What Was The Role Of Prize Fighting In The 1890's

In the 1880’s and 1890’s, college football and prize fighting began to ascend into the American limelight. The two sports went from being available to only certain social classes to being made available to all of them. The lower and middle social class would slowly begin to attend college football games and the upper class would start to make their way out to watch prize fighting matchups; two things that appeared as rarities earlier in the decade. With prize fighting originating in areas populated dominantly by lower and middle-class individuals, it was almost impossible for the higher class to even begin to observe the vulgar sport. Likewise, with college football originating in the Ivy League ranks, it was impractical for the lower class
For example, the trials that preceded the death of Thomas McCoy in 1842 raised the public awareness of the sport that was rapidly developing in New York. After the death of Thomas McCoy, the sport underwent heavy scrutiny from the general public and received a great deal publicity from the media. Readers were becoming particularly curious about the sport that had shown to be extremely violent and in the McCoy case, even fatal. As a result of this, the same sport that was uniting the working class individuals from foreign countries and within the country, began to have the same effect on the upper class community. The upper class went from staying away from the prize fighting altogether to becoming curious enough to show face at these bouts. Although the trial that followed the death of Thomas McCoy gave the sport a great deal of clout, the sport’s increase in popularity didn’t stop at just that. The “Great Fight of 1849”, which featured Yankee Sullivan and Thomas Hyer was highly publicised by the media. This bout was very important for the sport as prize fighting had taken a hit after the backlash received from McCoy’s death. With the fight being promoted by local newspaper for months beforehand, Hyer-Sullivan would be one of the great sporting events of the decade. Aside from the bout creating
After forming the groundwork of the sport over the past twenty years, football was finally beginning to bear resemblance to the sport that we’ve grown to know today. Even though the love of football would eventually grow to take the nation by storm, the sport came under some of the same scrutinies that prize fighting did. The National Police Gazette would often times denounce the sport in the same way they did prize fighting; calling out the upper class individuals who played and watched the sport “hypocrites”. The gazette felt that there was a contradiction in the fact that the same people who supported the violence that college football represented were also the same people who couldn’t stand to see gory prize fighting matches. Even so, this publicity (as negative as it may have sounded) would be the start of people beginning to become more curious about the sport. At the same time, the American newspaper would see college football as a chance to reach different types of demographics. Even though the amount of people who knew football players playing at Harvard or Yale was a small portion, newspaper editors decided that articles about the sport would begin to catch the eyes of even those those who had nothing to do with football. As a result of this decision, in the 1890s, newspapers in New York City, Boston, and