In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

BOXING 47
Harry Wills, the "Brown Panther," "a big, sharp-boxing but slow-moving
Negro heavyweight," to be the leading contender and therefore
refuses to allow Dempsey to appear in New York unless he agrees to fight
Wills (Heimer, 11; Andre and Fleischer, 106f£.). Insisting, on the basis of
his business experience, that "mixed fights don't draw well," Rickard
opts for an all-white match and for the Sesquicentennial, although,
ironically, the promotion of African-American culture is part of the
exposition's official agenda (Rydell, 157f£.). Despite the surprisingly low
level of prefight betting, which the New York Times describes as "the
lightest in the history of heavyweight championship fights" (and assuming
that the calculations which influence his decision are indeed financial),
Rickard's move yields stupendous results. At a time when Babe
Ruth is playing for the Yankees at an annual salary of slightly more than
$50,000 (which many observers of baseball still find scandalously high
(Ritter and Rucker, 135), the New York Times of September 24 publishes
the following official numbers regarding the Philadelphia bout: "It was
estimated the promoters would have a profit of about $500,000. The
total paid admissions were 118,736. In addition, 25,732 were admitted
on passes [for the Sesquicentennial], which makes the total attendance
144,468. The paid admissions were distributed as follows: $27.50 tickets,
28,903; $22, 12,805; $16.50,23,014; $11, 19,589; $7.70, 15,747;
$5.50, 18,678. It was also announced that Dempsey's end of the receipts
would amount to approximately $700,000 and Tunney's to about
$200,000." "Six governors and 2,000 millionaires" (New York Times,
September 23) are in attendance, among them such celebrities as William
Randolph Hearst, Joseph Pulitzer, Florenz Ziegfeld [see Revues], Charlie
Chaplin, the Channel swimmer Gertrud Ederle [see Endurance], and the
Roosevelt family (Heimer, 15).
The huge crowd puts transportation and traffic systems to a severe test
[see Airplanes, Automobiles], which seems to interest the journalists no
less than the actual fight: "The emphasis now is not on the fighters but
on the customers." In special trains and private cars (for which only
1,500 parking spaces are available), about 50,000 people come from
New York, and package deals for travel and admission have been sold
in the Midwest (especially Chicago) and in California. Following the
motto "Where there's a crowd there's bound to be an airplane circling
overhead," promoters have provided the spectators, during the long
hours spent waiting for the fight, with something to watch: "airplanes,