Petra Browne

3 weeks ago | thebaffler.com | Petra Browne |Sean Nam |Declan Ryan

Sham prizefighting goes by many names these days—crossover boxing, celebrity boxing, influencer boxing—but it’s been around a long time. In the 1940s, a retired Jack Dempsey, folk hero of the Roaring Twenties, struck a path on the comeback trail by taking on a string of wrestlers. In 1975, George Foreman traveled to Toronto to flatten five tomato cans, one after the other, in a single night, in a bid to restore his confidence after Muhammad Ali had shattered it in Zaire.