Mike Jacobs - The All Time Undisputed Heavyweight Champion Of Promoters.

By Chris Williamson, @Chris_v2boxing.

A reporter who knew Mike Jacobs well once said of the man, "He had no bullsh*t eyes, and by that I mean that he could look at anyone and tell if that person was full of sh*t or not. And mostly, they told him the other fella was."

If ever there was a time that boxing needed a character with that ability, it was throughout the thirties and forties. What with the grip of organised crime, the impending Second World War and the racial barriers which were still very much in effect, the landscape of the sport was uneven and troubled at that point, to put things mildly. But Mike Jacobs not only found ways to combat (or at least lessen) the effects of these issues, but also managed to steer boxing towards its golden age, so that by the time of his effective retirement in 1946, the promoter had left the sport in a position to become the dominant (and most lucrative) one of the early television age, as well as helping to re-establish the World Heavyweight title as truly the 'greatest prize in sports.'

Born to Jewish immigrant parents in New York in March 1880, Jacobs was similar in many ways to the millions of other second generation settlers of his time. As a kid, he'd try to make a buck or two whenever possible to aid his cash-strapped parents, selling newspapers on Coney Island as early as the age of 8. He had little formal education, preferring hours of people watching on New York's docks, examining the countless comers and goers to and from the city that never sleeps and imagining their stories. He was unsentimental and yearned to escape his life of poverty, the same as so many others in the downtrodden Irish-American neighbourhoods he lived in.

He was different in one way, mind you - he was never a fan of boxing. For the minorities of the USA, particularly in New York (namely the Irish / Jewish immigrants and blacks), usually possessed of a belief that a career as a prize fighter could be their path out of obscurity and financial toil, boxing was a way of life. Jacobs was drawn to boxing eventually, at the age of twelve - but not by his own fistic dreams, or because he idolised the likes of John L. Sullivan or 'Gentleman' Jim Corbett, both themselves of Irish stock and the two men who contested the first-ever gloved Heavyweight title fight under the Marquess of Queensberry rules which still exist today in the year (1892) that Jacobs was first introduced to the fight game.

No, what drew Jacobs to boxing was the thought of making money. Lots of it. Hand to hand combat didn't get his juices flowing, but after a short while watching flocks of fight fans paying to enter prize fights at New York's first Madison Square Garden, Jacobs soon realised that boxing was a big money enterprise. Soon, he was scalping tickets outside the famous old stadium - and already a canny negotiator with a persuasive tongue, he often drove a hard bargain. "I could make a $2 ticket in to a $10 sale," he said when asked about his early days around the Garden years later. "From the age of sixteen, I was never broke again."

Hanging around the Garden, a teenage Jacobs mixed with influential characters. He reamed knowledge from the legendary 'Tex' Rickard, the man who promoted arguably the most charismatic and famous Heavyweight champion of them all in Jack Dempsey (well, Muhammad Ali aside, perhaps) and broke a significant barrier by promoting boxing's first-ever million dollar gate, Dempsey's 1921 title defence against the Frenchman Georges Carpentier. He was also introduced, through mutual friend Bat Masterson, to legendary boxing writer Damon Runyon, who would become a powerful ally in the future.

Rickard passed away aged 59 in 1929 - and all of a sudden, with its biggest fighting attraction (Dempsey) retired, its premier promoter gone and the Great Depression threatening to stem the flow of fans passing through the turnstiles, boxing was plunged in to trouble. Boxing needed someone to fill Rickard's shoes and, of course, someone to fill Dempsey's.

Jacobs felt sure that he could take care of the first bit. But finding someone to fill Dempsey's shoes would be trickier. Gene Tunney, whose more measured, scientific style didn't endear him to fight fans the way his victim Dempsey's did, was more respected than loved within the sport, and in any case only stuck around to make one title defence after his pair of wins over Dempsey before retiring. The Heavyweight title was passed around from one man to another, with nobody really emerging as an outstanding champion capable of reigniting the sport. Max Schmeling (who would stage a career revival in later years, but flattered to deceive right now), Jack Sharkey, Primo Carnera and Max Baer all lifted the title between 1928 and 1934, but none of them managed more than two defences (Sharkey and Baer, in fact, didn't even manage one).

James J Braddock outpointed Baer in a dour fight in 1935 to lift the title in one of the biggest upsets in boxing history, but over the previous twelve months something much more interesting had been afoot - the emergence of a fighter who just may be able to fill Dempsey's shoes.

Joe Louis had dynamite knockout power, quick hands, an icy cool demeanour in the ring, superb punch accuracy and on top of that was an utterly ruthless finisher. But there was just one problem - he was black. Boxing had still not got over the reign of Jack Johnson, up until then the only black Heavyweight champion. Johnson's antics (cavorting with a series of white women, taunting white opponents and being totally unapologetic for his flamboyant personality in very conservative times had outraged and infuriated middle America, and subsequently life for black fighters had got even harder in the wake of 'Papa Jack' rather than easier, as you might have otherwise expected.

Even Jack Blackburn, a former world-class Lightweight who now coached youngsters, needing a lot of convincing - he was initially reluctant to take on a black fighter, arguing that he could make more working the corner of white ones. But finally he took the youngster on, in the hope that Louis being a puncher with a crowd-pleasing style might afford him more opportunities than other black fighters would be presented.

Louis' rise was meteoric. Dempsey himself was ringside when Louis, by now being called the 'Brown Bomber' by the press, brutally knocked out former champion Baer in New York in September 1935. "This kid looks like he could be another Jack Dempsey!" one of the ex-champion's friends roared to him. "How about the first Joe Louis?" replied Dempsey, a back-handed compliment for the man who seemed to have all the tools to pick up where he himself had left off.

While it was Louis knocking guys out for fun in the ring, and his back room team of Blackburn, John Roxborough and Julian Black carefully formulating his PR moves, it was Jacobs who was planning the route to the Heavyweight title. But in June 1936, Max Schmeling stunned the boxing world when he knocked out Jacobs' can't-miss prospect in twelve rounds. This presented Jacobs with a serious problem - by rights, Schmeling should have been next in line to fight for Braddock's title. But with the Nazis now truly in complete control in Schemling's homeland of Germany, and their propaganda machine in overdrive to coincide with the 1936 Berlin Olympics, he knew that Schmeling usurping Braddock (as he almost certainly would have done) could have meant the Germans shutting up shop, keeping the title in Europe and brushing Louis out of the picture completely.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man. With a mix of wickedness, canniness and his mischievous nature, Jacobs, perhaps even more sensitive to the situation in Germany as a Jew himself, went about scuppering a proposed Schmeling-Braddock fight any way he could. Jimmy Johnstone, Jacobs' rival to the New York promotional throne at the time, had a contract in place for Braddock to defend against Schmeling, but Braddock's lack of fitness (he'd been plagued with hand problems throughout his career) and confusion over whether or not the German government would let Schmeling travel again to New York where the city's two million Jews had threatened to boycott any potential Schmeling fight meant that negotiations were slow.

Meanwhile, Jacobs devised a plan. To distract the boxing world, he'd have Louis back in the ring in less than three months, and against a former champion, no less. Louis duly knocked Jack Sharkey out in three rounds. With people's eyes back on Louis, Jacobs then went about discreetly testing Johnstone's hand, to see just how strong it was, and if there was any possibility of fanning out the problematic flames of Schmeling getting to Braddock before Louis did. He asked an unsuspecting Johnstone if, for just one night only, he could have access to Braddock and promote a couple of obscure exhibitions over the two-round distance for the champion at New York's Hippodrome. Temporarily taking the reins from Johnstone, Jacobs announced that Braddock would meet Eddie Kotswica, a former New Jersey State title holder, as well as Eddie Cook, a Havana fighter, both on the same night as a bit of fun and a nice little earner while his potential fight with Schmeling was being made.

On the record, these fights never happened, apparently called off late in the day as the New York State Athletic Commission snapped out of a slumber to re-enforce their policy on exhibition bouts, which were illegal at the time. But Jacobs had found out everything he needed to know when it came to just how much power Johnstone held over Braddock and the NYSAC, and he now felt confident that he could find a way to leapfrog the German.

But he needed to get Braddock's approval to face Louis first, and the champion drove a hard bargain. As well as a (then) staggering $300,000 purse, Braddock and his shady manager Joe Gould (a man so connected with the mob that when Owney Madden, one of boxing's most notorious gangsters, was released from prison after serving time for murder in 1928 he was there to pick him up outside the gates!) also demanded ten per cent of all gate receipts from any future Louis fight promoted by Jacobs.

Jacobs agreed - and well he might have done. As said earlier, friendship and morals in boxing were secondary to Jacobs. It was all about the money, and striking such a deal was of little consequence to him; besides, he took his ten per cent directly from Louis' wages. It was Louis, in later life, who struggled due to such deals being made, but if it meant getting a title shot, then so be it was how Jacobs viewed matters.

Braddock tentatively agreed to defend against Louis in June 1937. As expected, Jimmy Johnstone and a livid Schmeling complained bitterly (and understandably). Johnstone twice applied for a court injunction to prevent the newly proposed fight from happening, but both times the NYSAC ruled in favour of Jacobs and the Louis camp. While Louis would end up a little light in his pockets because of Jacobs' duplicity, he was at least now the Heavyweight champion (having survived an early knockdown to put Braddock away inside eight rounds) all because of his promoter's can-do attitude and dogged determination.

While Louis ended up owning less than ten per cent of himself (and again, let's not pretend that Jacobs always had his fighter's best interests at heart), in boxing terms he and Jacobs were a dream match. Louis repaid Jacobs' efforts by setting new standards of excellence as champion, defending the title successfully twenty-five times, including a stunning demolition in one short round of Schmeling in their massively publicized rematch in June 1938. Louis' fights against Schemling (1938) and Billy Conn (1948 rematch) both easily breached the $1million live gate figure, firmly establishing Louis as the most bankable athlete in the world.

By 1949, when Louis announced his first retirement, a now ailing Jacobs was also ready to turn it all in. He had, by hook or crook, helped boxing through an uncertain time after being thrust to the top of the pile after Rickard's death, and he played an instrumental part in giving Joe Louis, in my mind one of the few true heroes of the sport, to the wider world. Like any promoter, Jacobs (who died in 1953) could be unscrupulous and extremely cold-blooded when the mood took him. But without his input, it's doubtful that boxing would have been in such a commanding position as the fifties rolled in, and boxing became the first sport to become a major television attraction. Jacobs might not have been a part of that golden era, but he shaped it before it had even happened.

For that, boxing owes him a debt of gratitude.



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