Legendary Champions

I purchased this excellent documentary from a video store in the 1980s. My version is listed as being 101 minutes. This documentary in part formed the basis of my intense interest in old-school boxing, which led to my writing several biographies of fighters, from John L. Sullivan to Jack Johnson. For that, I owe it a debt of gratitude.

This documentary had guys like Jim Jacobs and Bill Cayton behind it. They owned massive amounts of archival footage, and nice sprinklings from their collection are included throughout. Jacobs was a boxing historian and fight film collector. He and Cayton eventually co-managed a man by the name of Mike Tyson.

As a youth, it was so amazing for me to discover that history actually was captured on film, and I could see it and form my own opinions. The footage is excellent, narration and writing top notch, and I enjoyed the theme music. I can still hear it in my head to this day.

My interest in this video was to watch the old boxers in action. There are lots of extra scenes that show the boxers outside the ring. There are some films included that have never been shown elsewhere or that are the only ones of their kind in existence. A couple of the early boxers, John L. Sullivan for example, are shown here in the only film ever taken of them. The film of the Dempsey-Willard fight is very violent. The history of Jack Johnson out of the ring is quite interesting. The narrator incorrectly states that Jack Johnson is seen picking a defeated boxer's teeth out of one of his gloves. That's at the end of pretty bloody fight. The attire worn by some of the early boxers is much more revealing than what modern-day boxers use, and to the other extreme, tights were even worn by some boxers.

I bought a VHS tape of this film at a library sale in the early 1990s. I had repeatedly checked the video out when it was in circulation, so I was thrilled to see that it was available for purchase. It covers the early years of professional boxing in America, the period from 1882 to 1929. I was first attracted to this documentary by the name of its writer/director: Harry Chapin, who is one of my favorite singers from the 1970s. This is Chapin's only directorial effort, and it was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Documentary. The boxing footage and the narration (spoken by Norman Rose) are so entertaining, I never tire of watching this film. Tom Chapin's musical score is fun, too, even if his theme song is rather dated. The oddest thing about the print that I bought from that library is that it runs 101 minutes. I've come across a couple of other VHS tapes of this film over the years, and they were both 77 minutes in length, as both the IMDb and Amazon have listed as the running time. . .I'm not sure why there is such a disparity in the running times of "The Legendary Champions," but I strongly recommend seeking out the longer version of this excellent documentary. It's just a shame that Chapin never directed a followup.