Quote:
Originally Posted by D. Bergin
Good lord! Looks like Hyland on the right, but I can't quite place the fella on the left.
I don't know how much they embellished the blood in the colorization process, but they certainly had lots of bloodbaths back then, especially among the lighter weight fighters who often wore less padded horsehair gloves then the higher weight guys. They didn't hit as hard, but would corkscrew their punches and cut each other up pretty badly.
Ad Wolgast and Bat Nelson were in several of these types of bouts. Both against each other and others.
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The other gentleman is Ray Campbell (I don''t know him, because he doesn't have a T card
), in a 1913 bout. This is the original photo in B/W, so it looks like the colorization was fairly honest.
I know today's guys are the in the best shape drugs can create and are quicker etc., but man the old timers took incredible amounts of punishment and fought all the time. These guys had to be tough as nails. Baseball and boxing have the deepest histories, but boxing does not treasure or remember it's past like baseball does. I guess that kind of makes sense, a pastoral game of nostalgia vs. a sport of brutality. I have had a ton of fun looking up newspaper articles and coverage of the forgotten card subjects and learning about all the guys who weren't Jack Johnson, Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali.