Here's a photo of Jake Kilrain and Jem Smith. In 1887, Kilrain met Smith in France for the Police Gazette championship belt, the most prestigious belt in all of bare-knuckle boxing. After 2 and a half hours and 106 rounds of bare-knuckle fighting, the bout was declared a draw due to darkness. After the bout, Richard K. Fox, editor of the legendary Police Gazette, recognized Kilrain as the champion. Just think about that, 2 and a half hours, 106 rounds of bare-knuckle boxing, these guys were from the planet Krypton.
Frank Klaus, "The Braddock Bearcat", he needs no introduction, all-time great middleweight, literally wrote the book on infighting. 1910 T220 Champions - Mecca Cigarettes Back - Frank Klaus.
Fidel LaBarba, aka "Steel Feather", won the gold medal at the 1924 Paris Olympics in the flyweight division. Hard to hit and quick on his feet, LaBarba has an outstanding record with wins over a long list of great fighters including Charles “Bud” Taylor, Frankie Genaro, Memphis Pal Moore, Kid Chocolate, Elky Clark, Georgie Rivers and Petey Sarron. That's one hell of a resume. His third fight with Kid Chocolate is on film and it's one of my favorites, LaBarba wore Chocolate's body the f#$@ out with body shots during that fight. Love a good body puncher, and LaBarba was that. This is the 1927 E211 - York Caramel Prizefighters - Fidel LaBarba.
1929 Tabacalera La Morena - Fidel LaBarba. Again, I apologize for the lack of a back scan, it's a very rare card and I just can't find another scan of it. It's frustrating when some of these auction houses neglect to upload a back scan, a customer has a right to see every inch of what they're buying, front and back, and it's really ridiculous that a back scan wasn't uploaded. And I have to say, this particular auction house uploaded a piss-poor scan, I had to use Google edit to sharpen it and run it through a meme generator just to blow the image up and it still came out looking like garbage. I know, not their concern that I'm trying to create a little museum here showcasing the great boxing photos that were used on the boxing cards we boxing fans and collectors love. One other thing, I'm not sure which way this photo is supposed to be facing, the top image is the way I found it, but Tabacalera La Morena obviously has him facing the other direction so I flipped it around and included it. It's difficult to tell because Fidel LaBarba was naturally left handed, a South Paw, but was forced to learn boxing in a right hand stance. This gave him a somewhat different weaving style of fighting, and was why his left jab was his most powerful punch.
Let's go with "Two Ton" Tony Galento, aka "The Jersey Night Stick." The nickname says it all, he was brutal. He might just be THE dirtiest fighter in boxing history, he was a rough customer, elbows, thumbs to the eye, you name it. And if he didn't get you with the dirty tricks, he had serious knockout power, his left hook was murder. He was a street fighter, and in the streets anything goes, he carried that mentality with him to the boxing ring. We got a few beautiful Galento cards here, this is the 2003-07 Helmar Brewing Co. - Famous Athletes - Tony Galento.
They’re a rare breed the true punchers. We don’t even have a word for them, not really. Has there ever been a more inadequate vernacular in sports for what these most devastating of hitters do in the ring than “big punchers”? Bob Satterfield. Joe Choynski. Aurelio Herrera. Freaks who hit so hard that anything they hit crumbled, sand where once there were cliffs, men for whom the words “weight class” were as meaningless as “big punchers”. But they weren’t great fighters. A great fighter is so much more than a collection of physical attributes, even if they are lucky enough to possess an absolutely extraordinary one. The men on this list differ from Satterfield, Choynski and Herrera in that they deliver that power with the pugilistic equivalent of precision engineering. “Composite” punching is all-aspect punching. We’re looking here at speed, technique on delivery, work-rate, accuracy, aggression, mercilessness, feinting, timing—all of which were owned in abundance by Pernell Whitaker, who doesn’t make the list. In the end unless you can reign down the silence and darkness described by Dick Tiger, you don’t belong.
Apologies to the aforementioned Joe Choynski—and Kid Lavigne and Barbados Joe Walcott and a host of others—but if there is no readily available footage of a fighter that fighter doesn’t make the list. Some of these guys number amongst the hardest punchers in all of history but there are too many factors dependent upon eye for me to be able to ignore them.
Precision engineering. Darkening power. Some special something else, granted by Heaven, or perhaps the other place.
These are the 15 pound-for-pound most terrifying offensive monsters in the history of boxing.
15 – Sonny Liston
“After Liston knocked me out I felt, for four or five seconds, that everybody in the arena was in the ring with me, circled around me, like family…I actually blew a kiss to the crowd from the ring.”—Floyd Patterson
Liston is famous for his power, and it was, quite literally, paralyzing. Three-time opponent Marty Marshall:
“Nobody should be hit like that. I think about it now I hurt. He hit me to the stomach with a left hand in the sixth. That wasn’t a knockdown. It couldn’t be. I was paralyzed. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t move enough to fall down.”
Thirty-one knockouts, eight of them in the first round, also testifies to his power punching, but it is the skills that augmented that phenomenal power that get him onto this list ahead of arguably harder pure heavyweight punchers such as George Foreman and Lennox Lewis. Two-handed and the first stalking heavyweight since Jack Dempsey to draw and counter leads with arbitrary head movement, Liston showed numerous offensive tactical adjustments in his fights, drawing fellow banger Cleveland Williams onto murderous counter-punches in their first fight, crowding and banging him out in the second. He also controlled almost every fighter he ever met with one of the most devastating jabs the prize-ring has ever seen, the ubiquitous Muhammad Ali turning in a magical performance that saw him throw punches from every angle at lightning speed the only real exception.
As comfortable fighting right in the pocket as he was at range, Liston is one of the few great heavyweight technicians, a brutishly strong man—“the only man who ever moved me backwards in the ring” according to George Foreman who sparred with the then ex-champion—who has literally every single punch in the book at his disposal, each of them a knockout waiting to happen. Most terrifying when lifting the title from a deeply intimidated Floyd Patterson, Liston arguably lays claim to both the best uppercut and the best jab in the history of the heavyweight division.
14– Alexis Arguello
“I believe more in precision. Like when you see a mosquito and you hit it with a couple of short sharp shots. That’s beautiful.”—Alexis Arguello
Precision, he had.
“Once he’d measured the distance,” says CheckHookBoxing scribe and Arguello disciple Kyle McLachlan, “he could hit you with any punch from any range.”
This is an accurate a surmise of what made Arguello dangerous as it is possible to make. Allowing him into a fight was an invitation to your own destruction. Against Royal Kobayashi, a sprawling puncher of note in his own right, it took Arguello exactly three rounds to box his way into the fight. The fourth through the fifth saw him miss only a handful of punches as “El Flaco Exposivo” (62 of 77 victims stopped) speared the bull he shared the ring over and over again with perhaps the most hurtful one-two the ring has ever seen. Often compared to Joe Louis, Arguello shared none of the Brown Bomber’s apparent difficulty with the awkward, crowding fighters said to trouble him. Once he had found you, he had found you for all time.
As consummate a punching technician as appears on this list, Arguello wasted almost nothing, and mastered the art of variety in terms of both punch selection and target areas. The dual left-right combinations that set Kobayashi out to sea in the fifth were typical in that their brutality was matched by their precision. “A combination so good that you Americans know that combination!” is how Arguello explained it to American television—as well as countless opponents this dual-tipped spear had pierced the US consciousness. That they served, against Kobayashi, as blows that opened up an opponent for equally devastating left hooks to the midsection spoke of Arguello’s deep well of offense.
“One of the last fighters you would want to get into a fire-fight with” is Kyle’s last word on the subject.
Good enough.
13 – Stanley Ketchel
“He didn’t even bother sitting down between rounds – he just stood there like a caged beast waiting for the trap to be sprung.”—“Dumb” Dan Morgan
Ketchel cleared out perhaps the most stacked division in middleweight history with as undiluted a storm of violence as has been seen in the ring. Ketchel fought like he was literally possessed by some malignant spirit. Only Billy Papke, also a great middleweight and puncher, had any success fighting him toe-to-toe during those prime years, but running from him was all but impossible too—as Dan Morgan put it, you might as well try to out-run a hurricane.
He is known, rightly, as a savage dog on heavy chain, a chain broken upon the toll of the bell, but this aggression was harnessed and honed. In March of 1908, Ketchel’s landmark year, he was matched with Jack Twin Sullivan, a man more accustomed to meeting heavyweights and ranked by Tommy Ryan as one of the three best fighters in the world pound-for-pound. The fight began as a modern observer might expect, Ketchel forcing the action but missing often against one of the era’s defining defensive geniuses. But by the ninth, Sullivan was struggling. Ketchel punched from such a wide variety of angles and targeted head and body with equal regularity and venom. His iron chin and exceptional engine made him impossible for even the most devastating puncher to discourage. Ketchel’s quilted offense was based primarily upon this unerring variety as well as his workrate, which astonished even observers used to seeing fights over longer distances.
There was elegance, too. Ketchel employed a shifting, feinting attack. “He is the greatest fighter to ever have lived,” offered the great Abe Attell after “The Slasher” first defeated Billy Papke. “He is wonderfully clever…and can hit harder than any other man I ever saw. He uses a shift—hits with the right and moves immediately to the left. He has that down better than Bob Fitzsimmons ever did.”
This is astonishingly high praise, but it was not unusual to hear Ketchel’s contemporaries talk about him in this way. Corbett agreed with Attell that Ketchel was the greatest of all time. Joe Gans labeled him a “past master”. When we look at the very limited footage we have of Ketchel we see a thoughtless savage bereft of technique. Reading about him on the internet will generally re-enforce that point of view. A closer look reveals that a monster does exist—but one far more dangerous and pathological than popular opinion holds.
12 – Earnie Shavers
“Nobody hits harder than Shavers. If somebody hit harder than Shavers, I’d shoot him.”—Tex Cobb
When you write, you want to believe in your ability to communicate your ideas to the reader. Sometimes though, it’s necessary to step aside for some poet, some philosopher, and acknowledge that you just cannot match the beauty with which he expresses the idea you are striving for. So in defense of my high placement of Shavers and my opinion that he is literally the hardest puncher in the history of boxing, I give you James “Quick” Tillis:
“The baddest motherfucker I fought was Earnie Shavers. That motherfucker can make July into June and made me jump over the motherfuckin’ moon. Shavers hit so hard he turned horse piss into gasoline! He hit me so hard he brought back tomorrow! When he hit me, I was seeing pink rats and cats and animals smoking cigarettes. I thought I was in the corner smoking a cigarette and eating a spam sandwich. That’s how hard that motherfucker hit.”
Muhammad Ali, Larry Holmes, Ron Lyle and Ken Norton all agree with him, though none of them put it quite so eloquently.
11 – Julian Jackson
“He’s a heavyweight trapped in a middleweight’s body.” —Mike Tyson
Early in the first round of his 1991 challenge for Julian Jackson’s WBC strap, Dennis Milton was caught behind the ear with a clubbing right hand bereft of the torque and precision usually seen in deciding punches. Milton’s reaction was extraordinary. First, he wanted to hug it out, trying to wrap his hands around Jackson’s head and draw him in, but his legs betrayed him utterly and instead he vanished into an obscene lean which left him wide open for more punches. Then he stumbled to the short rope and, left hand in the air as if warding off avenging angels only he could see, he grabbed the top strand with his right hand leaving himself almost defenseless against the man labeled by many as P4P the hardest puncher of all time. Jackson, though, looked momentarily disorganized. Perhaps the sight of Milton abandoning any notion of actually boxing and instead taking on the appearance of a man trying to negotiate an icy garden path temporarily threw him. He shouldn’t have been surprised though—Jackson’s ring opponents often put on strange and inexplicable shows for the crowd.
The reasons were simple in Milton’s case. Firstly, he was terrified. “I saw it in his eyes,” Jackson would claim afterwards. Secondly, all control of his legs by his brain had been ceased and desisted by the early warning that had been that clubbing right hand. Off the ropes and across the ring, Jackson worked harder to support Milton’s weight than he did until, around thirty seconds later, Jackson landed a real punch; a clipping right hand driven through the target on the near side of the ear. Milton tumbled over happily and spread himself on the canvas in the repost of Superman in full flight. It would be embarrassing if it were not for the fact that so many of Jackson’s victims ended their nights in such poses.
Jackson’s left hook was sometimes embarrassing and he often forgot his jab. But he was a well-schooled if not a brilliantly skilled fighter and, in the words of manager to Rocky Balboa opponent Ivan Drago, whatever he hits—he destroys. That destructive punching power granted Jackson 49 stoppages and a KO percentage in the 80s. It also earns him the #11 spot on this list.
10 – Sandy Saddler
“I fight rough, sure.”—Sandy Saddler
Sandy Saddler is a proud member of the century club. He has 103 knockouts to his name. Perhaps making him the cornerstone argument for the philosophy that a world-class offense bests a world-class defense, the savage Saddler holds multiple stoppage wins over perhaps the greatest defensive fighter in history, Willie Pep.
Perfectly described by Boxing.com’s Mike Casey as “the ugly duckling of the game who gate-crashed the party and kicked sand in everyone’s face,” Saddler’s cooked style made him unbeatable at his roughhouse best, especially with a cooperative referee at hand.
Raw-boned with a long reach, Saddler’s left hand was extraordinary. He did not make use of his generally superior length and height in the same way that Wladimir Klitschko or Carlos Monzon have, rather he used an ultra-aggressive pressure style in spite of these advantages and that stalking approach was built around that left hand. A long stiff jab, naturally, was crucial, but that jab could be magically transformed into a hook or uppercut at the last second. This was disastrous for an opponent of even Pep’s caliber because it imbued the jab with the virtual power of both of those devastating punches—punches that separated fighters as good as 33-4 contender Lulu Perez from his senses in one fell swoop. The right hand also worked behind disguised left-handed feints, and if Saddler could land lead right hand leads against Pep he could land them against anyone.
The final piece in his out-fighting puzzle was superb ring-cutting footwork. Watching Saddler with Pep we see Pep take advantage of Saddler’s rushing style to spin and punch him over and over again. What we do not see is Saddler left behind by Pep’s dazzling movements. They did not impress Sandy at all—even the deftest of ring movers was never far from range.
With the distance closed, Saddler hit as brutally as any fighter ever at featherweight and with the kind of variety that stretched the most brilliant defense. But more than this, Saddler swamped his man with attacks. There may never have been a fighter so adept at discovering his opponent’s physical weaknesses. He was a horror to share the ring with and brutally jarring his opponents with wrestling, pushing and handling was as much a part of that truth-seeking violence as those huge punches. On the darker side, it is rumored that the gaping cut which stopped Flash Elorde in their 1956 encounter was caused by a headbutt and then ripped opening by repeated lacing—on the referee’s blindside, of course.
One of the most troubling left hands in boxing history married to the ultimate roughhousing style and sporting the 100 plus knockouts that only destructive power can bring, Saddler is overqualified for the #10 spot.
9 – Roy Jones Jr.
“Show me a man in control of his emotions and I’ll show you a dangerous man.”—Roy Jones Jr.
Writing about Roy Jones versus James Toney recently I described the winning performance as possibly “the best performance ever filmed in color.” Roy Jones himself described it as “about 60% of what I got—in both power and precision.” Roy’s tragedy now is something quite different and more disturbing but during the helicon days of his P4P #1 stewardship, Roy’s tragedy was rather that he seemed not that interested. As perfect a fighting machine as the world had ever seen he was generally more interested in fighting dogs, chickens and his beloved basketball. Maybe Jones did fight Toney at 60%—but that seemed some 30% more than he used for any fight that came after. Until, some three years later, Montell Griffin focused his attention. Edging a generally close fight, Jones hit Montell in the 9th after his man had taken the knee. To Roy’s displeasure Griffin made his inability to continue very clear and the resulting disqualification was something he took rather personally. The rematch would be Roy’s most devastating display.
Roy suddenly looked interested again.
A fighter built in a disturbed boxing lab by a father obsessed with his son’s future success, environment and genetics combined in Jones to produce a fighter on offense possibly unparalleled. Against Griffin he opened with a short hook, so short Joe Louis would have been proud of it. Two jabs so fast that the Montell didn’t even react to them were followed by another of those short hooks, this one right on the button. Griffin hurtled backwards towards the short rope as though some gargantuan black hole had materialized ringside and sucked him straight in, a standing eight-count the result. A one-two and a lightning fast but unreasonably formed ice-cream scoop of a left hook followed and Montell was on the run. He tried to establish his jab but couldn’t do so in the light of Roy’s stalking and feinting, he was hypnotized by that left hand and the coiled steel rattlesnake weaving it.
Fans of a certain age may find “Superman’s” inclusion on this list disturbing. For a different generation the fact that he doesn’t hold the #1 spot may be the offending element. For me, only Roy’s abandonment of his superb jab and his lack of focus on the attack in many fights keeps him from one of those very top spots. It is worth noting that in this fight and others, however, Roy just supplanted the jab with the left hook. His one-two was built entirely of power punches. He was that fast. And as Griffin will attest, when he landed—and he was a frighteningly accurate puncher—he was powerful, too. The one-punch finish here totally separated him from his physicality and the title reign of Montell Griffin finished as it started, with him apparently separated from his senses, only this time hopelessly trying to rise as the messages of disastrous punishment spun endlessly inside his head.
“Hall of Famers were sent spinning sideways.”—Springs Toledo
Armstrong’s reputation is of a fighter that wore the opposition down with a fuselage of punches rather than a fighter who carried dynamite in his fists. Not so. As a featherweight he was one of the hardest punchers in the division’s history. In unifying the 126 lb. title, Armstrong came up against a brute of a champion in Petey Sarron, a granite-chinned warrior unstoppable in 142 contests. He finished the 6th round against Armstrong blindly groping the ring-floor, seeking some invisible door-handle at the new champion’s feet, the finishing right hand the punch that Homicide Hank had nicknamed “The Blackout” responsible. It was aptly named. Of the 101 men Armstrong darkened, this was the punch that did the bulk of the business. During his prime, Armstrong delivered similarly brutal knockouts even up at welterweight, many of them quick. It takes an attrition puncher longer than four rounds to stop a welterweight of Phil Furr’s quality. It wasn’t a cumulative effect that resulted in Lew Jenkins visiting the canvas seven times in six short rounds. The ultra-durable Al Manfredo was stopped once on cuts and twice by Henry Armstrong punches—beaten into submission by a fighter who could stop you with one punch, but if that didn’t work, would stop you with hundreds.
The ultimate punching buzzsaw.
7 – Tommy Hearns
“He was a killing machine.”—Ted Sares
Sugar Ray Leonard, as astonishing a boxer-puncher as ever lived, spent 35 rounds in the ring with Roberto Duran without landing blank-dealing punches of any sort. Hagler was extended the distance against Hands of Stone, one of the best middleweights ever forced to settle for a close decision win. Iran “The Blade” Barkley, a huge and aggressive one-sixty crazy was beaten on those cards. Getting Duran out of there during his prime was as impossible a task as existed in boxing.
Step forwards Thomas “The Hitman” Hearns, a fighter who scores at least a nine out of ten in every one of our criteria for greatness. Capable of superb boxing or brutish dismantling rushes, Hearns has laser-guided accuracy to augment his elite speed and numbing power. His knockout of Duran is as astonishing and perfect a knockout as was ever perpetrated against an all-time great fighter. Those two superhuman efforts Duran mounted at middleweight, combined with the seeming certainty that he could mount similar efforts against Hearns one-hundred times and be stopped in two every single time, underlines just how great a performance that really was. The final punch, reportedly sold with a feint using nothing more than his eyes, is the cherry on the top of Tommy’s great legacy. Add 47 more knockouts to this one and consider that some of them occurred up at cruiserweight and it surely becomes apparent that this former welterweight belongs inside the top ten.
6 – Bob Foster
“Quit hittin’ them kids! Push ‘em or slap ‘em!”—Bertha Foster to her son on the occasion of his fracturing a schoolmate’s skull in a fight
It is often said of Bob Foster that he dominated a weak light-heavyweight era. There is some truth to this. It is also true that he fought in a light-heavyweight era stacked with granite-chinned fighters of the highest durability. This did not reduce the likelihood of a Bob Foster knockout victory. In fact, it seems that fighters who trusted in their extraordinary punch resistance to save them were even more unlikely to survive. There was only one way to fight Foster and have hope of success: make sure you did not get hit.
Take Chris Finnegan. Stopped three times on cuts, only a devastating one-two from Foster saw him counted out, tangled in the ropes, his spirited resistance totally broken. Or Dick Tiger, owner of one of the most celebrated chins in history, separated from his sense by one crunching left hook. Frank DePaula was stopped just twice in his career, Foster turning the trick in a single round with a snapping right uppercut. Henry Hank lost 31 fights in his career, but only Foster was able to stop him. Mark Tessman was stopped twice, once by a split eyelid, once by Bob Foster punches. Hal Carroll was similarly prevented from continuing twice by cuts but Foster introduced him to the 10-count in four brutal rounds. See the pattern?
It is also said that Foster never carried his power above 175 lbs. Whilst it is true that Foster never delivered a top scalp up at heavyweight it is also true that he knocked out around twenty men weighing between 180 and 215 lbs.
But power alone wouldn’t get Foster onto this list, and at #6 no less. In spite of his often aesthetically displeasing style, Foster boxed with no little art. On his devastating knockout of Mike Quarry:
“Every time I’d throw a left jab he’d slip it by leaning to his right. He’d bring his right hand back up when he returned to his normal position. I faked a jab and turned it into a hook when he came back up. Bam, I hit him right on the point of the jaw. When he went down, I couldn’t see his eyes. I thought I’d killed him.”
5 – Mike Tyson
“He throws combinations I never saw before. I was stunned. I’ve worked with Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard, but I’m seeing a three-punch combination second to none. When have you seen a guy throw a right hand to the kidney, come up the middle with an uppercut, then throw the left hook?”—Angelo Dundee
Tyson used planes of movement no other fighter has ever utilized. He is heavyweight’s Albert Einstein squared, not only recognizing the possibilities of an unexplored universe but putting those theories into practice. He also represents, for this list, something of a fulcrum. Everyone in the top five was at one time or another considered for the #1 spot. It’s possible to spend more time talking about why four of these five aren’t at #1 rather than talk about what makes them great.
To get the negative stuff out of the way, Tyson was a specialist at mid-range whilst bull-rushing. His physical limitations—short arms, short stature—limit him on the outside and a propensity to allow himself to be held and walked limited him on the inside. In the period between his leaping from our television sets and his destruction at the hands of Buster Douglas, however, Tyson was a cyborg—sent from the future to show us how Joe Louis and Jack Dempsey should have done it.
Ultra-elastic, Tyson was taught to pivot and slip on the spot by Cus D’Amato’s teardrop sandbag, fist-sized and zipping around Tyson’s head like a giant and aggressive blue-bottle. He may have learned to punch in combination whilst ripping out these unique defensive maneuvers on Cus’s patent “Willie Bag”, named for Willie Pastrano, from whom Cus associate Jose Torres lifted the world’s light-heavyweight title. Reportedly made up of five mattresses and a supporting frame, the contraption was marked with eight numbers each of which represented a certain kind of blow, a hook to the jaw, a jab to the chest. Tyson would stand with it for hours whilst either Teddy Atlas or Cus himself (sometimes via a tape recorder) barked out numbers to which Tyson would react. Like Roy Jones, Tyson was a perfect storm of boxing brought together by an upbringing that left him thirsty for direction and acceptance as much as by those fast-twitch muscle fibers.
For a short while in what became a long career Tyson was all but unboxable. At the end of the second round against Trevor Berbick he landed two jabs, came square for a right hook to the kidney, came upstairs with a second right hook, moved back to make room for a left hook as Berbick charged and then tagged on another right for good measure. Spring-tight combinations thrown against a sprawling, moving opponent. The shot that ushered in his “title” reign just seconds later was an absolutely superb punch in its own right, but notable because of its normality; Tyson threw extraordinary punches from angles that just didn’t exist in boxing before his time. Finding sparring partners to replicate his style was easy because anyone can walk in, but finding sparring partners to replicate his dipping, vanishing, off-kilter defense and throw punches going out and coming back from those positions was impossible. None existed. None have ever existed. Probably, none will ever exist.
4 – Sam Langford
“I fought most of the heavyweights including Dempsey and Johnson, but Sam could stretch a guy colder than any of them. When Langford hit me it felt like someone slugged me with a baseball bat. It was like taking ether. You just went to sleep…”—“Fireman” Jim Flynn
In December of 1903 the great Joe Gans stowed the gloves he had used the night before to outpoint the superb Dave Holly and traveled 400 miles in a single day to put his lightweight title on the line against a mercurial teenager named Sam Langford. Complications with the weight meant the fight would go on, in spite of Joe’s stomach trouble, without the title being on the line. For “The Old Master”—then in his absolute prime—this was a glad happenstance; the 17-year-old Langford absolutely thrashed him, outboxed and out-generalled the greatest general seen on the face of the earth up until that point. It was easy.
Fast forward to February of 1916, 13 long years and 100 defeated opponents behind him, a past-prime Sam Langford separates all-time great heavyweight Harry Wills from his senses with a single left hook in the 19th round of their 20-round contest.
Zip on to June of 1922. Langford shares the ring with another all-time great, the middleweight Tiger Flowers. Standing just 5-feet-7-inches, Langford is better suited to this weight-division, but perhaps the most storied of all ring careers has left him blinded. Fighting against shadows, the partial sight that remained him was enough to allow him to land a right hand which traveled “no more than six inches” according to author and historian Clay Moyle, which saw Flowers just about reclaiming all fours at the count of “Ten”.
Viewed on film, Langford looks frighteningly modern. A clearly terrified (and firmly beaten) Joe Jeanette, one of the great heavies of his era, provided the best opposition on video, but it is against Bill Lang that “The Boston Terrier” shines brightest. Crowding footwork maintains the perfect distance for right and left hand punches that are sold behind the narrowest of shifts and the subtlest of feints. A counterpunching pressure fighter, he was as difficult for his peers to box as anyone on this list. As a finisher he is arguably without equal, and as a pure puncher? We’ll let perennial opponent Harry Wills answer that one.
“I’ve met some hard punchers in my time, and all I can say is that the hardest blows any of them ever landed on me were like a slap in the face from a woman compared with those bone-crunching wallops from Langford…[W]hen he knocked me out in New Orleans in 1916, I thought I’d been killed.”
3 – Bob Fitzsimmons
“Whilst physicians were examining him, Ruhlin opened his eyes and faintly asked for water. This was given him as he again lapsed into a sort of stupor. Blood at this time was trickling from his ears and nose.”—The San Francisco Call
Nobody hit like Fitz.
Boxing at the then middleweight limit of 154 lbs., he stopped the granite-chinned nonpareil champion Jack Dempsey in just 13 rounds in what was described as the most scientific display of boxing seen up until that point. Then a boxer-puncher known for his exceptional poise in the ring, Fitz spent the next years adding layer upon layer to one of the most studied, devastating offenses in history. The March 9th, 1893 edition of The Times Democrat published as beautiful and complete a description of Bob’s style as can be seen:
“He will advance when his antagonist least expects it, and often when in full retreat will wheel suddenly about and meet his advancing rival with right or left just in time to borrow his momentum and add it to the force of his own blow…”
Fitzsimmons was the ultimate trap-smith, perhaps unparalleled even today at laying bait, guiding opponents onto his punches, switching the attack at the last possible minute.
“..[T]hough exceedingly apt to advance and force the fighting at times, he has a wonderful faculty of doing so just when his opponent is not ready to meet him with a blow, and by the time a blow is launched in his direction he is generally in the act of getting away…”
An opening rarely missed, Fitzsimmons would become famous in his career for picking certain vulnerable spots and landing upon them, accuracy above and beyond what can be seen in even a world-class fighter.
“…[W]ith all his violent exertion, he never seems to become tired.”
An engine almost infallible, Fitz carried one-punch knockout power of the most devastating kind to the late rounds. His 14th round one-punch knockout of James J. Corbett, which caused the champion’s eyes “to roll back into his head until no pupil was visible,” is amongst the most famous in history. Landed by hands so fast that many at ringside did not see it go in, Corbett was all but paralyzed, crawling pitifully across the ring floor, arguably the greatest heavyweight of his generation laid low by a single blow from a man fighting at the modern super-middleweight limit.
His one punch knockout of middleweight contender Jim Hall was so violent and sudden that onlookers thought him dead; tragically, two men would indeed go to their graves behind punches landed by Ruby Red.
Other victims such as world-class heavyweight Peter Maher were dropped—unconscious—by invisible punches that left their eyes rolling in their heads, confused, when revived, as to what had actually happened to them. Speed enough to make punches invisible to the naked eye. Perhaps unequalled pound-for-pound power. Traps, feints and counterpunching skills unmatched in his era. What kind of fluidity and devastation on offense can keep this monster from the top two?
2 – Sugar Ray Robinson
“I don’t know anything about that punch. Except I watched it on movies a couple of times.”—Gene Fullmer
Fullmer was as tough a middleweight who ever lived, a man who lived face-forwards in the ring, thick-necked, his face as immobile and daunting as his rough-hewn style. Mauling, driving fighters are the easiest to knock out on paper, busy and aggressive they afford plenty of punching opportunities for the opponent. Nevertheless, Florentino “The Ox” Fernandez, one of history’s hardest pure punchers could not make a dent in the granite battlement that was Fullmer’s chin despite landing his terrifying left hook flush at least once. “The Cyclone” just took a quick moment for himself, shrugged off the punch and then went back on the attack. Rescued between rounds by a concerned manager in his very last fight, he never heard the ten.
Except for once.
Sugar Ray Robinson, behind on the cards and a three-to-one underdog to reclaim the middleweight title he had lost to Fullmer, landed perhaps the most perfect punch in the history of boxing. After leading with a hard right hand to the body, Sugar was bulled back and away, making space for himself before assuming the exact stance he had used to throw that right hand to the body—and then, form the hip, all gunslinger, he tossed out a short left hook, driven not by the left or the right foot, but by both feet, and you can’t see it land on film without slowing the film down, and then Fullmer crumbled, managing just a single step in support of his defense of the middleweight title, reduced to nothing less than a back alley drunk on payday, perhaps the most iron-chinned of middleweights missed gaining his feet by a single second.
Is this Robinson’s most impressive feat as a puncher? Possibly not. There’s the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre perpetrated against Jake LaMotta, a fighter legitimately stopped during action just once by this punching display so varied and savage it is likely no fighter in middleweight history could have deciphered or survived it. There’s the terrifying move through the gears in his second fight with Randy Turpin as Robinson, on the verge to losing to Britain’s greatest ever middleweight for a second time, did what all great champions do and found a solution, a fluidity on offense so brutal and alarming that even a 1950s referee couldn’t stand by and do nothing.
As Carmen Basilio, who spent 30 rounds in the ring with Sugar put it, “He was the best puncher, he was the hardest puncher.”
Almost.
1 – Joe Louis
“It ain’t like a punch. It’s like someone nailed you with a crowbar. I thought half my head was blowed off. I figured he caved it in. After he hit me I couldn’t even feel if it was there.”—James J. Braddock
“God how that man can hit. I can’t remember anything after the first knockdown.”—Johnny Paycheck.
“You’d take one shot from him and you were sure he’d have seven or eight more coming for you.”—George Foreman
“Joe Louis uncovers dynamite.”—Richard Wright
“I was worried he would break someone’s neck.”—Arthur Donovan
“He hit me eighteen times as I was in the act of falling.”—Max Baer
Cus D’Amato came up with a punch system for Mike Tyson that would help him become not only the youngest heavyweight world champion, but one of the most ferocious combination punchers in boxing history, the famous "Willie Bag."
Joe Louis is number one on that list for a reason, he's the greatest puncher in boxing history. In any division. He is widely considered the greatest puncher in boxing history because of his unmatched knockout efficiency, flawless technical precision, and devastating power in both hands. Louis wasn't a wild brawler; he was the ultimate textbook puncher. He mastered punch mechanics, generating immense power with minimal wasted motion. His textbook cross—which involved stepping in and perfectly transferring weight through his hips and shoulders—is considered one of the most mechanically perfect punches in history. Many fighters are known for a single dominant hand, but Louis possessed crushing, fight-ending power in both fists. Whether it was his punishing left hook or his straight right, opponents faced constant danger. Louis was a master at stringing punches together, throwing short, concise, explosive combinations at pinpoint speed. Once he had an opponent hurt, his brutal finishing ability gave them virtually no chance to recover. Rather than relying on flashy or erratic movements, Louis utilized a smart, stalking, flat-footed style. This kept him perfectly balanced and constantly in range to strike. He forced opponents into mistakes and capitalized instantly.
Ok, let's get back to the photos that made the cards. Up next, Sam Langford, aka "The Boston Bonecrusher." What he have on our hands here is a true pound-for-pound monster. Many people consider Langford to be the greatest P4P fighter that ever lived. Robinson, Greb, Armstrong, Charles, Fitzsimmons, Langford is certainly right there with them. He raised hell across 11 weight divisions during his career, leaving a trail of broken bodies in his wake. One of the most dangerous and hardest punchers ever, he sent 127 of his opponents to dreamland, hence the nickname. Standing at only 5'6", he was famous for routinely knocking out much larger men. He defeated world champions and top contenders across every division he fought in. Despite his murderous power, Langford was a highly technical pioneer of the sport.
“This is the man competent critics said was the greatest fighter in ring history, the man the champions feared and would not fight, the man who was so good he was never given a chance to show how good he really was."
-Al Laney, New York Herald Tribune
“Quite possibly the greatest fighter who ever lived, Langford mastered every punch. His short hook on the inside and his right cross and uppercut were particularly deadly. His punishing jab was also one of the best. He was a strategist who knew how to maneuver, with the ability to explode out of an offensive or defensive position. He could instantly stop when retreating, revert to the offensive, and in the blink of an eye render an opponent unconscious with trip-hammer blows thrown in four and five punch combinations. Langford's every move embodied the technique of a studied master boxer. During his prime he was rarely outfought, out-thought, or out-punched."
-Mike Silver
“Langford wasn't simply an all out slugger. He was smart and crafty and knew how to out-think guys in the ring. He could fight inside or outside and was impossibly strong. He was decades ahead of his time."
-William Detloff
“Langford was as quick and slippery as an eel in action, highly intelligent and made up of surprising dodges from head to heels. Sam used his bulky shoulders and clever blocking arms to avoid blows and his potent punching power stayed with him until the end of his career.”
-Nat Fleischer, Ring Magazine founder
“Langford with his massive pair of shoulders and long arms was a danger to anyone. Although only a middleweight he gave weight and a beating to many heavyweights.”
-Gilbert Odd
“Langford had all the attributes of a great fighter, speed, punching power, an amazingly elusive defense, the ability to absorb punishment, and unlimited endurance."
-R. Stockton
“Sam Langford was a great fighter in an age of great fighters. In proportion to his height and weight there never was a greater fighting man."
-W. Diamond
“On the whole, I think Langford was the most tremendous hitter in the Ring at this time; for, whereas Jack Johnson would not, as a rule, let the heavy stuff fly until he had worn the man down, Sam always waded right in and immediately let go punches heavy enough to drop anyone. Of course, he had to work up his punch to an extent, however, and this he usually did on the giant Negro, Bob Armstrong, whom he had training with him. As he sparred with Armstrong, every now and again he would give him a dig "downstairs" that would have the big fellow gasping, and, to keep moving, he would then shadow-box for a short time before coming back to resume operations. There would be a few more exchanges, then whop! In would go another one to the body, and exclaim, "Oh"! He's got cramp again", Sam would do a little more shadow-boxing: and so, and so on.
For working up speed Langford had Jimmy Walsh, the bantamweight champion of the world, with him. The pair used to box together lightly, but at a great pace, and I was surprised to find that even in this sort of work Sam was every bit as fast and clever as Walsh himself.”
-Norman Clark who saw Sam fight on his tour of England
“I was knocked out three times in my career, twice by Langford and in my last fight by Paulino Uzcudun. I still don't know, except from hearsay, what punches Sam used to knock me out. The first time it happened was 1914. We were supposed to go twenty rounds, when the fourteenth began I was going easy. Sam was in a bad way. I backed him around the ring trying to set him up for a one punch finish. His eye was bleeding and the last thing I remember was having him against the ropes just about five feet from his corner. It must have happened right then.” The Nov 27 San Francisco Chronicle reported that it was “a left hook to the jaw” that “turned the trick.”
“Two years later we were scheduled for another twenty rounder. In the eighteenth Sam was in a peck of trouble and once again I tried to set him up for a quick knockout. He finished the round okay and when the bell sounded for the start of the nineteenth I was after him again. I figured if I could get him in a corner I could finish the fight. That was all I could remember. He must have caught me as I rushed in." The Feb 13, 1916 New Orleans Times-Picayune said it was "Langford's mighty left hook.
I don't know how long I was unconscious but it must have been quite a while. He was marvelous as a fighting man, I'd venture to say unbeatable in his prime."
-Harry Wills describing in the February 1953 Boxing and Wrestling Magazine what his knockout losses to Langford were like. Wills said he was hit so hard each time that he doesn’t remember being knocked out.
This is Sam Langford against Bill Lang in London in 1911. Langford was 5"6', 166-pounds, Lang was 6"1', 203-pounds. Watch as Langford stalks Lang around the ring, throwing punches with both hands with bad intentions. It's absolutely amazing and fascinating that we have Langford on film, and everything they say about him is absolutely true, he was a pound-for-pound monster.
Ok, let's look at some Sam Langford cards, this is the 1909 E79 - Philadelphia Caramel - 27 Scrappers - Sam Langford. This photo of Langford was used on a lot of his cards.
2004 Helmar Brewing Co. - All Our Heroes - Sam Langford. I love Helmar Brewing Co. cards, such beautiful artwork, designs, and portraits of the athletes. This is actually my favorite Sam Langford card, just a beautiful piece of art.
Music break. I grew up listening to this band, my dad was a big fan and I became one as well. This band has a very unique sound, their own sound, and this is one of the most beautiful songs ever made.
He doesn't have many cards, but Ace Hudkins, aka "The Nebraska Wildcat" deserves a nod. One of the most vicious men to ever enter a boxing ring, he earned his nickname because that was his fighting style, like a wildcat, he tore away and slashed at his opponents. The possessor of a granite-chin, and he fought from lightweight all the way up to heavyweight. This is a really cool card, the 1928 W565 Strip Card - Ace Hudkins.
Fascinating article about Ace Hudkins. He was hell on wheels.
Nightmare in Dreamland: When Ace Hudkins Crashed Coney Island
By: Carlos Acevedo
“All he wanted to do was fight, fight, fight.” Paul Gallico
He tore out of the Great American Desert to make a mockery of the carefree Jazz Age, trailing behind him the dark shadow of the lawless frontier, snarling, heeling, butting, permanent stubble underpinning his perpetual scowl. From the High Plains he scratched his way to riches in Los Angeles before winding up, incongruously, under the whirling lights of Surf Avenue in Brooklyn, New York, where he ignored the carousels on his way to doing what he loved doing best: raising cain. To hell with kewpie dolls, red hots, and armadillo baskets; the roughneck who once said, “It gives me a thrill to see a man bleeding and his flesh sliced like the top of a baked ham,” was here to kick up a ruckus. It was a warm night, June, 1926, and the careening Thunderbolt roller coaster on nearby Bowery Street was a fitting backdrop to what would soon occur. In less than fifteen minutes he left his exact opposite — a quiet teenager named Ruby who had soulful eyes and doted on his mother — draped helplessly over the bottom strand of the ring ropes.
His name was Ace Hudkins. They called him “The Nebraska Wildcat,” and this is the story of how he introduced himself to New York City in 1926. He did it the only way he knew how: with a snarl and a sock on the jaw. Hudkins, so cool he was actually christened “Ace,” was the scourge of lightweights, welterweights, and middleweights for most of the 1920s. Born in Valparaiso, Nebraska, in 1905, Hudkins probably began fighting as a newspaper boy in 1917 or 1918. His first recorded professional bout took place in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1922, when he was only sixteen. Over the next two and a half years, Hudkins razed his way through murky clubs and auditoriums across Nebraska, scrapping under thunderheads of cigarette smoke in townships and hamlets like Tecumseh, Wahoo, and Harlan.
In late 1924 Hudkins left the hardpan behind and drifted into Los Angeles, where his no-holds-barred ferocity made him an overnight star in Hollywood. Not the kind with two yachts and a Mission Revival house, of course, but the kind that could draw thousands of screaming spectators to watch him maul his opponents in cold blood. Damon Runyon once described the Ace Hudkins experience succinctly. “When I watch him fight,” he wrote, “I visualize a vicious jungle cat clawing the guts out of a helpless antelope.”
Hudkins thrashed it out with West Coast headliners like Mushy Callahan, Spug Myers, and Joe Benjamin, sometimes losing, sometimes winning, sometimes settling for stalemates, but always ready to knock the Tinsel out of Tinseltown with a sneer. Nothing less could be expected from a man Paul Gallico described as, “tough, hard, mean, cantankerous, combative, foul, nasty, courageous, and filled at all times with bitter and flaming lust for battle.”
To say Hudkins was ornery was like saying Doc Holliday had a quick trigger-finger. “Ace lived up to my concept of what a prizefighter ought to be,” wrote Stan Windhorn. “He was dirty in the ring, a back-alley brawler out of the ring, and, to the best of my knowledge, Ace was never kind to anyone—not even his mother.” Hudkins was a walking, no, swaggering, firestorm who left charred ruins wherever he went. Indeed, during his heyday, Hudkins — who was the guest of honor at a minimum of three riots in his career — was suspended at one time or another in California, New York, Kansas, Illinois, Milwaukee, and even in his home state of Nebraska for, incredibly, conduct “detrimental to the best interests of boxing.”
Years later, after he had retired, Hudkins stalked the City of Angels with a sawed-off shotgun looking for trouble. He got it, too, for the same reason a Marsh Hawk always gets its prey — it was just something he was born to do. In 1933 Hudkins was shot twice in a cafe brawl that left him so close to death that obituaries had already been written up by the press corps, ready for printing. But he survived out of sheer contrariness.
In 1926 Hudkins, on the prowl, brought his special brand of cussedness East and was immediately matched with an 18-year old wunderkind named Ruby Goldstein.
Reuven Goldstein was born on October 7, 1907, in the Lower East Side of New York City. Desperate poverty — the Jacob Riis kind — blighted his childhood. His father died a few months before he was born; his mother sewed and took in laundry; his grandfather worked inhuman hours at a sweat shop for a pittance. Not even the $3 a month public relief chipped in to help the Goldstein family could make ends meet. Goldstein dropped out of school when he was fourteen years old and, after ditching a job as an office boy, turned to amateur boxing full-time to help his family pay the bills.
Goldstein, sad eyed and scrawny, showed remarkable ability and power at an early age. He was undefeated as an amateur and by the time he turned pro in 1924, underage at 17, Goldstein was already being compared to Benny Leonard. With smooth boxing skills and a right cross that doubled as a Howitzer, Goldstein won his first 23 bouts and became a hero to Jewish fans from Cherry Street to Pelham Parkway. “That was the Ruby Goldstein of 1925,” wrote Ted Carroll of The Ring, “a young fighter whose ability was almost unbelievable! Small wonder that Goldstein, during his brief heyday, was the greatest idol New York City ever had!” Just how popular was he? Dubbed “The Jewel of the Ghetto,” Goldstein was mobbed wherever he went, and his fights were nearly always sold out. Today it is nearly impossible to imagine, but Ruby Goldstein once drew over 40,000 fans to watch him slug it out with neighborhood rival Sid Terris at the Polo Grounds in 1927. It was a six-round bout.
Goldstein was on his way to a title shot when his manager, Hymie Cantor, decided one last tune-up bout was necessary. Incredibly, he chose Ace Hudkins for the role of patsy. Choosing Ace Hudkins to be a fall guy is like putting Leopold and Loeb in charge of the entertainment at a party. It was the biggest mistake Hymie Cantor ever made.
On June 25, 1926, Ruby Goldstein and Ace Hudkins faced off at Coney Island Stadium. Since neither participant was 21, the bout, by New York law, was limited to six rounds. Still, it was one of hottest tickets in town. By 1920 the Seabeach Line had been extended to Surf Avenue and the New West End Terminal had been built, allowing the New York City Subway system to deliver masses of underclass revelers to Luna Park and Coney Island Beach for five cents. It was the Nickel Empire, and Ace Hudkins was ready to conquer it. Around 15,000 fans paid to see their hero, Ruby Goldstein, go up against a red-headed sourpuss the likes of which New York sports had never seen before.
Hudkins, a 6-1 underdog, entered the ring wearing a short jersey sweat-shirt with, believe it or not, a popped collar. He was seconded by his brothers Clyde and Art, and the crowd booed the trio unmercifully. Goldstein, described by nearly every contemporary account as “cherubic,” followed to a deafening roar of cheers, accompanied by Cantor and two future corner superstars: Ray Arcel and Whitey Bimstein. Referee Patsy Haley gave the final instructions, and the two men returned to their corners. The bright lights of the Wonder Wheel could be seen beyond the stadium walls.
Within seconds of the opening bell, Goldstein dropped Hudkins with a straight right that landed with an explosive thud. “I knocked Hudkins down with my first punch,” recalled Goldstein. “A feint… a stab as he moved into me… then a right hand on the chin. He was hit so hard he rolled over.” But Hudkins, however, was mean and tough. He rose with a snarl, charged into Goldstein with both hands whipping, and rode out the first three minutes of a sensational slugfest. In the 2nd and 3rd rounds, the two fighters traded shots without pause, Goldstein sharper and more accurate with his fluid moves, Hudkins clubbing and chasing furiously. Although Hudkins took many more blows than he landed, he was relentless. “No matter how well I hit him, “ Goldstein wrote in his autobiography, “he seemed to be getting stronger. Then, near the end of the round, he nailed me on the chin with a looping right hand. I was hurt. I began to fall. The bell rang. I lurched toward my corner as Hymie and Ray and Whitey swarmed through the ropes to catch me.”
Goldstein came out for the 4th like a man who had been stuck on the Human Roulette Wheel overnight. Hudkins, smelling blood, moved in for the kill. An overhand right dropped a wobbly Goldstein to his knees. He beat the count, but was floored moments later by a hard uppercut. Once more Goldstein rose, and Hudkins, flaming hair and lips bared in a sneer, charged, crashing home a left hook that sent Goldstein reeling into the ropes, where he lay suspended horizontally for a moment, like something out of the Funhouse, before ricocheting back into the ring and onto his hands and knees. When Patsy Haley tolled “10” over Goldstein, he counted out both “The Jewel of the Ghetto” and his future as the most promising lightweight to emerge since Benny Leonard.
Goldstein was hit so hard that he had little recall of what happened to him after the knockout blow was landed. “I do not remember leaving the ring, although I was told that it was some minutes after I had been counted out and that I sat in my corner crying…” he wrote. “Even the picture of the dressing room when I returned to it is not clear, except that I was still crying. I was not hurting from the punches, but the grief and disappointment were too much for me.”
Goldstein was not the only one suffering from grief. Jack Conway in The Evening Journal reported: “The tears that Ruby Goldstein shed after he had recovered consciousness and realized he had been knocked out by Ace Hudkins were only the beginning of a weeping Niagara that has flooded Broadway. Ruby wept because his pride was hurt; the others because their bankroll was flattened.” It was said that the notorious gangster Waxey Gordon, who had a piece of Goldstein, took the biggest hit of all: a loss of $45,000, roughly half a million simoleons today.
Goldstein, not yet 19, was finished as a fighter after being mangled by Hudkins. He was so psychologically damaged that he skipped town the day of his comeback fight and somehow wound up in San Francisco, on the run from shame and humiliation. He returned to New York and continued fighting. “I didn’t have the zest for boxing,“ he wrote, “but it was a living—a better living than I could have made any other way.” A few big purses still followed: a 1st round KO loss to Sid Terris that netted him a payday of $22,500, a fortune in the 1920s, and a brutal KO defeat against lethal Jimmy McLarnin, who floored him three times. Goldstein went through the motions until 1937, finishing with a record of 54-6. All of his losses were by knockout. After World War II, Goldstein went on to become one of the most famous referees in history, but here, too, he found himself devastated: Goldstein was the third man the night Benny “Kid’ Paret died at the hands of Emile Griffith in 1962. Goldstein came back after two years of guilt, refereed one more fight, and never stepped into the ring again.
Hudkins became a villainous smash in New York City, drawing huge gates in fights with Phil McGraw and Stanislaus Loayza before heading back West to wreak havoc in a friendlier climate. Ace Hudkins, you see, was despised in all five boroughs of The Big Apple. “There was no love or even warmth in Hudkins,” wrote Stanley Weston. “He disgusted the press and the fans came out hoping to see him slaughtered.” Hudkins fought on until 1932, twice challenging Mickey Walker unsuccessfully for the middleweight championship and even going so far as fighting at heavyweight. Despite beating King Levinsky and winning the California State heavyweight title, Hudkins lost his edge with each pound he gained and hung up his gloves at 27. He finished his career with a record of 67-17-12.
Hudkins was in and out of trouble with the law for years after he retired, until a near-death experience, provided via bullet, settled him down. He bought a stable and then made a living supplying horses for movie Westerns. Then, Ace Hudkins being Ace Hudkins, he became a Hollywood stuntman.
Although he failed to win a world title, Hudkins would never be forgotten by New Yorkers who saw this pitiless red-headed discontent come out of the dying frontier, like the Bad Man from Bodie, step into the urban dreamland of Coney Island, and knock the living daylights out of a nice Jewish boy named Ruby Goldstein.
Ace Hudkins would have fit in perfectly in the old West. I could easily picture him riding horseback alongside a train, face covered with a bandana.
The Sweet Science
Before ‘Bud’ Crawford, there was Ace Hudkins: A Look Back at the ‘Nebraska Wildcat’
During his career, Ace Hudkins was recognized as the California state champion in two weight classes – lightweight and heavyweight. He fought before crowds of 30,000-plus at baseball parks in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago and he came within a shade of wresting the world middleweight title from the great Mickey Walker, losing a decision widely assailed as a heist.
In light of Terence “Bud” Crawford’s brilliant performance last Saturday against Errol Spence, now would seem to be a good time to dust off the Ace Hudkins omnibus. Before Crawford, there was little argument that Hudkins was the best fighter ever born and raised in Nebraska.
Asa “Ace” Hudkins was born in 1905 in Valparaiso, a little farming town where his father owned a livery stable. His father died young and the family moved to Lincoln where Ace took up boxing at age 16 after first attracting notice as a wrestler with the Lincoln, Nebraska YMCA. He fought exclusively in and around the Cornhusker State before turning up in Los Angeles in December of 1924.
Los Angeles in 1924 was a boomtown. The population of LA County soared from 936,000 to 2.2 million during the decade of the 1920s. In December of 1924, boxing in the Golden State was on the cusp of a renaissance, the result of the new state law that took effect that month that overturned the law in effect since 1914 that had restricted matches to four rounds. A new arena for boxing was rising from the dirt on South Grand Avenue, the Olympic Auditorium, offering an alternative to Hollywood Legion Stadium, which itself was fairly new.
Having two venues for boxing in close proximity in a large and rapidly growing city was bound to drive up purses and Ace Hudkins was one of many leather-pushers who followed the scent of fresh money to Southern California in the mid-1920s.
In Hudkins’ second fight in California, on Jan. 9, 1925, he was thrust against California lightweight champion Tommy Carter. A capacity crowd was on hand for an event that was somewhat historic, marking the first “long fight” (i.e., 10-rounder) at Hollywood Legion Stadium.
The fight, by all accounts, was a doozy. Carter had the Nebraskan almost out on his feet in the third round, but Hudkins roared back and almost finished Carter in the sixth. The bout went the full distance and there was scarcely a dull moment. The referee awarded the match to Hudkins, a foregone conclusion as “the gawky, freckled kid from Nebraska,” as reporter Ed Frayne phrased it, “won conclusively.”
By then, Ace Hudkins had 45 pro fights under his belt although he was yet only 19 years old. Reporters took to referencing him as the Nebraska Wildcat and predicted that he would go far if he tightened up his defense.
Hudkins had 11 more fights before the year was out, all but one in Los Angeles. The exception was a 10-round contest in East Chicago, Indiana, against Sid Terris. The lightweight title was then in dispute – the great Benny Leonard had retired – and the winner would claim the title, notwithstanding the fact that the New York Commission recognized Buffalo’s Jimmy Goodrich.
The bout was a thriller climaxed by a breathtaking final round that had the crowd on its feet the whole while. Ace never took a backward step, but the consensus of ringside reporters was that he was out-boxed. This was no disgrace. Terris, a clever New Yorker with a magnificent record (66-4-2 heading in, per boxrec) would be inducted posthumously into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
During the bout, Ace was warned several times by referee Dave Barry (he of “long count” fame) for low blows and general roughhousing and this became part of his persona. Retrospectives of Ace Hudkins invariably touch upon his penchant for flouting the Queensberry code. “Whatever it takes (to win),” was his mantra.
Coney Island
Ace had better success against Terris’s landsman Ruby Goldstein. A baby-faced knockout artist from New York’s Lower East Side who would go on to become a prominent referee, Goldstein, nicknamed the Jewel of the Ghetto, was 23-0 when he was pitted against Hudkins on June 25, 1926, in the outdoor arena at Coney Island.
New York then had a rule that mandated that a fighter had to be at least 21 years old to compete in a 10-rounder. Both Hudkins and Goldstein were under the limit and their match was slated for six frames. Despite this encumbrance, a crowd estimated as high as 18,000 swarmed into Coney Island Stadium to see the Jewish phenom perform against the mysterious “wildcat” from out west who was making his Big Apple debut.
Things started swimmingly for Goldstein. Midway through the first round, he put Hudkins on the deck with a straight right hand. “At this stage,” wrote the ringside reporter for the Brooklyn Standard Union, “the buttonhole makers who wagered their shekels on Ruby were counting the profits.” But Hudkins was up at the count of six and bobbed and weaved and clinched to last out the round.
Goldstein won the second round also, but Ace landed a big right hand just before the bell and from that point it was all Hudkins who ended the match in the fourth with a paralyzing left hook that put Goldstein down for the count. A physician clambered into the ring and stayed with him until he regained his senses and young Ruby would leave the ring in tears.
Hudkins had three more fights in New York before returning to Los Angeles where he racked up five straight wins, outpointing such notables as Mexican-American trailblazer Bert Colima and future Hall of Famer Lew Tendler.
Welterweight
When Ace returned to New York in the summer of 1927, he was a full-fledged welterweight. He carried 146 pounds for his June 15 date with Sergeant Sammy Baker at the Polo Grounds on a card studded with leading lightweight contenders.
The guest of honor was Col. Charles Lindbergh who had flown solo from New York to Paris the preceding month, a feat that made him a national hero. Lindbergh came there at the behest of Ace Hudkins. It turned out that they were old friends who met when Lindbergh, three years older than Ace, was in Lincoln attending flight school.
The motorcade that transported Lindbergh and his host Mayor Jimmy Walker to the fight ran into traffic and Lindbergh missed the first two rounds. When he finally took his seat, Hudkins’ right eye was already purplish and swollen. The cut over the eye burst wide open in round seven and the referee waived the fight off.
Hudkins got his revenge the following month in a fight for the ages at LA’s Wrigley Field, home to the city’s Triple-A baseball teams.
Hudkins-Baker II was a gory spectacle. At the finish, said a ringside scribe, “both fighters were covered with blood and many ringside spectators wished they had come equipped with umbrellas.” Harry Grayson, soon to be one of America’s highest-paid newspaper writers as the sports editor of the Newspaper Enterprise Association, could not contain his enthusiasm. “Veterans declared it to be the most savage contest their tired old eyes ever gazed upon,” said Grayson. “This writer never saw a more bitterly contested duel between great fighters.”
The fourth round ended with Sergeant Baker flat on his back, unconscious. But the bell sounded when the referee reached the count of nine and Baker recovered during the one-minute respite and fought his way back into the fight. The turnout, at least 30,000, was said to be the largest in LA boxing history and the gate receipts exceeded the previous high by a good margin.
A fighter of Sicilian extraction from Baltimore, Joe Dundee, then had the strongest claim to the welterweight title. Hudkins signed to meet him at Wrigley Field on Nov. 4. 1927. What ensued was one of the nastiest riots in California boxing history.
Dundee refused to come out of his dressing room when the promoter failed to make good on his guaranteed $60,000 fee. When that became obvious, fistfights erupted like wildfires in every section of the enclosure. Some of the belligerents managed to make their way into the ring. The battle royal collapsed the ropes on one side of the ring and a score of men landed on press row, crushing typewriters and telegraph equipment. Every available policeman in the city was dispatched to the ballpark where they “wielded their nightsticks with vigor” to quell the conflagration.
Middleweight
Hudkins then set his sights on middleweight champion Mickey Walker, the Toy Bulldog, a former welterweight title-holder who would go on to defeat some of the leading heavyweight contenders before his career had wended its course. While he was waiting, he engaged in several more fights, notably a rubber match with Sergeant Sammy Baker at Madison Square Garden. This bout wasn’t as gory as their second fight, but was every bit as robust. The decision went to the “wildcat” who struck the reporter from the New York Daily News as a throwback to the Stone Age.
Ace Hudkins and Mickey Walker collided on June 21, 1928, at Chicago’s Comiskey Park. It was 10-rounder, the limit then in effect in Chicago for any prizefight, whether for a world title or otherwise. The turnout, purportedly 30,000, was impressive considering the ominous skies, a portent of the torrential downpour that larruped the crowd in the final two rounds.
It was a bloody, tightly-contested affair and, at the conclusion, most of the reporters were in accord with the referee who deemed Ace Hudkins the winner. But both judges dissented (their scorecards were not made public) and Walker retained his crown.
Despite the drenching from the cloudburst, many in the crowd lingered long after the fight to vent their displeasure, holding up the walk-out fight. “It was one of the wildest demonstrations of disapproval any championship fight has witnessed in recent years, lasting fifteen minutes in full volume and a half-hour in more sporadic form,” said the correspondent for the Associated Press.
The damage was starting to take its toll on the Nebraska Wildcat, a glutton for punishment. He lured Mickey Walker to LA for a rematch, but their contest, on Oct. 6, 1929, was a pale imitation of their first encounter. The reporter for the Los Angeles Record scored the bout 6-1-3 for the Toy Bulldog while conceding that his tally may have been a bit generous to Hudkins. This may, however, have been Hudkins’ best payday. The turnout, 21,370, including many Hollywood stars, shattered the California record for gate receipts.
Light Heavyweight
Undeterred by his second failed bid at Walker’s middleweight title, Hudkins set his sights on the light heavyweight diadem. To this end, he challenged the leading contender and future title-holder Maxie Rosebloom.
Their match at Madison Square Garden on Feb. 14, 1930, although a predictably foul-filled tussle, was an entertaining affair. Ace won the first three rounds, but then faded. In reaching for a stab at the light heavyweight title, he had reached too far.
Hudkins, clearly past his prime although only 25 years old, would have only seven more fights before calling it quits. In the fifth of those seven fights, however, he turned back the clock, winning the California heavyweight title from Dynamite Jackson. Hudkins upended Jackson before a packed house at the Olympic Auditorium on Sept. 15, 1931, in a match pushed back three weeks after Ace suffered a bad case of poison ivy.
Heavyweight
In his customary slashing and mauling style, Hudkins wore down his 205-pound adversary and coasted home after building an insurmountable lead. “The spectacle of the 173-pounder moving his heavier foe around the ring, much as husky gentlemen shove pianos, gave the crowd many a chuckle,” said the reporter for the Los Angeles Evening Express.
Ace had previously defeated Chicago heavyweight hopeful King Levinsky and his triumph over Jackson sparked talk of a match between him and rising heavyweight star Max Baer. That would have been an interesting match-up, if only because it would have paired two native Nebraskans. Baer was born in Omaha but spent his formative years in Colorado and Northern California.
That match never materialized and Ace’s win over Dynamite Jackson proved to be his last hurrah. He surrendered the title to Lee Ramage in his first defense and his performance in his swan song fight with Utah journeyman Wesley Ketchell was desultory. The best that could be said is that he lasted the distance in both matches. The only man that ever stopped him was Sergeant Sammy Baker and Ace avenged that setback twice.
After the Fall
In retirement, Hudkins became an alcoholic which led to numerous brushes with the law resulting from bar brawls, drunk driving, and such, and a near-fatal incident in 1933 when he was shot in the chest by the proprietor of a nightclub. But he kicked the habit and became a successful businessman. With his three brothers – Clyde, Art, and Ode – he opened a ranch that rented horses and related equipment to Hollywood filmmakers and TV studios in an era when Westerns were the backbone of the industry. Roy Rogers’ famous “Trigger” and the original “Silver” of Lone Ranger fame were boarded and trained at the Hudkins Brothers North Hollywood facility. Ace appeared with some of his horses in a few movies where he was an uncredited stunt rider. He was battling Parkinson’s disease when he passed away at age 67 in 1973.
You won’t find a plaque for Ace Hudkins at the International Boxing Hall of Fame, but that may yet happen. In this reporter’s opinion, he is no less qualified than Tiger Jack Fox, the most recent inductee in the Old Timer category, and Hudkins created much more of a stir during his brief but tumultuous career.
As to whether Ace could hold his own with Bud Crawford, that’s a rhetorical question. Crawford is a special talent. There are many dimensions to his game, whereas Hudkins, although tough as nails, had only one gear. A reporter seeking the right adjective to describe his technique, came up with the word longshoreman. But despite his limitations, it would be hard to argue with former LA Times scribe Paul Lowry who called Hudkins the best near-champion of his era.
Paul Gallico referenced Ace Hudkins in his classic memoir, “Farewell to Sport.” We’ll give Gallico the last word, er, words: “[He] was tough, hard, mean, cantankerous, combative, foul, nasty, courageous, acrimonious, and filled at all times with bitter and flaming lust for battle.”
Editor’s Note: Kristine Sader, a distant relative who had access to Ace Hudkins’ scrapbooks, wrote a biography of the boxer that was published in 2018. “Ace Hudkins: Boxing with the Nebraska Wildcat,” a $25 paperback, can be found at Amazon.
This is the book about Ace Hudkins that was mentioned in that article.
IBRO
A Look at “The Nebraska Wildcat”
Articles, Boxing Books / September 26, 2019
By: Roger Zotti
Ace Hudkins was a blond thunderbolt in his heyday….His one thought was to get at his opponent and tear him to pieces. Ace fought as a lightweight and middleweight and, though never a champion, he could lick 99 percent of the guys who thought they were champions. [He] probably drew more money in a year than all the present champions put together, bar Joe Louis.
It’s Cinematic What Kristine Sader hopes readers take from her intriguing book Ace Hudkins: Boxing with the Nebraska Wildcat is, she told the International Boxing Research Organization Journal, “an appreciation for the time, the 1920s, and for the man, Ace Hudkins. I wanted it to be an enjoyable book, almost like a scrapbook. Fun and informative.”
Kristine explained that “I tried to think cinematically while I was writing the book. I would ask myself, ‘How would this scene look in a movie?’” (For me, reading Kristine’s book was like seeing a documentary unfold with each turn of the page. Her cinema technique worked!)
She cited documentarian Ken Burns as “a terrific influence in the way he presents history in an entertaining way, and that movies like Seabiscuit and Cinderella Man influenced my book, too, and I believe movies like Hooper will influence the next book I am writing, which is a continuation of the Hudkins brothers’ work in Hollywood providing stuntmen, horses, wagons, and wranglers for movies.
About twenty or so years ago, Kristine said, “the seeds of this book were planted. That was when I was out to dinner with my Dad, and I told him that his family’s stories sounded like they would make a great book. They were such great characters and had such a large part in movies and early westerns on TV.”
His answer: “’Well, maybe you should write it.’ It took me time to make it a priority. Slowly I started having interviews with people such as Gene LeBell (wrestler, stuntman, and actor in Raging Bull and Rocky, among many other projects). I include portions of Mr. LeBell’s interview in my first book, and I am also including portions in the second book on which I am currently working.”
Kristine added: “I chatted with my cousin Rich Brehm (Head Wrangler on Wagon Train who worked on Around The World In Eighty Days, and did transportation for Scarface, among many other projects), and then Robert Fuller (Laramie and Wagon Train actor). I later talked with Clint Walker (Cheyenne), James Drury (The Virginian) and other greats of the time whose interviews will be included in the second book.
“I was making progress when my dad passed in 2013, and at first it was hard to get back into writing the book, but I found renewed determination when I decided to write it as a tribute to my Dad’s family and to my Dad himself.”
Ace, the Challenge, and Learning Ace Hudkins was Kristine’s great-uncle. He was “a well-known boxer during the 1920’s who,” she wrote, “worked his way up to the top of the boxing world and knew many interesting and famous Hollywood personalities. How did he get from Lincoln, Nebraska, to the big time in Hollywood? What did it take? I think it is a story about family, brotherhood, and, well, the American Dream coming true.”
As she wrote her book—which contains “anecdotes about people such as Charles Lindbergh and Rudolph Valentino, who were included in the varied list of Ace’s friends and acquaintances”—Kristine learned “that writing isn’t talking about writing. Writing is writing. ‘A writer, writes.’ “Billy Crystal said that in Throw Mama From The Train, and it’s true! It really means if you want to write, it takes sitting down and writing.
“You may not always be inspired,” she continued, “and it might get tiring, especially toward the end, but a book will never be finished unless someone finishes writing it. That might mean it is never as good as you would like it to be. Sometimes that means just stopping and writing the end.”
Stephen King is one writer who influenced Kristine. “It’s not because my book is scary,” she said, “although the image of Ace coming at opponents haunted many of them for years. I am influenced by King because of his craft. He is a grand storyteller and that is what I want to do . . . I LOVED the way he included song lyrics in his books when I first started reading them in middle school. If I could get the rights I would include many more song lyrics in my book, as I think they help to set the time, place, mood and tone.”
Many other writers have influenced Kristine, too, but “I am most influenced by movies,” she said. “Though the book is about a boxer in the 1920s and in honor of my Dad, as I said, I tried to write it like a movie. If you like Rocky, Chicago, or Cinderella Man, I think you will like this book, which I hope comes off as entertaining. Please keep up with me on Facebook, Twitter, or my website (https://www.kristinesaderwriter.com/).
The Book Kristine’s lively coverage of Ace’s fights with Ruby Goldstein and Mickey Walker are among the highlights of Ace Hudkins: Boxing With The Nebraska Wildcat. Against the highly regarded, hard-hitting, undefeated Goldstein, who later became one of boxing’s greatest referees, Ace was a 4-1 underdog. Though floored in the opening round, in round four Ace connected. Mike Silver, in Stars in the Ring: Jewish Champions in the Golden Age of Boxing, put it like this: “Goldstein never saw the sweeping left hook that landed on the point of his chin, [and] he was counted out for the first time in his career.”
(The bout was scheduled for six rounds because both fighters were under twenty-one years of age. The venue was Brooklyn’s Coney Island Stadium, the year 1926. The twenty-year-old Hudkins was two years older than Goldstein.)
Ace fought middleweight champion Mickey Walker twice, and in their first fight—which took place at Chicago’s Comiskey Park, in 1928, with a large crowd in attendance—Walker won the decision. So disputed was the verdict, however, that Ace was soon known as the uncrowned middleweight champion. (Kristine quotes a clipping from Ace’s scrapbook: “Whenever you see ten or fifteen thousand fans say the decision was ‘rotten,’ put it down as being just that and nothing else.”)
Their second fight took place in 1929, at Wrigley Field, Los Angeles, and Walker, who perhaps underrated Ace the first time they fought, won a clear-cut decision.
Ace stopped fighting in 1932 and according to boxrec.com compiled a record of 64-16-12 (25 KOs) during his ten-year boxing career.
In retirement Ace still had some of the “wildcat” in his bones: His everyday existence was filled with ups and downs, but Kristine believes that “In the later part of [his] life, he had settled down tremendously. This could be attributed to age and maturity but, then again, this author like to think that it was also due to the calming influence of Mildred Herron, Ace’s true love . . . Mildred doted on Ace and her love calmed him down . . . No more did he feel the need to take risks and drive intoxicated or get into bar fights. He didn’t have to be ‘The Wildcat’ 24 hours a day.” He passed away April 18, 1973
And, yes, Kristine said, “There are many more stories to be told about Ace—and they will be.”
John Wayne and Ace Hudkins on the set of Rio Bravo (1959). Duke autographed the photo and wrote " Find another 'Banner', Ace."
During the 1940’s and 1950’s, Duke’s favorite mount was a large bay named Banner, supplied by the Fat Jones stables.
“He was intelligent and had an instinct for this business,” John Wayne once said of Banner.
Ace Hudkins had a horse stable near Warner Bros. He and his brother Art began renting horses to film companies in the late 1930s. His Hudkins Brothers Movie Ranch was a favorite of dozens of cowboy stars who boarded horses at the ranch (the property is now part of Forest Lawn Glendale), and among Ace's friends were Smiley Burnette, Guinn Wilson, Fred Kennedy, Gene Autry, and John Wayne.
Ace also did stunt work and appeared in Gunsmoke (1955), Temple Houston (1963), and The Mountain Men (1980).
You know, it mentioned in that Sweet Science article, a fantasy matchup between Terence "Bud" Crawford and Ace Hudkins and who would win? That's fascinating, Crawford is a very cerebral technician, likes to take his time and study his opponent a bit, figure them out, then systematically take them apart. He would be going up against a man who rips into his opponents like a wild animal and overwhelms them with sheer aggression. Fascinating fantasy matchup. One last photo of Ace Hudkins here.
This is the only surviving fight footage of Ace Hudkins, his second fight with Mickey Walker in 1929. Watching this footage, you can see everything they say about Hudkins is absolutely true, at the opening bell he instantly applies vicious pressure on Walker and begins tearing at him and mauling him. Walker really has no other choice but try and outbox Hudkins on the backfoot to avoid the nastiness of Hudkins' trench warfare.
This is an article by The New York Times after the first fight between Ace Hudkins and Mickey Walker, most observers thought Hudkins should have been crown the world middleweight champion that night.
Hudkins Is Beaten in Title Bout With Walker in Chicago; CHAMPION WALKER OUTPOINTS HUDKINS Gains Verdict After Ten Rounds of Hard and Bitter Fighting at Chicago. CHALLENGER ON ATTACK Sets Pace From Start to Finish, Punishing Walker With Heavy Body Blows. CROWD OF 30,000 PRESENT Receipts for Bout, Cut by Early Threatening Weather, Are Estimated Over $150,000.
By: James P. Dawson. Special To the New York Times.
June 22, 1928
CHICAGO. June 21. Mickey Walker won the world's middleweight championship about eighteen months ago on a weird decision from the late Tiger Flowers in a battle here, and tonight he retained his laurels through the same medium. In this latest instance of charity among the city's boxing judges, Ace Hudkins, Nebraska's aptly named Wildcat of the ring, was the victim.
Through ten savage rounds, in a battle of which half was fought in a driving downpour of rain, Hudkins battered and pounded Walker in a desperate bid for the world's 160-pound title and at the finish had only a blood smeared countenance to show for his efforts. The majority thought that Hudkins's hand would be raised in victory, but the crowd and experts were amazed to see the hand of Walker held aloft, signifying victory. Receiving the decision. Walker retained his title. The decision was not unanimous, but that does not alter the fact that Walker is champion. Eddie Purdy, veteran referee, and well known in New York for his officiating, was the third man in the ring, and he made no secret of the fact that he voted for Hudkins.
Two Judges Decide Issue.
The judges, Ed Klein and Harry Carroll, voted for Walker, and their ballots decided the issue. Their ballots also precipitated one of the most vigorous outbursts of condemnation from a fight crowd that Chicago has ever experienced in the short time it has enjoyed professional boxing under recently legalized conditions. There was a crowd of about 30,000 at this title struggle, drawn by the promise of a slashing battle which was fulfilled, and it paid in gross receipts a figure estimated in excess of $150.000, an all-time record for receipts in Chicago boxing, exclusive of the Tunney-Dempsey bout last year. The fans stood on chairs in the downpour, ignoring discomfort in their desire to voice disapproval of what was one of the most weird decisions they had ever listened to. Powerful arc lamps in the park started popping as fans threw missiles at the lights, and the reports, sounding like pistol cracks above the din of the disapproving fans, made some in the gathering apprehensive. One light exploded directly above the head of Clyde Hudkins, brother-manager of the Ace, and showered him with glass, while some thought a bottle had been hurled into the ring.
How the decision of the judges was arrived at will remain a deep mystery. Hudkins deserved the decision by taking four of the six rounds to Walker's two. In the other two sessions champion and challenger shared honors.
Hudkins Makes the Fighting.
Hudkins made all of the fighting against a champion who has gone back as a fighter. The challenger did most of the leading, showing contempt for the desperate blows of Walker, who was in full flight at times. Hudkins was erratic and cautioned several times for fouling.
Hudkins's hurts were on the surface; Walker's were internal. The champion bled freely from the nose and mouth and from an old wound over the left eye. Hudkins gushed blood from a wound over the left eye. another under the right eye, from the nose and from bruised and battered lips.
Walker won only the first and fourth rounds, and he held Hudkins even in the fifth and in the tenth, when he rallied heroically. The champion made his big effort and enjoyed his greatest success in the fourth. He hammered out cuts on Hudkins's face which bled through the rest of the fight. Walker crashed a terrific left hook to the body which almost doubled up Hudkins. The champion followed with a rain of vicious lefts and rights to the jaw which had Hudkins on the verge of a knockout at the bell. The Ace responded to the bell for the fifth round unaffected and more vicious than ever. He had kept on top of Walker tirelessly, hammering away with both hands in a steady drum-fire of punches to the head and body at close quarters. After the fourth round, Hudkins was like the wildcat to which he has been compared in point of fury. Ho withstood an abbreviated rally from Walker in the fifth session.
Hudkins Closes Strongly.
Through the sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth rounds and for a time in the tenth. Hudkins battered and pounded Walker all over the ring. The challenger went close, getting past the champion's weak stabs and drilling home to the body and to the head and face with his left and with his right. In desperation Walker at times threw the Ace off bodily and hooked left or right to the jaw or to the body, but the blows lacked steam. Realizing he couldn't keep his rival at bay, Walker did the next best thing and openly broke and ran across the ring. But always Hudkins was in hot pursuit, pressing the champion to the ropes, laying his head on Walker's chest and hammering away. And the bell ending each round was the only relief for the champion.
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1950 Joe Palooka Candy - Jake Kilrain.
1950 Joe Palooka Candy - Coupon Back - Jake Kilrain.
Here's a photo of Jake Kilrain and Jem Smith. In 1887, Kilrain met Smith in France for the Police Gazette championship belt, the most prestigious belt in all of bare-knuckle boxing. After 2 and a half hours and 106 rounds of bare-knuckle fighting, the bout was declared a draw due to darkness. After the bout, Richard K. Fox, editor of the legendary Police Gazette, recognized Kilrain as the champion. Just think about that, 2 and a half hours, 106 rounds of bare-knuckle boxing, these guys were from the planet Krypton.
Here's a photo of Jem Smith, man, he's built like a tank, he's got thighs like a red kangaroo.
Frank Klaus, "The Braddock Bearcat", he needs no introduction, all-time great middleweight, literally wrote the book on infighting. 1910 T220 Champions - Mecca Cigarettes Back - Frank Klaus.
1910 T219 Champions - Red Cross Tobacco Back - Frank Klaus.
1912 T227 - Series of Champions - Honest Long Cut Back - Frank Klaus.
1910 E78 - Anonymous Prize Fighters - Frank Klaus. I can't seem to find a back scan for this card, it is very scarce and rarely turns up.
Fidel LaBarba, aka "Steel Feather", won the gold medal at the 1924 Paris Olympics in the flyweight division. Hard to hit and quick on his feet, LaBarba has an outstanding record with wins over a long list of great fighters including Charles “Bud” Taylor, Frankie Genaro, Memphis Pal Moore, Kid Chocolate, Elky Clark, Georgie Rivers and Petey Sarron. That's one hell of a resume. His third fight with Kid Chocolate is on film and it's one of my favorites, LaBarba wore Chocolate's body the f#$@ out with body shots during that fight. Love a good body puncher, and LaBarba was that. This is the 1927 E211 - York Caramel Prizefighters - Fidel LaBarba.
1929 Godfrey Phillips LTD. - Sporting Champions - Fidel LaBarba.
1929 Tabacalera La Morena - Fidel LaBarba. Again, I apologize for the lack of a back scan, it's a very rare card and I just can't find another scan of it. It's frustrating when some of these auction houses neglect to upload a back scan, a customer has a right to see every inch of what they're buying, front and back, and it's really ridiculous that a back scan wasn't uploaded. And I have to say, this particular auction house uploaded a piss-poor scan, I had to use Google edit to sharpen it and run it through a meme generator just to blow the image up and it still came out looking like garbage. I know, not their concern that I'm trying to create a little museum here showcasing the great boxing photos that were used on the boxing cards we boxing fans and collectors love. One other thing, I'm not sure which way this photo is supposed to be facing, the top image is the way I found it, but Tabacalera La Morena obviously has him facing the other direction so I flipped it around and included it. It's difficult to tell because Fidel LaBarba was naturally left handed, a South Paw, but was forced to learn boxing in a right hand stance. This gave him a somewhat different weaving style of fighting, and was why his left jab was his most powerful punch.
1932 La Pie Qui Chante - Fidel LaBarba.
Music break.
Let's go with "Two Ton" Tony Galento, aka "The Jersey Night Stick." The nickname says it all, he was brutal. He might just be THE dirtiest fighter in boxing history, he was a rough customer, elbows, thumbs to the eye, you name it. And if he didn't get you with the dirty tricks, he had serious knockout power, his left hook was murder. He was a street fighter, and in the streets anything goes, he carried that mentality with him to the boxing ring. We got a few beautiful Galento cards here, this is the 2003-07 Helmar Brewing Co. - Famous Athletes - Tony Galento.
2003-07 Helmar Brewing Co. - All Our Heroes - Tony Galento.
This is fun.
The 15 Greatest Composite Punchers of All Time
By: Matt McGrain
They’re a rare breed the true punchers. We don’t even have a word for them, not really. Has there ever been a more inadequate vernacular in sports for what these most devastating of hitters do in the ring than “big punchers”? Bob Satterfield. Joe Choynski. Aurelio Herrera. Freaks who hit so hard that anything they hit crumbled, sand where once there were cliffs, men for whom the words “weight class” were as meaningless as “big punchers”. But they weren’t great fighters. A great fighter is so much more than a collection of physical attributes, even if they are lucky enough to possess an absolutely extraordinary one. The men on this list differ from Satterfield, Choynski and Herrera in that they deliver that power with the pugilistic equivalent of precision engineering. “Composite” punching is all-aspect punching. We’re looking here at speed, technique on delivery, work-rate, accuracy, aggression, mercilessness, feinting, timing—all of which were owned in abundance by Pernell Whitaker, who doesn’t make the list. In the end unless you can reign down the silence and darkness described by Dick Tiger, you don’t belong.
Apologies to the aforementioned Joe Choynski—and Kid Lavigne and Barbados Joe Walcott and a host of others—but if there is no readily available footage of a fighter that fighter doesn’t make the list. Some of these guys number amongst the hardest punchers in all of history but there are too many factors dependent upon eye for me to be able to ignore them.
Precision engineering. Darkening power. Some special something else, granted by Heaven, or perhaps the other place.
These are the 15 pound-for-pound most terrifying offensive monsters in the history of boxing.
15 – Sonny Liston
“After Liston knocked me out I felt, for four or five seconds, that everybody in the arena was in the ring with me, circled around me, like family…I actually blew a kiss to the crowd from the ring.”—Floyd Patterson
Liston is famous for his power, and it was, quite literally, paralyzing. Three-time opponent Marty Marshall:
“Nobody should be hit like that. I think about it now I hurt. He hit me to the stomach with a left hand in the sixth. That wasn’t a knockdown. It couldn’t be. I was paralyzed. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t move enough to fall down.”
Thirty-one knockouts, eight of them in the first round, also testifies to his power punching, but it is the skills that augmented that phenomenal power that get him onto this list ahead of arguably harder pure heavyweight punchers such as George Foreman and Lennox Lewis. Two-handed and the first stalking heavyweight since Jack Dempsey to draw and counter leads with arbitrary head movement, Liston showed numerous offensive tactical adjustments in his fights, drawing fellow banger Cleveland Williams onto murderous counter-punches in their first fight, crowding and banging him out in the second. He also controlled almost every fighter he ever met with one of the most devastating jabs the prize-ring has ever seen, the ubiquitous Muhammad Ali turning in a magical performance that saw him throw punches from every angle at lightning speed the only real exception.
As comfortable fighting right in the pocket as he was at range, Liston is one of the few great heavyweight technicians, a brutishly strong man—“the only man who ever moved me backwards in the ring” according to George Foreman who sparred with the then ex-champion—who has literally every single punch in the book at his disposal, each of them a knockout waiting to happen. Most terrifying when lifting the title from a deeply intimidated Floyd Patterson, Liston arguably lays claim to both the best uppercut and the best jab in the history of the heavyweight division.
14– Alexis Arguello
“I believe more in precision. Like when you see a mosquito and you hit it with a couple of short sharp shots. That’s beautiful.”—Alexis Arguello
Precision, he had.
“Once he’d measured the distance,” says CheckHookBoxing scribe and Arguello disciple Kyle McLachlan, “he could hit you with any punch from any range.”
This is an accurate a surmise of what made Arguello dangerous as it is possible to make. Allowing him into a fight was an invitation to your own destruction. Against Royal Kobayashi, a sprawling puncher of note in his own right, it took Arguello exactly three rounds to box his way into the fight. The fourth through the fifth saw him miss only a handful of punches as “El Flaco Exposivo” (62 of 77 victims stopped) speared the bull he shared the ring over and over again with perhaps the most hurtful one-two the ring has ever seen. Often compared to Joe Louis, Arguello shared none of the Brown Bomber’s apparent difficulty with the awkward, crowding fighters said to trouble him. Once he had found you, he had found you for all time.
As consummate a punching technician as appears on this list, Arguello wasted almost nothing, and mastered the art of variety in terms of both punch selection and target areas. The dual left-right combinations that set Kobayashi out to sea in the fifth were typical in that their brutality was matched by their precision. “A combination so good that you Americans know that combination!” is how Arguello explained it to American television—as well as countless opponents this dual-tipped spear had pierced the US consciousness. That they served, against Kobayashi, as blows that opened up an opponent for equally devastating left hooks to the midsection spoke of Arguello’s deep well of offense.
“One of the last fighters you would want to get into a fire-fight with” is Kyle’s last word on the subject.
Good enough.
13 – Stanley Ketchel
“He didn’t even bother sitting down between rounds – he just stood there like a caged beast waiting for the trap to be sprung.”—“Dumb” Dan Morgan
Ketchel cleared out perhaps the most stacked division in middleweight history with as undiluted a storm of violence as has been seen in the ring. Ketchel fought like he was literally possessed by some malignant spirit. Only Billy Papke, also a great middleweight and puncher, had any success fighting him toe-to-toe during those prime years, but running from him was all but impossible too—as Dan Morgan put it, you might as well try to out-run a hurricane.
He is known, rightly, as a savage dog on heavy chain, a chain broken upon the toll of the bell, but this aggression was harnessed and honed. In March of 1908, Ketchel’s landmark year, he was matched with Jack Twin Sullivan, a man more accustomed to meeting heavyweights and ranked by Tommy Ryan as one of the three best fighters in the world pound-for-pound. The fight began as a modern observer might expect, Ketchel forcing the action but missing often against one of the era’s defining defensive geniuses. But by the ninth, Sullivan was struggling. Ketchel punched from such a wide variety of angles and targeted head and body with equal regularity and venom. His iron chin and exceptional engine made him impossible for even the most devastating puncher to discourage. Ketchel’s quilted offense was based primarily upon this unerring variety as well as his workrate, which astonished even observers used to seeing fights over longer distances.
There was elegance, too. Ketchel employed a shifting, feinting attack. “He is the greatest fighter to ever have lived,” offered the great Abe Attell after “The Slasher” first defeated Billy Papke. “He is wonderfully clever…and can hit harder than any other man I ever saw. He uses a shift—hits with the right and moves immediately to the left. He has that down better than Bob Fitzsimmons ever did.”
This is astonishingly high praise, but it was not unusual to hear Ketchel’s contemporaries talk about him in this way. Corbett agreed with Attell that Ketchel was the greatest of all time. Joe Gans labeled him a “past master”. When we look at the very limited footage we have of Ketchel we see a thoughtless savage bereft of technique. Reading about him on the internet will generally re-enforce that point of view. A closer look reveals that a monster does exist—but one far more dangerous and pathological than popular opinion holds.
12 – Earnie Shavers
“Nobody hits harder than Shavers. If somebody hit harder than Shavers, I’d shoot him.”—Tex Cobb
When you write, you want to believe in your ability to communicate your ideas to the reader. Sometimes though, it’s necessary to step aside for some poet, some philosopher, and acknowledge that you just cannot match the beauty with which he expresses the idea you are striving for. So in defense of my high placement of Shavers and my opinion that he is literally the hardest puncher in the history of boxing, I give you James “Quick” Tillis:
“The baddest motherfucker I fought was Earnie Shavers. That motherfucker can make July into June and made me jump over the motherfuckin’ moon. Shavers hit so hard he turned horse piss into gasoline! He hit me so hard he brought back tomorrow! When he hit me, I was seeing pink rats and cats and animals smoking cigarettes. I thought I was in the corner smoking a cigarette and eating a spam sandwich. That’s how hard that motherfucker hit.”
Muhammad Ali, Larry Holmes, Ron Lyle and Ken Norton all agree with him, though none of them put it quite so eloquently.
11 – Julian Jackson
“He’s a heavyweight trapped in a middleweight’s body.” —Mike Tyson
Early in the first round of his 1991 challenge for Julian Jackson’s WBC strap, Dennis Milton was caught behind the ear with a clubbing right hand bereft of the torque and precision usually seen in deciding punches. Milton’s reaction was extraordinary. First, he wanted to hug it out, trying to wrap his hands around Jackson’s head and draw him in, but his legs betrayed him utterly and instead he vanished into an obscene lean which left him wide open for more punches. Then he stumbled to the short rope and, left hand in the air as if warding off avenging angels only he could see, he grabbed the top strand with his right hand leaving himself almost defenseless against the man labeled by many as P4P the hardest puncher of all time. Jackson, though, looked momentarily disorganized. Perhaps the sight of Milton abandoning any notion of actually boxing and instead taking on the appearance of a man trying to negotiate an icy garden path temporarily threw him. He shouldn’t have been surprised though—Jackson’s ring opponents often put on strange and inexplicable shows for the crowd.
The reasons were simple in Milton’s case. Firstly, he was terrified. “I saw it in his eyes,” Jackson would claim afterwards. Secondly, all control of his legs by his brain had been ceased and desisted by the early warning that had been that clubbing right hand. Off the ropes and across the ring, Jackson worked harder to support Milton’s weight than he did until, around thirty seconds later, Jackson landed a real punch; a clipping right hand driven through the target on the near side of the ear. Milton tumbled over happily and spread himself on the canvas in the repost of Superman in full flight. It would be embarrassing if it were not for the fact that so many of Jackson’s victims ended their nights in such poses.
Jackson’s left hook was sometimes embarrassing and he often forgot his jab. But he was a well-schooled if not a brilliantly skilled fighter and, in the words of manager to Rocky Balboa opponent Ivan Drago, whatever he hits—he destroys. That destructive punching power granted Jackson 49 stoppages and a KO percentage in the 80s. It also earns him the #11 spot on this list.
10 – Sandy Saddler
“I fight rough, sure.”—Sandy Saddler
Sandy Saddler is a proud member of the century club. He has 103 knockouts to his name. Perhaps making him the cornerstone argument for the philosophy that a world-class offense bests a world-class defense, the savage Saddler holds multiple stoppage wins over perhaps the greatest defensive fighter in history, Willie Pep.
Perfectly described by Boxing.com’s Mike Casey as “the ugly duckling of the game who gate-crashed the party and kicked sand in everyone’s face,” Saddler’s cooked style made him unbeatable at his roughhouse best, especially with a cooperative referee at hand.
Raw-boned with a long reach, Saddler’s left hand was extraordinary. He did not make use of his generally superior length and height in the same way that Wladimir Klitschko or Carlos Monzon have, rather he used an ultra-aggressive pressure style in spite of these advantages and that stalking approach was built around that left hand. A long stiff jab, naturally, was crucial, but that jab could be magically transformed into a hook or uppercut at the last second. This was disastrous for an opponent of even Pep’s caliber because it imbued the jab with the virtual power of both of those devastating punches—punches that separated fighters as good as 33-4 contender Lulu Perez from his senses in one fell swoop. The right hand also worked behind disguised left-handed feints, and if Saddler could land lead right hand leads against Pep he could land them against anyone.
The final piece in his out-fighting puzzle was superb ring-cutting footwork. Watching Saddler with Pep we see Pep take advantage of Saddler’s rushing style to spin and punch him over and over again. What we do not see is Saddler left behind by Pep’s dazzling movements. They did not impress Sandy at all—even the deftest of ring movers was never far from range.
With the distance closed, Saddler hit as brutally as any fighter ever at featherweight and with the kind of variety that stretched the most brilliant defense. But more than this, Saddler swamped his man with attacks. There may never have been a fighter so adept at discovering his opponent’s physical weaknesses. He was a horror to share the ring with and brutally jarring his opponents with wrestling, pushing and handling was as much a part of that truth-seeking violence as those huge punches. On the darker side, it is rumored that the gaping cut which stopped Flash Elorde in their 1956 encounter was caused by a headbutt and then ripped opening by repeated lacing—on the referee’s blindside, of course.
One of the most troubling left hands in boxing history married to the ultimate roughhousing style and sporting the 100 plus knockouts that only destructive power can bring, Saddler is overqualified for the #10 spot.
9 – Roy Jones Jr.
“Show me a man in control of his emotions and I’ll show you a dangerous man.”—Roy Jones Jr.
Writing about Roy Jones versus James Toney recently I described the winning performance as possibly “the best performance ever filmed in color.” Roy Jones himself described it as “about 60% of what I got—in both power and precision.” Roy’s tragedy now is something quite different and more disturbing but during the helicon days of his P4P #1 stewardship, Roy’s tragedy was rather that he seemed not that interested. As perfect a fighting machine as the world had ever seen he was generally more interested in fighting dogs, chickens and his beloved basketball. Maybe Jones did fight Toney at 60%—but that seemed some 30% more than he used for any fight that came after. Until, some three years later, Montell Griffin focused his attention. Edging a generally close fight, Jones hit Montell in the 9th after his man had taken the knee. To Roy’s displeasure Griffin made his inability to continue very clear and the resulting disqualification was something he took rather personally. The rematch would be Roy’s most devastating display.
Roy suddenly looked interested again.
A fighter built in a disturbed boxing lab by a father obsessed with his son’s future success, environment and genetics combined in Jones to produce a fighter on offense possibly unparalleled. Against Griffin he opened with a short hook, so short Joe Louis would have been proud of it. Two jabs so fast that the Montell didn’t even react to them were followed by another of those short hooks, this one right on the button. Griffin hurtled backwards towards the short rope as though some gargantuan black hole had materialized ringside and sucked him straight in, a standing eight-count the result. A one-two and a lightning fast but unreasonably formed ice-cream scoop of a left hook followed and Montell was on the run. He tried to establish his jab but couldn’t do so in the light of Roy’s stalking and feinting, he was hypnotized by that left hand and the coiled steel rattlesnake weaving it.
Fans of a certain age may find “Superman’s” inclusion on this list disturbing. For a different generation the fact that he doesn’t hold the #1 spot may be the offending element. For me, only Roy’s abandonment of his superb jab and his lack of focus on the attack in many fights keeps him from one of those very top spots. It is worth noting that in this fight and others, however, Roy just supplanted the jab with the left hook. His one-two was built entirely of power punches. He was that fast. And as Griffin will attest, when he landed—and he was a frighteningly accurate puncher—he was powerful, too. The one-punch finish here totally separated him from his physicality and the title reign of Montell Griffin finished as it started, with him apparently separated from his senses, only this time hopelessly trying to rise as the messages of disastrous punishment spun endlessly inside his head.
8 – Henry Armstrong
“Hall of Famers were sent spinning sideways.”—Springs Toledo
Armstrong’s reputation is of a fighter that wore the opposition down with a fuselage of punches rather than a fighter who carried dynamite in his fists. Not so. As a featherweight he was one of the hardest punchers in the division’s history. In unifying the 126 lb. title, Armstrong came up against a brute of a champion in Petey Sarron, a granite-chinned warrior unstoppable in 142 contests. He finished the 6th round against Armstrong blindly groping the ring-floor, seeking some invisible door-handle at the new champion’s feet, the finishing right hand the punch that Homicide Hank had nicknamed “The Blackout” responsible. It was aptly named. Of the 101 men Armstrong darkened, this was the punch that did the bulk of the business. During his prime, Armstrong delivered similarly brutal knockouts even up at welterweight, many of them quick. It takes an attrition puncher longer than four rounds to stop a welterweight of Phil Furr’s quality. It wasn’t a cumulative effect that resulted in Lew Jenkins visiting the canvas seven times in six short rounds. The ultra-durable Al Manfredo was stopped once on cuts and twice by Henry Armstrong punches—beaten into submission by a fighter who could stop you with one punch, but if that didn’t work, would stop you with hundreds.
The ultimate punching buzzsaw.
7 – Tommy Hearns
“He was a killing machine.”—Ted Sares
Sugar Ray Leonard, as astonishing a boxer-puncher as ever lived, spent 35 rounds in the ring with Roberto Duran without landing blank-dealing punches of any sort. Hagler was extended the distance against Hands of Stone, one of the best middleweights ever forced to settle for a close decision win. Iran “The Blade” Barkley, a huge and aggressive one-sixty crazy was beaten on those cards. Getting Duran out of there during his prime was as impossible a task as existed in boxing.
Step forwards Thomas “The Hitman” Hearns, a fighter who scores at least a nine out of ten in every one of our criteria for greatness. Capable of superb boxing or brutish dismantling rushes, Hearns has laser-guided accuracy to augment his elite speed and numbing power. His knockout of Duran is as astonishing and perfect a knockout as was ever perpetrated against an all-time great fighter. Those two superhuman efforts Duran mounted at middleweight, combined with the seeming certainty that he could mount similar efforts against Hearns one-hundred times and be stopped in two every single time, underlines just how great a performance that really was. The final punch, reportedly sold with a feint using nothing more than his eyes, is the cherry on the top of Tommy’s great legacy. Add 47 more knockouts to this one and consider that some of them occurred up at cruiserweight and it surely becomes apparent that this former welterweight belongs inside the top ten.
6 – Bob Foster
“Quit hittin’ them kids! Push ‘em or slap ‘em!”—Bertha Foster to her son on the occasion of his fracturing a schoolmate’s skull in a fight
It is often said of Bob Foster that he dominated a weak light-heavyweight era. There is some truth to this. It is also true that he fought in a light-heavyweight era stacked with granite-chinned fighters of the highest durability. This did not reduce the likelihood of a Bob Foster knockout victory. In fact, it seems that fighters who trusted in their extraordinary punch resistance to save them were even more unlikely to survive. There was only one way to fight Foster and have hope of success: make sure you did not get hit.
Take Chris Finnegan. Stopped three times on cuts, only a devastating one-two from Foster saw him counted out, tangled in the ropes, his spirited resistance totally broken. Or Dick Tiger, owner of one of the most celebrated chins in history, separated from his sense by one crunching left hook. Frank DePaula was stopped just twice in his career, Foster turning the trick in a single round with a snapping right uppercut. Henry Hank lost 31 fights in his career, but only Foster was able to stop him. Mark Tessman was stopped twice, once by a split eyelid, once by Bob Foster punches. Hal Carroll was similarly prevented from continuing twice by cuts but Foster introduced him to the 10-count in four brutal rounds. See the pattern?
It is also said that Foster never carried his power above 175 lbs. Whilst it is true that Foster never delivered a top scalp up at heavyweight it is also true that he knocked out around twenty men weighing between 180 and 215 lbs.
But power alone wouldn’t get Foster onto this list, and at #6 no less. In spite of his often aesthetically displeasing style, Foster boxed with no little art. On his devastating knockout of Mike Quarry:
“Every time I’d throw a left jab he’d slip it by leaning to his right. He’d bring his right hand back up when he returned to his normal position. I faked a jab and turned it into a hook when he came back up. Bam, I hit him right on the point of the jaw. When he went down, I couldn’t see his eyes. I thought I’d killed him.”
5 – Mike Tyson
“He throws combinations I never saw before. I was stunned. I’ve worked with Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard, but I’m seeing a three-punch combination second to none. When have you seen a guy throw a right hand to the kidney, come up the middle with an uppercut, then throw the left hook?”—Angelo Dundee
Tyson used planes of movement no other fighter has ever utilized. He is heavyweight’s Albert Einstein squared, not only recognizing the possibilities of an unexplored universe but putting those theories into practice. He also represents, for this list, something of a fulcrum. Everyone in the top five was at one time or another considered for the #1 spot. It’s possible to spend more time talking about why four of these five aren’t at #1 rather than talk about what makes them great.
To get the negative stuff out of the way, Tyson was a specialist at mid-range whilst bull-rushing. His physical limitations—short arms, short stature—limit him on the outside and a propensity to allow himself to be held and walked limited him on the inside. In the period between his leaping from our television sets and his destruction at the hands of Buster Douglas, however, Tyson was a cyborg—sent from the future to show us how Joe Louis and Jack Dempsey should have done it.
Ultra-elastic, Tyson was taught to pivot and slip on the spot by Cus D’Amato’s teardrop sandbag, fist-sized and zipping around Tyson’s head like a giant and aggressive blue-bottle. He may have learned to punch in combination whilst ripping out these unique defensive maneuvers on Cus’s patent “Willie Bag”, named for Willie Pastrano, from whom Cus associate Jose Torres lifted the world’s light-heavyweight title. Reportedly made up of five mattresses and a supporting frame, the contraption was marked with eight numbers each of which represented a certain kind of blow, a hook to the jaw, a jab to the chest. Tyson would stand with it for hours whilst either Teddy Atlas or Cus himself (sometimes via a tape recorder) barked out numbers to which Tyson would react. Like Roy Jones, Tyson was a perfect storm of boxing brought together by an upbringing that left him thirsty for direction and acceptance as much as by those fast-twitch muscle fibers.
For a short while in what became a long career Tyson was all but unboxable. At the end of the second round against Trevor Berbick he landed two jabs, came square for a right hook to the kidney, came upstairs with a second right hook, moved back to make room for a left hook as Berbick charged and then tagged on another right for good measure. Spring-tight combinations thrown against a sprawling, moving opponent. The shot that ushered in his “title” reign just seconds later was an absolutely superb punch in its own right, but notable because of its normality; Tyson threw extraordinary punches from angles that just didn’t exist in boxing before his time. Finding sparring partners to replicate his style was easy because anyone can walk in, but finding sparring partners to replicate his dipping, vanishing, off-kilter defense and throw punches going out and coming back from those positions was impossible. None existed. None have ever existed. Probably, none will ever exist.
4 – Sam Langford
“I fought most of the heavyweights including Dempsey and Johnson, but Sam could stretch a guy colder than any of them. When Langford hit me it felt like someone slugged me with a baseball bat. It was like taking ether. You just went to sleep…”—“Fireman” Jim Flynn
In December of 1903 the great Joe Gans stowed the gloves he had used the night before to outpoint the superb Dave Holly and traveled 400 miles in a single day to put his lightweight title on the line against a mercurial teenager named Sam Langford. Complications with the weight meant the fight would go on, in spite of Joe’s stomach trouble, without the title being on the line. For “The Old Master”—then in his absolute prime—this was a glad happenstance; the 17-year-old Langford absolutely thrashed him, outboxed and out-generalled the greatest general seen on the face of the earth up until that point. It was easy.
Fast forward to February of 1916, 13 long years and 100 defeated opponents behind him, a past-prime Sam Langford separates all-time great heavyweight Harry Wills from his senses with a single left hook in the 19th round of their 20-round contest.
Zip on to June of 1922. Langford shares the ring with another all-time great, the middleweight Tiger Flowers. Standing just 5-feet-7-inches, Langford is better suited to this weight-division, but perhaps the most storied of all ring careers has left him blinded. Fighting against shadows, the partial sight that remained him was enough to allow him to land a right hand which traveled “no more than six inches” according to author and historian Clay Moyle, which saw Flowers just about reclaiming all fours at the count of “Ten”.
Viewed on film, Langford looks frighteningly modern. A clearly terrified (and firmly beaten) Joe Jeanette, one of the great heavies of his era, provided the best opposition on video, but it is against Bill Lang that “The Boston Terrier” shines brightest. Crowding footwork maintains the perfect distance for right and left hand punches that are sold behind the narrowest of shifts and the subtlest of feints. A counterpunching pressure fighter, he was as difficult for his peers to box as anyone on this list. As a finisher he is arguably without equal, and as a pure puncher? We’ll let perennial opponent Harry Wills answer that one.
“I’ve met some hard punchers in my time, and all I can say is that the hardest blows any of them ever landed on me were like a slap in the face from a woman compared with those bone-crunching wallops from Langford…[W]hen he knocked me out in New Orleans in 1916, I thought I’d been killed.”
3 – Bob Fitzsimmons
“Whilst physicians were examining him, Ruhlin opened his eyes and faintly asked for water. This was given him as he again lapsed into a sort of stupor. Blood at this time was trickling from his ears and nose.”—The San Francisco Call
Nobody hit like Fitz.
Boxing at the then middleweight limit of 154 lbs., he stopped the granite-chinned nonpareil champion Jack Dempsey in just 13 rounds in what was described as the most scientific display of boxing seen up until that point. Then a boxer-puncher known for his exceptional poise in the ring, Fitz spent the next years adding layer upon layer to one of the most studied, devastating offenses in history. The March 9th, 1893 edition of The Times Democrat published as beautiful and complete a description of Bob’s style as can be seen:
“He will advance when his antagonist least expects it, and often when in full retreat will wheel suddenly about and meet his advancing rival with right or left just in time to borrow his momentum and add it to the force of his own blow…”
Fitzsimmons was the ultimate trap-smith, perhaps unparalleled even today at laying bait, guiding opponents onto his punches, switching the attack at the last possible minute.
“..[T]hough exceedingly apt to advance and force the fighting at times, he has a wonderful faculty of doing so just when his opponent is not ready to meet him with a blow, and by the time a blow is launched in his direction he is generally in the act of getting away…”
An opening rarely missed, Fitzsimmons would become famous in his career for picking certain vulnerable spots and landing upon them, accuracy above and beyond what can be seen in even a world-class fighter.
“…[W]ith all his violent exertion, he never seems to become tired.”
An engine almost infallible, Fitz carried one-punch knockout power of the most devastating kind to the late rounds. His 14th round one-punch knockout of James J. Corbett, which caused the champion’s eyes “to roll back into his head until no pupil was visible,” is amongst the most famous in history. Landed by hands so fast that many at ringside did not see it go in, Corbett was all but paralyzed, crawling pitifully across the ring floor, arguably the greatest heavyweight of his generation laid low by a single blow from a man fighting at the modern super-middleweight limit.
His one punch knockout of middleweight contender Jim Hall was so violent and sudden that onlookers thought him dead; tragically, two men would indeed go to their graves behind punches landed by Ruby Red.
Other victims such as world-class heavyweight Peter Maher were dropped—unconscious—by invisible punches that left their eyes rolling in their heads, confused, when revived, as to what had actually happened to them. Speed enough to make punches invisible to the naked eye. Perhaps unequalled pound-for-pound power. Traps, feints and counterpunching skills unmatched in his era. What kind of fluidity and devastation on offense can keep this monster from the top two?
2 – Sugar Ray Robinson
“I don’t know anything about that punch. Except I watched it on movies a couple of times.”—Gene Fullmer
Fullmer was as tough a middleweight who ever lived, a man who lived face-forwards in the ring, thick-necked, his face as immobile and daunting as his rough-hewn style. Mauling, driving fighters are the easiest to knock out on paper, busy and aggressive they afford plenty of punching opportunities for the opponent. Nevertheless, Florentino “The Ox” Fernandez, one of history’s hardest pure punchers could not make a dent in the granite battlement that was Fullmer’s chin despite landing his terrifying left hook flush at least once. “The Cyclone” just took a quick moment for himself, shrugged off the punch and then went back on the attack. Rescued between rounds by a concerned manager in his very last fight, he never heard the ten.
Except for once.
Sugar Ray Robinson, behind on the cards and a three-to-one underdog to reclaim the middleweight title he had lost to Fullmer, landed perhaps the most perfect punch in the history of boxing. After leading with a hard right hand to the body, Sugar was bulled back and away, making space for himself before assuming the exact stance he had used to throw that right hand to the body—and then, form the hip, all gunslinger, he tossed out a short left hook, driven not by the left or the right foot, but by both feet, and you can’t see it land on film without slowing the film down, and then Fullmer crumbled, managing just a single step in support of his defense of the middleweight title, reduced to nothing less than a back alley drunk on payday, perhaps the most iron-chinned of middleweights missed gaining his feet by a single second.
Is this Robinson’s most impressive feat as a puncher? Possibly not. There’s the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre perpetrated against Jake LaMotta, a fighter legitimately stopped during action just once by this punching display so varied and savage it is likely no fighter in middleweight history could have deciphered or survived it. There’s the terrifying move through the gears in his second fight with Randy Turpin as Robinson, on the verge to losing to Britain’s greatest ever middleweight for a second time, did what all great champions do and found a solution, a fluidity on offense so brutal and alarming that even a 1950s referee couldn’t stand by and do nothing.
As Carmen Basilio, who spent 30 rounds in the ring with Sugar put it, “He was the best puncher, he was the hardest puncher.”
Almost.
1 – Joe Louis
“It ain’t like a punch. It’s like someone nailed you with a crowbar. I thought half my head was blowed off. I figured he caved it in. After he hit me I couldn’t even feel if it was there.”—James J. Braddock
“God how that man can hit. I can’t remember anything after the first knockdown.”—Johnny Paycheck.
“You’d take one shot from him and you were sure he’d have seven or eight more coming for you.”—George Foreman
“Joe Louis uncovers dynamite.”—Richard Wright
“I was worried he would break someone’s neck.”—Arthur Donovan
“He hit me eighteen times as I was in the act of falling.”—Max Baer
Cus D’Amato came up with a punch system for Mike Tyson that would help him become not only the youngest heavyweight world champion, but one of the most ferocious combination punchers in boxing history, the famous "Willie Bag."
Joe Louis is number one on that list for a reason, he's the greatest puncher in boxing history. In any division. He is widely considered the greatest puncher in boxing history because of his unmatched knockout efficiency, flawless technical precision, and devastating power in both hands. Louis wasn't a wild brawler; he was the ultimate textbook puncher. He mastered punch mechanics, generating immense power with minimal wasted motion. His textbook cross—which involved stepping in and perfectly transferring weight through his hips and shoulders—is considered one of the most mechanically perfect punches in history. Many fighters are known for a single dominant hand, but Louis possessed crushing, fight-ending power in both fists. Whether it was his punishing left hook or his straight right, opponents faced constant danger. Louis was a master at stringing punches together, throwing short, concise, explosive combinations at pinpoint speed. Once he had an opponent hurt, his brutal finishing ability gave them virtually no chance to recover. Rather than relying on flashy or erratic movements, Louis utilized a smart, stalking, flat-footed style. This kept him perfectly balanced and constantly in range to strike. He forced opponents into mistakes and capitalized instantly.
Ok, let's get back to the photos that made the cards. Up next, Sam Langford, aka "The Boston Bonecrusher." What he have on our hands here is a true pound-for-pound monster. Many people consider Langford to be the greatest P4P fighter that ever lived. Robinson, Greb, Armstrong, Charles, Fitzsimmons, Langford is certainly right there with them. He raised hell across 11 weight divisions during his career, leaving a trail of broken bodies in his wake. One of the most dangerous and hardest punchers ever, he sent 127 of his opponents to dreamland, hence the nickname. Standing at only 5'6", he was famous for routinely knocking out much larger men. He defeated world champions and top contenders across every division he fought in. Despite his murderous power, Langford was a highly technical pioneer of the sport.
“This is the man competent critics said was the greatest fighter in ring history, the man the champions feared and would not fight, the man who was so good he was never given a chance to show how good he really was."
-Al Laney, New York Herald Tribune
“Quite possibly the greatest fighter who ever lived, Langford mastered every punch. His short hook on the inside and his right cross and uppercut were particularly deadly. His punishing jab was also one of the best. He was a strategist who knew how to maneuver, with the ability to explode out of an offensive or defensive position. He could instantly stop when retreating, revert to the offensive, and in the blink of an eye render an opponent unconscious with trip-hammer blows thrown in four and five punch combinations. Langford's every move embodied the technique of a studied master boxer. During his prime he was rarely outfought, out-thought, or out-punched."
-Mike Silver
“Langford wasn't simply an all out slugger. He was smart and crafty and knew how to out-think guys in the ring. He could fight inside or outside and was impossibly strong. He was decades ahead of his time."
-William Detloff
“Langford was as quick and slippery as an eel in action, highly intelligent and made up of surprising dodges from head to heels. Sam used his bulky shoulders and clever blocking arms to avoid blows and his potent punching power stayed with him until the end of his career.”
-Nat Fleischer, Ring Magazine founder
“Langford with his massive pair of shoulders and long arms was a danger to anyone. Although only a middleweight he gave weight and a beating to many heavyweights.”
-Gilbert Odd
“Langford had all the attributes of a great fighter, speed, punching power, an amazingly elusive defense, the ability to absorb punishment, and unlimited endurance."
-R. Stockton
“Sam Langford was a great fighter in an age of great fighters. In proportion to his height and weight there never was a greater fighting man."
-W. Diamond
“On the whole, I think Langford was the most tremendous hitter in the Ring at this time; for, whereas Jack Johnson would not, as a rule, let the heavy stuff fly until he had worn the man down, Sam always waded right in and immediately let go punches heavy enough to drop anyone. Of course, he had to work up his punch to an extent, however, and this he usually did on the giant Negro, Bob Armstrong, whom he had training with him. As he sparred with Armstrong, every now and again he would give him a dig "downstairs" that would have the big fellow gasping, and, to keep moving, he would then shadow-box for a short time before coming back to resume operations. There would be a few more exchanges, then whop! In would go another one to the body, and exclaim, "Oh"! He's got cramp again", Sam would do a little more shadow-boxing: and so, and so on.
For working up speed Langford had Jimmy Walsh, the bantamweight champion of the world, with him. The pair used to box together lightly, but at a great pace, and I was surprised to find that even in this sort of work Sam was every bit as fast and clever as Walsh himself.”
-Norman Clark who saw Sam fight on his tour of England
“I was knocked out three times in my career, twice by Langford and in my last fight by Paulino Uzcudun. I still don't know, except from hearsay, what punches Sam used to knock me out. The first time it happened was 1914. We were supposed to go twenty rounds, when the fourteenth began I was going easy. Sam was in a bad way. I backed him around the ring trying to set him up for a one punch finish. His eye was bleeding and the last thing I remember was having him against the ropes just about five feet from his corner. It must have happened right then.” The Nov 27 San Francisco Chronicle reported that it was “a left hook to the jaw” that “turned the trick.”
“Two years later we were scheduled for another twenty rounder. In the eighteenth Sam was in a peck of trouble and once again I tried to set him up for a quick knockout. He finished the round okay and when the bell sounded for the start of the nineteenth I was after him again. I figured if I could get him in a corner I could finish the fight. That was all I could remember. He must have caught me as I rushed in." The Feb 13, 1916 New Orleans Times-Picayune said it was "Langford's mighty left hook.
I don't know how long I was unconscious but it must have been quite a while. He was marvelous as a fighting man, I'd venture to say unbeatable in his prime."
-Harry Wills describing in the February 1953 Boxing and Wrestling Magazine what his knockout losses to Langford were like. Wills said he was hit so hard each time that he doesn’t remember being knocked out.
This is Sam Langford against Bill Lang in London in 1911. Langford was 5"6', 166-pounds, Lang was 6"1', 203-pounds. Watch as Langford stalks Lang around the ring, throwing punches with both hands with bad intentions. It's absolutely amazing and fascinating that we have Langford on film, and everything they say about him is absolutely true, he was a pound-for-pound monster.
Ok, let's look at some Sam Langford cards, this is the 1909 E79 - Philadelphia Caramel - 27 Scrappers - Sam Langford. This photo of Langford was used on a lot of his cards.
1910 E77 - American Caramel Prize Fighters - Sam Langford.
1910 T218 Champions - Sam Langford.
1911 T9 - Turkey Red - Same Langford. This one has a checklist back with offer, don't see a lot of these.
1910 T226- Red Sun Cigarettes - Sam Langford.
1910 T219 Champions - Red Cross Tobacco - Sam Langford. Very rare card.
1911 W.D. & H.O. Wills - Scissors Back - Sam Langford.
1915 Cope Bros. & Co. - Sam Langford.
2004 Helmar Brewing Co. - All Our Heroes - Sam Langford. I love Helmar Brewing Co. cards, such beautiful artwork, designs, and portraits of the athletes. This is actually my favorite Sam Langford card, just a beautiful piece of art.
2026 Starpop - Ring Master - Sam Langford. Another beautiful card.
2024 Top Trumps - Boxing Icons - Sam Langford.
Music break. I grew up listening to this band, my dad was a big fan and I became one as well. This band has a very unique sound, their own sound, and this is one of the most beautiful songs ever made.
He doesn't have many cards, but Ace Hudkins, aka "The Nebraska Wildcat" deserves a nod. One of the most vicious men to ever enter a boxing ring, he earned his nickname because that was his fighting style, like a wildcat, he tore away and slashed at his opponents. The possessor of a granite-chin, and he fought from lightweight all the way up to heavyweight. This is a really cool card, the 1928 W565 Strip Card - Ace Hudkins.
Fascinating article about Ace Hudkins. He was hell on wheels.
Nightmare in Dreamland: When Ace Hudkins Crashed Coney Island
By: Carlos Acevedo
“All he wanted to do was fight, fight, fight.” Paul Gallico
He tore out of the Great American Desert to make a mockery of the carefree Jazz Age, trailing behind him the dark shadow of the lawless frontier, snarling, heeling, butting, permanent stubble underpinning his perpetual scowl. From the High Plains he scratched his way to riches in Los Angeles before winding up, incongruously, under the whirling lights of Surf Avenue in Brooklyn, New York, where he ignored the carousels on his way to doing what he loved doing best: raising cain. To hell with kewpie dolls, red hots, and armadillo baskets; the roughneck who once said, “It gives me a thrill to see a man bleeding and his flesh sliced like the top of a baked ham,” was here to kick up a ruckus. It was a warm night, June, 1926, and the careening Thunderbolt roller coaster on nearby Bowery Street was a fitting backdrop to what would soon occur. In less than fifteen minutes he left his exact opposite — a quiet teenager named Ruby who had soulful eyes and doted on his mother — draped helplessly over the bottom strand of the ring ropes.
His name was Ace Hudkins. They called him “The Nebraska Wildcat,” and this is the story of how he introduced himself to New York City in 1926. He did it the only way he knew how: with a snarl and a sock on the jaw. Hudkins, so cool he was actually christened “Ace,” was the scourge of lightweights, welterweights, and middleweights for most of the 1920s. Born in Valparaiso, Nebraska, in 1905, Hudkins probably began fighting as a newspaper boy in 1917 or 1918. His first recorded professional bout took place in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1922, when he was only sixteen. Over the next two and a half years, Hudkins razed his way through murky clubs and auditoriums across Nebraska, scrapping under thunderheads of cigarette smoke in townships and hamlets like Tecumseh, Wahoo, and Harlan.
In late 1924 Hudkins left the hardpan behind and drifted into Los Angeles, where his no-holds-barred ferocity made him an overnight star in Hollywood. Not the kind with two yachts and a Mission Revival house, of course, but the kind that could draw thousands of screaming spectators to watch him maul his opponents in cold blood. Damon Runyon once described the Ace Hudkins experience succinctly. “When I watch him fight,” he wrote, “I visualize a vicious jungle cat clawing the guts out of a helpless antelope.”
Hudkins thrashed it out with West Coast headliners like Mushy Callahan, Spug Myers, and Joe Benjamin, sometimes losing, sometimes winning, sometimes settling for stalemates, but always ready to knock the Tinsel out of Tinseltown with a sneer. Nothing less could be expected from a man Paul Gallico described as, “tough, hard, mean, cantankerous, combative, foul, nasty, courageous, and filled at all times with bitter and flaming lust for battle.”
To say Hudkins was ornery was like saying Doc Holliday had a quick trigger-finger. “Ace lived up to my concept of what a prizefighter ought to be,” wrote Stan Windhorn. “He was dirty in the ring, a back-alley brawler out of the ring, and, to the best of my knowledge, Ace was never kind to anyone—not even his mother.” Hudkins was a walking, no, swaggering, firestorm who left charred ruins wherever he went. Indeed, during his heyday, Hudkins — who was the guest of honor at a minimum of three riots in his career — was suspended at one time or another in California, New York, Kansas, Illinois, Milwaukee, and even in his home state of Nebraska for, incredibly, conduct “detrimental to the best interests of boxing.”
Years later, after he had retired, Hudkins stalked the City of Angels with a sawed-off shotgun looking for trouble. He got it, too, for the same reason a Marsh Hawk always gets its prey — it was just something he was born to do. In 1933 Hudkins was shot twice in a cafe brawl that left him so close to death that obituaries had already been written up by the press corps, ready for printing. But he survived out of sheer contrariness.
In 1926 Hudkins, on the prowl, brought his special brand of cussedness East and was immediately matched with an 18-year old wunderkind named Ruby Goldstein.
Reuven Goldstein was born on October 7, 1907, in the Lower East Side of New York City. Desperate poverty — the Jacob Riis kind — blighted his childhood. His father died a few months before he was born; his mother sewed and took in laundry; his grandfather worked inhuman hours at a sweat shop for a pittance. Not even the $3 a month public relief chipped in to help the Goldstein family could make ends meet. Goldstein dropped out of school when he was fourteen years old and, after ditching a job as an office boy, turned to amateur boxing full-time to help his family pay the bills.
Goldstein, sad eyed and scrawny, showed remarkable ability and power at an early age. He was undefeated as an amateur and by the time he turned pro in 1924, underage at 17, Goldstein was already being compared to Benny Leonard. With smooth boxing skills and a right cross that doubled as a Howitzer, Goldstein won his first 23 bouts and became a hero to Jewish fans from Cherry Street to Pelham Parkway. “That was the Ruby Goldstein of 1925,” wrote Ted Carroll of The Ring, “a young fighter whose ability was almost unbelievable! Small wonder that Goldstein, during his brief heyday, was the greatest idol New York City ever had!” Just how popular was he? Dubbed “The Jewel of the Ghetto,” Goldstein was mobbed wherever he went, and his fights were nearly always sold out. Today it is nearly impossible to imagine, but Ruby Goldstein once drew over 40,000 fans to watch him slug it out with neighborhood rival Sid Terris at the Polo Grounds in 1927. It was a six-round bout.
Goldstein was on his way to a title shot when his manager, Hymie Cantor, decided one last tune-up bout was necessary. Incredibly, he chose Ace Hudkins for the role of patsy. Choosing Ace Hudkins to be a fall guy is like putting Leopold and Loeb in charge of the entertainment at a party. It was the biggest mistake Hymie Cantor ever made.
On June 25, 1926, Ruby Goldstein and Ace Hudkins faced off at Coney Island Stadium. Since neither participant was 21, the bout, by New York law, was limited to six rounds. Still, it was one of hottest tickets in town. By 1920 the Seabeach Line had been extended to Surf Avenue and the New West End Terminal had been built, allowing the New York City Subway system to deliver masses of underclass revelers to Luna Park and Coney Island Beach for five cents. It was the Nickel Empire, and Ace Hudkins was ready to conquer it. Around 15,000 fans paid to see their hero, Ruby Goldstein, go up against a red-headed sourpuss the likes of which New York sports had never seen before.
Hudkins, a 6-1 underdog, entered the ring wearing a short jersey sweat-shirt with, believe it or not, a popped collar. He was seconded by his brothers Clyde and Art, and the crowd booed the trio unmercifully. Goldstein, described by nearly every contemporary account as “cherubic,” followed to a deafening roar of cheers, accompanied by Cantor and two future corner superstars: Ray Arcel and Whitey Bimstein. Referee Patsy Haley gave the final instructions, and the two men returned to their corners. The bright lights of the Wonder Wheel could be seen beyond the stadium walls.
Within seconds of the opening bell, Goldstein dropped Hudkins with a straight right that landed with an explosive thud. “I knocked Hudkins down with my first punch,” recalled Goldstein. “A feint… a stab as he moved into me… then a right hand on the chin. He was hit so hard he rolled over.” But Hudkins, however, was mean and tough. He rose with a snarl, charged into Goldstein with both hands whipping, and rode out the first three minutes of a sensational slugfest. In the 2nd and 3rd rounds, the two fighters traded shots without pause, Goldstein sharper and more accurate with his fluid moves, Hudkins clubbing and chasing furiously. Although Hudkins took many more blows than he landed, he was relentless. “No matter how well I hit him, “ Goldstein wrote in his autobiography, “he seemed to be getting stronger. Then, near the end of the round, he nailed me on the chin with a looping right hand. I was hurt. I began to fall. The bell rang. I lurched toward my corner as Hymie and Ray and Whitey swarmed through the ropes to catch me.”
Goldstein came out for the 4th like a man who had been stuck on the Human Roulette Wheel overnight. Hudkins, smelling blood, moved in for the kill. An overhand right dropped a wobbly Goldstein to his knees. He beat the count, but was floored moments later by a hard uppercut. Once more Goldstein rose, and Hudkins, flaming hair and lips bared in a sneer, charged, crashing home a left hook that sent Goldstein reeling into the ropes, where he lay suspended horizontally for a moment, like something out of the Funhouse, before ricocheting back into the ring and onto his hands and knees. When Patsy Haley tolled “10” over Goldstein, he counted out both “The Jewel of the Ghetto” and his future as the most promising lightweight to emerge since Benny Leonard.
Goldstein was hit so hard that he had little recall of what happened to him after the knockout blow was landed. “I do not remember leaving the ring, although I was told that it was some minutes after I had been counted out and that I sat in my corner crying…” he wrote. “Even the picture of the dressing room when I returned to it is not clear, except that I was still crying. I was not hurting from the punches, but the grief and disappointment were too much for me.”
Goldstein was not the only one suffering from grief. Jack Conway in The Evening Journal reported: “The tears that Ruby Goldstein shed after he had recovered consciousness and realized he had been knocked out by Ace Hudkins were only the beginning of a weeping Niagara that has flooded Broadway. Ruby wept because his pride was hurt; the others because their bankroll was flattened.” It was said that the notorious gangster Waxey Gordon, who had a piece of Goldstein, took the biggest hit of all: a loss of $45,000, roughly half a million simoleons today.
Goldstein, not yet 19, was finished as a fighter after being mangled by Hudkins. He was so psychologically damaged that he skipped town the day of his comeback fight and somehow wound up in San Francisco, on the run from shame and humiliation. He returned to New York and continued fighting. “I didn’t have the zest for boxing,“ he wrote, “but it was a living—a better living than I could have made any other way.” A few big purses still followed: a 1st round KO loss to Sid Terris that netted him a payday of $22,500, a fortune in the 1920s, and a brutal KO defeat against lethal Jimmy McLarnin, who floored him three times. Goldstein went through the motions until 1937, finishing with a record of 54-6. All of his losses were by knockout. After World War II, Goldstein went on to become one of the most famous referees in history, but here, too, he found himself devastated: Goldstein was the third man the night Benny “Kid’ Paret died at the hands of Emile Griffith in 1962. Goldstein came back after two years of guilt, refereed one more fight, and never stepped into the ring again.
Hudkins became a villainous smash in New York City, drawing huge gates in fights with Phil McGraw and Stanislaus Loayza before heading back West to wreak havoc in a friendlier climate. Ace Hudkins, you see, was despised in all five boroughs of The Big Apple. “There was no love or even warmth in Hudkins,” wrote Stanley Weston. “He disgusted the press and the fans came out hoping to see him slaughtered.” Hudkins fought on until 1932, twice challenging Mickey Walker unsuccessfully for the middleweight championship and even going so far as fighting at heavyweight. Despite beating King Levinsky and winning the California State heavyweight title, Hudkins lost his edge with each pound he gained and hung up his gloves at 27. He finished his career with a record of 67-17-12.
Hudkins was in and out of trouble with the law for years after he retired, until a near-death experience, provided via bullet, settled him down. He bought a stable and then made a living supplying horses for movie Westerns. Then, Ace Hudkins being Ace Hudkins, he became a Hollywood stuntman.
Although he failed to win a world title, Hudkins would never be forgotten by New Yorkers who saw this pitiless red-headed discontent come out of the dying frontier, like the Bad Man from Bodie, step into the urban dreamland of Coney Island, and knock the living daylights out of a nice Jewish boy named Ruby Goldstein.
Ace Hudkins would have fit in perfectly in the old West. I could easily picture him riding horseback alongside a train, face covered with a bandana.
The Sweet Science
Before ‘Bud’ Crawford, there was Ace Hudkins: A Look Back at the ‘Nebraska Wildcat’
During his career, Ace Hudkins was recognized as the California state champion in two weight classes – lightweight and heavyweight. He fought before crowds of 30,000-plus at baseball parks in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago and he came within a shade of wresting the world middleweight title from the great Mickey Walker, losing a decision widely assailed as a heist.
In light of Terence “Bud” Crawford’s brilliant performance last Saturday against Errol Spence, now would seem to be a good time to dust off the Ace Hudkins omnibus. Before Crawford, there was little argument that Hudkins was the best fighter ever born and raised in Nebraska.
Asa “Ace” Hudkins was born in 1905 in Valparaiso, a little farming town where his father owned a livery stable. His father died young and the family moved to Lincoln where Ace took up boxing at age 16 after first attracting notice as a wrestler with the Lincoln, Nebraska YMCA. He fought exclusively in and around the Cornhusker State before turning up in Los Angeles in December of 1924.
Los Angeles in 1924 was a boomtown. The population of LA County soared from 936,000 to 2.2 million during the decade of the 1920s. In December of 1924, boxing in the Golden State was on the cusp of a renaissance, the result of the new state law that took effect that month that overturned the law in effect since 1914 that had restricted matches to four rounds. A new arena for boxing was rising from the dirt on South Grand Avenue, the Olympic Auditorium, offering an alternative to Hollywood Legion Stadium, which itself was fairly new.
Having two venues for boxing in close proximity in a large and rapidly growing city was bound to drive up purses and Ace Hudkins was one of many leather-pushers who followed the scent of fresh money to Southern California in the mid-1920s.
In Hudkins’ second fight in California, on Jan. 9, 1925, he was thrust against California lightweight champion Tommy Carter. A capacity crowd was on hand for an event that was somewhat historic, marking the first “long fight” (i.e., 10-rounder) at Hollywood Legion Stadium.
The fight, by all accounts, was a doozy. Carter had the Nebraskan almost out on his feet in the third round, but Hudkins roared back and almost finished Carter in the sixth. The bout went the full distance and there was scarcely a dull moment. The referee awarded the match to Hudkins, a foregone conclusion as “the gawky, freckled kid from Nebraska,” as reporter Ed Frayne phrased it, “won conclusively.”
By then, Ace Hudkins had 45 pro fights under his belt although he was yet only 19 years old. Reporters took to referencing him as the Nebraska Wildcat and predicted that he would go far if he tightened up his defense.
Hudkins had 11 more fights before the year was out, all but one in Los Angeles. The exception was a 10-round contest in East Chicago, Indiana, against Sid Terris. The lightweight title was then in dispute – the great Benny Leonard had retired – and the winner would claim the title, notwithstanding the fact that the New York Commission recognized Buffalo’s Jimmy Goodrich.
The bout was a thriller climaxed by a breathtaking final round that had the crowd on its feet the whole while. Ace never took a backward step, but the consensus of ringside reporters was that he was out-boxed. This was no disgrace. Terris, a clever New Yorker with a magnificent record (66-4-2 heading in, per boxrec) would be inducted posthumously into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
During the bout, Ace was warned several times by referee Dave Barry (he of “long count” fame) for low blows and general roughhousing and this became part of his persona. Retrospectives of Ace Hudkins invariably touch upon his penchant for flouting the Queensberry code. “Whatever it takes (to win),” was his mantra.
Coney Island
Ace had better success against Terris’s landsman Ruby Goldstein. A baby-faced knockout artist from New York’s Lower East Side who would go on to become a prominent referee, Goldstein, nicknamed the Jewel of the Ghetto, was 23-0 when he was pitted against Hudkins on June 25, 1926, in the outdoor arena at Coney Island.
New York then had a rule that mandated that a fighter had to be at least 21 years old to compete in a 10-rounder. Both Hudkins and Goldstein were under the limit and their match was slated for six frames. Despite this encumbrance, a crowd estimated as high as 18,000 swarmed into Coney Island Stadium to see the Jewish phenom perform against the mysterious “wildcat” from out west who was making his Big Apple debut.
Things started swimmingly for Goldstein. Midway through the first round, he put Hudkins on the deck with a straight right hand. “At this stage,” wrote the ringside reporter for the Brooklyn Standard Union, “the buttonhole makers who wagered their shekels on Ruby were counting the profits.” But Hudkins was up at the count of six and bobbed and weaved and clinched to last out the round.
Goldstein won the second round also, but Ace landed a big right hand just before the bell and from that point it was all Hudkins who ended the match in the fourth with a paralyzing left hook that put Goldstein down for the count. A physician clambered into the ring and stayed with him until he regained his senses and young Ruby would leave the ring in tears.
Hudkins had three more fights in New York before returning to Los Angeles where he racked up five straight wins, outpointing such notables as Mexican-American trailblazer Bert Colima and future Hall of Famer Lew Tendler.
Welterweight
When Ace returned to New York in the summer of 1927, he was a full-fledged welterweight. He carried 146 pounds for his June 15 date with Sergeant Sammy Baker at the Polo Grounds on a card studded with leading lightweight contenders.
The guest of honor was Col. Charles Lindbergh who had flown solo from New York to Paris the preceding month, a feat that made him a national hero. Lindbergh came there at the behest of Ace Hudkins. It turned out that they were old friends who met when Lindbergh, three years older than Ace, was in Lincoln attending flight school.
The motorcade that transported Lindbergh and his host Mayor Jimmy Walker to the fight ran into traffic and Lindbergh missed the first two rounds. When he finally took his seat, Hudkins’ right eye was already purplish and swollen. The cut over the eye burst wide open in round seven and the referee waived the fight off.
Hudkins got his revenge the following month in a fight for the ages at LA’s Wrigley Field, home to the city’s Triple-A baseball teams.
Hudkins-Baker II was a gory spectacle. At the finish, said a ringside scribe, “both fighters were covered with blood and many ringside spectators wished they had come equipped with umbrellas.” Harry Grayson, soon to be one of America’s highest-paid newspaper writers as the sports editor of the Newspaper Enterprise Association, could not contain his enthusiasm. “Veterans declared it to be the most savage contest their tired old eyes ever gazed upon,” said Grayson. “This writer never saw a more bitterly contested duel between great fighters.”
The fourth round ended with Sergeant Baker flat on his back, unconscious. But the bell sounded when the referee reached the count of nine and Baker recovered during the one-minute respite and fought his way back into the fight. The turnout, at least 30,000, was said to be the largest in LA boxing history and the gate receipts exceeded the previous high by a good margin.
A fighter of Sicilian extraction from Baltimore, Joe Dundee, then had the strongest claim to the welterweight title. Hudkins signed to meet him at Wrigley Field on Nov. 4. 1927. What ensued was one of the nastiest riots in California boxing history.
Dundee refused to come out of his dressing room when the promoter failed to make good on his guaranteed $60,000 fee. When that became obvious, fistfights erupted like wildfires in every section of the enclosure. Some of the belligerents managed to make their way into the ring. The battle royal collapsed the ropes on one side of the ring and a score of men landed on press row, crushing typewriters and telegraph equipment. Every available policeman in the city was dispatched to the ballpark where they “wielded their nightsticks with vigor” to quell the conflagration.
Middleweight
Hudkins then set his sights on middleweight champion Mickey Walker, the Toy Bulldog, a former welterweight title-holder who would go on to defeat some of the leading heavyweight contenders before his career had wended its course. While he was waiting, he engaged in several more fights, notably a rubber match with Sergeant Sammy Baker at Madison Square Garden. This bout wasn’t as gory as their second fight, but was every bit as robust. The decision went to the “wildcat” who struck the reporter from the New York Daily News as a throwback to the Stone Age.
Ace Hudkins and Mickey Walker collided on June 21, 1928, at Chicago’s Comiskey Park. It was 10-rounder, the limit then in effect in Chicago for any prizefight, whether for a world title or otherwise. The turnout, purportedly 30,000, was impressive considering the ominous skies, a portent of the torrential downpour that larruped the crowd in the final two rounds.
It was a bloody, tightly-contested affair and, at the conclusion, most of the reporters were in accord with the referee who deemed Ace Hudkins the winner. But both judges dissented (their scorecards were not made public) and Walker retained his crown.
Despite the drenching from the cloudburst, many in the crowd lingered long after the fight to vent their displeasure, holding up the walk-out fight. “It was one of the wildest demonstrations of disapproval any championship fight has witnessed in recent years, lasting fifteen minutes in full volume and a half-hour in more sporadic form,” said the correspondent for the Associated Press.
The damage was starting to take its toll on the Nebraska Wildcat, a glutton for punishment. He lured Mickey Walker to LA for a rematch, but their contest, on Oct. 6, 1929, was a pale imitation of their first encounter. The reporter for the Los Angeles Record scored the bout 6-1-3 for the Toy Bulldog while conceding that his tally may have been a bit generous to Hudkins. This may, however, have been Hudkins’ best payday. The turnout, 21,370, including many Hollywood stars, shattered the California record for gate receipts.
Light Heavyweight
Undeterred by his second failed bid at Walker’s middleweight title, Hudkins set his sights on the light heavyweight diadem. To this end, he challenged the leading contender and future title-holder Maxie Rosebloom.
Their match at Madison Square Garden on Feb. 14, 1930, although a predictably foul-filled tussle, was an entertaining affair. Ace won the first three rounds, but then faded. In reaching for a stab at the light heavyweight title, he had reached too far.
Hudkins, clearly past his prime although only 25 years old, would have only seven more fights before calling it quits. In the fifth of those seven fights, however, he turned back the clock, winning the California heavyweight title from Dynamite Jackson. Hudkins upended Jackson before a packed house at the Olympic Auditorium on Sept. 15, 1931, in a match pushed back three weeks after Ace suffered a bad case of poison ivy.
Heavyweight
In his customary slashing and mauling style, Hudkins wore down his 205-pound adversary and coasted home after building an insurmountable lead. “The spectacle of the 173-pounder moving his heavier foe around the ring, much as husky gentlemen shove pianos, gave the crowd many a chuckle,” said the reporter for the Los Angeles Evening Express.
Ace had previously defeated Chicago heavyweight hopeful King Levinsky and his triumph over Jackson sparked talk of a match between him and rising heavyweight star Max Baer. That would have been an interesting match-up, if only because it would have paired two native Nebraskans. Baer was born in Omaha but spent his formative years in Colorado and Northern California.
That match never materialized and Ace’s win over Dynamite Jackson proved to be his last hurrah. He surrendered the title to Lee Ramage in his first defense and his performance in his swan song fight with Utah journeyman Wesley Ketchell was desultory. The best that could be said is that he lasted the distance in both matches. The only man that ever stopped him was Sergeant Sammy Baker and Ace avenged that setback twice.
After the Fall
In retirement, Hudkins became an alcoholic which led to numerous brushes with the law resulting from bar brawls, drunk driving, and such, and a near-fatal incident in 1933 when he was shot in the chest by the proprietor of a nightclub. But he kicked the habit and became a successful businessman. With his three brothers – Clyde, Art, and Ode – he opened a ranch that rented horses and related equipment to Hollywood filmmakers and TV studios in an era when Westerns were the backbone of the industry. Roy Rogers’ famous “Trigger” and the original “Silver” of Lone Ranger fame were boarded and trained at the Hudkins Brothers North Hollywood facility. Ace appeared with some of his horses in a few movies where he was an uncredited stunt rider. He was battling Parkinson’s disease when he passed away at age 67 in 1973.
You won’t find a plaque for Ace Hudkins at the International Boxing Hall of Fame, but that may yet happen. In this reporter’s opinion, he is no less qualified than Tiger Jack Fox, the most recent inductee in the Old Timer category, and Hudkins created much more of a stir during his brief but tumultuous career.
As to whether Ace could hold his own with Bud Crawford, that’s a rhetorical question. Crawford is a special talent. There are many dimensions to his game, whereas Hudkins, although tough as nails, had only one gear. A reporter seeking the right adjective to describe his technique, came up with the word longshoreman. But despite his limitations, it would be hard to argue with former LA Times scribe Paul Lowry who called Hudkins the best near-champion of his era.
Paul Gallico referenced Ace Hudkins in his classic memoir, “Farewell to Sport.” We’ll give Gallico the last word, er, words: “[He] was tough, hard, mean, cantankerous, combative, foul, nasty, courageous, acrimonious, and filled at all times with bitter and flaming lust for battle.”
Editor’s Note: Kristine Sader, a distant relative who had access to Ace Hudkins’ scrapbooks, wrote a biography of the boxer that was published in 2018. “Ace Hudkins: Boxing with the Nebraska Wildcat,” a $25 paperback, can be found at Amazon.
This is the book about Ace Hudkins that was mentioned in that article.
IBRO
A Look at “The Nebraska Wildcat”
Articles, Boxing Books / September 26, 2019
By: Roger Zotti
Ace Hudkins was a blond thunderbolt in his heyday….His one thought was to get at his opponent and tear him to pieces. Ace fought as a lightweight and middleweight and, though never a champion, he could lick 99 percent of the guys who thought they were champions. [He] probably drew more money in a year than all the present champions put together, bar Joe Louis.
It’s Cinematic What Kristine Sader hopes readers take from her intriguing book Ace Hudkins: Boxing with the Nebraska Wildcat is, she told the International Boxing Research Organization Journal, “an appreciation for the time, the 1920s, and for the man, Ace Hudkins. I wanted it to be an enjoyable book, almost like a scrapbook. Fun and informative.”
Kristine explained that “I tried to think cinematically while I was writing the book. I would ask myself, ‘How would this scene look in a movie?’” (For me, reading Kristine’s book was like seeing a documentary unfold with each turn of the page. Her cinema technique worked!)
She cited documentarian Ken Burns as “a terrific influence in the way he presents history in an entertaining way, and that movies like Seabiscuit and Cinderella Man influenced my book, too, and I believe movies like Hooper will influence the next book I am writing, which is a continuation of the Hudkins brothers’ work in Hollywood providing stuntmen, horses, wagons, and wranglers for movies.
About twenty or so years ago, Kristine said, “the seeds of this book were planted. That was when I was out to dinner with my Dad, and I told him that his family’s stories sounded like they would make a great book. They were such great characters and had such a large part in movies and early westerns on TV.”
His answer: “’Well, maybe you should write it.’ It took me time to make it a priority. Slowly I started having interviews with people such as Gene LeBell (wrestler, stuntman, and actor in Raging Bull and Rocky, among many other projects). I include portions of Mr. LeBell’s interview in my first book, and I am also including portions in the second book on which I am currently working.”
Kristine added: “I chatted with my cousin Rich Brehm (Head Wrangler on Wagon Train who worked on Around The World In Eighty Days, and did transportation for Scarface, among many other projects), and then Robert Fuller (Laramie and Wagon Train actor). I later talked with Clint Walker (Cheyenne), James Drury (The Virginian) and other greats of the time whose interviews will be included in the second book.
“I was making progress when my dad passed in 2013, and at first it was hard to get back into writing the book, but I found renewed determination when I decided to write it as a tribute to my Dad’s family and to my Dad himself.”
Ace, the Challenge, and Learning Ace Hudkins was Kristine’s great-uncle. He was “a well-known boxer during the 1920’s who,” she wrote, “worked his way up to the top of the boxing world and knew many interesting and famous Hollywood personalities. How did he get from Lincoln, Nebraska, to the big time in Hollywood? What did it take? I think it is a story about family, brotherhood, and, well, the American Dream coming true.”
As she wrote her book—which contains “anecdotes about people such as Charles Lindbergh and Rudolph Valentino, who were included in the varied list of Ace’s friends and acquaintances”—Kristine learned “that writing isn’t talking about writing. Writing is writing. ‘A writer, writes.’ “Billy Crystal said that in Throw Mama From The Train, and it’s true! It really means if you want to write, it takes sitting down and writing.
“You may not always be inspired,” she continued, “and it might get tiring, especially toward the end, but a book will never be finished unless someone finishes writing it. That might mean it is never as good as you would like it to be. Sometimes that means just stopping and writing the end.”
Stephen King is one writer who influenced Kristine. “It’s not because my book is scary,” she said, “although the image of Ace coming at opponents haunted many of them for years. I am influenced by King because of his craft. He is a grand storyteller and that is what I want to do . . . I LOVED the way he included song lyrics in his books when I first started reading them in middle school. If I could get the rights I would include many more song lyrics in my book, as I think they help to set the time, place, mood and tone.”
Many other writers have influenced Kristine, too, but “I am most influenced by movies,” she said. “Though the book is about a boxer in the 1920s and in honor of my Dad, as I said, I tried to write it like a movie. If you like Rocky, Chicago, or Cinderella Man, I think you will like this book, which I hope comes off as entertaining. Please keep up with me on Facebook, Twitter, or my website (https://www.kristinesaderwriter.com/).
The Book Kristine’s lively coverage of Ace’s fights with Ruby Goldstein and Mickey Walker are among the highlights of Ace Hudkins: Boxing With The Nebraska Wildcat. Against the highly regarded, hard-hitting, undefeated Goldstein, who later became one of boxing’s greatest referees, Ace was a 4-1 underdog. Though floored in the opening round, in round four Ace connected. Mike Silver, in Stars in the Ring: Jewish Champions in the Golden Age of Boxing, put it like this: “Goldstein never saw the sweeping left hook that landed on the point of his chin, [and] he was counted out for the first time in his career.”
(The bout was scheduled for six rounds because both fighters were under twenty-one years of age. The venue was Brooklyn’s Coney Island Stadium, the year 1926. The twenty-year-old Hudkins was two years older than Goldstein.)
Ace fought middleweight champion Mickey Walker twice, and in their first fight—which took place at Chicago’s Comiskey Park, in 1928, with a large crowd in attendance—Walker won the decision. So disputed was the verdict, however, that Ace was soon known as the uncrowned middleweight champion. (Kristine quotes a clipping from Ace’s scrapbook: “Whenever you see ten or fifteen thousand fans say the decision was ‘rotten,’ put it down as being just that and nothing else.”)
Their second fight took place in 1929, at Wrigley Field, Los Angeles, and Walker, who perhaps underrated Ace the first time they fought, won a clear-cut decision.
Ace stopped fighting in 1932 and according to boxrec.com compiled a record of 64-16-12 (25 KOs) during his ten-year boxing career.
In retirement Ace still had some of the “wildcat” in his bones: His everyday existence was filled with ups and downs, but Kristine believes that “In the later part of [his] life, he had settled down tremendously. This could be attributed to age and maturity but, then again, this author like to think that it was also due to the calming influence of Mildred Herron, Ace’s true love . . . Mildred doted on Ace and her love calmed him down . . . No more did he feel the need to take risks and drive intoxicated or get into bar fights. He didn’t have to be ‘The Wildcat’ 24 hours a day.” He passed away April 18, 1973
And, yes, Kristine said, “There are many more stories to be told about Ace—and they will be.”
This is the photo that was used for the image of Ace Hudkins on the cover of the book about him. This kind of stuff fascinates me.
Ace Hudkins in a fight pose.
Check out this photo of Ace Hudkins with a lion on top of him.
This is the photo that was used for the image of Ace Hudkins on the cover of the book about him. This kind of stuff fascinates me.
Ace Hudkins on the cover of The Ring magazine in October of 1926.
John Wayne and Ace Hudkins on the set of Rio Bravo (1959). Duke autographed the photo and wrote " Find another 'Banner', Ace."
During the 1940’s and 1950’s, Duke’s favorite mount was a large bay named Banner, supplied by the Fat Jones stables.
“He was intelligent and had an instinct for this business,” John Wayne once said of Banner.
Ace Hudkins had a horse stable near Warner Bros. He and his brother Art began renting horses to film companies in the late 1930s. His Hudkins Brothers Movie Ranch was a favorite of dozens of cowboy stars who boarded horses at the ranch (the property is now part of Forest Lawn Glendale), and among Ace's friends were Smiley Burnette, Guinn Wilson, Fred Kennedy, Gene Autry, and John Wayne.
Ace also did stunt work and appeared in Gunsmoke (1955), Temple Houston (1963), and The Mountain Men (1980).
Nice shot of Ace Hudkins during his fighting days.
Ace Hudkins on an exhibit card
You know, it mentioned in that Sweet Science article, a fantasy matchup between Terence "Bud" Crawford and Ace Hudkins and who would win? That's fascinating, Crawford is a very cerebral technician, likes to take his time and study his opponent a bit, figure them out, then systematically take them apart. He would be going up against a man who rips into his opponents like a wild animal and overwhelms them with sheer aggression. Fascinating fantasy matchup. One last photo of Ace Hudkins here.
This is the only surviving fight footage of Ace Hudkins, his second fight with Mickey Walker in 1929. Watching this footage, you can see everything they say about Hudkins is absolutely true, at the opening bell he instantly applies vicious pressure on Walker and begins tearing at him and mauling him. Walker really has no other choice but try and outbox Hudkins on the backfoot to avoid the nastiness of Hudkins' trench warfare.
This is an article by The New York Times after the first fight between Ace Hudkins and Mickey Walker, most observers thought Hudkins should have been crown the world middleweight champion that night.
Hudkins Is Beaten in Title Bout With Walker in Chicago; CHAMPION WALKER OUTPOINTS HUDKINS Gains Verdict After Ten Rounds of Hard and Bitter Fighting at Chicago. CHALLENGER ON ATTACK Sets Pace From Start to Finish, Punishing Walker With Heavy Body Blows. CROWD OF 30,000 PRESENT Receipts for Bout, Cut by Early Threatening Weather, Are Estimated Over $150,000.
By: James P. Dawson. Special To the New York Times.
June 22, 1928
CHICAGO. June 21. Mickey Walker won the world's middleweight championship about eighteen months ago on a weird decision from the late Tiger Flowers in a battle here, and tonight he retained his laurels through the same medium. In this latest instance of charity among the city's boxing judges, Ace Hudkins, Nebraska's aptly named Wildcat of the ring, was the victim.
Through ten savage rounds, in a battle of which half was fought in a driving downpour of rain, Hudkins battered and pounded Walker in a desperate bid for the world's 160-pound title and at the finish had only a blood smeared countenance to show for his efforts. The majority thought that Hudkins's hand would be raised in victory, but the crowd and experts were amazed to see the hand of Walker held aloft, signifying victory. Receiving the decision. Walker retained his title. The decision was not unanimous, but that does not alter the fact that Walker is champion. Eddie Purdy, veteran referee, and well known in New York for his officiating, was the third man in the ring, and he made no secret of the fact that he voted for Hudkins.
Two Judges Decide Issue.
The judges, Ed Klein and Harry Carroll, voted for Walker, and their ballots decided the issue. Their ballots also precipitated one of the most vigorous outbursts of condemnation from a fight crowd that Chicago has ever experienced in the short time it has enjoyed professional boxing under recently legalized conditions. There was a crowd of about 30,000 at this title struggle, drawn by the promise of a slashing battle which was fulfilled, and it paid in gross receipts a figure estimated in excess of $150.000, an all-time record for receipts in Chicago boxing, exclusive of the Tunney-Dempsey bout last year. The fans stood on chairs in the downpour, ignoring discomfort in their desire to voice disapproval of what was one of the most weird decisions they had ever listened to. Powerful arc lamps in the park started popping as fans threw missiles at the lights, and the reports, sounding like pistol cracks above the din of the disapproving fans, made some in the gathering apprehensive. One light exploded directly above the head of Clyde Hudkins, brother-manager of the Ace, and showered him with glass, while some thought a bottle had been hurled into the ring.
How the decision of the judges was arrived at will remain a deep mystery. Hudkins deserved the decision by taking four of the six rounds to Walker's two. In the other two sessions champion and challenger shared honors.
Hudkins Makes the Fighting.
Hudkins made all of the fighting against a champion who has gone back as a fighter. The challenger did most of the leading, showing contempt for the desperate blows of Walker, who was in full flight at times. Hudkins was erratic and cautioned several times for fouling.
Hudkins's hurts were on the surface; Walker's were internal. The champion bled freely from the nose and mouth and from an old wound over the left eye. Hudkins gushed blood from a wound over the left eye. another under the right eye, from the nose and from bruised and battered lips.
Walker won only the first and fourth rounds, and he held Hudkins even in the fifth and in the tenth, when he rallied heroically. The champion made his big effort and enjoyed his greatest success in the fourth. He hammered out cuts on Hudkins's face which bled through the rest of the fight. Walker crashed a terrific left hook to the body which almost doubled up Hudkins. The champion followed with a rain of vicious lefts and rights to the jaw which had Hudkins on the verge of a knockout at the bell. The Ace responded to the bell for the fifth round unaffected and more vicious than ever. He had kept on top of Walker tirelessly, hammering away with both hands in a steady drum-fire of punches to the head and body at close quarters. After the fourth round, Hudkins was like the wildcat to which he has been compared in point of fury. Ho withstood an abbreviated rally from Walker in the fifth session.
Hudkins Closes Strongly.
Through the sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth rounds and for a time in the tenth. Hudkins battered and pounded Walker all over the ring. The challenger went close, getting past the champion's weak stabs and drilling home to the body and to the head and face with his left and with his right. In desperation Walker at times threw the Ace off bodily and hooked left or right to the jaw or to the body, but the blows lacked steam. Realizing he couldn't keep his rival at bay, Walker did the next best thing and openly broke and ran across the ring. But always Hudkins was in hot pursuit, pressing the champion to the ropes, laying his head on Walker's chest and hammering away. And the bell ending each round was the only relief for the champion.
This is a cartoon about Ace Hudkins and his in-your-chest, aggressive style.
Sorry, didn't mean to go on about Ace Hudkins but he is one of my personal favorites, love the pressure guys that stick to you like a rash.