Maple Leaf Rag about the sales of the "Maple Leaf Rag", for example that 1 million copies of the sheet music were sold in the composer's lifetime, making Scott Joplin the first musician to sell 1 million copies of a piece of instrumental music. Joplin's first biographer Rudi Blesh wrote that during its first six months the piece sold 75,000 copies, and became "the first great instrumental sheet music hit in America". However, research by Joplin's later biographer Edward A. Berlin demonstrated that this was not the case; the initial print-run of 400 took one year to sell, and under the terms of
Maple Leaf Gardens Corcoran, who passed the reins to Frank Tunney and his Maple Leaf Wrestling promotion in 1939. Under Tunney, Toronto and the Gardens was for decades a thriving centre for professional wrestling. Local hero Whipper Billy Watson became the city's top wrestling attraction in the 1940s and 1950s. The last WWE-promoted event to be held at Maple Leaf Gardens was on September 17, 1995. Boxing was also a regular offering at the Gardens for many years. The first world title bout in the building was on September 19, 1932, with bantamweight champion Panama Al Brown knocking out challenger Émile Pladner in