By Geno McGahee
The 1920s was an outlaw sort of time for the sport of boxing with corruption holding back many fighters, including Ace Hudkins, a fighter that retired with a record of 64-16-12, 25 KO’s. In Ace Hudkins: Boxing With The Nebraska Wildcat, a great book by Kristine Sader, we get a look back at the career and life of Hudkins with a great overview of the time itself through a collection of news clippings, comics, and photographs from that time. It is quite impressive and effective to include these elements, making this a different reading experience than a lot of the other boxing related books I’ve read
There were a lot of interesting stories in this including one about Hudkins coming to the ring for a title fight and then waiting and waiting, only to have the champion never make it over a financial dispute. This led to a riot where people were killed. The stock market crash of 1929 would hit and Ace would run into another similar situation with another opponent no-showing…for at least an hour, forcing him to postpone the fight for 15 minutes, but bringing up similar feelings of the night of the riot.
When you look where Hudkins came from, a small town in Nebraska, and then consider where he went from there, fighting for the middleweight title in Los Angeles and Chicago, it shows what ambition this fighter had as he fought his way onto the world stage and fought a career that never found him knocked out. His only stoppage loss was due to a cut. He had never been knocked out and he fought some vicious punchers of the time.
Hudkins dealt with the mob influence as well, costing him the world title in a losing effort against Mickey Walker, a mafia-owned fighter that was giving a gift decision. Despite this, there is this sense that the “Nebraska Wildcat” took it all in stride and found some amusement in it. One of the best parts of this book is getting to know Hudkins and I walked away with that.
Kristine Sader accomplished a great deal here, compiling clippings, photos, and other elements, to introduce the reader to her uncle, the fighter and the man. I highly recommend Ace Hudkins: Boxing With The Nebraska Wildcat. It was constructed very well and proved to be a very interesting read.
