The Friday Night Fighters

This chapter discusses the rise of the Friday Night Fighters. The new age of television meant grand opportunity for Friday Night Fighters. As broadcasts expanded in the postwar years, fighters discovered that a main event fight in Madison Square Garden equaled instant national celebrity and a big pile of cash. To make it on TV, a boxer first needed to be in New York. Some migrated internally, arriving from the red dirt roads of the Deep South or the rangy farmlands of the Midwest. For others, home was the cane fields and ghettos of the Caribbean or the desert metropolises of Mexamerica. Still others crossed the Atlantic, originating in Europe, Asia, even Africa. In a way, the Friday Night Fighters symbolized New York immigration. The remainder of the chapter explains the effect of television on the sport, how both science and theater played into the persona of the Friday Night Fighter, by letting two boxers stand in for the whole. The first— Kid Gavilan—is an exemplar of that group of rugged, quality fighters who made many appearances but whom the history books have let pass unnoticed into the mists of boxing lore. The second— Chuck Davey—was a man almost too perfect for television and wholly unprepared for it.