Did Charley Weinert Put Austria On The World Boxing Map?

Don't know enough about the subject but Weindert was a solid heavyweight.

 

I appreciate that you thought of me but have never heard of this person.

 

Same here Stallion. Appreciate the shout out.

 

Austrian boxing is not in my wheelhouse. Sorry. I know Weinert by name and record and that he was ethnically Hungarian, born within the then Austro-Hungarian Empire. I have no idea how he got into the sport.

 

Charleie Weinert was a well regarded heavyweight contender, who was in the argument to get a title shot at Jack Dempsey or Gene Tunney.

Whether or not he was an Austrian Frank Bruno figure, is very hard to say, without looking at Austrian/Hungarian sources.

 

Weinert was one of boxing heavyweight prodigies. A great might-have -been, sublimbly talented. Jack Root pre-dated him as an perceived Austrian standout.

 

Austrian boxing got on the map? All kidding aside I fail to see how he would have put Austria on the map. He was born in Hungary (yes it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire but it was still an independent nation at the time that shared a dual monarchy). He immigrated to the USA when he was a baby, took up boxing here, never fought outside of the USA (few even knew he hadnt been born here) etc. Furthermore, while he was a fairly well known fighter during the teens and early twenties (mainly on the East Coast) he was not a huge name in the grand scheme of things. So for several reasons, no, he did not put Austria on the map.

 

I think Klompton2 nailed it above.

Weinert is Austrian, or Hungarian, only in the sense that Irving Berlin or Al Jolson are Russian, or Frank Capra Italian.

I wonder if boxing was even an active sport in the old Austro-Hungarian Empire in the days before the Hapsburg dynasty bit the dust.

Interestingly, I notice that some youngsters who were born abroad ended up speaking English w/o their native country accent while many born here spoke it with an accent. Lawrence Welk would have been a prominent example of the latter when I was young. There were quite a few in my old home town. There were still areas of old world ethnic stock where the old homeland language was exclusively spoken at home. My father didn't learn English until he started going to school. His mother never learned English. His father only haltingly.

 

My understanding is that boxing didnt really take off in Germany/Eastern Europe until the POWs from WW1 returned home and took it with them. Not unlike how the sport exploded in the USA after WW1 due to the boxing training soldiers received in cantonments during the war and the exhibitions staged throughout the country and allied nations to raise money for the war effort and entertain the troops. It was practiced in pockets in those countries but not widely. WW1 is arguably the single biggest event in terms of popularizing boxing in the history of the sport.

 

I would have said Laszlo Papp put Austria on the Boxing map when he based himself in Vienna for his pro career. His forced retirement saw Austria pretty much removed from the map.