The Cadillac Kid

Oct. 28, 2016

Once, early in his career, an announcer assumed pugilist Ad Wolgast was from Grand Rapids, the city from which his manager hailed. It was an innocent mistake, but it wasn’t the kind of thing Wolgast would let go.

“Wolgast said, ‘I’m not from Grand Rapids. I’m from Cadillac, and I’m proud of it,’ and he punched the announcer in the face,” said Richard Kraemer, docent at the Wexford County Historical Society. “From then on, everyone in boxing knew that he punched out an announcer for saying the wrong town.”

Wolgast’s simmering anger and propensity for violence would propel him to the top of the early 20th-century boxing world and bring him fame and fortune. But after his career ended, Wolgast descended into madness, living out his last decades in California mental institutions.

FROM FAME TO FORGOTTEN

Ad Wolgast’s lack of notoriety today is in stark contrast to a century ago, when he was a household name.

Indeed, even in Cadillac, Wolgast is largely forgotten. The Wikipedia article for the city, for example, lists native musician Luke Winslow- King, According to Jim actor Larry Joe Campbell, and the late congressman U.S. Rep. Guy Vander Jagt among notable people from Cadillac, but Wogast’s name is nowhere to be found. There is, however, a small exhibit about his life in a corner in the basement of the Wexford County Historical Museum. Kraemer said some people around Cadillac remember Wolgast’s name, but the number has dwindled.

“I would say five to 10 percent of people in Cadillac, if you say ‘Ad Wolgast,’ they’ll say, ‘Oh, he’s that boxer,” Kraemer said. “He’s not that well known, but the lore is there, and kids will say, ‘Oh yeah, my dad mentioned him one time.’” There used to be a billboard outside of town that announced Cadillac was the home of the legendary boxer. That billboard was erected in 1964 — the same year Wolgast was inducted into the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame — but it, too, is long gone.

When Wolgast won the world lightweight championship in 1910, it was international news, and thousands of people packed theaters around Cadillac to listen to the fight broadcast from California. After his victory, throngs of people celebrated in the streets, despite blizzard conditions.

The Evening Record of Traverse City reported next day that the region saw the worst winter storm of the season that night, with temperatures of two below zero and enough snow to stop steam engines.

That didn’t stop the celebration. Even though most local boxing fans (at least in Traverse City) believed Wolgast would lose and bet against him, the newspaper reported that everyone was pleased “that a real championship has come to Michigan.”

A LIFE IN THE RING

Wolgast was born on Feb. 8, 1888, one of 12 children who grew up on a struggling farm south of Cadillac. He was the son of a cigar maker, according to the 1900 census.

Opportunities were few, and Wolgast was tough, so he turned to fighting. He began his professional career at age 18.

Wolgast’s first bout took place in Petoskey. He went up against someone who weighed 27 pounds more than he did — a significant disadvantage for the five-footfour-inch fighter who weighed in at 132 pounds on the day he captured the world lightweight title.

But Wolgast won handily, and he went on to fight his way through Grand Rapids to Milwaukee and then on to Los Angeles — at the time, the center of the boxing world since New York had outlawed prizefighting.

Wolgast became known as a boxer who didn’t care about putting up a defense. He could hit hard, and he could take a punch, which made him entertaining to watch.

His foray into fame started when he first fought Oscar Battling Nelson in 1909.

He won the match, which was notable, because Nelson was the reigning lightweight champion of the world. But the win didn’t bring Wolgast the championship because it was only an exhibition, and Nelson dismissed Wolgast, insisting that he only had lost because he’d underestimated the younger man and hadn’t trained.

Wolgast wanted another match — a title match — and it took him seven months to get one.

That bout would be huge. It took place before 18,000 fans in Point Richmond, Calif., on Feb. 22, 1910.

LEGENDARY BRUTALITY

The bout would become famous for its gore and brutality.

The promotors wanted to get around a California law that barred “fights to the finish,” so they limited the fight to 45 rounds, a preposterous length that ensured the fight would end on its own terms.

What ensued was a marathon that lasted two hours and ended with Nelson covered in blood, his eyes swollen shut and his arms only barely able to poke at the air. The referee finally called the fight after 40 rounds — only after Nelson no longer had the strength to protest.

A writer for the Boxing News published earlier this year described the event as “one of the most famous bloodlettings in boxing history.”

Wolgast proclaimed himself the toughest boxer in the world. A few weeks later he returned home to Cadillac a hero. Wolgast stayed on top of the world for a couple more years. He successfully defended his title five times as he continued to fight at a furious pace that left little rest between bouts.

Cadillac historian Cliff Sjogren noted that Ring Magazine ranked the Wolgast-Nelson bout the 19th greatest fight of all time.

The magazine also named another Wolgast bout, in which he took on challenger Joe Rivers on July 4, 1912, the 11th best fight in history.

THE DOUBLE KNOCKOUT

The Rivers-Wolgast fight, known as the “double knockout,” also was one of the most controversial in history.

In the 13th round, with Wolgast covered in blood and losing on points, Rivers was up against the ropes. Rivers landed an uppercut to the champion’s face just as Wolgast landed a low blow to Rivers, and both men collapsed, apparently knocked out at the same moment.

A stunned crowd watched as the referee — who had been personally selected by Wol gast— picked Wolgast off of Rivers, counted Rivers out, and declared Wolgast the victor. A firestorm ensued. The decision would be a matter of controversy for years.

Just months laster, Wolgast would lose his championship title under the same circumstance that brought him victory against Rivers; he was called on a foul for a belowthe-belt punch in a fight against Willie Ritchie, costing him the title.

Wolgast’s record was far better in the years before he got the title than it was in the years after he lost it; his final career record was 60-13-17, with most of those wins coming before he lost of the championship and most of the losses and draws coming after.

By 1916, his career had more or less ended. Soon after, he was declared insane and committed to an asylum. Although he returned to the ring several times after being committed, these fights were embarrassing spectacles. The last one, in 1920, he assured fans that he would fight like a much younger man — on an account of a recent surgery he’d claimed to have undergone: the surgical implantation of goat glands into his testicles (a fad procedure of the time carried out by charlatan doctors who promised to reinvigorate men with youth).

The San Diego Evening Tribune quipped, after he badly lost that fight: “He refused to comment at the end of the bout whether he still favours goat glands.”

INSTITUTIONALIZED LIFE

Wolgast paid the price for the punishment he put himself through in the ring.

“The reason that Ad Wolgast had to retire was not that he couldn’t fight anymore, but that he couldn’t stop fighting,” Kraemer said.

Wolgast, it seems, picked fights with everyone after his retirement from boxing. It was as if the distinction between the ring and real life had vanished altogether.

“He was picking bloody fights with patrons where he was setting up billiard games.

He would pick fights with every single woman that he took in,” Kraemer said. “And he would pick fights with the grocer, and he would pick fights with his family. He was just fighting, and he couldn’t stop fighting. So he went into a mental institution.”

After 1920, a fight promoter took pity on Wolgast and took care of him, letting him train every day for a nonexistent rematch with Nelson, his nemesis.

In 1925, a news item titled “Deposed King” shows an older Wolgast racking pool balls and explained that the former boxer now worked at a California pool hall. That was a humble place for someone who, just a decade before, had been worth $1 million (which, in 1913, was worth about $24 million in today’s dollars).

Wolgast was committed permanently to mental institutions in 1927, and he remained institutionalized until his death in 1955 at age 67.

His time in asylums didn’t offer Wolgast freedom from his fighting life. When he was 61, he suffered such a beating at the hands of two orderlies who wanted to take on the champ that he was left permanently bedridden.

The punishing length of his boxing matches, combined with the frequency with which he fought, clearly had an impact on Wolgast’s mental health. Wolgast almost certainly suffered from CTE, or Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, a progressive degenerative disease of the brain found in people with a history of repetitive brain trauma.

STALLONE COMES TO TOWN

Wolgast’s life is the stuff of a Hollywood movie, and there has been interest, but so far no film has been made.

Wolgast, in the short time between his boxing career and permanent move into mental institutions, tried to make movies himself; he acted in a couple of silent films. He played a fighter in the 1923 film Some Punches and Judy and in the 1926 film The Prince of Broadway. Sjogren said Wolgast was able to get acting work in Hollywood even as his life was coming apart because he was such a good looking man.

But handsome face notwithstanding, his film career didn’t work out.

“He got into Hollywood about six months after everyone else got into Hollywood,” Kraemer said. “There was a flood of talent going to Hollywood. He got there — he got in, made a couple movies — but he wasn’t right for excelling in the Hollywood scene.”

Frank Stallone, brother of Sylvester Stallone, visited Cadillac in 2000 to research a movie about Wolgast. The film has not been made.

Kraemer found out about Stallone’s visit through a strange coincidence. When Kraemer started working at the museum three years ago after he and his wife moved to Cadillac from Ludington, he was going through the Wolgast material and found a museum sign-in sheet that he and his wife had signed years earlier. He wondered why the sheet was saved.

“What’s this attendance sheet doing in a file about our boxer? And my name was on it, my wife’s name. What are our names doing on this attendance sheet?” Kraemer said.

“I looked at it, and Frank Stallone had signed in just before we did. He was here researching a movie on Ad Wolgast … That’s why they saved that one attendance sheet.”

KID CADILLAC

There’s no evidence that Wolgast visited Cadillac later in life. His last visit may have been in early 1916, when he had a fight in Milwaukee. He tended to visit when he was close to home. His last fights took place out west.

Sjogren said Wolgast was marked by a love of his hometown, even if he stopped visiting.

“When he was in Milwaukee, they called him The Michigan Wildcat, and he wanted to be called The Cadillac Kid,” Sjogren said. “He liked his hometown.”

Sjogren thinks it’s strange there isn’t a better commemoration of Wolgast in Cadillac. “There was an initiative some time ago to create a statue,” he said, around the time Sjogren moved back to Cadillac in 2001. “People would ask me about it, and I’d say I think we should do that. You know, it’s not every small community in the country that has a world boxing champion. And he was a special one.”