Ned O'Baldwin, the Irish giant.

Here is a guy who isn’t talked about much today even by fans of his era.

Ned O’Baldwin (The Irish Giant) was a contender of the 1860s and 1870s who was heavily hyped during his career and remembered for a while after it. He was 6’ 5’’ 200 lbs and purportedly fast and agile for his size. He was matched twice to fight Jem Mace for the title, once in the UK and once in America. On both occasions the fight fell through due to police interference.

On at least the second occasion O’Baldwin was installed as the betting favourite. Mike Donovan contended that O’Baldwin was the greatest living heavyweight, prior to the rise of John L Sullivan. It is also interesting, that during Jim Jeffries career he was sometimes compared to O’Baldwin in terms of his combination of size and speed.

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O’Baldwin had a violent temper and was often in court as a result. He was jailed for armed robery after he threatened to bludgeon a stakeholder. He died after being shot by his business partner, with whom he co-owned a saloon, after an altercation.

 

I was extrapolating his weight from a contemporary paper that said he was 3 stone heavier than Jem Mace.

Perhaps he was the firs super heavyweight.

And yes he was a borderline psychotic.

 

Being a nice person was not a prerequisite for being a sucesfull bareknuckle fighter.

Then as now, many boxers were quite awfull people.

There were notable exceptions of course. Jem Mace always went to considerable lengths to avoid using his fists on civilians and was verry critical of any fighter who did.

 

Sounds plausible.

He was probably about as big as a prime Tony Tucker.

Hard to say how good he was but he was up against a 160lb champion who was prepared to fight him in principle.

 

Little of his record exists (as with many top fighters of that era) but he was being matched at the highest level and was expected to win.

He beat Marsden and was matched against Wormwold (both top men), but his career was spoiled by the fact that he peaked just when the police were cracking down on prizefighting big time.

Most of his big fights were stopped.

 

Undoubtedly.

It is also the case that many managers avoided exposing their protege to the limelight untill they were ready to fight at world level.

This alowed them to get verry favourable betting odds.