Jacobs, Mike

Michael Strauss Jacobs

A member of the International Boxing Hall of Fame, Jacobs was the world's top boxing promoter as head of Twentieth Century Sporting Club in the 1930s and 1940s. Nicknamed "Uncle Mike," Jacobs controlled champions in every division at one time or another during his career.

Birth and Death Dates:
b. March 10, 1880 - d. January 24, 1953

Career Highlights:
Jacobs began his career as a ticket broker and was led into boxing promotion by Hall of Famer Tex Rickard. Rickard had promoted the boxing first $1 million gate in 1921 (Jack Dempsey vs. Georges Carpienter), built the Old Madison Square Garden in 1925 (it was actually the third MSG building; the current one is the fourth), and founded the NHL's New York Rangers as the Garden's primary tenant. Jacobs had helped finance the building of Madison Square Garden, but four years after Rickard's death in 1929, Jacobs (and three reporters) formed the Twentieth Century Sporting Club in opposition to Madison Square Garden.

On January 24, 1934, Jacobs and the Club promoted their first fight between Hall of Famer (and world lightweight and junior-welterweight champion) Barney Ross and Billy Petrolle in a non-title fight; Ross won a 10-round decision. Jacobs, who used the Hippodrome in New York as his primary venue, soon became the top promoter in the world as he gained control of one the greatest fighters in history. In March 1935, Jacobs went to Detroit to watch a young Joe Louis fight a Jewish heavyweight named Natie Brown with the intention of taking over as Louis' promoter. Although Louis won a 10-round decision, he was not happy that Brown lasted the entire fight and worried he had disappointed Jacobs.

Louis soon found out that Jacobs needed him as much as he needed Jacobs. Struggling in his budding rivalry with Madison Square Garden, Jacobs needed a champion that would put people in the seats. In Joe Louis: My Life, the great fighter said he met Jacobs after his fight with Brown and, "when I started talking about how bad I looked, he just dismissed it. Then he told me that there was a kind of silent agreement between promoters that there would never be another black heavyweight champion like Jack Johnson...And he wanted me to fight Primo Carnera. If I could fight, he'd get me a shot at the title, and he'd make a lot of money for me." The two men signed a contract that night making Jacobs Louis' sole promoter for three years.

In 1937, Jacobs pushed Louis, and the Club, into the forefront of boxing when he managed to persuade heavyweight champion Jim Braddock to fight Louis instead of Max Schmeling (under the promotion of Madison Square Garden). With few Americans wanting to see Schmeling take the title back to Germany with Hitler in power, the proposed title fight between Schmeling and Braddock set for June 3 was cancelled. Instead, Jacobs promised Braddock a guaranteed payday of $500,000 and the Louis-Braddock fight took place on June 22 in Chicago. Louis defeated Braddock to become champ and Jacobs soon became the top promoter in boxing.

In 1942, Jacobs was responsible for the promotion of an astounding 250 boxing cards. Two years later, he obtained the first commercial sponsorship of a television fight: the featherweight title bout between Willie Pep and Chalky Wright. He dominated boxing promotion for the rest of the 1940s, when he finally sold his empire to Madison Square Garden in 1949. A member of the International Boxing Hall of Fame, he promoted three $1 million bouts during his career; the largest was the Joe Louis-Billy Conn fight in 1946 that grossed $1,925,564.

Origin:
New York City

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