William A. Muldoon was an American wrestling champion and boxing trainer. Also William Muldoon was a powerful athlete in his own right, and later became the head of the first modern boxing commission.
Background
William Muldoon was born on May 25, 1852, at Caneadea, New York, the fourth son and seventh child of Patrick Muldoon and Maria Donohue.
He developed in early youth a powerful and beautiful body, a sculptor's ideal, had a taste for athletics, and acquired neighborhood fame as a wrestler in rustic style.
Career
When Muldoon was about eighteen he drifted to New York City, where he worked at all sorts of jobs - as "bouncer" in cheap restaurants and dance halls, as a common laborer, longshoreman, and cart driver. Meeting a longshoreman one day with a black eye the youth learned from him that he had received it in a boxing bout at a so-called club on the lower East Side. Muldoon persuaded the match-maker of the resort to let him meet there a wrestler of local renown and won, reports as to his reward ranging between three and fifteen dollars. Thus began his professional career.
Muldoon now trained earnestly, had numerous other matches, won most of them, and acquired a following. In 1876 he joined the New York police force, where he served six years. He organized the Police Athletic Association, and in addition to many impromptu bouts, beat the department champion, John Gaffney, in a formal match.
In 1878 Muldoon won over Edwin Bibby, a noted English wrestler, and a few years later, after leaving the police force for an athletic career, he battled Clarence Whistler, an equally famous American wrestler, for eight hours without obtaining a decision. When Muldoon defeated Whistler in two other matches, he claimed the American championship. He won fame by evading the vicious strangle-hold of Evan ("Strangler") Lewis in a two-hour draw.
In 1882 - 1883 Muldoon appeared briefly on the stage as the wrestler Charles in As You Like It, with Helena Modjeska and Maurice Barrymore. He managed a troupe of wrestlers for several years, taking it on long tours of the country, and even to Japan. With this troupe he is said to have introduced the so-called Graeco-Roman style of wrestling to America.
Muldoon retired as a wrestler in 1900, but he had begun training wrestlers and boxers long before that. His most difficult subject was John L. Sullivan, whom he trained for his fight with Kilrain in 1889, and whom, because of his persistent drinking, Muldoon was compelled to discipline severely. For a time he operated a saloon near the New York Stock Exchange, which was frequented not only by the devotees of sports, but by bankers and brokers.
In 1900 he bought an estate in Westchester County, north of New York City, where he operated a training place for boxers, but gradually he developed it into a famous health resort for business men, to whom he gave a Spartan and inflexible regimen of walking, running, woodchopping, setting-up exercises, horseback riding, plain diet, and abstinence. He invented the "medicine ball" for this service.
He was made chairman of the New York State Boxing Commission in 1921 and ruled that, too, with an iron hand, crusading against gambling, providing better sanitary equipment for boxers, and forbidding smoking at matches. Another chairman was appointed in 1924, but Muldoon continued to serve on the board until his death.
In 1928 he and Gene Tunney provided the Tunney-Muldoon Trophy as the future emblem of the world's heavyweight boxing championship. William A. Muldoon died on June 3, 1933, in Purchase, New York, and was interred in a grandiose private mausoleum at Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York.
William Muldoon was a strong advocate of compulsory military service, equestrianism, physical culture and the Boy Scouts of America, citing the latter as the only organization left devoted to leadership-building for young men.
Personality
A noted horseman, a bitter foe of automobiles, a vigorous proponent of general military training, outspoken in all his beliefs, William Muldoon, as he grew older, acquired vigorous nicknames, such as "The Solid Man, " "The Iron Duke, " and "The Old Roman. "
Connections
William Muldoon claimed to be a lifelong bachelor. However, he was married twice; the first marriage ended in divorce, the other in separation.