At the same time a gambler and saloonkeeper named Rickard was coming to the fore as a boxing promoter in the first decade of the 20th century, a pug by the same name carved his own niche as, in the matchless words of famous referee George Siler, ?a heavyweight that did not know as much about the game as a hog knows about Sunday.?
Contrary to several stories about him, ?Big Bill? Rickard?no relation to Tex?didn?t lose every fight he had; but his deficiencies in the ring were so pronounced that for his biggest bouts Rickard trained behind closed doors to keep them from premature exposure.
Reportedly born in Canada in 1885 and raised on a farm in Minnesota, Big Bill may have played football for the University of Minnesota before he got a job at the Cudahy meat packing plant at Sioux City, Iowa, at the turn of the new century. The six-foot, 200-pound Rickard first got his name in the Sioux City Journal for a preliminary bout he won, and then after he almost severed a thumb with a skinning knife at work.
In September 1903 he was talked into a scheduled 15-round match with veteran palooka George Lawler, who?d been Bob Fitzsimmons? sparring partner and was similar fodder for most of the heavyweights he faced in competition. But Lawler pole-axed the novice in the fourth round, and Rickard returned to anonymity until the Sioux City Journal breathlessly reported in February ?05 that he had ?blossomed out as a full-fledged professional fighter? in Chicago and was preparing to meet Peter Maher. That knockout by Lawler was now called a 20-round draw, and according to the article no less than Jim Jeffries had his eye on Big Bill as a future challenger for his heavyweight title.
All that gushed from the fertile imagination of Rickard?s mentor, Dick Green, a lightweight boxer whose promotional instincts almost rivaled those of the other Rickard. The Maher fight never happened because Green had a bigger brainstorm?to have Big Bill fight Sam Berger, the 1904 Olympic heavyweight champion, for the putative amateur heavyweight championship of the USA.
This entailed dummying up about Rickard?s smattering of pro bouts, proclaiming him the undefeated simon-pure heavyweight champ of the Midwest, and laying it on thick about all the Chicago sports pegging Big Bill a sure bet to knock off Jeffries within a year?s time. Most importantly, it depended on keeping Rickard mostly out of sight until the four-round match in San Francisco on March 15, 1905.
The overflow crowd at Woodward?s Pavilion (including future heavyweight champions Marvin Hart and Jack Johnson, whose 20-round bout two weeks later went to the former by decision) was awed by the statuesque Easterner who had 20 pounds on the local champion. Then the bell rang to start the fight.
?When (Rickard) attempted to hit Berger,? reported the San Francisco Call, ?his effort resembled that of an old woman driving out flies with a towel.?
Berger hit Big Bill twice. The first punch knocked him down, the second one knocked him out after one minute and 23 seconds. The Oakland Tribune was unwittingly spot-on with the comment that Rickard ?acted throughout his short stay in the ring like a pork packer whose experience had been gleaned in fighting hogs, not boxers.?
For a couple years Rickard?s only reported public ring appearances were exhibition matches with Dick Green in the Midwest. ?He has never lost hope,? said the Sioux City Times, ?and Green ? believes he still is good.?
That belief and their partnership ended in early ?09 after Green took Big Bill to Europe, put him in a Paris ring with future Hall of Famer Sam McVea, and carried him out less than a minute later.
On November 14, 1910, a story in the Grand Forks Herald introduced North Dakota?s own Great White Hope: ?Bill Rickard of Marmath, North Dakota, believes that he is capable of giving Jack Johnson an interesting battle in the ring, and those who have watched him work are enthusiastic regarding his chances of claiming the privilege to determine his ability with the colored fighter.? But after doing no better than successive 10-round draws with journeyman Ben Tremble, Big Bill pulled up stakes again.
In 1912 he lived in Vancouver, British Columbia, and knockouts of Pete Muldoon and Lee Manson?both middleweights?convinced Rickard he was ready for another big time match. Tommy Burns lived in Calgary. He had fought just once since Jack Johnson deposed him as world heavyweight champion in 1908. Big Bill challenged him to a match for the Canadian title, and said after he beat Burns he would ?go right after the world?s championship.? He modestly debunked a report that he had once boxed a draw with Sam Langford, but didn?t go so far as to correct newspaper stories stating that in his whole illustrious career Rickard had lost just once, on a disqualification to Al Withers (a/k/a ?Tennessee Jack Johnson,? whose available record of 0-5-2 shows only a 1911 draw with Rickard).
For all that, three days before the August 8 fight with Burns at Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, the local Star-Phoenix newspaper fretted that ?nobody knows what (Rickard) is capable of doing. He does not show up very promisingly in his workouts ? but if it is true that he is indulging in secret workouts??uh-oh??the general public can have no idea as to his formidableness.?
He lasted six rounds. The chief of police ordered the fight stopped after Big Bill went down for the third time. Four years older, 20 pounds lighter and a head shorter, ex-champion Burns ?did not have to extend himself once, and was continually chasing his opponent around the ring,? said the Calgary Herald. ?Rickard was never in it for a minute, and turned out to be, instead of a boxer, a fat, juicy lemon.?
That was finally it for 27-year-old Big Bill Rickard in the ring. But unlike too many of his ilk he didn?t end up on boxing?s ash heap, because what he lacked in knowledge of the fight game he made up for in other areas.
Dick Green, Rickard?s first manager, died in June of 1928. Said the report of it in the Sioux City Journal:
?Green?s death brings to mind an interesting chapter in the life of Big Bill Rickard. Rickard took a course in medicine in an American college, but success did not come to him in the manner he thought it should. To overcome this Rickard took a two-year post-graduate course in Italy in what is said to be the world?s oldest medical school, with the result that he now is credited with being one of the leading physicians in Chicago.?
