THE MOB'S ENTRY INTO BOXING

BOYLE'S THIRTY ACRES

Owney “The Killer” Madden - The Criminal Czar of Boxing

Boyle’s Thirty Acres was built in Jersey City, New Jersey, ostensibly by promoter George “Tex” Rickard in order to accommodate over 90,000 rabid fight fans who wanted to witness the upcoming world heavyweight title fight extravaganza between champion Jack Dempsey and French challenger, Georges Carpentier. Dempsey was an incredibly popular world figure who personified both the excitement and the insouciance of the Jazz Age.

Carpentier was a decorated WWI flying ace and was considered a dashing hero to his people. Dempsey was considered a slacker by the press and public for not participating in WWI but this was simply not true. Dempsey was the sole support for his family at that time, and thus, had legitimate reasons to receive a military deferment. The slacker defamation was deliberately concocted by Dempsey’s unprincipled manager, Jack “Doc” Kearns to increase the impending gate of his client’s upcoming fight with Carpentier. Kearns always believed that a “good guy vs. bad guy” was the best scenario for selling boxing tickets.

The nefarious Jack “Doc” Kearns

Interestingly, the Dempsey-Carpentier fight is, in an historic sense, almost incidental to the story of how Boyle’s Thirty Acres came into existence. This was 1921 and it was not well known at that time, that Rickard did not have the cash necessary to cover all of his expenses and Rickard’s expenses were very, very steep indeed. He had to cover the cost of the lumber and all other building materials and necessary machinery - up front. Rickard also had to pay the skilled workers and labourers on a weekly basis, plus overtime and danger pay. He needed to make the necessary political payoffs as well as deliver envelopes to the police and fire department. In essence, Rickard needed a hell of a lot of disposable cash and he needed it every week for nine weeks straight.

In that era, no bank would ever risk their money on such an ambitious sports venture. In reality, there were really only two sources available to Rickard, with which he was well acquainted, who could, for a reward of their choosing, lend him the money required to get Boyle’s Thirty Acres and his Dempsey promotion underway. Those two entities were ticket scalper and future boxing promoter Mike Jacobs and, organized crime.

Of course, the Mob’s direct involvement in the building of Boyle’s Thirty Acres only became known to the public at large years later. Did the press know that Mob money helped build Boyle’s Thirty Acres during its construction? No doubt some of them did, but given that the Mob was involved, the press wisely decided to keep their collective mouths shut. Even those boxing writers on the Mob’s payroll, and there were many, knew better than to let their readers know where the financing for Boyle’s Thirty Acres was really coming from. The Mob was not kidding around when they said their involvement was to be kept hidden. Any reference to Mob financing in the papers would have brought the IRS and other federal agents sniffing around, which would have negatively impacted all of their other rackets which, they were firmly against.