I’ll just stick the link to that here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Frederick_Bettinson#Driscoll_v_Moran

Doyle had a point. The illegal prizefighting of the early 19th century was hard to suppress, and Queensberry Rules fighting was supposed to be a civilized alternative.

There are underground fights in New York City today (with gloves)and various illegal bareknuckle fights have been going on for years.

To bolster her argument that Judge John Sirica had a mob-connected background, Renata Adler pointed out that Sirica had been a boxer as a young man, and not only was that the most corrupt, mob-owned business in America, it was actually illegal while he was doing it:

“As for the boxers themselves, in Washington, D.C., as it happens, all professional boxing was illegal–not just in 1921, when Sirica began, but throughout the years he was boxing there–until 1934, when Congress finally legalized it in the District. Professional boxing in Washington, in other words, was a violation of the criminal statute. That Sirica knew this is beyond doubt. All the years he boxed professionally in the District before 1934 he used, although he does not mention this either, fictitious names. It is, of course, possible to be a criminal without ties to organized crime–a pickpocket, say, or a burglar. Illegal boxing, however, requires payoffs….”

Letting the point about Sirica slide, I repeat, Doyle was not kidding about the possibility of boxing continuing to exist when banned. It had happened before him, it would happen after him, and it’s happening today.

I haven’t read Rodney Stone.

I can’t remember if I mentioned on this site the story I did read recently, The Master of Croxley or The Croxley Master.

Doyle’s love of boxing certainly came through in it, from his details of the fight from the perspective of one of the combatants, to his ringside perspective, to his recounting of the nuances of boxing as a trade and a business and a social network.

I had had no real interest in the topic and was just cruising through Doyle stories on Project Gutenberg. But I found that story far more engaging than I expected I would.