 He destroyed everything in his path—including himself. 
The National Police Gazette published this issue in 1954, with a cover featuring pro heavyweight boxers Tommy Hurricane Jackson and Dan Bucceroni battling at Eastern Parkway Arena in Brooklyn, New York. The fight took place on March 29, and Jackson won with a TKO in the 6th. He never won a heavyweight title, but was well regarded in fight circles for being fearless, if not self-destructive. In fact, he once fought Floyd Patterson and was knocked down nine times. Each time he rose to absorb more punishment, before losing by TKO in the tenth round. It was apparently one of the worst ring beatings ever, made worse by Jackson's sheer will. Afterward, boxing authorities suspended his license for his own protection. It was a temporary ban designed to force him to recover fully before fighting again, but we've never heard such a drastic step. It's indicative of Jackson's reputation. Was he fearless, crazy, or both? Opinions vary, but we love this Gazette cover. The magazine specialized in boxing photo-illustrations, which we've documented here, here, here, and other places if you're inclined to dig around the site. 
 Boxing Illustrated chronicled the sweet science for thirty-eight years. 
We found this weathered but legible Boxing Illustrated/Wrestling News, a magazine founded by Stanley Weston in 1958, and decided to post it because the cover features Floyd Patterson and Ingo Johansson, two interesting guys we profiled back in December. This issue is from July 1960, and in 1967, Boxing Illustrated/Wrestling News jettisoned its wrestling coverage and went on to become one of the important sports publications of its time. Boxing had been known as the sweet science for nearly two centuries, but during the 1970s larger than life personalities like Muhammad Ali, Howard Cosell, Norman Mailer and George Plimpton gave weight to that nickname, imbuing the sport with both emotional impact and intellectual veneer. Ali and Cosell were nothing less than the yin and yang of the sport, two men who seemed to orbit each other like binary stars. Meanwhile, guys like Mailer and Plimpton were the scribes, using their pens to describe unbridled savagery in terms more suited for the Bolshoi ballet. Boxing Illustrated finally folded in 1995, which is more or less when boxing itself began to lose relevance with the world public as the dynamism inside the ring and the intellectualism outside it both withered. The sport still hasn’t recovered, and with the rise of mixed martial arts, many think it never will. More Boxing Illustrated covers and info here.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1939—First Baseball Telecast
The first televised baseball game, a doubleheader between the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers, takes place at New York City's Ebbets Field. 1944—Vive la France
With the surrender of the last occupying German garrison, Paris is liberated from Nazi occupation by Allied troops after six days of fighting. The city had been administered by Nazi Germany since the Second Compiègne armistice in June 1940 when Germany occupied the north and west of France and when the Vichy regime was created in the city of Vichy in central France. 1954—Communist Party Outlawed
In the U.S., during the height of the Red Scare, President Dwight Eisenhower signs the Communist Control Act into law. The new legislation bans the American Communist Party, and prohibits people deemed to be communists from serving as officials in labor organizations. 1968—France Explodes Nuke
France tests a two-stage nuclear weapon, codenamed Canopus, on Fangataufa, French Polynesia. |
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