Boxing 2020

[Elite]

Frank Warren cards go on all fucking night. It's nearly 10pm and there's still 4 fights.

[J-V]

Get your money's worth then.

[Elite]

Just now, J-V said:

Get your money's worth then.

I like my main events at 10-10.30pm. it'll only finish about 12.30am this card. I'm usually in bed at 9pm.

[Guest]

There will be a Tie Fighter in the ring tonight.

[Kevin D]

 

[easytoslip]

15 hours ago, Kevin D said:

 

I'm a mate of his two brothers down here, one used to run my local until a few months ago, I did meet him quite a few times in the pub, Steve McCarthy, he sadly died about 3 years ago, heart attack I think. His niece still works behind the bar. 

They were friends of Brian Schumacher I learnt when I was talking to him a last year in the Lord Nelson, he was in the RN down here in Portsmouth, McCarthy 's from Southampton. 

[Lee909]

Whyte and Povetkin due to go again in November. 

[Captain Turdseye]

 

Jack Munroe was just another miner in a booming city full of them when the heavyweight champion of the world came to Butte, Mont., looking for a fight. As the champ would soon learn, he’d come to the right place, a town that truly loved and embraced a good scrap – and Munroe was just the man to provide it.

This was December 1902, the week before Christmas. As usual for that time of year in Montana, it was bitterly cold when the train hauling the champion, James J. Jeffries, former champ Bob Fitzsimmons and a small entourage of managers and handlers pulled into a bustling station in the town known as “the richest hill on earth.” An ocean of copper and other precious metals sat beneath Butte, with thousands of men from all over the world working day and night to get it out.

It was the promise of those underground riches that drew Munroe to Butte in the first place. Born in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, itself a prominent Canadian mining town some 3,000 miles away, Munroe headed west as a young man in search of gold. Like many, he wound up in Butte, a city that had already spawned multiple millionaires in addition to creating vast fortunes for “copper kings” like Marcus Daly and William A. Clark.

By the time Munroe found Butte, it was on its way to becoming a genuine metropolis. It had electric lights and streetcars but also retained a fiercely independent spirit.

In the parlance of the times, Butte was “a wide-open city,” meaning that all manner of vice and violence were on prominent display, with only selectively enforced federal or state laws meant to clamp down on them. Brothels and bordellos operated freely. Dance halls and gambling houses of all stripes stayed full throughout the night. Residents could buy opium as well as whiskey.

But one of the most consistently popular attractions, despite a strongly worded state law explicitly outlawing it, was prizefighting.

In all ways and all forms, Butte loved a good scrap. As newspaper reporter Herbert Horace Smith wrote in his unpublished memoir of early Butte, “Hell With The Lid Off,” fights in the streets featuring fists, knives and guns were not uncommon. City residents who happened upon any such fight were expected to keep walking or at least mind their own business and stay out of it, lest they be branded a “tenderfoot” unaccustomed to Butte’s ways. Old-timers had a terse reply for any would-be reformer trying to smooth the rough edges of the town: “Butte was here first.”

In other words, learn how to get along in the mining city or find somewhere else to live.

On the rare occasions when Montana’s state law against prizefighting was invoked, Smith wrote, it was typically as a threat leveled by the local sheriff against boxers who were thought to be taking it suspiciously easy on one another. They could come out for the next round and fight harder, they were told, or they could spend some time at the prison in nearby Deer Lodge. Typically, the bout’s intensity picked up right away after such a speech.

By the turn of the century, Butte had multiple boxing gyms as well as venues of varying size and respectability featuring everything from bare-knuckle brawls to the more gentile “glove-matches” under Marquess of Queensberry rules.

The first motion picture shown in Butte was of the 1897 heavyweight title fight between Fitzsimmons and “Gentleman” Jim Corbett. Even before that, John L. Sullivan had come through town on one of his famous exhibition tours, where paying crowds gathered to watch him box local toughs who’d been offered a prize of a couple of hundred dollars if they could stay with him for a few rounds without getting knocked out. As Sullivan liked to brag, he went from city to city and never once had to pay out – though he often funneled his earnings right back into the local economy while enjoying the nightlife afterward.

This practice of exhibition tours proved to be such an effective and lucrative marketing gimmick for boxing champions of the day that James J. Jeffries eventually took it up between bouts. Jeffries had won the heavyweight title with a knockout of Fitzsimmons in 1899, then became the first man in the gloved era to defend it multiple times over several years. He was known for being an all-around athlete and prime physical specimen, standing around 6-foot-2 and weighing roughly 225 pounds when he was in fighting shape.

Heavyweight world champion James J Jeffries poses in 1910. (Historica Graphica Collection / Heritage Images / Getty Images)

Tales of Jeffries’ athleticism sprouted like weeds, such as the story about his once killing a large deer on a hunting trip, then carrying it the nine miles back to camp on his shoulders without ever stopping to rest. In his book “The Heavyweight Champions,” John Durant claimed that Jeffries could run the 100-yard dash in 11 seconds and clear six feet in the high jump — both of which, if true, would have put him in serious contention for Olympic medals at the time.

“He was no lumbering ox, anchored to one spot,” recalled referee Billy Roche, “but a natural athlete.”

Most people of the time, even if they were ardent fight fans, would never get a chance to see the heavyweight champion defend his title in a real fight. They heard about it secondhand or read about it through telegram updates and newspaper accounts. If they were very lucky, maybe they’d eventually see some film of the fight — but not until months or maybe even years after it happened.

Seeing any celebrity at all was an extremely rare experience. But a chance to see the heavyweight champion of the world come to your town and fight local tough guys? That was a truly special experience. And when the hardheaded, profit-driven Munroe heard there might be $250 in it for him if he could simply stay upright and conscious for four rounds with the champ, he couldn’t resist.

---

Munroe often said he learned the basics of fighting mostly out of necessity while growing up in the coal-mining town of Cape Breton. In Butte, he joined the celebrated adult football team, where his natural strength made him one of the team’s most prized assets. Standing just shy of six feet, brawny and thickly muscled from a life spent in various mining trades, Munroe developed a reputation for his physical power as well as his resilience. He traveled with the Butte football team to other big cities like San Francisco, where he added some polish to his pugilistic skills and even won an amateur title there in 1900.

But as he later told reporters, after a few bouts, Munroe had decided that, as a vocation, prizefighting was “best left to other men.” Of course, that was before Jeffries and his entourage showed up in Butte with an opportunity to make some quick cash.

“I have always been a miner except during my short excursions into the fighting game,” Munroe told the Winnipeg Tribune’s Robert Edgren in 1909. “Even then I only tried fighting to get money to go back to mining. I needed capital.”

Fighting Jeffries was one way to get it — if only he could last the four rounds.

The bout took place on a Saturday night just before Christmas, at Butte’s Broadway Theater. Munroe would later say that he had trained all of two days for the fight. Jeffries didn’t seem to be expecting much of a fight at all, according to Dorothy Farmiloe’s biography “Legend of Jack Munroe: A Portrait of a Canadian Hero.”

“Jeffries came out of his corner smiling and with his hands hanging by his sides,” Munroe recounted later. “We immediately struck fighting attitudes. I whipped my right across his neck and staggered the champion. Jeffries was the most surprised man I ever saw.”

Though later recollections of the fight would differ, as is so often the case, most agreed that the miner had a strong first round against the champion. This delighted the roughly 1,500 spectators in attendance, many of them Butte miners just like Munroe. According to Farmiloe’s account, Munroe “displayed such unexpected skill in avoiding the big champion’s blows that most of (the crowd) went wild.”

In the second, Jeffries rebounded and dropped Munroe at least once, though some versions say it was twice. He also, according to Farmiloe, began to disregard any warnings about punching in the clinch, using his size advantage to bully Munroe in close. Jeffries was known for fighting out of a defensive crouch, employing his left hook to the body and head. While he wasn’t regarded as one of the biggest punchers of the era, he did have a knack for wearing opponents down and withstanding punishment when needed. At this point in his career, it was said, he’d never been off his feet in a fight.

At a certain point, maybe as a result of being knocked down in the second or perhaps just because he remembered that he’d be paid simply for lasting all four rounds, Munroe’s focus turned more defensive, according to some observers. He paid special attention to blocking the champion’s powerful uppercuts as well as to “hanging on in the clinch” to run the clock out. Afterward, Munroe would admit that both his arms were “skinned from the wrist up” from stopping Jeffries’ blows.

(Courtesy of Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives)

Still, some accounts of the fight had Jeffries fading in the fourth and final round, while Munroe “led right out” of his corner and went after the champion, even bloodying his nose, according to one version of the story. When the final bell sounded, referee Dunc McDonald raised Munroe’s arm, indicating him as the winner. In those days, fights that went the distance were often decided by the referee, who acted as the sole judge. Though, this being an exhibition bout, the distinction was essentially meaningless.

For Munroe, what mattered was that he had stayed the full four rounds and would collect his $250. One later account would claim that Jeffries offered him $1,000 if he could stay four more rounds, but “the local boy was wise and refused.”

---

The fallout from the surprising result was intense and immediate — and for more than just the fighters involved. Reports that the heavyweight champion had been beaten by an unknown miner in Butte went out quickly and spread to major newspapers all over the country. Clark Ball, the fight manager traveling with Jeffries’ entourage, rushed to sign Munroe to a contract that very night, offering him $500 a week according to some accounts.

This didn’t sit well with Fitzsimmons, the former champion who also traveled with and fought on this exhibition tour. Ball had been serving as his manager, and both Fitzsimmons and Jeffries were furious when they heard that Ball was using the tour to scout and sign new talent rather than seeing to his existing clients. Fitzsimmons confronted him in the lobby of Butte’s Thornton Hotel just after midnight, at which point Ball tendered his resignation as Fitzsimmons’ manager.

“Ball spoke to Fitz in the hotel lobby and asked him to decide what was due him as a manager for past services,” a local Butte newspaper reported. “Fitz replied that he owed Ball nothing. The latter made a hot retort and the Cornishman’s fist shot out like a piston rod on a fast express.”

(Courtesy of Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives)

The punch knocked Ball down. As he was falling, his head “came in contact with the sharp point of a furniture fixture, and a gaping wound was opened in the scalp.” Ball required five stitches to close the wound and was told to stay in his hotel room to recover. This probably seemed like sound advice, since he was notably less welcome on the remainder of the tour as it headed off for its next stop in Helena.

When the newspapers finally managed to pry a post-fight interview out of Munroe, he was almost sheepish about his accomplishment.

“There is little to say,” Munroe told a reporter two days later. “I did not think I would be able to stay with Jeffries, but somehow I did it. I was not in the best condition, as I have done no boxing since I won the Olympic Club amateur heavyweight championship gold medal in San Francisco in 1900. … I think I did pretty well to stay with the champion. I had no idea that I could whip him in a finish fight. I am not so foolish or conceited as to entertain any such idea.”

The same newspaper described Jeffries on his way out of Butte as “the angriest man on earth.”

“He is angry about the publicity given the Munroe affair, and says the latter is not even a good third rate fighter and that he could have knocked him out in two rounds, but did not want to disappoint the audience. He admits, however, that he tried to knock Munroe out in the fourth and was unable to finish him.”

Jeffries would go on to blame poor conditioning and altitude. (Butte sits at about 5,500 feet, and in fairness, the air quality at the time was especially poor due to mining and smelting pollution.) He took strong exception to Munroe’s being declared the winner and insisted that the miner was owed the $250 prize for staying the distance but nothing more.

“This is the first decision against me in my whole pugilistic career,” Jeffries told a newspaper on Dec. 23. “Had the bout gone one more round I would, without a doubt, have knocked Munroe out. The altitude affected me greatly, and I was afraid of overexertion. Munroe can stand much punishment, and I believe if a fight is arranged between (Tom) Sharkey and Munroe the miner will win. He can hit a stiff blow.”

(Courtesy of Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives)

Munroe became semi-famous almost overnight after news of the Jeffries fight spread, a viral sensation of the day. Two years later, he would go on to fight and defeat Sharkey, just as Jeffries had predicted. At one point, Munroe even went on his own exhibition tour (though the payout for going the distance with him was said to be only $100, less than half of what Jeffries had offered). He’d go on to fight other boxing luminaries of the day, including Peter Maher and even the great Jack Johnson, who beat Munroe some three years before winning the heavyweight title.

But after all the media attention paid to the exhibition bout, the obvious play for Munroe was a rematch with Jeffries, this time with the title on the line and with more than four rounds to work. So in 1904, two years after their exhibition bout, they met in San Francisco for the real thing.

---

The fight created such a stir back in Munroe’s home of Cape Breton that a bar owner named Hughie Johnston announced that he’d arranged for a live play-by-play of the bout via telegram service at his establishment. Eager patrons downed drinks and shushed one another into silence when each new dispatch came through.

Jeffries nearly knocked out by Munroe, read one telegram.

Jeffries suffering grievous wounds around his mouth, read another.

On and on these dispatches went, past the 20th round and then the 50th. The fight fans stayed in the bar until sunrise, drinking and listening to each new telegram as it was read aloud. Finally, sometime after Round 100, with the sun coming up and the drinkers bleary-eyed, Johnston announced that he had to close up and clean the place. It wasn’t until later that the patrons learned the fight had actually ended in the second round and everything else had been an invention to keep them present and buying drinks. Back in the real world, Jeffries had knocked Munroe out rather easily to end the rivalry.

“It’s all over now,” Munroe said after the fight. “I went as far as I could. He was a better man than when I met him in Butte.”

Soon after, Munroe drifted away from the world of prizefighting and resumed in earnest the task of looking for his wealth inside the earth. He was successful at it, too, heading back to Canada and finding prosperity as part of an early silver strike near Elk Lake, Ontario. Along with a few other miners, Munroe helped found the town and was elected its first mayor.

Munroe would later serve with distinction as a Canadian infantryman in World War I, during which he was severely wounded and lost the use of one arm. He even brought his dog Bobbie to war, where the border collie served as a regimental mascot. As if he were worried that he might not already be one of the most interesting men in the world, Munroe went on to write a book about the war from the dog’s perspective, called “Mopping Up.”

Munroe’s few years spent as a boxer seem somewhat dull compared with the rest of his life. And while he never fought again after retiring from the ring, he remained an ardent lover of the sport. In 1909, a reporter who had known him in their football days asked if the newly founded mining camp that had elected him mayor was as “wide open” as Butte.

Munroe, the man wrote, “looked pained” as he conceded that, yes, they had the typical mining camp amusements, including dance halls and even prizefights. As a matter of fact, he said, they’d had a good one just recently. And did he get to take a break from his job as mayor and magistrate long enough to see the fight?

“Well, I guess I did,” Munroe told him. “I refereed it.”

[KMD7]

Love those old stories from the turn of the last century

[KMD7]

From the Boxing-The Loneliest Sport page on Facebook

 

'I went to New York to win the championship. I wouldn't have gone if I did not think I could win. I was confident. But Ali beat me at my own game. He did the same thing to Liston. Williams, another big puncher, Ali knocked him out in short order. Terrell, the great jabber, what happened to him? He got outjabbed. And Patterson, the guy with superspeed hands, couldn't match Ali and just stood around and got punched to pieces.

 

The right hands Ali hit me with just had no business landing—but they did. They came from nowhere. Many times he was in the wrong position but he hit me anyway. Blatt! and the punch connected. I've never seen anyone who could do that. The knockdown punch was so fast that I never saw it. He has lots of snap, and when the punches land they dizzy your head; they fuzz up your mind.

 

The first time I went down, I wasn't hurt, but I didn't know what had happened. Suddenly I became aware of the noise and then I saw Ali standing over me, and I figured I was down. So I wheeled around to look at my corner, to find out the count. I kept thinking, was that a right hand he hit me with? So what did he do but hit me with the same punch again in the seventh round and knock me out. I can't believe it, but that's what he did.

 

He's smart. The trickiest fighter I've seen. He's had 29 fights and acts like he's had a hundred. He could write the book on boxing, and anyone that fights him should be made to read it first. I did things to Ali that have never been done before. He missed more punches and landed fewer than with all of those other guys he's been in with. I also cut the ring on him, reduced it so consistently that he chose to stand and fight. He's a safety-first fighter, no matter how foolish he looks. And I made him fight. That could have been my worst mistake, making him fight.

 

I hurt him to the body, but he's tough. You can tell from the way he's put together that he's got pride. The man's a real fighter. Look at the way he acts out of the ring and you can see that. In the ring the guy doesn't show when he's been hurt. Not even the smallest sign, the way most fighters do. He beat me good, but he didn't beat me bad. There's just no way to train yourself for what he does: the moves, the speed, the punches and the way he changes style every time you think you got him figured. Wendell Newton, my sparring partner, jumped around and he was awkward, but he wasn't Ali. Ali is something else. I fought middleweights, even smaller men and they weren't as fast.

 

This guy has a style all of his own. It's far ahead of any fighter's around today, so how could those oldtime fighters, you know, Dempsey, Tunney or any of them keep up? Louis wouldn't have a chance—he was too slow. Marciano couldn't get to him, and he would never get away from Ali's jab. The only one who would have a good chance was Ezzard Charles, a real fast heavyweight who was smart and was perhaps the best combination puncher of them all.' - Zora Folley

[KMD7]

Cunt formatting

[Guest]

On 16/09/2020 at 19:38, Captain Turdseye said:

 

Jack Munroe was just another miner in a booming city full of them when the heavyweight champion of the world came to Butte, Mont., looking for a fight. As the champ would soon learn, he’d come to the right place, a town that truly loved and embraced a good scrap – and Munroe was just the man to provide it.

This was December 1902, the week before Christmas. As usual for that time of year in Montana, it was bitterly cold when the train hauling the champion, James J. Jeffries, former champ Bob Fitzsimmons and a small entourage of managers and handlers pulled into a bustling station in the town known as “the richest hill on earth.” An ocean of copper and other precious metals sat beneath Butte, with thousands of men from all over the world working day and night to get it out.

It was the promise of those underground riches that drew Munroe to Butte in the first place. Born in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, itself a prominent Canadian mining town some 3,000 miles away, Munroe headed west as a young man in search of gold. Like many, he wound up in Butte, a city that had already spawned multiple millionaires in addition to creating vast fortunes for “copper kings” like Marcus Daly and William A. Clark.

By the time Munroe found Butte, it was on its way to becoming a genuine metropolis. It had electric lights and streetcars but also retained a fiercely independent spirit.

In the parlance of the times, Butte was “a wide-open city,” meaning that all manner of vice and violence were on prominent display, with only selectively enforced federal or state laws meant to clamp down on them. Brothels and bordellos operated freely. Dance halls and gambling houses of all stripes stayed full throughout the night. Residents could buy opium as well as whiskey.

But one of the most consistently popular attractions, despite a strongly worded state law explicitly outlawing it, was prizefighting.

In all ways and all forms, Butte loved a good scrap. As newspaper reporter Herbert Horace Smith wrote in his unpublished memoir of early Butte, “Hell With The Lid Off,” fights in the streets featuring fists, knives and guns were not uncommon. City residents who happened upon any such fight were expected to keep walking or at least mind their own business and stay out of it, lest they be branded a “tenderfoot” unaccustomed to Butte’s ways. Old-timers had a terse reply for any would-be reformer trying to smooth the rough edges of the town: “Butte was here first.”

In other words, learn how to get along in the mining city or find somewhere else to live.

On the rare occasions when Montana’s state law against prizefighting was invoked, Smith wrote, it was typically as a threat leveled by the local sheriff against boxers who were thought to be taking it suspiciously easy on one another. They could come out for the next round and fight harder, they were told, or they could spend some time at the prison in nearby Deer Lodge. Typically, the bout’s intensity picked up right away after such a speech.

By the turn of the century, Butte had multiple boxing gyms as well as venues of varying size and respectability featuring everything from bare-knuckle brawls to the more gentile “glove-matches” under Marquess of Queensberry rules.

The first motion picture shown in Butte was of the 1897 heavyweight title fight between Fitzsimmons and “Gentleman” Jim Corbett. Even before that, John L. Sullivan had come through town on one of his famous exhibition tours, where paying crowds gathered to watch him box local toughs who’d been offered a prize of a couple of hundred dollars if they could stay with him for a few rounds without getting knocked out. As Sullivan liked to brag, he went from city to city and never once had to pay out – though he often funneled his earnings right back into the local economy while enjoying the nightlife afterward.

This practice of exhibition tours proved to be such an effective and lucrative marketing gimmick for boxing champions of the day that James J. Jeffries eventually took it up between bouts. Jeffries had won the heavyweight title with a knockout of Fitzsimmons in 1899, then became the first man in the gloved era to defend it multiple times over several years. He was known for being an all-around athlete and prime physical specimen, standing around 6-foot-2 and weighing roughly 225 pounds when he was in fighting shape.

Heavyweight world champion James J Jeffries poses in 1910. (Historica Graphica Collection / Heritage Images / Getty Images)

Tales of Jeffries’ athleticism sprouted like weeds, such as the story about his once killing a large deer on a hunting trip, then carrying it the nine miles back to camp on his shoulders without ever stopping to rest. In his book “The Heavyweight Champions,” John Durant claimed that Jeffries could run the 100-yard dash in 11 seconds and clear six feet in the high jump — both of which, if true, would have put him in serious contention for Olympic medals at the time.

“He was no lumbering ox, anchored to one spot,” recalled referee Billy Roche, “but a natural athlete.”

Most people of the time, even if they were ardent fight fans, would never get a chance to see the heavyweight champion defend his title in a real fight. They heard about it secondhand or read about it through telegram updates and newspaper accounts. If they were very lucky, maybe they’d eventually see some film of the fight — but not until months or maybe even years after it happened.

Seeing any celebrity at all was an extremely rare experience. But a chance to see the heavyweight champion of the world come to your town and fight local tough guys? That was a truly special experience. And when the hardheaded, profit-driven Munroe heard there might be $250 in it for him if he could simply stay upright and conscious for four rounds with the champ, he couldn’t resist.

---

Munroe often said he learned the basics of fighting mostly out of necessity while growing up in the coal-mining town of Cape Breton. In Butte, he joined the celebrated adult football team, where his natural strength made him one of the team’s most prized assets. Standing just shy of six feet, brawny and thickly muscled from a life spent in various mining trades, Munroe developed a reputation for his physical power as well as his resilience. He traveled with the Butte football team to other big cities like San Francisco, where he added some polish to his pugilistic skills and even won an amateur title there in 1900.

But as he later told reporters, after a few bouts, Munroe had decided that, as a vocation, prizefighting was “best left to other men.” Of course, that was before Jeffries and his entourage showed up in Butte with an opportunity to make some quick cash.

“I have always been a miner except during my short excursions into the fighting game,” Munroe told the Winnipeg Tribune’s Robert Edgren in 1909. “Even then I only tried fighting to get money to go back to mining. I needed capital.”

Fighting Jeffries was one way to get it — if only he could last the four rounds.

The bout took place on a Saturday night just before Christmas, at Butte’s Broadway Theater. Munroe would later say that he had trained all of two days for the fight. Jeffries didn’t seem to be expecting much of a fight at all, according to Dorothy Farmiloe’s biography “Legend of Jack Munroe: A Portrait of a Canadian Hero.”

“Jeffries came out of his corner smiling and with his hands hanging by his sides,” Munroe recounted later. “We immediately struck fighting attitudes. I whipped my right across his neck and staggered the champion. Jeffries was the most surprised man I ever saw.”

Though later recollections of the fight would differ, as is so often the case, most agreed that the miner had a strong first round against the champion. This delighted the roughly 1,500 spectators in attendance, many of them Butte miners just like Munroe. According to Farmiloe’s account, Munroe “displayed such unexpected skill in avoiding the big champion’s blows that most of (the crowd) went wild.”

In the second, Jeffries rebounded and dropped Munroe at least once, though some versions say it was twice. He also, according to Farmiloe, began to disregard any warnings about punching in the clinch, using his size advantage to bully Munroe in close. Jeffries was known for fighting out of a defensive crouch, employing his left hook to the body and head. While he wasn’t regarded as one of the biggest punchers of the era, he did have a knack for wearing opponents down and withstanding punishment when needed. At this point in his career, it was said, he’d never been off his feet in a fight.

At a certain point, maybe as a result of being knocked down in the second or perhaps just because he remembered that he’d be paid simply for lasting all four rounds, Munroe’s focus turned more defensive, according to some observers. He paid special attention to blocking the champion’s powerful uppercuts as well as to “hanging on in the clinch” to run the clock out. Afterward, Munroe would admit that both his arms were “skinned from the wrist up” from stopping Jeffries’ blows.

(Courtesy of Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives)

Still, some accounts of the fight had Jeffries fading in the fourth and final round, while Munroe “led right out” of his corner and went after the champion, even bloodying his nose, according to one version of the story. When the final bell sounded, referee Dunc McDonald raised Munroe’s arm, indicating him as the winner. In those days, fights that went the distance were often decided by the referee, who acted as the sole judge. Though, this being an exhibition bout, the distinction was essentially meaningless.

For Munroe, what mattered was that he had stayed the full four rounds and would collect his $250. One later account would claim that Jeffries offered him $1,000 if he could stay four more rounds, but “the local boy was wise and refused.”

---

The fallout from the surprising result was intense and immediate — and for more than just the fighters involved. Reports that the heavyweight champion had been beaten by an unknown miner in Butte went out quickly and spread to major newspapers all over the country. Clark Ball, the fight manager traveling with Jeffries’ entourage, rushed to sign Munroe to a contract that very night, offering him $500 a week according to some accounts.

This didn’t sit well with Fitzsimmons, the former champion who also traveled with and fought on this exhibition tour. Ball had been serving as his manager, and both Fitzsimmons and Jeffries were furious when they heard that Ball was using the tour to scout and sign new talent rather than seeing to his existing clients. Fitzsimmons confronted him in the lobby of Butte’s Thornton Hotel just after midnight, at which point Ball tendered his resignation as Fitzsimmons’ manager.

“Ball spoke to Fitz in the hotel lobby and asked him to decide what was due him as a manager for past services,” a local Butte newspaper reported. “Fitz replied that he owed Ball nothing. The latter made a hot retort and the Cornishman’s fist shot out like a piston rod on a fast express.”

(Courtesy of Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives)

The punch knocked Ball down. As he was falling, his head “came in contact with the sharp point of a furniture fixture, and a gaping wound was opened in the scalp.” Ball required five stitches to close the wound and was told to stay in his hotel room to recover. This probably seemed like sound advice, since he was notably less welcome on the remainder of the tour as it headed off for its next stop in Helena.

When the newspapers finally managed to pry a post-fight interview out of Munroe, he was almost sheepish about his accomplishment.

“There is little to say,” Munroe told a reporter two days later. “I did not think I would be able to stay with Jeffries, but somehow I did it. I was not in the best condition, as I have done no boxing since I won the Olympic Club amateur heavyweight championship gold medal in San Francisco in 1900. … I think I did pretty well to stay with the champion. I had no idea that I could whip him in a finish fight. I am not so foolish or conceited as to entertain any such idea.”

The same newspaper described Jeffries on his way out of Butte as “the angriest man on earth.”

“He is angry about the publicity given the Munroe affair, and says the latter is not even a good third rate fighter and that he could have knocked him out in two rounds, but did not want to disappoint the audience. He admits, however, that he tried to knock Munroe out in the fourth and was unable to finish him.”

Jeffries would go on to blame poor conditioning and altitude. (Butte sits at about 5,500 feet, and in fairness, the air quality at the time was especially poor due to mining and smelting pollution.) He took strong exception to Munroe’s being declared the winner and insisted that the miner was owed the $250 prize for staying the distance but nothing more.

“This is the first decision against me in my whole pugilistic career,” Jeffries told a newspaper on Dec. 23. “Had the bout gone one more round I would, without a doubt, have knocked Munroe out. The altitude affected me greatly, and I was afraid of overexertion. Munroe can stand much punishment, and I believe if a fight is arranged between (Tom) Sharkey and Munroe the miner will win. He can hit a stiff blow.”

(Courtesy of Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives)

Munroe became semi-famous almost overnight after news of the Jeffries fight spread, a viral sensation of the day. Two years later, he would go on to fight and defeat Sharkey, just as Jeffries had predicted. At one point, Munroe even went on his own exhibition tour (though the payout for going the distance with him was said to be only $100, less than half of what Jeffries had offered). He’d go on to fight other boxing luminaries of the day, including Peter Maher and even the great Jack Johnson, who beat Munroe some three years before winning the heavyweight title.

But after all the media attention paid to the exhibition bout, the obvious play for Munroe was a rematch with Jeffries, this time with the title on the line and with more than four rounds to work. So in 1904, two years after their exhibition bout, they met in San Francisco for the real thing.

---

The fight created such a stir back in Munroe’s home of Cape Breton that a bar owner named Hughie Johnston announced that he’d arranged for a live play-by-play of the bout via telegram service at his establishment. Eager patrons downed drinks and shushed one another into silence when each new dispatch came through.

Jeffries nearly knocked out by Munroe, read one telegram.

Jeffries suffering grievous wounds around his mouth, read another.

On and on these dispatches went, past the 20th round and then the 50th. The fight fans stayed in the bar until sunrise, drinking and listening to each new telegram as it was read aloud. Finally, sometime after Round 100, with the sun coming up and the drinkers bleary-eyed, Johnston announced that he had to close up and clean the place. It wasn’t until later that the patrons learned the fight had actually ended in the second round and everything else had been an invention to keep them present and buying drinks. Back in the real world, Jeffries had knocked Munroe out rather easily to end the rivalry.

“It’s all over now,” Munroe said after the fight. “I went as far as I could. He was a better man than when I met him in Butte.”

Soon after, Munroe drifted away from the world of prizefighting and resumed in earnest the task of looking for his wealth inside the earth. He was successful at it, too, heading back to Canada and finding prosperity as part of an early silver strike near Elk Lake, Ontario. Along with a few other miners, Munroe helped found the town and was elected its first mayor.

Munroe would later serve with distinction as a Canadian infantryman in World War I, during which he was severely wounded and lost the use of one arm. He even brought his dog Bobbie to war, where the border collie served as a regimental mascot. As if he were worried that he might not already be one of the most interesting men in the world, Munroe went on to write a book about the war from the dog’s perspective, called “Mopping Up.”

Munroe’s few years spent as a boxer seem somewhat dull compared with the rest of his life. And while he never fought again after retiring from the ring, he remained an ardent lover of the sport. In 1909, a reporter who had known him in their football days asked if the newly founded mining camp that had elected him mayor was as “wide open” as Butte.

Munroe, the man wrote, “looked pained” as he conceded that, yes, they had the typical mining camp amusements, including dance halls and even prizefights. As a matter of fact, he said, they’d had a good one just recently. And did he get to take a break from his job as mayor and magistrate long enough to see the fight?

“Well, I guess I did,” Munroe told him. “I refereed it.”

I've downloaded this book to my kindle. 

[sir roger]

Just a mention that the Super Series cruiserweight final between Briedis and Dorticos is on Sky tomorrow night at 10pm. Both good fighters and should be worth a viewing.

 

Usyk v Chisora signed up for Halloween,  Usyk a massive favourite. Very tempted to slip 500 notes on Del Boy

[Elite]

13 minutes ago, sir roger said:

Just a mention that the Super Series cruiserweight final between Briedis and Dorticos is on Sky tomorrow night at 10pm. Both good fighters and should be worth a viewing.

 

Usyk v Chisora signed up for Halloween,  Usyk a massive favourite. Very tempted to slip 500 notes on Del Boy

Josh Taylor is fighting Khongsong the same time on BT sport tomorrow night as well. Hopefully the main events don't clash.

[Bjornebye]

49 minutes ago, sir roger said:

Just a mention that the Super Series cruiserweight final between Briedis and Dorticos is on Sky tomorrow night at 10pm. Both good fighters and should be worth a viewing.

 

Usyk v Chisora signed up for Halloween,  Usyk a massive favourite. Very tempted to slip 500 notes on Del Boy

 

You might as well throw them 500 notes in the fire then mate. 

[sir roger]

Twas in jest, Stig. 

 

What was the name of the poster who used to be good value on these boxing threads and lost £500 on a ridiculous punt on Chisora. He also had Paul Smith offer him a straightener in the Kemlyn car park over some perceived slight.

[Elite]

17 minutes ago, sir roger said:

Twas in jest, Stig. 

 

What was the name of the poster who used to be good value on these boxing threads and lost £500 on a ridiculous punt on Chisora. He also had Paul Smith offer him a straightener in the Kemlyn car park over some perceived slight.

DanDanShaw

 

He was a good poster, albeit a shite gambler 

[Bjornebye]

Yeah I liked DanDan especially on this thread. 

 

Didn't Smith start on him in the Top as well? Hahaha. Good mates with Crolla as well. 

[Bjornebye]

My mates working the Josh Taylor fight tonight the jammy twat 

 

 

[Curly]

1 hour ago, Bjornebye said:

My mates working the Josh Taylor fight tonight the jammy twat 

 

 

That’s ace. What does he do?

[Bjornebye]

8 minutes ago, belarus said:

That’s ace. What does he do?

He is a runner of some sort for BT. Mainly does footy. Sits next to the dugout and stuff. I don't quite know his full role or job title. He has to get players / managers etc for interviews and reports pitch side stuff to the studio live. 

[Curly]

55 minutes ago, Bjornebye said:

He is a runner of some sort for BT. Mainly does footy. Sits next to the dugout and stuff. I don't quite know his full role or job title. He has to get players / managers etc for interviews and reports pitch side stuff to the studio live. 

Nice - dream job stuff that.

 

I know a lad whose mate works on Soccer am and he goes and watches a few times a season then gets out on the ale with them after. Says Bullard is a cunt, as expected. The lad says the money is bad, but he’d rather have less and do something he enjoys, which I massively respect.

[Bjornebye]

7 minutes ago, belarus said:

Nice - dream job stuff that.

 

I know a lad whose mate works on Soccer am and he goes and watches a few times a season then gets out on the ale with them after. Says Bullard is a cunt, as expected. The lad says the money is bad, but he’d rather have less and do something he enjoys, which I massively respect.

Yeah respect to him for that. My mate gets a decent wedge to be fair, it is a proper dream job. He is a blue as well but went away with the Reds in the States last year for the tour, working with LFC TV. He did 10 days in Portugal for the Champions League games last month. The fella lives the fucking dream. It's funny when he does Liverpool at Anfield, when they show Klopp on the touchline you often see him just sat there with a brew. 

 

Good mates with Fowler who is godfather to his daughter and Macca was best man at his wedding. He made an appearance on that Liverpool documentary as well from the other week. 96, he was with the players at the races and with them the days around the cup final as well. He also went all the Euro 96 England games pissing up with the team etc. He's got some stories. 

[Raymond Duck]

Swinging for the fences, mad round.

[Curly]

3 hours ago, Bjornebye said:

Yeah respect to him for that. My mate gets a decent wedge to be fair, it is a proper dream job. He is a blue as well but went away with the Reds in the States last year for the tour, working with LFC TV. He did 10 days in Portugal for the Champions League games last month. The fella lives the fucking dream. It's funny when he does Liverpool at Anfield, when they show Klopp on the touchline you often see him just sat there with a brew. 

 

Good mates with Fowler who is godfather to his daughter and Macca was best man at his wedding. He made an appearance on that Liverpool documentary as well from the other week. 96, he was with the players at the races and with them the days around the cup final as well. He also went all the Euro 96 England games pissing up with the team etc. He's got some stories. 

Fucking hell - that is dream job world! When you said runner I thought he was some tea boy who famous players called “Pat” when his names Phil in a vague attempt at humouring the jabroni on set!

 

I bet he has got some stories with the Euro 96 team. Sounds like a good lad to have a few scoops with for sure.