did equally well - their film made well over $100,000. Ticket revenue totaled $48,000, breaking all records for a non-heavyweight bout. Nevertheless all hail to both of them! They play the clean game of life." The filmmakers calculated that if the fight went 20 rounds, they would lose money, because film was so expensive.įortunately for them, the fight went "only" 18 rounds, ending when Battling Nelson doubled up Britt with a brutal blow to the midsection, then knocked him out with a punch to the jaw.Ī young reporter named Jack London, assigned to cover the fight, wrote, "It was the abysmal brute against a more highly organized, intelligent nature. This was a more or less arbitrary number, used only because "fight to the finish" matches were nominally illegal. The match was announced as a 45-round event. He also sold the film rights to the bout to a San Francisco company, the Miles Brothers, for an astonishing $135,000. Interest in the fight was so great that Coffroth added 3,000 seats, bringing the arena's capacity to 15,000. Nelson, born in Copenhagen, was a crude but implacable fighter who was virtually impossible to knock out - hence the tag given him by the ring announcer, "the toughest nut to crack."īritt, the son of a successful and well-connected San Francisco plumber, was more skillful and less brutal. 9, 1905, this Sunshine Arena was the site of one of the era's most famous fights - the lightweight rematch between Oscar "Battling" Nelson and Jimmy Britt. He also opened another arena a mile or so south and west, on the site of an old coursing track at School and Mission streets, in present-day Daly City. He opened an arena on Sickles Street, just 50 feet south of the San Francisco city limits, a block from the present-day County Line Cleaners. With its dozen cemeteries, Colma had previously been known as the "city of the dead," but Coffroth put it on the map. San Francisco's strict regulations chafed on Coffroth, however, so he moved his matches to the more lenient turf of San Mateo County - the unincorporated town of Colma, to be exact. But in 1899 the state started allowing athletic clubs like San Francisco's Olympic Club to stage "exhibitions." Coffroth and a partner, "Big Jim" Kennedy, began attracting big-name fighters like "Gentleman Jim" Corbett and Bob "The Freckled Wonder" Fitzsimmons. Matches drew thousands of spectators who would travel miles and spend the whole day at the arena, picnicking and partying.īoxing had been banned in California since 1872, leaving it in a strange limbo - fights took place on boats, in open fields, anywhere the police could be avoided.
So many men would throng the streets for weigh-ins at Harry Corbett's poolroom at Ellis and Powell that boxers were sometimes afraid to get out of their limousines. Lang writes in "The Nelson-Wolgast Fight and the San Francisco Boxing Scene, 1900-1914," the San Francisco Call, the daily with the most robust sports section, devoted more space to boxing than to any other sport - even more than to baseball, which was already known as the "national pastime." Eager throngs
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