tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/professional-boxing-14172/articlesProfessional boxing – The Conversation2016-09-09T10:06:20Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/650582016-09-09T10:06:20Z2016-09-09T10:06:20ZBoxer Kell Brook moved up two weight categories for the fight of his life – here’s how we trained him<p>Gennady Gennadyevich Golovkin (known as “GGG”) is the <a href="http://www.boxingnewsonline.net/gennady-golovkin-becomes-wbc-middleweight-champion/">undefeated middleweight champion of the world</a>. He’s considered by many to be the best pound-for-pound boxer in the world and has a <a href="http://boxrec.com/boxer/356831">knockout rate of 91%, stopping 32 of his 35 opponents</a>. It’s easy to see why the media call him <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/boxing/31316042">“the most dangerous man in world boxing”</a>. Not a single middleweight has come close to beating him.</p>
<p>Kell Brook is a welterweight (between 140lb/63.5kg and 147lb/66.7kg) champion, undefeated in 36 contests and a hugely talented boxer. He’s never fought in the middleweight category (between 154lb/69.85kg and 160lb/72.57kg). Yet on September 10, he will move up two weight classifications to face GGG. He’s never faced anyone like this before and he’s only had nine weeks to prepare. The odds are stacked against Team Brook. To get him ready for the event, my colleagues and I at Sheffield Hallam University’s <a href="https://www.shu.ac.uk/research/specialisms/centre-for-sport-and-exercise-science">Centre for Sport and Exercise Science</a> have put him through a training regime like no other. Here’s how we did it.</p>
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<p>The fight was announced on <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/boxing/kell-brook-vs-gennady-golovkin-8380757">July 8 2016</a> so we didn’t have a lot of time to prepare Kell for this contest and there was no room for error. Optimal preparation has been the only solution to this challenge.</p>
<p>We began by putting Kell through his paces in our boxing-specific test battery. This enabled us to gain an insight into his physiological strengths and weaknesses. We wanted to find out what was limiting his performance and how quickly we could cause his body to adapt to overcome these limits. </p>
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<p>This included using a treadmill test and gas analyser to assess his oxygen uptake and energy expenditure. We used something called a linear position transducer to determine how fast Kell can punch and how much punch-specific strength he has. Jump tests were used to assess how well he can produce vertical force and deal with the elastic demands of jumping. And we used a 3D body scanner that mapped the surface of his body to a resolution of 2mm so we could assess how his body shape was changing in response to training.</p>
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<p>Most boxers need to lose weight before a fight so that they fall just within the boundaries of their category but with the biggest mass possible. Although Kell needed to move up from his usual category, he still needed to lose weight – but much less than normal. His diet hasn’t been as low on energy so he’s been able to fuel for his training sessions. It means he’s more switched on, he can push himself harder, he can try things he’s never done before. He’s happy and content and that builds confidence.</p>
<p>But we still needed to bring his weight down. It’s not just a case of dropping a little bit from everywhere, we’ve had to target specific areas to retain and lose lean mass. When boxers move up weight classes they generally increase their upper body mass but this can slow them down. Punching force is determined by <a href="http://journals.lww.com/nsca-scj/Abstract/2016/06000/Strength_and_Conditioning_for_Professional_Boxing_.9.aspx">force generation in the lower body</a> and torso, not the upper body, which primarily transmits force.</p>
<h2>Losing weight in all the right places</h2>
<p>It was key for us to limit lean tissue loss in the lower body and core, while losing mass from the arms. We did this by focusing on strength training using heavy weights for the lower body and core but using light and fast weights for the upper body. Kell’s boxing coach <a href="https://twitter.com/dominicingle">Dominic Ingle</a>, used a similar approach when Kell was in the early phases of his training, using padwork, speedballs and footwork drills to keep Kell fast at his new fighting weight. His nutrition was tailored by <a href="https://twitter.com/gregorymarriott">Greg Marriott</a> to match these demands, who importantly cooked Kell meals that he enjoyed, which also had a positive influence on Kell’s mood and, in turn, performance. </p>
<p>Eight weeks of training is not long enough to induce certain physiological adaptations that contribute to boxing performance such as structural changes to the cardiovascular system. But it is long enough for other changes, such as altering the chemical signals that control the number of energy plants or “mitochondria” in the body’s cells and other processes that control <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1995688">how the body uses oxygen</a> and promote recovery.</p>
<p>His strength training sessions were designed to maximise force production at high-speed by lifting heavy weights very quickly. Kell’s running training has been dominated by sprint interval training, designed to improve the way that his muscles utilise oxygen and deal with cellular acidosis. A typical session would involve just 30 seconds of maximal effort running with three minutes recovery, performed four times. </p>
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<p>This type of interval training is very intense. A single 30 second effort is accompanied by searing muscle pain, dizziness, nausea and very heavy breathing. But these sessions push Kell to his limits. He says he’s been through hell in this camp, and he would be right. </p>
<p>Movement training both in the boxing gym and before strength and conditioning training has helped him transmit more force from his feet up to his fists, while gliding around the ring. Most of this type of training is a hybrid of yoga, <a href="http://www.animalflow.com/">animal flow</a> and body weight exercises, designed to improve the range of motion around Kell’s hips and shoulders. </p>
<p>Kell’s physiological responses to training have gone according to plan and exceeded our expectations. We’ve seen improvements in his ability to rapidly produce force of up to 29%. Because of our focus on high-intensity training, he’s now finding running at faster speeds easier, even compared to when he weighed less. The effort from Kell, Dominic Ingle, Greg Marriott and everyone who has supported him at the <a href="https://twitter.com/IngleGym">Ingle Gym</a> has been astounding. Kell Brook is ready to do the unthinkable, and shock the world.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alan Ruddock does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For his fight with Gennady Gennadyevich Golovkin, Kell Brook had to gain weight in just the right places.Alan Ruddock, Performance Physiologist, Sheffield Hallam UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/519292015-12-07T14:19:18Z2015-12-07T14:19:18ZWhy Tyson Fury’s sexist and homophobic comments make him unfit for BBC Sports Personality of the Year<p>One could be forgiven for being under the misapprehension that the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/sports-personality/34727935">BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year accolade</a> should be about more than a sportsman or woman’s exploits on track, field, court or ring. The clue’s in the name: “personality”. Most of us, I would think, would expect that the honour should be bestowed on someone whose achievements and bearing have struck a particular chord with the public, and have elevated their sport beyond the physical achievement. Apparently not. </p>
<p>I have to declare an interest here. I am among the 77,000 and more who have signed a petition (<a href="https://www.change.org/p/the-bbc-should-remove-homophobic-tyson-fury-from-sports-personality-of-the-year-shortlist?recruiter=2649931&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=share_twitter_responsive&rp_sharecordion_checklist=control">available here</a>) pressurising the BBC to remove boxer Tyson Fury from its shortlist for Sports Personality of the Year (SPOTY) on the grounds that <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/sports-personality-of-the-year/12032967/BBC-urged-to-drop-Tyson-Fury-from-SPOTY-shortlist-over-homophobic-and-misogynist-comments.html">his shockingly sexist and homophobic remarks</a> show him to be a man whose personality gives absolutely no grounds for celebration, still less for an award.</p>
<p>Fury’s comments include remarks about fellow SPOTY nominee Jessica Ennis-Hill’s appearance, saying that she “slaps up good” and “looks quite fit when she’s got a dress on”.</p>
<p>In response to the widespread public condemnation of his remarks, Fury has denied being sexist and his wife Paris <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/tyson-furys-big-softie-cries-6962188">has defended the boxer</a> as his “show side” but he has continued his vile stream of unconsciousness telling critics in an interview with IFLTV’s Kugan Cassius that they can “suck my balls” and called those who have signed the SPOTY petition as “50,000 wankers”.</p>
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<p>I’m a little bit backward I didn’t really go to school so which part of “a woman looks good in a dress” was sexist?… I stand up for my beliefs. My wife’s job is cooking and cleaning and looking after these kids, that’s it. She does get to make some decisions – what she’s gonna cook me for tea when I get home… She’s a very privileged woman to have a husband like me.</p>
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<p>It’s also fairly disturbing that Cassius appears to agree with these sentiments.</p>
<p>Fury has been unrepentant since, as his Twitter comments amply illustrate:</p>
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<p>Not only have his comments been sexist, but he continues this verbal diarrhoea by attempting to frame his homophobic beliefs as embedded in Christianity saying “the bible doesn’t lie”. <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/tyson-fury-suck-my-homophobia-sexism-comments-ifb-tv-a6762286.html">Fury told Oliver Holt</a>: </p>
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<p>There are only three things that need to be accomplished before the devil comes home: one of them is homosexuality being legal in countries, one of them is abortion and the other one’s paedophilia. Who would have thought in the 50s and 60s that those first two would be legalised?</p>
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<p>This link between paedophilia and homosexuality is not only extremely harmful but against the law. However, these laws brought in by the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/contents">Equality Act in 2010</a> do not seem to be protecting women and LGBT people from this sort of discrimination.</p>
<p>Once again, I’m disappointed that a sportsperson lacking in such moral character has been able to receive exposure that celebrates his aggressive sporting prowess but ignores the greater problem that can be spread by these harmful beliefs. Many sports can be misused as an arena for promoting a skewed brand of heterosexual masculinity which feeds sexism and homophobia into all sports – whether played by <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sports-Society-Controversies-Jay-Coakley/dp/0077117441">men or women</a>.</p>
<p>Fury’s brand of <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/backing-homophobic-tyson-fury-may-mean-a-knock-out-for-the-bbc-a6761041.html">sexism and homophobia</a> only serves to reinforce these findings. When these sorts of attitudes are evident and accepted in sport, it is hardly surprising that athletes have fears of “coming out” and sportswomen feel less valued.</p>
<h2>The harm of invincibility</h2>
<p>Of course, there’s no suggestion that this applies to Fury, but when <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07448481.2010.483715">athletes believe</a> that they are invincible, above the law, or incapable of being hurt they can undermine respect for authority or social norms and can result in criminal activity or deviant behaviour because they believe that the “<a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13573320701464150">jock culture</a>” of which they are a part takes precedence over any other authoritative structures outside their sporting world.</p>
<p>Indeed, <a href="http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/OU-Sport/?p=541">a large body of research</a> suggests that competitive sporting environments provide a unique socio-cultural context that offers possibilities for sexual abuse and exploitation to take place. For example, <a href="http://jss.sagepub.com/content/19/2/126.abstract">findings</a> in one study indicated that male college student-athletes were responsible for a significantly higher percentage of reports of sexual assault on the campuses of Division I institutions (the highest level of intercollegiate athletes). <a href="http://fs.ncaa.org/Docs/NCAANewsArchive/2003/Editorial/policy+alone+is+not+a+deterrent+to+violence+-+5-26-03.html">Another study</a> showed that while male college athletes made up only 3.3% of the collegiate population, they represented 19% of sexual assault perpetrators and 35% of domestic violence perpetrators.</p>
<p>Meanwhile challenging homophobia in sport can be an intimidating task, particularly when the person handing out the abusive comments appears to be so intimidating and invincible. But nevertheless, some sports are raising their game – rugby, for example, rising to the challenge of promoting awareness of <a href="http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/good-tackle-rugby-players-strip-off-to-raise-awareness-of-homophobia-in-sport-10111114.html">gay issues</a>. It seems to be making a big effort to challenge homophobia, which also could enable a much less narrow definition of masculinity to be accepted in rugby.</p>
<p>Perhaps boxing should follow the example of men’s rugby? The BBC could help this shift by removing Fury from their list. It would certainly help the sport of kings climb off the canvas when it comes to promoting acceptable behaviour among its stars.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/51929/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helen Owton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The boxer’s recent remarks represent everything that is wrong with attitudes towards gender and sexuality in professional sport.Helen Owton, Lecturer in Sport & Fitness, The Open UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/410542015-05-01T10:02:28Z2015-05-01T10:02:28ZOff the mat: boxing’s triumphant (if brief) return in Mayweather-Pacquiao bout<p>Maybe the most interesting thing about all the hype surrounding Saturday night’s fight in Las Vegas between Floyd Mayweather, Jr and Manny Pacquiao is that we’re talking about boxing at all.</p>
<p>If sports were music, this fight would feel a lot like Elvis Presley’s 1968 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqKQ5OxYofE">comeback special</a>: that moment when an old star demanded attention again, if only for a moment.</p>
<p>But why is boxing’s moment now? And as the times have changed, should the media be obligated to focus on social issues raised by the fight, like concussions and domestic violence?</p>
<h2>A dearth of personable stars</h2>
<p>Let’s take a quick look at how we got here.</p>
<p>From John L Sullivan to Jack Johnson, from Muhammad Ali to Mike Tyson, boxing has always been a personality-driven sport. </p>
<p>The nature of the game demands it: boxing is primal – it cuts right to the core of our fight-or-flight instinct – and it’s personal. There are just two fighters in the ring; only one emerges on top. It’s natural fans want to feel a connection with the power and glory of a boxing champ. The more charismatic he is, the better. </p>
<p>But a major problem for boxing in the era after the incandescent Ali is the dearth of personalities. Tyson was the last American boxing superstar. Known for lightning-quick knockouts, he was a full-on pop culture icon, a bully built around a menacing persona – black trunks, black shoes, no socks. </p>
<p>Among his famous quotes: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” </p>
<p>But Tyson lost to the heavyweight title to Buster Douglas and was never the same. That was 25 years ago.</p>
<p>It’s not a personality deficit alone, though, that has dragged boxing down. The rise of mixed martial arts (MMA) – a quicker, full-body combat sport – has become popular, to some degree, at the expense of boxing. </p>
<p>MMA is seen as more in tune with the times: Bouts are typically shorter than boxing’s 10- or 12-rounders, and the sport offers a mix of fighting styles.</p>
<p>There are other theories about boxing’s decline. There’s no centralized governing body for awarding title belts, which would add a greater sense of legitimacy to the sport. Some have said its inherent violence is anachronistic, and there’s the new awareness of the dangers of concussions. (Such claims, however, miss that the term “punch drunk” was connected to boxing before 1930. They also don’t explain the rise of MMA.) </p>
<p>This week, Brando Simeo Starkey of The Undefeated <a href="http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/12749248/floyd-mayweather-manny-pacquiao-fight-boxing-demise">argued</a> that racial progress in the United States, as fitful as it may be, has taken the air out of the black-white tension that drove interest in boxing last century. </p>
<p>Starkey notes, for instance, how whites rioted when Johnson punded James J. Jeffries in 1910, and Joe Louis’s 1937 heavyweight title victory over James Braddock sparked celebrations in the streets of black neighborhoods.</p>
<p>It’s notable that even at a time when white fighters were not very relevant heavyweights, Muhammad Ali race baited Joe Frazier, <a href="http://deadspin.com/5207420/frazier-on-alis-health-problems-god-judges-you-know-what-im-saying">calling him</a> “a gorilla” and a “Tom.” </p>
<p>Bottom line: boxing barely registers, if at all, <a href="http://www.harrisinteractive.com/NewsRoom/HarrisPolls/tabid/447/ctl/ReadCustom%20Default/mid/1508/ArticleId/1546/Default.aspx">when Americans are asked to name their favorite sport</a>.</p>
<h2>The measure of money</h2>
<p>One way to measure the unprecedented demand and hype of this fight is the record-shattering revenue it’s predicted to generate, with <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-28/how-mayweather-pacquiao-doubled-fight-revenue-by-waiting-6-years">payout estimates</a> ranging from $300 million to $400 million.</p>
<p>Mayweather and Pacquiao, fighting as welterweights, can each make a reasonable claim to being the best pound-for-pound boxer in the world. Pacquiao, though he lost twice in 2012, has won several boxer-of-the-year awards. His record stands at 57-5-2. Mayweather is undefeated at 47-0, owns most of the welterweight belts and is the <a href="http://www.forbes.com/athletes/list/">highest-paid athlete in the world</a>. (His nickname, of course, is Money.)</p>
<p>For years, fans have been clamoring for a fight between the two, but a deal could never be struck: the two sides argued over drug testing, the purse and other details. </p>
<p>The tactic, whether intentional or not, only increased demand. </p>
<p>Now, a New York Times <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/18/sports/floyd-mayweather-jrand-manny-pacquiao-to-split-fight-payday-60-40.html?action=click&contentCollection=Sports&module=RelatedCoverage&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article">breakdown</a> predicts hundreds of millions in revenue from a pay-per-view event priced just south of $100 and jointly produced by HBO and Showtime. </p>
<p>There’s also an expected $72 million from ticket sales and another $60 million from sponsorships and closed-circuit sales to US bars and international audiences – not to mention the Super Bowl-style betting or the economic boon to host city Las Vegas. </p>
<h2>The media’s problem</h2>
<p>So for the first time in decades, there’s a large-scale bout featuring two larger-than-life personalities at the top of their sport. But it’s made things a bit tricky for the sports media, which has gone all-in on their coverage of the superfight. </p>
<p>Underdog Pacquiao is the easy one, a guy who comes with a fistful of storylines. He’s a boxer, but he also sings, acts and is now a congressman in the Philippines.</p>
<p>The problem for the media has been how to handle Mayweather. Known for flaunting his extravagant lifestyle, Mayweather also has <a href="http://deadspin.com/the-trouble-with-floyd-mayweather-1605217498">an extensive record of domestic abuse</a>. In fact, he’s been convicted five times and was incarcerated for two months in 2012 for beating Josie Harris, with whom he has three children.</p>
<p>To be sure, top boxers have had criminal records before. Sonny Liston’s <a href="http://espn.go.com/classic/biography/s/Liston_Sonny.html">was lengthy</a> and Tyson was convicted for raping a Miss Black America contestant. </p>
<p>Now, though, we’re in the post-Ray Rice era; following the video of NFL running back Ray Rice knocking out his fiancée in an Atlantic City elevator, a national conversation on domestic abuse has taken place. Should Mayweather’s abuse convictions be central to his coverage? Or is it a story many in the press are likely to skirt in favor of a boxing piece?</p>
<p>Mainstream media outlets seem to be following the lead of ESPN, which has played it both ways. The ESPN investigative show Outside the Lines <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HRd-5G8TGM">explored Mayweather’s abuse convictions</a>, with reporter John Barr asking Mayweather about his abusive past. </p>
<p>On the other hand, ESPN personality Stephen A Smith <a href="http://deadspin.com/why-is-espn-serving-as-floyd-mayweathers-pr-mouthpiece-1699694763">ignored</a> the issue in a one-on-one interview and house tour with the boxer – what Deadspin deemed a “puff piece.” </p>
<p>“The lines between entertainment and journalism, in this and other cases, are blurry,” Travis Vogan, an assistant professor of American Studies at Iowa and author of the forthcoming book <a href="http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/65gtw7be9780252039768.html">ESPN: The Making of a Sports Media Empire</a>, told me. “ESPN often seems content to keep them so and to shift those already hazy boundaries to fuel its entertainment and journalistic goals.” </p>
<h2>A fight like no other</h2>
<p>Nonetheless, on Saturday night the fight will undoubtedly be mythologized by the media.</p>
<p>For millennials (and maybe for some older fans) the fight at the MGM Grand will be like no other boxing spectacle they’ve ever seen. The hype is something akin to the first Ali-Frazier meeting in Madison Square Garden, a fight so big that Frank Sinatra served as a ringside photographer for Life magazine. The audience Saturday is sure to be star-studded, too.</p>
<p>The match itself calls to mind the second bout between Sugar Ray Leonard and Roberto Duran, the famous “No Mas” fight won by Leonard. As with Mayweather-Pacquiao, that match – fought at 146 pounds – involved an Olympic medalist from the United States against an international boxer carrying the hopes of his own country (Duran was from Panama). But those two fighters had met earlier the same year.</p>
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<p>But when it’s all over, it will be hard to draw parallels to any other moment in boxing history. The money, the hype of the 24/7 news cycle, the impact of social media – the package will be unprecedented.</p>
<p>Boxing is ready for its comeback.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41054/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Affleck does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A perfect storm of personalities, demand and money has created unprecedented hype. How should the media respond?John Affleck, Knight Chair in Sports Journalism and Society, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/357492014-12-23T10:47:39Z2014-12-23T10:47:39ZEntertaining the masses: sports spectacles of today began in the 20s<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/67853/original/image-20141219-31560-8xzjv9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">This may be the fight that started all the hoopla </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Library of Congress/Prints & Photographs Division</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the 1920s American sports became big business, a billion dollar industry with “stars” created by the media and represented by professional agents and promoters. </p>
<p>One of the pioneers of this new industry was radio revolutionary David Sarnoff,a young executive at the newly created Radio Corporation of America, RCA. In the summer of 1921, Sarnoff had RCA, exclusively and for the first time, broadcast a live sporting event. Working with George “Tex” Rickard, the country’s top boxing promoter and President of New York’s Madison Square Garden, Sarnoff had a microphone placed at ringside for the heavyweight championship fight between famed slugger Jack Dempsey and French challenger Georges Carpentier. An estimated 400,000 listeners heard the blow-by-blow account of Dempsey’s victory by knockout over the handsome French <a href="http://books.simonandschuster.com/Supreme-City/Donald-L-Miller/9781416550198">war hero</a>. Sarnoff predicted that modern radio sets, affordable to most consumers, had the potential to transform society, and they did. </p>
<p>Professional boxing in New York State had been dead and Rickard and Dempsey revived it, turning it into a multimillion-dollar business centered in Rickard’s Madison Square Garden offices. They made heavyweight championship fights, battles once held before raucous, all-male crowds in Western mining towns, into urban spectacles staged in big metropolitan arenas, with ringside seats reserved for the rich and the notable, male and female. “The one could scarcely survive without the other,” New York Times reporter James Dawson wrote of the partnership that gave boxing “a tone and affluence <a href="http://books.simonandschuster.com/Supreme-City/Donald-L-Miller/9781416550198">hitherto unknown</a>.” </p>
<h2>Record crowds</h2>
<p>Tex Rickard’s new Madison Square Garden, on Eighth Avenue, became Dempsey’s home base but the menacing fighter outgrew the arena as radio and newspaper sports sections turned athletes into international celebrities with enormous followings. Rickard staged Dempsey’s biggest fights – against Gene Tunney, Jack Sharkey and Argentinian Luis Firpo, the “Wild Bull of the Pampas” – in immense, open-air stadiums in New York, Philadelphia and Chicago, some of which seated over 100,000 spectators. Five of Dempsey’s fights in the 1920s were million dollar gates; there was not another one until the Ali-Frazier era in the early seventies. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/67854/original/image-20141219-31548-123dsin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/67854/original/image-20141219-31548-123dsin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=842&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67854/original/image-20141219-31548-123dsin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=842&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67854/original/image-20141219-31548-123dsin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=842&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67854/original/image-20141219-31548-123dsin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1058&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67854/original/image-20141219-31548-123dsin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1058&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67854/original/image-20141219-31548-123dsin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1058&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jack Dempsey.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">US Library of Congress/Prints and Photograph Division</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Dempsey’s controversial “long count” fight against Tunney at Chicago’s Soldier Field in 1927 drew the largest fight crowd of all time. And fifty million Americans, along with boxing fans in fifty-seven other countries, listened to it on Sarnoff’s National Broadcasting Company, NBC, the world’s first national radio network. </p>
<p>Time magazine claimed that prize fighting drew a large audience because by “watching it, civilized people are vicariously purged of their <a href="http://books.simonandschuster.com/Supreme-City/Donald-L-Miller/9781416550198">primitive inclination</a>.”</p>
<p>People were drawn to Babe Ruth for the same vicarious fulfillment. In 1919, the Boston Red Sox sold Ruth’s contract to the Yankees. Fans came to see the Bambino swing for the seats, but his bad boy ways – drinking prodigiously and ignoring nighttime curfews imposed by Yankee management – made him even more popular. White-collar workers fearful of flouting authority and telling off their bosses could take secret pleasure in Ruth’s insubordination.</p>
<h2>Sports reporting takes hold</h2>
<p>The New York Daily News, America’s first tabloid newspaper, exploited this upsurge of interest in mass spectator sports. Beginning in the early 1920s a rising standard of living and a shortened workweek freed up Saturday afternoon and Sundays for leisure pursuits. The sports section of American newspapers grew phenomenally. </p>
<p>By 1927, New York’s major newspapers were devoting between 40 and 60 percent of their local coverage to sports, with the Sunday sports section often running as long as <a href="http://books.simonandschuster.com/Supreme-City/Donald-L-Miller/9781416550198">twelve pages</a>. The reporters who made New York the sports writing capital of the world were the elite of their papers and became the best-paid reporters on the New York dailies. Legendary sports writer Grantland Rice pulled in over $100,000 a year, in 1920s money, more than the Yankees paid Babe Ruth and more than President Coolidge’s <a href="http://books.simonandschuster.com/Supreme-City/Donald-L-Miller/9781416550198">yearly salary</a>.</p>
<p>Paul Gallico of The New York Daily News pioneered what became known as “participatory journalism,” stepping into the ring with Jack Dempsey at the champion’s training camp. Less than an hour after being knocked out by Dempsey, Gallico was writing his piece for the paper. Writers like Gallico and Damon Runyon built up drama for every heavyweight championship fight, every World Series, every major college football game, and turned athletes like Ruth, Dempsey, and golfer Bobby Jones into “Golden People” – Jazz Age sports legends. These sports heroes sold newspapers, just as newspapers sold them. </p>
<h2>The sports personality comes into focus</h2>
<p>The New York Daily News publisher Joseph Patterson developed a new approach to baseball coverage. He instructed sports editor Marshall Hunt to cover Babe Ruth twelve months a year, chronicling his off-season barnstorming tours, his vaudeville gigs, his workouts, his trips to hospitals to visit sick children, and his stormy marital life. And though Hunt never reported on it, he also followed Ruth into gambling dens and whorehouses. Ruth’s sexual exploits with women were kept out of the news by Hunt and other obliging reporters. Regardless, he was the most storied and publicized baseball player in history, and one of the most photographed figures of the decade. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/67855/original/image-20141219-31542-14hx5e5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/67855/original/image-20141219-31542-14hx5e5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=977&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67855/original/image-20141219-31542-14hx5e5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=977&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67855/original/image-20141219-31542-14hx5e5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=977&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67855/original/image-20141219-31542-14hx5e5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1228&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67855/original/image-20141219-31542-14hx5e5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1228&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67855/original/image-20141219-31542-14hx5e5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1228&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Babe Ruth.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">US Library of Congress/Prints and Photograph Division</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>People flocked to the Polo Grounds, which the Yankees
rented from the New York Giants, to watch Babe shatter every existing home run record. The Yankees broke all major league attendance records, drawing more than a million fans at home—- over double what the Giants brought in. A bigger ballpark was needed, so the team’s flamboyant owner, Jacob Ruppert, built Yankee Stadium in an amazing 284 days on the site of an old lumberyard in the Bronx. </p>
<h2>Yankees take off</h2>
<p>On opening day, April 18, 1923, Ruth baptized the new park with a three-run shot into the short right field “porch,” to the delight of a standing-room crowd of 62,000. Soon the stadium was dubbed “the <a href="http://books.simonandschuster.com/Supreme-City/Donald-L-Miller/9781416550198">house that Ruth built</a>. </p>
<p>With Ruth’s emergence, a new type of fan began to come to the ballpark -— "the fan” as one sports reporters wrote, “who didn’t know where first base was but had heard of Ruth and wanted to see him <a href="http://books.simonandschuster.com/Supreme-City/Donald-L-Miller/9781416550198">hit a home run.”</a> And people learned all about him from stories written by his own syndicate of ghostwriters. </p>
<p>In 1921, the year Ruth hit 59 home runs, he hired America’s first ever sports agent, Christy Walsh. A self-described “happy hustler,” Walsh arrived in New York with the idea of forming a syndicate of sports reporters to ghostwrite stories for famous athletes. Walsh could not believe that Ruth was “on the loose,” unsigned by any big syndicate. In Ruth’s first year with Walsh his newspaper earnings jumped from $500 to $15,000. Walsh estimated that his syndicate’s total output for sixteen seasons would have covered over <a href="http://books.simonandschuster.com/Supreme-City/Donald-L-Miller/9781416550198">5,600 solid newspaper pages</a>. In the winter of 1925 Babe entrusted his finances and all his business dealings to Walsh. </p>
<p>Christy Walsh was to Babe Ruth as Tex Rickard was to Jack Dempsey. Rickard’s master idea, the idea that made him the greatest boxing promoter of all time, was that each fight must be a story, a drama heightened by a blaze of publicity. “We got to dramatize this one for the newspaper boys,” he told Dempsey at one pre-fight meeting, “go easy on the other guy.”</p>
<p>Not many sports fanatics know that in the 1920s, the “Golden Age of Sports,” promoters, athletes, radio revolutionaries, and newspaper reporters combined their energies, talents, and gift for dramatization to create modern mass spectator sports, a new and permanent thing on the American scene.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/35749/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Donald L. Miller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In the 1920s American sports became big business, a billion dollar industry with “stars” created by the media and represented by professional agents and promoters. One of the pioneers of this new industry…Donald L. Miller, Professor of HIstory, Lafayette College Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.