I am re-reading a history of the air war in World War I. The famous American 94th Aero Squadron adopted Uncle Sam’s hat in a ring as their symbol. Why?
I understand that ‘to have one’s hat in the ring’ means you are in on the fight. But why? Does this come to us from boxing or what?
(Does the 94th still fly? Do they still have this symbol?)
I think the cite quoted by Larry Mudd is incorrect in a subtle way, or badly worded. I don’t think the “hat” belonged to the champ willing to take on challengers, it belonged to the challengers willing to take on the champ.
The champ – perhaps having defeated a scheduled opponent – or his manager, would announce that he would take on anyone in the crowd. A challenger(s) would toss his hat into the ring to accept the challenge. The gesture could announce the challenger’s intentions from the back seats and over the crowd noise. This makes more sense, if you ask me.
One more thing. My version of the origin holds up better in the Teddy R. quote, too. Taft, as sitting president, was the champ. TR, the challenger, needed to do the hat tossing.
The earliest recorded use of the phrase is in John Hamilton Reynolds’ 1820 poem:
On the other hand, at that time boxing matches were illegal and largely improvised. There was no ladder organization, and there weren’t necessarily championships to defend. It’s possible that both men threw their hats into the ring by way of declaring that they wished to fight that night.
Anyone know anything concrete about the organization of American boxing in the early 19th century?
I can find rather easily an 1817 English cite, in the Times of London on one of my newspaper databases. It would appear that the event WAS illegal, but I can’t say with certainty from that cite just who was the champion and who was the lesser.