Jacobs was born on March 17, 1880, in New York City, the son of Isaac and Rebecca Jacobs. His parents were Polish Jews who immigrated to the United States in the 1870's; Isaac Jacobs worked as a tailor in a predominantly lower-class neighborhood.
Because of family economic problems, Jacobs left school after the sixth grade and took on a series of odd jobs, beginning with newspaper hawking.
Jacobs' initial foray into the entertainment world came in 1892 when he began to buy tickets for various events and sell them for a profit on the day of the show. His talent for sensing attractions that would be sellouts was unerring, and by 1896 he had accumulated a nest egg of $1, 000, primarily by scalping tickets. During the first decade of the twentieth century he was also a fruit peddler, excursion boat concessionaire, and waiter at Tammany Hall, the home of the city's Democratic party machine. Jacobs' first close connection with boxing came in 1915 when he met Tex Rickard, the legendary prizefight promoter. They quickly became friends, no doubt in part because of Jacobs' intimate knowledge of the intricacies of ticket buying and reselling. The first major financial coup engineered by the Rickard-Jacobs team occurred in 1921 with the Jack Dempsey-Georges Carpentier heavyweight championship fight. Jacobs assisted Rickard in raising money to back the fight, after convincing him that the match would gross nearly $1 million. Jacobs had underestimated; the take from the fight came to almost $1. 8 million - boxing's first million-dollar gate. In the 1920's Jacobs became a silent partner in the operation of Madison Square Garden, New York City's largest indoor sports arena; his chief function at the Garden was ticket selling. In 1933 he decided to become a boxing promoter. Madison Square Garden had drawn much of its support from the Hearst Milk Fund boxing matches, in which 10 percent of the gate went to the favorite charity of Millicent Willson Hearst, wife of the newspaper publisher. Three sports correspondents from the Hearst chain persuaded Jacobs to join them in setting up the Twentieth Century Sporting Club as a competitor to the Garden. In 1935 Jacobs achieved his greatest single promotional success when he signed a contract with Joe Louis, a young heavyweight contender from Detroit. For the next fifteen years, Jacobs was the sole promoter of Louis' bouts, and as the fighter grew in ability and fame, winning the heavyweight championship in 1937, Jacobs became immensely wealthy and powerful in the boxing industry. It is estimated, in fact, that Jacobs grossed $10 million through the promotion of Louis' fights. By August 1937 Jacobs controlled leases for boxing matches in Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds, New York City's major outdoor arenas. In the same month he also leased Madison Square Garden, thereby attaining almost monopolistic control over the boxing business in New York. If one wanted to fight in Gotham, one had to see "Uncle Mike. " During World War II, Jacobs promoted a number of charity fights, most notably the Louis-Billy Conn bout, in which Louis nearly lost his title. Shortly after the war he organized his most successful promotion, a second Louis-Conn fight that grossed more than $1. 9 million. Jacobs suffered a nearly fatal brain hemorrhage in December 1946. Although he remained titular head of his promotional enterprises, his career was essentially finished. In May 1949 he sold his remaining interest in the Twentieth Century Sporting Club. For the next four years he lived alternately on his estate in Rumson, New Jersey, and at his vacation home in Miami Beach, Florida, where he died on January 24, 1953.
Jacobs was on of the most successful and influential boxing promoter of the first half of the twentieth century. Because he controlled promotional rights for the matches of Joe Louis, perhaps the most capable and popular heavyweight champion in boxing history, Jacobs amassed enough capital to control other leading boxers as well. Moreover, his domination of New York City's boxing arenas gave him prime rights in America's largest prizefighting market.
In 1916, Jacobs married Josie Pelo, a worldly-wise girl he had met while working a Coney Island concession stand.
If one wanted to fight in Gotham, one had to see "Uncle Mike."
He was an American boxing promoter, founder of the New York Rangers of the National Hockey League (NHL), and builder of the third incarnation of Madison Square Garden in New York City.
