Sport: Rickard's Heirs

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In the last years of his career, Promoter Rickard had surrounded himself with a powerful corporation, mainly to insure financial security. It seemed likely that whoever was elected president of this, would inherit the responsibilities, if not necessarily the talents, of Tex Richard. A much discussed candidate was Vice President William F. Carey, Wall Street contracting engineer, builder of the new Manhattan and Boston Madison Square Gardens, onetime Rickard Partner in Paraguayan cattle-ranchholdings. Jack Dempsey refused to consider it officially; before any announcement had been made by the Garden Corporation, William F. Carey entrained with Prizefighter Dempsey for Boston and persuaded Jack Sharkey, who had lapsed into his habitual recalcitrance, to sign papers for the Stribling fight. Then Dempsey went to Miami, arranged details of a fight on the night of Feb. 27.

Thus it appeared that some sort of working arrangement had been secured to keep boxing, temporarily at least, in expensive arenas or stadiums and out of barges and border towns where it had been when Rickard began to operate.

However, for promoters to be successful, they must have something to promote and unless Promoter-Pugilist Dempsey should arrange a match between himself and the winner of the Sharkey-Stribling bout, there seemed to be no further work for Rickard's successor to do until a prospective heavyweight champion appeared. Of these, only one had shown the vaguest possibility of becoming satisfactory. This was Maximilian Siegfried Victor ("Mocks") Schmeling who was once the champion of Germany, who has fought twice in the U. S., who is 23 years old, who looks like Jack Dempsey and is being taught to fight like him.

While the stock-market is happy and the motor industry hale, there will be plenty of people who want to go to U. S. prizefights, however wretched they may be. It is not probable therefore that Max Schmeling, if he becomes heavyweight champion, will be expected to defend his title in the back rooms of speakeasies, like John L. Sullivan, or on a barge, like James J. ("Gentleman Jim") Corbett. The other champions,* of whom Tex Rickard made a list before he died, are as well off as ever. But perhaps million-dollar gates are now definitely in the past; perhaps to produce them it was necessary to have the assistance of the man with the cigar, the cane and the brown felt hat who lay last week in the middle of the enormous house he had built, enclosed in a $15,000 coffin.

^{*The list in part as compiled for The Ring International
boxing magazine:

Heavyweight: Gene Tunney, New York City.

Light Heavyweight: Tommy Loughran, Philadelphia.

Middleweight: Mickey Walker, Elizabeth, N.J.

Welterweight: Joe Dundee, Baltimore.

Junior-Welterweight: Jimmy McLarnin, Vancouver, Wash.

Lightweight: Sammy Mandell, Rockford, Ill.

Junior-Lightweight: Tod Morgan, Seattle.

Featherweight: Andre Routis, France.

Bantamweight: Fidel La Barba, California.

Flyweight: Emile Pladner, France.}