Alex Daley @thealexdaley
Historian & author
WHILE grainy, colourless footage shot with archaic cameras can never do justice to the likes of Jack Johnson, Jack Dempsey, Gene Tunney and Joe Louis, at least we have glimpses of their fighting lives preserved on film. So spare a thought for the countless boxing heroes who preceded the age of film and photography. Without visual proof of their existence, from a modern perspective their careers can seem like fairytale legends, akin to the stories of Greek mythology. Unlike the protagonists of those ancient Greek fables however, these men were real.