Here's an article I came accross about the life of one of the more colourful characters that boxing has produced. Wiggins was a wild man who would and did fight pretty much everybody there was during the 1920's. He was no world beater but his resume features various ATG's and assorted ring legends from a golden period for boxing but his outside the ring lifestyle makes Wiggins almost the embodiment of the "Roaring 20's" hard drinking,free living,hard fighting lifestyle. I knew next to nothing about him and found this article very interesting (whether or not it's 100% accurate or not I'll leave to the experts). Anyway I hope you enjoy :good http://www.ibroresearch.com/?p=1030
On October 21, 1930, the United Press reported that Chuck Wiggins had once again been arrested by local police, the night before -- this time for allegedly "cleaning out" a restaurant and chasing patrons into the street. According to the UP: "Police said he gave them no trouble although on a previous occasion he soundly drubbed three officers who attempted to arrest him in a North Side hotel lobby. 'Just getting a little training, that's all,' Wiggins remarked as he climbed into the patrol wagon. After he had fought three prisoners in the city jail he was removed to solitary confinement." INDIANAPOLIS, May 18, 1942 (AP)--"Charles F. (Chuck) Wiggins, veteran of hundreds of fights in and out of the ring, died yesterday in City Hospital of a fractured skull, which he apparently suffered in a fall down a stairway. He finished his formal schooling with the completion of the seventh grade. Street fights built up his interest in the prize ring and he had his first professional fight at the age of fifteen. Wiggins always said Greb was 'the greatest I ever met.'"
The guy just straight up looks like trouble: http://www.harrygreb.com/chuckwigginsbiopage.html Great pics
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=VipPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=fk0DAAAAIBAJ&dq=chuck wiggins&pg=3560,6276953 http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=QL4hAAAAIBAJ&sjid=zZwFAAAAIBAJ&dq=chuck wiggins&pg=4646,178927 Here's a good account of Wiggins by Gene Tunney: http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=Qr0hAAAAIBAJ&sjid=wJwFAAAAIBAJ&dq=chuck wiggins&pg=5968,6015888
Jack Dempsey called him "the greatest street fighter who ever lived" ... you don't get much better endorsement of toughness and roughness than that.
Wiggins was so tough and so much trouble when drunk that the Indy police force literally had a goon squad they had to call out on him anytime he was drunk, and even all those guys had trouble subduing him. You can find all kinds of articles of him being in all kinds of trouble throughout the mid twenties and into the early 1940s from statutory **** to beating up several police officers. There is some evidence that his death was actually murder and that the police killed him.
