"The Only Thing I Can Do Is to Fight" (Paperback)

"The only thing I can do is to fight." The real story of the biggest little man who ever lived Chicago's World Champion Jimmy Barry & Captain James Dalton Patrick J. "Reddy" Gallager, and Arthur Majesty Jimmy Barry came from Chicago's "Little Hell" where a man fought at least once a week to have a good name. In 1887 at sixteen Jimmy and his brother Michael were two of seven toughs arrested for complicity in the assault on a Chicago police officer. Jimmy, helped by Mike McGurn family and the great lightweight Harry Gilmore, straightened himself out. Ten years later Jimmy was the undefeated bantamweight champion of the world. In 1881 Captain James Dalton was the first Chicago man to meet John L. Sullivan in the ring. Dalton had a long fighting career, meeting many top heavyweights of his day. He was a tug boat captain on the Chicago River and operated two West Side saloons before being killed by a car in 1932. Barry and Dalton are buried within fifty yards of one another in Evanston's Calvary Cemetery. Reddy Gallagher was a top middleweight who met Dempsey in Cleveland and John Herget in San Francisco. After a successful boxing career Reddy became a successful businessman, sporting editor for the Denver Post and died as the wealthiest prize fighter of his day. Five Catholic bishops are buried with Gallager. Arthur Majesty is virtually unknown. From Toledo, Ohio he moved to Peoria and then Bloomington, Illinois. Majesty taught boxing, attended Illinois Wesleyan University and worked for a Bloomington newspaper. He fought the great Tommy Warren five times - once before the largest crowd to date to watch a boxing match in Chicago as the final preliminary match before Sullivan met the "Irish Lad" Jack Burke. Majesty died fighting under an assumed name in Nelsonville, Ohio in 1891. The stories of these men are told here and provide insight into the history of prizefighting at the end of the nineteenth century.