John Coulon: The Little Giant of the Bantamweights

John Frederic Coulon (February 12, 1889 – October 29, 1973) was a Canadian-American professional boxer who held the world bantamweight championship from March 6, 1910, when he took the crown from England’s Jim Kendrick, until June 3, 1914, when he was defeated by Kid Williams in Vernon, California. Later in life, Coulon became a boxing manager, guiding fighters such as Eddie Perkins.

Because the bantamweight title was claimed and sanctioned by different boxing associations, some sources — particularly American newspapers of the day and the National Boxing Association (later the WBA) — recognized Coulon as champion beginning February 26, 1911, when he defeated Frankie Conley in twenty rounds in New Orleans, Louisiana.

On July 27, 1921, at the close of his ring career, Coulon married Marie Maloney (1892–1984), a diminutive Irish Chicagoan who would be his partner for more than fifty years. She never saw him box professionally, but together they opened Coulon’s Gymnasium on Chicago’s South Side around 1923. Marie ran the business side and helped match both amateur and professional fighters. The gym became a landmark, drawing some of the sport’s greatest names — Jack Dempsey, Gene Tunney, Jim Braddock, Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson, and Muhammad Ali all trained there. Ali, in particular, often used Coulon’s during his exile years to stay sharp.

Coulon managed junior welterweight champion Eddie Perkins and light-heavyweight contender Allen Thomas, and even in his seventies he was still traveling to arrange fights for Perkins.

Coulon’s Gym also drew cultural figures. Ernest Hemingway dropped in and insisted on sparring with local fighters. Artist LeRoy Neiman sketched boxers at work there. And in the late 1960s, Haskell Wexler’s cult film Medium Cool shot scenes inside the gym, briefly capturing Coulon himself — a tiny old man forever preserved on film.