[rob snell]

The Boxing Biographies Newsletter
Volume 2- No 1 - 8th January 2008
Contents summary

My sincere thanks to Corey Gardner who provided this article

George Gardner is one of the few sixty - one heroes who have been ranked the number one fighter in the world. He is also one of the top ten light - heavyweights in history. Gardner was also ranked as number 29 out of 100 all - time heavyweights when he was actually a middleweight turned light heavyweight, weighing anywhere from 155 to 175 pounds. Gardner was a very good fighter and a well respected boxer, however, today he is a side note usually mentioned as the man who lost the title to 40 - year old Bob Fitzsimmons, making the "old
man" the first triple - division winner in the history of boxing.

The Syracuse Herald 26 July 1926
The Fight Game from The Inside
By Jack Kearns

I welcomed the chance to clear up Dempsey's record even though there wasn't to be any money worth while in the fight with Jim Flynn at Fort Sheridan. At the same time, winner take. all, was
good enough for us and we went after it. There was no money at the fort, but reputation was hotter than the dough right then.

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The Boxing Biographies Newsletter
Volume 2- No 2 - 12th January 2008
Contents summary

Pedlar Palmer

"Box O' Tricks", Pedlar Palmer was from fighting stock. His father was a bare knuckle champion of Essex, and it was said his mother could handle any women in London's East End !.
Pedlar was an elusive and extremely clever boxer who developed into an extravagant showman with moves learned in a boyhood stage act with his brother

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The Boxing Biographies Newsletter
Volume 2- No 3 - 19th January 2008
Contents summary

The Fort Wayne Sentinel 28 May 1910
The Rise of John L Sullivan

Sullivan was the one great product of the fourth period of the fistic history, which came to an end with his career and which was only lifted from a dead level of mediocrity by his astounding achievements. His personality completely dominated the prize ring for ten years, during which he imposed his own peculiar methods upon the sport, sweeping away once for all the teachings of the first great tactician, Mendoza, which had influenced pugilism more or less directly
throughout the second, third and fourth periods.

Jackie 'Kid' Berg 'The Whitechapel Windmill'
Light-Welterweight Champion of the World (1930-31)
Chester Times, Chester PA. 11 September 1931

'NEW YORK. Sept. 11
The shoes of Frank Erne, Bat Nelson, Joe Gans, Ad Wolgast and Benny Leonard are none too big today for Tony Canzoneri, worthy champion of the lightweight division. The likeable little Italian, holder of the 135 Ib. and 140 Ib. titles and former bantamweight champion, proved his right to the purple robes last night when he administered a sound beating to Jack (Kid) Berg, Britain's best. It was the third and "rubber" meeting between the two rivals.

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The Boxing Biographies Newsletter
Volume 2- No 4 - 29th January 2008
Contents summary

Herald and News 19 July 1875

letters from different persons wanting information respecting the late Allen and Rooke fight, I here give you the particulars from the first. On January 10th, ,1875 George Rooke, of Newark, N. J, conceived a plan by which he hoped to enrich himself at the expense of Tom Allen. This Rooke never done anything only with third and fourth-class men, but he had the impudence to send a challenge to Allen to do battle with him for $2500 a side.

The Dubuque Herald, Iowa 25 September 1873

The Mill Between Tom Allen and Mike McCoole,
Allan the Winner in Seven Rounds, Occupying Twenty Minutes.
A Beastly Display of Muscle and Science

At half past 9 o'clock this morning the steamer Continental, with 1,000 persons on hoard, left for the great prize fight. The day was clear and cool, and left nothing to be desired. The boat
went 12 miles up the river to Choutean's island, where a landing was effected, and the ring pitched in a grove where the men were completely shaded from the sun. McCoole won the
toss, and selected the southeast corner.

Jem Mace v Tom Allen
By George Siler
Two Englishmen Scrapped Hard For the American Title
Jem Mace and Tom Allen clashed at new Orleans for a purse of $2,500

The important fistic event of the year 1870 was the battle between Jem Mace and Tom Allen For
the heavyweight championship of America, which took place on May 10 near New Orleans for
$2,500 a side. The peculiar thing about the scrap was the contestants were Englishmen, fighting
for an American title.

The Democrat, Lima, Ohio 14 September 1876
GOSS-ALLEN
.
The Cincinnati Prize Fight Brutality.
Cincinnati, Sept, 8, 1870.

So long as there can be found brutish fools to fight them, and less brutish fools to bet money on them, and encourage them just so long will there, continue to be prize fights ,in spite of civilization just as there have been in the past. To disguise the fact that there has been a certain sort of interest here throughout all this Goss-Allen, England-American championship business, will not do. Repugnant as it is, there have yet been few circles which have not been concerned in greater or less degree

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[rob snell]

The Boxing Biographies Newsletter
Volume 2- No 5 - 10th February 2008
Contents summary

When Corbett Thrashed Sullivan
"I will never challenge Sullivan" this remark was made by James J. Corbett to a party of friends in Chicago just before Christmas, 1891. Corbett had come East with the idea of making a theatrical engagement and at the time had not fully determined to enter pugilism as a career;

Sunday State Journal 3 July 1910
IS JEFFRIES STILL CHAMPION
CLAIMS OF JACK JOHNSON
Winning the heavyweight championship of the world from Fitzsimmons was no light thing, even for a man of such phenomenal strength and skill as Jeffries, but defending it was no less a task.

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The Boxing Biographies Newsletter
Volume 2- No 6 - 21st February , 2008
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THE CHAMPION COMES OF THAT GRAND OLD DANISH FIGHTING STOCK.
BY BATTLING NELSON.

Lightweight Champion of the World. My full name is Oscar Battling Matthew Nelson. I
was born on June 5, 1882 in Copenhagen, Denmark, the day on which we Danes celebrate the winning of Independence. Though born on foreign soil I herewith proclaim myself an American in every sense of the word.

Trenton Times 29 February 1904
Sharkey a "Has Been"
Munroe Won Bout
Miner Will Fight Jeffries for Championship
But It Will Be a Shame to Allow It.

Partly because Tom Sharkey has gone so far back as to qualify as a "has been' and partly because Jack Munroe has improved considerably under the tutelage of the clever "Kid" McCoy, the lucky miner gained a decisive victory over the sailor Saturday night in a six round bout In Philadelphia

The Syracuse Herald 21 January 1916
Jack Munroe's Right Arm is Destroyed By A Shell
Man Who Floored Jim Jeffries Is Now Patient in Hospital
After Having Been Maimed During Battle

The giant football player-miner, who fought Jim Jeffries twice when the latter was
champion of the world, has Just suffered a loss of his right arm while serving at
the front in France with Princess Patricia's Own, better known as the Princess
Pats, the crack Canadian regiment.

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The Boxing Biographies Newsletter
Volume 2- No 7 - 4th March , 2008
Contents summary

The Battling Nelson Story
BAT BECOMES A COWBOY.
Here I met up with a cowboy and he took me out to one of the big ranches close by, where
I became a regular cowboy. Another wild ambition of mine had been gratified. I had
read novels of Buffalo Bill and other famous men of the plains, and greatly admired their
personalities and records. So here I was astride a horse now and actually herding cattle.

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The Boxing Biographies Newsletter
Volume 2- No 8 - 18th March , 2008
Contents summary

The Battling Nelson Story
ENDS SEASON WITH A DEFEAT.

I concluded the siege of 1901 in old "Jonahville," Milwaukee, tying up with Charley Berry again. We -met the night after I had cleaned up big middleweight Walsh, and I felt as though I was due to close up the final chapter of the reason by licking Berry. He pursued his same old tactics of stalling, holding on in clinches and dancing around the ring, keeping out of harm's way, and as a result I hardly got a chance to hand over my sleep pills during the fight. I just couldn't shake the hoodoo, and though I was giving him the worst of it whenever I got near him, and at the finish was smothering him with blows, he was awarded the decision on "points." So ended the hardest and unluckiest year of fighting experienced by me during my entire career - 1901.

TOMMY BURNS AND AUSTRALIAN SQUIRES.

After Jeffries quit the fighting game, there were just two heavyweight ring events in which it was considered that the championship of the world was involved. The first of these was the battle between Tommy Burns and Champion Bill Squires of Australia. The other was a championship
struggle beyond doubt. Reference is made to the bout in far away Australia when Burns lost his newly acquired title to Jack Johnson, and a black man for the first time in pugilistic history was hailed premier heavyweight fighter of the world.

Jake Kilrain
Three Fights Stand Out As My Greatest Thrills

EVERY sport celebrity has had some colorful happening in his career that stands out as his greatest performance. The superlatives of sport are ever interesting. The greatest game of the various major league pitching stars, the greatest play of the All-America football stars and the greatest shot of the golf champions always carry a thrill.

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The Boxing Biographies Newsletter
Volume 2- No 9 - 7th April , 2008
Contents summary

The Battling Nelson Story
FAMOUS EXPERT EXAMINES FIGHTER FOR THE TRAVELER.
BY JOHN R. ROBINSON.

Wallop Battling Nelson in the stomach, hard and swift. Then follow it by another wallop in the
same place. And according to the dope, you're lightweight champion of the world. You can hit
Nelson on the jaw as long as you want, and the only thing that you'll hurt is your hands. You can
hit him over the kidneys, on the ears, on the nose, blacken both eyes and pound his chest to a
frazzle, and he'll still grin through the blood and come back for more.

Battling Siki

The Ogden Standard Examiner 19 November 1922

When black Siki, with one well-placed blow from his powerful fist, knocked out
Georges Carpentier a few weeks ago, he gave the French public the excuse for as silly an exhibition of hero worship as the world has ever seen. Carpentier was long the great popular idol of France

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[rob snell]

The Boxing Biographies Newsletter
Volume2 - No 10 , 2nd May, 2008
Contents summary

My Fighting Life BY GEORGES CARPENTIER - 1920
CHAPTER I - I BECOME DESCAMPS' PUPIL

OUTSIDE my home in Paris many thousands of my countrymen shouted and roared and screamed; women tossed nosegays and blew kisses up to my windows. "Vive Carpentier! ' came
from a mighty chorus of voices. Paris was still in an ecstasy of enthusiasm; my contest against Joe Beckett, so swift, sensational, dramatic, incredible, remained the wonder of the moment,
and as I looked from my window on to the street below I shook and shivered.


Freddie Mills
Frederick Percival Mills was born in Bournemouth, Dorset, on England's south coast, on 26th June 1919.The family did not live among the hotels, guest houses and the homes of the genteel retired, but in an old terraced house in one of the less salubrious back streets. His father Tom, who served in the army in the great war, was a "Totter" who drove his horse and cart around the streets buying unwanted junk which he, hopefully, would sell at a profit. His mother Lottie
had worked part time in the local hotels to help support the family while Tom was away in the army.

The Lethbridge Herald -29 May 1934

Barney Ross Wins Welterweight Title
Decisively Outpoints Jimmy McLarnin
Baby-Faced Irish-Canadian Proves No Match for Ferocity of American Jew

Ad Wolgast
WELSH IS FAVORITE OVER CADILLAC MAN

New York, NY., Oct. 31-Freddie Welsh, lightweight champion of the world, is a slight favorite over Ad Wolgast, former titleholder, in the betting at Madison Square Garden next Monday. The Englishman is picked to outbox the Michigan fighter with ease. Wolgast, now in training at Cooper's Gymnasium, declared today that he would surprise Welsh as well as some of the critics. The former champion has been working for this bout for three weeks and declared he is in perfect shape.

Saturday, October 31, 1914
The Cadillac Evening News
Cadillac, Michigan

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The Boxing Biographies Newsletter
Volume 2 - No 11 - 13th May , 2008
Contents summary

WHY BATTLING NELSON FIGHTS.

The following letter was written by Prof. Mike Donovan and sent to George Siler
and re-mailed to the Battler at Hegewisch, Illinois.

NEW YORK CITY, Dec. 3rd, 1904, Geo. Siler, Chicago Tribune. Friend George: Battling Nelson's brilliant victory over William Rothwell, "YOUNG CORBETT," at San Francisco, California, Thursday night, revealed a domestic drama which at one time threatened to be a tragedy. The story of the boy's struggles against great odds and his rapid ascent as a pugilist, conceals behind it the fact that for years Nelson has fought with two objects. His objects were outside the prize ring. He fought his way towards the championship with but two ideas to pay the
mortgage on his mother's home on Superior avenue, Hegewisch, and to win back the love and admiration of his father, brothers and sister.


Carmen Basilio was born on 2 April 1927 in Canasota, New York, one of 4 boys and 6
daughters raised by Italian immigrant parents. His parents both found low paid and back breaking work on a local onion farm and the Basilio children would also work in the fields when they became old enough. Years later Basilio claimed that the toughness which characterized him in the ring was moulded there in the onion fields of Canasota. However, his father Joseph's idea of buying a few sets of boxing gloves as a way of settling family squabbles may have contributed.

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The Boxing Biographies Newsletter
Volume 2 - No 12 - 23th May , 2008
Contents summary

Battling Nelson

Tragedy is Mirrored in Face of Britt's Father.
From .San Francisco Examiner. September 10. 1905.
CRITIC SAYS THIS IS MORE THAN MELODRAMA, AND TELLS HOW ACCURATE DRAMATIZATION WOULD BE LESSON FOR "THE GAME/'
BY ASHTON STEVENS.

Melodrama would be a hollow word poor old cut and dried melodrama! For this duel between Jimmie Britt and Battling Nelson had a nerve-wrecking shudder for every moment of the fifty -two minutes of actual fighting. It was a sight such as I hope never to see again ; and yet it was the greatest matinee I have ever witnessed. The most colossal audience and the most expensive too, that I have ever known played the horrible mob.

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The Boxing Biographies Newsletter
Volume 2 - No 13 - 3rd June , 2008
Contents summary

Tricks of the prize ring
Under the white glare of the arc lights, the centre of a thousand eyes, two pink figures move about the canvas covered square, back and forth, with quick, subtly evasive motions, and gloved hands flatteringly cruel. They are the skilful gladiators of our time, though we cannot see all their cleverness. They have tricks within tricks- tricks beneath the tricks we see, which the owners of the thousand eyes do not know about.

Melio Bettina

Monitor Index and Democrat, Moberly.Mo 13 July 1939
CONN AND BETTINA FIGHT TONIGHT
Winner of Match Might Be the Heavyweight Champ Next Summer

NEW YORK, July 13- Billy Conn of Pittsburgh and Melio Bettina of Beacon, N.Y.,. two tough youngsters who fully expect to be plunk in the middle of the heavyweight situation a year from now, clash in a 15-rounder at Madison Square Garden tonight for the country's 175-pound title.

Billy Barton

Billy Barton was yet another local boxer whose career coincided with the Second World War, although this did not prevent him from accumulating around 200 fights. It was the RAF who were to gain from his boxing skills and one cannot wonder at the talent the RAF team had at that time. His first amateur contest was against British Enka's Tommy Dunn, who had just been
beaten in the ABA Finals - A Baptism of fire - but Billy held his own before losing on points, a performance which undoubtedly persuaded him to give the pro game a shot.

Alf McEvoy

Ringmaster at the Liverpool Stadium for over 30 years and a former boxing booth fighter. In an
article published in the Liverpool Echo in July 1973 it was said that in a city which abounds with fight characters there can be few, if any, who have seen more of boxing in the city and met more fight personalities than Alf McEvoy. Alf was the backstage guy who saw that the ring and all its
necessary fittings were in order for the then regular Thursday night shows. Until the Boxing Board of Control inspectors took over the job he worked the scales at the weigh in, helped organise the roster of Referees and saw that the gloves were ready and fitted correctly.

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The Boxing Biographies Newsletter
Volume 2 - No 14 - 24th June , 2008
Contents summary

The Continuing Story of Battling Nelson

A few days later I happened into Billings, Montana, one of the greatest little sporting towns in the west. Tony Minder, proprietor of the Topic theater, engaged me to box my old rival, Charley Berry, from Hoodoville Milwaukee three nights at $200 per night, in four-round exhibition bouts. A few days later I visited Minot, North Dakota. At that time there was an installation of the Elks Lodge there, and they being a sporty lot, and being aroused over my appearance there, suggested a boxing match. Clarence H. Parker, a personal friend of mine as well as a prominent member of the Elks, was on the arrangement committee and approached me as to boxing an exhibition for the entertainment of the Elks, with Mark Nelson, to which I readily consented. We boxed four spirited round on October 26th, for which I received $250 and expenses.

ISMAEL LAGUNA was born, one of a family of nine, in a fishing village called Santa Isabel, near Colon, Panama, on 28 June 1943. Colon was a busy port at the Caribbean end of the Panama Canal and like many others from poor backgrounds Laguna scraped a living as a boy by shining shoes and selling newspapers.

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