THE PROMOTER WHO VANISHED
The story of ‘The Tex Rickard of Europe’, who brought British and European promoting to new heights in the 1930s
TODAY, British boxing has Warren and Hearn. Before them we had Duff, Levene, Solomons, Astaire, et al. But before all of them came Jeff Dickson. Dickson was the big noise in European boxing throughout the 1930s. An entrepreneur with the Midas touch, he brought a new level of glitz and glamour to fight shows on this side of the pond. Young, handsome and always immaculately dressed, Jeff looked every bit the big-time boxing promoter and possessed the requisite gift of the gab. One day in 1943, however, he disappeared.
Born in Natchez, Mississippi, on March 30, 1896, Dickson started his working life as a newsreel cameraman in America’s burgeoning cinema business. During World War I, he came to Europe to photograph the conflict for a US government-funded project, enrolled as a US soldier and was injured, afterwards staying in Europe.
He settled in Paris and in his spare time went to fight shows at the city’s two main boxing halls, the Cirque de Paris and the Salle Wagram. Business was on the slide at the Salle Wagram, and after bailing out its promoter with a series of loans, Dickson bought the hall for a mere 5,000 francs. With his natural entrepreneurial flair, he quickly turned things around and was soon promoting at the Cirque de Paris as well.
Not long afterwards, Dickson took over Paris’ largest indoor arena, the Vélodrome d’hiver, and also put on fight shows before vast crowds in cities such as Berlin, Brussels, Rome and Barcelona. Dickson had the connections and oratorical gift to get top Americans to box in Europe, and the nerve and financial muscle to stage lavish shows no one else dared to. He was dubbed “The Tex Rickard of Europe”, after the man who brought boxing its first milliondollar gate.
The BBBOFC tried and failed to keep Dickson out of Britain, repeatedly rejecting his promoter’s licence applications before giving in. He opened a London office in 1929 and became the resident fight promoter at the Royal Albert Hall. In October ’29, he sold out the venue at his first attempt, drawing awed gasps from Londoners when he featured the (for the day) freakishly huge future world heavyweight champ Primo Carnera in an eight-rounder. Carnera, of Italy, was then largely unknown, and Dickson was instrumental in building him into a worldwide star. Memorably, in 1930, he staged a bout between the giant Italian and Spain’s Paulino Uzcudun, drawing 85,000 to a Barcelona bull ring.
As the 1930s progressed, Dickson built a vast sporting empire, replacing the Vélodrome d’hiver with a new venue, the Palais des Sports, which he modelled on New York’s Madison Square Garden. In Britain, he used the mammoth White City Stadium to stage outdoor shows.
So what happened to Dickson? In World War II, he volunteered for the US Air Force as a photographer, and in 1943 the plane he was in was gunned down over Germany. Witnesses saw five parachutes leave the plane and open, but whether Captain Jeff Dickson was among them no one knew. Dickson was never seen again and presumed dead. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2000.