Rickard made ring history with the match, for not only did he referee, but he drew gate receipts amounting to $270,755, high figures for the period. The result of the Reno fight convinced Tex that there was more money in the fight game than in mining, and thereafter most of his time was devoted to pugilism. When he decided to devote all his time to boxing promotion, the gilded era got under way. * * * * * When Rickard came to New York, boxing was at a low ebb. He had successfully promoted shows in the West and when he took over the Garden, he saw no reason why his success should not continue. I recall a dinner party he tossed for New York journalists at the Biltmore Hotel. Free loaders crashed the gate in large numbers, but that didn’t disturb Rickard. He sat back as the boys made speeches in which some questioned his ability to make money on weekly boxing shows at the Garden, while paying rent amounting to $52,000 a year. At that time, as I have mentioned previously, the Garden was only occasionally rented out for events other than boxing. Tex said nothing. He leaned back and smiled as he puffed his Perfecto. He saw things in the future that the scribes were blind to. At that time boxers were wearing bathhouse suits and ordinary street shoes in the ring. Barbers, ham actors, bum politicians and stick-up guys occupied front row seats that should have been used by the press. Holders of ringside seats were pushed about, laughed out of their rightful chairs by rowdies and gangsters. The aisles were filled with loafers and gate crashers, blocking the view of people who had paid good money to see the fights. That’s how boxing was run in New York before Tex took over—not only in the Garden, but in all the other clubs. But he had seen boxing staged on a different level by Jim Coffroth in California and he decided to do the same thing on the East coast. Law and order prevailed at Coffroth’s promotions and people were seated properly. Coffroth had a fine organization and he ran his affairs in a decent manner, without delays and without mob ruling. Rickard remembered all those things when he came to New York and he lived to see the Garden take over where Coffroth had left off. He lived to see ushers in bright uniforms give each patron the seat the check called for. He saw women by the thousands at his shows. At Reno, at the time of the Jeffries-Johnson fight, I recall how Tex fooled the scribes with his “telephone booths.” A few days before the fight, the newspapermen went out to look the grounds over at Tex’s invitation. Over the entrance to the arena and right back of the last raised seat, about twenty-five feet from the ground, they noticed a row of covered boxes that looked like telephone booths. Tad Dorgan, grabbing Tex by the arm, pointed to the boxes and asked what they were for. Tex, a cigar in his mouth, and with his usual poker face, replied: