I'll point out before we get into this, that this is part notes and part copied and pasted from the source I was reading from. It's for a topic on an upcoming podcast and I was just familiarising myself with it and it was written in a really annoying way. I started fixing it and voila: Just to give a little background to these guys, here. For me, these two are the two premiere middleweights between Fitzsimmons and Ketchel. In the early/mid 1890s, McCoy was Ryan's sparring partner. Ryan was a little like Jack Dempsey, merciless in sparring. As such, McCoy really disliked him and sought revenge. McCoy was a real character, though. Married ten times. Poor, alcoholic by the early-20s, he was sleeping with a rich married woman. Her divorce - to be with Norman - was an animosity filled process and while it was in progress, she died; shot in the head. McCoy was accused of murdering her for monetary gain. The morning after his girlfriend's death, McCoy rounded up several of who he thought were likely candidates for killing her, and robbed them blind in what can only be described as a fit of psychotic rage. The Kid, however, pleaded his innocence, and that his girlfriend was actually trying to commit suicide. He dramatically told the jury how she tried to kill herself with a knife and he pulled it away from her, and that when she went for the gun, he just couldn't do anything but watch. However, the jury were not quite so easily sold. Half were, half weren't. Seemingly, a compromise of McCoy serving for manslaughter was the verdict. Just to go in a bit more about how McCoy and Ryan met and interacted with eachother. Kid McCoy crossed Tommy Ryan’s trail when the then champion was training at Detroit for his non-title fight with Harry Wilkes In 1894. McCoy came to Ryan's quarters and fairly begged to be taken In, saying that he was willing to do anything, from sparrlng to washing dishes, and the coin didn’t cut any figure with him, so parson Davies finally engaged McCoy, Just to be rid of his pleadings, at the munificent salary of $7 per week. McCoy was too green to spar Ryan - he'd not even had twenty pro fights by that point and a month after Tommy fought Wilkes, he was KOed in one round by Billy Steffers. He stuck around and stayed as useful as possible though, and that's what kept him around. Because nobody wanted him there. Ryan's fight with Nonpareil Jack Dempsey fell through, Ryan returned to New Orleans to find a smiling and friendly McCoy. When Ryan-Dempsey actually took place, in Maspeth, Long Island, Ryan fought a reserved effort at his manager's request. Dempsey was embarrassed of his own accord. 'Listless', is the word he was described as. Kid McCoy was "part of the party," as usual, but still only us a general runaround and handy man. Ryan liked to send him on errands, but scorned to put the gloves on with him. After the Dempsey fight, Tommy went back to Syracuse, and waxed fat and lazy holding down the saloon that the original Tommy Ryan had set him up in. He didn't exactly disipate, but he got in the habit of taking a few more drinks each day and smoking a few perferto’s, and that sort of thing always gets them in the long run. Once in a while, Ryan receive a letter from Norman. The Kid was often asking to borrow, or look to earn a few dollars. He normally threw in a hard-luck story for sympathy and as a guilt trip. He begged Ryan to use his influence to get him on In some prelim, and alternately flattered and fawned the champion. Finally, The Kid begged Ryan to get it on with him in one of the smaller towns; "I know I ain't got a chance in the world with you Tommy," wrote McCoy, "but the loser's end looks awful good to me, and it's a decent pick-up for you," and so on in the same wheedling vein. Finally, when a letter came from Maspeth, begging Ryan to come down for a match with anyone he wanted to name, Tommy accepted, and good-naturedly offered the chance to Norman Selby. He looked on the whole match as a joke, and never even gave thought to training for it. After having spent months in the enemy camp before the fight was made, McCoy had fallen in with arch-enemies of Ryan; Parson Davies and Joe Choynski. These two were giving Norman the opportunities his talent merited. Happily, they wanted to see Ryan lose so they could even the scores. In fact, for the express purpose of evening old scores with Ryan, McCoy's whining letters to Tommy were all part of a gigantic frame-up to tempt the champion, unprepared, into the ring with McCoy. While The Kid was borrowing dollar bills, on the plea that he was starving, he was actually living on the fat of the land and training under Davies' watchful eye at Asbury park. The matchmaker at Maspeth was in on the deal, his part being to coax the champion to box there via the letter he sent. Ryan fell for it hook, line and sinker. When he arrived at Maspeth for the fight, he told his seconds: "I want to let the Kid make a good showing, so I'll stall along for six rounds and then go in and finish him." After six, Ryan started the finishing stunt. McCoy just turned his back and ran. He had Tommy chasing him for a while, then it dawned on the champion that, from lack of training, he was all in. Then Kid McCoy tore in, and what he did to one, Mr. Joseph Youngs was a shame in the fifteenth. Ryan, battered and unable to stand on his feet a moment longer, went to the floor for the count, and his despised rubber and valet was declared middleweight champion of the world. Tommy crawled to the bathhouse after the fight. He wanted to be alone in his misery and humiliation. He had a rub and finally lay down on a cot to sleep the sleep of utter exhaustion. "I was so tired that I couldn't have climbed a twenty-foot mountain to get a million dollars, and you know I don't hate money," was the way Tommy expressed his feelings, telling the story long afterward: "Finally I woke up, feeling better. Somebody was putting hot towels and then cold ones on my face, and I got to thinking that, after all, there were some people in the world who wouldn't shake you when you got licked I opened my eyes, and who do you think I saw fussing over me? I hope to die if it wasn't Kid McCoy, 'I hated to do it, Tommy, old pal,' he said, 'but I just gotta get the dough.' "And do you know," continued Ryan, "the damn little skunk actually kidded me into shaking hands with him. That's the way Kid McCoy feathered his nest. A pretty neat example of the ol' double cross, isn't it?"
Personally, I think this account is pretty heavily romanticised and bias towards McCoy - who is definitely my favourite between the two, despite being an almost pantomime level villain.
This is great verse. I used to soak it up when I was a kid, believing most of what I read. Some of it is true- the sacrifices, the paucity of chance, how luck and fortune and right management played a large part in it all, how guys literally back then lived by the seat of their pants, they didn't cross borders expecting Governmental largesse- they road the rails and let fate whisk them along. In 1999 I learned that the phrase "The Real McCoy" comes from the prizefighter- sometimes he'd show up and clown around, other times he'd be all business. Old timers... they are often portrayed as the beneficiaries of some rigged system {"Tiger Flowers Could Have Beat Them All!! Sam Langford Was The True Champ" etc} and on other hand people look past how these old timers were really unapologetic and bereft of any self-sympathy. They did not feel sorry for themselves, they struck out into the unknown, come what may. Ketchel is made out to be the hardest hitting MW of all time. I am sure that is baloney. But by that same token, he was a young man when he was shot to death by a jealous lover and he made his money fighting guys like Jack Johnson. Mickey Walker had the Flowers fight shortened to 10 rounds so he could take the decision, but then again Bernard Hopkins never fought Evander Holyfield like Walker did Schmeling. The so-called Great White Hopes are remembered as racist bums but all had bad endings......Jeffries dragged out of retirement, in the throes of alcoholism, to fight Johnson. Al Palzer was shot to death by I think his father in law. ....this was after an 18 round beating by Luther McCarty who in turn broke his neck falling off a horse and was then killed in a fight where a fluke uppercut aggravated the injury caused a few days earlier.
