bits and pieces

The Hurricane


“I don’t like it here,” Jackson said. “I want to go back to the mountains, shoot a mouse. No mouses here.” “You can’t go back now,” Freddie Brown said in a soothing voice. Then he turned to me. “Hurricane found a new interest,” he said. “He shoots rats with a twenty-two. He calls them mice.” “Mouses,” the fighter corrected him. “I shoot them between the eyes.” He seemed depressed. “He finds them on the dump,” Freddie said. When Jackson saw that Freddie wasn’t going to take him back to the mountains, he wandered away and sat down, morosely staring at his feet.
“I don’t know where he gets the energy,” said Freddie, who looked underweight. “The hardest worker I ever seen before him is Marciano, but Marciano works steady and then he rests good. Also he eats good. Jackson don’t sleep enough and he don’t eat enough. These boys that ain’t used to good food, it don’t agree with them.” “What kind of food is he used to?” I asked. “He wants hot dogs,” Freddie said. “And also ice cream and pie. We got him to accept hamburgers as a substitute, but you got to watch him all the time. He fell out of a canoe which I had told him not to get into it, and he can’t swim good. He wants to ride a horse, he thinks he is Eddie Arcaro. And he could easy shoot himself instead of them rats.” Freddie shuddered.


14th July, 1954 -

Whitey Bimstein, Freddie Brown, and Lippy Breidbart all came into the ring with their primitive. Jackson weighed a hundred and ninety and a half, which indicated that he had overdone his self-induced training sessions. Nino Valdes’s weight was announced as two hundred and four, which showed that he had done more work than customary, but not too much. In the first round Valdes, boxing straight up, moved forward methodically and punched at Jackson’s body. Jackson, fidgeting about, did not accomplish anything.

Jackson stood up in his corner halfway through the one-minute rest period and did what gym teachers call “running in place,” at the same time waving his arms. When the bell rang, he rushed out to meet Valdes, dabbing and slapping. Valdes took aim like a bowler and knocked him through the ropes, at which point, since Jackson’s body was very nearly horizontal, the referee should have started a count, in my opinion, even though the lower strand prevented the animal’s body from touching the canvas. Valdes—“mucho nice boy,” as he would have said—turned and went to a neutral corner. The referee disentangled Jackson and upended him, and Valdes knocked him down again a couple of times. Each time Jackson fell—he did even that grotesquely, landing once sitting, once kneeling—he bounced up at the count of two or three. But the referee, because of a fairly new rule of the New York State Athletic Commission, had to stand in front of him and count eight before permitting the opponents to resume action. According to a collateral rule, if one boxer knocks the other down three times in one round, the referee has to stop the fight.

By my reckoning—and I was not alone—the second knockdown was really the third, and the referee, Al Berl, should consequently have stopped the fight there if he was going to be a precisionist. But Berl let them go to it again. Jackson was fluttering like a winged bird, making a difficult though harmless target, and Valdes, conscious of the three-knockdown rule, was following him about, eager to bring him down, even for a half second, before the round ended. Valdes has had many fights, has always finished strong, and was in good condition, but he seemed at this point to be heaving. Perhaps it was merely emotion, for he could not have anticipated a chance to knock off work so early. Several times he aimed as deliberately as if he were about to hurl a sack of sugar at a toad but missed. Finally he missed Jackson’s head with his right fist and, in recovering, hit him on the back of the neck with his forearm, as big around as a normal collar. He may simply have been trying to keep himself from falling. Anyway, Jackson’s knees hit the floor, and Berl, perhaps to compensate for the time he hadn’t counted, flung his arms wide in token of a technical knockout. Jackson promptly jumped up. In Pierce Egan’s time the victor might have offered to knock the loser out again to satisfy him, but that was before the Athletic Commission. (I know an old boxer who was awarded a fight on a foul because the other fellow was biting him. My friend was enjoying himself, so he said he would go on with the match if the fellow would promise to stop biting. The opponent promised, but he didn’t keep his word. “Maybe he hadn’t ate lately,” my man says.) They towed Valdes into the corner of the ring farthest from Jackson and, snuggling against his flank, make him hold up his right hand for the benefit of the photographers, who got a picture like one of those circus shots taken under the elephant’s trunk. From the way Valdes was grinning, he had a pretty good program lined up for the rest of the evening. Meanwhile Jackson was standing in his corner, shaking his head and refusing to leave the ring. He demanded the privilege of being hit some more. I could see Whitey and Freddie and a policeman arguing with him. At last they persuaded him to leave.


The show had drawn forty-five hundred cash customers—possibly six thousand in all, including deadheads, but even that is only a third of the Garden’s capacity, and there was no trouble getting around. The evening seemed so incomplete that I decided to visit Jackson’s dressing room, off the corridor on the north side of the arena, to hear the losing faction’s story. There were perhaps twenty colored people outside the door, including several attractive girls. As I approached, the door flew open, and Jackson, dressed and carrying a suitcase, dashed through the group and ran up the stairs that lead to an exit on 50th Street, about midway between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. “Tommy, come back!” one of the girls yelled. I followed Jackson out, not knowing quite what he might do, and ran slap into a storm, of which I had been unaware. It was a short, intense squall that had just hit the city, and it seemed to me an exaggerated reaction to the defeat of Tommy Jackson. To him, however, marching off into the rain, it may have seemed a fitting recognition of the occasion. He turned south on Ninth, and my curiosity was not strong enough to draw me more than a short distance into the rain after him. Then I began working my way back toward Eighth, taking advantage of intervening marquees and saloons for cover. At Muller’s, on the north side of the street, they have Münchner beer on tap, and I sheltered there longer than at any other place. By the time I got around to the main entrance of the Garden the storm had died to a drizzle, but there were still a couple of dozen fight people under the big marquee talking about the night’s events. I saw a second named Izzy Blanc, who had worked a pair of the minor bouts, and asked him if he knew what had happened to Jackson. “He’s walking around the Garden in the rain,” he said. “He’s been around ten times since I’ve been standing here.” We waited, and within a minute Jackson swung by—silent, head forward, looking like a priest who has found he has no vocation or like an actor hissed from the stage. I asked Izzy if he had seen the disputed knockdown, but he, a diplomat, offered a good alibi. “After the second knockdown I was on my way to the dressing room,” he said. “I had the emergency.” He meant he had been engaged to second one of the boxers in the final four-rounder, and he had sensed that it was going to be needed earlier than anybody had expected. “I had my back to the ring,” he said. The rain was easy to ignore now, and Izzy said he was going to walk up Eighth, stopping by a couple of bars where he might meet other fight people. “We’ll probably find Whitey at the Neutral Corner,” he said. The Neutral is a bar on the southwest corner of 55th and Eighth, and when we got there, Whitey was on a stool smoking a cigar and having a glass of beer. “If they want to rune boxing,” he said, “that’s the way to do it. He wrastled him to the ground just when the kid was hitting his stride.” “His what?” I said “Sure,” Bimstein said. “He was just beginning to come on good.” “How about the first three knockdowns?” I asked. “There was only one knockdown,” Whitey said. He rejected my proposition that Berl had let the animal off the time he got knocked through the ropes. “And the second thing he called a knockdown, that was a push, too,” Whitey said. He appeared calm, not bitter, and acted as if it were a matter of little moment to him if the Commission wanted to take the bread out of its own mouth. “He was just sizing the fellow up,” he said. “And the fellow trips him, and boom, Berl stops the fight.” I began to suspect we hadn’t seen the same fight that evening.

(A.J. Liebling)

 

When he broke camp five detectives rode shotgun with him to New York, underlining how serious they had taken the many death threats to his life. He didn't say much, said one, and he "looked so distant we joked that he was sitting there waiting for us to give him the menu for his last meal."

There were only a handful of people in Frazier's room that night - Durham, Futch, an assistant, Les Peleman, and a Philly cop bodyguard. Joe was gloved and ready. Durham took him to the far corner of the room, put his hands on his shoulders, looked him straight in the eye and in his signature voice said: "Well, we're here. I want you to know what you've done, boy. There will never be another Joe Frazier. They all laughed. You got us here. There's not another human who ever lived I'd want to send out there, not even Joe Louis. Win tonight, and the road will be paved with gold.

Joe knelt in the corner of the room and prayed aloud: "God, let me survive this night. God protect my family. God grant me strength. And God...allow me to kick the poo out of this motha****er!."

............................................................


A more just world would have celebrated Frazier's victory that night. From the beginning, however, careful observers knew that the story wasn't going to play out like that. "Joe's such a decent guy," veteran trainer Futch said of Frazier before the fight, "but when he beats Ali, Joe is going to be to go down as one of the most unpopular black champions of all time."

The next day Ali was public again, the X-rays were negative. He wanted his legions to know that he didn't lose, it was a bad decision, and that he had only trained for a six-round fight. He had shown remarkable heart and endurance, now with cameras grinding he was trying to steal the fight back from Joe, issuing some subtle, dippy call for a referendum, and he was succeeding. Privately, he was of another mind: "We been whupped. Maybe I'll get some peace now. We all have to take defeats in life." Joe watched on television at the Pierre, had Ali's comments read to him as he lay in bed. "It's not like I even won," he said. "He's robbin' me. Like nothin' changed!" He struggled to his feet. He tried to lift the TV set, to hurl it across the room. He was too weak. Durham guided him back to bed, saying: "Now, now, Joe. You know he aint got any sense." Nevertheless, Frazier continued to seethe. A commission doctor came by, suggested he be moved to a hospital in the Catskills. "What?" Joe said. "So he can make more headlines, show how he beat me so bad I gotta be put in a hospital?" Joe slipped out of the Pierre, to St Luke's Hospital in Philly. For twenty-hours, Dr James Guffe had him lay in a bed of ice. Joe dreamed a spirit had taken his hand, said he would be okay. "I could feel his touch. He was right there." They told him the next morning there had been no visitors.

His life hung out there for several days. His blood pressure was in another galaxy, and he had a kidney infection. Day and night, every five minutes, doctors scurried in and out of his room. They thought they would lose him to a stroke. Durham was in London on business, and quickly hustled back. But for a time, only Joe Hand, a cop and stockholder, sat out the nights with him.

"Let him live," Joe said to no one in particular. Joe stayed in a deep sleep, almost a coma. When he awoke, he mumbled over and over: "Don't say a word, Joe. Don't let Ali find out I'm here." At one point, four doctors lingered ominously over his bed. He awoke one time, and said: "All the money I made for people, and you're the only one here, Joe." Hand tried to comfort him, what could he say to a man on the brink? Finally, Joe broke through, like he had through Ali's mechanized jab, and he began to stabilize. One doctor sighed and said: "It was close."

Joe Frazier stayed in St Luke's hospital for three weeks.


(by Mark Kram)

 

Before Joe Louis KO'd Max Schmeling in one round in their rematch...the unheralded Gypsy Daniels from Wales did the very same thing earlier in Schmeling's career..and in Schmeling's back yard !!

...............................

His swarthy complexion and dark eyes and hair would open up some unlikely avenues to success. The story that grew up is that Daniels walked into the New York office of legendary boxing manager Jimmy Johnston, who said: “Say, son, are you a gypsy”.

The Welshman denied this, but a promotional idea was born, and Johnston is said to have taken him across the street to Woolworths to buy a brightly coloured bandana and curtain rings for ear-rings.

Photographers and the press were then invited to meet Billy ‘Gipsy’ Daniels, King of the Gipsies, who had been imported from Wales to become the next heavyweight champion of the world!

Despite the colourful story, there is evidence that Daniels had used the Gipsy nickname before he crossed the Atlantic, but the angle was certainly pushed during his time in the States.

The hyperbole was backed up by the Welshman’s performances in the ring as he impressed in seven US bouts, including two at Madison Square Garden.

Daniels decided to come home in 1923, though, where he would compete at middleweight, light-heavyweight and heavyweight in the highest class across the UK and Europe.

He would find great popularity and success, including a series of epic fights against Frank Moody and a 20-round victory over Tom Berry that won him the British cruiserweight title.

The most famous name on the Welshman’s record, though, was surely Max Schmeling.

Daniels lost a December 1927 fight against the German in Berlin, but in a rematch two months later claimed the greatest – and most surprising – win of his career.

Schmeling rushed out in the first round of their 25 February, 1928, bout in Frankfurt… and walked straight into a stunning KO punch from the unfancied ‘Gipsy’!

Daniels failed to capitalise on the remarkable win, though, as – for unexplained reasons – his career went quiet.

He was fighting less, the losses were mounting, and – perhaps over-playing the Schmeling result – he seems to have turned into more of a knock-out expert than a boxer.

There was one more huge domestic clash to come, though, as – on 4 August, 1930 – he met old rival Moody for the third time.

Both men were past their best, but 15,000 turned out to see them at the Welsh White City on Sloper Road, Cardiff.

The fans were rewarded with a superb fight, Pontypridd great Moody emerging as the victor.

Daniels would keep fighting, including in the boxing booths where he helped to mentor a young Freddie Mills.

(welshboxers.com)

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Elmer (Violent) Ray was the #1 ranked heavyweight contender in early 1947. He lost that ranking and a potential title fight with Joe Louis, when he was defeated by Jersey Joe Walcott on March 1, 1947. Ray would subsequently go on to defeat future champion Ezzard Charles on a split decision, before Charles knocked him out in the 9th round on May 7, 1948, ending his title hopes for good.

...............

In the years before he became a famous professional boxer, he rose to prominence in the southern battle royale circuit- battle royales being a fight game from that time period in which 10 competitors would be put into the ring with each other and have an "all-against-all" throw-down until only one was left. Ray won 61 battle royales and supposedly once knocked out nine opponents with one hand behind his back during a match in New Orleans, earning himself the title "King of the Battle Royale."

According to the Traverse City Eagle, March 11, 1946 -
"Ray had a system that let him win 61 of those free-for-alls. In these bouts, the usual order is for the little guys to gang up on the biggest man and down the batting order in that manner. Elmer simply dropped to the floor when the bell sounded, crawled to a corner, placed his back against the ropes and took the whole gang as it came at him."

He also had a reputation as an alligator wrestler. When he held camp near his home town in Florida, he would scare his manager to death by going out into the mud and wrestling 'gators, often to entertain tourists. In fact, he was so comfortable around them that he was known to casually play with them and let them eat out of his hand.

"Elmer (Violent) Ray has the extraordinary distinction of being the only man Joe Louis wouldn't even meet in an exhibition*. Louis boxed Dan Merritt of Cleveland instead, and stood watching as Ray, a crowding weaver and bobber with the speed of a swift middleweight, ironed out Claudio Villar, a Spaniard, in 29 seconds flat.”

"Arturo Godoy and Tami Mauriello rejected guarantees to square off with Ray at Madison square Garden, Lee Oma the Violent One's share of the swag in addition to his own. Joe Baksi and Lou Nova refused. Melio Bettina will have nothing to do with the Hastings Hammerer. Jimmy Bivins turned down the chance to march front and center with him in Los Angeles, where the terror recorded 19 knockouts in a row. The current Joe Walcott will have no truck with him in Baltimore... Currently he is drawing and at Miami's Negro ball yard, Dorsey Park, while putting the slug on such as Dan Merritt and Al Patterson, the latter a slatty character out of Pittsburgh. "It's better than wrestlingalligators and fighting nine guys at once," beams Violent Ray."
-The Coshocton Tribune, March 8, 1946

*Louis and Ray would meet in exhibitions later as detailed below.

"None of the near-name heavies wants any part of Ray, who in a New Orleans battle royal knocked out nine opponents with one hand tied behind his back."

"...in doing so he made of Elmer Ray a modern Sam Langford. You remember the Boston Tar Baby. He was a guy heavyweight champion Jack Johnson dodged and dodged during the six years he held the title some three decades ago. Langford tried desperately to get a bout with the champ, but Johnson never would have a part of him. Louis is that way with Ray. It’s silly to say that Louis, the man who has made so many valiant defenses of the crown, is afraid of Elmer. But it is a fact that he won’t fight the burley puncher from Hastings, Florida."
-Middlesboro Daily News, July 26, 1947

(by MarcianoFrazier)

................

July 25, 1947 -
"The gallery gods went into ranting hysterics last night when the burly negro who once wrestled alligators for a living smashed the myth which was Ezzard Charles. The boxing bigwigs, who had been grooming Charles for a fight with Joe Louis, laughed. Once more they had given Joe Louis, the heavyweight champion, an excuse to dodge the violent one. For from 10 rows back it looked like Charles all the way. He danced and jabbed and landed a lot on Ray's bobbing pate and Elmer's busy elbows. But inside 10 rows you could see the devastation wrought by Ray's jarring hooks, blasts which raised the sheaf of Ezzard's cheek. “No holding,” was the continual admonition of referee Eddie Joseph. But Ezzard, of the winged retreating feet, had to hold for his life, and in doing so he made of Elmer Ray a modern Sam Langford."
(Middlesboro Daily News)

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May 7, 1948 -

"Hammer-fisted Ezzard Charles racked up a knockout over Elmer Ray today and called for a shot at light heavyweight champion Gus Lesnevich. The fast moving Charles hanged the aging Ray right out of heavyweight boxing with a left hook at 2:43 of the 9th stanza."
(United Press)


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March 29, 1949 -
Elmer Ray apparently returned to Palatka Florida and annouced his retirement from the ring there to the newspapers
March.28. 1949,and also addmited that he had suffered a slight brain concussion in being KO'D in the third exhibition match with Joe Louis .
He announced that he was quitting the ring "While I still had my health" and was going to go back to Minneapolis,Mn, were he has a home(he had moved to Minneapolis in 1945) and that was going to open "A Package Shop" there.
(Hartford Courier)


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Ed Beattie, who had heart surgury when five fights into his professional career and was left with a scar from armpit to armpit...and then went on to continue that career with fourteen straight wins including winning the Canadian Lightweight Title in 1960.

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Chicago, 1922: a metropolis rife with the trappings of 1920s culture. Skys****ers and traffic. Shoppers, flappers, gangsters. Mass transit, art deco architecture, jazz, The Loop …

In the first three months of the year, Bud Taylor divided his time between Terre Haute and the mega-city 180 miles due north. In Chicago, his managers Kane and Long pitted him against the best available competition. More importantly, the co-managers hired Jack Blackburn to train Taylor and Sammy Mandell.

Blackburn had nearly reached age 40 and was winding down his own fight career of 20-plus years. He had been a talented boxer at various weights, back in the days when fights lasted as long as 40 rounds and a fighter would be lucky to clear $35 a bout. Blackburn’s specialty had been his left, which he used to jab and hook in flashes, and about which he would impart his wisdom to understudies Taylor, Mandell and later, Joe Louis.

Outside the ring, Blackburn liked to aim his lefts and rights to his own lips with bottles of beer, transforming an otherwise pleasant man--one who loved dogs, fishing and playing cards--into a belligerent drunk. Blackburn shot three people in 1909, one died, and he served four years of a 15-year prison sentence.

Not surprisingly, a lot of people were afraid of Blackburn. Even in street clothes, he looked menacing, a balding man with a weathered face marked with a knife-scar lengthy enough to impress a pirate--the remnant of a bar fight. But inside a roped ring, the man was in his element. Blackburn knew boxing and he taught it tactfully. For example, he avoided criticizing fighters in the presence of other fighters, instead taking them aside to confer.

Blackburn’s tutelage suited the promising young talent before him–and more the greener Taylor than Mandell. Bud had considered his left-hand punch merely a setup for his “sweetheart” right, but Blackburn laid the groundwork to change that thinking.

Eddie Long liked what he saw in the progress of his newest acquisition. “He’s title bound, that’s all there is to it …” he boasted about Taylor to a Terre Haute sportswriter early in 1922.

The grooming to place Taylor in such contention continued Jan. 13, 1922, against George Corbett, a south Chicago brawler. The fight took place inside what the newspapers referred to only as a “suburban arena,” its site undisclosed presumably to protect the principals from arrest.

Corbett was a popular fellow among the stockyards crowd, and Taylor heard the strains of a hostile audience as the pair volleyed in the early rounds. The bout met its abrupt end in the middle of the third round, when Taylor rocked Corbett with a punch that broke his jaw in three places. The injury disfigured Corbett’s face, but the wounded man gamely continued to flail away with his mouth open while the crowd yelled wildly. Boxing writer Ed Smith, refereeing the fight, saw that the front teeth of Corbett’s lower jaw had been smashed back into his palate. When Smith heard Corbett making what Smith later described as “inarticulate sounds,” Smith stopped the fight.

In those days, a broken jaw ended a fighter’s career. The injury forced Corbett to retire from the ring, the main source of his income. A month later, Corbett’s friends organized a benefit boxing exhibition/party for him in the visitation hall at 54th and Peoria streets, Chicago. The event raised $1,000 for the disabled fighter. Taylor traveled to Chicago to box in the exhibition, paying for his own way and that of a sparring partner, winning many friends by his kindness.


(Excerpt from 'The Terror of Terre Haute, Bud Taylor and the 1920s' by John D. Wright)

 

"I'd have to say it's a toss-up between Ted Kid Lewis and Harry Greb. Both were great. Lewis could box and hit. Greb was not as other men; he started his fights at a fast pace and accelerated as the fight went on." - Augie Ratner, when being asked to choose the best man he ever faced.

From 1967...

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1954

A shock-haired little Zulu, with the fighting heart of his warrior ancestors, has become the bright light in Britain's gloomy boxing scene.

His name Is Jake Tuli and he ranks right behind champion Yoshio Shirai among the world's flyweight fighters.

It is on him the British fight fans are pinning their hopes for a world title.

British, you say? A Zulu? 'Sure he comes from Johannesburg,' says the ****ney fight fan. 'But that's in the British Commonwealth, ain't it? And Tuli is British Empire flyweight champ, ain't 'e So 'e's British, just as much as the lad from Manchester, Sheffield or Glasgow. And no one can say he ain't' - What's more, say Britain's title-hungry fans, Tuli boxes out of Britain, so he's part of the British boxing picture, no matter what his birthplace.

Tuli (22) goes into the ring as fit and strong— at his weight— as world heavyweight champion Rocky Marclano. He's the old Henry Armstrong whirlwind type, soaks up punishment like a sponge and dishes it out with two fisted efficiency.

Tuli's climb into the world class makes fighting men compare him with the great Battling Siki - the Senegalese negro who knocked out the idol of France, Georges Carpentier, In the sixth round in 1922 to win the light-heavyweight championship of the world.

But little Tuli, with his mop of shock black hair, is a very different man to the Battling Siki who was stabbed to death in a New Tork street brawl, once he is out of the ring. Tuli Is a modest, soft-spoken man with deeply religious ways. He lives with a priest in a London clergy house and helps to serve Mass three times a week.

'It Is a pleasure to handle such a fine fighter and a good living boy,' manager Jim Wicks said. 'He is a manager's dream."

Tuli came to Britain for the first time in September, 1952. That's when he took the British Empire flyweight championship from England's Teddy Gardner.

'That win gave Tuli four titles— and after only 10 professional bouts.' Wicks said. 'He held the flyweight title European flyweight and Bantamwelght title of South Africa. The Empire title makes it four - He still holds them!"

Tuli has lost only one fight out of 24 contests. That was when he climbed out of his class to meet European bantamweight champion Robert Cohen last December. Tuli lost on points over 10 rounds and boxing writers named it the "Fight of the Year".


(Townsville Daily Bulletin - April 1954)


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In one corner sat 'Peerless' Jim Driscoll.

Driscoll was known as ‘Gentleman Jim’, but his quiet and unassuming manner belied his skill and strength as a boxer. Despite his short and slim figure, he had boxed in fairs in his youth, and it was there that he learned the trade and honed his skills.

The fight was to be Driscoll's challenge for the British lightweight. Driscoll had been British featherweight champion since 1906 and had challenged for the world title in 1910 but failed to secure the 'knock-out' and thus did not win the crown.



In the other corner sat Freddie Welsh (aka the Welsh Wizard), who was the Welsh, British and European lightweight champion.

Born Frederick Thomas, he had made his name in the United States. He had boxed in fairs for money and had developed a rugged and unruly style.

At only 5 feet 7 inches tall and weighing only 9 1/2 stone, Welsh would crouch and duck, clinching and punching the opponents' kidneys and head, tactics considered 'ungentlemanly' in his native country.

His fight to claim the European title in 1909 had drawn a crowd of 15,000 in Mountain Ash, the largest crowd to watch a boxing match in Wales up to that time.



It was not long before the bout degenerated into a street fight as Welsh’s tactics prevented Driscoll from using his notorious left arm and showing his style.

In the tenth round of a scheduled twenty, Driscoll finally lost his cool and butted Welsh under the chin across the ring forcing the referee to disqualify him.

Boxing fans rioted in Cardiff for days. There was never to be a rematch.


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While Welsh was from Pontypridd and Driscoll hailed from just 14 miles away in Cardiff, the pair were from very different backgrounds, had taken vastly different career paths, and represented boxing styles that were split by 3,000 miles of Atlantic ocean.

Welsh, whose real name was Frederick Hall Thomas, came from a relatively wealthy background as an auctioneer's son whose grandfather had been a renowned mountain fighter .

At the age of 16 he travelled to North America seeking work and adventure, the first of many jaunts across the Atlantic.

As he chased a shot at the world lightweight title his skill in the ring was matched by a flair for publicity that saw him play on his vegetarianism, plan to take part in a trans-Atlantic balloon race, and concoct a story to the press that he had been kidnapped in Mexico!

He had returned to Britain in 1909 and received a huge welcome in Wales, but his ring style courted controversy as it was felt that he fought in an 'American' manner that emphasised in-fighting and valued controversial kidney punches.

Driscoll, meanwhile, who had Irish heritage, had fought himself out of a life of poverty in Cardiff Bay with an upright, classical style that has been described as "the boxing textbook come to life" and that took him to the British title.

His vast experience, learnt in the boxing booths, had endowed him with formidable skills including an artistic left hand, and he proved a huge hit on a nine-fight tour of the United States in 1908/9.

Driscoll dominated world featherweight champion Abe Attell in their showdown in New York, but the no-decision rule meant that he would have needed a knock-out to claim the title.

The Welshman's manager, Charlie Harvey, knew the clamour that could be built for a rematch under Championship rules.

But Driscoll boarded a ship for Britain the day after the Attell fight in order to perform his annual piece in a charity show for Nazareth House Orphanage in Cardiff.

"I never break a promise," was Driscoll's simple reply to Harvey's howls of dismay, and the fighter received a hero's welcome back home.

With the two local heroes now back in Wales and seeking worthy opponents for a major fight, the clamour built for a showdown.

While the two had been firm friends, bad blood had allegedly been built since a lively 1907 meeting in a boxing booth.

"I thought I'd let [Welsh] see that I was a better goat than he was"

Newspapers helped to hype the rivalry, with arguments emerging over details of the bout including the weight, referee, size of the gloves and the Driscoll camp's insistence on clean breaks.

The bickering delayed the showdown, but was quickly put aside when the Welsh Sports Club put up a record purse of £2,500, £1,500 for Driscoll and £1,000 for Welsh.

Despite poverty caused by the ongoing miners strike, a sell-out crowd of over 10,000 was packed into the Westgate Street arena.

The huge, corrugated iron building adjoining the Arms Park - dismantled in 1919 and rebuilt in Mill Road, Ely, only to be demolished in the early 1920s - had been opened in 1908 as the venue for Cardiffians to learn to waltz on roller skates as a brass band played.

But with the atmosphere at fever pitch the styles of the two protagonists failed to gel.

The bigger and stronger Welsh controlled the early stages, avoiding Driscoll's straight left, clinching and roughing up his opponent.

Driscoll had come into the bout with a festering wound above his ear that became a favourite target for his opponent, but the Cardiff man was more angered by Welsh's alleged boring with the head, his verbal jibes and his kidney punching.

The referee Peggy Bettinson - who officiated from a ringside seat - did little to curb the growing anger of Driscoll and the crowd, while the imperturbable Welsh wore an innocent smile throughout the entire fight.

After a disappointing, dirty fight, the usually unflappable Driscoll lost his cool in the 10th round as he aimed a series of blatant head-butts at his opponent, forcing Bettinson to step in and disqualify the Cardiff man.

Contemporary newspaper reporter James Butler said: "It was the only time I saw Driscoll not in control of himself in the ring.

"So bitter was the hatred by the 10th round that the finest boxer this country has ever produced was rushing in red-eyed like a man gone berserk."

A distraught Driscoll burst into tears, saying: "The referee allowed Freddie to butt me till I couldn't stand it any longer. I thought I'd let him see that I was a better goat than he was."

Despite his head-strong action, Driscoll found sympathy with press, public, and even the referee who had disqualified him.

"I can't say that I ever worried much about what people thought or said of me" - Welsh

"Welsh, I admit is a most exasperating man to fight, and I can fully sympathise with Driscoll in losing his head," said Bettinson.

Welsh himself said later: "I can't say that I ever worried much about what people thought or said of me.

"I like to be liked, and have often wished that I could be as much loved as Jim Driscoll, say, but I have never been able to bow down to rules and regulations."

The war of words and opinion was not the end of the controversy, though, as opposing seconds Boyo Driscoll and Badger O'Brian began a scuffle.

Members of the audience were dragged in and the brawl spilled out onto Westgate Street, police intervention needed to break up the carnage.

The frustration of the crowd summed up the mood of the night, with the question left open as to which of the two fighters was the greatest.

Speaking in a 1977 BBC Wales interview, former Welsh bantamweight champion Billy Eynon - an ex-sparring partner of Driscoll's - came down in favour of the Pontypridd man.

"Driscoll was a great classical boxer, but Welsh was the best," said Eynon.
"He was winning every round easily. He needled Driscoll who lost his head and butted Freddie.

"Driscoll was the classical boxer but he was a dirty boxer as well. He was an idol in Cardiff and had the Cardiff people behind him."

But Driscoll was arguably already past his best in 1910, ill health and the Great War meaning he would fight just six more times.

He died of pneumonia on 30 January, 1925, at the age of 44, and over 100,000 lined the streets of Cardiff for the funeral.

Welsh's long pursuit of the world title continued and was eventually fulfilled in 1914 when a huge purse guarantee tempted champion Willie Ritchie into the ring.

After outclassing his opponent over 20 rounds, Welsh reigned for three years but damaged his considerable reputation by exploiting the no-contest rule to keep the crown.

Unfortunate business decisions, high living and health problems meant that his life was also cut short, and he was found dead in his Manhattan apartment in 1927, at the age of 41.

"Welsh and Driscoll would be outstanding and would beat all of today's fighters, they were a different class of boxer altogether," said Eynon in his 1977 interview.


("Wales and its Boxers: The Fighting Tradition" - Peter Stead and Gareth Williams)


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In this video Billy Eynon, a former british bantamweight title contender, speaks about the fight between Driscoll and Welsh, as well as touching on his own career which included being a sparring partner for Driscoll.
Also, an interesting part of this video, Eddie Thomas (former british and european welterweight champion) speaks of Eynon having fought in front of a crowd of 200,000 !!...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4xTXlFcqdo

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this video shows both in fights not against each other (vs packy mcfarland and frank robson respectively)....notice here, as mentioned in a previous post, the referee sitting outside of the ring, and a few rows away from the ring, during the boxing...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evYYJKdU6_8

 

Billy Fox speaks in 1981 about his life in boxing as well as the infamous Jake LaMotta fight and it's aftermath for him...

(best of my knowledge he is still alive today....91 years old.)

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After retiring from boxing, Kid Berg became a movie stuntman, working mainly in Westerns, this gave him a wardrobe for life. He smoked cigars incessantly – Optimos that were sent to him from New York.

All his defeats apart from Canzoneri, Berg put down to the effects of womanising, which he believed weakened his legs, but which he said he couldn’t resist. He was particularly defiant about his defeat by Billy Petrolle, who had him down seven times - but only because, Berg insisted, “I was messing around with this particular broad.” Most of his big fights took place in the United States, and he had a penchant for the American vernacular. He finished boxing in 1946 at the age of 35, with an extraordinary record of 157 victories (with 61 knockouts), 26 losses, and nine draws. Known for his prodigious punch-rate, Berg’s moniker was “The Whitechapel Windmill” or, in America, “Whirlwind.”

He was managed by Frankie Jacobs and trained by the late Ray Arcel, that most distinguished and honourable of trainers, who saw off the Mob in the form of Frankie Carbo et al and regarded Berg as almost a son and his favourite fighter, even though Arcel trained many other champions, including Roberto Duran. Berg had arrived in his custody off a boat from England in 1928, when he was 18 and, according to Arcel, “Looked like a little girl.” Arcel was soon disabused of such notions. “Not only could he fight,” Arcel once recalled. “But he thought he was God’s gift to the ladies. You had to watch him like a hawk.”

Berg once said he was convinced one of his cornerman had been stabbed on the way to the ring to face Kid Chocolate.

In his last year or so Berg moved to the Es*** coast. His wife Morya died before him. So did Ray Arcel. To the end he followed his usual routines. He remained friends with Kid Lewis’ son, Morgan, to the last, believing he had a protective duty towards him, and still went to Soho.

Despite his age Berg was still an active driver in his little red car, which he drove extremely aggressively, indeed specialising in curb side confrontations. He had been arrested for chinning another, much younger motorist, but turned up in court in a borrowed wheelchair and was let off.

Berg went to New York for the 90th birthday party of Ray Arcel. There, among a stellar cast that included Holmes, Graziano, Zale, LaMotta and Pep, as well as contemporary champions such as Breland and McGirt, Berg stole the show with an emotional speech about how much Arcel meant to him. On the way out, I was collared by an octogenarian former fighter who, pointing at Berg, announced, ‘Forget all the others. This is the guy. This guy is really the one.’
Coincidentally there was a musical named “Legs,” about the ‘30s gangster Legs Diamond, playing on Broadway at the time. Berg knew Diamond well, having once been threatened with death by him for attempting to chat up Diamond’s girlfriend at the Harding Hotel, where Berg lived one floor beneath Mae West. “We had to do a lot of fast talking to get out of it,” was Arcel’s recollection. Berg had also been au fait with Harlem nightlife, and was a regular at the Cotton Club, whose benefactor, Owney Madden (played in the movie by Bob Hoskins) had been a big Berg fan.

Once Berg took an interest in a Jewish fighter called Gary “Kid” Jacobs from Scotland, a useful welterweight apparently named in the tradition of Kid Lewis and Berg. Jacobs’s management did not know what they had let themselves in for by adopting this marketing strategy. Berg trailed him like a protective bloodhound, saying “Gary is the new me.” Jacobs, who was sensible enough to play along with it, asked Berg if he had any specific tips. “Lay off women before a fight,” Berg replied. “Just remember what happened with me and Billy Petrolle.”

He was someone who resolutely refused to countenance the b****ity of ordinary life, and was determined to live a mythic one, visiting again and again its landmarks. He himself had established them, after all.

(by Jonathan Rendall)


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April 1939

57 year old former lightweight champion, Battling Nelson and 50 year old former bantamweight champion Johnny Coulon compete in a three round exhibition in Chicago...

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The story of Bernard “Superbad” Mays, described as the best boxer of his era by those who knew him, and yet a talent wasted and a name unknown to many boxing fans.

A record of 200 amatuer bouts with only 1 defeat, and 40 pro bouts with only 1 defeat in the last fight of his career.
By 16 he was an alcoholic and in 1994 at aged 33 he died penniless from the effects of that alcoholism.

Mays trained at the famous Kronk boxing gym in Detroit in the 1970's, a gym that was in the process of producing some of the greatest champions of the following decade, and for a while unsung Bernard Mays was the daddy of them all.

Speaking of his amatuer fights, legendary Kronk trainer Emmanual Stewart said "the first two or three rows would be packed with managers and trainers who had brought their boxers to see Superbad Mays"

Multiple weight World Champion Tommy Hearns said of him “Bernard Mays was the king. I almost gave up boxing because I dreaded going to the gym every day. I knew I’d have to get in the ring with Bernard.”

........................................

The following piece was written by Fred Girard (The Detroit News)....

Best of all

“He was the most talented Kronk boxer of all,” Steward said. “He was like a legend, really.”

Kronk boxers says Steward is not exaggerating.

“It gives me chills just to talk about him,” said Robert Tyus of Detroit, one of the original Kronk team, winner of two amateur national titles. “Superbad Mays was like Sugar Ray Robinson — he had it all.”

“Superbad Mays was the awesomest fighter I ever saw — he could devour you,” said John Johnson of Detroit, who won a national amateur title under Steward. “Speed is power — it’s the punch you can’t see that knocks you out — and Bernard had a wicked left hook that would just take the breath from your body.”

Tournament winner at 14

When he was 14, Mays swept to victory in the 106-pound class of the national Junior Olympic tournament. Two years later, he repeated in the 139-pound division. He fought more than 200 times as an amateur, losing only once, and at every fight, Steward said, the first two or three rows would be packed with managers and trainers who had brought their boxers to see Superbad Mays.
But, “Bernard started disappearing on me,” Steward said. “He’d always been quiet, but he got moody, stopped showing up at the gym regular.”

Sixteen-year-old Superbad Mays had become addicted to Colt .45 malt liquor.

“Bernard and I had been drinking and smoking since we were 14,” acknowledged Eric Williams. That was also about the time, family members say, Prince Milton left and stopped being any influence on his young son’s life.

Former world lightweight champion Jimmy Paul said that at the 1977 Ohio State Fair national tournament “I’d be in bed sound asleep the night before every fight, and Bernard would be out drinking beer with the ladies all night, then come in and absolutely destroy everybody else in the tournament.”

"Tommy Hearns’ first loss of deep significance came in a sparring match with Bernard ‘Superbad’ Mays. At the time Hearns was confident, flush with amateur success. He would eventually amass an amateur record of 155-8 and win the 1977 National Amateur Athletic Union Light Welterweight Championship and National Golden Gloves Light Welterweight Championship.

This day he was literally broken and remade.

Mays crushed Hearns’ nose. Some young men would have quit the ring. Hearns’ reacted with disgust and determination. He returned to the gym a different fighter, and the change was evident to everyone present. From that day the effects of that punch showed like a badge on Hearns’ face."

Turned pro in 1978

When he turned professional in 1978, Mays parted company with Steward, who had hounded him about his drinking. His next manager, Chuck Davis, tried just as hard, and had just as little success.

Mays hired noted Oakland County attorney Elbert Hatchett to break his contract with Davis. After he did so, Hatchett, who fought as a kid and followed the game all his life, decided to manage and promote Mays himself.

“We lost a ton of money,” Hatchett said. “Bernard fought like Joe Louis. He was a middleweight, a classic boxer, just classic. He was the first guy (who) I saw knock somebody out hitting him in the side. But he would drink beer all the time.”

Roland Scott, Mays’ last trainer, said. “That beer just tore him up. He would get absolutely smashed.”

Won 40 straight

At the age of 31, Mays had fought 40 times as a pro and won them all, when everything caught up with him in a bout in California. An opponent hit Mays hard and staggered him badly, costing Mays the fight. The next day Hatchett had him in a hospital.

Mays’ alcohol-damaged pancreas was dangerously inflamed.
The doctor told Hatchett, “Look, this condition has progressed to such a point that he takes his life in his own hands if he decides to fight,” the doctor told Hatchett.

Superbad Mays would fight no more.

He stayed with his mother for a time, and after she died, a broke Mays entered the New Light Nursing Home in Detroit.

“He walked in here under his own power,” said administrator George Talley, and stayed for nearly a year.

In the final weeks his condition deteriorated rapidly. “When I saw him there at the end, his stomach was so swollen it looked like he was pregnant,” trainer Scott said.

On March 1, 1994, at 9:55 p.m., Superbad Mays’ heart stopped, unable to fight any longer against the crushing load of diabetes, chronic pancreatitis and chronic malabsorption syndrome.

He is buried in an unmarked grave — Section 4, Row 18, grave No. 36 — in Mt. Hazel, a small cemetery on Detroit’s far west side that has been closed for years.

Mays’ sister, Esther Farley of Ypsilanti, signed the death certificate.
“It was a painful thing to visit Bernard” in the nursing home, she said. “He was always a real charmer, a sweetheart — who knows where his life might have led?
“But alcoholism is a terrible disease.”

 

On April 18, 1940, Norman Selby checked into the Hotel Tuller in Detroit, took an overdose of sleeping pills and bid the world adieu.

"To Whom it May Concern:
For the last eight years I have wanted to help humanity, especially the youngsters who do not know nature's laws. That is, the proper carriage of the body, the right way to eat, etc. … To all my dear friends, I wish you the best of luck. Sorry I could not endure any more of this world's madness.
The best to you all."

In an apparent last attempt to drop his professional moniker, the note was pointedly signed as, "Norman Selby"

He left the world as he came into it — as Norman Selby, but in between he lived his life as boxer Charles "Kid" McCoy. In the boxing ring, he was clever, devious, a notorious cheater and his flamboyance could rival the best in professional wrestling. His problem, however, was out of the ring — with women. Between his eight and ninth wife, he murdered his girlfriend.

Selby was born Oct. 13, 1872, in the Rush County community of Moscow, Ind., to Francis and Emily Selby. His early life was spent hopping freight trains with friends to Cincinnati and getting into rail yard s****s so often that it toughened him as a fighter.

At the age of 18, Norman Selby became a professional fighter and changed his name to Charles McCoy, which he allegedly acquired from a burlesque number featuring exploits of safe*******s, Kid McCoy and Spike Hennessey.

In the first three years of his boxing career, McCoy was undefeated in 20 fights and most of those were by knockout. He developed a corkscrew punch similar to a left hook with a twist at the end. His cat-and-mouse style of boxing that led to the eventual dismantling of his opponents gave him the reputation of being a vicious fighter.

McCoy would feign illness prior to a boxing bout and then beat his opponent leaving some to question "Is this the real McCoy?" Other accounts have the expression originating when in a saloon tussle with a drunk. "Beat it, I says, I'm Kid McCoy." And the drunk answers "Yeah? Well, I'm George Washington." McCoy then pops him in the jaw and he hits the floor. Once the drunk comes to, he says "Jeez, it was the real McCoy!"

McCoy, who was boyish in appearance, stood at 5 feet 11 inches and weighed 160 pounds. McCoy would often appear weak and ill in the ring, sometimes using makeup to fool his opponents. McCoy would also claim to not train, however he would hide away at Cedar Bluffs, his farm outside Saratoga, N.Y., and train like a madman.

McCoy never defended his titles, choosing to advance to other divisions despite his size. McCoy defeated Tommy Ryan in March 1896 to win the world welterweight title. This victory was under rather shady circumstances however. McCoy told Ryan he was dying of consumption and needed the money for doctor bills. Ryan didn't train and was willing to lay down. McCoy, however, was in top shape and took Ryan in the fifth round. In December 1897, McCoy won the world middleweight title with a 15th round knockout of Dan Creedon and despite his slight build, chose to enter the heavyweight division. He defeated the likes of Peter Maher and Gus Ruhlin and took on "Gentleman Jim" Corbett, but was defeated in what was considered one of the most staged fights in boxing history.

Against a deaf boxer, he pointed to the man's corner, indicating that the bell had ended the round. It hadn't. When the man turned away, McCoy knocked him cold.

The last fight of McCoy's career was against British Petty Officer Matthew Curran in London in 1914. At the 12th round of the 20 round bout, McCoy was failing badly. A timekeeper sitting by the ring placed a whiskey and soda at his side, McCoy hit the mat, downed the drink and finished the fight, defeating Curran. McCoy lost just 6 of his 166 career fights.

As successful as McCoy was in the ring, his life outside the ring was fraught with disappointment. He married his first wife, Lottie Piehler, in 1895. That union did not last, nor did any of his marriages as most had thoughts of reforming him, "and that was their mistake" he would say. He married nine times - three times to the same woman.

McCoy had a number of business ventures, a saloon, auto dealership, jewelry store and various other enterprises, but those would soon begin to lose money or fall victim to scandal.

Following his boxing career, McCoy entered the service of his country. Some accounts say he served with the National Guard along the Mexican border and as a recruiter, while other accounts have him in the Army as a boxing instructor. With eight divorces behind him — and an empty bank account because of them — McCoy moved to Hollywood and landed a few bit parts in silent movies courtesy of his friend D.W. Griffith. He also found a friend in actor Charlie Chaplin.

But as his fame dimmed, his temper rose and he found himself in many a bar room brawl. So there he was in the early 1920s — a broke, alcoholic, former boxer and actor. But what he did have was a romance with the wealthy wife of an antique dealer. And that was surely not going to end well.

Theresa Mors was an attractive 30-year-old woman who was smitten with McCoy and was filing for divorce from her husband, Albert. McCoy and Mors moved into a Los Angeles apartment under and assumed name. Following one of the many confrontations by the divorcing couple, McCoy said he was headed to New York for a break. McCoy and Mors had their own fight. The next day Mors was found by a janitor in the apartment. She had been shot once in the left temple. A .32-caliber pistol lay nearby and allegedly a photograph of Kid McCoy was on her chest.

The following day McCoy went on a wild crime spree holding 12 people hostage at the antique shop owned by Theresa Mors. McCoy left the store, shot the first three people he met before being apprehended by police in a park.

During the trial, McCoy claimed Mors shot herself, which was rebutted by the prosecution. His acting career must have served him well during his defense as news accounts report McCoy's vivid details of that night. The charges were reduced from murder to manslaughter and McCoy was sentenced to San Quentin. McCoy was a model prisoner and had one of the cleanest records in the prison history. Because of his celebrity status he was visited often by his old Hollywood pals, Lionel Barrymore and Al Jolson. There was even a campaign to "Free McCoy" supported politicians and actors alike.

McCoy served eight years of a 24-year sentence. Working on a chain gang near San Simeon, he saved an injured pilot from the wreckage of a plane that crashed nearby. That led to a better job as a tour guide at San Quentin.

Paroled in 1932, Selby made a living as an athletic director for the Ford Motor Co., as an occasional gardener for Henry Ford and as a lecturer on the evils of strong drink and wild women.

(Dawn Mitchell / Cecilia Rasmussen)

 

"I had watched him continue his career as mine slipped away. Whatever he achieved I still felt he didn't deserve to be world champion, rolling in dough and glory. I keep seeing the big picture in my head of June 1972 and Duran is jumping about the ring with my title. I go white-hot with anger...nothing can cool me down.

All I ever wanted was a return fight but Duran stayed well ouut of my road. Every time I was in position to ask for a title fight there was some excuse...so here I am working as a joiner more than 20 years later and I can't take it. Any time I have tried to talk to another person about this, they just tell me, "Ken, it's just one of those things".

But it's not just one of those things. For the rest of the world it might be just one of those things, but for me it is the thing. And by now I am old enough and ugly enough to know that it has to be dealt with. If I had a pound for every time somebody asked me if I would have beat Duran [in a rematch] i'd be a millionare. And every time I got asked that question my heart broke just a little bit further.

I flew from Edinburgh to London...I got a flight to Kennedy Airport...to be honest it felt like it was just the day before I was fighting Duran. When we landed in America my heart was pounding. I was looking out the taxi thinking, what was I doing? One man in a city of ten million trying to find another single human being amongst the those ten million.

We arrived in Harlem where the bed and breakfast was. I got out of the cab and caught a few people loooking at me. But that didn't bother me. Nothing much frightens me at all now...the door opens and this woman pokes her head otu. She's about five feet nothing in her socks.

"Yes?"

"I phoned from the terminal. You said you had me a room for a couple of weeks."

"But man - you is white!"

"Jesus - you're the second person today to tell me that!"

"You're white!"

"Yes brilliant, Christ, I know that."

I smile, she smiles, and she lets me in. She takes me to Mrs. Wells restraunt up the street. Up the stairs we go and people are looking. She opens the door and we go in. The place falls silent. Not a fork or a knife s****ing a plate. Mouths are hanging open. There is a white man in the doorway...but I didn't give a **** - to be honest there are times in your life when nothing matters, and I think people pick up on that.

After about ten days looking for Duran in all the gyms and bars, I decided I was never going to find him...So after two weeks in Harlem I went back to Scotland..."

(Ken Buchanan)