Fight Fan Digs Into the Past, Emerges as the . . . : Graveyard Detective of Boxing

Dave Coapman is a boxing fan, but you’ve probably never heard of most of his favorite boxers. They have one thing in common, though.

They’re all in cemeteries.

“I can’t explain it,” Coapman said the other day, walking past rows of headstones at East Los Angeles’ Calvary Cemetery.

“I enjoy reading about turn-of-the-century boxers. I spend a lot of evenings at the Glendale public library, reading microfilm copies of L.A. Times sports sections of the 1895-1915 period, and looking for boxers’ obituaries.

“I have very little interest in the contemporary boxing scene. Oh, I’ll watch a TV fight now and then. But it’s the old-time guys I’m most interested in.”

Dave Coapman is boxing’s graveyard detective. He never boxed himself, and he looks as if he never would have made weight. He also has flat feet and wears glasses. And he has spent more time in front of library microfilm machines than he has in boxing gyms.

On a recent morning, Coapman was looking for the resting places of two of his old favorites, Joe Rivers and Solly Smith. Rivers fought numerous times for the lightweight championship about 70 years ago, but he is best remembered by historians for his famed “double knockout” fight of 1912 with Ad Wolgast.

Smith? He was Los Angeles’ first world boxing champion. Or was he?

Coapman and a friend walked to an older Italian-Irish section of the cemetery. Craggy, granite monuments with chiseled names such as Sullivan, Patritti, Ferrero, Kelly and O’Donoghue rose from the green grass like ponderous old sentinels, guarding old hopes, old dreams.

And then, there it was, a simple, flat headstone that read:

First Los Angeles Born

World Boxing Champion

Solly Smith

1871-1933

“I learned about 1980 that Solly was in an unmarked grave here,” Coapman said. “It seemed a shame--the first L.A.-born fighter to win a world title, in an unmarked grave. He was the world featherweight champion in 1897-1898.

“I contacted Bill Schutte, a librarian at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater. He’s a life-long boxing historian. In fact, he’s probably the No. 1 authority on the history of boxing in the world today. He has something like 10,000 photographs of old boxers, and sells them by mail order.

“He put 25 cents from every picture he sold into an account for a headstone for Solly. When we had $280, in 1981, we got this one.”

Coapman, a purchasing manager for the USC Medical Center, has a notebook filled with old clippings and notes on Smith’s boxing career, gleaned from stories in The Times, his own interviews with old-timers and other sources. But Coapman was jolted one night at the Glendale library while reading a 1912 Times story about Smith.

“The story had him living in Culver City and working as a roofer in 1912, which I knew,” Coapman said. “Then the writer quoted him as saying he was born ‘somewhere near San Bernardino, in 1871.’ That shocked me, because everything I had on Solly had him born in L.A.

“For years, people referred to him as the first L.A.-born champion. The Ring record book has him born in L.A. Schutte has Solly’s own scrapbooks, and he verifies the 1871 birth date, but not the place.”

It was an added twist for boxing’s graveyard detective, and Coapman, who thought he had Smith’s life pretty much figured out until that night in the Glendale library, is back in his sleuth mode.

“Solly, who was born Solomon Garcia Smith, lived at 9320 Lucerne, Culver City, when he died, and his death certificate had him working as a phone installer shortly before he died,” Coapman said. “I’ve got an archivist at General Telephone working on that for me, hoping he can come up with a death or birth certificate or some kind of lead. I’ve checked the Mormon library in West L.A., but I struck out there.

“It’s a tough hunt--Solly had no children. But I’ll keep looking.”

After Coapman learns whether Solly Smith really was the first L.A.-born champion, he’ll get back to where he was before that night in the Glendale library. He will resume his search for the graves of a couple of other Southland fighters, Rudy Unholz and Fireman Jim Flynn.

Both, he believes, are buried in Calvary, but he can’t find their graves. Unholz died in Glendale in 1916, Flynn in Los Angeles in 1935.

“Rudy Unholz was a terrific bantamweight-lightweight, from 1903 to 1912,” Coapman said. “He was defeated by Joe Gans for the lightweight championship in 1908. Later, I believe, he became one of the Keystone Cops. I’m almost certain he’s buried here (in Calvary), but I can’t find his headstone.

“He was born in Germany, in 1881, and his headstone might have his name with a Germanized spelling. I visited Rudy’s granddaughter in Glendale about 10 years ago, and she seemed certain he was buried here, but she’d never seen his grave.”

Fireman Jim Flynn had his big chance in 1912. He fought Jack Johnson for the heavyweight championship, but Johnson beat him badly.

Flynn is best known to boxing historians as the only man who ever knocked out Jack Dempsey. It happened in the first round, according to the Ring record book, on Feb. 13, 1917, at Murray, Utah. Dempsey avenged the defeat on Jan. 24, 1918, with a one-round knockout of his own, at Fort Sheridan, Wyo.

Coapman has prowled rows of Calvary headstones, and through the cemetery office files, looking for a Flynn or a Chiariglione, or a Haymes, names Flynn is known to have used. It’s a tough hunt. Calvary has tens of thousands of graves.

“I’m pretty sure Flynn is buried here,” Coapman said. “But the trail has gone cold on me. I know he was running a cafe in L.A. at Third and Main streets shortly before he died, in 1935. His obituary in The Times said he was to be buried at Calvary. But I can’t find a headstone for him under Flynn or under his real name, Andrew Chiariglione.”

Flynn’s big day in the headlines was July 4, 1912. He fought Johnson in Las Vegas, N.M. Coincidentally, it was the same day as the Rivers-Wolgast fight, in Vernon.

Flynn, according to reporters, tried to beat Johnson with his head. The 5-foot 9-inch, 190-pound Flynn grappled with the 6-1, 205-pound Johnson in clinches and appeared to ringsiders as if he was trying to butt Johnson.

Flynn, warned repeatedly by the referee for butting, finally wound up the loser when 12 New Mexico state policemen climbed into the ring, shunted the referee aside and declared Johnson the winner.

If you were a sports fan in Los Angeles on July 4, 1912, you were happy if you had a ticket to the Joe Rivers-Ad Wolgast lightweight title fight at Vernon Stadium. After months of waiting, it was showdown time for Rivers, the cunning, stand-up boxer, and Wolgast, the relentless, charging slugger.

For 13 rounds, it was all the capacity crowd of 11,000 had hoped for. Exchanges were ferocious and frequent, the pace furious. Neither fighter gave ground.

Then suddenly, in the 13th round, as both men were going at it toe to toe, both boxers were down. Here’s how The Times’ Owen R. Bird described one of boxing’s most bizarre finishes:

The pace had been ferocious from the opening bell and toward the end of the 13th the fury was redoubled.

Then this thing happened. Both fighters suddenly lay writhing on the floor together, almost in a heap.

The referee (Jack Welch) seemed to be trying to count out Rivers, and help Ad Wolgast to his feet in a confused sort of way. Rivers had apparently been fouled, but after a moment’s hesitation, the referee began to count over him.

It took Jack Welch eight seconds to count out Rivers, after he had been fouled, and render a decision, besides helping the fallen champion to his feet. The gong rang as he had finished the downward stroke of the five count.

As for the fight--there never was a better one in the Vernon arena.

The Associated Press reporter said that the crowd poured into the ring at the confusing finish, that referee Welch designated Wolgast the winner, then escaped into the crowd, unnoticed.

Rivers maintained for the rest of his life that he had hit Wolgast a legal blow in the stomach at the instant that Wolgast had hit him low.

In those days, Rivers nearly had it all. He was 20 that day in 1912. Had he won, he would have been boxing’s youngest champion to that date.

He never won a title but fought five lightweight champions, had more than 200 fights and earned roughly $230,000 in his career from 1908 through 1925.

In 1915, he paid $7,500 for a Simplex touring car, with J.R. inscribed on the doors. He paid $3,000 for a diamond ring. He owned 46 suits. He built a two-story house for his mother, at 709 Solano Ave.

In those days in Los Angeles, just about everyone knew who Joe Rivers was.

But as the decades rolled by, the gloss faded from Rivers’ story.

In 1955, Times sportswriter Frank Finch found 63-year-old Joe Rivers, living in a small, windowless hotel room at 327 1/2 W. Second St. An unshaded light bulb dangled by a cord from the ceiling. Finch looked up Rivers after having seen a news item that had Rivers being hit by a car while crossing the street at 11th and Flower.

Down on his luck? Not strong enough. The report had it that Rivers, who had suffered a broken ankle, was on his way to apply for unemployment compensation. And he was issued a ticket for jaywalking.

Rivers reminisced with Finch about the glory days, and Finch asked him where the money had gone.

“Who knows?” Rivers said. “I spent it. I was a kid. Thought I’d be makin’ it all my life. Spent it like a drunken sailor.”

He told Finch his real name was Jose Ybarra and that many of his fans incorrectly assumed for years that he was of Mexican descent. “The Lethal Latin,” and “the Marvelous Mexican,” they called him. But he was Spanish-Indian, and fourth generation Californian at that.

Joe Rivers was born on North Broadway, near Elysian Park. His father, who spoke four languages, was an educated man who taught music and played the violin at the community dances at Los Angeles’ old Pico Union.

After his last pro fight in 1925, Rivers worked in silent films for a few years. During World War II, he worked in West Coast shipyards. But after the war, his old friends lost track of him . . . until 1955, when he was hit by a car.

“I guess I had a million friends in my time,” he told Finch.

“Most of them are dead now. Or like old Ad Wolgast, lost their marbles. Or old Sam Langford--he was a good old boy, wouldn’t hurt a fly. Used to box with him even though he was twice my size. Sam’s blind and broke, somewhere.

“A million friends. Gone now, most of them. The others--they just don’t seem to drop around much anymore.”

Rivers died on June 25, 1957, two years after his old protagonist, Wolgast, had died in a state mental hospital.

Rivers lies today in an open, breezy, area of Calvary Cemetery, where you can hear the hum of cars on Whittier Boulevard, beyond a wall. The wind, blowing through nearby leafy trees, makes a soft, pleasant sound, and makes you want to linger. The simple, flat granite headstone reads:

JOSEPH Y. RIVERS

1892-1957

One of Boxing Greats