How to Train: Very few pugilists train alike, simply because where one man may be working to take off weight another may be working to put it on. I will try and explain my own method of training by saying that when I am preparing for a contest I rise about 6 o’clock in the morning and take a walk of ten miles. When I have gone about eight miles I begin to quicken the pace and come home on a good fast run. My trainers then rub me down with Turkish towels until I am dry, and then apply a wash of alcohol and witch hazel. I then put on a new suit of ‘sweaters,’ after which I breakfast. I usually eat the lean part of muttonchops or broiled steak well done. I eat eggs about every other day and drink Bass ale. Tea and coffee have a tendency to make a person nervous.
After an hour’s rest I start in at the punching bag and work there for about an hour. I punch the bag for three minutes and then rest one minute. I then ‘rough it’ by wrestling and running about until about one hour before dinner. I then go through the ‘rubbing down’ process again and another change of sweaters. After dinner, which consists of roast meats, potatoes and other good solid food, I read and write until about 3 o’clock. Then I go for a twenty-mile run and upon returning am rubbed down, and another change of sweaters. Then I partake of a light supper and retire about ten o’clock. The same course is followed until I reach the weight I am to fight at.
– George Dixon, “A Lesson in Boxing” (1893)
George Dixon came of age when the sport of boxing was transforming from a backroom, bare-knuckled excuse for brawling to the modern, gloved, Marquess of Queensbury Rules boxing. This transformation was perhaps best embodied in the career of John L. Sullivan, who also found his life tangentially intersecting with George Dixon’s in ways telling, surprising, and ironic.
Born twelve years before Dixon, in 1858, to poor Irish immigrant parents, John L. Sullivan was raised in the tough streets of Boston. At five feet ten, he was short for a heavyweight boxer, but he was tenacious in temperament as well as physically muscular and exceptionally strong in body. As a youth, he worked at numerous manual labour jobs and was known to be quick with his fists.
His professional fighting career began almost accidentally when he was nineteen. He and some friends were attending a popular vaudeville show at the Dudley Opera House in Boston. At one point in the program, an Irish bare-fisted fighter named Jack Scannell took the stage and challenged anyone in the audience to a three-round, bare-knuckled exhibition. The crowd smiled at the offer. Such exhibitions were regular features of vaudeville shows because fighting was ostensibly illegal in most cities and states. So vaudeville shows offered their patrons “exhibitions” of fistic skills.
The young, brash, and ever cocky Sullivan immediately volunteered. He dashed down the aisle and gamely mounted the stage. Removing his coat, he waved to the audience. Then he turned and smiled at Scannell, who raised his fists and postured in the familiar boxer’s pose. Sullivan’s smile faded as he rolled up his sleeves and raised his fists. They nodded at each other, and the two pugilists started circling. Scannell waited patiently for the impulsive Sullivan to throw a punch. When finally Sullivan did, Scannell stepped aside and struck Sullivan playfully on the back of the head. Embarrassed, Sullivan was infuriated. He rushed Scannell and punched him so forcefully that Scannell was knocked backward off his feet and into the stage piano, where he lay unconscious.
The crowed roared with approval. Sullivan had won the fight.
After that, Sullivan went on to win more “exhibitions” and moved to fighting in the ring, earning a reputation as a fearsome brawler. That said, he was not, nor was he ever, a particularly skillful boxer. Rather, he was a persistent attacker and able to withstand extraordinary punishment. “Sullivan is as fierce, relentless, tireless as a cataract,” wrote sports editor John Boyle O’Reilly. “The fight is wholly to go in his way – not at all in the other man’s. His opponent wants to spar; he leaps on him with a straight blow. He wants to breathe; he dashes him in to the corner with a drive in the stomach. He does not waste ten seconds of the three minutes each round.”
Before long, Sullivan had amassed an impressive winning record. And though he was well known as the last bare-knuckled fighter, Sullivan had in fact only fought in four “official” bouts without gloves. Indeed, as early as 1880, he showed a decided preference for gloved fighting under the Marquess of Queensbury Rules.1 And in doing so, he popularized the use of gloves in the ring. At the same time, he continued to accept bare-knuckled fights until July 10, 1889, when, in a roped-off section of a grassy field before hundreds of enthusiastic fans, Sullivan fought and defeated Jake Kilrain. The fight would stand as the last bare-knuckled championship and would cement Sullivan’s long-lasting reputation as a great fighter.
John L. Sullivan became the first modern sports celebrity. His picture hung in nearly every tavern and saloon in America. Thousands of fans followed his exploits in newspapers officially against the “barbaric sport” of boxing but which recorded every fight in great detail. People wanted to see him do almost anything and would pay almost anything to do so. During his reign as heavyweight champion, he found it more financially rewarding to take three years off to star in a travelling play that had been written for him than to fight in the ring.
And the fans flocked to see him.
But though he was much loved, Sullivan was also a difficult man. He was a notorious drunk, whose drinking often resulted in barroom brawls, destroyed relationships, and the loss of his health and his money. He was also a notorious racist famous for proclaiming that he would fight and beat “any son-of-a-bitch” who stepped forward – except a Black man. “I will not fight a negro,” he once said. “I never have and I never shall.”
Despite this noxious nature, Sullivan maintained a long, meaningful friendship with George Dixon. Their lives and careers, and even their fates, seemed inexorably intertwined. “The world knows what a prejudice John L. Sullivan has against colored fighters,” reported The Boston Globe in the 1890s, “but Dixon has not a warmer friend than the big fellow. Dixon did not try to gain the friendship of Sullivan, but it was the big fellow who wanted to know Dixon. Though both began their lives as boxers in this city [Boston], they never had exchanged a word until about six or seven years ago. The meeting took place many miles from here. Both were on the road with their companies and they happened to cross paths in the lunchroom of a railroad station in Pennsylvania. Sullivan had heard of the abilities of the colored lad and asked O’Rourke [Dixon’s manager] to introduce him.
“From the time they clasped hands, Sullivan always had a great admiration for Dixon, and the many kind deeds that Dixon has since done for Sullivan have linked their friendship more firmly together. Whenever the big fellow had a benefit, he did not have to ask Dixon to appear. The latter was always the first to volunteer. While he could have gone to the hall and have been admitted free, he never would. He bought tickets for himself and friends and generally had to travel from Boston to New York to appear, never taking a cent from Sullivan for his work. Such acts Sullivan never forgot, and Dixon is the only colored boxer who can go to Sullivan’s place and do about as he likes. He also can have half of anything the big fellow has, and there is many a white boxer that could not receive the same favors from Sullivan. When Dixon first traveled through the country with Tom O’Rourke, their route often carried them to southern cities where the prejudice against colored people was very strong, but the boxer was never insulted, for he knew how to carry himself in all circumstances.”
Given their professional trajectories, it was perhaps no accident that both men participated in a three-day, three-fight event in New Orleans in 1892 that represented the true beginning of modern boxing. That event would feature Sullivan losing his heavyweight title to “Gentleman” Jim Corbett, and also George Dixon making a powerful statement about racism and sport.
But that was still years away.
* * *
While boxing was emerging from the brutality of bare-knuckled brawling, the horrific epidemic of lynching was spreading in America. Between 1886 and 1906, the years George Dixon boxed as a professional, more than two thousand Black men were lynched by racist mobs throughout America. Though the vast majority of these lynchings took place in the southern United States, only four out of the then forty-eight states – Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Vermont – could claim that no Black man had been lynched there.
Lynching represented, perhaps, the most horrifying act of the institutionalized racism that blighted America. By the time George Dixon had moved to Boston, the efforts at post-Civil War Reconstruction in the South had all but collapsed. One result of the collapse was tens of thousands of Black Americans living without the protection of Union troops. Into this void came the Ku Klux Klan, the sharecropper system, and the Jim Crow laws that made life in Black America a dangerous and often deadly challenge. Even in northern communities, Black Americans were legally treated as second-class citizens. Lynching – often accompanied by dismemberment, castration, burning, and other torture – provided a terrifying means to keep Black Americans in a state of deferential fear.
To be Black in America during the late nineteenth century was singularly dangerous. And to be a Black boxer fighting white boxers must have been nothing short of flirtation with murder.
* * *
George Dixon’s first professional bout occurred in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on November 1, 1886. He was just sixteen years old. Yet, save for the date, the name of the opponent, and the location of the fight, little more is recorded. We do know that Dixon knocked out his opponent, Young Johnson, in just three rounds. It is also worth noting that Johnson never fought professionally again.
Why did Dixon fight his first match in Halifax? Perhaps it was easier to get a professional bout in the city as an unknown, and perhaps Dixon wanted the support of his friends and family at ringside as he made his first foray into professional boxing. In either case, Dixon’s quick success must have buoyed his young confidence. One can only imagine the celebration that occurred that night in the Dixon home in nearby Africville.
No doubt George Dixon engaged in a number of amateur bouts in the months that followed, and no doubt his skills improved with each engagement. But Dixon was a unique fighter. More than just developing from experience, he became a true student of the sport. He spent countless hours in clubs, studying matches with care from ringside. He watched the fighters on offence and on defense. He watched their blows and counterblows. So, too, he read all he could find about boxing and worked for hours to find efficiencies in training and movement. As time passed and he learned more, Dixon seemed to acquire a rare capacity to see his opponents’ intentions as if they were being delivered in slow motion.
* * *
Eight months before George Dixon fought his first professional bout, on March 18, 1886, sometime just before 1:00 p.m., sixty armed men entered the courthouse in Carrolton, Mississippi. They climbed to the second-floor room where a Black man named Ed Brown was being tried for murder. Without warning, the men burst into the room with their Winchester rifles, and they began firing. “The room,” reported The New York Times, “was completely enveloped in smoke.” Bodies fell “four or five on top of each other.” A stampede pressed to leave the room. Some people made for the windows, jumping thirty feet to the street only to find men waiting. Amos Mathews, for one, had jumped safely from the courthouse window only to have “the whole left side of his head blown off by one or more loads of buckshot or a Winchester rifle.” More than twenty people were killed that day.
All were Black.
No one was ever arrested for the crime.
* * *
Nearly a year after his first professional bout, Dixon prepared for his second at the Way Street Gymnasium in Boston on September 21, 1887. Small and light – he weighed less than a hundred pounds – Dixon had turned seventeen just two months earlier. He was set to fight Elias Hamilton, another young Black boxer from Boston who had fought and lost a single professional bout some two years earlier in Baltimore. What drew Hamilton back into the ring is unknown, but the money was good for a night’s work, and perhaps he thought the young Dixon, who had no professional record of note, would be an easy opponent.
The Boston Globe reported the fight that night “was an eight-round go between two young gentlemen of color.” Likely, the audience was sparse, just a collection of gamblers, perhaps, who came out to bet on second-rate fighters. Those in attendance were not disappointed. The newspaper described the bout as a “hard fight” with Dixon proving “to be the better man.” As with Young Johnson, Elias Hamilton’s experience in the ring with Dixon was more than enough to encourage a quick retirement.
A few years later, Dixon would remember this fight in an interview with the New York Sun. He recounted that he was still living with his father on Knapp Street and had been fighting in local clubs as an amateur. Another local amateur named “Sammy Cohen was challenging every bantam,” reported the Sun .
“Dixon finally accepted his challenge, but Cohen flunked [backed out]. Then Dixon ascertained that Sandy Walker, who had agreed to fight Elias Hamilton at the Fair Play Club, had backed out. He hunted up Ed Holske, and after much persuasion, Dixon succeeded in getting the chance to take Walker’s place. The sports saw that the newcomer, as Dixon was now called, knew something about fighting, and he was given plenty of chances to show all his skill by the managers of the boxing clubs of the city. Dixon became so completely taken up with the business that he visited all the boxing exhibitions given by the crack pugilists of Boston. He made it a point always to get a seat close to the stage so that he could get a good view of every blow that was given. On returning home he would practice some of the blows he had seen delivered at the show. In that way, he acquired great proficiency in his line, and it was soon noticeable that every time he appeared in the ring he showed wonderful improvement.”
* * *
While Dixon was still fighting amateur bouts, a young Black man named Sidney Davis was standing trial in the small town of Morgan, Texas, on July 15, 1887. Davis had been charged with assaulting a woman and was silently listening to the court proceedings when “a mob of 500 men rushed into the courtroom.” The armed men ordered everyone to remain still. As one of the men bound the sheriff, the others took Davis from the courtroom “very roughly [and] marched [him] to the Basque River Bridge, about a mile away.” There, at a nearby tree, the mob told Davis that he was guilty of attacking a white woman and that his “time had come.” Davis began to weep. Unmoved, one member of the mob threw a rope over a limb and fixed the noose around Davis’s neck. While the crowd jeered, Davis was then drawn up “to remain [hanging] until his life was extinct.”
No one was ever charged with the murder of Sidney Davis.
* * *
Dixon fought yet another newcomer in October 1887, a white boxer named Young Mack. The bout was over in three rounds, when Dixon flattened his opponent with a hard right. Mack found the defeat so demoralizing that he retired from the professional ring for three years, only to return in 1890 for his second professional fight. He lost that and retired for good.
While Dixon had yet to face an opponent of gen-uine experience or real talent, his three professional fights to date and his numerous amateur bouts garnered him much attention among the sporting men of the city. Not long after the Young Mack fight, he was approached by a small-time manager from Boston named Young Collins, who promised to get Dixon better fights and bigger purses. Seventeen-year-old Dixon was enthusiastic about bigger purses and immediately agreed.
A month later, on Saturday, November 5, 1887, Young Collins marched into the offices of The Boston Globe and asked to speak with a sports reporter. When one finally appeared, the blustery Collins announced that he “would match his man against any of the 105-pound fighters.” He particularly wanted Dixon to fight the talented Tommy Doherty of East Boston. “If Doherty really wants a go,” said Collins, “I will guarantee a purse for a fight to the finish of a limited number of rounds, under the management of a club in this city.” When the reporter asked why a fighter of Doherty’s reputation would fight an unknown like Dixon, Collins responded, “Dixon has been tried and has proven he is a game fighter, one who will stand lots of punishment.” Of course, Doherty felt little pressure to take on the upstart Dixon. He suggested Dixon earn a few more victories in the ring before taking on someone of his calibre.
So that is exactly what Dixon did.
* * *
The first detailed newspaper description of a George Dixon fight came with his fourth professional bout, on January 2, 1888. Dixon travelled out of the city centre, past Dorchester, into Roxbury, to fight Jack Lyman at the Earley Athletic Club on Lagrange Street. The fight “parlor” was located up “three, long and narrow flights of stairs.” The room was small and poorly lit, and cigarette and cigar smoke gave the air a claustrophobic stench.
The president of the athletic club was an impresario named Colonel Thomas who had staged numerous fights in the city, usually rough toe-to-toe brawls that featured little skill and less talent. That night, after two preliminary matches – which did little to excite the patrons of the club – Dixon and Lyman entered the room with their seconds (cornermen, aides, and assistants). Dixon passed first between the ropes with his manager, Young Collins. Lyman then entered the ring, accompanied by Bob “the Black Spider” Green. There was notable excitement in the crowd as both fighters had made good names for themselves in a series of “extensive” exhibition fights. As well, both fighters had laid dubious claim to being contenders for the “105-pound championship.”
The scheduled six-round bout between George Dixon and Jack Lyman – who had won his first professional fight just a month earlier – would impress those present enough to earn a good description from a reporter at The Boston Globe. “It is doubtful,” the Globe reporter wrote, “whether out of the number of fights that have taken place there one could be found which would excel the bout last evening, in which the contestants were only a couple of little bantamweights, who were matched to fight six rounds.”
After the gloves were tied and tested, the fighters were called to the centre of the ring. Referee Tim McCarthy gave his instructions then sent the fighters to their corners, where they waited anxiously. The atmosphere of the hall was charged with anticipation. The bell rang, and the two fighters bolted to the centre. Dixon let fly a left jab that caught Lyman on the jaw. Lyman responded, both arms swinging. The two clinched and each delivered short uppercuts and jabs.
They broke away, circled, and exchanged light blows. Dixon threw an overhand right that cut the skin above Lyman’s eye, drawing blood, then he shot a sharp left to Lyman’s chin. Lyman rushed forward to clinch. After a moment they broke, and the two threw short arm punches until Lyman stepped back, allowing Dixon to deliver another left to Lyman’s cut eye.
When the bell rang, the fighters returned to their corners. Lyman breathed heavily as he sat on his stool with his head tilted back. His second, Bob Green, worked the cut. “Keep away from him,” Green told Lyman. “Counter with your left when he rushes. Wait for him to overreach.”
In his corner, Dixon watched Lyman with a notable calm. He studied Lyman and seemed almost to know what Green was telling him. When the bell rang for round two, Dixon moved quickly to the centre and baited Lyman. Dropping his hands, he left himself open. Lyman took the hook and rushed forward, throwing a stinging right toward Dixon’s head. Dixon dodged and released the trap. He countered Lyman’s punch with a combination to the body and head. Stunned, Lyman began to wobble.
“You’ve got him, Dixon!” the crowd yelled.
Referee McCarthy turned to the crowd. “No remarks, please.”
Dixon kept attacking, driving sharp blows to Lyman’s nose and body. Lyman tried to counter, but the momentum was with Dixon. Lyman’s eye was now swollen and closing. He was bleeding from the nose and mouth. A reporter present noted that Dixon was “without a scratch,” though his “left eye was a little damaged and had begun to swell.”
As the round wore on, Lyman’s energy waned. He clinched when Dixon punched. Catcalls rose from the crowd. Dixon grew increasingly frustrated. “If you want to wrestle,” Dixon hissed into Lyman’s ear, “I’ll give you all you want.”
At the start of round four, Lyman found a second wind. He and Dixon stood toe to toe for almost three minutes. Blow followed blow, counterblow followed counterblow. At the bell, Lyman was “very groggy, and was very much winded.” And at the start of the fifth, Lyman was lifeless. The Colonel, recognizing that Lyman had nothing left, called the fight for Dixon. As he raised Dixon’s hand in victory and the crowd cheered, the Colonel was quick to announce another fight for Dixon and amateur favourite Charley Parton, in one week’s time, for a purse of fifty dollars.2
The crowd roared.
“I can truly say,” wrote the enthused Boston Globe reporter, “that I have seen worse fights where the purse given amounted to $1,000, and where each of the contestants had records as long as your arm.”
Two weeks after the Lyman fight, Dixon returned to the ring and beat Charley Parton in six rounds, taking home the purse of fifty dollars, a sum that would have seemed like riches to Dixon. A month later, on February 17, 1888, George Dixon defeated Barney Finnegan in seven rounds. His fast rise brought him much attention. He was soon scheduled to fight Tommy “Spider” Kelly, who claimed the unofficial paperweight title or the “105 pound championship.” But when the fight day arrived, Kelly failed to show, and Dixon easily defeated the substitute Ned Morris in four rounds.
At the end of February 1888, Dixon fought Paddy Kelly. The bout ended in a fifteen-round draw. It would be the first of many draws to come in Dixon’s career, despite the fact that Dixon was often the stronger boxer. In fact, the number of draws in his record suggests something of the biases of the time. Though never explicitly stated in Dixon’s fights, as a Black boxer fighting a white boxer, he always faced the greater challenge. Matches that would have gone in favour of a Black boxer were called a draw in order to save face for the white boxer and disgruntled patrons. As Jack Johnson, the first Black heavyweight champion, would later note, “For every point I’m given, I’ll have earned two, because I’m a Negro.” Dixon took the draw with Kelly without public complaint.
And if he did complain in private, no record of it remains.
Dixon next fought the talented Tommy Doherty. The bout went eight rounds before it too was called a draw. Doherty was considered a serious challenge for Dixon, and the draw says much about Dixon’s rapidly developing skills. Indeed, Dixon’s talent could no longer be denied. Win or draw, Dixon was undefeated as a professional. And as such, he rightly earned the opportunity to fight for his first title – a match with Tommy “Spider” Kelly for the 105-pound championship of America.
That fight came on May 10, 1888. Dixon and Kelly arrived in the early evening at the Athenian Club in Boston for the championship bout. Three years older than Dixon, Tommy “Spider” Kelly was as tall with a narrow, sinewy muscularity that suggested both quickness and strength. Kelly had a habit of brushing his auburn hair up from his forehead, making his narrow face appear all the leaner. He would give Dixon his first serious challenge in the ring.
Set for seven rounds, the two fighters were prepared for a battle. “These two men,” wrote The Boston Globe reporter present at the fight, “are probably the best 105-pound men in the business.”
When the bell rang for round one, both Kelly and Dixon came out fast, with Kelly taking the lead and holding it through the second round. Dixon seemed surprised at Kelly’s speed and ferocity, and spent more time defending than attacking.
In round three, Dixon was “just beginning to wake up” and effectively began counterpunching, though Kelly’s “queer antics” – jumping “around the ring in great style, and by very clever ducking avoiding blows, which, had they landed, would have done much damage on the place at which they were aimed” – caused Dixon much difficulty. Yet when Dixon’s punches finally connected, Kelly knew it. Said the Globe reporter, “The little colored boy hits like a kicking mule.”
Kelly’s jumping antics got under Dixon’s skin. “Why don’t you stand up and fight?” barked Dixon a number of times throughout the bout. Kelly, said the reporter, “responded to the call and came near giving George all he wanted.”
By the end of the seventh round, the referee scored the bout even. And it should have finished as a draw, but in an effort to give Kelly a chance to win, the referee arbitrarily added two more rounds. The additional rounds settled nothing. When finally the bout ended in an undeniable draw, and most likely what should have been a Dixon win, the crowd was pleased, applauding “heartily” for both fighters. Kelly later spoke with a Boston Globe reporter. He showed his hands. They were “badly puffed.”
Given the draw, Dixon and his manager, Young Collins, were quick to co-claim the 105-pound or Paperweight Championship. Here Dixon showed a keen eye for self-promotion, particularly when it came to garnering bigger and bigger purses. And when, not long afterward, Tommy Kelly retired from the paperweight class to fight solely as a bantamweight, Dixon immediately claimed sole title to the unofficial Paperweight Championship of America.
Yet George Dixon, too, had set his sights on the more lucrative and more recognized Bantamweight Championship of America.
______________
1 The Marquess of Queensbury Rules were introduced in 1867. They were intended to refine the London Prize Ring Rules used for bare-knuckled fighting. The twelve Marquess of Queensbury Rules established the basic framework for modern boxing including a twenty-four-foot ring, set rounds of three minutes with one minute of rest between rounds, and the use of boxing gloves.
2 An approximate conversion rate for a dollar in 1890 and a dollar of 2021 is about 1 to 31. As such, a conservative estimate of $400,000 career earnings for George Dixon would be equivalent to about $12 million today. Some estimates suggest that Dixon earned as much as $750,000 over his career or, in today’s money, $23 million. In either case, such figures made George Dixon among the wealthiest Black men of his day.