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Scott Beekman, "The Last Gladiator: William Muldoon and the Making of American Sports" (U Texas Press, 2025)
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Scott Beekman
Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Paul Knepper
Welcome back to New Books and Sports, a podcast channel on the New Books Network. I'm your host, Paul Knepper, and today I'll be talking to Scott Beekman about his new book, the Last Gladiator, William Muldoon and the Making of American Sports. Scott is a professor of history at the University of Ryo Grande and he is the author of a number of books. The most recent before this one is called A History of Professional Wrestling. Scott, welcome to the show.
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Scott Beekman
Thank you for having me, Paul.
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Paul Knepper
Yeah, I'm really excited to talk to you. As I told you before we got on the air, I consider myself, I'm maybe an amateur sports historian and know a lot about sports history and I knew nothing. I didn't even know the name William Muldoon. So that was kind of exciting for me because it was new territory to cover and I gather I'm not alone, even among sports fans and not, you know, and you address this in the book of not knowing the name and certainly the significance of William Muldoon. So I wonder if you could just start off by talking a little bit about who was William Muldoon and why? What was his significance in American history?
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Scott Beekman
Sure. So William Muldoon was a pretty major figure in American sporting culture and also American popular culture from the mid-1870s all the way up to his death in 1933. And one of the things that's interesting about Muldoon is that he had sort of three different careers within that lengthy public career. And so he burst into fame in the mid-1870s as a professional wrestler, becoming by far the most successful and popular pro wrestler in the United States. And he parlayed that into sort of a sideline career in theater and doing some stage posing. And then as his career wound down, he started looking for other ways to continue to pay the bills and ended up training John L. Sullivan, the heavyweight boxing champion of the world, for an 1889 match with Jake Kilrane, where the dissipated and drunken Sullivan was pulled out of his problems by Muldoon. And it really allowed Muldoon to present himself as being a health expert, as someone who could train people and get them back into shape. And so he launched a second career as a personal trainer, as a fitness expert, where he established his own hygienic institute in New York called Olympia. And so the wealthy, the famous, the politically powerful would go to Muldoons, and he'd spend six or eight weeks with them, whipping them into shape, made a lot of money, made a lot of connections, sort of started positioning himself as a country gentleman type and getting a lot of attention in the media for his views on health. And then he used those connections to become the head of the New York State Athletic Commission when it was reconstituted in the early 1920s. And. And so he spent the decade of the 20s and the first few years, the 1930s, effectively running sports in New York because of his position on the Athletic Commission. And so he really had a significant role to play in sort of shaping how boxing and wrestling looked in New York and beyond for about a dozen years.
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Paul Knepper
And so, you know, you just laid out, and you go into great detail in the book about how well known he was, what a public figure he was throughout the country. And so the natural question is, why? Why don't more people know about William Muldoon? Why has he kind of dropped, disappeared from the public discourse?
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Scott Beekman
It's, it's, it's. It's a collection of sort of various reasons why he's sunk in his obscurity. And there are reasons related to each and every one of those three careers. The immediate problem he faces is that professional wrestling isn't viewed today as a legitimate sport. It's not taken particularly seriously by the public and most significantly for Muldoon, it's not really taken very seriously by a lot of sports historians. And so despite the fact that he was among the most prominent athletes of the late 19th century, because he was a pro wrestler, he sort of gets short shrift in a lot of studies that look at Gilded Age sports. And so that didn't help him. His career as a trainer was built around his conviction that neurasthenia, a now discredited idea, could solve basically all health problems. And so he's viewed as something of a crank now because of his allegiance to neurasthenia and his somewhat questionable treatment methods for it. And then once he became the head of the athletic commission in New York, he really acted as sort of a one man wrecking crew. Running sports generated lots of ill will with the press, generated lots of ill will with athletes and managers and trainers. And so as soon as he was dead and began buried, they moved very quickly to try to repeal a lot of the laws and regulations he put in place. And a lot of folks just wanted to move beyond the Muldoon years because they were so unhappy with what he had done. And so there's sort of this confluence of factors that come together that work against Muldoon being recognized for the prominent figure that he was for again, over five decades.
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Paul Knepper
You know, I'm really intrigued. I've written a couple of books myself, and one is about a 1990s basketball team. The other is a biography of a basketball player who played in the 70s, 80s, 90s. And so through my process, obviously I spoke to a lot of people involved with those teams and had access to all kinds of media that one doesn't have. If you're writing a book about someone who's really, at least public career and, well, personal life dated back before this, and public career is start in the 1880s. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about your research process for this book.
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Scott Beekman
Yeah, so there aren't a huge number of primary sources available for Muldu. And so you kind of have to sort of find ways to fill in some of these gaps. A lot of it, quite frankly, comes from periodicals and newspapers who did cover him quite thoroughly during this period because he was such a celebrity. He has an authorized biography that is largely fanciful, but it does have some important facts in there that I could use. The New York State Athletic Commission papers were absolutely invaluable for it and they're available publicly. And so I relied on that a great deal. And there are a few archival sources Here and there, his brother John's letters. There's some court records here and there. And so there was enough to sort of piece this story together. I don't necessarily like having to rely this much on secondary sources, but with the case of Muldoon, there really just isn't a way around that.
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Paul Knepper
Yeah, no, I mean, you have to. Right. I mean, if you're writing a book about William Shakespeare, you're not interviewing his friends. Right. I mean, that's just. Well, you did a great job with that. I mean, I was really impressed with a lot of the details, which is why I asked. I want to talk a little bit. I think it's important to kind of put wrestling in context of when he was big in the wrestling world, of what was. Well, let's start with this. I mean, how big was wrestling in terms of popularity? So obviously, the sports landscape has changed tremendously since then. Right. I mean, now when you talk about American sports, it's football is king, and then you have basketball and baseball. And boxing's dropped off tremendously the last couple decades. For example, where was. What was kind of the sports landscape in the country at that time?
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Scott Beekman
Sure. So wrestling is one of the oldest professional sports in American history. There were professional wrestlers dating in the United States, at least dating back into the 1820s and 30s. And at that point, the only other legal professional sport was horse racing there. Obviously, there was pugilism, but that was illegal everywhere. And so wrestling is a really central part of the story of sports in the United States. And post Civil War, we see this growth in that sporting culture. And when that sporting culture develops, post Civil War, there's this period where there's an effort to try to figure out exactly what that sporting landscape is going to look like. And so there were a lot of sports at the time that were very popular that we just totally discount today. So pedestrianism was one of the biggest sports in America. America. Bicycle racing, billiards, archery, all sorts of sports that we don't really think of as legitimate sports today were, as in part of that sort of scuffle to try to emerge as a prominent sport. And so a lot of them have this period where they are big and then they sort of fade away. Wrestling was part of that, along with pugilism, which, again, was illegal everywhere. Baseball is what we sort of think about during that period. And certainly this is the period where baseball becomes the quote, unquote, national pastime. But once you get past baseball, you have this cluster of sports, including professional wrestling. They were almost as Big and sometimes for periods like pedestrianism, for example, were as big as professional baseball. And so wrestling's an important part of that sporting landscape that doesn't really get a lot of attention again, because we have this sort of anachronistic view of professional wrestling today as this sort of campy melodrama. And there's the notion that that's what it's always been, when in fact the 19th century was taken just as seriously as any other professional sport.
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Paul Knepper
Yeah. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what wrestling looked like. And I know even, you know, you discussed in the book, even through the course of Muldoon's career, the nature of wrestling changed dramatically. But, you know, let's say the 1880s, what did wrestling look like? I mean, obviously it was very different than it wasn't the WWE of today. What, what was it like? Because you do talk a lot in the book also about hippodroming and all that went on with that, but I don't know. Go ahead. What do you think? What do you have to say about that?
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Scott Beekman
So professional wrestling in the 19th century was for the most part predicated upon folk style wrestling. And so it looked more legitimate than product would today. The initially sort of most successful style of professional wrestling was called collar and elbows, and it's called square hold, where you'd have one hand on the collar of your opponent and one hand on their elbow. It's still the standard opening move in most professional wrestling matches today in sort of the bastardized form. But the problem with collar and elbow is you had to maintain that hold. And so it was a lot of tripping. Matches could be very, very short. And so it kind of limited the amount of attention and publicity you could get because folks were not really willing to pay to see a match that might last 45 seconds. Um, and so that style was supplanted in the 1870s by Greco Roman, which is, you know, still to this day, a widely practiced amateur style of wrestling. And the benefit of Greco Roman was it doesn't have an opening hold. It allowed sort of the hands to be utilized freely, so you can engage in all sorts of theatrical moves. Now, you, you could not have holds below the waist in Greco Roman, but you could toss your opponent around, you could pick them up, you could do all sorts of things that added an extra layer of excitement to the matches still, again, looking far more legitimate than today. And then in the early 1880s, catch as catch can, or the Lancashire style, which brought the legs back into it. And also Brought increasing numbers of submission holds was introduced into professional wrestling. And that becomes sort of the basis for what professional wrestling looks like from the beginning of the 20th century on. Now it's obviously it's not people jumping off the top rope like you would have in WWE today. It's still much less flashy than things are today. But it was a worked style that could generate a lot of excitement and a lot of attention. And these would normally be matches that would occur on stage rather than in arenas. And so you'd go to variety halls to watch wrestling matches, sometimes as part of a larger variety show, or sometimes they would be if there were significant enough standalone matches. And so it's not like what we see today in the sense that it doesn't necessarily look like what we see today. But many of the elements were present in the 19th century that are still with us today in terms of what we think about wrestling being in that there's a good guy and a bad guy sort of style emerges where you have a heel or a face. It was just as worked or faked or hippodromed as it is today. And so it looks a bit more legitimate, but really doesn't necessarily have all that much to separate it from how wrestling operates in the 21st century.
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Paul Knepper
How about the perception by fans? Was the fan perception that it was legitimate or no?
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Scott Beekman
Yes. So it was viewed as a legitimate sport and fans assumed that it was legitimate. And one of the things that I try to point out in the book is that if you look at 19th century sports, effectively all of it was worked or faked or as they would have put it in a hippo drill. You really can't trust 19th century sports. It doesn't matter which sport you're talking about to be legitimate. And a lot of these sports that have this period where they're very successful end up crashing and burning because folks stop having faith in them and it becomes obvious that they're fake. So pedestrianism is probably the best example that went from a huge sport to once folks figured out that a lot of these walking matches are just completely rigged, abandoned it. And so the perception was that wrestling was just as legitimate as any other sport. But again, we have to keep in mind that basically all these sports are illegitimate.
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Paul Knepper
And what made William Muldoon a successful wrestler.
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Scott Beekman
So Muldoon had a lot of things going for him. He was native born, which was important during this period. And he was the first native born wrestler to really achieve a lot of fame. The prior successful pro wrestlers in the United States were either English or French before him. And so he gets a lot of support because he's native born. He was viewed as having a remarkably muscular physique and being very large for the time period. He was about 6ft tall, about 210 pounds. And he always worked on, on, on his muscle mass. And so he looked the part. He was also, by the beauty standards of the time, viewed as incredibly handsome. And he was just absolutely driven to succeed and really didn't care what it took to succeed or who he stepped on to succeed. He was just truly trying to make a name for himself.
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Paul Knepper
And of course, as you noted earlier, you know, the wrestler wrestling led to other opportunities. One which you document in the book is his training of John L. Sullivan. There's this weird thing with the book in Muldoon where you never really know what is myth and what is fact. And you cover that well, he lied about his age, he lied about where his parents were from, he lied about where he was from. He lied about, I believe, his initial. I mean, he says you're a lifelong bachelor and he had been married. It's funny because in many ways it kind of foreshadows wrestlers of today, right, how they created their own Persona. So he very much created his own Persona. But I mean, did he really have a big impact on John L. Sullivan, kind of resurrecting his career?
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Scott Beekman
It was probably the most important match of Sullivan's career against Chick Kilrain in the summer of 1889, because Sullivan was by far the most popular athlete in America. But he had spent years as a raging alcoholic, just completely dissipated. And he had reached a stage where he could not be controlled by his current management. No one could get him into shape, no one could train him, no one could really sort of control him until Muldoon steps in. And now Muldoon has to pull Sullivan out of the environment that he was operating. He took him to Belfast, New York, which is a very small village in upstate New York, that Muldoon was from himself, to try to get him away from temptation. He isolated him from all of his friends, made sure he had no alcohol, and then just sort of browbeat Sullivan into submission by haranguing Sullivan about how he's going to lose, he was going to be embarrassed by Jake Kilrayne, that it was disgraceful what he let himself become. And so his training methods weren't necessarily all that revolutionary, but his sort of psychological work on Sullivan had a real impact on Sullivan. And so when Sullivan beats Kilrain in the summer of 1889. It really catapults Sullivan to a level that he hadn't been at before because he sort of broadens his popularity outside of that sporting culture. And Muldoon's able to ride along the coattails of that and become far more successful and popular than he had in before. And for Muldoon, the important part here is that he always presented himself as sort of the anti Sullivan. He claimed he didn't use alcohol, he claimed he didn't use tobacco. None of that was true of course, but his image was that he was sort of squeaky clean athlete who's now showing the superiority of that squeaky clean lifestyle by being able to be the one person who could whip John L. Sullivan into shape. And so that victory by Sullivan in many ways really changed the course of Muldoon's life and career because if Sullivan had lost to Kilrain, I'm not sure what would have happened to Muld. Certainly could have opened a gym or a tavern like a lot of these washed up athletes did. But he wouldn't have been able to parlay his success with Sullivan into the sort of remarkably profitable and public career he has afterwards if Sullivan had lost to Kilrain. So I think that match in 1889 really is the significant turning point in what happens to Muldoon after he retires from wrestling.
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Paul Knepper
Mean, you know, one word that's that that jumps out at me when talking about Muldoon is adaptability. He seems to be able to adapt to the changing times and ride the different waves of popularity, one of which being the kind of this. This physical culturalist. Yes, I can't think of the word, excuse me, physical, physical culturalist lifestyle that that emerged. What exactly is a physical culturalist and what led to the rise of the physical, physical culturalist community.
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Scott Beekman
Sure. So a physical culturalist would be someone that we would think of akin today as a personal trainer or a fitness expert that you would consult if you were concerned about getting into shape. And the fiscal culture movement really takes off in the latter part of the 19th century because of some of the things that are going on in American society. There's an increasing concern on the part of old stock white Americans that the United States is being flooded with immigrants, the so called new immigrants of the late 19th century who are from Eastern and Southern Europe. And they were viewed with a great deal of disdain despite the fact that they were absolutely essential to the burgeoning industrialization of the United States. But the fear becomes that all these folks are flooding in and America is going to change because all those folks are flooding. And this is a standard trope when you see large waves of immigration at any point in American history. And so when that starts to happen, concerns arise about, okay, could old stock Americans improve their physical condition to sort of withstand this flood of immigrants who are coming in? And part of the problem there was that you have old stock Americans by this point are a lot of white collar jobs, they're in urban areas, they're not getting much fresh air, they're not getting much exercise, and that they need to find some way to strengthen the stock. And so there are a lot of these figures who pop up as fiscal culturalists promising to help revitalize old stock Americans. Muldoon is able to catapult himself to the front ranks of that because of the fact that he's able to whip John L. Sullivan into shape. And even though Sullivan was native born, he was a problematic figure. He was violent, he was a bully, he was an alcoholic. To a lot of sort of staid old stock Americans, he's akin to these immigrants who are coming in, who are causing problems. And so for Muldoon to successfully tame Sullivan gives Muldoon an opportunity to really present himself as someone who understands physical culture, who understands health, who's going to be able to help old stock Americans find a way to remain on top of this wave of immigrants that's increasingly concerning to them.
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Paul Knepper
And you mentioned this diagnosis, theory, whatever you want to call it, neurasthenia, can you talk a little about that? Because it sounds like it was quite prominent diagnosis at the time. What exactly was neurasthenia?
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Scott Beekman
Yes, neurasthenia was sort of a blanket diagnosis that covered all sorts of ailments today. It was a notion that nervous energy in the body had been depleted because of hard work, because of stress, and that you had to then find ways to replenish that energy if you're going to continue to be a productive member of society. It encompasses just about anything you could name today. Depression, stress, all sorts of things that we now understand better today were lumped in as aspects of neurasthenia. And it rises to popularity in the late 19th century in part because it gets linked to sort of the experiment of America. There's this argument that the fact that the nervous energy of Americans is being depleted is because we're in this process of nation building, because we're in this process of trying to protect American society and culture from all of these immigrants. And so lots and lots of successful folks who we would think of today just need a break or a overstressed or suffering from depression would be diagnosed as suffering from neurasthenia. And because it's this blanket sort of ailment that doesn't really have any causation to it, all sorts of folks spring up, claim that they're the ones who can fix and treat those who have neurasthenia. Muldoon is amongst that very large group of folks who do so. And so his hygienic clinic, Olympia in White Plains, New York, specifically treats folks who have neurasthenia. And one of the components of neurasthenia is that you're not going to have that unless you've been successful, that you're. You've depleted that energy because you are someone of prominence. And so if you're someone of prominence and has neurasthenia, then you have the financial wherewithal to go to somewhere like Olympia to have that nervous energy replenished so you can go back out there and be part of nation building. And so Muldoon makes a lot of money because his clients are very successful folks who are looking to rejuvenate themselves through sort of traditional hard work, farm labor, riding horses. There was nothing particularly original about his methods, but folks came to believe that this was one of the more successful mechanisms for treating neurasthenia. And so they flocked to Muldoons also becomes sort of one of those places that you want to be able to claim you've been to. That going to Muldoons becomes sort of a rite of passage. If you're one of these nouveau riche Americans that you go to Muldoons because you're going to meet other famous people who are also there being treated. It sort of snowballs into something that really helps Muldoon position himself as far more than just a professional athlete, that he becomes this sort of country gentleman, health expert who is part of the process of rebuilding the United States because of the difficulties that we're facing because of neurasthenia.
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Paul Knepper
And I found it very interesting. Firstly, it sounds like Muldoon himself was very hands on at Olympia. He didn't just own the place and have other people running it. He was very hands on. And I found his techniques to be interesting, particularly when dealing with people of that wealth and fame and who are accustomed to being the boss themselves and calling the shots. So maybe could you talk a little bit about how Muldoon treated his clients at Olympia?
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Scott Beekman
Yeah. So Muldoon frankly treated all of them with open disdain. And in part that stems from the fact that he looks at these folks as being broken down and that he is not broken down, that he is, because he has taken care of himself in some ways superior to these folks, even though they are captains of industry, even though they are high ranking officials and major figures in Popular culture. And so he would treat them sort of the same way that we think, like a drill sergeant would treat recruits. He yelled at them, he would cuss them out, he would throw balls at them if he didn't like what they were doing. He would insult them at all times, order them to follow his very specific instructions. You know, he wouldn't let them talk when they were eating. He required them to clean their plates when they were eating. Regimented their day down to the last minute really sort of took over. And part of that was because he claimed that he was breaking their will, because he had to tear their will down. He had to tear those egos down to rebuild them so that they could overcome their neurasthenia. And for Muldoon, who had an enormous ego himself, I certainly believe he enjoyed being able to really talk down to a lot of folks who were, in every way imaginable, his social betters.
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Paul Knepper
This may be a strange question, but when you write a book about someone, you take on the role of chronicler, and you don't try and allow personal feelings to get involved, but inevitably you form opinions. Do you like William Muldoon?
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Scott Beekman
Do I like William Muldoon? I find him more interesting than likable. And my first book was actually a biographer, guy named William Dudley Pelly, who was the most prominent American Nazi of the 1930s and then becomes a cult leader in the 1950s. And so, sort of from the very beginning of my career, I've kind of tackled some of these figures who aren't especially likable and problematic, and I try my best to be objective about them. But with Muldoon, it's hard not to present him as something of a violent bully and egotist, because that's what he was. And so I don't know that I like Muldoon, but I was certainly fascinated by Muldoon and by this remarkable career that he had. And so I've grown close to him in ways that I think all biographers do, but I've tried at least to remain somewhat objective about him, which isn't always easy to do.
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Paul Knepper
Yeah, no, absolutely, yeah. I mean, he's fascinating, and there are a lot of seeming contradictions to them, as there are to most of us. I suppose one thing I found interesting is, I mean, he burned a lot of bridges throughout his career and his life and yet always seemed to continue climbing based on his connections. And there were people who would come in and out of his life or people who he would be close with for long periods of time. And So I found that interesting about him that he could be. He could turn people off so strongly, and yet there were people who stayed connected to him for so long.
- [29:56]
Scott Beekman
Yeah, Muldoon had a horrible temper. And when you have a really violent temper coupled with an enormous ego, you're going to burn bridges. That's just the way that works. Muldoon, though, because he was constantly striving, though, was always able to find someone to replace the bridge that he had burned. And so he continued to move up. And you can clearly see in some cases, there are folks that he recognizes he cannot possibly burn those bridges without there being consequences. You know, he did everything imaginable to suck up the Teddy Roosevelt. He was always very polite and respectful to the governors of New York. When he's part of the New York State Athletic Commission, even Muldoon understood there were limits to how much he could get away with. But anyone that he viewed as beneath him or he viewed he no longer needed, he was more than happy to just discharge them from his life and move on.
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Paul Knepper
So, you know, you mentioned boxing, and of course, he was named the commissioner of the New York State Athletic Commission. How did he get that position? And. Well, let's start there. How did he get that position?
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Scott Beekman
So the New York State Athletic Commission was reconstituted in the early 1920s. Boxing had been legalized a couple of different times in New York State in the early part of the 20th century and then banned again. And there was an athletic commission. They tried and failed. And then once we get into the early part of the 1920s, there's a recognition that boxing has been legalized in lots of other sports. It's very lucrative for a state to have lots of legalized boxing. You need an athletic commission to run boxing. And so New York, like many other states, establishes an athletic commission and fills it with political appointees. Muldoon, by that point, because he was so well known, because he had connections, he was a lifelong Republican, but he also was very careful to try to cultivate prominent Democrats as well as. And so he was friendly with James J. Walker, who was the father of the Walker Law that brought boxing back and recreated the New York State Athletic Commission. And so Jimmie Walker lobbied the governor to put Muldoon on the commission, arguing that this was the sort of figure that you wanted, because by that point, Muldoon, again, is viewed as respectable. He has all these connections, he's in the media all the time. He seemed like this perfect figure to put in charge of sports because he had been part of that before. He was this sort of country gentleman who has all these connections. And so because he was politically connected, he was able to get appointed. And then those political connections allow him to remain on the commission. Even though we have a series of different governors of New York over the course of the 1920s. You have Republicans, then you have Democrats. Muldoon, though, kind of rose above the sort of petty partisanship that occurred and was able to hold on to that position until his death in 1933.
- [32:41]
Paul Knepper
And what was his approach to that position?
- [32:44]
Scott Beekman
His approach was that he was the chair and he was going to run sports. And so he has fellow commissioners that he doesn't listen to in any way. He just views them as sort of obstacles that he has to deal with in meetings on a weekly basis. And so by that point, Muldoon had sort of decided on what he wanted wrestling and boxing to look like. And he was then going to do his best from the pulpit that he'd been given to try to create or recreate his notions of what those sports should look like, which, frankly, often were in conflict with what most folks thought those sports should look like.
- [33:23]
Paul Knepper
It should be noted as well that what he thought boxing should look like is he believed there should be a color line in boxing.
- [33:31]
Scott Beekman
Yes, well, Dune had always argued there should be a color line. He was one of the folks who actively dissuaded John L. Sullivan from defending his title against Peter Jackson, who was a black Australian who was probably the best heavyweight operating in the late 19th century, never got a shot at the title. Muldoon was adamant that there should be white champions, there should be black champions. He was appalled by Jack Johnson and Jack Johnson's antics, Johnson being the. The first black heavyweight champion in the early 20th century. And Muldoon was convinced that if you allow another black man to get the heavyweight title, they're going to act like Jack Johnson. And that was not the way that Muldoon thought people of color should act. And so he made sure that Harry Wills, who was probably the second best heavyweight in the world at that time, never got a shot at Jack Dempsey's title. Even though that required all sorts of contortions on Muldoon's part, he kept Wills from getting that shot. And so, in a very real sense, William Muldoon has a significant effect on the course of the heavyweight title in boxing, which at the time was maybe the most important championship in all of sports. And so Muldoon's vision didn't necessarily align with everyone's or most folks, but because he had that position of authority, he really could exert his will over. Over boxing and over wrestling, for that matter.
- [34:56]
Paul Knepper
And I mean, how. How important was New York specifically in the boxing world at that time?
- [35:03]
Scott Beekman
So New York was the center of. Of boxing. You know, Madison Square Garden is there, the Polo Grounds, Yankee Stadium. Large arenas. They could host really large matches. And it was the publishing capital of the United States. And so the New York media was incredibly important, and they helped them make New York very important as a sports center. I mean, also, it's, you know, the Y there as well. So it's the period of Babe Ruth and Luke Ehrig. So New York was, in a very real sense, the center of American sporting culture during the 1920s.
- [35:34]
Paul Knepper
And he held on to power really right up until he died or shortly before he died in 1933. He died. What was William Muldoon's. What was the perception of him? What was his legacy at the time of his death? How was he remembered at that time?
- [35:51]
Scott Beekman
At the time of his death, he was viewed as this sort of out of touch, old curmudgeonly dictator in sports. And when he dies in 1933, there's that natural tendency for some folks to be, well, it's too bad he's passed. But there also was a great sense of relief in many quarters that people no longer had to deal with Muldoon and his often very arbitrary decisions that he never really bothered to explain or justify because he believed he didn't have to. And so he's not particularly loved when he dies in 1933. But what quickly happens after that is there is a recognition on the part of a lot of folks in the media that what we're seeing, particularly in boxing at that point, is the growing presence of organized crime. And that to a certain degree, boxing stayed cleaner, cleaner because Muldoon had maintained this sort of dictatorial control over the sport. And so there is something of a reassessment not too long after his death, but certainly leading up to his death, folks were not particularly pleased with the way that William Muldoon operated on the New York State Athletic Commission.
- [37:02]
Paul Knepper
What about the common folk, everyday people, did they still. Was he still a heroic figure, you know, dating back to his wrestling days and maybe even as, you know, with what he did at Olympia?
- [37:15]
Scott Beekman
I mean, it's difficult to really get a good sense of exactly how the average sports fan would have felt about Muldoon. Certainly those who were active participants in fandom in sports in New York would have probably not viewed him all that favorably. Because of some of the rules he put in place. The one that people really hated was he banned smokey and boxing and wrestling venues in New York. And we're talking about a period where everyone used tobacco products in the 1920s. And so that you could not have a cigarette because William Muldoon said you could not have a cigarette, really inflamed a lot of passions against him. But I think that maybe the farther you got away from New York and the farther you got away from actually having to live under his dictatorial rules, people were probably more favorably disposed to Muldoon. And there was always. Even his critics always recognized that he was trying to do what he thought was best for the sport. They didn't necessarily agree with what Muldoon was doing, but they at least thought he was honest in his efforts to try to maintain some level of respectability for boxing and wrestling.
- [38:17]
Paul Knepper
Yeah. And it turns out he was probably onto something with that smoking thing.
- [38:20]
Scott Beekman
Yes, absolutely.
- [38:24]
Paul Knepper
When did he kind of disappear? For the public consciousness, Simuldoon is.
- [38:30]
Scott Beekman
Once he dies in the summer of 1933, and there are these moves to try to repeal most of his regulations, it very quickly becomes a situation where it's almost like he wasn't there. There's a fanciful motion picture in the late 1940s called the Great John L. That's a depiction of. Alleged depiction of John L. Sullivan. And there's a Muldoon character in it who is portrayed as a bit of a failure and a buffoon. And so even at that point, there is sort of this belief that what he did on the New York State Athletic Commission has kind of tarnished that reputation. And after we get past that, we've entered in a period where we have far more knowledge about nutrition and exercise and health. And so he's totally forgotten and pushed aside because he is viewed as something of a crank when it comes to neurasthenia and health. And by the time we get to the 1950s, we've entered really, the modern era of professional wrestling, where a lot of folks aren't taking it particularly seriously. So the fact that Muldoon was a pro wrestler, in and of itself kind of makes him viewed as something of. Shouldn't necessarily be taken completely seriously. Scott, there you go.
- [39:37]
Paul Knepper
I'd like to ask you one final question that I ask all my guests, but first, let me just say the name of Scott's book once again, is the Last Gladiator William Muldoon and the Making of American Sports. Muldoon's a fascinating figure and like I said, I think he really foreshadows, you know, some of the sports celebrities of modern day. And so you should definitely check out the book. Scott, my final question for you is what is your all time favorite sports book?
- [40:08]
Scott Beekman
I really enjoy Stephen Reese's City Games because it dealt with the late 19th century, a time period that I've become increasingly fascinated with as a, as a child. I remember reading can anybody here play this game about the 1962 Mets? I don't know if you're familiar with that book or not, but a classic contemporary account of how bad that team was and what a train wreck at Buildingham Shea Stadium was. And I remember at that point I was, I don't know, about 12 or 13 when I read it, thinking that this is, I was already very interested in history at that point and thinking that maybe sports history is something that could be serious and legitimate. And so that one had a large impact on me. I don't know. Once we get past that, though, I do dearly love city games, the manly art by Elliot Gorn is also a favorite of mine. So it's hard to say off the top of my head. Really?
- [40:59]
Paul Knepper
Okay. Yeah. It's not an easy answer.
- [41:03]
Scott Beekman
I'm looking at my bookcase, calculate, what the hell's Elliot?
- [41:05]
Paul Knepper
It's kind of if somebody asked me that, I think I might have a different answer every day. So it's, so what is yours?
- [41:10]
Scott Beekman
What's your favorite today?
- [41:14]
Paul Knepper
I love the Breaks of the Game by David Halberstam about kind of a history of basketball. I'm a basketball guy, so that's kind of at the top of the list. There's another one called Heaven is a Playground about basketball that I love by Rick Tellander. But yeah, I could go on and on.
- [41:33]
Scott Beekman
Sure.
- [41:35]
Paul Knepper
All right. Well, Scott, thank you so much for coming on and talking about the book. I wish you the best of luck with the book.
- [41:41]
Scott Beekman
Thank you. I appreciate the. Appreciate your time, Paul.
- [41:43]
Paul Knepper
All right.
- [41:56]
TV Show Promo Announcer
Abc Wednesday, Shifting Gears is back.
- [41:59]
Scott Beekman
He has arisen.
- [42:00]
TV Show Promo Announcer
Tim Allen and Kat Dennings return in television's number one new comedy what what? With the star studded premiere including Jenna Elfman, Nancy Travis and.
- [42:10]
Scott Beekman
Hey, buddy.
- [42:11]
TV Show Promo Announcer
A big home improvement reunion.
- [42:15]
Scott Beekman
Welcome. Oh boy, that guy's a tool.
- [42:18]
TV Show Promo Announcer
Shifting Gears season premiere Wednesday, 8, 7 Central on ABC and stream on Hulu.