Time Tunnel: The Real McCoy

by B. R. Bearden

It is ironic that the fighter for whom the phrase "The Real McCoy" was coined should have been such a dishonest shyster par excellence. Charles "Kid" McCoy mastered every trick in the book to gain an advantage in a fight, then went out and invented more of his own. Even his ring name was fabricated.

Born October 13th, 1872 under the name Norman Selby, he was fighting as a pro by age 17, using the name Kid McCoy. He would fight from welterweight to heavyweight, employing an array of slight-of-hand tricks that would have made Houdini proud. He invented a punch called the "corkscrew" which involved a sudden twist at the point of impact, designed to tear the skin of the opponent. (Almost 70 years later Muhammed Ali would employ a similar technique and naively claim he invented it)

For a time McCoy served as a sparring partner for the welterweight champion Tommy Ryan, who reportedly treated him with little respect. Hall of Famer Ryan was a master boxer who taught Jim Jeffries to fight from a crouch to beat heavyweight champion Bob Fitzsimmons. He had taken the welterweight crown from Mysterious Billy Smith in 1894 and defended it successfully against Jack Dempsey, The Nonpareil, and held Smith to a NC 18 rounder in a return match.

When McCoy came calling for a match with his former employer, he put on a masterful performance, pretending to be desperate for a match but woefully out of shape. It is said he even claimed to be dying of consumption (tuberculosis). Humble and ingratiating, he asked Ryan to take it easy on him, as he was just fighting for the loser's purse. Tommy agreed to the match, but only as a non-title bout. That was fine with McCoy, who assured him he wasn't a threat for the title anyway. When Ryan learned that McCoy was barely training, he didn't put much effort into conditioning himself. After all, he'd had little trouble with McCoy as a sparring partner.

But there's a danger in fighting former sparring partners, for while the champion is showing all his stuff in training, the sparring partner is often emulating the style of the upcoming opponent rather than his own natural style. This danger was compounded by the deceitful McCoy, who was secretly training very hard for the fight.

They met March 2nd, 1896 in Maspeth, New York, and McCoy entered the ring as if barely able to stand. He had the look of the already-beaten through the introductions and the customary touching of the gloves. For the first three rounds McCoy kept up his charade and Ryan put no real pressure on the "dying" man. Then the Kid suddenly "revived".

McCoy came after Ryan with a vengeance. Too late the champion realized he'd been taken, and McCoy was in excellent condition. All he could do was try to ride out the storm. The Kid gave him a rough time of it, beating him around the ring and never letting up on the less-than-fit champ. Whatever frustrations McCoy had from his sparring sessions with Tommy, he took them out that night. It's a measure of how good Ryan was that he lasted for most of 15 rounds, but in the 15th McCoy knocked out the exhausted champion. He didn't get the title, since it was a non-title match, but he didn't care. In fact, it's probable McCoy didn't want the welterweight title anyway.

He certainly didn't want the middleweight title, which he gained in 1897 by knocking out Dan Creedon in an elimination fight. The middleweight championship had been vacated by Bob Fitzsimmons after only one defense as he moved up to seek the heavyweight crown. McCoy treated it with even more disdain, defending it not a single time but dropping it to move up to heavyweight himself. There was no light heavyweight title in those early days so the ambitious middleweight stepped right up to heavyweight.

McCoy was KO'd by tough-as-nails Sailor Tom Sharkey in 1899, then fought the great Joe Choynski twice that same year, winning the first via decision in 20 rounds and taking a draw in the second fight. He would meet Choynski once more, knocking him out in 4 rounds. It was a mark of how good McCoy was when Choynski knocked out Jack Johnson in the 3rd round only a year after the third fight with the Kid.

McCoy was an excellent fighter by all accounts, Jim Corbett calling him, "a genius of scientific fighting", yet he seemed to delight in trickery as much as skill.

He pulled so many scams that it's hard now to judge which tales are true, but all reflect the devious nature of McCoy. He would put out rumors that he wasn't training for a fight, he was sick, he had been injured in sparring. Once he sent word ahead when fighting outside the US that it wasn't even Kid McCoy who was coming to fight, but a much lesser fighter who would be using the Kid's name. Before one fight, he agreed to meet with some reporters at the house where he was staying. Before they arrived, the Kid put talcum powder on his face to appear paler than he was, dampened his forehead as if in a fever, and met them wrapped in a bath robe. He assured them the flu or fever he had would be gone by the time of the fight, three days hence, and begged them not to let it out that he was sick. Of course, knowing the press, he knew his opponent and the odds makers would soon learn of his "condition". He showed up for the fight pale and worn looking, shivering in his robe, and the odds shifted even more against him. For a few rounds he fought just enough to stay in the contest until an accomplice reported the ever changing odds had reached the point the Kid sought and their bets had been placed. At the bell, a new McCoy emerged, suddenly fast and lethal, to batter his surprised foe around the ring. He won the fight, collected largely on the bets, and walked away smiling at all the suckers.

Somewhere during this career of artful con combined with superb boxing the phrase "the Real McCoy" came into existence. There are several explanations, as befits anything told about the Kid, but the most likely comes from his 1899 fight with Joe Choynski in San Francisco. A few days earlier another fighter named Peter McCoy had fought a bout. When Kid McCoy beat Joe, to avoid any confusion, the newspaper headline read, "Choynski is Beaten by the Real McCoy".

Other stories have it that he was in a bar with a girl when a man started to hit on her. The Kid warned him, "I'm Kid McCoy, you better back away" or something similar. The man said, "Sure you are, and I'm John L. Sullivan". When he woke up on the floor, the bogus John L. remarked, "That must have been the real McCoy".

In other versions, it's the newspapers wondering what trick McCoy will use in an upcoming fight and if the "real" McCoy will show up to make a straight up fight of it.

Still another tale has it that when he fought Jim Corbett, the fight was so one-sided against him, ending in a 5th round knockout, that shouts of "fix!" rang out and people wondered if it was "the real McCoy" that Gentleman Jim had fought. Corbett didn't help matters when he left for Europe right after the fight. Sports enthusiast Theodore Roosevelt finally had to declare the fight was not fixed and assert it really was McCoy who had fought Corbett to still the outcry.

Each story may be true and the only distinction of which helped coin the phrase no more than a matter of chronology.

When the new light heavyweight division was created in 1903 McCoy fought Jack Root for the title but lost over 10 rounds. He was past his prime, with 90+ fights behind him (perhaps as many as 200, most unrecorded). He fought infrequently after that, only 15 fights over the next 13 years.

His life beyond boxing was as shifty as his ring-work. He married at least 8 times, owned a tavern and gym, starred in a few movies, and spent some time as a private detective.

In 1924 he was convicted of manslaughter in the shooting death of Theresa Mors, a married woman with whom McCoy was living, and sentenced to 24 years in prison. It is said he avoided the electric chair because of the most bizarre performance he put on in court trying to convince the jury the woman committed suicide, despite the fact he shot 3 other people during his rampage. He was released after 7 years and 3 years later, in 1940, committed suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills. One can only wonder what tale he had for St. Peter when he arrived outside the Pearly Gates.