When Walker died on April 28, 1981, several different men perished. More than anything, boxing lost “The Toy Bulldog,” one of the most tenacious and relentless fighters of the 1920s and 30s, and a two-division world champion when that was still a unique feat. Walker ended the long off-and-on reign of Jack Britton at welterweight before moving up to defeat Tiger Flowers for the middleweight title. For some reason, he then challenged several top heavyweights.

There was also Mickey Walker the painter. His unexpected enthusiasm for creating art exploded after watching the film “The Moon and Sixpence” in 1942, several years after his fighting career ended. A passing interest gradually transformed into a vehicle for Walker to succeed in another facet of his life as he developed a quirky and distinct style, painting flattened landscapes and blocky chunks of American life.

Walker was even an actor for a short time. In 1946, he starred in a production of “Walk Hard,” a play based on the novel of a similar name by Len Zinberg. There were only seven performances, yet Walker said it was the most nerve-wracking thing he ever had to do. At the time, he said: “Before a fight, I always could sleep and I never dreamt. Now I dream all night and wake up thinking about my lines, and I don’t have any appetite. This is a lot worse than any fight.”

By the 1970s and 80s, few holdouts from the hard-charging twenties still remained, and those who did slowed down years earlier. That went double for fighters, who were known even then to deteriorate at unpredictable and often incredibly young ages. But Jack Dempsey, one of the most popular athletes and celebrities of all time, somehow lasted.

Dempsey fought everyone like they were bags of meat he could punch through, and that included sparring partners. That in-ring approach made fans yearn to watch him fight, and the way he accommodated fans, autograph-seekers and hand-shakers away from the ring turned him into a hero.

Mickey Walker definitely benefited from the boxing craze of the 1920s that Dempsey spearheaded. Walker and Dempsey even shared the same manager, Jack “Doc” Kearns. It would be inaccurate to say Walker rode Dempsey’s coattails or fought in his shadow, though. Walker fought twice as often and took far more risks as a fighter, facing heavier and taller foes on a regular basis and drawing tens of thousands of fans numerous times.

Walker also out-partied Dempsey by a country mile. After Dempsey and Kearns fell out, Walker and Kearns became drinking buddies as much as fighter and manager. One time, Walker took off to enjoy a weeks-long bender, evading search parties before returning home and resuming his career.

In 1935, the same year Dempsey opened his successful and famous restaurant on Broadway in New York, Walker opened up a saloon called “The Toy Bulldog” across from the old Madison Square Garden. Predictably, his drinking only increased.

In his autobiography, Walker wrote: “The trouble with me and drinking was that I’d feel three drinks as much as thirty. Once I got started, I was on my way.”

It was a different time, times were different back then, the world was tougher, as so on. Boxing fans hear and read those phrases so much they lose their meaning, even if they’re often factual. For instance, Walker described his upbringing in the neighborhood of Keighry Head in Elizabeth, New Jersey: “[I was] standing there in front of Cooper's saloon in a black velvet suit, white brocade collar, short pants, long curls… and a cigarette dangling from my lips. I was smoking at the age of seven.”

Most of the old stories Walker told about his past involved drinking or smoking. Like puffing a cigarette as he watched young men return from World War I, too young to join himself. Or doing his late morning roadwork while still in evening attire from the previous night’s bender.

The most immortal of the great Mickey Walker yarns emerged from the champagne haze of a post-fight celebration in 1925, after Walker tangled with middleweight champion and all-time great Harry Greb. After the fight, won by Greb on a decision, Walker and Greb allegedly bumped into each other in the middle of partying on Broadway in New York City. What began as a friendly drunken escapade ended with Walker and Greb scuffling out on the street. The veracity of the tale is highly questionable, but also less important than why it endured. These were different men.

At the dawn of the 1930s, the Great Depression blanketed the nation and boxing reflexively changed by dispersing to smaller clubs again, less focused on unbelievable and gaudy spectacles. By then, Dempsey was well retired, even if fought exhibitions for years. He couldn’t carry the fight game in any capacity anymore, though. One of the few fighters audiences leaned on was Walker, who regularly drew thousands, and sometimes tens of thousands, at arenas, stadiums and auditoriums.

Much of Walker’s best work came as he grew out of the middleweight division and, at only about 5-foot-6 and 165 pounds, took on high level light heavyweights and heavyweights. He fought to a spirited draw with Jack Sharkey, who was only two fights away from winning the heavyweight title. Walker also gave light heavyweight champ Tommy Loughran hell and defeated the likes of Mike McTigue and Maxie Rosenbloom before swatting around much larger heavyweights in Bearcat Wright, Johnny Risko and Paulino Uzcudun.

It took a serious heavyweight puncher and ex-champion in Max Schmeling to stop Walker in his tracks. “The Toy Bulldog” absorbed a beating against Schmeling before getting TKO’d in eight rounds. Walker’s two stoppage losses before that came when he was just 17 and a lightweight and as a result of a cut years later. By the end of the Schmeling fight, Max was begging referee Jack Denning to stop the fight so he didn’t have to punch Walker anymore. It only took a closed eye and lacerated lip for Walker to make friends with Germany’s first world champion.

Eventually the cauliflower ears and busted noses added up, becoming more than an old bulldog could bear. When Walker retired in 1935, his saloon occupied his suddenly-free time. He rarely even went home, which ended the marriages and personal relationships Walker already found tricky. A bit of dime store psychoanalysis could easily trace that conflict between his turbulent personal life and outward likability way back to his own chaotic home situation, which he described as typical.

Walker’s turn away from the art of drinking and punching and toward painting and acting probably saved his life. Yet rather than treating the arts as lifesavers or crutches, Walker approached them as someone fighting to excel.

In 1946, a few years after first purchasing an armload of incorrect, mismatching art supplies from the shop, Walker estimated it would take another 10 years for him to feel satisfied about his progress as an artist. By 1955, his work was featured on Fifth Avenue, at the Associated American Artist Galleries. One of his paintings sold for just short of $1,000, or the current equivalent of about $12,000.

Even Walker’s acting was well-received when the productions weren’t. Those old off-Broadway showings of “Walk Hard” were called “semi-pro” by the New York Daily News, but Walker was “well cast.” He played a fighter, after all.

Boxing’s problem, more ageless than any of its warriors, is zero respect for karma or logic or happiness. In the end, likability means nothing in a cruel sport.

Walker married for the sixth and final time in 1956, and for a time he was happy. The 60s were a struggle for the former champion, though. He even recited a confusing story to a newspaper about fighting a group of “beatniks” in New York, and punching one who he later found out was a woman.

The damage caught up to Walker, like it caught up to similar hard-living, hell-bringing fighters Terry McGovern and Battling Nelson. In 1974, local police came across Walker passed out on the street in Freehold, New Jersey, and doctors confirmed a Parkinson’s disease diagnosis. He spent the last several years of his eventful life in a rehab center before his generous heart gave out in a nearby convalescent home in 1981.

In his 79 years, Walker was a painter, a writer, a shipyard laborer, an actor, a radio announcer, a bartender and a referee. He was a fighter the whole time, no matter what else he also did. But he did it all with a convincing grin, and when asked about his exploits, he often just said, “I had a good time.”