"MUMBLING INCOHERENTLY, the shriveled little man shuffled into the charity ward of Chicago State Hospital. The doctors looked at him with a mixture of pity and awe. His eyes were blank and his once muscular 133-pound frame had wasted away to a mere 80 pounds. A brash young attendant said callously: "Huh! Another derelict. We're sure getting a lot of them these days." An elderly attendant shot him a cold look. "Do you know who that 'derelict' is?" he snapped angrily. "That 'derelict' is Battling Nelson, one of the greatest fighters who ever lived."
Old Bat, who had licked immortals like Aurelio Herrera, Young Corbett, Jimmy Britt, Terry McGovern and the incomparable Joe Gans, was 71 years old when he was ruled insane and committed in January of 1954. The psychiatrists' diagnosis had been chillingly brief: "Incurable senile dementia." Nobody will ever know what went on in Nelson's tortured mind as he dribbled away his last days amid alien surroundings. Occasionally a flicker of interest would light up his lustreless eyes and he would try to talk. But the words trickled out in a jumble of meaningless phrases. Those familiar with the ex-champion's spectacular career could pick out place names here and there and link them with some of the famous battles that had earned him riches beyond his dreams. Names like Colma... Goldfield... Point Richmond... But what could they make of such mystifying phrases as electric lights... cracks in the floor... sheets of snow... my seven dollar suit...? It was hard to make any sense of this babbling because Nelson, in his wild hallucinations, was conjuring up the broken images of a past less concerned with his great triumphs than with the vivid fragments of memory that often overshadow the important events in a man's life..."
A month later he was dead of lung cancer at age 71. With 68 wins, 19 draws and 19 losses, Bat once said that although he had "lost several fights," he had never been beaten.

(From: Boxing International, Dec. 1974)

April 1939

57 year old former lightweight champion, Battling Nelson and 50 year old former bantamweight champion Johnny Coulon compete in a three round exhibition in Chicago.

"I began to take on a lot of confidence, and I made up my mind that I would put down a bet on myself the next time I started, if a good chance was offered and I could keep my mother from finding it out. It came quicker than I expected.      

William Rosser, a lightning fast young lightweight, and at that time the pride of West Pullman, and a boy who had been defeating every Chicago fighter who dared to come into his bailiwick, sent me a challenge after I had stopped the Cyclone. With a large party of my Hegewisch friends and backers we journeyed over to Harvey  by  buses,  buggies,  automobiles  and in every manner imaginable.  We were about 250 strong.      

About a week previous to the fight while training at my White House Club at home, Frank Reiger, one of those talkative fellows, dropped into the club  rooms and asked me what I thought  of  my chances in  the coming fight. I jokingly said, "Why, I'll knock him out in a round."        Reiger,  who had been continually belittling my ability as  a fighter, at  once  offered to bet me $40, to  $4, or $10 to $i, that I wouldn't knock him out in  a  round. I, thinking it was only a bunch of  hot  air, dug down in my jeans and took up the bet. Reiger immediately  appointed George  Wickham as stakeholder and handed him the $40. Of course, I put up my four, thinking he would try and crawl out of the bet any moment. But the stakeholder forced him to keep his coin up.      

Now that the bet was made and the money posted it was up to me to figure out ways and  means to win that fight in a gallop.

I immediately made up my mind to get that one-round money if I never fought again. I notified my backers that I would show the Harvey sports three minutes  of  the fastest fighting they ever saw in their lives, if Rosser lasted that long.      

Having that forty dollars in view all the while, I made up my mind that I wouldn't allow him to get a start. When we were called to the  centre of  the ring for instructions I had the scheme figured out.  Instead  of retiring to my corner,  as  is customary, I  decided  to take a step toward his corner.      

The trick worked like a  charm. As  the  timekeeper rang the bell Rosser raised out of his chair,  and he was just within nice hitting distance. The bell had not ceased ringing before I shot a terrific right-hand swing flush on his jaw. He tottered a step forward and fell in the centre of the ring. Rosser tried hard to get up and made two futile efforts to rise, but only got to arm's length, and by the time the referee had tolled off seven seconds he dropped on his face and turned over on his back and remained for the full count, only to be carried to his dressing room by his handlers.      

My only punch was so well directed that it was hours before he regained consciousness."

(by Battling Nelson)

..................

*The Two Second Fight. April 5th 1902.

Battling Nelson knocked out his opponent, William Rossler, two seconds into the first round making this the shortest bout in history to date. It would be equalled 13 years later by the Billy Weeks v Romeo Hagen bout of Dec.18, 1915.

Siki

"At about seven o'clock in the evening on Monday, December 14, his wife met him on the stairs to their flat on West Forty-second Street. The house they lived in still stands, a house of dingy brick with ten walk-up apartments, two on each of its five floors. He told Mrs. Siki he was going "out with the boys" and would be back in time to help her pack for a trip they were making next day to Washington, where Siki was to appear in a theater. Shortly after midnight on the morning of the fifteenth, Patrolman John J. Meehan, of the West Thirtieth Street station, walking his beat along Ninth Avenue, had a brief encounter with Siki, whom he knew by sight. Siki, wobbling a little as he turned under the "L" tracks from Forty-first Street, called to Meehan that he was on his way home. The patrolman told him to keep going that way. At 4:15 A.M., Meehan walked past the intersection of Forty-first Street and Ninth Avenue again and saw a body lying about a hundred feet east of the corner in the gutter in front of 350 West Forty-first. Approaching it, he recognized Siki. The body was taken to Meehan's station house where a doctor pronounced the fighter recently dead from internal hemorrhage caused by two bullet wounds. Detectives examined the deserted block of Forty-first between Eighth and Ninth avenues. In front of No. 346, some forty feet east of where Siki had died, they found a pool of blood on the sidewalk. It seemed to them that Siki might have been trying to crawl home after he was shot. They could not tell just where the shooting had taken place. The gun, a vest-pocket .32-caliber pistol, was lying in front of No. 333, on the other side of the street. Only two bullets had been fired from it. An autopsy showed that these had entered Siki from behind, one penetrating his left lung and the other his kidneys. The autopsy showed something else which surprised Siki's neighbors a good deal when they heard of it: he had suffered from an anemic condition.

At his wife's request; Siki was given a Christian funeral service at the Harlem funeral parlors of Effie A. Miller. The Reverend Adam Clayton Powell delivered a eulogy. However, seven Mohammedan pallbearers in turbans carried his body to the hearse, chanting prayers as they did so, while a crowd of three thousand people looked on. The body was clothed in evening dress, as Siki would undoubtedly have wished. His estate, estimated at six hundred dollars, was awarded to his wife in Surrogate's Court after Levy made out an affidavit in her favor. The words of the affidavit while perhaps not strictly accurate in point of fact told the broad truth about Siki's place in the world better, I think, than the editorial that spoke of Achilles, Siegfried, and "natural man." To the best of his knowledge, Levy said, Siki left surviving "no child or children, no father, mother, brother, or sister, or child or children of a deceased brother or sister." He lived as a man without kin or country, roots or guides, and that, it seems to me, is a hard way to do it.

Siki's murder was never solved. There was an abundance of suspects, but none of them suited the police at all until one day in March 1926 a young man of eighteen who lived a block or two from Siki's house was arrested and booked on a homicide charge in connection with the killing. Detectives disguised as truck drivers had heard him making incriminating remarks, they said, over a telephone in a bootleggers' hangout at Tenth Avenue and Fortieth Street. On being arrested, he allegedly signed two statements which gave two different accounts of the crime. One said that Siki had staggered into a coffee pot at Eighth Avenue and Fortieth Street in the early morning of December 15 and had thrown a chair at the eight men, including the deponent, who were gathered there. Deponent ran out of the place in alarm and heard shots fired in the restaurant behind him. The other statement, which fitted the physical facts of the killing a little better, said that a short while after the throwing of the chair, he, the young man under arrest, lured Siki to Eighth Avenue and Forty-first Street on the promise of buying him a drink. At the corner they were joined by two other men, one of whom, as the party walked west on Forty-first, shot Siki in the back. The young man was held in the Tombs for eight months, until the fall of 1926, and then was released by the court without trial, presumably because the state was not satisfied with its case. I might add that in May 1927 this same young man got five to ten years for second-degree robbery, committed in April in the vicinity of Ninth Avenue and Forty-second Street against a tourist from another state. That was clearly the wrong part of town for a tourist to go to."

(by John Lardner)

.........

Battling Siki (September 16, 1897 – December 15, 1925), aka Louis Mbarick Fall, was an American-Senegalese light heavyweight boxer born in Senegal who fought from 1912–1925, and briefly reigned as the lineal light heavyweight champion after knocking out Georges Carpentier.

Mrs Nelson

Sept. 28. 1912

For the first time in his life Battling Nelson has declined to be interviewed. This time the subject of the proposed interview was matrimonial, not pugilism. "Is it true that your rumored engagement with Miss Fay King of Denver is all off?" Nelson was asked.

"The only match I know about is the one my Chicago representative is trying to clinch with Packey McFarland," replied Nelson, "and he is pretty slow about it, too."

Miss King says she loves you like a brother, but that she has not considered you for a husband," Nelson was informed.

"If McFarland thinks he can lick me, now is his chance," replied Bat.

"Didn't you and Miss King go up on Pikes peak and engage a minister to marry you? And didn't the minister fail to show up?" were the next questions.

"I'm not going to talk about marriage," said Bat. "I am leaving the matter up to her. What she says is right, no matter if she's wrong." Then Nelson got serious.

"There's no use in my talking marriage," he said. "Any man who says he's going to marry a woman is crazy, unless he has her right at the altar—and even then he's liable to be fooled. She may not like the color of his necktie and call off the match. Miss King is a fine cartoonist, and she'd make a fine wife for anybody. If I'm the lucky fellow at the finish I'll be tickled to death, that's all. But I'm not saying a word one way or the other on the time, the place or the girl."


.......................................



January 22, 1913.

Oscar Matthew Nelson, once famed as the lightweight champion pugilist 'Battling' Nelson, and Miss Fay Barbara King, a Denver cartoonist, were married today at the fighter's home in Hegewisch. The ceremony was brief, but as the final words fell from the minister's lips the bride, overcome by the nervous strain, swayed and toppled over into her husband's arms, sobbing violently. "Bat" soothed his bride, and pretty soon she smiled and said, "I feel much better after my cry."

Rev. W.E. Pearson, a Lutheran clergyman of Moline, performed the ceremony. "Jack" Robinson, manager of the fighter, was best man, and Miss Ida Nelson, sister of the groom, was maid of honor.

Outside a brass band burst forth into "Moonlight Bay." A report said there was to be a double wedding. Miss Ida Nelson, it was said, was to have been married to a young man of the town immediately after her brother's marriage. The story run that at the last minute the young man, fearing bad luck if he married on the twenty-third, insisted upon a postponement. Miss Nelson denied the story.

"I'm the happiest guy in the world." Bat said. Asked about his wife's future, the groom said:

"She'll probably devote her time to illustrating my map. But I'll stay in the ring. I've got to, as that's the only way I have of making a living."

The couple came to Chicago after the ceremony and a wedding breakfast was served at the Wellington hotel.

The trip downtown to "Bat's" home was a gala affair. A special car on the Illinois Central was chartered and a band hired.

On the train Miss King drew a cartoon of the pugilist. The moving picture men were clamoring for some pictures and set up their machines before, the happy pair. The band played and "Bat" leaned over and (kissed his bride to be twice, and the picture machines got it all.

A big crowd turned out at Hegewisch to greet "Bat" and his fiancee. There were vigorous cheers as the party stepped from the train. The band played as the long line of friends, townsmen. newspaper men, moving picture operators and photographers started for the Nelson home behind the bridal party in a big automobile.

Tonight the couple entertained friends at a theater.


.................................................. .......


February 28, 1913.

Nelson's Wife Says Pugilist Kidnapped Her
Former Lightweight Champion Will Be Met at Denver by Summons in Divorce Suit

Battling Nelson, financier of Hegewiseh and erstwhile champion lightweight prize fighter, will be met with a summons in a suit for divorce when he arrives in Denver March 5.

This announcement was made tonight by friends of Mrs. Nelson, better known in Denver as Fay King, a cartoonist on the Post.

That she was kidnaped by Battling Nelson on the night of January 20 for her marriage three days later at the fighter's home will be the charge which the suit will be based.

Fay King remained three days as Nelson's wife. She left for Denver on the Sunday night following the marriage and then went on to Portland. Ore., to visit her parents before resuming her work on the Post.

"Nelson heard of my reported engagement to a Denver man and ho stopped his fighting engagements to come here for me." said Miss King tonight. "He took me by storm after I was weak and a nervous wreck from resisting him and his proposals he forced me into a taxicab and rushed me off to the station.

"I realized that I had made a mistake the day of the wedding and the first opportunity I got I hurried back to Denver. I will go right on working on the Post as though the affair had never happened.

"The marriage must not and will not stand."

.....................................

May 6, 1913.

Couple back together.

Fay Has the Say and Battler Will Retire

Battling Nelson, hero of many ring battles, the receiver of many a lacing, ''…and former lightweight champion of the world, today announced the date of his retirement from the ring. Bat is going to quit. There's no idle boast connected with the announcement. It may not be the wish of the once durable Dane to put the gloves on the shelf, but it is the request Mrs. Battling Nelson, Fay King, and Fay has the say. Labor day will be the Dane's last fight—this because it will be the eighteenth anniversary of his fighting career. He would quit now but for that. There will be no fights between now and September, however. Nelson and his wife are now in Bedford, Va., resting up. Bat plans on settling in the far west.

...........

Years later Nelson sued King for divorce as reported in Cartoons Magazine, March 1916. A divorce was granted later that year.


Fay King's name was not found in the 1940 census. Battling Nelson passed away February 7, 1954.

The Oregonian newspaper , February 9, 1954, reported that the funeral expenses were to be paid by King.

Battling Nelson died February 7, 1954 at the age of 71 in the Chicago State Hospital where the rugged old battler was committed; his death was attributed to senility. Fay King preformed a very gentle and gracious act when she hears of his death. Fay was truly a kind person. She defrayed the funeral expenses so he could be buried in Chicago next to his second wife, “whom he loved so much,” who had died just 2 months before, December 26, 1953.

Fay had been married to Bat over 40 years before his death and yet, when she was told her response was. “He was such a noble, honest man he did not deserve such a tragic end.” Fay had not seen him since 1919.

(from - WHO WAS FAY KING by Marilyn Slater)

On the afternoon of September 22, 1922 fight fans packed the Buffalo Velodrome in Paris, France to see Georges Carpentier defend his light-heavyweight title against Battling Siki.

Nicknamed the “Orchid Man” for the corsages he often wore with his tailored suits, Carpentier had been fighting professionally since he was 14. Although he was coming off a failed attempt to win Dempsey’s heavyweight title, he’d helped secure boxing’s first million-dollar gate. Fighting again as a light-heavyweight, the Frenchman’s future was still bright—so bright that Carpentier’s handlers were taking no chances. They offered Battling Siki a bribe to throw the fight. Siki agreed, under the condition that he “didn’t want to get hurt.” What followed was one of the strangest bouts in boxing history.

Although Siki later admitted that the fight was rigged, there’s some question as to whether Carpentier knew it. Early in the first of 20 scheduled rounds, Siki dropped to a knee after Carpentier grazed him, and then rose and began to throw wild, showy punches with little behind them. In the third, Carpentier landed a powerful blow, and Siki went down again; when he got back on his feet, he lunged at his opponent head first, hands low, as if inviting Carpentier to hit him again. Carpentier obliged, sending Siki to the canvas once more.

At that point, the action in the ring turned serious. Siki later told a friend that during the fight, he had reminded Carpentier, “You aren’t supposed to hit me,” but the Frenchman “kept doing it. He thought he could beat me without our deal, and he kept on hitting me.”

Suddenly, Battling Siki’s punches had a lot more power to them. He pounded away at Carpentier in the fourth round, then dropped him with a vicious combination and stood menacingly over him. Through the fourth and into the fifth, the fighters stood head to head, trading punches, but it was clear that Siki was getting the better of the champion. Frustrated, Carpentier charged in and head-butted Siki, knocking him to the floor. Rising to his feet, Siki tried to protest to the referee, but Carpentier charged again, backing him into a corner. The Frenchman slipped and fell to the canvas—and Siki, seemingly confused, helped him get to his feet. Seeing Siki’s guard down, Carpentier showed his gratitude by launching a hard left hook to Siki’s head just before the bell ended the round. The Senegalese tried to follow Carpentier back to his corner, but handlers pulled him back onto his stool.

At the start of round six, Battling Siki pounced. Furious, he spun Carpentier around and delivered an illegal knee to his midsection, which dropped the Frenchman for good. Enraged, Siki stood above him and shouted down at his fallen foe. With his right eye swollen shut and his nose broken, the Orchid Man was splayed awkwardly on his side, his left leg resting on the lower rope.

Siki returned to his corner. His manager, Charlie Hellers, blurted out, “My God. What have you done?”

“He hit me,” Siki answered.

Referee M. Henri Bernstein didn’t even bother counting. Believed by some to be in on the fix, Bernstein tried to explain that he was disqualifying Siki for fouling Carpentier, who was then being carried to his corner. Upon hearing of the disqualification, the crowd unleashed a “great chorus of hoots and jeers and even threaten the referee with bodily harm.” Carpentier, they believed, had been “beaten squarely by a better man.”

Amid the pandemonium, the judges quickly conferred, and an hour later, reversed the disqualification. Battling Siki was the new champion.

Siki was embraced, just as Carpentier had been, and he quickly became the toast of Paris. He was a late-night fixture in bars around the city, surrounded by women, and he could often be seen walking the Champs-Elysees in a top hat and tuxedo, with a pet lion cub on a leash.

(By Gilbert King)

Sept. 1906.

A highly touted fight, held in the Nevada hinterlands to escape anti-boxing laws, had the box-office appeal of pitting a fan-favorite boxer, Battling Nelson, against one of the greatest fighters of all time, Joe Gans. Gans was black, and any interracial boxing match was big news in those days. Nelson was considered to be over-matched, but Gans was coming into the twilight of his career, and may have already been ill with tuberculosis (he would die of the disease just a few years later). The grueling fight lasted 42 rounds, and was finally won by Gans on a foul, a low blow by Nelson. The foul call was amazing because black fighters were rarely given the benefit of a clean fight in those days. Referees made it a habit to turn a blind eye to dirty tricks by white fighters against black fighters.

(by Allan Holtz)

Gans literally killed himself to make the lightweight limit for this bout, Nat Fleischer stated in "The Three Colored Aces." As a result of his extremely light diet and strenuous training in the Nevada heat, Gans would feel the effects of tuberculosis shortly afterward. Nelson's manager Billy Nolan allegedly set extremely unfair standards, as Champion Gans received only $11,000, compared to Nelson's $34,000 (or $22,500, depending upon the source). And when Gans did make it down to 133 pounds, the lightweight limit at the time, Nolan announced that he must enter the ring at the same weight or the fight would be called off. Gans, who allowed all this just to reportedly "bring home the bacon" for his family, still had a vicious combatant to face in the ring.

United States President Teddy Roosevelt's son Kermit was in the audience.

The Two Second Fight. April 5th 1902.

Battling Nelson knocked out his opponent, William Rossler, two seconds into the first round making this the shortest bout in history to date. It would be equalled 13 years later by the Billy Weeks v Romeo Hagen bout of Dec.18, 1915.