Mike Jacobs

Michael Strauss Jacobs (March 17, 1880 – January 1953) was a boxing promoter, arguably the most powerful in the sport from the mid-1930s until his effective retirement in 1946.

Jacobs then became a ticket scalper in New York, buying and selling theater, opera, or sports events tickets. He began promoting events himself, including charity balls, bike races, and circuses.

After Rickard's death in 1929, Jacobs then became a promoter of events at the Hippodrome in New York City's Sixth Avenue, and afterward, a promoter for Madison Square Garden – then the dominant New York City-area boxing promotion franchise – staging 320 shows there from 1937 to 1949. With this experience, Jacobs and the three sportswriters founded the Twentieth Century Sporting Club, a rival boxing promotion franchise to that of Madison Square Garden, later in 1933. Meeting at the Frog Club, a colored nightclub, Jacobs and the Louis team spoke and hammered out a three-year exclusive boxing promotion deal.

Louis's first bout in Yankee Stadium grossed $328,655, while his fight with Max Baer grossed over $1 million. After Louis' unexpected loss to Max Schmeling in 1936, Jacobs convinced Joe Gould, manager for heavyweight titleholder James Braddock – contractually obligated to defend his title against Madison Square Garden's preferred opponent Schmeling – to instead defend his crown against young Louis. While a boon for Louis, Gould's price was onerous; Jacobs would have to pay 10% of all future boxing promotion profits (including any future profits from Louis' future bouts) for ten years. Louis defeated Braddock and remained World Heavyweight Champion for an even longer period of time, until 1949. Every fight Louis fought as a champion was promoted by Jacobs.

Leveraging his success with Louis, Jacobs' organization began to assert its control over other divisions. In August 1937, MSG leased Madison Square Garden's main facility as well as the outdoor Madison Square Garden Bowl to the Twentieth Century Sporting Club. In 1938, Jacobs became the sole shareholder of the Twentieth Century Sporting Club, paying off Runyon and forcing the other two partners out. He was posthumously elected to the World Boxing Hall of Fame in 1982, and the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1990.