THE first edition of Boxing News was published on 11 September 1909. It was published weekly until May 1941, when the offices, which were situated on Fetter Lane, Holborn, were reduced to ashes in the London Blitz.
The paper also appeared sporadically during 1943 and 1944 when the circumstances of war intervened once again. During the 1970s and 1980s, there were occasional gaps due to industrial action, but apart from this, for the last 115 years, the magazine has appeared weekly on newsstands around the country. Until 1940, the paper was known as Boxing, and it was in this guise that the first edition was printed.
Let’s have a look at the issues of the day back in 1909. In his first editorial, John Murray led with an analysis of the current state of the heavyweight division in Britain. The whole world was searching for a ‘white hope’, a sad, but an inevitable consequence of the inability of the white race to tolerate a black man as world heavyweight champion.
Jack Johnson was one of the great champions, but in Europe, and especially in America, his time as champion was deplored. Murray questioned the motivation of our heavyweight champion, Iron Hague, who had just been comprehensively beaten by one of the world’s best, Sam Langford.
Hague, who did not like training, had been given the opportunity to go to the States for three contests intended to build his profile, but seemingly apprehensive about the regime in which he would have to knuckle down and prepare himself properly over there, he had opted to box Langford instead and had been knocked out in four rounds at the National Sporting Club.
Murray then turned to the proposed contest between Jim Driscoll and Owen Moran, two of the greats at this time, and both men appeared on the front cover that week. Neither camp could agree terms for the match, and it would take another four years before the two men to face each other for the British featherweight title, by which time Moran was past his best. A disgruntled heavyweight and an inability to match two greats until a time when the fight was no longer competitive. Sound familiar?
Within the ring, the season was just restarting after a quiet summer and, with the National Sporting Club due to reopen in three weeks, the game was hotting up again. The big fight that week took place at Mountain Ash, a mining town situated between Pontypridd and Merthyr, where the Welsh idol Freddie Welsh, having his third contest since returning from America, where he had made his name, took on Camberwell’s Joe Fletcher. Welsh had won his first two at the same venue and his contest with Fletcher, a tough and brave Londoner, was one-sided, ending in a 12th-round knockout victory for the ‘Welsh Wizard’.
Up in Newcastle a new purpose-built boxing stadium, the St James Hall, opened its doors for the first time and at the top of the bill was a 20-round contest between the local hero, a middleweight pitman, Tom Lancaster from Spennymoor against the black American fighter, Young Johnson, a man who had just knocked out Gunner Moir in two rounds and who would box in the UK for the entirety of his 81-bout, five-year career. Lancaster, the underdog, won on points at the end of the 20 rounds.
An interview with the great Australian boxing impresario, Hugh McIntosh, revealed that whilst he thought it likely that Jack Johnson and Jim Jeffries would be matched for the world heavyweight title, he was non-committal about the likely outcome.
Amazingly, he stated that “There is one man in the world who would outbox Johnson eight days a week” and then named him, James J Corbett. Johnson made easy meat of Jeffries the following year and he would have certainly done the same with the ageing Corbett, who had not seen the inside of a boxing ring since losing to Jeffries in 1903.
