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22-518: In 1949 Madison Square Garden paid Mike Jacobs of Twentieth Century Boxing Club $ 100,000 to relinquish his rights to promote fights at the Garden. Jacobs had become ill as a result of a stroke and the Garden wanted to turn over promotion to the IBC. The IBC had obtained the contracts of four contenders from Joe Louis for $ 160,000 on his retirement, and wanted to promote the fight in the Garden. The IBC developed

44-713: A behind the scenes manager in Genovese. He also told of meeting with Carbo, who he had first met in the mid-1950s. Evidence submitted to the subcommittee showed that Basilio's on-the-record managers, John DeJohn and Joseph Netro, paid Gabriel Genovese $ 39,334.41 and approximately $ 25,000, respectively, during the time Basilio fought for and defended his welterweight and middleweight titles. The following year, Gibson Jr. and Carbo, Carbo's partner "Blinky" Palermo, and Los Angeles mobsters Joe Di Sica and Louis Dragna , were charged with conspiracy and extortion against National Boxing Association Welterweight Champion Don Jordan . After

66-543: A boon for Louis, Gould's price was onerous; Jacobs would have to pay 10% of all future boxing promotion profits (including any future profits from Louis' future bouts) for ten years. Louis defeated Braddock and remained World Heavyweight Champion for an even longer period of time, until 1949. Every fight Louis fought as a champion was promoted by Jacobs. Leveraging his success with Louis, Jacobs' organization began to assert its control over other divisions. In August 1937, MSG leased Madison Square Garden's main facility as well as

88-552: A stranglehold on championship boxing, promoting 47 out of 51 championship bouts in the United States from 1949 to 1955. Its major revenues were acquired through television of twice-weekly boxing bouts from the Garden. Norris and Wirtz formed the International Boxing Club of Illinois to discourage the perception that the IBC monopolized boxing. Norris resigned as president of IBC of New York in favor of Truman Gibson and

110-400: A three-month trial, in which U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy served as prosecutor, the defendants were convicted and sent to federal prison. Mike Jacobs (boxing) Michael Strauss Jacobs (March 17, 1880 – January 1953) was a boxing promoter, arguably the most powerful in the sport from the mid-1930s until his effective retirement in 1946. He was posthumously elected to

132-648: A year. Former world welterweight and middleweight champion Carmen Basilio testified before the Subcommittee, giving evidence on Carbo, Carbo's partner Frank "Blinky" Palermo (a member of the St. Louis crime family , and Carbo's aide, Gabriel Genovese, a cousin of Mafia Don Vito Genovese who was convicted in 1959 of being an unlicensed boxing manager. Calling for a house cleaning of professional boxing, Basilio's testimony revealed that his former managers had to pay off organized crime for his title shots and that he essentially had

154-513: Is visited by boxing fans from all over the world. An earlier hall had been created in 1954, when The Ring magazine's Boxing Hall of Fame was launched, located at Madison Square Garden in New York City . When that Boxing Hall of Fame was disbanded in 1987, it had a total of 155 inductees. As of November 2018 , all but 13 of those 155 have also been inducted to the IBHOF. Beginning in 2020,

176-636: The World Boxing Hall of Fame in 1982, and the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1990. Born in New York City in 1880, Strauss was one of 10 children born in New York's Greenwich Village to Jewish immigrants Isaac and Rachel (Strauss). Jacobs came from a poor family and went to work as a boy, selling newspapers and candy on Coney Island excursion boats. Noticing that ticket purchases for

198-684: The Hearst newspaper chain arranged for Jacobs to stage Hearst's annual Milk Fund boxing benefit at the Bronx Coliseum ; Jacobs promised the charity a substantially better cut of the proceeds than the event's prior promoter, Madison Square Garden. With this experience, Jacobs and the three sportswriters founded the Twentieth Century Sporting Club, a rival boxing promotion franchise to that of Madison Square Garden, later in 1933. Jacobs, as President of Twentieth Century Sports Club, at first used

220-525: The Hippodrome in New York as his primary venue. The club’s initial bout was staged in January 1934 between Barney Ross and Billy Petrolle . Jacobs' boxing promotion career changed forever in 1935, when he met with the management team of then up-and-coming African American heavyweight contender Joe Louis . Although Louis had black management at the time from his hometown of Detroit, Michigan, Jacobs promised

242-464: The IBC was bought by the Garden and operated as a wholly owned subsidiary. But Judge Sylvester Ryan of the U.S. District Court decided the IBC of New York was a monopoly and ordered its dissolution. Norris and Wirtz were given five years to divest themselves of their holdings (approximately 40%) in the Garden. Ryan also declared the IBC of Illinois a monopoly and ordered its dissolution as well. The decisions were appealed but confirmed on January 12, 1959 by

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264-646: The IBHOF began inducting female boxers for the first time since its inception. The IBHOF is one of two recognized Boxing Halls of Fame with the other being the World Boxing Hall of Fame (WBHF), with the IBHOF being the more widely recognized institution. Ceremonies have been held every second Sunday in June since 1990 to honor inductees but were postponed in 2020 and 2021 due to COVID-19. Events are attended by many former world boxing champions, as well as boxing and Hollywood celebrities. Artist Richard T. Slone has been

286-650: The Joe Gans-Battling Nelson bout in Goldfield, Nevada, and eventually became Rickard's "money man" by the time of the 1919 Jack Dempsey-Jess Willard bout. After Rickard's death in 1929, Jacobs then became a promoter of events at the Hippodrome in New York City's Sixth Avenue, and afterward, a promoter for Madison Square Garden – then the dominant New York City-area boxing promotion franchise – staging 320 shows there from 1937 to 1949. In 1933, sportswriters Damon Runyon, Ed Frayne, and Bill Farnsworth of

308-478: The U.S. Supreme Court. [1] In a surprise move, on January 30, 1959 Norris and Wirtz announced they were selling their interest in the Garden to Graham-Paige Corporation , a New York investment company. The sale became official on February 19, 1959. In 1960, the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly chaired by Senator Estes Kefauver held hearings into organized crime and professional boxing. It

330-561: The boats were often confusing to prospective passengers, Jacobs began scalping boat tickets. He then bought concession rights on all the boats docked at the Battery, sold train tickets to recent immigrants, and eventually ran his own ferryboats. Jacobs then became a ticket scalper in New York, buying and selling theater, opera, or sports events tickets. He began promoting events himself, including charity balls, bike races, and circuses. Jacobs met famous boxing promoter Tex Rickard in 1906 at

352-667: The first paid radio sponsorship for a series of boxing matches, over 18 weeks, from the New York Hippodrome, heard on WHN, New York. Sam Taub was the blow-by-blow reporter. In September 1944, Jacobs secured the first commercial sponsorship of a television boxing match—the Featherweight title bout between Willie Pep and Chalky Wright. During World War II, he promoted a boxing extravaganza that realized $ 36 million in U.S. War Bond sales. Three times during his career Jacobs promoted million-dollar fights. His biggest championship fight gate

374-471: The outdoor Madison Square Garden Bowl to the Twentieth Century Sporting Club. In reality, this arrangement put MSG out of the big-time boxing promotion business, which Jacobs dominated from that time on. In 1938, Jacobs became the sole shareholder of the Twentieth Century Sporting Club, paying off Runyon and forcing the other two partners out. Eventually Jacobs would come to control the championships of every weight division in boxing. In 1937, he originated

396-869: The prospect of delivering a title shot to Louis, at a time when informal barriers still kept negro boxers from obtaining a world championship. Meeting at the Frog Club, a colored nightclub, Jacobs and the Louis team and hammered out a three-year exclusive boxing promotion deal. Louis's first bout in Yankee Stadium grossed $ 328,655, while his fight with Max Baer grossed over $ 1 million. After Louis' unexpected loss to Max Schmeling in 1936, Jacobs convinced Joe Gould , manager for heavyweight titleholder James Braddock – contractually obligated to defend his title against Madison Square Garden's preferred opponent Schmeling – to instead defend his crown against young Louis. While

418-499: The sport worldwide. Inductees are selected on ballots created through screened public nominations by members of the Boxing Writers Association of America . The IBHOF started as a 1980s initiative by Ed Brophy and other locals to honor Canastota's world boxing champions, Carmen Basilio and Basilio's nephew, Billy Backus ; the village of Canastota inaugurated the new museum in 1989 which showcases boxing's rich history. It

440-652: Was buried in Washington Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. He was posthumously elected to the World Boxing Hall of Fame in 1982, and the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1990. International Boxing Hall of Fame The International Boxing Hall of Fame ( IBHOF ), located in Canastota , New York right next to exit 34 of the New York State Thruway , honors boxers , trainers and other contributors to

462-402: Was revealed that the IBC had ties to Mafioso Frankie Carbo , a soldier in New York's Lucchese Family who had been a gunman with Murder, Inc. At the time of the hearings, Carbo was imprisoned on Riker's Island , having been convicted of the undercover management of prizefighters and unlicensed matchmaking. The hearings revealed that Carbo's wife was employed by the IBC at a salary of $ 45,000

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484-568: Was the Louis–Billy Conn rematch in 1946 that grossed $ 1,925,564. Jacobs suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in 1946 but remained the head of the organization, with his relative Sol Strauss operating the club on a day-to-day basis. When Louis decided to retire and then go into business with the group that became the International Boxing Club, the Twentieth Century Sporting Club ceased to function; Jacobs sold it to Madison Square Garden in 1949. Jacobs remained in ill health and died in January 1953. He

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