Jimmy Reagan (1888-1975) was an American boxer who claimed the World Bantamweight Championship in a twelve-round bout on January 29, 1909 against
Jimmy Walsh at Dreamland Rink in San Francisco, California. He lost the title only a month later in an historic twenty round bout on February 22, 1909 to
Monte Attell
Monte Attell (July 28, 1885 – November 11, 1960), born in the Knob Hill neighborhood of San Francisco, California, United States, was an American boxer who took the vacant World Bantamweight title on June 19, 1909 by defeating the 1904 bantamwe ...
at the Mission Street Arena in San Francisco.
Reagan's primary manager was Jack Davis. During his career he fought
Battling Nelson
Oscar Matthew "Battling" Nelson (June 5, 1882 – February 7, 1954), was a Danish-born American professional boxer who held the World Lightweight championship. He was also nicknamed "the Durable Dane".
Personal history
Nelson was born Oscar ...
, Peanuts Sinclair, future lightweight champion
Willie Ritchie
Willie Ritchie (born Gerhardt Anthony Steffen, February 13, 1891 – March 24, 1975), was the World lightweight champion from 1912 to 1914.
Gerhardt Anthony Steffen was born in San Francisco, California on February 13, 1891. He began his bo ...
, World Feather and Lightweight contender "Mexican Joe" Rivers and reigning lightweight champion
Benny Leonard
Benny Leonard (born Benjamin Leiner; April 7, 1896 – April 18, 1947) was a Jewish American professional boxer who held the world lightweight championship for eight years, from 1917 to 1925. Widely considered one of the all-time greats, he was r ...
.
Career before the championship
Jimmy Reagan was born in 1887 or 1888. He was born of both Irish and Italian descent, with his father being Irish, and his mother Italian. He began fighting professionally around late 1907 in the Oakland, California area, and won all but two of his first nine fights in the following year, primarily in short four and six round bouts.
On July 16, 1908, in a rare early career loss he met the gifted
Willie Ritchie
Willie Ritchie (born Gerhardt Anthony Steffen, February 13, 1891 – March 24, 1975), was the World lightweight champion from 1912 to 1914.
Gerhardt Anthony Steffen was born in San Francisco, California on February 13, 1891. He began his bo ...
at the Reliance Athletic Club in Oakland, California, and came up on the short end of a six-round points decision. Ritchie was one of the most accomplished opponents Reagan would meet in his early career and would hold the World Lightweight Title from 1912 to 1914.
He met
Monte Attell
Monte Attell (July 28, 1885 – November 11, 1960), born in the Knob Hill neighborhood of San Francisco, California, United States, was an American boxer who took the vacant World Bantamweight title on June 19, 1909 by defeating the 1904 bantamwe ...
for the first time on November 30, 1908 in an important fifteen-round draw at the Dreamland Pavilion in Oakland.
World Bantamweight champion
On January 29, 1909, Reagan met
Jimmy Walsh at the Dreamland Rink in San Francisco for a twelve-round World Bantamweight Title match. According to the ''Oakland Tribune'', "Reagan led in every one of the twelve rounds with Walsh and was entitled to the verdict," though admitting the "title was a very close one."
Joe Woodman, Walsh's manager, admitted that Walsh had been beaten in eight of the twelve rounds, though it was a surprise to much of the audience who believed that Reagan had been overmatched with Walsh in the days before the fight. Walsh was considered to have a more clever boxing form and finesse, particularly in the early rounds, but Reagan was the aggressor, delivering more blows, and taking the initiative in the final rounds. Reagan was 17 years and 207 days old of his victory over Walsh making him the youngest world champion in boxing history until
Wilfred Benitez Wilfred may refer to:
* Wilfred (given name), a given name and list of people (and fictional characters) with the name
* Wilfred, Indiana, an unincorporated community in the United States
* ''Wilfred'' (Australian TV series), a comedy series
* ' ...
beat it 67 years later. Three days after taking the World Bantamweight Championship, he was signed to appear in a local Vaudeville House at a salary of $250 a week, an impressive sum for the era.
Loss of Bantamweight Title
On February 22, 1909, he lost to
Monte Attell
Monte Attell (July 28, 1885 – November 11, 1960), born in the Knob Hill neighborhood of San Francisco, California, United States, was an American boxer who took the vacant World Bantamweight title on June 19, 1909 by defeating the 1904 bantamwe ...
in a thrilling twenty round title fight at the Mission Street Arena in San Francisco. In the first six rounds the fighting was quite close, with Attell down four times in the early rounds. Reagan was down twice in the eighth, once for a nine count. Reagan knocked down Attell with a right to the jaw just as the bell sounded ending the sixth round, but Attell recovered, though dazed by the blow. According to the ''Oakland Tribune'', Attell took every round from the eighth through the twentieth.
On August 8, 1909, he finally lost the World Bantamweight Title to the exceptional
Attell, brother to World Featherweight Champion Abe, in a fourth of ten-round knockout in Oakland, California only seven months after taking the title. The bout was billed as the 115 pound World Bantamweight championship. Reagan was able to hold his title for only one month. Perhaps if he had the opportunity to meet challengers less skilled and dominant than Monte Attell, he would have held the title far longer, but Attell was a local boxer and would not be denied his chance.
Bouts after losing bantamweight title
On September 5, 1910, he defeated Peanuts Sinclair in a thirteen-round knockout at the Fair Grounds in Ogden, Utah on what was then Labor Day. The fight was billed as an "Inter-Mountain Featherweight Championship", though Sinclair was not a featherweight of great national prominence.
He trained at the Hermitage at Ogden Canyon for the well publicized bout, and told the press he would consider retiring if he lost the bout. Sinclair's training at Willard Bean's Gymnasium included pulley work, a form of strength training, shadow boxing, club swinging, and rope dancing. Apparently Reagan was accurate in his belief that he had an edge in the match. A very large crowd was expected to attend the bout. Reagan worked out with the punching bag, skipping rope, medicine ball, and sand bag.
On October 7, 1910, he lost to Gene McGovern in the Fairgrounds in Ogden, Utah, in an eleventh round disqualification. The original call was a knockout by Reagan, but upon closer examination, the Referee Tom Painter ruled that Reagan had hit McGovern below the belt. After consulting with three physicians who examined McGovern, Painter made the binding ruling and awarded the bout to McGovern, reversing the rule of a knockout by Reagan. A crowd of 1500 witnessed the vigorous bout that saw Reagan dominating in every round. McGovern was counted out after he had laid down after the final blow. The bout was to have been for the Inter-Mountain Featherweight Championship.
Loss to "Mexican Joe" Rivers
On February 22, 1911, he lost to
Mexican Joe Rivers
Mexican Joe Rivers (born Jose Ybarra, March 19, 1892 – June 26, 1957) was a lightweight boxer whose ring career lasted from 1910 to 1923.
Biography
Rivers was born in Los Angeles on March 19, 1892 to Andrew Ybarra. He was a fourth generation ...
by a technical knockout in the thirteenth round of a scheduled twenty. Reagan took a "terrific beating" and was knocked down four times prior to the thirteenth round when he was knocked down twice more by Rivers before the fight was called by Referee Eyeton. The bout took place in the Arena in Vernon, California, considered in the city of Los Angeles. The referee was Charles Eyton.
Rivers would contend for the World Lightweight Title on July 4, 1913 against Willie Ritchie. He would fight many of the top feather and lightweight boxers in the country.
He fought Monte Attell again in a draw bout on July 25, 1911, at the Buffalo Athletic Club in Sacramento, California.
He fought "Chalky" Germaine twice, first on January 8, 1912, in what was to be a ten-round bout at the Colonial Theatre in Salt Lake City, Utah. Reagan was having trouble making the 122 pound limit for the bout. Nevertheless, he won the bout in the fifth round on points. Germaine was losing throughout the bout, and was clearly still suffering from a previous illness. Referee Harding K. Downing stopped the bout in the fifth round as a result. He met Germaine again on July 24, 1912 in Price, Utah, in a 20-round draw.
He defeated Tally Johns on September 4, 1912, at the Salt Lake Theatre in Salt Lake City, Utah, in an uncharacteristic fourteenth-round TKO of a twenty-round match. Johns was described by one source as a "featherweight champion of the Northwest." Johns ended the bout with one eye badly swollen and the other entirely shut. Suffering, he had his seconds stop the bout forty-five seconds into the fourteenth round. Reagan was described as the aggressor throughout the bout, but not a single knockdown of either boxer occurred in the fight.
Between October 1913 and February 1915, he fought Sally Salvadore three times, winning in each bout.
On November 5, 1915, he won against the great Battling Nelson in a ten-round points decision in Kansas City, Missouri.
Nelson, the former lightweight champion, lost decisively, and took serious punishment.
Decline of boxing career
Between August 1916, and May 1919, he began losing bouts with greater frequency, winning only 1 of 14 of his late career bouts. Though a number of the boxers he met after his loss of the title were competent or even gifted, his boxing dominance was relatively brief for a former World Champion.
Match with Benny Leonard
Near the end of his boxing career, on February 28, 1917, he fought the exceptional reigning lightweight champion
Benny Leonard
Benny Leonard (born Benjamin Leiner; April 7, 1896 – April 18, 1947) was a Jewish American professional boxer who held the world lightweight championship for eight years, from 1917 to 1925. Widely considered one of the all-time greats, he was r ...
at the Manhattan Casino in Manhattan, New York, in a ten-round match, that the ''New York Times'' considered a draw bout. The ''Des Moines Register'' considered the fact that Reagan had gone ten rounds without being knocked out by the extraordinary champion a remarkable accomplishment. According to the ''Ogden Standard'', "Dozens of times Jimmy seemed on the point of going down, but always he kept afoot. The ''Standard'' also wrote of Leonard, that "there wasn't a punch that he didn't aim at Reagan, and there wasn't one that was forceful enough to keep the Californian at bay."
["To Stage Athletic Show", ''Des Moines Register'', Des Moines, Iowa, pg. 31, 13 January 1918]
Loss to Arlos Fanning
On November 20, 1917, he lost decisively to Arlos Fanning in a fifteen-round points decision in Joplin, Missouri. Fanning scored a clear knockdown of Reagan in the fourth, and had leads in twelve rounds, while Reagan took only two rounds, with one was a draw. On November 7, 1917, while in St. Louis training for the bout at the Future City Boxing club, Regan was briefly arrested and then released. Several policeman were able to purchase boxing tickets to a boxing event sponsored by the club, without having club membership, which was legally required to purchase tickets. When such violations occurred the boxers present at a club were arrested.
Of his late career loss to Black boxer Willie St. Clair on January 8, 1918, the ''Ogden Standard'' accurately predicted "As a fighter Reagan is through, Undoubtedly he is tough and can take a terrific beating, but for real milling his days apparently are over. Willie won the decision by a mile."
He lost to Neal Allison January 15, 1918 at the Waterloo Theatre in Waterloo, Iowa in a ten-round newspaper decision. Reagan was characterized as a boxer who lacked great scientific boxing skills, being rather "a scrapper of the give and take variety, who relied on his ability to "give and take punishment to bring ...victory."
Reagan died in October 1975.
Professional boxing record
All information in this section is derived from
BoxRec
BoxRec or boxrec.com is a website dedicated to holding updated records of professional and amateur boxers, both male and female. It also maintains a MediaWiki-based encyclopaedia of boxing.
The objective of the site is to document every profess ...
,
unless otherwise stated.
Official record
All
newspaper decision A newspaper decision was a type of decision in professional boxing. It was rendered by a consensus of sportswriters attending a bout after it had ended inconclusively with a "no decision", as many regions had not adopted the National Sporting Club o ...
s are officially regarded as “no decision” bouts and are not counted in the win/loss/draw column.
Unofficial record
Record with the inclusion of
newspaper decision A newspaper decision was a type of decision in professional boxing. It was rendered by a consensus of sportswriters attending a bout after it had ended inconclusively with a "no decision", as many regions had not adopted the National Sporting Club o ...
s in the win/loss/draw column.
See also
*
List of bantamweight boxing champions
This is a list of world bantamweight boxing champions, as recognized by the four major sanctioning organizations in boxing:
* The World Boxing Association (WBA), established in 1921 as the National Boxing Association (NBA). The WBA often recognize ...
References
External links
*
Jimmy Reagan - Cyber Boxing Zone
, -
{{DEFAULTSORT:Reagan, Jimmy
1975 deaths
Irish male boxers
Bantamweight boxers
American people of Irish descent
World boxing champions
World bantamweight boxing champions
1891 births
American male boxers
People from San Francisco
Boxers from California