When Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk meet in a rematch of their May clash, there will be no doubt what is at stake: the winner will be the one, true heavyweight champion of the world. Because boxing is boxing, one of the four (!) universally recognized sanctioning bodies will fail to recognize him as such, having bestowed that honor on Daniel Dubois. No matter; in the grand scheme of things, by boxing’s standards, the fight’s consequences will be clear, as is the modern heavyweight lineage.
Nor will there be any mystery about the location, the officials who will oversee it, or the rules by which it will be conducted.
All of which makes modern-day boxing seem, believe it or not, positively exemplary in terms of organization compared to its early days. If boxing is frequently referred to as the Wild West of the sporting world, there was a time when that was literally so, when the fate of what may or may not have been the heavyweight championship of the world lay in the hands of one of the most famous gunslingers of pioneer times.
The notion of “the man who beat the man who beat the man” began with James J. Corbett, “Gentleman Jim,” who defeated John L. Sullivan to take the heavyweight crown in 1892. He retired in 1895, leading to Bob Fitzsimmons assuming general recognition as the champion, until Corbett decided to renege on his retirement and reassert his claim to the crown. Even so, Fitzsimmons’ December 2, 1896, battle with Tom Sharkey in San Francisco was billed as a defense of the heavyweight belt; but as morning dawned on fight day, the bout’s promoters had a problem: they couldn’t find a referee. Fitzsimmons’ manager had rejected every suggestion they put forward, concerned about the possibility of a fix; and so, in desperation, promoters J.J. Groom and John Gibbs turned to a man whose probity they felt confident couldn’t be questioned.
His name was Wyatt Earp.
Fifteen years earlier, Earp, his brothers Morgan and Virgil, and his friend Doc Holliday, had been participants in what would subsequently become probably the most famous shoot-out in history, known to us today as the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. The gunfight, in Tombstone, Arizona, left three people dead; in revenge, the dead men’s allies assassinated Morgan and severely wounded Virgil, prompting Wyatt, Holliday and others to set out on a “Vendetta Ride” in an attempt to kill them all. They succeeded in eliminating perhaps three of them – most notably their leader, “Curly Bill” Brocius – before, pursued by a sheriff’s posse,he left Arizona behind. He stopped variously in Idaho, Colorado, and San Diego, before finding himself in San Francisco, where he took a position as head of security for the Hearst family, publishers of the San Francisco Examiner.
Earp had not yet achieved the fame in life that he would accrue in death, but his adventures in Tombstone had earned him some notoriety in the West; and shortly after he was hired, the Examiner ran a three-part ghostwritten account of his life, one that painted him as effectively the only imposer of law and order in the Arizona Territory and, in the words of Earp biographer Tim Fattig, “made him seem 10 feet tall and bulletproof.”
Groom and Gibbs figured he would be the perfect person to take charge of the fight, but he initially resisted before advising them that he would be dining that evening at Goodfellow’s Restaurant, across the street from the Mechanics’ Pavilion where the fight would be held. If they couldn’t find anyone else in the interim, he promised, then he would take them up on their offer.
When Earp entered the arena with just a few minutes remaining before the bout was scheduled to start, the crowd cheered with approval – but those cheers turned to concerned murmurs when it became clear he would be the third man in the ring. You wouldn’t nominate a boxing referee to participate in a gunfight; why ask a gunfighter to referee a title fight? (Earp did in fact have some experience as a referee, although primarily in non-Marquis of Queensberry contests.}
Ignoring the hecklers, Earp stepped between the ropes and removed his topcoat, revealing a Colt 45 tucked in his waistband. A policeman immediately disarmed him, a humiliation for a man who would become an icon of the Old West.
Unfortunately for Earp, his night would only get worse.
Once the action began, Fitzsimmons was in complete control; then, in the eighth round, in the words of Earp biographer Stuart Lake, “Fitzsimmons landed a left hook squarely on the button of Sharkey’s jaw and started his huge right fist from the floor to Sharkey’s abdomen … [Sharkey] stumbled forward instead of back. Fitzsimmons’ right, coming up, struck Sharkey in the groin. Sharkey collapsed.”
Fitzsimmons contended the blow had been his patented uppercut to the solar plexus; Earp insisted it had strayed substantially lower than that and promptly disqualified Fitzsimmons, to the fury of the crowd.
A temporary injunction prevented Sharkey from collecting his winner’s purse until a hearing had been conducted to establish the legitimacy of the evening’s events, and of Earp’s part in them. Fitzsimmons’ manager complained that Sharkey had been fouling all evening, questioned whether the low blow had even occurred and protested that his suspicions of a fix had been confirmed. A team of doctors would later verify that Sharkey had been hit hard below the belt, and Sharkey would subsequently claim that Fitzsimmons had apologized for the transgression.
The result stood, but Earp was fined $50 for the illegal firearm he had worn into the ring and the Examiner’s rival, the San Francisco Chroniclesensed an opportunity to stick a knife into the wound. Day after day, it ran articles mocking the referee it dubbed the “Tombstone Terror” — stoked, claimed Lake, by the publisher’s loss of a $20,000 bet on Fitzsimmons, but more likely, asserts Fattig, by an all-too-easy opportunity to besmirch a rival publisher’s poster boy.
Humiliated, Earp left town, heading to Alaska in an unsuccessful attempt to make a fortune as a gold prospector before returning to California to spend his twilight years in Los Angeles.
Earp was the only participant in the Gunfight at the OK Corral to escape unharmed. He survived the Vendetta Ride, even as he and his cohorts killed three more men. He would later become celebrated as an icon of the Old West. But the one foe that bested him, as it would best many others in the century and more since, was boxing. When he died in 1929, he was as well known for his controversial outing as a referee as for his adventures in Tombstone.
“It was a complete publicity disaster for him,” Fattig said. “Even in the 1930s, I found newspaper references to ‘pulling an Earp’ or ‘Earping the job’ as being shorthand for a crooked referee.”
The following year, Fitzsimmons and Corbett met to establish an undisputed heavyweight champion. Fitzsimmons won the fight when he dropped Corbett for the count in the fourteenth round. The conclusive blow was his patented punch to the solar plexus.
Wyatt Earp was in attendance. He was not invited to be the referee.
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