Boxing Nostalgia: The Good, the Bad and the Weird

By Alex Daley

The champs and challengers, unsung heroes and eccentrics, tragedies and bizarre little-known tales from the history of boxing are all here. This unique assortment of articles comes from the popular Boxing News "Yesterday's Heroes" column. In this compilation, Alex Daley has delved deep into the archives and interviewed ex-fighters to uncover some of boxing's most intriguing stories. British legends like Jimmy Wilde, Jim Driscoll, Ted Kid Lewis, Jock McAvoy, Benny Lynch, Freddie Mills, Randolph Turpin, John Conteh, and Terry Downes all feature, as do American greats like Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Robinson, Harry Greb, Sonny Liston, and Jack Dempsey. Read about the world champion who was sold to a boxing booth by his father, the bareknuckle champ who became an MP, women's boxing pioneers, and the fighter who started a mutiny. Boxing Nostalgia takes you on a journey through British ring history, from the bareknuckle era to the late 20th century, with stories that are often sad, staggering, or downright bizarre.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: Nov 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9781785314957

Book preview

2018

The Incredible Mr Reeve

When former British light-heavyweight champion Harry Reeve walked into the Boxing News office in January 1919, editor John Murray was stunned by what he saw.

Instead of making excuses for his loss the previous night – a fifth-round retirement against future British heavyweight champ Joe Beckett – Reeve rolled up his right trouser leg and showed Murray the cause of the defeat.

Reeve had just returned from fighting in France, where his leg had been damaged by shrapnel. During the bout with Beckett, in which Harry had his man down twice, the wound burst open, forcing him to quit with blood pouring from his leg.

The injury required months of hospital treatment and permanently hampered Reeve’s mobility. He had handed back his Lonsdale Belt and relinquished his title after being told he would never box again. But financial needs, and a hungry family, had compelled him to try.

On seeing the injury, Murray summoned a photographer and placed a photo of the leg on the cover of Boxing News.

Reeve’s injury was, in fact, the lesser of two notable incidents from the ex-champion’s war service. The other was extraordinary, and tragic.

After turning pro in 1910, Reeve, who was born in east London in 1893, established himself as a top title contender within four years. He challenged the talented Pat O’Keefe for the British middleweight title in February 1914 but was outpointed over 20 rounds.

Thereafter, Reeve, a 5ft 8in beer-lover, drank his way into the light-heavyweight class, where he was forced to tackle naturally bigger men. Nevertheless, in October 1916 he captured the British light-heavyweight crown with a 20-round points win over Dick Smith. Harry also beat titlists Jim Sullivan, Joe Beckett and Bandsman Blake before war service intervened. Frustratingly, the call-up came just as Reeve looked set for a lucrative spell as champion.

He was posted to France as a military policeman at Étaples, a notorious army base where appalling conditions had the men close to mutiny by the time Harry arrived. On 9 September 1917, a large crowd of angry men gathered outside the camp’s guardhouse to protest about the arrest of a New Zealand Artillery gunner, but after he was released they did not disperse.

Private Harry Reeve attempted to move an Australian soldier and when the soldier refused to budge Reeve punched him. Incensed, the crowd charged at Harry, who amid the chaos drew his gun and fired several shots. One struck and injured a French woman and another killed a Corporal Wood of the Gordon Highlanders, who was innocently passing and not part of the mob.

Reeve’s actions sparked a mutiny as the furious soldiers turned on the military policemen, who were forced to flee for their lives. It took several days to restore order and Reeve was court-martialled for manslaughter and sentenced to a year’s hard labour. After his release in 1918, Harry was sent to the front line, where he sustained his awful leg injury.

Although the injury had cut short Reeve’s post-war comeback fight with Beckett, eventually he was well enough to return.

Harry never recaptured his pre-injury form but had many more fights, taking on heavyweights as his beer consumption and waistline grew. He boxed draws with British heavyweight champions Phil Scott and Reggie Meen, and twice took the future world light-heavyweight titlist Battling Siki the distance. In 1928 Reeve retired, but he made a brief comeback six years later, aged 41.

After retirement, Reeve worked on the docks and served as a boxing instructor. He died at the Coach and Horses pub in Plaistow, with a pint in his hand, while picking horses for a bet. He was 65.

8 October 2015

Indelible Echoes

The National Sporting Club (NSC), an institution that once governed and shaped British boxing, has been honoured with a green plaque at its former HQ in London’s Covent Garden.

The plaque, installed at 43 King Street, was unveiled on 12 October by the current Lord Lonsdale, whose ancestor lent his name to the iconic Lonsdale Belt introduced by the club. Descendants of some of the men who boxed at the NSC and ex-pros who inherited its rules and traditions were present.

Credit for the plaque must go to boxing historian Harold Alderman MBE and Bernard Hart, founder of the Lonsdale sporting brand, whose campaign for the memorial was realised with help from Jan Warren, the London Ex-Boxers’ Association, Westminster City Council and the building’s present owner, Capital & Counties Properties PLC.

Ex-parliamentary reporter and 1882 ABA lightweight champion Arthur Frederick (‘Peggy’) Bettinson opened the NSC in March 1891 with business partner John Fleming. Their aim was to give boxing – then widely viewed as a dubious back-alley activity – greater respectability and social acceptance.

They achieved this feat expeditiously with the roll-out of a set of rules that became the norm for boxing in Britain. Adapted from the Queensberry Rules of 1866, the NSC rules introduced compulsory gloves, stricter safety precautions, a 20-round cap on contests and a mandatory minute’s rest between rounds.

Modern boxing is run along similar lines to those laid down by the NSC. In fact, the club’s scoring system of awarding a boxer up to five points per round was only replaced in Britain by the current ten-point system in 1973.

The NSC did much to bring boxing in from the cold but there was a flipside to its autocracy. In keeping with its high-minded ethos, the NSC was for members only and off limits to the hoi polloi. Its patrons were mostly stockbrokers, high-class shop owners, merchants, manufacturers and even members of the landed gentry, with women barred completely.

Fresh from a sumptuous meal in one of the NSC’s dining rooms, the club’s dinner-jacketed members would file into its ornate amphitheatre, thick with cigar smoke. Under club rules, an eerie silence was observed during actual boxing, with polite applause – no catcalls, cheers or whistles – permitted between rounds. Members of the press, who were only just tolerated, were accommodated on uncomfortable benches.

In 1909, the NSC introduced a championship belt at eight self-nominated weights, named after its president, Lord Lonsdale. For a while, the Lonsdale Belt system gave the club a monopoly over British-title fights; it chose the challengers, terms and dates for all championship bouts, which could only be seen by club members and their guests at 43 King Street. The man on the street could then only read about title fights in the papers.

In the 1920s, the NSC lost its grip as ambitious promoters drew boxing stars away from the club, offering them bigger purses at rival shows staged at larger venues. The NSC tried unsuccessfully to compete, hiring Holland Park Skating Rink for its own big promotions. Finally, Peggy Bettinson’s death in 1926 sealed the club’s fate and it closed in 1929 amid financial ruin.

Even so, the NSC left an indelible mark on boxing. Not only did it give us the Lonsdale Belt and proper rules, but it played host to such ring legends as Peter Jackson, Sam Langford, Tommy Burns, Pedlar Palmer, Georges Carpentier, Jimmy Wilde, Jim Driscoll and Freddie Welsh. It also established the British Boxing Board of Control, which succeeded it as British boxing’s governing body.

15 October 2015

The Lesser-Known Patterson

Every fight fan of a certain age knows about the 1950s and ’60s world heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson, whose bouts with Archie Moore, Ingemar Johansson, Sonny Liston and Muhammad Ali are part of boxing folklore.

But I wonder how many remember Floyd’s younger brother, Ray, a fellow heavyweight who exiled himself from America to fight out of Sweden at a time when pro boxing was illegal there and punishable by prison.

One of 11 siblings, Ray was born in New York in 1942 and took up boxing hoping to emulate his famous brother. After winning two New York Golden Gloves titles, he turned pro in March 1963 with a two-round stoppage win at Madison Square Garden.

After two more wins in the States, Ray took a match in Sweden on the undercard of Floyd’s bout with Italian heavyweight champion Santo Amonti. Despite losing on a split decision to his opponent, Lars Olof Norling, Ray fell in love with Sweden. In fact, he liked the country so much he stayed and had a string of contests – all wins.

After briefly returning to America for three fights — two wins and a split-decision loss to the now-famed Chuck Wepner, who inspired Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky — Ray went back to Sweden, became a Swedish citizen and never boxed outside Europe again.

UK fans got their first glimpse of Ray in April 1966 when he outpointed Welshman Carl Gizzi over ten rounds. Over the next six years Ray fought in Britain nine times, losing to ‘Golden Boy’ Billy Walker and British and European heavyweight champs Jack Bodell and Richard Dunn. However, he did draw with champions Joe Bugner and Danny McAlinden and stopped Midlands Area titlist Johnny Prescott.

Ray invariably gave a good account of himself. When he fought Bugner in April 1970, for instance, many — including Ray himself — felt he deserved the decision. In his December 1966 Albert Hall bout with Billy Walker, Ray gave the fans a barnstorming display before succumbing to the Londoner’s relentless assault in the eighth.

When Graham Houston tracked Ray down for Boxing News in 1970, professional boxing had just been banned in Sweden, and even exhibition bouts and gym sparring was prohibited for pros.

Pro boxing remained illegal there until 2007, which meant that Ray, who worked at a car factory in Gothenburg, was restricted to roadwork. His sparring and other gym work only started when he arrived in the country where he was fighting, often leaving him little time. When he fought Bugner, for example, he’d only had nine days’ training.

Like his brother Floyd, Ray was free-thinking and enigmatic. When asked about the Vietnam War he politely declined to answer, saying, ‘What opinions I have of it I prefer to keep to myself.’ He had avoided the US military draft by staying in Sweden, but insisted he had to remain there to obtain his Swedish citizenship.

When Houston asked if he’d ever return to America, Ray spoke of the problems of raising mixed-race children there and how US culture would shock his Swedish wife. ‘I don’t say there’s no prejudice in Sweden but I have not met any personally,’ he declared.

Being related to Floyd Patterson did not hurt Ray’s box-office appeal, but he was more than just the brother of someone famous. He was a genuine crowd-pleaser.

Ray ended his pro career in 1973 with a record of 26 wins, 11 losses and five draws.

22 October 2015

‘Smashing, Dashing, Crashing Kid’

In an era with only eight divisions, he was undisputed world welterweight champion and won British and European titles at three weights. He boxed pro for 20 years, had hundreds of fights and beat the best, often giving away weight. It’s easy to see why many consider Ted Kid Lewis the greatest British fighter of all time.

I use the word ‘fighter’ advisedly, as the man America dubbed the ‘Smashing, Dashing, Crashing Kid’ cared little for cautious boxing. To call him a brawler, though, would be wrong. It was educated pressure and consummate ring generalship that carried him from poverty to success, wealth and worldwide fame.

Born into a Jewish family in Aldgate in 1893, Lewis started life with the far less catchy name of Gershon Mendeloff. Like many other Jewish people, his immigrant parents had fled the pogroms (anti-Jewish riots) in Russia only to live poor in London’s East End.

Despite his father’s disapproval of boxing, Lewis turned pro in 1909 at age 15. He trained diligently and took fights at short notice at the Judean Club in Princes Square, Cable Street, typically for a purse of sixpence and a cup of tea.

He adopted the name Kid Lewis (the ‘Ted’ was added later in America), after the world welterweight champion Harry Lewis, to keep his boxing excursions hidden from his father. When Mendeloff Sr found out, he gave the boy an ultimatum. Either he could stop boxing and become a cabinet maker like his dad, or he could leave home and box. Reluctantly, but wisely, Ted flew the nest.

Lewis squeezed a dizzying number of fights into his first few years in the ring, losing occasionally but constantly learning, toppling the country’s top contenders as the purse money rose. He won the British and European featherweight titles in October 1913 before sailing to America.

US fans fell in love with his furious, all-action style, and after a string of exciting performances he was matched with Jack Britton for the world welterweight championship. On 31 August 1915, Ted won the title in Britton’s Boston backyard. In one of boxing’s keenest rivalries, Lewis and Britton fought 20 times, passing the welterweight crown back and forth.

By the early 1920s, after hundreds of fights and having earned a fortune, Lewis was past his prime — but not ready to retire. Instead he returned to Britain and fought on, astounding UK fans by winning British and European titles at welter and middleweight.

He even challenged the legendary Georges Carpentier for European heavyweight and world light-heavyweight honours. Ted gave away 18lbs to the Frenchman, but was controversially knocked out in a round as he took a shot while answering a referee instruction.

By rights, when Lewis finally retired in December 1929, he should have been rich. But his generosity and penchant for free spending were as legendary as his fighting. When he visited the East End in an open-top car, he’d scatter notes and coins like confetti. At a time when £2 was a good weekly wage, Ted spent up to £1,000 a week and gave lavish gifts to acquaintances. He’d earned huge sums in America but by the time he hung up his gloves, there was little money left.

In the early 1930s, Lewis erred by associating himself with the British fascist leader Oswald Mosley. But when he discovered the true nature of Mosley’s politics, he severed their connection. It says much for Ted’s popularity that the Jewish community forgave him this blunder. He remained a regular and hugely respected figure at boxing shows and functions until his death in 1970.

29 October 2015

Empire King

When Percy Lewis arrived in Britain, the Second World War was raging. The year was 1944 and the 16-year-old had left his home in Port of Spain, Trinidad, to support the war effort as an RAF aircraftman. He’d had six bouts in Trinidad and only knew the basics of boxing, but he soon honed his skills through RAF contests and military coaching, revealing a special talent.

Percy won RAF and ISBA titles and was runner-up in two consecutive ABA featherweight finals – in 1950 and ’51 – before winning the crown twice, in 1952 and ’53. He boxed for Britain at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics and turned pro in October 1953, aged 26.

However, as a slick southpaw with a hard punch and remarkable stamina, Percy found other pros were less than keen to fight him. In 1954, for example, he only secured two bouts. Luckily, he had a second job as a wholesale milk delivery driver in Oxford, his adopted home, delivering to schools, hospitals and other organisations after his 5am roadwork.

Lewis was handled by the astute manager-trainer duo of Jim Wicks and Danny Holland (who also looked after Henry Cooper and twin brother George), so a break eventually came. After outpointing the gifted ex-British and British Empire featherweight champion Billy ‘Spider’ Kelly in October 1956, Percy was matched with future world champ Hogan ‘Kid’ Bassey for the Empire crown at Nottingham Ice Rink in April 1957. Both men were floored in this 15-round thriller but Bassey got the decision.

That December, Lewis got another crack at the then-vacant Empire crown against the reigning British featherweight champion Charlie Hill of Scotland, again in Nottingham. Percy floored Hill nine times before Charlie’s seconds threw in the towel in the tenth. After just 14 pro fights, Percy had been crowned champion. Boxing News described it as ‘Lewis’s best, most attractive, and certainly most damaging performance in his paid career’.

Percy received his British Empire Championship trophy from Lord Scarsdale and was carried from the ring shoulder-high by members of Oxford University’s boxing club, with whom he had trained. An Empire title then was a glorious achievement, but it seems a pity that Percy, who had boxed for Britain at the Olympics, was not able to win the British crown from Hill because he was born abroad.

In 1959, Lewis defended his Empire title against John O’Brien, dispatching the challenger with a second-round knockout. Wins over rated American Carmelo Costa and future European featherweight titlist Gracieux Lamperti put Percy in the mix as a potential world-title challenger. Accordingly, he was ranked number-four contender to world featherweight champion Davey Moore in The Ring magazine’s 1960 annual ratings.

In October 1960, Percy beat a future world-title contestant in Floyd Robertson (Ghana), but he never got a shot himself. Having turned pro late, age was not on Percy’s side. When he retired in June 1962, after losing his Empire crown to Robertson in a return, he was almost 35.

After retiring, Percy remained in Oxford with his wife Barbara, their sons Leo and Leon, and daughter Leoniza. At first, he tried his hand as a greengrocer, then went into road haulage, before working as a bookmaker for many years.

In his spare time, he coached at boxing clubs in and around Oxford and was a long-serving boxing instructor to Oxford University. Today Percy, aged 87, still lives in Oxford, where he is greatly liked and respected.

5 November 2015

Once Is Not Enough

Fastest rematch in history?

Today, even the most hotly anticipated rematches require a bit of patience from the fans, typically building anticipation to fever pitch. We waited six months for the Carl Froch–George Groves return and one to three years between each of the Manny Pacquiao–Juan Manuel Marquez fights. But in 1936, fans were less patient.

On 14 October 1936, a 17-year-old middleweight named Freddie Mills stepped into the ring at Bournemouth’s Westover Ice Rink for his seventh pro fight. Later, he would win the world light-heavyweight championship, become a household name and die tragically in mysterious circumstances, aged 46.

As the bell clanged, Mills swarmed over his opponent in customary style, pounding out a first-round knockout win over the UK-based American Jack Scott. But Scott had only just failed to beat the count and some in the crowd voiced their disapproval.

When Mills went to pick up his purse money, the promoter Jack Turner told him if he wanted to get paid he would have to fight Scott again – not in a month’s or even a week’s time, but that very night! Quite how Scott felt about meeting fearless Freddie again is unclear, but presumably he was obliged to if he wanted his cash. After waiting for a couple of other fights to end, the pair duly re-entered the ring and the result was the same – another first-round KO win for Mills.

Most rematches ever?

Bournemouth’s Westover Ice Rink was also a site for what is arguably the keenest ring rivalry in history. London pros Mike Sweeney and Danny Cripps fought there on 16 March 1914, but they also faced each other many other times – in Oxford, Manchester, Reading, Bath, Bristol, Canterbury, Aberdeen and numerous London halls.

Ring historian Miles Templeton – a guru of boxing record-compiling – has traced 64 other contests between the pair between 1906 and 1921. We can guess that by the time they retired, they knew each other’s styles pretty well.

Lewis–Britton rivalry

The prize for the most rematches between world-class men probably goes to America’s Jack Britton and Britain’s Ted Kid Lewis. They fought each other 20 times between 1915 and 1921.

Many of these were ‘no-decision’ fights, peculiar to America at that time. The barring of pro boxing in many US states meant the referee could not give a verdict, but knockouts and stoppages were okay. The results of bouts that went the distance – eagerly awaited by gamblers and casual fans alike – were decided by sportswriters in the next day’s papers.

When they entered the ring for their first world-title contest, Britton refused to fight because of Lewis’s use of a gum shield (Ted is thought to have been the first boxer to use one). To Lewis’s disgust, the referee ordered him to remove it. After a heated exchange, he spat the gum shield out, shouting, ‘All right – let’s start the fight!’ The same dispute arose in their last fight, in 1921, with Britton again getting his way.

Before another of his bouts with Britton, Lewis fell seriously ill with yellow jaundice. His manager, Charley Harvey, pleaded with him to postpone the fight, but Lewis wouldn’t listen. Against doctors’ orders, he dragged himself out of bed, insisting he would win.

‘His stamina and will to win were amazing,’ Harvey told veteran fight scribe James Butler. ‘He took a licking because he was too weak to raise his arms, but he would not quit. I’ve never seen his equal!’

12 November 2015

The First Man to KO Cockell

On 16 May 1955, it took the great Rocky Marciano nine rounds to halt his brave British challenger Don Cockell in their famous world heavyweight title fight. Eight years earlier, a light-heavyweight from Kent achieved the same feat four rounds faster, without the help of a referee. Jock Taylor (Sidcup) was the first of only three men to KO Cockell in the latter’s glorious 81-fight pro career.

Jock, now 90, was one of a group of extremely good late-1940s middleweights and light-heavies who, had they boxed separately at a less competitive time, could all have been British champions. They included Ginger Sadd, Al Marson, Reg Spring, Cockell, Albert Finch, Mark Hart, Ernie Woodman, Pat Stribling and Taylor himself. Jock fought each of the others in that exciting group but now he is its sole surviving member.

In 1946, a 21-year-old Taylor had recently returned from service in the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm, where he’d won the Air Arm middleweight championship, earning a reputation as a lethal puncher.

His opponent at Watford Town Hall on 10 October 1946 was Cockell, a rising light-heavyweight star. ‘He was unbeaten and I was supposed to be just another victim for him – or so they thought,’ grinned Jock as he recalled the encounter.

That evening, Jock, weighing 12st to Don’s 12st 4lb, stepped out to a chorus of boos before a pro-Cockell crowd, but the Sidcup man was unfazed by icy receptions. ‘Once you’re in that ring, you’re on your own,’ he told me. ‘They cheer or they boo but it doesn’t make any difference.’

As Boxing News reported, ‘Cockell started as if he was out for a KO, but found Taylor ready to join in. Gradually Taylor got on top and, connecting with well-placed body blows, had Cockell taking counts in the fifth, sixth and seventh rounds.’

‘I don’t know why but he was made for me,’ Jock revealed. ‘For all his cleverness, I could beat him to the punch, and that’s everything in the game. I could slip his left hand over my shoulder and hit him in the body every time. His style suited me and I won on points. I thought I beat him quite easily, but he wanted a return.’

The return contest was set for High Wycombe Town Hall on 6 January 1947, but in the interim both men squeezed in several fights.

Between the two bouts, Cockell notched six straight wins, including a victory over Jimmy Carroll (Stockport), who had recently stopped Jock in three rounds. Cockell and his supporters therefore fancied he would turn the tables on Jock in the rematch.

Having found success in their first fight with counters to the body, Jock knew this was his key to victory. ‘Again, I found that I could slip his left hand and clonk him in his body with my right,’ he recalled. ‘I did that in the first round and put him straight on the floor, and then at the end of the fourth I knocked him down again, and in the fifth I knocked him out.’ It was a rewarding win in both reputation and financial terms. ‘We had a £25 sidestake on it and 25 quid was a month’s pay then,’ smiled Jock.

The stories of Jock Taylor and six other ex-pros of the 1940s and 50s