The BAWLI Papers
(Boxing As We Liked It)
By J Michael Kenyon
Issue Number 27
Saturday, January 9, 1998
New York City, New York, US of A
__________________________________________
IN THIS ISSUE: THE RECORD REVIEWED, VOLUME NUMBER 2 -- HEAVYWEIGHT GEORGE
GODFREY
__________________________________________
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Readers are welcome to submit interesting and otherwise noteworthy articles
concerning professional boxing's long and storied past. The emphasis,
generally, should be on the foremost fighters, managers, trainers and
promoters, and events that otherwise were of some moment in the sport's
history. Either transmit the articles via e-mail or mail them to the editor at
the following addresses:
J Michael Kenyon (oldfallguy@aol.com)
244 Madison Avenue, Suite 145
New York City, New York 10016
_________________________________________
(ED. NOTE -- The BAWLI Papers continue with an experiment in boxing history
research. Included below is the record of George Godfrey, as printed in the
1933 Everlast record book. As was the case with Tiger Jack Fox, whose record
was printed in BAWLI No. 13, it is a notable career. Not long after the bouts
reflected here, Godfrey -- unable to crack into boxing's big-time for some
serious money fights -- opted for a go at professional wrestling. He enjoyed
only a modicum of success in that profession and later wound up, retired, and
according to various reports which swirled about, either dead or operating a
saloon somewhere in Pennsylvania. When he died is unknown to the editor, but
that is part of the reason why these old records are being reprinted -- in an
effort to encourage additional scholarship and a flow of information between
those who are trying to make some sense of the great tide of boxing history.
As previously noted, BAWLI is basically dedicated to elaborating on the
careers of only the best fighters of the 20th century, a category to which Fox
and Godfrey doubtless belong, despite their inabilities -- largely due to the
color of their skins -- to gain world titles.)
-------------------------------------------------------------
GEORGE GODFREY
Born, January 25, 1901, Mobile, Ala., Weight, 225 lbs., Height, 6 ft., 2
inches.
"Discovered" and first managed by former world heavyweight champion Jack
Johnson in New York City.
(RECORD AS SHOWN BELOW: 83 fights, 79 victories, 69 by knockout, 13 losses, 3
by knockout, 5 by foul, 1 no contest -- the record is incomplete by a large
measure, particularly with regard to dates and places where most of the bouts
took place. Hence, the need for cooperation and assistance from other
historians. The fights are not necessarily in chronological order, either,
other than to have happened in the years noted.)
1922
-- Jack Ward, KO2
-- Rough House Ware, KO1
-- Buddy Jackson, KO2
-- Jack Thompson, KO4
-- Clem Johnson, W12
1923
-- Battling Owens, KO6
-- Bill Tate, KO8
-- K.O. Gudan, KO2
March 9 -- Jack Renault, New York KOby11
1924
-- Tom Clovers, KO2
-- Francis Lodge, KO2
-- Jack Townsend, KO1
-- Joe White, KO1
-- Jack Thompson, KO2
Sept. 8 -- Jack Renault, Philadelphia L10
1925
-- Tut Jackson, KO5
-- Sam Baker, KO4
-- Tiny Jim Herman, TKO3
-- Battling Owens, KO3
-- Vic Alexander, KO7
June 6 -- Jack Renault, San Francisco W10
-- Martin Burke, W10
-- Mike Conroy, NC2
Dec. 18 -- Fred Fulton, Minneapolis KO5
1926
-- Joe Gaimes, TKO4
-- Larry Gains, KO6
-- Cowboy Billy Owens, TKO8
-- Sully Montgomery, WF7
-- Tiny Herman, W10
-- Bob Larson, W6
-- Jack Townsend, W6
-- Chuck Wiggins, LF7
Sept. 21 -- Jack Sharkey, Boston L10
-- Bearcat Wright, TKOby10
1927
-- Ralph Smith, KO9
-- Tony Fuente, KO9
-- Jack Roper, KO9
-- Leon Chevalier, KO3
-- Jack Roper, TKO6
-- Neal Clisby, KO7
Aug. 15 -- Jim Maloney, Philadelphia KO1
-- Henry Van Patten, KO2
-- Monte Munn, TKO4
-- Tom Sayers, KO1
-- Clem Johnson, KO1
-- Jack Townsend, KO6
-- Larry Gains, KO5
-- Cowboy Billy Owens, KO7
-- Andrew Dervos, KO1
-- Soldier Jones, KO1
1928
-- Joe White, TKO1
-- Tut Jackson, KO2
-- Jierre Charles, KO2
-- Benny Hill, KO2
-- Bud Gorman, KO3
-- Clem Johnson, KO2
-- Jim Segman, KO2
Feb. 28 -- Paulino Uzcudun, Los Angeles W10
-- Larry Gains, LF3
June 27 -- Johnny Risko, New York L10
1929
-- Francisco Cruz, KO2
-- K.O. Hartwell, KO2
-- Farmer Lodge, KO2
-- Jimmy Byrne, KO7
-- Chuck Wiggins, KO7
-- Ralph Smith, KO2
-- Willie Walker, LF3
-- Tom Hawkins, LF3
-- Jimmy Byrne, TKOby7
1930
June 23 -- Primo Carnera, Philadelphia LF5
1930-31
-- Jack Rosen, KO1
-- Leonard Dixon, KO3
-- Ace Clark, KO7
-- Jack Gross, KO7
-- Frankie Simms, KO2
-- Arthur DeKuh, KO2
-- Ralph Lee, KO1
-- Salvatore Ruggerillo KO1
-- Jack Russell, KO1
-- Seal Harris, KO4
-- George Gemas, KO2
-- Seal Harris, KO2
-- Jack Gross, L10
1932
-- K.O. Harper, Mt. Clemens, Mich. KO2
May 3, K.O. Riser, Monroe, Mich. KO2
May 24, Bill Williams, Alliance, Mich. KO1
May 30, Texas Tanner, Canton, O. KO2
June 3, Harry Johnson, Sandusky, O. KO2
Sept. 1, Ace Clark, New Laredo, Tex. KO3
Nov. 10, Al Fay, Philadelphia, KO7
Dec. 10, Walter Cobb, Philadelphia, W10
Dec. 29, Walter Cobb, Philadelphia L10
1933
Jan. 31 -- Tiger Jack Fox, Indianapolis W10
_________________________________________
SOME PAGE ONE HEAVYWEIGHT NEWS
(Florida Times-Union, September 23, 1997)
By Bill Foley
The death of the Black Uhlan was front page news.
Max Schmeling was more than another German soldier.
He was the former heavyweight boxing champion of the world.
He was the man who whipped Joe Louis.
He was an icon of German ascendancy between world wars.
He was bigger than Marlene Dietrich.
And in Jacksonville, he was much more than that.
He was the man who whipped Strib.
And, of course, a couple of days after the Jacksonville Journal front-paged
his passing, Max Schmeling was no longer dead.
He outlived first Strib, then Louis, then Dietrich.
Turned 90 in September 1995, avoiding the press.
Strib, of course, was W.L. Stribling.
''Young'' Stribling to fight fans. Just Strib to the locals. Double-yuh el.
The King of the Canebreaks.
Strib was a Macon boy, but fought out of Jacksonville so often he was
considered Jacsksonville's own. His momma and daddy handled him and his kid
brother, Baby Stribling - they all had been acrobats -- and they were just
folks around here.
Strib and the Black Uhlan whacked their way to the top of the boxing world on
different paths until July 3, 1931, in Cleveland.
They fought that night for the heavyweight championship of the world.
Schmeling was the champ. He had beaten Jack Sharkey in four rounds on a foul
to take the title vacated by Gene Tunney.
Strib was the favorite. Seven-to-5.
Strib could whip anybody who walked, seemed like.
They called him King of the Canebreaks because he'd set his private plane down
in a canebreak and would whip anybody who walked up and wanted to fight.
But this night, as Strib himself told Charlie Baker, nobody in the world could
have beaten Schmeling.
Not Dempsey, not Tunney, not Sharkey, for sure, Stribling told Baker, sports
editor of the Jacksonville Journal.
Fourteen seconds before the end of the 15th and final round, referee George
Blake ripped Stribling from a desperate clinch and declared Schmeling the
winner.
Nobody disagreed.
''Taking the play entirely from the Pride of Dixie after the one-third mark,
Schmeling grew steadily stronger and slowly but surely outpunched the
challenger into a gory mess,'' Baker wrote. ''He forced the fighting
continually and was fresh as a daisy at the end.''
Stribling died not long afterward from injuries in a motorcycle wreck near his
home.
Sharkey took the championship from Schmeling in a decision a year later in
Long Island City.
Six years later, champ Joe Louis KO'd Schmeling in the first round in New York
City, avenging a 12-round knockout in 1936, also in New York City.
They said Schmeling was out of favor with Hitler by then. They said that's why
he was the only top sportsman drafted into the army.
In late May, he was reported killed in the German invasion of Crete.
The Journal reported his death at the same time the St. Johns Theatre was
being opened in downtown Jacksonville.
The Journal said Schmeling reportedly was killed while trying to escape after
being captured.
''Speaking English with a strong American accent, he said he was Schmeling and
his papers bore that name,'' a New Zealand ambulance driver told The
Associated Press.
''He was truculent and surly. After talking with him at length, our officers
were convinced he was Schmeling.''
The AP account said the man described as Schmeling grabbed a rifle from a
wounded British soldier ''and went into action like a wild bull. Before he did
any damage, someone let him have it, and that was the end of Max.''
The next day Berlin made an extraordinary announcement that Max Schmeling was
not dead.
''First inquiries in Berlin elicited the suggestion that the German war
machine would not be stopped to learn the plight of one parachutist - even if
it was Schmeling, who had been much photographed as the German beau-ideal of
strength and parachuting dare-devilry,'' said The AP in The Florida Times-
Union.
But Berlin later announced the ex-champ was definitely alive, but suffering
from an unspecified ''tropical disease'' contracted in Crete.
The fighter America called the Black Uhlan survived the war, bought a farm and
secured a production license from Coca-Cola.
Reuter Information Service said when he turned 90, Schmeling still was running
his business and a charitable trust and working out a half hour a day.
___________________________________
BACK WHEN ROBERTO DURAN KOd A HORSE
(New York Times, June 2, 1998)
By Dave Anderson
Nearly 100 fights and 27 years ago, Roberto Durán arrived in New York, a
20-year-old Panamanian lightweight with a 25-0 record and the sneering snarl
of a Caribbean pirate in an old Errol Flynn movie. All he
needed to fit the part was a bandanna around his head and a knife between his
teeth.
And in his Madison Square Garden debut on Sept.13, 1971, all he needed to
dispose of Benny Huertas was 70 seconds.
"It was a dream for me to fight here," he said yesterday with a soft smile
that soon turned into that old sneer. "But when I walked around the city,
nobody knew who I was. I told myself, 'The next time I come here, they're
going to know me.'"
The next time, he arrived as the challenger for the world lightweight title,
then held by Ken Buchanan of Scotland.
"I remember seeing Buchanan eating a piece of bread with butter and drinking a
Coke," Durán recalled through Juan Rolon, his interpreter.
"They asked him why he hadn't looked at films of my fights and he said,
'Durán's too slow for me.' I started laughing inside. I knew I was too tough
for him."
Too tough and too rough. He doubled up Buchanan with a low blow, took the
title in the 13th round and everybody in boxing knew who Roberto Durán was.
They still do and they always will.
He'll be 47 years old in two weeks, but Saturday night he will go up the steps
into the Garden ring again, this time with a 102-13 record, with 69 knockouts.
In his eighth Garden bout, he will try to dislodge the World Boxing
Association middleweight title from William Joppy before Evander Holyfield
defends his heavyweight title against Henry Akinwande.
"I don't want to talk a lot about Joppy, I want to show you," he said, sitting
near the Garden ring in the exposition hall where he and other boxers will
train this week. "But you can't imagine the emotion I feel about
being in the Garden."
On the peak of his cap were the weight classes he has won titles at: 135, 147,
154 and 160. Some boxing people think that, at 135 pounds, he was the best
lightweight ever. As a welterweight and middleweight, he has never had quite
the same punch.
But of his seven Garden fights, he lost only one, a 10-round nontitle decision
in 1972 to Esteban de Jesus, whom he knocked out twice in rematches.
He also outpointed Adolfo Viruet and knocked out Monroe Brooks in 1978,
outpointed Carlos Palomino in 1979 and stopped Davey Moore in 1983.
"Even a lot of people in my country didn't think I would beat Moore," he said,
"but I did."
Three years earlier, some of those same people had scrawled "Durán, Traitor"
on walls in Panama City after he had turned to the referee, muttered "no más"
and walked away from Sugar Ray Leonard in the seventh round in the Louisiana
Superdome. To him, Leonard had been clowning and taunting, not fighting.
But in winning the W.B.A. junior-middleweight title from Moore and the World
Boxing Council middleweight title from Iran Barkley in 1989, Durán was an idol
again in Panama, where he once punched out a horse.
"My mother's town, Guarare, every year they have a feast," he recalled. "I
went there with $150, a lot of money for me then. My whole family was drinking
whisky and now I was down to about $30. Then this guy said, 'I'll bet you a
bottle of whisky and $50 you can't knock out that horse over there.'
"I looked at the horse and I thought, 'The horse has no jaw; where am I going
to hit him?' But my uncle, Socrates Garcia, told me: 'Hit him behind the ear.
If you hit him there, he will go down.' I said, 'Somebody hold the money,'
then I walked over and hit the horse behind the ear and the horse went down."
"I tore a hole in my hand, nothing broken, but it was bleeding," he said,
holding out his right hand and pointing to the knuckle area.
"My uncle wanted me to go to the hospital to bandage my right hand, but I had
so many drinks in me, I didn't feel the pain. I stayed at the party."
But the horse isn't why Roberto Durán is known as Manos de Piedras, meaning
hands of stone.
"I took a picture once with two rocks in my hands," he said. "That's how that
started."
Those hands aren't what they used to be, but they will be throwing punches in
the Garden again.
_________________________________
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