillion-dollar salaries, adulterous relationships and other issues are tainting, for some fans, the very spirit of what really matters — the games themselves.
At a certain point, this all will catch up to professional sports and eventually push fans away. It happened in boxing, and it can happen again. If you don’t believe me, ask my uncle.
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Irving Rein is a communication studies professor at Northwestern University and co-author of “The Elusive Fan: Reinventing Sports in a Crowded Marketplace.”
