British warrior Dave “Boy” Green, known as the “Fenland Tiger,” fought some big fights in the 1970s and ’80s. The former British and European champ at light-welterweight and also a former European welterweight ruler, Green thrilled millions with his action fights. Green got as far as challenging Sugar Ray Leonard for the world welterweight crown. Today content in retirement, 68-year-old Green is a genuine British boxing great. Here, Green – who exited with a fine 37-4 (29 KO) record in 1981 – recalls his ring career: On his greatest win: “My best night was the night I beat John H. Stracey, who had only recently lost his world welterweight title. That fight, in March of 1977, was a final eliminator for the world title, which was held by Carlos Palomino then. I think I was at my peak against Stracey. It was a big thing for me to beat a former world champion. He never actually hurt me in the fight before I stopped him (on an eye injury RSC 10) but he was still near his best. We are in touch these days, which is great. That was a big, important win for me.” On the Sugar Ray fight: “My worst night has to be the night I fought Sugar Ray Leonard, definitely. He really was a special fighter. Going into the fight, I thought if I could stay with him for eight to ten-rounds, I’d be able to come on strong in the later rounds, because of course it was set for 15-rounds back then. But he was a very fit man himself. His speed, his power, his balance – everything was just brilliant. If I’d trained for fifty years I’d never have beaten him; not even with a baseball bat! To me, he is one of the top-5 greatest fighters of all time.” On the hardest puncher he ever fought: “The hardest puncher I faced, without a doubt, Sugar Ray Leonard. He hit me with a left hook to the head (in the 4th-round) and that was it. Before the ending of the fight, he’d hit me and hurt me to the body, also with his left hand. Nobody ever hurt me to the body during my entire career, he was the only one. Another hard puncher was Joergen Hansen (who KO’d Green in the 3rd-round in Denmark in 1979). He was 38-years-old at the time but he could still really punch. I still keep in touch with Leonard today; he’s been to my house and I’ve been to his house. I just lost to a great fighter, that’s all.” On his toughest ring battle: “My toughest fight was against a man called Mario Omar Guillotti, who I fought before I fought Stracey. He took me the full ten-rounds. He was such a tough man, he took everything and he just kept coming at me. I really did hit him with everything and I couldn’t hurt him he was so tough. He was aggressive as well. I think all the Argentinean fighters are tough, really (laughs). That was another of my fights at The Albert Hall. I fought there nineteen times in my career.” Any regrets?: “Initially when I retired (in 1981) it was hard to walk away, and my manager, Andy Smith, a lovely man, he got me a job working for a company. It was a company that did the packaging for Nat West and The Midland bank. He thought that getting me a job would get me thinking about something else mother than boxing. He said that if I did need to come back, to come back to him, as he’d get me the right fights. But thankfully I never needed to come back. My only regret today is not winning the world title; I think that’s every fighter’s main goal. But I fought two great fighters who were better then me (Leonard, Palomino). And receiving the MBE (in 2012) was one of the best days of my life. I never thought that would happen. I’m content in retirement.”
Thousands of people flock to South Shields to welcome American World Heavyweight Boxing Champion Muhammed Ali and his cavalcade of cars. As Ali waves to the crowd from an open-topped bus, below him is a poster of the Queen, during his visit to the North East there are several other famous boxers next to him including Richard Dunn, Dave 'Boy' Green, Terry Downes and Terry Spinks. The champion boxer was travelling to the North East to visit boys' boxing clubs across Tyneside and help raise money for them.
"How did I start? A friend at school was joining the local amateur club. He didn't want to go on his own and he asked me to keep him company. "It's no good me going', I said. 'Well just this first week and I'll be alright,' he pleaded. I went reluctantly and to my surprise I liked it."
Dave Boy Green was a rugged banger and brawler known for high work rate, pressure, and a powerful overhand right. While not a one-punch knockout artist, he possessed significant punching power and durability, often wearing opponents down with relentless, aggressive combinations. I love this image of him aiming a double barrel shotgun at the camera, it kinda fits his style of fighting.
Always been a big horror movie fan, this was a classic.
My Bloody Valentine 💔⛏️
Happy 45th Anniversary
Released on this day in 1981
(USA Release Date)
The small mining town of Valentine Bluffs decided to have its first Valentine's Day Dance in twenty years. Unfortunately the residents start to get bumped off with the only suspect being the sole survivor of a tragic mining accident decades before.
"My mother slammed me on the ground, put her knee in my chest, and said, ‘If you don’t get out there and fight that boy, you’re going to have to fight me.’
My mother, Lula Pearl Douglas, was my motivator. At 10 or 11 years old, she made me go out there and face that bully, and when I came into the house crying, she jumped on me bad. It was, like, the next day l went outside, and we were shooting basketball. l called a foul. The bully was like, ‘What?’ And l turned around and said, ‘Foul!’ And l was looking at him, fists all balled up, and he just gave me the ball. Ever since then, he never said anything else to me.
She was my world — my rock. That’s how she was with me and my brothers. She died three weeks before my fight against Mike Tyson on Feb. 11, 1990, a day that marked my sporting life. That was my pinnacle. On that day, l was the best. l couldn’t have asked for anything more. l was blessed with the opportunity and l conquered.
If you had to say, ‘This is how l want to be remembered, how l want people to know me, to look at me,’ it’s as a gentleman, a kind man who believes in himself, a humble guy who had an opportunity and took advantage of it.
But the person who motivated me was my mother. She visited me the week before she died on the 18th January 1990, to check on me as l was preparing for the fight.
She was really ill at that time — l didn’t know how ill, but she mustered enough strength to get in her car and drive over to my house and ask me a few questions to see where my head was at.
She was 46 years old, l was 29. lt would have just been devastating, knowing that l was unable to continue because of her passing, but it just built my strength even more, in a sense.
Fighting Mike was a relief. l was like, ‘Man, I’ve got so much s*** pent up in me, this is your a**.’ l mean, really, I was just at that point to where l could give a hoot about the naysayers.
In my mind, I was getting ready to be a nightmare to him. Make no mistake, I knew that if you weren’t bending steel or eating mercury, you had no chance against that man. But I knew what I could do.
I had no doubt at any time during training. I couldn’t wait for the fight. My biggest worry was something happening that would postpone or delay it — like Mike getting hurt in training. I just couldn’t wait for February 11th.
The thing about Mike is he’s not a trash-talker. He was a man of few words. I remember a reporter asking him how he thought the fight would go. He said the fight would be like any other fight — something like, ‘I’m going to knock him out,’ or whatever. Short and sweet.
I knew he was a talent. But I looked at the person. I looked beyond that figure in the ring, and I had to compare myself to the individual, so I wasn’t really impressed with all the success he was having. I knew he was a warrior in the ring, but I looked beyond that. That helped me a lot.
I went into the fight with a lot of confidence, and I wanted to express that. Everyone was expecting a quick 90-second knockout, but I’m well-educated in this game. I knew what I was doing. I knew nobody gave me this opportunity; I had earned it.
I fought killers to get this opportunity. Fighters who I figured would beat me, guys who lost their careers, I ended up beating and turning everything around to get a shot at the title. Even with all of that, I still wasn’t getting any respect because Mike Tyson was just a god.
When I went down late in the eighth round, I knew exactly why it happened. I got caught standing square, standing right up in front of him. That was the one time he really got me. I was angry and motivated — at the same time.
I was p***** because I got caught looking. He caught me with one of those hooks, uppercuts. I hit the canvas like, ‘F***!’ When he knocked me down, I wanted to look at him, take a moment and say: ‘Come on, Mike. What do you think about this?’
I got caught because of that brief moment of reflection, when I stopped fighting. He was showing me that he was still alive. But I got up.
I knew I had to get serious after that. I dominated the 9th round and gave him a swollen left eye. Then that 10th round came, when I dropped him at one minute and 22 seconds into the round.
When Mike didn’t get up, I knew I had him. I knew I had won, because when he reached for his mouthpiece, I knew he was incoherent. If he would have been coherent, he would have just gotten up, let the referee get the mouthpiece and extend the count.
But when he reached for it, I knew he was hurt then. That’s when I raised my hands. I knew it was over. He wasn’t even in the fight at that point — he was sleeping.
When Tyson and promoter Don King complained about the referee’s count at the end of the eighth round, I didn’t feel disrespect, I just felt like they were crying like babies.
I looked beyond all of that and realised that it was just some force trying to stop me from obtaining my goal. I knew then that I was on the right track of succeeding at my childhood dream, which started when I was 10, when my father started me in boxing. On the 11th February 1990, I was fighting for more than a win.''
Ever Hammer was a Chicago-based lightweight in the 1910s, by all accounts he was cut from the same cloth as an Ad Wolgast and Battling Nelson type, an extremely aggressive and vicious pressure fighter.
IBRO
Ever Hammer: The Hurricane from Chicago
By: Douglas Cavanaugh
“I don’t have to think twice about the man who gave me my hardest fight. As long as I live I will never forget the licking I received at the hands of Ever Hammer. He made me wish I had never laced a glove on my hands.” -Benny Leonard, Lightweight Champion
“I can think of a lot of so-called world beaters that I would sooner take on than this Hammer guy.” –Lew Tendler, Lightweight Contender
Ever Hammer, the durable Swede from Chicago, stormed out of the Windy City in the early 1910s and quickly proved every bit as tough as his name implied. He was born on October 30, 1894 on Chicago’s North Side to Swedish immigrants. As a teenager he worked as a driver and a delivery boy for a local grocer when he decided on boxing as a career. At that time the hometown competition was fierce, with top ringmen like Packey McFarland, Battling Nelson, Johnny Coulon and Harry Forbes regularly plying their trade in Chicago’s rings and gyms. Undaunted, Ever turned pro in 1913 and was soon dialed in to the local pugilistic scene, making an immediate impact by scoring kayos in half of his first eighteen bouts. His rugged, give-and-take approach to fighting quickly endeared him to fans and he became a popular attraction throughout the Midwest.
Despite his stellar record and increasing popularity, Hammer seemed unable to secure bouts with the top lightweight contenders and voiced his frustration to Chicago Cubs’ shortstop Joe Tinker, an acquaintance made famous by Franklin Pierce Adams’ poem “Tinker to Evers to Chance” and would later be enshrined in baseball’s Hall of Fame. Tinker, a fervent boxing fan, advised the young fighter to get himself a good, “wide awake” manager, which Ever had not had up to that point. Taking the tip, Hammer sought out Howard Carr (aka Kid Howard), a former prizefighter who was running a nearby gym and managing fighters. Howard gave Ever a tryout and was impressed enough to take him on.
Under Carr’s guidance Hammer was able to make great strides in his career in a short period of time. He made his first impression on the world lightweight ranks on March 2, 1916 in Kenosha, Wisconsin when he pounded out a 10-round newspaper win over top contender Joe Welling. It was an important victory, one that brought him his first national notices in the press. But his performance against a faded but still dangerous Ad Wolgast three weeks later in Racine is what made him a star. With heavyweight king Jess Willard and Battling Nelson at ringside, Hammer tore into the former lightweight champion, winning the newspaper decision in a bloody, hard fought 10-round battle. The Racine Journal-News was suitably impressed, calling it “the meeting of the two greatest action-lads of the class.” Wolgast himself was taken by this young blonde tiger who had a style that so mirrored his own in bygone days; so much so that he undertook to train Hammer for his next fight, which was to be in Milwaukee on April 24 against the reigning lightweight champion, Freddie Welsh.
Wolgast, known as the “Michigan Wildcat”, had fought Welsh on numerous occasions and knew his style well. In fact “The Welsh Wizard” had beaten the old champion several times, so Ad received no small measure of satisfaction in watching his youthful protégé subject Freddie to an unmerciful 10-round beating that left him with a bloody mouth, a torn ear and a closed eye at the final bell. Hammer was unmarked as he smiled at the roaring crowd. The fight was declared a No-Decision but the newspapers unanimously agreed that young Ever had dominated the Welshman and that if the title had been on the line there would be a new champion. An attempt by the Welsh camp to take the luster off the Chicagoan’s victory by blaming the champ’s poor performance on an injured hand was dismissed contemptuously by many sportswriters. Welsh himself admitted that Hammer had given him the hardest fight of his career; high praise coming from a man who had battled the likes of Benny Leonard, Johnny Dundee, Packey McFarland, Jim Driscoll, Abe Attell and Willie Ritchie.
Hammer next made a stop in East Chicago, Indiana to face off against yet another great fighter- the fabled “Scotch-Wop” Johnny Dundee. Slick, fast and talented, Dundee had fought them all from Benny Leonard and Freddie Welsh to Willie Ritchie and Johnnie Kilbane. Like Welsh he had a huge advantage in experience over his younger foe. But Johnny quickly realized that he had his hands full on this night. It took all the skill he could muster and every trick in his vast repertoire for Dundee to quell the tearaway rushes of the mad Swede and secure a newspaper decision. Some reporters thought that a draw would have been the correct verdict. All agreed that it was a hard fought battle which saw Hammer’s stock rise even higher in the lightweight ranks. A hotly contested rematch in Kansas City, Mo. two months later was won by Dundee on points in fifteen rounds, but it was so close and action packed that neither fighter lost face with the press or public.
All the commotion surrounding this newcomer didn’t go unnoticed by Benny Leonard, who had been blazing his own brilliant trail through the lightweight ranks. The two contenders were soon matched in an eagerly anticipated bout which saw a sellout crowd pack the Convention Hall in Kansas City on Oct. 18, 1916 to watch Benny play matador to Hammer’s bull. Ever tore out of his corner at the sound of the first bell and proceeded to give Leonard a calculated pounding. Benny later recalled the experience:
“He never gave me a chance to lead and not even time to think. He was right on top of me after every clinch, pasting away with both hands all the time. He varied his attack and I was forced to take about as fine a tanning in three minutes of one-sided battling as ever I received before and since I became champion. Two cruel rights to the mouth opened a cut from which blood flowed freely. I was a sight when I returned to the corner. He cut me to pieces. Between rounds Gibson and the boys were kept busy cleaning away the blood and refreshing me for the next melee. It was awful.”
Hammer continued his relentless attack round after round, pounding the body and ripping uppercuts to the head of his bewildered opponent, all the while taunting him with comments like “What kind of guys are you New Yorkers? Come on and fight!” By the mid-rounds Benny’s nose was bleeding along with his mouth. Even worse, his opponent seemed oblivious to his best shots and continued to bore in, whaling away with both hands. Realizing that he’d better do something and fast, Leonard began to use feints, jabs and speedy footwork in order to check the rushes of the Swede. The tide slowly began to turn and near the bell ending the ninth round Benny nailed Ever coming in with a perfect punch right under the heart. The blow was the turning point of the battle and wasn’t unnoticed by Leonard, who watched the Chicagoan stagger to his corner and slump on his stool.
At the start of round 11, Hammer rushed at Leonard and straight into a right uppercut that detonated off his chin. Benny stepped back expecting Ever to fall forward as so many others had done before. Instead, his blow was answered immediately with a vicious left hook leaving the New Yorker dazed and hurt. Smelling blood Ever swung madly at his retreating opponent, who danced and jabbed until his head could clear. At the break of a clinch in round 12, Benny nailed Hammer again under the heart followed by a perfect one two, dropping him. Howard Carr had seen enough and stopped the bout, the referee awarding Leonard with a TKO. After the contest Billy Gibson, Leonard’s manager, said that “Hammer hurt Leonard more in that one bout than 100 other opponents had done.”
The loss to Leonard began a low period for Hammer. In the space of just over six months he had fought four future hall of famers- Wolgast, Welsh, Dundee (twice) and Leonard- and a few top contenders to boot, but such a hectic schedule coupled with his reckless fighting style were bound to take a toll. His career hit a slump over the next four years- though he was never stopped- and he won only seven of 24 fights. As bad as it was Ever, who had gotten married to his childhood sweetheart shortly after the second Dundee bout, had to keep fighting to put food on the table. He took fights whenever and wherever he could as returning to the paltry paydays of his delivery boy years was simply no longer an option. He was a professional prizefighter now and fighting is what he would do to provide for his family.
When the 1920s dawned Ever headed west and caught a second wind. He beat top contender Phil Salvadore and battled tough Willie Robinson to a draw right in their own backyards. But Hammer’s most notable bout was when he faced a streaking local hotshot named Dave Shade in Stockton, California. Shade would later be considered one of the greatest fighters to never win a world title, becoming a top welterweight and middleweight contender and battling on even terms with welterweight champion Jack Britton and light-heavyweight champion Maxie Rosenbloom twice each and double-crown champ Mickey Walker three times. But on this night Hammer nullified Shade’s speed advantage with crowding and fierce infighting. Being the local favorite, Shade was given a draw by the judges, but the Stockton Daily Evening Record decried the hometown verdict, scoring it as a clear win for the Chicago battler.
As for Hammer, he returned to the Midwest refreshed and with a vengeance, reeling off ten straight victories. This included newspaper wins over top contenders Richie Mitchell and Charley White as well as gaining revenge on several of the pugs who had beaten him during his earlier slump. It seemed as if Ever Hammer was back in business.
It all came crashing down when he decided to again challenge the great Benny Leonard, now lightweight champion of the world. On August 8, 1922 in Michigan City, Indiana Leonard won a clear cut newspaper decision in ten rounds over his game foe, but it was clear to Benny and everyone present that this was not the same Ever Hammer who given him such a tough go six years earlier. This was a faded pug that years of tough give and take fighting had finally caught up with. Ever further hastened his exit from the scene the following month in Philadelphia when he faced the second greatest lightweight of the era, the southpaw Lew Tendler. Hammer sparred regularly with the slick former welterweight and middleweight titlist Jimmy Clabby in preparation for the bout, but it proved to be to no avail after the first bell rang on September 11. Tendler, who weeks earlier had given Benny Leonard all he could handle, was in his prime and beat Ever soundly in winning an eight round newspaper decision.
The last nail in the coffin came shortly afterward in a clear case of history repeating itself. Hammer went to Omaha, Nebraska where he was thrown in against Ace Hudkins, a youthful tiger who had a style and attitude eerily similar to his own in younger days. A decade earlier Ever held a similar position when he was matched against Ad Wolgast, except now it was he who was the aging veteran being served as cannon fodder for the up and coming slugger. The “Nebraska Wildcat” tore away at Hammer from the start and it took all of the old Swede’s savvy to survive. Apparently the referee didn’t agree with his tactics and Hammer was disqualified in round seven for “stalling”.
Hammer’s career was essentially bookended by two wildcats- his star had risen in beating Wolgast, the “Michigan Wildcat”, and had now descended in losing to Hudkins, the “Nebraska Wildcat”.
Not content to end his career on a losing note, Ever took a year off and then came back to reel off four more victories before retiring from the ring in 1930. He gathered up his family, which now included a young daughter, Oma, and returned to California, the site of his career resurrection as a bona fide contender in the 20s. He was employed at Knotts Berry Farm in Buena Park, where the barn of former heavyweight champion Jim Jeffries had been relocated and turned into a makeshift boxing museum. Ever worked at the museum, where his job was to greet and answer visitor’s questions. In sharp contrast to fellow give and take contemporaries Battling Nelson and Ad Wolgast, both of whom suffered greatly from pugilistic dementia in later years, Hammer suffered no ill effects, his mind remaining sharp and his memories lucid. He spent his remaining years living in Anaheim, where he died on September 13, 1969.
Last photo I can find of Ever Hammer, it's a shame there's not more photos available of him. I actually own a type 1 original photo of him but I can't seem to find it, I know it's around my home somewhere but I've got so many boxing photos and cards everywhere I don't know where I put it. Anyway, this is a wicked cool photo of Ever Hammer in a fight pose. Vicious fighter.
Frank Klaus, "The Braddock Bearcat", a punishing infighter with a granite chin who was middleweight champion in 1913. He literally wrote the book on infighting. Klaus holds wins over Stanley Ketchel, Billy Papke, Kid Williams, Georges Carpentier, Jack Dillon x2, Harry Lewis, and Leo Houck. That's the resume of an all-time great.
The Fight City
Frank Klaus
The Braddock Bearcat
By: Kenneth Bridgham
Call it the Smoky City or the Steel City. You can even call it, as The Atlantic Monthly famously did in 1868, “Hell with the lid taken off.” Pittsburgh was all those things back in the first part of the twentieth century. A labyrinth of molten steel, smoke-belching furnaces and mountains of black coal, the city was populated by grim-faced, multi-cultural laborers proud of the stone and metal metropolis they had built. When it came to boxing, it was already a City of Champions, producing generations of iron-willed, hard-working talent whose fistic exploits filled newspaper columns, record books, and, later, plaques at the Hall of Fame.
Named for the quiet stream that runs through it, the borough of Turtle Creek is a nondescript village wedged between the suburbs of Wilkins Township and Monroeville and blocked off from the Monongahela River by Braddock. If you were not familiar with the area, you could walk through it without knowing, unless you caught sight of the 1600-foot-long George Westinghouse Bridge, named for the engineer and businessman who erected factories nearby. It is Turtle Creek’s only immediately recognizable landmark. In Westinghouse’s heyday, the area’s landscape was composed of one sprawling factory beside another, all since repurposed or demolished.
Around the time Westinghouse set up shop there, Frank Klaus, Pittsburgh’s first world boxing champion and born in 1887, would have been learning to walk in his Turtle Creek home. “Industry marks every move of the Klaus family,” reported The Pittsburgh Press in 1911, recounting that, as a young man, Frank would leave his job at the Westinghouse factories and “hurry to the coal pit and swing the sharp pick for several hours to help his Pop,” a German immigrant who operated a coal mine on Oak Hill in nearby East Pittsburgh. Successful street scraps as a youngster piqued Klaus’s curiosity in boxing and led him to the Wilmerding Athletic Club, where he won two amateur tournaments in two weight classes, featherweight and lightweight, on the same night. This caught the eye of local impresario George Engel, who became Frank’s manager.
Frank Klaus literally wrote the book on infighting, and befitting his straightforward persona, he titled it simply, The Art of In-fighting. “In-fighting is the artillery of pugilism,” he wrote, “as continual pounding at the walls of the enemy’s defense gradually reduces him to capitulation.” In other words, hard work and persistence. Keeping with the family tradition, industry defined Klaus’s philosophy for action in the ring. Constructed of solid muscle, and with a square jaw as hard as anything his father could possibly dig out of the earth, Klaus bore into opponents in a methodical but relentless manner, a punching machine. He dug his gloves deep into livers and kidneys with a motion and stamina derived from digging his ax into mine walls for hours on end as a boy. Despite his industrial approach, promoters in the cities he visited saw a more animalistic quality in his attack and dubbed him “The Pittsburgh Bearcat.” His fellow Pittsburghers were more specific; they called him “The Braddock Bearcat.”
Turning pro in 1904, Klaus became a local sensation almost overnight, and though he lost his sixth pro bout, he then won forty-three straight. Many of these were no-decision bouts, matches that ended after six rounds without an official verdict or winner, in accordance with Pennsylvania law at the time. A fighter could only win or lose by knockout or disqualification inside that six-round limit, and fans relied on their favorite local sportswriter to tell them who won. In Pittsburgh, most favored the loquacious Jim Jab of The Pittsburgh Press. Jab and his fellow columnists saw a few losses and draws for Frank, but dozens of wins.
No-decision fights with former middleweight champions Hugo Kelly and Billy Papke, along with a victory over perennial contender Jack Sullivan in Boston, led to a no-decision, non-title fight with reigning middleweight champ Stanley Ketchel, already a living legend, his frightening power having put heavyweight champion Jack Johnson on the floor only months earlier. Before some six thousand spectators at Pittsburgh’s Duquesne Gardens on March 23, 1910, “The Pittsburgh Bearcat” tore into the champion.
Strangely, Ketchel, known as one of the most willing and thrilling scrappers of the day, offered little resistance and seemed only concerned with hugging. When he did throw, they were soft and clumsy punches. Despite his own honest effort, Klaus was incapable of hurting the clinch-minded Ketchel, and Ketchel made few attempts to hurt Klaus. The crowd was soon divided between those jeering the fight as a fix and those headed for the door. As if executing some strategy of surprise, Ketchel suddenly came alive at the start of the sixth and final round and looked to be gunning for a knockout. He found Klaus more than ready to trade, and soon enough Ketchel was back to holding until the final bell.
“While Ketchel was a disappointment Klaus nevertheless was entitled to the decision” determined the local Post-Gazette. Jim Jab of the Post didn’t mince words. He called it “a fragrant frame-up.” “Pity the Pittsburgh sports,” he lamented, before declaring that “honors – if such a thing could exist in an event of the kind – should go to Klaus.”
A little over six months later, Ketchel was dead, murdered by a Missouri ranch hand, and the championship was up for grabs. Klaus was among the several who proclaimed themselves Ketchel’s successor, though universal recognition eluded all for a time. In 1912, Klaus and Engel traveled to France, hoping to clear up the confusion by eliminating key middleweights there, not least of which was Papke, the former champion who had been Ketchel’s chief rival. After wins over future light heavyweight champ Georges Carpentier and French champion Marcel Moreau, Klaus secured a showdown with Papke for undisputed recognition as the world middleweight king.
On March 5, before the largest crowd to ever gather at the Cirque du Paris, the aging Papke boxed cleverly but was quickly overwhelmed by Klaus’s constant pressure, hitting the canvas twice in round seven, and the desperate former champ resorted to constant fouling with his head and elbows. Routinely shouted at by the crowd, and warned by the referee, he ignored it all, and so Klaus began to retaliate with his own rough tactics. Soon enough, heads were crashing, eyes were being thumbed, and groins were being kneed on both sides. One witness called Klaus “a caveman” and Papke “a snarling hooligan.” Eventually, the referee disqualified Papke and handed Klaus the decision and the championship, to the great acclaim of the audience. After, he was awarded a diamond-encrusted championship belt. Perhaps most satisfactorily for Frank, he had doubled his winnings by betting on himself before the fight.
In all, Frank Klaus spent about nine months in Paris, and he enjoyed every minute of it, maybe a little too much so. He returned to Pittsburgh and some six months after winning the championship, he lost it to fellow Pittsburgher George Chip in a match at the Old City Hall. When Klaus hit the floor from a wild Chip punch in the sixth round, George Engel was so stunned, he collapsed and hit his head on the floor. Both fighter and manager were knocked out. After failing to regain the laurels in a rematch, Klaus retired in 1913 at just 25 years of age. In 1918 a charity event lured him back to the ring for a six-round exhibition with the city’s newest fistic star, Harry Greb, but after that Klaus never fought professionally again.
Years later, when asked why he had faded so quickly, Frank replied, “being the toast of the Paris boulevards didn’t help.” A hotelier in retirement, Frank Klaus died of a heart attack in his home on February 8, 1940 at the age of sixty and was laid to rest at All Saints Braddock Catholic Cemetery. Among the noteworthy fighters he defeated were Papke, Sullivan, Carpentier, Moreau, Harry Lewis, Frank Mantell, Leo Houck, Cyclone Johnny Thompson, and Jack Dillon. A sturdy, no-frills, rough-edged battler, Frank Klaus was the blueprint for the working-class ethic that defined the ideal for Pittsburgh’s sports champions for decades to come. He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2008.
Infighting, also known as inside boxing, is a strategic and skillful aspect of the sport that involves fighting at close range, typically within an opponent's guard. This style demands excellent footwork, head movement, and the ability to generate power from short, compact movements using punches like hooks and uppercuts. Infighters often use pressure tactics to overwhelm opponents, nullifying reach advantages and forcing a physically and mentally demanding fight. It's an absolutely fascinating aspect of boxing. Frank Klaus was a master of infighting, here is he seen (on the left) demonstrating one of the skills of infighting, manipulating the guard of his opponent. His book "The Art of Infighting" is a gold mine of information on stuff like this.
This is cool, the photo that was used for the image on two Frank Klaus trading cards, the 1910 T220 and the 1912 T227, both of these cards came with different variation backs, Mecca Cigarettes, Miners Extra, and Honest Long Cut.
Frank Klaus and Jack Dillon facing off and during one of their fights, just wow, these are great shots of two legends. Frank Klaus is on the left in the top photo.
These are images from Frank Klaus vs Georges Carpentier, the top photo shows them during the fight and the bottom photo shows Carpentier sitting in his corner.
Frank Klaus (left) and Jimmy Belmont. This is a photo of Frank Klaus taken in 1930, he had been retired from fighting for some time and had taken to training a young fighter named Jimmy Belmont.
Check out this beauty, a Frank Klaus photo signed by the man himself. This photo is actually for sale right now for $3,500, too pricey for a penniless peasant like me, but a really cool item.
This is my favorite photo of Frank Klaus, he looks hard as nails. Frank Klaus was a bada$$, a brutal puncher with a granite chin. I've always been fascinated by infighting, it is an art, and nobody did it better than Frank Klaus. He only lost four times in his 9-year career, extremely difficult fighter to beat. A true all-time great.
"I was a fighter who left it in the ring. I gave it all, every time l fought. People loved to see me fight because, win or lose, l fought my heart out."
Alain Robert free soloing in Verdon (France) in the 90s. Robert is a French rock climber from Digoin, Saone-et-Loire,Bourgogne, France. He is known as the French Spider Man or the Human Spider. He is famous for soloing skyscrapers with no more than a small chalk bag and a pair of climbing shoes. He's climbed over 200 skyscrapers, some notable climbs are Eiffel Tower, the Sydney Opera House and the Montparnasse Tower.
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One more interview with "The Fen Tiger."
Dave “Boy” Green Looks Back On His Career
By: James Slater - 11/12/2021 -
British warrior Dave “Boy” Green, known as the “Fenland Tiger,” fought some big fights in the 1970s and ’80s. The former British and European champ at light-welterweight and also a former European welterweight ruler, Green thrilled millions with his action fights. Green got as far as challenging Sugar Ray Leonard for the world welterweight crown. Today content in retirement, 68-year-old Green is a genuine British boxing great. Here, Green – who exited with a fine 37-4 (29 KO) record in 1981 – recalls his ring career: On his greatest win: “My best night was the night I beat John H. Stracey, who had only recently lost his world welterweight title. That fight, in March of 1977, was a final eliminator for the world title, which was held by Carlos Palomino then. I think I was at my peak against Stracey. It was a big thing for me to beat a former world champion. He never actually hurt me in the fight before I stopped him (on an eye injury RSC 10) but he was still near his best. We are in touch these days, which is great. That was a big, important win for me.” On the Sugar Ray fight: “My worst night has to be the night I fought Sugar Ray Leonard, definitely. He really was a special fighter. Going into the fight, I thought if I could stay with him for eight to ten-rounds, I’d be able to come on strong in the later rounds, because of course it was set for 15-rounds back then. But he was a very fit man himself. His speed, his power, his balance – everything was just brilliant. If I’d trained for fifty years I’d never have beaten him; not even with a baseball bat! To me, he is one of the top-5 greatest fighters of all time.” On the hardest puncher he ever fought: “The hardest puncher I faced, without a doubt, Sugar Ray Leonard. He hit me with a left hook to the head (in the 4th-round) and that was it. Before the ending of the fight, he’d hit me and hurt me to the body, also with his left hand. Nobody ever hurt me to the body during my entire career, he was the only one. Another hard puncher was Joergen Hansen (who KO’d Green in the 3rd-round in Denmark in 1979). He was 38-years-old at the time but he could still really punch. I still keep in touch with Leonard today; he’s been to my house and I’ve been to his house. I just lost to a great fighter, that’s all.” On his toughest ring battle: “My toughest fight was against a man called Mario Omar Guillotti, who I fought before I fought Stracey. He took me the full ten-rounds. He was such a tough man, he took everything and he just kept coming at me. I really did hit him with everything and I couldn’t hurt him he was so tough. He was aggressive as well. I think all the Argentinean fighters are tough, really (laughs). That was another of my fights at The Albert Hall. I fought there nineteen times in my career.” Any regrets?: “Initially when I retired (in 1981) it was hard to walk away, and my manager, Andy Smith, a lovely man, he got me a job working for a company. It was a company that did the packaging for Nat West and The Midland bank. He thought that getting me a job would get me thinking about something else mother than boxing. He said that if I did need to come back, to come back to him, as he’d get me the right fights. But thankfully I never needed to come back. My only regret today is not winning the world title; I think that’s every fighter’s main goal. But I fought two great fighters who were better then me (Leonard, Palomino). And receiving the MBE (in 2012) was one of the best days of my life. I never thought that would happen. I’m content in retirement.”
Nice sequence of photos of Dave Green and Andy Smith.
Great images of Dave Green and Andy Smith after a win.
British boxer Davey Boy Green and manager Andy Smith give the thumbs up as they wait to fly out to America to fight Sugar Ray Leonard.
Wicked sequence of Davey Boy, with The Fen Tiger shirt.
Thousands of people flock to South Shields to welcome American World Heavyweight Boxing Champion Muhammed Ali and his cavalcade of cars. As Ali waves to the crowd from an open-topped bus, below him is a poster of the Queen, during his visit to the North East there are several other famous boxers next to him including Richard Dunn, Dave 'Boy' Green, Terry Downes and Terry Spinks. The champion boxer was travelling to the North East to visit boys' boxing clubs across Tyneside and help raise money for them.
"How did I start? A friend at school was joining the local amateur club. He didn't want to go on his own and he asked me to keep him company. "It's no good me going', I said. 'Well just this first week and I'll be alright,' he pleaded. I went reluctantly and to my surprise I liked it."
Good up-close fight pose shot of Davey Boy Green.
A lot of legendary fighters have books written about them, and Dave 'Boy' Green is one of them.
Dave Boy Green was a rugged banger and brawler known for high work rate, pressure, and a powerful overhand right. While not a one-punch knockout artist, he possessed significant punching power and durability, often wearing opponents down with relentless, aggressive combinations. I love this image of him aiming a double barrel shotgun at the camera, it kinda fits his style of fighting.
Always been a big horror movie fan, this was a classic.
My Bloody Valentine 💔⛏️
Happy 45th Anniversary
Released on this day in 1981
(USA Release Date)
The small mining town of Valentine Bluffs decided to have its first Valentine's Day Dance in twenty years. Unfortunately the residents start to get bumped off with the only suspect being the sole survivor of a tragic mining accident decades before.
Directed by George Mihalka
They actually remade My Bloody Valentine in 2009, and you could watch it in 3-D, cool stuff.
Music break. It's unbelievable, this video has been viewed 2.3 billion times on YouTube, this song is a trademark of the 80s.
"My mother slammed me on the ground, put her knee in my chest, and said, ‘If you don’t get out there and fight that boy, you’re going to have to fight me.’
My mother, Lula Pearl Douglas, was my motivator. At 10 or 11 years old, she made me go out there and face that bully, and when I came into the house crying, she jumped on me bad. It was, like, the next day l went outside, and we were shooting basketball. l called a foul. The bully was like, ‘What?’ And l turned around and said, ‘Foul!’ And l was looking at him, fists all balled up, and he just gave me the ball. Ever since then, he never said anything else to me.
She was my world — my rock. That’s how she was with me and my brothers. She died three weeks before my fight against Mike Tyson on Feb. 11, 1990, a day that marked my sporting life. That was my pinnacle. On that day, l was the best. l couldn’t have asked for anything more. l was blessed with the opportunity and l conquered.
If you had to say, ‘This is how l want to be remembered, how l want people to know me, to look at me,’ it’s as a gentleman, a kind man who believes in himself, a humble guy who had an opportunity and took advantage of it.
But the person who motivated me was my mother. She visited me the week before she died on the 18th January 1990, to check on me as l was preparing for the fight.
She was really ill at that time — l didn’t know how ill, but she mustered enough strength to get in her car and drive over to my house and ask me a few questions to see where my head was at.
She was 46 years old, l was 29. lt would have just been devastating, knowing that l was unable to continue because of her passing, but it just built my strength even more, in a sense.
Fighting Mike was a relief. l was like, ‘Man, I’ve got so much s*** pent up in me, this is your a**.’ l mean, really, I was just at that point to where l could give a hoot about the naysayers.
In my mind, I was getting ready to be a nightmare to him. Make no mistake, I knew that if you weren’t bending steel or eating mercury, you had no chance against that man. But I knew what I could do.
I had no doubt at any time during training. I couldn’t wait for the fight. My biggest worry was something happening that would postpone or delay it — like Mike getting hurt in training. I just couldn’t wait for February 11th.
The thing about Mike is he’s not a trash-talker. He was a man of few words. I remember a reporter asking him how he thought the fight would go. He said the fight would be like any other fight — something like, ‘I’m going to knock him out,’ or whatever. Short and sweet.
I knew he was a talent. But I looked at the person. I looked beyond that figure in the ring, and I had to compare myself to the individual, so I wasn’t really impressed with all the success he was having. I knew he was a warrior in the ring, but I looked beyond that. That helped me a lot.
I went into the fight with a lot of confidence, and I wanted to express that. Everyone was expecting a quick 90-second knockout, but I’m well-educated in this game. I knew what I was doing. I knew nobody gave me this opportunity; I had earned it.
I fought killers to get this opportunity. Fighters who I figured would beat me, guys who lost their careers, I ended up beating and turning everything around to get a shot at the title. Even with all of that, I still wasn’t getting any respect because Mike Tyson was just a god.
When I went down late in the eighth round, I knew exactly why it happened. I got caught standing square, standing right up in front of him. That was the one time he really got me. I was angry and motivated — at the same time.
I was p***** because I got caught looking. He caught me with one of those hooks, uppercuts. I hit the canvas like, ‘F***!’ When he knocked me down, I wanted to look at him, take a moment and say: ‘Come on, Mike. What do you think about this?’
I got caught because of that brief moment of reflection, when I stopped fighting. He was showing me that he was still alive. But I got up.
I knew I had to get serious after that. I dominated the 9th round and gave him a swollen left eye. Then that 10th round came, when I dropped him at one minute and 22 seconds into the round.
When Mike didn’t get up, I knew I had him. I knew I had won, because when he reached for his mouthpiece, I knew he was incoherent. If he would have been coherent, he would have just gotten up, let the referee get the mouthpiece and extend the count.
But when he reached for it, I knew he was hurt then. That’s when I raised my hands. I knew it was over. He wasn’t even in the fight at that point — he was sleeping.
When Tyson and promoter Don King complained about the referee’s count at the end of the eighth round, I didn’t feel disrespect, I just felt like they were crying like babies.
I looked beyond all of that and realised that it was just some force trying to stop me from obtaining my goal. I knew then that I was on the right track of succeeding at my childhood dream, which started when I was 10, when my father started me in boxing. On the 11th February 1990, I was fighting for more than a win.''
Ever Hammer was a Chicago-based lightweight in the 1910s, by all accounts he was cut from the same cloth as an Ad Wolgast and Battling Nelson type, an extremely aggressive and vicious pressure fighter.
IBRO
Ever Hammer: The Hurricane from Chicago
By: Douglas Cavanaugh
“I don’t have to think twice about the man who gave me my hardest fight. As long as I live I will never forget the licking I received at the hands of Ever Hammer. He made me wish I had never laced a glove on my hands.” -Benny Leonard, Lightweight Champion
“I can think of a lot of so-called world beaters that I would sooner take on than this Hammer guy.” –Lew Tendler, Lightweight Contender
Ever Hammer, the durable Swede from Chicago, stormed out of the Windy City in the early 1910s and quickly proved every bit as tough as his name implied. He was born on October 30, 1894 on Chicago’s North Side to Swedish immigrants. As a teenager he worked as a driver and a delivery boy for a local grocer when he decided on boxing as a career. At that time the hometown competition was fierce, with top ringmen like Packey McFarland, Battling Nelson, Johnny Coulon and Harry Forbes regularly plying their trade in Chicago’s rings and gyms. Undaunted, Ever turned pro in 1913 and was soon dialed in to the local pugilistic scene, making an immediate impact by scoring kayos in half of his first eighteen bouts. His rugged, give-and-take approach to fighting quickly endeared him to fans and he became a popular attraction throughout the Midwest.
Despite his stellar record and increasing popularity, Hammer seemed unable to secure bouts with the top lightweight contenders and voiced his frustration to Chicago Cubs’ shortstop Joe Tinker, an acquaintance made famous by Franklin Pierce Adams’ poem “Tinker to Evers to Chance” and would later be enshrined in baseball’s Hall of Fame. Tinker, a fervent boxing fan, advised the young fighter to get himself a good, “wide awake” manager, which Ever had not had up to that point. Taking the tip, Hammer sought out Howard Carr (aka Kid Howard), a former prizefighter who was running a nearby gym and managing fighters. Howard gave Ever a tryout and was impressed enough to take him on.
Under Carr’s guidance Hammer was able to make great strides in his career in a short period of time. He made his first impression on the world lightweight ranks on March 2, 1916 in Kenosha, Wisconsin when he pounded out a 10-round newspaper win over top contender Joe Welling. It was an important victory, one that brought him his first national notices in the press. But his performance against a faded but still dangerous Ad Wolgast three weeks later in Racine is what made him a star. With heavyweight king Jess Willard and Battling Nelson at ringside, Hammer tore into the former lightweight champion, winning the newspaper decision in a bloody, hard fought 10-round battle. The Racine Journal-News was suitably impressed, calling it “the meeting of the two greatest action-lads of the class.” Wolgast himself was taken by this young blonde tiger who had a style that so mirrored his own in bygone days; so much so that he undertook to train Hammer for his next fight, which was to be in Milwaukee on April 24 against the reigning lightweight champion, Freddie Welsh.
Wolgast, known as the “Michigan Wildcat”, had fought Welsh on numerous occasions and knew his style well. In fact “The Welsh Wizard” had beaten the old champion several times, so Ad received no small measure of satisfaction in watching his youthful protégé subject Freddie to an unmerciful 10-round beating that left him with a bloody mouth, a torn ear and a closed eye at the final bell. Hammer was unmarked as he smiled at the roaring crowd. The fight was declared a No-Decision but the newspapers unanimously agreed that young Ever had dominated the Welshman and that if the title had been on the line there would be a new champion. An attempt by the Welsh camp to take the luster off the Chicagoan’s victory by blaming the champ’s poor performance on an injured hand was dismissed contemptuously by many sportswriters. Welsh himself admitted that Hammer had given him the hardest fight of his career; high praise coming from a man who had battled the likes of Benny Leonard, Johnny Dundee, Packey McFarland, Jim Driscoll, Abe Attell and Willie Ritchie.
Hammer next made a stop in East Chicago, Indiana to face off against yet another great fighter- the fabled “Scotch-Wop” Johnny Dundee. Slick, fast and talented, Dundee had fought them all from Benny Leonard and Freddie Welsh to Willie Ritchie and Johnnie Kilbane. Like Welsh he had a huge advantage in experience over his younger foe. But Johnny quickly realized that he had his hands full on this night. It took all the skill he could muster and every trick in his vast repertoire for Dundee to quell the tearaway rushes of the mad Swede and secure a newspaper decision. Some reporters thought that a draw would have been the correct verdict. All agreed that it was a hard fought battle which saw Hammer’s stock rise even higher in the lightweight ranks. A hotly contested rematch in Kansas City, Mo. two months later was won by Dundee on points in fifteen rounds, but it was so close and action packed that neither fighter lost face with the press or public.
All the commotion surrounding this newcomer didn’t go unnoticed by Benny Leonard, who had been blazing his own brilliant trail through the lightweight ranks. The two contenders were soon matched in an eagerly anticipated bout which saw a sellout crowd pack the Convention Hall in Kansas City on Oct. 18, 1916 to watch Benny play matador to Hammer’s bull. Ever tore out of his corner at the sound of the first bell and proceeded to give Leonard a calculated pounding. Benny later recalled the experience:
“He never gave me a chance to lead and not even time to think. He was right on top of me after every clinch, pasting away with both hands all the time. He varied his attack and I was forced to take about as fine a tanning in three minutes of one-sided battling as ever I received before and since I became champion. Two cruel rights to the mouth opened a cut from which blood flowed freely. I was a sight when I returned to the corner. He cut me to pieces. Between rounds Gibson and the boys were kept busy cleaning away the blood and refreshing me for the next melee. It was awful.”
Hammer continued his relentless attack round after round, pounding the body and ripping uppercuts to the head of his bewildered opponent, all the while taunting him with comments like “What kind of guys are you New Yorkers? Come on and fight!” By the mid-rounds Benny’s nose was bleeding along with his mouth. Even worse, his opponent seemed oblivious to his best shots and continued to bore in, whaling away with both hands. Realizing that he’d better do something and fast, Leonard began to use feints, jabs and speedy footwork in order to check the rushes of the Swede. The tide slowly began to turn and near the bell ending the ninth round Benny nailed Ever coming in with a perfect punch right under the heart. The blow was the turning point of the battle and wasn’t unnoticed by Leonard, who watched the Chicagoan stagger to his corner and slump on his stool.
At the start of round 11, Hammer rushed at Leonard and straight into a right uppercut that detonated off his chin. Benny stepped back expecting Ever to fall forward as so many others had done before. Instead, his blow was answered immediately with a vicious left hook leaving the New Yorker dazed and hurt. Smelling blood Ever swung madly at his retreating opponent, who danced and jabbed until his head could clear. At the break of a clinch in round 12, Benny nailed Hammer again under the heart followed by a perfect one two, dropping him. Howard Carr had seen enough and stopped the bout, the referee awarding Leonard with a TKO. After the contest Billy Gibson, Leonard’s manager, said that “Hammer hurt Leonard more in that one bout than 100 other opponents had done.”
The loss to Leonard began a low period for Hammer. In the space of just over six months he had fought four future hall of famers- Wolgast, Welsh, Dundee (twice) and Leonard- and a few top contenders to boot, but such a hectic schedule coupled with his reckless fighting style were bound to take a toll. His career hit a slump over the next four years- though he was never stopped- and he won only seven of 24 fights. As bad as it was Ever, who had gotten married to his childhood sweetheart shortly after the second Dundee bout, had to keep fighting to put food on the table. He took fights whenever and wherever he could as returning to the paltry paydays of his delivery boy years was simply no longer an option. He was a professional prizefighter now and fighting is what he would do to provide for his family.
When the 1920s dawned Ever headed west and caught a second wind. He beat top contender Phil Salvadore and battled tough Willie Robinson to a draw right in their own backyards. But Hammer’s most notable bout was when he faced a streaking local hotshot named Dave Shade in Stockton, California. Shade would later be considered one of the greatest fighters to never win a world title, becoming a top welterweight and middleweight contender and battling on even terms with welterweight champion Jack Britton and light-heavyweight champion Maxie Rosenbloom twice each and double-crown champ Mickey Walker three times. But on this night Hammer nullified Shade’s speed advantage with crowding and fierce infighting. Being the local favorite, Shade was given a draw by the judges, but the Stockton Daily Evening Record decried the hometown verdict, scoring it as a clear win for the Chicago battler.
As for Hammer, he returned to the Midwest refreshed and with a vengeance, reeling off ten straight victories. This included newspaper wins over top contenders Richie Mitchell and Charley White as well as gaining revenge on several of the pugs who had beaten him during his earlier slump. It seemed as if Ever Hammer was back in business.
It all came crashing down when he decided to again challenge the great Benny Leonard, now lightweight champion of the world. On August 8, 1922 in Michigan City, Indiana Leonard won a clear cut newspaper decision in ten rounds over his game foe, but it was clear to Benny and everyone present that this was not the same Ever Hammer who given him such a tough go six years earlier. This was a faded pug that years of tough give and take fighting had finally caught up with. Ever further hastened his exit from the scene the following month in Philadelphia when he faced the second greatest lightweight of the era, the southpaw Lew Tendler. Hammer sparred regularly with the slick former welterweight and middleweight titlist Jimmy Clabby in preparation for the bout, but it proved to be to no avail after the first bell rang on September 11. Tendler, who weeks earlier had given Benny Leonard all he could handle, was in his prime and beat Ever soundly in winning an eight round newspaper decision.
The last nail in the coffin came shortly afterward in a clear case of history repeating itself. Hammer went to Omaha, Nebraska where he was thrown in against Ace Hudkins, a youthful tiger who had a style and attitude eerily similar to his own in younger days. A decade earlier Ever held a similar position when he was matched against Ad Wolgast, except now it was he who was the aging veteran being served as cannon fodder for the up and coming slugger. The “Nebraska Wildcat” tore away at Hammer from the start and it took all of the old Swede’s savvy to survive. Apparently the referee didn’t agree with his tactics and Hammer was disqualified in round seven for “stalling”.
Hammer’s career was essentially bookended by two wildcats- his star had risen in beating Wolgast, the “Michigan Wildcat”, and had now descended in losing to Hudkins, the “Nebraska Wildcat”.
Not content to end his career on a losing note, Ever took a year off and then came back to reel off four more victories before retiring from the ring in 1930. He gathered up his family, which now included a young daughter, Oma, and returned to California, the site of his career resurrection as a bona fide contender in the 20s. He was employed at Knotts Berry Farm in Buena Park, where the barn of former heavyweight champion Jim Jeffries had been relocated and turned into a makeshift boxing museum. Ever worked at the museum, where his job was to greet and answer visitor’s questions. In sharp contrast to fellow give and take contemporaries Battling Nelson and Ad Wolgast, both of whom suffered greatly from pugilistic dementia in later years, Hammer suffered no ill effects, his mind remaining sharp and his memories lucid. He spent his remaining years living in Anaheim, where he died on September 13, 1969.
There's not many photos available of Ever Hammer at all, just a few. This is an image of him on an exhibit card.
This is a photo of Ever Hammer with the great Benny Leonard before their fight and a ticket from the fight.
An autographed photo of Ever Hammer.
Last photo I can find of Ever Hammer, it's a shame there's not more photos available of him. I actually own a type 1 original photo of him but I can't seem to find it, I know it's around my home somewhere but I've got so many boxing photos and cards everywhere I don't know where I put it. Anyway, this is a wicked cool photo of Ever Hammer in a fight pose. Vicious fighter.
A classic from 1992.
Frank Klaus, "The Braddock Bearcat", a punishing infighter with a granite chin who was middleweight champion in 1913. He literally wrote the book on infighting. Klaus holds wins over Stanley Ketchel, Billy Papke, Kid Williams, Georges Carpentier, Jack Dillon x2, Harry Lewis, and Leo Houck. That's the resume of an all-time great.
The Fight City
Frank Klaus
The Braddock Bearcat
By: Kenneth Bridgham
Call it the Smoky City or the Steel City. You can even call it, as The Atlantic Monthly famously did in 1868, “Hell with the lid taken off.” Pittsburgh was all those things back in the first part of the twentieth century. A labyrinth of molten steel, smoke-belching furnaces and mountains of black coal, the city was populated by grim-faced, multi-cultural laborers proud of the stone and metal metropolis they had built. When it came to boxing, it was already a City of Champions, producing generations of iron-willed, hard-working talent whose fistic exploits filled newspaper columns, record books, and, later, plaques at the Hall of Fame.
Named for the quiet stream that runs through it, the borough of Turtle Creek is a nondescript village wedged between the suburbs of Wilkins Township and Monroeville and blocked off from the Monongahela River by Braddock. If you were not familiar with the area, you could walk through it without knowing, unless you caught sight of the 1600-foot-long George Westinghouse Bridge, named for the engineer and businessman who erected factories nearby. It is Turtle Creek’s only immediately recognizable landmark. In Westinghouse’s heyday, the area’s landscape was composed of one sprawling factory beside another, all since repurposed or demolished.
Around the time Westinghouse set up shop there, Frank Klaus, Pittsburgh’s first world boxing champion and born in 1887, would have been learning to walk in his Turtle Creek home. “Industry marks every move of the Klaus family,” reported The Pittsburgh Press in 1911, recounting that, as a young man, Frank would leave his job at the Westinghouse factories and “hurry to the coal pit and swing the sharp pick for several hours to help his Pop,” a German immigrant who operated a coal mine on Oak Hill in nearby East Pittsburgh. Successful street scraps as a youngster piqued Klaus’s curiosity in boxing and led him to the Wilmerding Athletic Club, where he won two amateur tournaments in two weight classes, featherweight and lightweight, on the same night. This caught the eye of local impresario George Engel, who became Frank’s manager.
Frank Klaus literally wrote the book on infighting, and befitting his straightforward persona, he titled it simply, The Art of In-fighting. “In-fighting is the artillery of pugilism,” he wrote, “as continual pounding at the walls of the enemy’s defense gradually reduces him to capitulation.” In other words, hard work and persistence. Keeping with the family tradition, industry defined Klaus’s philosophy for action in the ring. Constructed of solid muscle, and with a square jaw as hard as anything his father could possibly dig out of the earth, Klaus bore into opponents in a methodical but relentless manner, a punching machine. He dug his gloves deep into livers and kidneys with a motion and stamina derived from digging his ax into mine walls for hours on end as a boy. Despite his industrial approach, promoters in the cities he visited saw a more animalistic quality in his attack and dubbed him “The Pittsburgh Bearcat.” His fellow Pittsburghers were more specific; they called him “The Braddock Bearcat.”
Turning pro in 1904, Klaus became a local sensation almost overnight, and though he lost his sixth pro bout, he then won forty-three straight. Many of these were no-decision bouts, matches that ended after six rounds without an official verdict or winner, in accordance with Pennsylvania law at the time. A fighter could only win or lose by knockout or disqualification inside that six-round limit, and fans relied on their favorite local sportswriter to tell them who won. In Pittsburgh, most favored the loquacious Jim Jab of The Pittsburgh Press. Jab and his fellow columnists saw a few losses and draws for Frank, but dozens of wins.
No-decision fights with former middleweight champions Hugo Kelly and Billy Papke, along with a victory over perennial contender Jack Sullivan in Boston, led to a no-decision, non-title fight with reigning middleweight champ Stanley Ketchel, already a living legend, his frightening power having put heavyweight champion Jack Johnson on the floor only months earlier. Before some six thousand spectators at Pittsburgh’s Duquesne Gardens on March 23, 1910, “The Pittsburgh Bearcat” tore into the champion.
Strangely, Ketchel, known as one of the most willing and thrilling scrappers of the day, offered little resistance and seemed only concerned with hugging. When he did throw, they were soft and clumsy punches. Despite his own honest effort, Klaus was incapable of hurting the clinch-minded Ketchel, and Ketchel made few attempts to hurt Klaus. The crowd was soon divided between those jeering the fight as a fix and those headed for the door. As if executing some strategy of surprise, Ketchel suddenly came alive at the start of the sixth and final round and looked to be gunning for a knockout. He found Klaus more than ready to trade, and soon enough Ketchel was back to holding until the final bell.
“While Ketchel was a disappointment Klaus nevertheless was entitled to the decision” determined the local Post-Gazette. Jim Jab of the Post didn’t mince words. He called it “a fragrant frame-up.” “Pity the Pittsburgh sports,” he lamented, before declaring that “honors – if such a thing could exist in an event of the kind – should go to Klaus.”
A little over six months later, Ketchel was dead, murdered by a Missouri ranch hand, and the championship was up for grabs. Klaus was among the several who proclaimed themselves Ketchel’s successor, though universal recognition eluded all for a time. In 1912, Klaus and Engel traveled to France, hoping to clear up the confusion by eliminating key middleweights there, not least of which was Papke, the former champion who had been Ketchel’s chief rival. After wins over future light heavyweight champ Georges Carpentier and French champion Marcel Moreau, Klaus secured a showdown with Papke for undisputed recognition as the world middleweight king.
On March 5, before the largest crowd to ever gather at the Cirque du Paris, the aging Papke boxed cleverly but was quickly overwhelmed by Klaus’s constant pressure, hitting the canvas twice in round seven, and the desperate former champ resorted to constant fouling with his head and elbows. Routinely shouted at by the crowd, and warned by the referee, he ignored it all, and so Klaus began to retaliate with his own rough tactics. Soon enough, heads were crashing, eyes were being thumbed, and groins were being kneed on both sides. One witness called Klaus “a caveman” and Papke “a snarling hooligan.” Eventually, the referee disqualified Papke and handed Klaus the decision and the championship, to the great acclaim of the audience. After, he was awarded a diamond-encrusted championship belt. Perhaps most satisfactorily for Frank, he had doubled his winnings by betting on himself before the fight.
In all, Frank Klaus spent about nine months in Paris, and he enjoyed every minute of it, maybe a little too much so. He returned to Pittsburgh and some six months after winning the championship, he lost it to fellow Pittsburgher George Chip in a match at the Old City Hall. When Klaus hit the floor from a wild Chip punch in the sixth round, George Engel was so stunned, he collapsed and hit his head on the floor. Both fighter and manager were knocked out. After failing to regain the laurels in a rematch, Klaus retired in 1913 at just 25 years of age. In 1918 a charity event lured him back to the ring for a six-round exhibition with the city’s newest fistic star, Harry Greb, but after that Klaus never fought professionally again.
Years later, when asked why he had faded so quickly, Frank replied, “being the toast of the Paris boulevards didn’t help.” A hotelier in retirement, Frank Klaus died of a heart attack in his home on February 8, 1940 at the age of sixty and was laid to rest at All Saints Braddock Catholic Cemetery. Among the noteworthy fighters he defeated were Papke, Sullivan, Carpentier, Moreau, Harry Lewis, Frank Mantell, Leo Houck, Cyclone Johnny Thompson, and Jack Dillon. A sturdy, no-frills, rough-edged battler, Frank Klaus was the blueprint for the working-class ethic that defined the ideal for Pittsburgh’s sports champions for decades to come. He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2008.
Like I said, Frank Klaus literally wrote the book on infighting.
Infighting, also known as inside boxing, is a strategic and skillful aspect of the sport that involves fighting at close range, typically within an opponent's guard. This style demands excellent footwork, head movement, and the ability to generate power from short, compact movements using punches like hooks and uppercuts. Infighters often use pressure tactics to overwhelm opponents, nullifying reach advantages and forcing a physically and mentally demanding fight. It's an absolutely fascinating aspect of boxing. Frank Klaus was a master of infighting, here is he seen (on the left) demonstrating one of the skills of infighting, manipulating the guard of his opponent. His book "The Art of Infighting" is a gold mine of information on stuff like this.
This is cool, the photo that was used for the image on two Frank Klaus trading cards, the 1910 T220 and the 1912 T227, both of these cards came with different variation backs, Mecca Cigarettes, Miners Extra, and Honest Long Cut.
This is the image of Frank Klaus that was used for the T219 Champion Pugilist card, this is a beautiful card with the neon green background.
Frank Klaus and Jack Dillon facing off and during one of their fights, just wow, these are great shots of two legends. Frank Klaus is on the left in the top photo.
These are images from Frank Klaus vs Georges Carpentier, the top photo shows them during the fight and the bottom photo shows Carpentier sitting in his corner.
This is my favorite Frank Klaus card, 1915 Cope Bros & Co., wicked image of Klaus on this card.
Frank Klaus sitting in his corner before a fight.
Frank Klaus shaking hands with Eddie McGoorty.
This is a Boxing Illustrated - Wrestling News premium of Frank Klaus.
This is an awesome premium from The Ring magazine, I would love own the original artwork for this.
1996 Rover Victory Blend Tough Yanks Frank Klaus, love this set.
1923 W580 Frank Klaus card.
Hey, who's that girl?
Yeah, why not?
An up-close shot of Frank Klaus with the pinstripe suit.
Another good up shot of Frank Klaus.
Frank Klaus (left) and Jimmy Belmont. This is a photo of Frank Klaus taken in 1930, he had been retired from fighting for some time and had taken to training a young fighter named Jimmy Belmont.
I'll close it out on Frank Klaus with some good fight pose photos of "The Braddock Bearcat" in his prime.
Check out this beauty, a Frank Klaus photo signed by the man himself. This photo is actually for sale right now for $3,500, too pricey for a penniless peasant like me, but a really cool item.
This is my favorite photo of Frank Klaus, he looks hard as nails. Frank Klaus was a bada$$, a brutal puncher with a granite chin. I've always been fascinated by infighting, it is an art, and nobody did it better than Frank Klaus. He only lost four times in his 9-year career, extremely difficult fighter to beat. A true all-time great.
The infighting of Frank Klaus.
"I was a fighter who left it in the ring. I gave it all, every time l fought. People loved to see me fight because, win or lose, l fought my heart out."
Alain Robert free soloing in Verdon (France) in the 90s. Robert is a French rock climber from Digoin, Saone-et-Loire,Bourgogne, France. He is known as the French Spider Man or the Human Spider. He is famous for soloing skyscrapers with no more than a small chalk bag and a pair of climbing shoes. He's climbed over 200 skyscrapers, some notable climbs are Eiffel Tower, the Sydney Opera House and the Montparnasse Tower.
Alain Robert climbing The Torch in Doha in 2012.
Alain Robert climbing the Grande Arche de la Défense, in 1999.
Arian Robert climbing Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world's tallest building.