I can’t find this fight anywhere on boxrec, but there’s an excerpt from the Pollack Jeffries book: “I know Jeffries is a wonderfully strong man, but so is Sam McVea, whom I recently defeated at Los Angeles. McVea is a marvel of strength and he expected to rough me up in the clinches. I met him as his own game and fought him all over the ring. I believe I will be able to take as good care of myself with Jeffries as I did with McVea.” Police Gazette, April 30, 1904 Could Munroe have been a more formidable challenger than previously thought?
Boxing rec nor wiki have it. Likely an exhibition Nova Scotia hall of fame claims he was one second from knocking Jeffries out in an exhibition which no doubt is why Munroe got a shot right after. There were a LOT of unofficial fights those days. Cyberboxing does a good job listing them though most of them don't have a listed outcome. These tend to be 4 rounders which by the 20th century were not acceptable for title bouts. Might have to wayback it though heres the source on the Jeffries fight. https://nsshf.com/inductee/jack-munroe/ So far as the official record Munroe wasn't a bad fighter so much as he had a super short career with 9 official wins though hes got an 89% KO rate over that short sample size. In terms of official wins he narrowly beat Sharkey and Maher when they were pretty old. Also went the 6 round distance with Jack Johnson. Went 20 in his debut with Hank Griffin who we were just discussing in another thread. One of those guys who retired on a winning streak and we don't really know how that story would have went if he continued. But yeah makes you wonder about all the unofficial stuff we don't know. Put the Nova Scotian HOFs newspaper clipping up showing up in the preview but not on my version of the post. In any case you can read it by following the link above and clicking the little picture. This content is protected
It's hard to believe this fight could have happened and been so totally forgotten. Also, it seems strange that Munroe boasts about a win over McVey, and not over Jeffries' old rival Tom Sharkey, that he describes himself as "over 180 pounds" when he always weighed well over 190, that he doesn't mention his own previous meeting with Jeffries, and that he talks about his hopes against Jeffries "if we ever get together" when his title shot was already planned for June that year. Makes me wonder if this could be a mistake, and it's a quote from Jack Johnson, who actually had recently beaten McVey in Los Angeles, and who is quoted elsewhere in the same article. https://ibb.co/H7kyFJs
I think you’ve nailed it Solomon. Johnson defeated McVey/Mcvea on 22 Apr 1904 in San Fran (per boxrec) and without the quote being attributed to anyone, you would’ve guessed it came out Johnson’s mouth.
Just an FYI, this is the full Police Gazette (see below) from which Solomon sourced the article that he kindly provided. There are tons of Police Gazettes to pour through on this site. Absolutely free, no sign up required to view. I believe you can get even download them in their original form. Great step back in time. Quite a gold mine really. https://archive.org/details/sim_national-police-gazette_1904-04-30_84_1394/page/10/mode/1up
The article specifically says it is Jack Munroe talking: "This from Jack Munroe, the Butte miner." But in hindsight, as pointed out, I tend to agree that this likely was Johnson speaking. But the weird part is that same boxing page goes on to say we haven't heard much about Mistah Johnson lately, and has a quote from him.
Yes, I should probably have specified, if there was a mistake, it was by the Police Gazette, not by you!
